Thursday, July 06, 2006

on david hicks, waleed aly tells it like it is

this is going to get me on a few more lists, no doubt. luckily i never plan to be a politician, minister of religion, school principal, director of a major corporation or member of a royal family, otherwise there would certainly be dirt to dig and bring out later on.

on the subject of nadine's guilt-free three and fluffy's guilt-ridden three, i've had a lot of trouble working out what mine would be, and where the line is between the two categories.

but for today, waleed aly is my poster boy for justice. it was michelle g in canberra the other day; see how fickle i can be?

check him:














today in the age on page 21, waleed's article on hicks is headlined "rights reduced to rhetoric".

let me pull out two paragraphs:

when several UN special rapporteurs, on behalf of the UN commission on human rights, labelled the treatment of guantanamo detainees "torture", the howard government relied on the assurances of the white house, and spent more energy defending the regime than ensuring an australian citizen's human rights. we have left hicks there for 4 1/2 years. we left mamdouh habib there for three. then he was released without charge.

the right to a fair trial; freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment - in the human rights landscape, these are colossal landmarks. without them, other human rights become mere rhetoric. immediately after world war II, anyone could have told you that.

and:

we talk of human right being as important as security. but in truth, we subordinate them to political imperatives.

that should be unthinkable in a nation that pioneered human rights.

but then, perhaps, we are no longer that same nation.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, great series of posts on David Hicks. After spending most of my legal career trying to get various people WHO HAD ACTUALLY BROKEN A LAW OR TWO OR AT LEAST BEEN CHARGED WITH AN OFFENCE AGAINST AUSTRALIAN LAW out of custody, I can tell you that its not just the government who tend to forget about the presumption of innocence.

Until our community remembers that alleged offenders are humans with rights too, the government will continue to get away with this ridiculous disregard for the rights of ITS OWN CITIZENS. That would be us.

I am appalled beyond words by this government and I will continue to take every opportunity to tell everyone I know or have ever met to vote these idiots out as soon as possible.

I should add that I'm not worried about being associated with a possibly seditious blog like this. If they are going to arrest everyone whose name is not Craig, that may take a while. Presumably they would have to recruit an awful lot of people named Craig to do all that arresting.

Keep up the great posting comrade,

I'm not Craig

Melba said...

i'm not craig.

thank you for validating what i've one. even if one person can say something like you did, it makes it worthwhile.

i'm ending my rant. it was just to last a week. but may be re-visited later on.

like a sit in or something like that.

keep up the good fight.

and i like that you call me comrade.

comrade.

Melba said...

one = done

sheesh