Pip Hinman
The following is abridged from a speech by Pip Hinman to a Newtown community speak-out against the new terror laws on September 15. Hinman stood for the Socialist Alliance in the Marrickville by-election in NSW on September 17.
The arrest and deportation of visiting US peace and anti-corporate globalisation activist Scott Parkin should bring to mind the famous words of German Protestant pastor Martin Niemoller, who lived in Nazi Germany.
"They came for the communists, and I didn't object — for I wasn't a communist. They came for the socialists, and I didn't object — for I wasn't a socialist. They came for the labour leaders, and I didn't object — for I wasn't a labour leader. They came for the Jews, and I didn't object — for I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to object."
In our case, the first line would begin: "They came for the Muslims."
Just this week, right-wing Sydney Morning Herald columnist Gerard Henderson was applauding the "silence of the majority" as the iron fist of state repression was revealed by the Howard government. Good Muslims need not fear, we are only after Muslim terrorists, he added.
Oh yeah? If Henderson says don't worry, we'd better worry! The creep has spooky connections. And his assurances don't sound convincing in the wake of the detention of Scott Parkin, a detention that perhaps could begin the second line of a rewrite of Pastor Martin Niemoller's words to suit our cruel times: "They came for the peace activist."
And they are not stopping there. PM John Howard is out to smash the trade unions, the strongest of all the social movements in this country, through his new workplace relations laws coming soon to a tamed parliament in Canberra.
"They came for the trade unions." Socialist Alliance sees this as the most important political issue today. The attacks on trade unions are part of the attack on our democratic rights. If these laws manage to smash or radically weaken the trade union movement, every progressive campaign and movement in Australia is going to be weakened.
As the Socialist Alliance candidate in the Marrickville by-election, and as a trade union member and anti-war activist, the top priority in my campaign is to make the case for total non-cooperation by the NSW Labor government with these draconian anti-union laws.
We are collecting signatures from local residents on an open letter to Premier Morris Iemma, which calls upon his government to reject individual contracts for state public sector workers, guarantee unfair dismissal protection for all workers in NSW and to refuse police enforcement of Howard's anti-union laws. The Greens candidate, Sam Byrne, has added his name to the open letter. And I urge you to do the same.
Back to the world of Spooky Henderson. "In hostile times, democracies are often forced to curtail individual freedoms", he wrote in the September 13 SMH, as he applauded Howard's announcement that he planned to introduce laws that will:
- Increase the powers of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to restrict the movement of people they consider "terrorism risks" for up to 12 months. This will include being able to electronically tag people and restrict who they can meet.
- Introduce "preventive detention" of suspects for up to 14 days. People could be put in jail for two weeks at a time if they are deemed a "terrorism risk".
- Give the AFP the power to stop, question and search people in the streets.
- Make new migrants wait three instead of two years to apply for citizenship.
- Establish a new offence of leaving bags unattended at airports.
- Change sedition laws to make it an offence to "incite violence" in the community or against Australian troops overseas. This will carry a seven-year jail term. Look out anti-war movement!
To get the proposed counter-terrorism legislation fully enacted, Howard will need the support of state and territory governments — all of them Labor. So far no Labor premier has dismissed the proposal. Likewise, federal Labor has indicated it is prepared to hear the Coalition government's case.
But with federal Labor leader Kim Beazley endorsing the detention and deportation of Parkins — after being given a confidential ASIO briefing — Howard is pretty confident he can count on state Labor governments to cooperate in this latest attack on civil liberties.
The Labor "opposition" has supported all the repressive laws introduced so far by the Howard government, and state Labor governments have brought in their own. The Iemma government even boasts that the NSW ALP has introduced the toughest state "anti-terrorism" laws!
The "national security" and "anti-terror" laws passed by state and federal governments in recent years have given ASIO and the police forces the power to harass, persecute, prosecute and imprison people with impunity, yet they have done nothing to reduce the risk of terrorist attack, here or in any other country. The real purpose of the laws is to intimidate and silence dissent.
The laws are about gagging opposition to the imperialists' wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and any other poor country the US and its allies decide to invade.
Howard has targeted the Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir because it declared its solidarity with the movements resisting occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
Exercising the fundamental right to free speech is not a crime, and the Socialist Alliance joins with all those calling on the Australian government to:
- Repeal all the "anti-terror" laws;
- Stop the raids on the homes of Muslims, and launch a public education campaign to stop the racist attacks on Middle Eastern and Muslim communities;
- Demand that the US government immediately return David Hicks, and any other Australians imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, to Australia;
- Drop the charges against Jack Thomas, which are based on "evidence" extracted under torture;
- Not ban any political or religious organisation in Australia;
- Withdraw its national identity card proposal, and guarantee that the new Medicare card not be used to introduce a national ID card through the "back door"; and
- Reduce the threat of a terrorist attack by immediately withdrawing all military personnel from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Further, we call on the federal Labor opposition and all state Labor governments to act decisively to:
- Repeal state "anti-terror" laws;
- Reverse support for the federal ASIO bill and other "anti-terror" laws;
- Commit to not using state police forces to deny civil liberties or silence dissent;
- End "random" police searches of individuals at train stations and all public places; and
- Oppose the introduction of a national identity card.
Don't for a minute think this is something happening far away and to other people. Some of us could feel the chilling touch of our shadowy security agencies real soon, if we haven't already.
It might initially be as a consequence of the clumsy and over-zealous actions of local security personnel. Take this example: Some student activists seek to organise a public meeting for Mamdouh Habib, who was wrongly detained in Pakistan, tortured in Egypt and incarcerated without trial for years in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay. All of a sudden there is a security issue at the university. ASIO has contacted campus security. An attempt is made to forbid students from holding the meeting and when that fails massive public liability insurance is demanded. That was a month ago at the Bankstown campus of the University of Western Sydney.
Roll forward to this week. Some student activists want to organise a meeting for a visiting Iraqi trade unionist. Campus administration demands that the meeting has to issue tickets, that the names of all attendees and speakers be sent to the administration in advance, and that copies of speeches are shown in advance.
Or how about the story of Brisbane activist Jim Dowling, who alleges in an article in Green Left Weekly #642 that he had his "face re-arranged" on September 1 by police, simply for holding up a placard that said Liberal MP "Peter Dutton Supports Terrorism".
This is serious. Our rights to speak freely, to dissent and to organise politically are under grave attack. Don't for a minute suffer the illusion that it is not your democratic rights or civil liberties that are threatened.
We cannot remain silent. Now is the time to stand up together, before it's too late. Dare to struggle, dare to win. If you don't fight you lose.
From Green Left Weekly, September 21, 2005.
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