Muslims used to back Australian anti-terror laws?
Hand picked alleged Australian Muslim leaders are being used to cut their own throats the same as the hand picked Indigenous mob have been used by the HoWARd Government to screw ATSIC
The idea is simple you favour the few and make them the ilk and sweep the rest under the carpet and control the masses.
This is hoWARd's way folks divide and conquer using the 'Insiders' to exploit the idea and the news limited's and the murdoch's to take care of spoils.
We see it time and time again how certain people in certain groups and communities are bought out by the hoWARd government and given prestige and privilege at the fate of their fellow men women and children.
Example:
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CANBERRA, Oct 6: Australian Muslim leaders endorsed tough new anti-terorrism laws on Thursday after the government said the changes would not target Muslims. Australia announced a series of these laws, including the detention of suspects for 48 hours without charge and the use of electronic devices to monitor suspected terrorists, following the July 7 London bus and subway bombings.
The changes angered Australia's Muslim leaders, who feared the new laws would unfairly target Muslims and would lead to racial profiling, where people would be subjected to closer police scrutiny because of their ethnic background.--Reuters.
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By asdfasdf posted 8 October 05
From spinach 7 mag - on anti-terror laws, muslim community August 2005
Rattling the cage
BY VICKI SENTAS
Recently, the federal government announced a controversial new 'counter-terrorism' package. Civil libertarians were quick to raise the spectre of a police state . Yet Muslim groups argued that the new security regime is already having an impact on the democratic freedoms and everyday safety of their communities.
VICKI SENTAS talks to Agnes Chong and Waleed Kadous from the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network about the impact of the anti-terror laws so far.
Since 2002, over 20 pieces of state and federal counter-terrorism laws have been introduced in Australia. These laws created new broad criminal offences, most of which only indirectly relate to violent political acts, and confer unprecedented powers on police and intelligence agencies.
Agnes Chong, from the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network (AMCRAN) argues that increased police powers have resulted in systematic government intervention in Muslim people's lives: "The terrorism laws have the effect of constructing Muslims as a suspect community -- just being a Muslim makes you a target of suspicion and subjects Muslim communities, as a whole, to increased surveillance. This has disempowered the Muslim community, with people now afraid to speak out on political issues and even, ironically, the anti-terrorism laws themselves."
ASIO and Federal Police raids in 2001, after the New York attacks, and in 2002, after the Bali bombings, targeted Muslim homes in Sydney and Melbourne, with no arrests. The New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties reported that 30 raids occurred in 2002, most of them in Sydney, on the basis of innuendo, rumour and conduct taken out of context.
Waleed Kadous from AMCRAN believes the recent ASIO raids conducted against 'suspected terrorists' in Melbourne and Sydney in June 2005 followed a similar pattern: "The ASIO raids yielded no evidence of wrongdoing, despite the broad ranging laws under which preparatory acts can be prosecuted. No one was arrested. Instead, government officials said the purpose of the raids was to 'rattle the cage', and frighten people from the 'next step'. It highlights how ASIO uses its powers to intimidate."
AMCRAN is a voluntary community network established in 2004 by Agnes and Waleed. Concerned with the impact of the war on terror on Muslim communities, AMCRAN is dedicated to preventing the erosion of the civil rights of all Australians, and, by drawing on the rich civil rights heritage of the Islamic faith, provides a Muslim perspective in the civil rights arena.
Counter-terrorism legislation has been widely criticised as generally eroding civil liberties and democratic freedoms. However the laws have had a specific impact on Muslims. Waleed explains that because the laws define offences so broadly, the only possible way they can be used is through selective application. He describes it as "a back door... for it to be used discriminatorily. Currently, the target of choice is the Muslim community. The list of banned organisations, which is proscribed by the Attorney-General [Philip Ruddock], currently has only self-identified Muslim organisations on it, unlike any other country in the world. Consequently, there are currently some offences that exclusively apply to Muslims."
"The laws are so broad that they cover not only the acts commonly understood to be terrorist actions, but legitimate resistance movements. Under the new regime, the African National Congress or Fretelin would be considered terrorist organisations. In the case of Muslims, resistance to the brutal dictatorship in Uzbekhistan, or even financial support to Palestinian families who lost their houses due to the Israeli policy of demolishing homes of suspected -- not convicted -- suicide bombers, would be considered acts of terrorism."
This year, federal legislation gave ASIO powers to question and detain people not suspected of committing an offence, for up to seven days. Criminal justice standards such as the right to silence and the right to a lawyer are circumscribed. Disclosing information about the existence of a questioning or detention warrant to anyone, including family, is an offence punishable by five years imprisonment.
These 'secrecy provisions' also extend to third parties and the media, making public scrutiny of these exceptional powers not only difficult, but criminal. At the recent Parliamentary Joint Committee reviewing ASIO's new questioning and detention powers, AMCRAN presented evidence that ASIO have threatened people with a detention warrant in order to secure cooperation in informal questioning.
"There is evidence to suggest that the powers are being used as a coercive measure in the community, particularly in light of the provision that requires a person's passport to be surrendered when the Director-General [of ASIO] seeks the Attorney-General's consent to request for the issuing of a warrant," says Agnes.
While the laws foster differential policing towards Muslims, an anti-Muslim climate is also evident more generally. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 2003 report, Isma: Listen documents Arab, Muslim and Sikh Australians experiences of racial vilification and violence since September 11, 2001. The report outlines incidents of social incivility; verbal abuse; threats of violence including stalking and sexual assault; physical assaults such as women having their hijab torn in public places; people being spat upon or more violently assaulted; incidents of arson, vandalism, threats and harassment. Women are reported as overwhelmingly the subject of racist attacks.
