Doug Lorimer
In an interview broadcast on ABC TV's Lateline program on September 12, London-based Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger criticised PM John Howard's plans to introduce new, "tougher" anti-terrorism laws.
"There are two very big differences between the situation here in Britain and in Australia", said Pilger. "In Australia, there are very few dissenting voices at all, hardly any, both in politics and the media. You have probably one of the most restricted media in the Western world. Journalists are very close to politicians. Presumably, that's why the whole question of state terrorism, of Howard making Australia a target for terrorists, has not been debated at all. It's just been left off the agenda."
Pilger pointed out that in Britain "the highest judiciary, the Law Lords, have made it clear they're almost certainly not going to let [PM Tony] Blair's so-called anti-terrorist measures through. One of the Law Lords, Lord Hoffman, has said that Blair's anti-terrorist measures are as dangerous as terrorism itself. You see, these judges know that in all the years of Irish terrorism in this country, when we had a prevention of terrorism act" but not a single conviction was recorded.
Only politics made gains against terrorism, along with professional policing, said Pilger. Nothing was gained "by draconian measures of the kind that Howard wants to bring in into Australia".
By contrast with Britain, Pilger pointed out that in Australia "the highest judiciary, the High Court, is supine. We never hear from the High Court. There's perhaps one judge now" who's willing to cross Howard. So who will stop these anti-democratic measures, asked Pilger.
"Who will act on behalf of the people, as they should in a democracy", not only to stop Howard, but to ensure there is proper debate, Pilger asked.
"In this country [Britain], I think there's reasonable confidence that the courts will play their proper role" and throw out Blair's budding police state. "That's not guaranteed at all in Australia and that's something of a tragedy."
Pilger argued that in Britain "as in Australia, there are more than adequate laws" against terrorism, but these laws "have proven to be a total failure over all those years" in preventing terrorist acts.
"If we're talking about terrorism, left off the debate, left out of the debate, is state terrorism. The fact that Australia enthusiastically joined a rapacious, illegal attack on a defenceless country in which tens of thousands of people died. That under international law, under the Nuremberg enactment that formed the basis for international law" 60 years ago, what Howard did was "an illegal, rapacious and an act, in effect, of terrorism. Why is that not included in the debate on terrorism?"
Pilger pointed put that " state terrorism absolutely dwarfs the al Qaeda variety, which is minuscule compared with the kind of bloodshed and suffering and attack that has gone on in Iraq".
Lateline presenter Tony Jones asked Pilger if he was prepared to go to jail for saying, as he had in a Lateline interview last year, that the Iraqi resistance was necessary to defeat the US and other occupying forces, including the Australians, and "the context in which you told us that Australian, British and US forces were legitimate targets for the Iraqi resistance"?
Pilger replied: "Well, that's all very dramatic, Tony, but what I was saying, as you know well, is that every country when attacked has a right to resist. Australia had a right to resist the Japanese in the Second World War, Britain had the right to resist the Germans, and the Iraqis have a right to resist the attack on their country.
"Resistances are often appalling. They do appalling things. Often, as appalling as the attackers, but the truth is in Iraq is that the overwhelming number of people who have been killed, maimed and dispossessed in that country since April 2003 have been done by the so-called coalition, of which Australia is a member. That's an issue that really is at heart of this...
"I'm always prepared to go to jail for speaking the truth. I think that's what journalists should do.
"You know, democracy and freedom of press is entwined in Australia. It was the military dictatorship of General Darling that only collapsed under the weight of the work of courageous editors, something that's often forgotten, that probably our democracy started at that point when Darling was recalled to London [having failed to crush campaigning journalism with the laws of criminal libel]. We seem to have forgotten that over the years. Now that we have much a monopolised and restricted press."
Pilger went on to point out that it was unlikely that well-known journalists like himself would be the immediate victims of the anti-free-speech aims of the government's "anti-terrorism" laws, but that Third World Muslim immigrants would be.
"You have a whole minority community now in Australia, as you have in Britain, absolutely fearful, intimidated by the prospect of these laws. In [England], you have the police patrolling Muslim streets now in the north, almost as if they're under a kind of occupation. And what will this do, apart from take away people's basic rights? It will push young people, young Muslims into the arms of extremism. That always happens. It's so counter-productive.
"You know, any true leader of a democracy should be bringing people together. An Australian prime minister should be saying, 'Look, we're really a safe country. We're not really under attack. Yes, Bali happened. That was disgusting, but Australia itself is not under attack. What can we do about it? Yes, look at how we can stop terrorists coming in [and the causes].' But these laws are a provocation. Worse, they are the beginning of a kind of democratic police state. That may sound dramatic, but, you know the most basic freedoms always go in a very quiet and insidious way."
Pilger warned: "If Australia simply swallows these laws — and you have an attorney-general, who has deserted an Australian citizen, David Hicks, in Guantanamo Bay, at the vanguard of these laws — I think that's terribly worrying and we should be looking at what we can do about debating them properly and breaking silences and speaking about taboos."
Returning to the issue of whether the anti-terrorism laws help prevent terrorist attacks, Pilger said: "What you will get in Australia is the almost blanket surveillance that there is in Britain. Now, you know, this has been useful for telling the police after the event what the suicide bombers" did. But, "like the Prevention of Terrorism Act itself, and all the draconian measures that that brought in", the surveillance "hasn't actually prevented anything. And that's the point.
"But what it does do is criminalise whole groups of people. There's no doubt that since July 7, as I said, the Muslim community in this country, many of them — and I've been among them — are simply terrified, and with good reason. I mean, what catches terrorists ... is good policing, is good intelligence. It's not people running into Stockwell Tube and gunning down an innocent Brazilian electrician. It is competent policing, for which this country used to be famous. That will catch terrorists in the end, and good politics will safeguard the country from terrorism. It will safeguard Britain, it will safeguard Australia. Good politics would be to get out of Iraq."
From Green Left Weekly, September 28, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.