August 2, 2007 • 10:36 am
The Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, has announced an exemption to the alcohol bans in 70 remote indigenous communities in the NT that were announced as a core component of the government’s Indigenous Emergency Plan to combat the sexual abuse of indigenous minors. The exemption applies to rivers being used for recreational fishing on or adjacent to Aboriginal land.
Why is such a core measure being undermined?
The professor of indigenous studies at the University of Melbourne, Marcia Langton, said yesterday that relaxing the bans would open the floodgates for alcohol to be smuggled into the 70 communities where it was banned.
“It will allow illegal grog runners to sell grog into the communities,” she said.
“It’s the kind of loophole that can bring the whole system undone, by giving the big tick-off to the grog runners. It’s not going to work.”
What could be more important than protecting the children who are the whole justification for the sweeping authoritian emergency plan in the first place?
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Filed under: authoritarianism, indigenous, law, racism
Crossposted on Larvatus Prodeo, where each of the previous Haneef threads has generated hundreds of comments.
Much was made yesterday of claims that Indian police believe that there are links between Haneef and extreme jihadists. To kick this thread off, from The Hindu (Online edition of India’s National Newspaper):
Meanwhile, reports in a section of the Australian media that a dossier prepared by the Bangalore police on Mohammed Haneef on his alleged links with the Al-Qaeda have come as a surprise to the police here.
Bangalore Police Commissioner Neelam Achuta Rao told The Hindu on Wednesday that they had not prepared any such dossier.
So where has the alleged Haneef dossier actually come from?
Secondly, Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Politics, authoritarianism, law, sheer incompetence
And the police state lurches ever closer, with the SMH today reporting on proposed legislation for “New secret search powers”.
The proposed powers would give police the right to execute search, seizure and surveillance under so-called “delayed notification warrants”, without judicial oversight, and including the assumption of false identities by police to gain access. The subject can be denied notice of the s/s/s for up to six months, with extensions available on Ministerial approval, again with no judicial involvement:
The lack of judicial oversight was justified by the Minister for Justice and Customs, David Johnston, on the grounds that a court or judicial officer might leak news of the warrant.
“I don’t want to impugn anyone, but the security of these operations has to be pristine,” Senator Johnston told the Herald.
The article continues:
The position of the Labor Opposition is unknown. The party did not return calls yesterday.
Filed under: Politics, authoritarianism, law, moral panics, obstreperation
Kevin Andrews offers some explanation of the previously secret information upon which he relied.
Mr Andrews said the AFP had told him before making his visa decision that police suspected the internet conversation may be evidence Dr Haneef had prior knowledge of the UK bomb plot.
“And secondly, the AFP consider Dr Haneef’s attempted urgent departure from Australia on a one-way ticket for a purpose which appears to be a false pretext to be highly suspicious and may reflect Haneef’s awareness of the conspiracy to plan and prepare the acts of terrorism in London and Glasgow.
“The suspicion which the federal police referred to in terms of Dr Haneef was that he was wanting to get out of Australia not because of the reason proffered, namely that the child had been born – remembering that that child had been born I think six days earlier.
“That that was a pretext, a false pretext, on which he was wanting to get out of Australia because of his association with the Ahmed brothers, the cousins, and the incidents which had occurred in the UK.”
The chatroom conversation which Andrews is describing took place the same day that Haneef attempted to fly to India, July 2. The Glasgow car-bomb attempt took place two days earlier. It’s hard to see how such a conversation implies prior knowledge of any plot.
However, it certainly does raise questions about Haneef’s motivation for leaving in such a hurry, and using the birth of his daughter as the explanation. Perhaps it was mere nerves about his connection with Kafeel Ahmed making him liable to arrest and questioning, and so he brought forward his plans to travel to see his daughter. Perhaps it was more than that.
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Filed under: Politics, law
In response to Dr Mohammed Haneef’s interview last night on 60 minutes:
Isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?
He was only inconvenienced for 4 weeks.
