Speech to the House of Representatives by Peter Garrett
MP, Member for Kingsford Smith & Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for
Reconciliation and the Arts

June 15, 2006 

It has been a week where the
consciences of government members in this parliament have been
challenged-challenged because our opportunity to participate in full and
extensive debate, which is the hallmark of a democracy, has been challenged
because of the use of the gag; challenged because the Migration Amendment
(Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006, which clearly concerned some
members opposite, was withdrawn; and challenged because the government
continues to resist repeated calls made, including calls made in a motion in
the Senate this week, for Guantanamo Bay to be closed. 

I support the remarks of my
colleague the member for Banks. I want to say that Guantanamo Bay is a prison
of shame and that it is to Australia's great shame that, as a government, we
continue to participate in the operation of that prison. Revelations this week
that three inmates at Guantanamo Bay had committed suicide is again
confirmation that the conditions experienced by those who are held there are in
breach of basic human rights, of the basic principles of our legal and
democratic system and of the rule of law. Not one of those three who committed
suicide had been charged. And no argument need come from this government,
including the Attorney-General, that to question the conditions and the
inhumane periods of detention is to countenance terrorism. It is a false
argument, it is a false imputation and it does them no favour. 

The fact is that Guantanamo Bay
is a prison camp that is a discredit to American democratic traditions as much
as it is to our own. Incidentally, it is such a discredit to the American
political and democratic traditions that it is not located in the United
States. But even more so, it is a discredit to our democratic traditions
because we, alone amongst countries, continue to acquiesce to the conduct that goes on in
this prison. The United Kingdom Attorney-General stated it clearly: 

"...the existence of
Guantanamo Bay remains unacceptable. It is time, in my view, that it should
close." 

The United Kingdom
Attorney-General had already determined that the military commission set up to
try the detainees would not guarantee a fair trial. That point has been
emphasised by a number of leading human rights lawyers and journalists here in
Australia as well. British detainees were subsequently returned to the UK, but
in the case of an Australian citizen, the Australian government was mute. 

It is to the discredit of this
Attorney-General that he, as first law officer of the Crown, is so indifferent
to the fundamental principles he is charged with protecting that the aberration
of Guantanamo Bay continues without a murmur from him or any minister in the
government. The best the justice minister can come up with is that he wants to
get the military commission to consider the Hicks case. But recent events,
including the suicides, mean the case is delayed. Hicks's attempts to become a
British citizen have been stymied and the Pentagon itself blocks the access of
British consular officials attempting to reach Hicks in prison, notwithstanding
the links between those two countries. 

The debate rages in the US,
Europe and afar over Guantanamo Bay, and calls for its closure are repeatedly
heard. Yet the government says and does nothing. The government's absence and
silence on Guantanamo Bay shows the extent of its capture by the hardline neo-con
elements of the US government. That is clear. The foreign minister was on
television this week assuring Australians that the conditions Mr Hicks was
experiencing were acceptable. An Australian consular official was cited by both the Prime Minister and the foreign minister as saying that, in their
words, 'the visit was positive'. I would like to see a report from the consular
official on Mr Hicks's state of health. But at the same time as these comments
were put through, Mr Hicks's legal adviser, the American, Major Mori, was
saying clearly that Hicks was in poor health: 

"No, David is in isolation.
He is not fit and well - he is depressed." 

Who are we to believe-the foreign
minister running his line or Mr Hicks's American lawyer? Whatever the
circumstances or past activities of any inmate in this institution, they should
not be subject to long periods of indefinite detention or the possibility of
suffering subtle and continual psychological torture. It is a mark of a
civilised and
humane society that it treats prisoners, any prisoners, in such a way so as not
to deny them basic rights. It is a mark of politicians that they stand and
argue for those rights, wherever they are being impeded upon. 

The Howard government, the
foreign minister and the Attorney-General are failing us terribly on both of
these counts.

‘Which brings us back to the
unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly
told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me
lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet
replied.

Bush "was fixated on how to
get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one
briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators
did their best to find out, Suskind reports. 

They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a
water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with
certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening
noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep.

Under that duress, he began to
speak of plots of every variety - against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets,
water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the
Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and
women raced in a panic to each . . . target." 

And so, Suskind writes, "the
United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming,
at every word he uttered."’ 

The
Shadow War, In A Surprising New Light

‘As new reports detail further
abuse by the U.S. military of its prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, a
behind-the-scenes battle is being fought between the U.S. departments of state
and defence about whether a key section of the Geneva Conventions should be
included in new rules governing Army interrogation techniques. 

The Pentagon is pushing to omit
from new detainee policies a central principle of the Geneva Conventions that
explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment". Critics say
such a step would mark a further shift away from strict adherence to
international human rights standards.

The State Department is opposing
the decision to exclude Geneva Conventions protections and has been pushing for
the Pentagon and White House to reconsider. 

Meanwhile, in the face of growing
criticism over U.S. treatment of detainees, Pentagon officials have decided to
make public all of the military's interrogation techniques. Military leaders
had previously argued that making all of the interrogation tactics public would
allow enemy combatants to train and prepare for specific techniques.’

Pentagon Resists Ban On
"Degrading Treatment"

‘Prosecutors said Wednesday they had arrested two Italian
intelligence officers and were seeking four more Americans as part of an
investigation into the alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in
2003.

The arrest of the two SISMI
intelligence officials was the first official acknowledgment that Italian
agents were involved in a case that the government has complained was a
violation of its sovereignty.

In a statement released in Milan,
prosecutors said three Americans being sought were CIA agents, while the fourth
worked at the joint U.S.-Italian air base of Aviano, where the Egyptian was
allegedly taken after his abduction.

The statement did not provide
names, but said the two Italians, at the time of the kidnapping, were the
director of SISMI's first division - dealing with international terrorism - and
the head of the agency's operations in northern Italy.

Italian reports identified the
two as Marco Mancini, currently the head of military counterespionage, and
Gustavo Pignero, and said they were charged with kidnapping. 

Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, an
Egyptian cleric and terrorist suspect also known as Abu Omar, was allegedly
kidnapped from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003. Prosecutors say the operation
represented a severe breach of Italian sovereignty that compromised their
anti-terrorism efforts, and have already incriminated 22 purported CIA agents.

’Italians Seeking Arrest
Of 3 CIA Agents