Institute of Criminology
I refer to your column headed "Another reason to ditch the G-G" (Green Left, June 23).
In this column Karen Fredericks made the following claims — "The Institute of Criminology is bitterly regretting its invitation to the Governor-General, Bill Hayden, to open its national conference on violence last week" and "The Institute put out a statement following Hayden's address condemning his remarks as anti-feminist and incorrectly gender neutral".
Neither claim is correct in any sense. The Australian Institute of Criminology did not bitterly regret its invitation to the GG and the Institute did not issue a statement on the GG's opening address. A statement commenting on the GG's statement was issued by a group which attended the 2nd National Conference on Violence (organised by the Institute) and, indeed, this was reported by the Australian newspaper as having come from the AIC. However, this error was corrected quickly by the national paper.
I am concerned that your correspondent appears not to have followed a basic journalistic tenet, ie check with the source.
Again, the Australian Institute of Criminology did not bitterly regret the invitation to the Governor-General. Bill Hayden's views and the views of the group which commented on his speech are all part of the debate on violence — and that debate was a rich and rewarding part of a conference which the AIC looks back on with a great deal of satisfaction, apart from the occasional reporting hiccough.
Duncan Chappell
Director, AIC
Canberra
Deadly efficiency
Who would have thought that the innocuous HQ of Electro Optic Systems (described in White Pages as an "optometrist"!) in Queanbeyan is making its money from hi-tech gunsights, some of which are exported "to a number of overseas defence forces including the United States Army"? (Canberra Times July 14)
While crowing about the "$250m boost to local production" of gunsights which "... identify and track targets, identify the aim point and even pull the trigger if necessary" the report fixates on jobs and dollars and fails to ask who are the targets of these automated killing machines.
Unlike older times when combatants fought combatants, warfare in our modern era kills 9 civilians for every soldier. Ordinary people seeking nothing more than the most basic of human rights littered the bloodied streets of Lhasa, Saigon, Jakarta, Rangoon, San Salvador, Managua, Dili, Bangkok, Panama City, Manila and, of course, Beijing. These are the targets! And the slaughter continues.
The poet-soldier Wilfred Owen saw at first hand the industrial efficiency of the killing machine, produced by the unholy marriage of science and warfare. His words have a peculiar relevance to what is happening in Queanbeyan and to those in our government who help fund death industries:
But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That they should be as stones;
Wretched are they, and mean
With paucity that was never simplicity.
By choice they made themselves immune
To pity and whatever mourns in man ...
Gareth W.R. Smith
Convenor, Canberra Programme for Peace
Bougainville reporting
Concerning the ABC TV program Foreign Correspondent and Sean Dorney's letter in GLW 106:
A principal aim of the program was to "discredit" several dozen statutory declarations collected by barrister Rosemarie Gillespie. These illustrated atrocities and war crimes committed by PNG/Australian forces in Bougainville.
Gillespie's stat decs did not mention rape. But Foreign Correspondent simply ran "the BRA also claims" rape right after Gillespie's stat dec that nurses were "beaten", certainly confusing the majority of listeners. We checked all BRA communiques concerning the capture of Arawa General Hospital and
beating of the nurses: No mention of rape. None whatsoever.
We asked Sean Dorney where he got the "rape" story from and (thanks, SD!) he sent us his source: an article by Deacon Michael McGirr, of the Melbourne Jesuit Theological College, in the Catholic Magazine Eureka Street (Vol 3, no 5., pp 17-18).
McGirr writes: "In February this year [1993], civilians were taken into custody when these forces [PNG army] occupied the Arawa hospital. Ken Savia, Minister for Health in the [Bougainville] Interim Government, was tortured and executed. Others were raped and killed."
For security reasons, Deacon McGirr could not give me any further details concerning his sources. But Sean Dorney totally failed to indicate, in either his TV or radio programs, that he was "discrediting" a Melbourne Jesuit, not barrister Rosemarie Gillespie or "the BRA", who quite credibly maintain that some nurses were beaten.
Things get worse in the only other "refutation" of Gillespie's stat decs: forced sodomy and drowning at Asitavi. Foreign Correspondent interviews Father Bernard His. As a gospel, unquestioned source. After all, so Dorney, producer Dugald Maudsley and — eventually — George Negus: Father His "stayed on at Asitavi throughout the crisis". And His "totally discredited" Gillespie. Fr. His: "This story is not true. It didn't happen ..."
Really? Our sources in Bougainville say: The two boys were Seventh Day Adventists Jeffrey (not Peter) Pukuto, 18 years old, of Hustokoru hamlet and Jeffrey Retoviri, 19, of Niupayoro hamlet. They were captured, forced to commit sodomy, tied together and left to drown at low water mark by the PNG "Defence Forces" at Asitavi in April 1992. Will Sean Dorney now contact Father His for a statement that these two youths never existed?