Particular incidents prompt an intensification of everyday and ongoing forms of racism. During the Gulf War in 1991 and immediately after the September 11 attacks and the October 2002 Bali bombings, a sharp increase in incidents of racial vilification or violence were reported, and remained at an elevated level for some months afterwards. The London bombings resulted in over 300 official reports of racist violence in a three week period in Britain and at least one racially motivated murder of a Pakistani man.
In 2004 AMCRAN produced Terrorism Laws: ASIO, the Police and You, a know-your-rights guide outlining the terrorism laws and legal and civil rights. A second edition of the booklet, translated into Arabic, Urdu and Bahasa Indonesia, will be available in October.
AMCRAN considers circulating experiences of police interventions and surveillance together with grassroots community education as a key strategy for supporting community responses to the war on terror.
"The complexity of the laws leads to fear of engagement in politics and community discussion," explains Agnes. "An important function of the booklet is to let the community see clearly the problems with the laws and why the campaign to change them is so important; while simultaneously showing them that they still have certain rights."
Vicki is involved in community-based campaigns against terrorism laws. For more information see http://amcran.org
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By Scott Parkin posted 8 August 05
Historian Michael Foley said during times of war pacifists often get mugged. As a nonviolent activist working to end the war in Iraq and the corporate war profiteering that comes with it, September 2005 has been the most surreal time of my life and I definitely feel like I got mugged by Australian Attorney General Phillip Ruddock and the Australian government.
After three lovely months of traveling through Australia and meeting people, one Wednesday afternoon during the second week of September I was called by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, or ASIO, and asked to come in for an interview. I asked if I was required to do so and the woman at the other end of the phone said "No, you are not obliged too." I then asked if this would affect the remaining two weeks of my time in Australia and she said she couldn't say. I should have listened with closer attention to that non-answer.
A few days later, walking out of a cafe in Melbourne, I was snatched off the street by four Australian Federal Police and two Immigration Compliant Officers. They informed me I was being placed into "questioning detention" so that the Department of Immigration could assess if they were going to cancel my tourist visa or not. In truth, "a competent Australian authority" had already assessed me to be a "direct or indirect risk to Australian national security", canceled my visa and began the process of removing me from the country (which would end up costing me $11,000 Australian dollars). By that evening, I was in solitary confinement at the Melbourne Custody Center, a maximum security lockup awaiting that not-so free ride home. In addition, that evening, a media firestorm erupted in Australia and I became the center of debate over free speech and the criminalization of dissent in Australia.
I spent a good part of July and August doing workshops on our Houston based campaign to get Halliburton out of Iraq, people-powered strategies to end the illegal occupation of Iraq and nonviolent action. The Halliburton talks discussed the company's history of corruption and cronyism in Iraq, tactics and strategies used by community organizers in Houston (and elsewhere) to pressure Halliburton out of Iraq and the campaign in the larger context of the American antiwar movement. The people power strategies workshop is an approach to social action that addresses immediate community priorities, builds power by mobilizing citizens, is framed by core 'citizen values' and challenges structural inequalities. It imparts on participants methods to craft a clear strategy in working for social change. The nonviolent action workshops were facilitated them in the tradition of Thoreau, Gandhi, King and countless other advocates for nonviolent social change.
I facilitated these trainings at the Brisbane Social Forum, the Sydney Social Forum and Subplot, a forum for autonomous and student activists. The latter two venues were precursors for two days of protests against the Forbes Global CEO Conference at the Sydney Opera House.
During those two days of protests, I also organized a protest outside the Sydney offices of war profiteer Halliburton's subsidiary KBR. It was a political theater event where my cohorts and I dressed up as billionaires, named ourselves "The Coalition of the Billing" and chanted such insurrectionary chants as "1-2-3-4, we make money when there's war, 5-6-7-8, KBR's really great!" and "We're here, we're rich, get used to it!". It was a fun little protest and many of the New South Wales police watching were laughing along with our comedy routine. I can only guess that Phillip Ruddock and ASIO missed the underlying humor.
While they may currently hold all the legal cards, they are losing the public debate as lawyers, civil libertarians, environmentalists; former government whistleblowers, grassroots activists, major media outlets and some politicians have spoken out and acted on this baffling outrageous episode. Currently, their best response has been that I "incited spirited protest". All over Australia, local communities have mobilized and rallied around my detention and removal. There have been numerous NONVIOLENT protests, occupations and direct communications all over Australia, and in the United States, confronting Prime Minister John Howard, Phillip Ruddock and the Australian government about their shabby handling of me and my civil rights. Major Australian media outlets have questioned daily why their government has acted in such a manner. This doesn't even include the outpouring of support I have read from people all over the world fed up with this type of behavior from "liberal western democracies" seeking to restrict and criminalize dissent under the auspices of "national security" and the "war on terror".
Bob Dylan once alleged to live outside the law you must be honest. I have been known to live outside the law from time to time and it has given me a degree of self-realization and honesty which I apply to my activism. I realize that while my actions are not necessarily the norm in today's world, they are dictated by conscience or as Thoreau once said "The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies... A very few -- as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men -- serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it." After the backlash I have seen against the Australian government's treatment of me, I can honestly say the Australian people are on the right track to serving their country with their consciences.
Scott Parkin is a community organizer from Houston TX and recently traveled in Australia talking about Halliburton and the US antiwar movement, until the Australian government forcibly removed him. His e-mail is
[email protected].
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