Shouts from the desert

Unless you are living in a cave, it would be hard to escape the news today that Habib is to be released from Guantanamo due to there being insufficient evidence to charge him. Of course it is no doubt a total coincidence that this comes a week after the release of an affidavit detailing torture inflicted on Habib while in US custody.

I have previously discussed the inadequacy of the Guantanamo tribunals (1, 2, 3, 4), and briefly mentioned that holding people for three years before trial is incompatible with anything we would recognise as justice, but the revelation that there was never enough evidence to lay charges, even under the kangaroo "courts" of Guantanamo, points to something new and even more serious.

Given that there is insufficient evidence to charge Habib, and that he has been incarcerated now for 32 months, we can only conclude his imprisonment was for some purpose other than that of bringing him to justice - and that means it was for a political purpose. In other words, the United States is now keeping political prisoners, and has been doing so with the acquiescence of our own Government, including Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock.

Such a statement would have seemed extreme to the point of absurdity a little over three years ago, but today it is a matter-of-fact truth that is unavoidable by anybody who does not choose to ignore it. Moreover many seem willing to accept this conduct, even in Australia - and many more are choosing to ignore it and live in denial despite overwhelming evidence.

Before Bush came to power in the United States, it was unthinkable that the United States would keep political prisoners. It was unthinkable that they would engage in torture. It was unthinkable that the most senior officials of the United States administration would be involved in the preparation and deployment of legal advice sanctioning torture and giving orders in effect authorising torture. Yet all these things have now been done.

It is amazing, and somewhat distressing, that the people of the United States, and our own Government, can have come to accept this over such a short period of time. It is disturbing that others continue to be able to deny it. It makes it far easier to understand the history of despotic regimes which come to power and maintain overwhelming popular support even while engaging in unspeakable conduct.

This all points to a flaw in the human psyche - people are generally so desperate to believe in the goodness of their own nation (or even of allied nations) that they are willing to either approve of or deny the existence of acts of the Government that are inconsistent with that belief. Such a flaw must arise from an inability to differentiate between the nation and the Government - a belief that the Government can only be "evil" if the nation is "evil".

This serious erosion of our standards of justice - standards critical to freedom and civilised standards of Government conduct - cannot be allowed to continue. There must be a return the civilised standards, and that means the abolition of detention at Guantanamo, the release of all political prisoners, and immediate trial of any who are to be charged (and incidentally, they are still talking about Hicks remaining in detention without trial for years to come).

This is something that our Government has an obligation to fight for - at least in the case of our own citizens. To refrain from this is simply not within the reasonable range of political choices known to civilised society. But it is something that, given Ruddock's history, the Government will no doubt fail to do. And when the Government fails to do so, it is the responsibility of the House of Representatives to take corrective action - something that they will also no doubt fail to do.

And all that means that even though the Iraq war is dead as an election issue, there is a continuing, serious issue that demands that strong opposition to the current Government in Australia continue, not as a mere political choice, but as an obligation on us all as voters in a democratic nation - as the people that the Government act for, and as the people who jointly hold the power to replace those who serve as the agents of our nation. That issue is the total failure of our Government to defend and uphold decent standards of justice, and to oppose the keeping of political prisoners by our ally, the United States.