I originally wanted to call this post, ‘bastards I haven’t the time of day for’, but decided to wind it in a little and try sneak a cultural reference in there instead.
The question we all need to ask this week is, where is the love? Where? Swept under the carpet of three terms of hard-line xenophobia? Carefully tucked in Dubya’s back pocket with the object of Howard’s affections?
Again, where in the frickin’ hell is the love?
You might remember a post of last year where I had a little rant about this poor bloke stuck on Manus Island with no other company than the interweb and a stray cat. All this time costing the public $26k a day. Well, it turns out that that story is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this Government’s need to be a bunch of hard-line, tough guys.
Ok, so maybe before this post does actually descend into a litany of anti-conservative caterwauling, let me state that as far as the dinner-party-indignation scale goes, the current Governments actions are off the Ricther, as my conversation of a few nights ago prove.
Being politically minded, I like to surround myself with people who have political opinions. I know this is potential snobbery, but to me anyone who says ‘why can’t we just all get along?’, or ‘I know that deep down everyone just wants to love one another’, is asking to be slapped with a little post-1970s realism.
For this reason it’s always to be in the company of people being outraged by the actions of people like Little Johnny and Dubya, if not only because it restores my faith in the democratic process. Sure, I end up being used as an inexpensive ‘person with whom to consult’, but at least that edumacation is going completely to waste. And maybe the world isn’t degrading into a series of individuals concerned solely with interest rates and their mortgages.
Most of the indignation being expressed the other night was generated by the current case of a Ms. Cornelia Rau, imprisoned for ten months for the crime of being mentally ill and refusing to speak English to the police. The story is still unfolding, and the Labor Party is using it as a way to get stuck into the Government, so I’ll let you read what details there are here and here.
The main thing to get my goat about this story is Howard’s total and complete reticence to apologise to the woman or her family. Sure, he’ll apologise to tsunami victims he’ll never meet for a good soundbyte, and hug just about anyone in a disaster zone for a videograb, but to a woman terrified of incarceration that was granted her own personal hell courtesy of the Queensland police and Immigration Department, nada. And why? Because of legal concerns. There’s an outside chance that compensation may have to be paid.
The same goes for the case of Mamdouh Habib.
Habib was arrested in Pakistan a few years back, sent to Egypt, and finally ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Yay. Naturally, the means to try and extract information from this highly dangerous Sydney taxi driver have allegedly included
living in a cage, sensory deprivation, being regularly beaten, electrocuted, immersed in water and having a prostitute menstruate on his face. However, US authorities were not able to find enough evidence to put him on trial and consequently set him free
This guy was abandoned to the US military for three years of the treatment being alleged. Much like the people who ended up in Abu Ghraib for the unconscionable crime of breaking curfew, Habib appears by all accounts to have simply been in the wring place at the wrong time.
Terrific. Let's hear it for procedural fairness. Now, if we actually had any credible information about what Habib is alleged to have done, maybe we could justify his treatment. Maybe. If you can ever justify the things that are supposed to have been done to him. But, strangely, all that Phillip Ruddock (the Attorney-General, and a weasel of a man) will say is that Habib 'remains a person of interest'. Which is the equivalent of saying, 'he's a bit suss'.
To reiterate. We don't know what this guy is supposed to have done, and the Government refuses to tell us.. There was a TV report I saw in which he is a background face in a photo of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the first guy to try to demolish the World Trade Centre (1993, remember that?). But reports of his arrest in Pakistan just seem to have this guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was tortured because of it.
Meanwhile, the PM and the Attorney-General have continued since his release to characterise him as 'suss' and are willing to impose surveillance and a media-blanket over him. Ruddock has even gone as far as to threaten to remove any monies Habib might make by selling the story to the media, even though the AG apparently cannot do this.
This story stinks to high heaven.
If there's one thing that will characterise the Howard Government when judged by history is its complete unwillingness to cut anyone any slack if there was political mileage to be made.
From the Tampa, to the ‘Children Overboard’ lies, to the 'Pacific Solution', Howard's track record is remarkably stingy and at times downright mean. Witness also the Bakhtiyari's, an Afghani family who after having spent considerable time in Woomera Detention Centre, became the poster-children for the Australian refugee advocacy movement. They were deemed by the Immigration Department to be Pakistani, denied status as asylum seekers and deported by chartered jet late last year. They were then told that they were liable for the cost of their detention ($500k+) should they ever return to Australia. Part of that detention involved the mother of the family being kept under house arrest in a motel, at taxpayers expense. Not a cheap flat, a motel. Reports are that they have since travelled from Pakistan back to Afghanistan.
And, on an incomparably harder line to the Rau case, Howard has completely ruled out either an apology or compensation for Habib. Now, if he has actually associated with terrorists, or is a terrorist, then sweet as. But absolutely nothing has been proven. Nothing.
It really makes you wonder doesn’t it? I mean, why draw such a hard line?
What makes our societies liveable is that we have things like procedural fairness and recourse to an equitable system of laws. If doing things like being desperate to escape Afghanistan or not having the right papers results in being locked behind razor wire, then in reality how free are the rest of us? Moreover, if public opinions such as those that opposed looking for WMDs in Iraq are ignored and subsequently poo-pooed, or the justifications our leaders provide for their actions can change willy-nilly, then were is the democratic accountability?
Instead, we’re left with the impression that all is good in the world because the economy is (currently) healthy, and that the concerns of a few individuals are little to worry about. But I worry. I worry every time another one of these cases is aired in the media, because I know when push come to shove someone like Howard would abandon me to the permanent scars of incarceration, even if I’m completely innocent and deemed by unhappy coincidence to be suspicious.
And I think you should worry too.
PS. I just noticed this story, which was brought to my attention by DreamOnBlackGirl, the first Aboriginal woman I’ve seen on the web.