91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳

BY ALISON DELLIT

In the mid 1960s, protesters in Australia broke the law just by holding street protests against the Vietnam War. Through persistently defying anti-protest laws, they won the legal right to hold street marches.

This is an example we may have to emulate, if, in early June, the Senate passes the Howard government's “anti-terrorism” laws substantially intact. There are six major reasons to oppose, and to defy, these atrocious laws.

1. There is no need for them

The government claims these laws are necessary to protect the public from terrorists, but at a press conference last month, federal Attorney-General Daryl Williams was forced to concede that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) had identified “no tangible threat” to Australia from terrorists.

Despite persistent, terrifying, raids on Palestinian, Colombian and Muslim households in the last six months, ASIO has not even found one crazed Osama-bin-Laden-look-alike to parade before the media in justification.

But even if there was a real terrorist threat in Australia, these laws would still be unnecessary. Murder, bombing, flying planes into buildings and destroying public transport and other systems were all illegal under previous criminal laws.

The creation of a special terrorist offence metes out harsher punishments to those who “offend” for political or religious reasons than to those who commit the same sort of criminal acts for monetary gain.

For example, someone who hacks into a bank's web-based systems in order to steal commits a crime punishable by a fine or a short prison sentence. But someone who hacks into exactly the same system to print “Banks suck” on customers' withdrawal slips could, under the “anti-terrorism” legislation, face life in prison.

Similarly, someone who hijacks a plane simply to extort money faces a lower sentence than someone who hijacks a plane in an attempt to force the Burmese military dictatorship to release political prisoners.

2. They are an attack on solidarity

The government does not seek to criminalise all acts of politically motivated violence — Australian Defence Force personnel acting under orders are given specific exemption from the laws. ADF officers can hijack, bomb and kill in order to advance the political goals of the government. An act of politically motivated violence only legally becomes “terrorism” when the government decides that it is not in its interests.

But for thousands of people living in Australia, who fled here from overseas, the real terrorism is the brutal oppression their nations suffer at the hands of foreign conquerors. For Palestinians fleeing the Israeli occupation, Tamils fleeing persecution in Sri Lanka, Acehnese escaping Indonesia's massacres, supporting armed resistance movements back home is a form of national self-defence.

The government's earlier decision to outlaw the raising of funds in Australia for organisations such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) — a large, peasant-based guerilla army engaged in a civil war with a repressive right-wing government — demonstrates that it intends to criminalise much more than acts of terrorism. Any support — financial or moral — for armed resistance movements overseas could be met by hefty jail terms under the “anti-terrorism” laws.

Even support for non-violent forms of resistance may be criminalised. Australian organisations can be banned just for endangering “'the security or integrity of another country”. Had these laws existed a few years ago, support for East Timor's independence movement would have been illegal.

3. They will be implemented in a racist way

For the last few years, police in NSW (and all other states, at least informally) have been implementing “racial profiling”, that is, assuming that non-white youth are more likely to commit crimes than white youth, and treating them accordingly. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Australian police harassment of Muslim and Arabic youth has dramatically increased.

The NSW Islamic Council told Senate committee investigating the legislation that Muslims faced daily harassment from the police and from ASIO. In its submission to the committee, the council stated that it feared that with more powers ASIO would step up its persecution of Muslims.

The corporate media and the government have furiously attempted to convince the public that terrorists are Arabic or Muslim and frequently refugees (despite expert opinions to the contrary).

If the laws are passed, it is likely that ASIO and the police will intensify their efforts to harass Islamic communities in order to find al Qaeda sympathisers ”proving” the legislation was needed (even if the sympathisers are not involved in terrorist acts). Such a campaign would make life much more difficult for thousands of migrants and ex-refugees.

Because national liberation movements are frequently accused of terrorism, refugees who come here after struggling against oppression overseas are likely to be the government's first targets for interrogation and harassment. They are easier targets than the Australian radical left because of their social isolation and the racism inflamed by the government's refugee-bashing.

4. They take away basic human rights

These bills take away basic civil liberties. The ASIO amendment bill will remove the right to silence, and the right to legal representation, from those under interrogation in an investigation into “terrorism”.

For example, if the ASIO amendment bill is passed, a man suspected having information about al Qaeda could find his 12-year-old daughter taken into custody, terrified through a strip-search and then interrogated on her father's activities for two days straight.

By giving ASIO the power to detain and interrogate, the legislation makes the institution a secret police force, instead of simply a spy agency.

5. They criminalise dissent and political protest

Although the legislation excludes “lawful protest”, many protests which become “unlawful” would quickly fit the definition of a “terrorist act”.

Even street marches can become “unlawful” pretty easily — protesters march in a direction the police have instructed them not to, they bang on the doors of a building or a protester swears.

Other protests, common in Australia, are unlawful from the beginning — blockades of corporation's offices, forest blockades or hanging banners off corporate headquarters. All these activities — carried out for political reasons and disruptive to “systems” — could be classified as terrorist acts under the legislation.

While “industrial action” is excluded, thanks to Peter Reith's workplace relations act, not all union activity is the legally interpreted as “industrial action”. The “peaceful assemblies” that blocked entry to the waterfront during the 1999 maritime industry dispute, for example, were not legally industrial actions.

In questioning before the Senate committee investigating the package of laws, government representatives confirmed that the pushing over of the fence at the Woomera refugee detention centre at Easter would fit within the definition of a “terrorist act”, as would the August 19, 1996 union protest in Canberra (which broke through the front doors of Parliament House) and most forest blockades.

Once a protest has been declared a “terrorist act”, anyone who has attended, helped organise or publicise or even simply hold onto a leaflet about the protest could be charged with a related offence.

Even if, as the ALP has vaguely suggested, an intent to “violently intimidate the government” is added to the definition of terrorism, protest action could still be classified as terrorist — providing it had political aims and the government claims it was “violent” (as it has for M1, S11, the Woomera protest and the 1996 union action).

The government is claiming that the laws will not be used against protesters, and they probably won't be at first. But to have such laws on the books leaves protesters vulnerable to legal attack if the government is able to demonise particular protest actions or groups involved in these actions.

6. They protect the government's racism

The introduction of these laws is part of a bi-partisan push to convince Australians that political “extremes” — including protesters — are dangerous and need to be suppressed.

This is not a new push. Since the election of the Coalition government in 1996, Prime Minister John Howard, almost always supported by the Labor Party, has attempted to demonise almost every significant left-wing protest — the 1996 union march on Parliament House, the protests outside One Nation meetings, the high-school walkouts against racism, the “peaceful assemblies” to defend the Maritime Union of Australia, the blockade against the Jabiluka uranium mine and the 2000 S11 protests outside the World Economic Forum.

Even the hugely popular protests to force his government to send troops to the defence of East Timor in 1999 and the 2000 “bridge walks” for reconciliation were opposed by Howard.

Up to now, Howard has not been able to rollback public support for the right to protest. However, if his “anti-terrorism” laws win popular support, it will be a big defeat for those prepared to fight for human rights and social justice. Not only will the laws intimidate potential protesters, they will help to feed a climate of fear within which police will feel more confident to use horses, batons, capsicum spray and water cannon on protesters.

We cannot let this racist government use the tragedy of September 11 to silence its critics, giving itself more space to peddle the lie that the world's problems are caused by its most unfortunate and that human rights are under attack from those who have none.

We must vocally oppose these laws, and demand that they be completely rejected. If they are passed, we must defy them — confidently, collectively and passionately continuing to protest, to offer solidarity to those in Third World, and to defend refugees and migrant communities under attack in Australia.

From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, May 22, 2002.
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