Trials of the 280 peace activists arrested at the US base at Nurrungar last Easter continued in the Adelaide Magistrates Court throughout February and early March.
Nearly all the Victorian and South Australian cases have now been "dealt with". They have resulted in people being convicted of trespass on prohibited Commonwealth land and fined between $1 and $125 plus $200 or more in costs. All these cases concerned activists who were arrested in the Nurrungar Prohibited Area (NPA), the outer region of the "buffer zone" around the base itself.
These trials concerned people who entered the Nurrungar Prohibited Area but did not enter the land which constitutes an inner buffer around the base and which is actually owned by the Commonwealth. The land they were arrested on remains part of Arcoona Station, even though it has been declared prohibited by the Commonwealth. So the Commonwealth's claim to occupy the outer area of the Nurrungar Prohibited Area is open to challenge.
On March 7-8, the trial of Bob Berghout, one of at least 11 activists who went right into the Commonwealth owned land, took place before Magistrate Gumpl.
After he was convicted of trespass on prohibited Commonwealth land, Berghout said that during 3
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55D>hours in the witness box, he had claimed he had both a duty and a right to enter the land on which the base is situated.
His duty he claimed to derive from international law, including the Nuremberg Principles and, in particular, Principle VI, which covers crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.
He argued that this principle, among many other aspects of international law, was contravened by Nurrungar's design to support the nuclear strike capability of the US.
Magistrate Gumpl pointed out that the High Court of Australia binds him to uphold Australian law over international law. Berghout said he appreciated this, but the execution of war criminals after World War II and the events in Bosnia now are evidence that the international community considers it has powers to override national laws. He might have added that the people of Iraq also found out how the United Nations can ride roughshod over any nation.
Like many others arrested, Berghout claimed that he had a right to enter the land because the traditional Kokatha owners had issued him, and other peace activists, with visas authorising their entry into the area to close Nurrungar.
He noted that the Arcoona lease explicitly provided for unrestricted right of access over the land for any South Australian Aborigine and for rights to hunt and erect dwellings. When the Commonwealth acquired its piece in 1970 these access rights were either snuffed out or not. If they were, he argued, then the acquisition was unconstitutional because the Commonwealth had not acquired the land on just terms, and if the acquisition was legal, then these rights persist.
At an earlier trial, Joan Wingfield, a Kokatha elder, had testified that she certainly considered one continuing Kokatha right to be the right to invite visitors who respect the Kokatha's conditions on to their land.
Magistrate Gumpl convicted Berghout and find him $150 plus $1166 court costs.
Berghout said afterwards, "Until I started to challenge the Commonwealth's claim to the land, Magistrate Gumpl seemed to be giving me a reasonable hearing. But from that point, he seemed to take all his legal advice from the prosecutor who, not surprisingly, advised him that my case was worthless.
"In the peace movement we need to reassess our strategies for allocating our very limited financial resources: is the publicity one gets on the issues from a court hearing the best way to blow over $1300 plus travel and accommodation expenses, or are there more effective uses for that sort of money? I look forward to thrashing this out with other activists over the year leading up to the Close Pine Gap camp in 1995."