Mike Minehan
Over the last few years, Australia has enacted 44 new laws to prevent terrorism.
These laws are tough. They provide for phone taps without warrants, detention without arrest, and even house arrest for up to a year on suspicion only.
Detained individuals can notify their family and tell them that they are ‘safe’, but suspects can’t reveal their location, why they are being held, or how they can be contacted. Detained individuals have access to a lawyer, but all communications with their lawyer are monitored. According to civil rights lawyers, this process threatens the basic principles of confidentiality necessary to mount an effective legal defence (Lynch, A, 2006, ‘What Price Security’ UNSW Press, p152).
House arrest for up to a year can be imposed by control orders on suspicion only. But according to Tim Adams, the Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, ‘putting people under house arrest is tantamount to jailing people without trial. This is a shocking departure from Australia’s proud tradition of protecting individuals from an overly powerful state.’
Adams claims that ‘locking people up or seriously restricting their liberty when they have not even been charged, are characteristics of dictatorship, not a democracy’.
Link
Sedition laws could also result in journalists being imprisoned for up to seven years – if these journalists fail to report an interview with someone the police may suspect is a terrorist.
Those who donate to an organisation that the government suspects of terrorist links could also be jailed for up to seven years.
And do these laws make us safer?
Well, maybe - if the authorities get it right.
However, a number of recent cases in Australia reveal that the authorities don’t always get it right.
In 2006, the Commonwealth Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan, reviewed nearly 250 cases where the Immigration Department appeared to have jailed the wrong people (The Australian, 27 April, 2006, p2). These people were imprisoned without trial.
The Cornelia Rau case is an interesting example. Cornelia Rau is a German-born permanent resident who was a former Qantas flight hostess. Rau was initially found in a delirious state in the tiny Cape York town of Coen in early
2004 and was handed over to Queensland police as a suspected illegal
immigrant. Ms Rau, who suffers from schizophrenia, spent 10 months in detention - including periods in isolation - after authorities failed
to identify her as a missing person (The Australian, 4 September, 2007, p4).
The Rau case did not have any association with terrorism. But even in a high-profile case of terrorism, the government failed to release a suspect in the face of overwhelming evidence that he was innocent.
This was the Dr Mohamed Haneef incident. Haneef was a doctor working on the Queensland Gold Coast. He lent his phone card to a cousin in England, who then lent it to an acquaintance who was implicated in the London subway terrorist attacks.
Haneef was imprisoned and interrogated for 12 days. The government then chose to ignore evidence that Haneef was innocent, because the government was keen to convict a terrorist so as to justify its tough anti-terror laws.
Haneef was released only after public pressure forced the government to back down. The Australian government has never apologised to Haneef.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland agreed that the case was riddled with mistakes from the top down (The Australian, 23 December, 2008, p1).
Australia’s anti-terror laws have been condemned by Amnesty International, Civil Liberties groups, the Australian Law Council, the Australian chapter of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and senior judges (Polya, G, 2005, Link ).
Obviously there is a trade-off between protecting the public from terrorists and upholding basic human rights.
But the track record of Australian authorities so far is erratic. There should be an independent, judicial review process in place to ensure that the innocent are adequately protected.
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