Everyone makes mistakes, and it’s all been corrected now.
Sure he was incarcerated, but he was fed and safe and he must have known that if he was innocent he’d eventually be set free.
He shouldn’t have been traumatised by that, he should be happy to be contributing to the safety of society by being thoroughly investigated.
The attempts by partisans to game talkback shows are becoming more and more obvious.
The last two lpoints strike me as particularly disingenuous. They’re trying to imply that only a person with some guilty secrets would be traumatised by being investigated. As if anybody who’s been paying attention to justice narratives (both fact and fiction) at any time in their life ever doesn’t know that innocent people get persecuted all the time for cynical political gain. Why on earth should Haneef’s pofessed innocence have made him unafraid of the investigation’s intensity?
Filed under: authoritarianism, elections, law, sheer incompetence
At least he was charged with a crime in front of a judge before the executive arm got involved. Since the latest Presidential Executive Order has been signed and sent to Congress, someone in Haneef’s situation in the USA could be made a homeless dumpster-diver without ever being interviewed by the police, let alone being charged with a crime.
Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq
…all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,
- (i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:
- (A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or
- (B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;
So far typically authoritarian, but following a certain valid logic.
(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or
(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.
All assets of any suspect can be frozen, with no notice (Section 5 of the order), by the Treasury without even having to get a court order. Anyone associated with them in all sorts of normal social or business transactions can potentially be treated likewise. And to put the icing on the top:
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Filed under: Politics, authoritarianism, law
Curmudgeon of the Day goes to the caller I heard on ABC702 talkback radio this morning (paraphrased from memory):
What a ridiculous charge?…How do you even do that? Tie it to a brick and chuck it at someone?
He’s talking of course of Dr Mohammed Haneef, who was yesterday granted conditional bail by a Queensland magistrate on charges laid against him of recklessly supplying resources (said SIM card) to a terrorist organisation (what other people would describe as passing on a UK SIM card he could not use in Australia to his cousin when he left the UK).
The call was in response to news of the decision by Federal Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews last night to preempt judicial due process and the presumption of innocence. Andrews used his ministerial oversight powers to revoke Haneef’s visa and consign him to the Villawood Detention Centre pending further investigations and the resolution of his court case.
Shaun at LP has a great post and links round-up on opinon about Andrews v. Haneef, and quotes Peter Wilkinson most aptly:
Indiscriminate repression is totally incompatible with the liberal values of humanity, liberty and justice. It is a dangerous illusion to believe one can ‘protect’ liberal democracy by suspending liberal rights and forms of government.
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Filed under: authoritarianism, ethics, islamophobia, law
This press release from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), dated 21 June 2007, has largely gone off the media radar due to Howard’s Indigenous Emergency plan hogging all the limelight:
Changing the definitions describing de facto relationships in relevant federal laws could help end daily discrimination suffered by more than 20,000 same-sex couples in Australia, according to a report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), tabled in Federal Parliament today.
The Same-Sex: Same Entitlements Report, being officially launched in Sydney tomorrow by Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes AM, found that 58 federal laws denied same-sex couples and their children basic financial and work-related entitlements available to opposite-sex couples and their children.
“As one man told us during our Inquiry – same-sex couples are first class tax-payers but second class citizens – and we have certainly found this to be true,” Mr Innes said.
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Filed under: ethics, law, moral panics, sexuality
Or, as Kim has named it, Tampa 2007.
Prime Minister John Howard has announced a sweeping authoritarian plan of managing indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, with the stated purpose of combatting the horrifying rates of child sexual abuse amongst the indigenous population. Unlike the total beat-up of Tampa, there is a genuine problem to be addressed with respect to sexual abuse, but Howard’s announced plans reek of the Something Approach:
Something Must Be Done.
This is Something We Could Do.
Let’s Do That Thing Then.
Certainly, Mr Howard’s plan is Doing Something. But is it the most effective solution to the problem?
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Filed under: Politics, authoritarianism, indigenous, law, moral panics, racism, sexual violence
