As I mentioned in the last post, David Hicks’ father Terry is coming up to Brisbane for the March 17th rally commemorating the 4th anniversary of the war in Iraq. Anyone who has seen the documentary The President Versus David Hicks will know Terry as a softspoken everyman who’s been thrown into the awful situation of having to campaign for his son’s freedom, and quite possibly, his life. Anyone who hasn’t seen it, should tune in to SBS tonight at 10pm – regardless of your position on David Hicks’ guilt or innocence, you cannot help but be touched by Terry’s journey, retracing David’s steps. The movie’s tagline reads -
“Your son converts to Islam. Your son fights for the Taliban. Your son is labelled a terrorist. Your son is still your son”
and it sums up Terry’s situation well. But it should also sum up ours as a country. Whatever we think of David’s actions, we have obligations to him as a fellow citizen and a part of the Australian community. We can dislike him as much as we want, but we can’t disappear him.
Except our Government apparently disagrees.
Under the common law we inherited from the British, no should be above the law and no one should be beyond its protection. The UK government demanded the return of their citizens, because they had no faith in the US military commissions ability to deliver justice.
The fact that the Supreme Court of the United States declared that process to be unconstitutional, would seem to bear them out.
But our Government persists with these trials, unwilling, or perhaps unable, to admit any flaws in the process. If you watched the Insight programme on SBS tonight, you were probably as shocked as I was to hear our Attorney-General’s latest talking point – that David Hicks deserves the right to clear his name in court.
So, it’s out of concern for his best interests, and perhaps, social standing, that he’s been left in Guantanamo Bay until they could concoct a system capable of trying him for non-crimes.
David has spent five years in a hell hole, cut off from family, society, and the media and with only the barest of protections or oversight.
If a fundamental principle of the legal system is that not only must justice be done, but that it must be seen to be done, then in Guantanamo in general, and in David’s case in particular, the injustices are so evident and so overwhelming, that any future chance for fairness has been destroyed.
His trial will permit hearsay evidence, coerced testimony, and will take place after senior figures in the US and Australia have publicly pronounced his guilt.
There are a lot of campaigns to fight for the rights of those who’ve fallen through the cracks. But the people in Guantanamo Bay haven’t found themselves the unfortunate victims of holes in our legislation, they have been shovelled into an abyss created deliberately to hold them beyond the law, in the name of freedom.
Everyone who missed Insight should make a point of watching the repeats, either on Friday at 2.30pm or on Monday at 2.30pm, or if you’re online tonight, join in the discussion at their site.
Terry Hicks will be speaking at the March 17th Peace Rally in Queen’s Park, Brisbane from 11am, and also at a forum (details to follow) on Sunday the 18th.
Oh you stupid machine you ate my post. Hang on.
Okay not it’s accepting it but not posting them, do what now?
OK – the comments feature is giving me a bit of grief, as SteveD can attest, but if you’ll be persistent, I’ll stick with it.
After I get up tomorrow, that is.
Right, let’s hope this works this time.
What I typed before was me wondering whether people hide behind the issue of David Hicks’ guilt or innocence so they don’t have to recognise the sheer totality of injustice that is Guantanamo Bay. Here is a place which admits that it is beyond the reach of any law or protection, is answerable to nobody, which openly flaunts the Geneva Convention – and then claims a halo for doing it.
In 1984, Big Brother went to a lot of work to cover the traces of people it “disappeared”. Somehow we’ve become so jaded towards our governments’ evil deeds or so convinced of our own impotence in stopping them that such pretence is no longer seen necessary.
To me then, that’s what Terry Hicks represents: the person who isn’t jaded and refuses to be impotent. Who watches the Watchmen, and doesn’t look away. May he inspire us all to do the same. We are watching you, Bush and Howard. Nobody will be allowed to fall through the cracks. Not now, not ever.
