David Hicks has spent 5 years in detention without trial for a war that we are told is being waged in the name of freedom and democracy. Yet David has become an example of the way this same war is in danger of eroding the very freedoms and rights that it claims to defend and uphold.
Labor’s position on the fate of David Hicks is clear: after 5 years in detention suffering conditions that no moral person can consciously condone, Labor believes that it is time for David to be released on bail until a date for his trial has been set. And Labor believes that David will only receive a fair trial in a civilian court, not in a military commission where his accusers also serve as his judge and jury.
David has a right to defend his name in a court of law. He has an inalienable right to receive a fair trial. And until then, he must be treated in a way that does not jeopardise his physical and mental welfare.
To date, the Australian government, and those who seek to prosecute him, have singularly failed on all three counts.
David has been denied his day in court. Instead he remains in legal limbo, left in detention to face an uncertain fate.
David has been denied his right to a fair trial. Instead, he faces a military commission whose fairness and validity many in the legal profession, including the US Supreme Court itself, continue to question. And to this country’s great shame, the Howard government stands alone as the only western government that is prepared to accept these military commissions as a substitute for what should be a free and fair trial for David in a civilian court.
Even the US government has banned any US citizen from being tried under these military commissions.
In essence, the Howard government has simply abandoned David Hicks, and sacrificed both his rights, and their basic responsibility to protect his welfare as an Australian citizen, for the sake of their own political expediency and in pursuit of a political agenda that has lost sight of what is right and what is wrong.
The British government followed British law with respect to their citizens held in Guantanamo Bay, and we should do the same.
Both David’s legal team and his family continue to hold serious concerns over David’s physical and mental wellbeing given the conditions he faces at Guantanamo Bay. Last year, I had an opportunity to meet David’s sister. It is hard to convey just how worried David’s family is about his health. Only yesterday, David’s father, Terry Hicks, expressed these same concerns about David’s health to my colleague Kelvin Thompson, the Shadow Attorney General.
For 5 years, David has been denied the right to a fair trial. For 5 years, he has been held without charge in conditions that are anything but acceptable and humane. Often detained in isolation, he is now locked up in a small room where the lights are left on 24 hrs a day, and he is purposely denied access to a watch that would at least allow him to be able to tell night from day.
And like many other detainees in Guantanamo Bay, David alleges that he has been subject to systematic torture.
In the mind of any decent person, a room where there is 24 hr light and no way for David to tell night from day are in themselves conditions that amount to a form of mental torture. But unlike most decent people, the Attorney General Philip Ruddock – who is on record questioning whether sleep deprivation constituted a form of torture - seems to think that these conditions are par for the course when it comes to David’s detention.
To date, Philip Ruddock and the Howard government have taken absolutely no steps to determine the veracity of David’s claims of torture, and they offered absolutely no voice of protest when US authorities refused to allow an independent mental health assessment to be undertaken on David by senior Melbourne psychiatrist, Professor Paul Mullen.
At issue here is the way David has been denied his basic rights. And equally at issue here is the Howard government’s abysmal failure in its basic duty of care to one of our own overseas.
By failing to protect the basic rights of an Australian citizen who continues to be denied the due process of law, the Howard government has failed to fulfil its own end of the bargain when it comes to Australian citizenship. Quick to demand that all citizens pledge loyalty to Australia, this government has shown absolutely no loyalty to David Hicks.
Whilst Philip Ruddock has spent the last 5 years seeking “assurances” from the US that David Hicks be tried “expeditiously,” Britain, France, Spain, Canada, Russia and Afghanistan, amongst others, have all successfully secured the release of their citizens held in US custody for trial back home. David Hicks remains in Guantanamo Bay precisely because the Howard government refuses to demand that he be returned home to receive a fair trial.
If David is an enemy combatant in a war fought in the name of freedom and democracy, then David must be accorded his full rights under the law, including the right to a fair trial and the right to expect humane conditions of detention. But if David is denied these rights, then in effect he becomes a victim of a war that has gone horribly wrong, one that threatens to erode the very rights and freedoms it is supposed to defend.
In the name of what is right, in the name of justice and the due process of the law, and in the name of civility and simple decency, we must continue to demand that David receive a fair trial in a civilian court. We must continue to demand that until then, he be released on bail. And we must continue to shame the Howard government for the way it has completely abandoned David Hicks, and in the process, abrogated its own responsibility to protect the rights and welfare of an Australian citizen held in detention overseas.
I want to join the Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, in calling for Guantanamo Bay to be closed. I also want to publicly recognize the extraordinary commitment and courage that David Hicks’ family have shown, especially his father Terry Hicks, and to say to them that the majority of Australian’s support justice for their son, David.
Contact: Alex Kouttab 0417 541 465
