Gideon Polya, “Australia Terror Hysteria. Indefinite Jail without Trial for Indian Doctor”, MWC News, 18 July 2007.
Australian Terror Hysteria. Indefinite Jail without Trial for Indian Doctor
The extreme right wing, politically correct racist (PC racist), Bush-ite Australian Coalition Government is trashing human rights, civil rights and Australia's reputation as it scrambles to stave off an impending landslide electoral defeat in the forthcoming Australia Federal Elections. Its latest abuse of human rights beggars belief – it involves the indefinite imprisonment without trial of an Indian doctor.
The latest victim of the PC racist Bush-ite Coalition Government has been an Indian doctor Dr Mohammed Haneef (a Gold Coast, Queensland hospital doctor and specialist trainee) who has suffered the following – I have numbered the blow-by-blow account for clarity:
(1) he was held without charge and interrogated for 2 weeks under the draconian Australian Anti-terrorism Laws that allow for indefinite release and re-arrest “revolving door” detention (his second cousin is alleged to be linked to the recent UK London and Glasgow attempted bombings in which fortunately nobody was killed);
(2) he was then charged with “recklessly supporting a terrorist organization” (before leaving the UK a year ago he gave the unused mobile phone SIM card credit worth $20 maximum to his second cousin before heading for Australia);
(3) he was offered $10,000 bail by the Magistrate (who noted Australian Federal Police evidence that his only “offence” was to give his SIM card to his relative and that there was no evidence at all that he or the $20 SIM card were involved in any terrorist plot);
(4) however before he could exercise the option of bail (members of the public had come forward with the money) the Australian Federal Government stepped in and under the “good character” section of Australia’s notorious Immigration Act abolished Dr Haneef’s work visa – this immediately placed the Queensland doctor in a legal limbo in which he will be indefinitely imprisoned without trial until the current (ludicrous) charge is heard, appealed etc (according to legal experts, for several years) beyond which, if found innocent, he will be deported or indefinitely imprisoned again if charged with further offences (e.g. chatting with his second cousin several weeks ago about the recent birth of his child in Bangalore, India = “consorting with a terrorist”);
(5) his Brisbane, Queensland lawyers have not exercised the bail option (this means that Dr Haneef will continue to be imprisoned in Brisbane near his lawyers rather than being sent a a notorious “Immigration Detention Centre’ (Concentration Camp in Sydney, 1,000 kilometers away) and have appealed the Australian Government decision in the Federal Court;
(6) Dr Haneef’s wife (who has recently given birth) has indignantly approached the Indian authorities; the Indian Media are full of the story and the Indian Government has protested at the highest diplomatic level over this treatment of one of its citizens.
Now I am biased and must declare my bias against any racism (racially-specific maltreatment) – the Nazis wiped my family from the face of Europe over 60 years ago. However through blessed accident I made up for my lack of relatives by marrying into a huge Indian family of mostly Bengali and Bihari origin. Some of my closest and dearest friends are specialist Indian doctors. I believe in the post-Jewish Holocaust crie de coeur of “Never Again” but to me – and one supposes to ALL decent people - “Never Again” means “Never Again to ANY people”.
It is quite clear that this would simply NOT have happened to a Jewish doctor in Australia. Further, these events have to be seen in the light of present political realities in Australia (an unpopular Bush-ite Government is facing a landslide defeat in the forthcoming elections) and past racist White Australian realities (the horrendous Australian Aboriginal Genocide in which 1 million died, for forced removal of 0.1 million aboriginal children from their mothers, the White Australian Policy, White Australia’s support for all US Asian wars that have so far been associated with 19 million excess deaths and the horrendous continuing Aboriginal Genocide that “passively” kills 9,000 Indigenous Australians every year) (see “Aboriginal Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ ).
Dr Haneef is certainly a "person of interest" to the Security Services because of his family links to the alleged UK Bombers but the available evidence from the Australian Federal Police says that his only “offence” (?) was to give his unused SIM card mobile phone credit (worth a maximum of about $20) to his second cousin in the UK and to recently chat with him about the birth of his child in Bangalore, India several weeks ago.
This is appalling, outrageous stuff according to top Australian human rights lawyers - and is evidently a last ditch effort by the racist, violent, warmongering Bush-ite Australian Government to boost its flagging electoral prospects in an election year by drumming up red-neck support using terror hysteria and xenophobia. Indeed the cowardly, unprincipled Labor Opposition, facing a landslide electoral victory after 11 years in the wilderness, is too frightened to jeopardize this by objecting and has gone along with the grossly human rights-abusing Federal Government actions.
The following letter was sent to major Australian media several days ago. The silence - as always in “look the other way”, injustice-ignoring Racist White Australia – is deafening:
Dear Sir/Madam,
If Dr Haneef had been passively involved in UK terrorism it is unbelievable that he would have deliberately implicated himself by giving his remaining mobile phone SIM card credits to an active and violent co-conspirator relative.
The Coalition Federal Government and politicized public servants are abusing anti-terrorism laws and threatening the security of all decent Australians.
Altruism is one “core Australian value” now off the list – would you risk 15 years’ imprisonment by giving something you don’t even need to a friend, a relative or indeed a stranger?
No doubt Dr Haneef’s family connections to the alleged UK bombers dictate intense Security scrutiny – however the authorities should also be acting on actual, deadly and documented terrorism-related offences of Australians e.g. those involved in the violent, illegal and war criminal 40-year occupation of Palestine; those complicit in the shelling and bombing of 25,000 Australian citizens in Lebanon in mid-2006; those who lied to Parliament about the rendition and torture of Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib and $300 million in bribes to Saddam Hussein; and those complicit in post-1996 Indigenous Australian excess deaths totaling 90,000 and post-invasion excess deaths in the Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories totaling 0.3 million, 1.0 million and 2.4 million, respectively.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Gideon Polya, Melbourne.
For references to the above horrendous statistics about Bush-ite Australian crimes against humanity see MWC News).
But enough of what I think. This is what some top Australian human rights lawyers have said about the Dr Haneef case.
For views of former Liberal (Conservative party) Leader, former judge and current Chairman of the Executive Committee of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, John Dowd, see: here .
See the views of a top Australian Human Rights Lawyer see here: Julian Burnside, QC .
Currently the cheapest prepaid SIM card in the UK is the Mobile World SIM card … thanks to UK InternationalStudent.com you can purchase a Mobile World SIM before you arrive in the UK for £9.99 (including free delivery) (see: here). For giving a maximum of about $20 SIM card credit to his second cousin, Dr Haneef now faces 15 years in prison; he has lost his job (circa $100,000 annually); he will not see his new-born child for several years; and to add insult to injury the Bush-ite Australian Government will charge him $120 a day for imprisoning him in a notorious Immigration Concentration Camp i.e. if for 2 years, $120 x 2 x 365 = $87,600.
If it is racism to exclude a non-European from a restaurant (a standard exclusion 50 years ago in America) what do you call this egregious human rights-abuse of an Indian doctor? How many sick Australians will die because the racist Australian Government has arbitrarily removed a Doctor from his Patients by imprisoning him indefinitely without trial or even good cause?