Removal of Recognition of US Military Commissions (David Hicks) Bill 2006

This week Australian citizen David Hicks will face the beginning of his sixth year in detention.

This weekend The Greens will join thousands of Australians who will gather in protest around the country to call for David Hicks to be returned to Australia.

There is a growing anger that the Australian government continues to support the detention of David Hicks and the military commissions which the United States have established to legitimise his detention.

Faced with this anger the best the Australian government can do is call for David Hicks to face trial before a military commission sooner rather than later.

The military commissions have not been established to provide for a fair trial. They are designed to provide a legal cover for the appalling treatment and continued detention of people such as David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay.

The recent release of the film The Road to Guantanamo showed in graphic detail the torture and terrible treatment experienced by people detained at Guantanamo Bay, treatment that the White House and Australian Government do not want the world to know about.

Ruhal Ahmed who is one of the central characters portrayed in the film was intending to come to Australia to discuss his experiences, but was blocked by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

The Inspector General for Intelligence is currently investigating this decision. But it was clearly politically motivated.

Ruhal Ahmed has travelled to numerous countries around the world including throughout Europe but is only prevented from promoting the film in Australia and the United States.

Like Ruhal Ahmed, the Australian government does not want David Hicks to tell his story.

That is why in 2004 the Government supported by Labor amended the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to ensure that David Hicks would not be able to receive funds from telling the story of his incarceration at Guantanamo Bay.

They did this by recognising the legitimacy of the US Military Commissions intended to try David Hicks and other Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

It was an appalling act of cooperation by the major parties to silence David Hicks. But even worse, in doing so they gave a stamp of approval to the military commissions in Australian law.

The relevant provision of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, section 337A (3) states that:

offence against a law of a foreign country includes an offence triable by a military commission of the United States of America established under a Military Order of 13 November 2001 made by the President of the United States of America and entitled “Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism”.

In supporting the inclusion of this section in the Proceeds of Crime Act in 2004 the government and Labor gave the tick of approval to President George Bush’s military commissions.

The military commissions have subsequently been ruled unconstitutional and therefore illegal by the US Supreme Court, backing up what David Hicks’ family and lawyers and The Greens have said from the beginning.

However one of the last acts by the Republican controlled US Congress just prior to the recent US elections was to re-establish the military commissions.

The new military commissions are perhaps worse than the old as they sanction torture by allowing evidence obtained by coercion to be used in evidence.

They also:

• exclude the defendant from the proceedings in certain circumstances,
• prevent the defence from learning how evidence against the defendant was obtained whenever the government labels the evidence classified;
• admit hearsay evidence while imposing the burden on the defence to prove that the evidence is not reliable;
• do not provide the defence with right to appeal faulty rulings before the end of the whole trial,
• limit the defendant’s access to evidence that could show innocence,
• limit the sources of law to which courts may look,
• seek to exclude the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights,
• aim to make the Geneva Conventions non-enforceable in U.S. courts,
• seek to create retroactive criminal responsibility for acts that were not crimes at the time they were committed, and
• withhold full and effective rights of appeal

These military commissions are kangaroo courts not intended to conduct a fair trial but rather legitimate the detention for over five year’s prisoners such as David Hicks.

It is a travesty that these commissions are recognised by Australian law and that the government and Labor combined in 2004 to hinder Hicks telling his story.

This bill, the Removal of Recognition of US Military Commissions (David Hicks) Bill 2006 will remove this recognition of the US Military Commissions from the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, making clear that both the commissions ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court and the new military commissions established by Congress are not supported in Australian law.

Passage of The Green’s bill through the Australian Parliament would also be a strong statement against the ongoing detention of David Hicks.

This bill is only the latest action by The Greens in support of a fair go for David Hicks.

Senator Bob Brown was the first Australian MP to raise David Hicks situation in Parliament, back in June 2002 and has been barred from visiting Guantanamo Bay.

In 2003 Greens Senator Bob Brown and I approached President Bush and asked him to release David Hicks. The Greens did this in 2003 because the Australian Government had failed to stand up for this Australian citizen.

We did not imagine that three years later David Hicks would still be in detention in Guantanamo Bay and the Australian Government would still be failing to stand up for the rights of this Australian citizen.

The Greens want David Hicks brought home to Australia and we will do whatever we can to achieve this.

This weekend we join thousands of Australians at rallies around the country who are calling for David Hicks to be brought home for Christmas.

We will move a motion in the Senate every day calling on the government to bring David Hicks home until he is returned to his family in Australia.

This bill is a necessary step in ensuring that the illegal military commissions set up by the Bush Administration to legitimise the detention of David Hicks are not recognised in Australian law.

The passage of this bill through the Australian Parliament will send a strong message to the Bush Administration that David Hicks must receive a fair trail and not be hauled before a hastily created unfair kangaroo court that is set up to convict him.

The process of the military commissions created by the Bush Administration have been considered to be an unacceptable way to try American citizens, British citizens and citizens from a host of other countries.

The Australian parliament must not accept a process that is unacceptable to the rest of the world and well below the standards of fairness that American and British Governments expect for their citizens.

The Greens call on the government to ensure that David Hicks is returned home and receives a fair trial.

I commend the bill to the Senate.