Steve
One of the points I was trying to make, but perhaps failed to, was that after 5 years without charge, justice is no longer possible. No bona fide criminal case ‘prosecuted’ in this way could go ahead, and for good reason. The right to a speedy trial is central to our justice system, as is the necessity of releasing anyone who you can’t charge, in a matter of days, let alone the five years David has been locked up.
It took five years and two tries for the US Government to fabricate a process that could provide a trial for David, and there is still a thumb, arm and shoulder on the scales there.
A few weeks ago I met Lee Rush, father of Scott Rush, one of the Bali Nine, and he reminded me of Terry Hicks.
Both had to come late in life to political campaigning, and not with the luxury many of us have, of doing it out of some intellectual rationale.
Both of them face the prospect that if they don’t do everything they can to push the issue, in the public eye and in the political spectrum, they may never see their loved ones again.
I’ll post more about Lee (and his wife Chris) soon.
Nice article. I’ve been following – or at least spluttering with outrage and fuming with anger over – the David Hicks thing for some time.
See my article on the debabcle where I compare Hicks’ training with the Taliban and the various brands of survivalists and armed nutters dressing up like Rambo every weekend in America (and here).
Psychos, robbers and malcontents of every stripe get bail and wander our streets – whatever Hicks has done cannot possibly be bad enough to justify what “Uncle Sam” has done.
Through seeking justice for myself and my own family recently on a very minor matter our justice system and the way it works (or doesn’t work) scares me to death.
I was what is colloquially termed an “army brat” – I believed that most people in authority were there to try to do what is good and right to the best of their ability within the law. Sadly I now know this not to be true.
Our justice system isn’t fabulous, but it’s better than nothing and it’s ours- not showing it to the United States is to me the same as throwing it away altogether. Let’s not get rid of it before we have a better replacement!
Even if a trial were held tomorrow and we were told he had been found guilty, how could anyone believe it at this point? Especially since the evidence and trial proceedings will not be made public.
The whole question of justice is interesting. I think you are right in David Hicks’ case – how could any vindication now (and that’s probably not likely anyway) make up for the injustices done so far?
But if you thought it’s never achievable, you’d give up now. I heard an interesting discussion of protest methods recently and the point was made that, often, when you’re in the middle of it, it feels like you’re losing, but in hindsight you can see that the protest action had a positive effect. E.g. the decades of protest about East Timor – eventually resulted in independence.
Congrats on starting the blog, Don – look forward to vsisitng your head space now & then.
Even gung -ho idiot anti-Semites deserve a fair trial. Assuming that’s what he is of course.
If its made into enough of a political issue then maybe Hicks has a chance around election time. But then all Howard has to do is seen to be doing something about hicks.
When watching the sbs story there was a comment about how the detainees were being kept for intelligence gathering purposes( this was 18 months after his capture). One wonders how useful this intelligence is if the captive has been separated from any activity for 18 months. Now 5 years on one wonders how competant the american military are at interogation if it takes them 5 years to do so.
A sad sorry state of affairs that our federal politicians should be ashamed of.
The liberal government are obviously squeezing themselves futher and further into the tight dark corner of Iraq and ‘Terrorism’.
David Hicks’ ongoing, unjust incarceration is obviously one of the more completely stuffed up actions they have managed.
What worries me is that the current ‘action’ is only because of mounting public pressure – even support by the common media to a degree. Not that I want this situation to be prolonged by any means, but it is also becoming more clear to most people with any understanding of this tale, that our government can not afford to have him tried fairly with the risk of him being found either not guilty or of limited risk.
I don’t see that there is any fair and quick solution. Anything that happens quickly, will only be John’s buddies helping John get the solution that will ultimately help them all because their lackey will still stand a chance of leading/undermining on of the world’s most respected countries.
Similarly the Covco issues. Any death is a tragedy, but to spend months discussing want amounts to a single accidental death and over look the hundreds of citizens that we are apparently in Iraq to free is absurd and disgusting – but doesn’t win votes. It’s not hard to work out if the new strategy for Iraq actually features any consideration about more effective methods to preserve life and human rights.