[LINK] disappearing...

[Craig Sanders]

Cop shows will soon be reading a new set of "rights" when they arrest
people: "you now have the the right to disappear, to confess guilt,
and to enforced secrecy about your case. you do not have any right to
silence - anything you say and anything we can make up about you will be
used against you. you're screwed."

anyone else think that the main purpose of the new "anti-terrorist" laws
is so that the government can grant itself the right to "disappear"
people?

i can accept the fact that there might, on occasion, be a need to detain
people who are about to commit some terrorist act (although i think that
the risk of such happening inside australia is vanishingly small*). i
can never, under any circumstances, accept that it should be legal to do
so secretly, and without the accused having access to friends, family,
legal representation and/or publication of what has happened to them, or
even the right to know what they have been accused of and to know what
the evidence against them is.

the new laws directly undermine the foundations of our legal system -
the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial.

how can you possibly get a fair trial if you don't know what you're
accused of, and if neither you nor your lawyer are allowed to see the
evidence against you? you can't even begin to defend yourself against
secret accusations.

worse, the argument that maintaining secrecy about any "preventative
detentions" is necessary is completely bogus - if a group of people
were planning a terrorist act, is it really credible that they wouldn't
notice that one of their members has just disappeared? or that they wont
tell each other what happened just because it's now illegal?

no, of course not. that's an absurd proposition. yet said with a
completely straight face by those pushing the new police state laws.

the real purpose of the secrecy provisions is to prevent any reporting
of the fact that some harmless activist has been arrested for protesting
government policy - any witnesses are not allowed to talk about it
with friends, family, and fellow activists and, most importantly, no
journalist is allowed to report it in the media. it also has a chilling
effect on free speech - who's going to want to risk 5 years gaol for
talking about rumours that someone they know of has disappeared? avoids
much embarassment and inconvenience for the government.

just as the american Scott Parkin, an avowedly non-violent peace
activist who came over here to work with PtChang (a group famed
for teaching non-violent conflict resolution skills to activists)
was deported and all the so-called "evidence" against him was kept
secret, so we will see australian-born activists just disappear into
preventative detention - and nobody will be allowed to know about it or
talk about it or report it to the public.

at the same time, the changes to "Sedition" laws are an attack on free
speech and the expression of political opinions - making criticism of
the government or government policy or actions illegal.  criticise the
government and you could find yourself "disappeared" and/or labelled
a "terrorist".

it's not just activists who will be disappearing - our freedom, our
democracy (flawed as it is), our way of life is also vanishing, being
replaced by a police state. i used to wonder how the German people in
the 1930s could be so evil as to allow the Fascists to rise to power,
how they could allow their government to do what it did without protest.
i don't wonder any longer - i know. they weren't evil, they were just
powerless and tried hard to convince themselves that it wouldn't get
much worse, that it would blow over....and by the time they realised
that it was as bad as they feared, it was too late. and it's happening
all around us now, not just in australia but in the whole world.


so, what are the ramifications for a mailing list like LINK which
discusses issues like censorship of the media? or for alternative news
sites like leftlink or indymedia which report facts that the government
doesn't want known?




(*) at least for the moment. the license to persecute and disappear
people in the new so-called "anti-terror" laws will inevitably push some
already alienated young hotheads over the edge.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>           (part time cyborg)