According to local sources, Father His was at Mabiri (some 50 kilometres from Asitavi) and probably in Madang (mainland PNG) and Buku during much
of this time. He was not at Asitavi "throughout".
Why Sean Dorney, "in Bougainville", could not (or would not) discover these rather crucial "details", we leave to future historians of media "bias", or is it "honesty"?
It may help them understand the mind-set of "our media people" if they also consider Sean Dorney's explanation of this "sodomy-drowning" incident on the Radio Australia program beamed to the Pacific, unavailable (as so much) to the wider Australian public:
Dorney: "... it [the story] may owe its origin to a book called Island of Ghosts. This book deals with the wreck of a ship, the Batavia, off the Western Australia coast several centuries ago ... the captain of the ship found two of his crew committing sodomy on a Western Australian beach. He tied them up together on a spit and they drowned on the incoming tide."
By Dorney's implication, Gillespie or her source, Bougainvillean Nelson Patu, must have been doing some amusing reading when composing those statutory declarations.
The rest of the Foreign Correspondent program keeps well to the above standards. If it is not "the most dishonest program on Bougainville ever screened", I would be interested in Dorney telling us which others have been "more dishonest".
Max Watts
Sydney
.PC 35
No laughing matter
Sean Dorney's rather peculiar letter (GLW #106) attacking our "review" of his Foreign Correspondent report on Bougainville failed completely to address the issues Max Watts and I raised.
We wrote (GLW #104) that Dorney's report presented a "highly distorted picture based on deliberate omissions, falsifications and manipulation of facts". Nothing in Dorney's reply challenges our conclusion.
Instead of tackling the key criticisms, Dorney bluffed and blustered about insubstantial points of fact. We also learned that Mr Dorney suffers from an odd ailment which leaves him convulsed with laughter at the slightest impulse.
Dorney, revealing his partisanship, claims "the people" have "given up on the BRA [Bougainville Revolutionary Army]" without actually talking to the people who live outside PNGDF-controlled areas.
Let me again remind Mr Dorney of the key points we made:
- Dorney and his crew travelled around Bougainville accompanied by PNGDF troops and/or collaborating forces armed and supplied by the PNGDF, and only visited areas controlled by them. Any statements and interviews given to him by Bougainvilleans could not be uninfluenced by the fact that these forces have a well-documented record of abuse against those hostile to their presence.
- Dorney omitted to reveal that Father Benedict His, who contradicted evidence that two boys were murdered by PNG troops near his church, was a former chaplain in the PNGDF and close friend of the PNG-appointed administrator of Bougainville.
- In a question to Sister Rose Tsiroats, Dorney jumbled together (1) evidence collected by Rosemarie Gillespie that nurses at the Arawa hospital were beaten and (2) claims made by others that the nurses were raped, in order to secure a denial. The uncorrected impression was given that Tsiroats was interviewed in Arawa when in fact she was interviewed at the main PNGDF camp at Wakunai, where she is a captive.
The situation in Bougainville is no laughing matter. It is the PNG government, backed by Canberra, through its crippling blockade and its military operations that has intensified the "mayhem" and divisions among Bougainvilleans. The fact that almost the sole source of news from that area of the world is someone with such a clearly partisan point of
view is a great cause of concern for all those, including the vast majority of Bougainvilleans, who desire peace.
Norm Dixon
Sydney
Demarchy
.PC 35
I was most intrigued by Brian Martin's article "Are elections the ultimate in democracy?" in your July 14 issue. (Historic date! — why no mention of its significance?) My comments below are not to denigrate Brian's effort. His is the first good try I have seen, to work up a method of making a participatory democracy function.
It seems clear that the decisions of the demarchs in each locality would often require allocations of resources from outside the locality. Our present complex economy does not allow all local "wish lists" to be granted in full (or sometimes at all).
Given our present population level — worldwide, and also down through the national and the conurbation level to suburban levels in more densely populated areas — we can not quickly opt for the simple life in which only local resources are enough to meet all social needs.
It seems to me that global/country/township/suburb demarchs would be needed, to say "Yea" or "Nay" to the needs of the local levels. Demarchs at these levels must become more "expert" in all things. How else can they decide between an irrigation scheme in one area competing with a hydroelectric scheme in another and an urban public transport scheme somewhere else when resources are available only for one of these?
Given such complexities, the learning curve of newly appointed upper level demarchs would be slower. "Local knowledge" would take longer to pass on to them by their predecessors. So demarchs at these levels would, I think, need a longer tenure than those at the sharp end.
This promptly undermines one of the major advantages of Brian's scheme — short tenure. The more global the level of demarch, the longer the
tenure that would be needed. Here would be the chance for random demagoguery.
I would like to see Brian or someone tackle this problem.
Ron Guignard
Stepney SA