When I was a kid I didn’t know a lot about politics and the way it all worked, but I did know one thing. There was one indisputable fact that could be used to justify any annoyance that I wished to perpetrate on my siblings. I could stand where I wanted, could make whatever noise I wanted and I could follow or parrot whoever I wanted all with the one simple, straight forward defence, ‘it’s a free country’. We all seemed to believe and accept that fact and it was probably reasonably true back then. However, recent events in Australia may set a precedent that could remove the basic rights of children. It may no longer be possible for them to be annoying little brats under the ‘free county’ defence.
The events I am referring to are those surrounding Dr Haneef who has been detained in Queensland and charged with ‘recklessly’ providing material support to terrorists. The terrorists in question are the seemingly incompetent ‘bombers’ in London and Glasgow who obviously had more money than mathematical ability when they put petrol bombs into a Mercedes Benz and a Jeep Cherokee hoping to cause massive damage, death and terror. The plot failed. Nobody was killed and the only injury was to the driver of the ‘car bomb’. Terror experts said that there was little chance that the bombs could have caused anything more than a big fireball and it is laughable to compare them to the car bombs in Iraq.
So some guys planned and executed a failed attack. That’s enough to put themselves into a lot of trouble I’m sure. But what is going on with Dr Haneef? Dr Haneef is related to two of the arrested ‘bombers’, the driver of the Jeep Cherokee, Kafeel Ahmed and Sabeel Ahmed who is charged with foreknowledge. Dr Haneef has admitted to sharing a house with his cousin and when he left London in 2006 he left his pre-paid mobile phone sim card behind as it was of little use in Australia. It is alleged that Ahmed decided to use that sim card as a detonation device inside one of the cars.
Haneef was detained for 12 days without charge and then charged with ‘reckless’ support of terrorists because the AFP had no other evidence against him other than an old sim card. The judge in the case granted Haneef bail but now immigration minister Kevin Andrews has revoked his visa sending him to Villawood Detention Centre. It is bad enough that the AFP trashed Haneef’s home, causing him to be evicted and the charges have left him without a job, but now the Federal Government has stepped in and effectively labelled him a guilty man.
This may be sold by Mr Andrews as being in the public's best interest and to ‘protect’ us but how is side-stepping the basic principles of law ever good for the country? Dr Haneef may possibly be complicit in the attacks but the fact of the matter is that the AFP were not able to provide enough evidence to prove that. They have detained a man for no good reason and however they want to spin it, the truth is Dr Haneef has been assumed guilty with little chance of being found innocent. The damage is done.
The new terror laws on which Dr Haneef has been held fly in the face of freedom and fairness. They set a precedent that would allow any person in Australia to be arrested and detained without charge and for the Federal Government to override the judicial system at their will. These are the sort of unlawful actions that we attacked Saddam Hussein for. The ability to ‘disappear’ any person whom the government deems a threat should never be tolerated.
We are constantly told that the ‘terrorists’ hate our freedoms and want to change our way of life. It seems the government’s answer to that is to get in first and remove our freedoms and change our way of life first so the terrorists can’t. Good thinking!
If only Dr Haneef had thought to use the other great childhood defence. When they accused him of being a terrorist he should have said “I know you are, but what am I?”
3 comments:
not sure i can agree with you on this one Barry..
I think you are missing the facts of the situation, this guy, is for starters, not Australian!
He is or was an Indian working here on a visa, indians are not white, they are brown. Brown people make up the bulk of islamic fundementalists, i would have thought that part was obvious, eg aborigines are not white, they are brown and some aborigines sniff petrol and petrol can be used to make molotov cocktails or used to drive cars, cars can be turned into car bombs so as a country we have a duty to protect all Australians from these unaustralian fundementalist aboriginals which is why we have been systematically decimating the aboriginal population for centuries, allow the aboriginal people to have the highest rate of infant mortality of any race in the world and why we tend to overlook the odd instance of asisted suicide in prisons..
Anyhow, getting back to the terrorist indian doctor, you have also whitewashed over the fact that this bloke is related to another bloke in another country who is suspected of doing something bad..
I myself know and understand that if i had a cousin overseas who had done something wrong then i should also be accused of being a terrorist (not that the indian doctors cousin has been accused of being a terrorist or a member of any terrorist organisation) and i should also quite happily be arrested and detained in custody and questioned at length because that is our rights and obligation as good old unquestioning aussie citzens.
And, don't forget, this indian doctor isn't just some innocent flunky from overseas, he is a person of great concern to the australian people and should be treated as such, i mean, he gave someone a sim card for christs sake, don't you know how dangerous that can be and what it could lead to... phone calls and text messaging and god knows what else.
Giving someone a sim card, even if it was a relative and it happened awhile ago in a different country and that sim card was found 300 miles away froma crime scene is an extremely risky think to do and makes what that other indian doctor did, Dr Patel, (killed 30 or 40 odd people) pale into insignificance, which i guess is why Dr Patel is still enjoying his Freedom in the united states and Dr Haneef is being held in a detention cell, its a just reaction to what could have potentially been a very dangerous situation, the sim card in question could have been used to make a......phone call to any terrorist organisation in the world and could have targeted our nationally important historical locations, such as movieworld or something, and don't forget the Doctor Haneef had pictures of where he himself lived, if that is not the act of a criminal then you are living in a little dream that all is safe and secure in the age of terrorism.
I am not sure we can afford these freedoms and our way of life when we live in a world where someones relative can simply and easily give his cousin an item or gift and then easily slip out of the country, go back to india, apply for and be granted a working visa and then cover up his terrorist actions by working in a public hospital.
I for one am glad the AFP caught this man in time, before he had a chance to send his family or relatives any more material that could have been used for the purposes of terrorism, like a mobile phone charger or god forbid a crazy frog tone ..
Once again, I stand corrected. When will I learn that our government always has our best interests at heart and is protecting us from sinister terrorists?
I'll try and be less suspicious of people in the future... unless of course they are foreign!
...or brown, they don't have to be foreighn, just not white. Or called David Hicks..ok, there a couple of flaws in the system but bottom line is yes, our government always has our interests at heart first and foremost. Not quite sure where that leaves the position of the Prime Minister of England however..
A great example is the enviroment, our current Federal government could never have previously be considered green but now days look at em, taking over control of water from the states with absolutlely no intention of privatising it because, it's not like they have a history of privatisation or cocking up privatisation and they are adressing the greenhouse issue by haing a policy of planting trees overseas (well, there's not much land in Australia to plant trees, plenty of room to knock em down though) and what better way to fix our enviromental issues then to mine more uranium and have our own nuclear reactors, cos nuclear is clean energy buddy!
I just think maybe your a little cycnical Gavin, our geriatric PM has always had the best interests of 1950's Australia at heart and Mr Costello has done more for our economy than anybody ever alive..well, if by our economy you think banks, mining, country road, bonds, blundstone.
Ok, admittedlyy if you want to buy a house, or rent a house or buy food you might be struggling a little but if you had One Million dollars plus at the end of the finacial year then you could put it into superannuation tax free and didn't we all do that?
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