Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I am delighted to second this motion, which has been moved in a spirit of bipartisanship. And may I recognise the member for Cook for the work he does as chair of the Amnesty International Parliamentary Group and for the fact that he and a number of other members of this parliament do seek to address human rights abuses, divorcing ourselves from the exigencies of our political position—difficult as it may be sometimes to try and express these judgements objectively. That is why it is important to have a group like Amnesty above and beyond us as parliamentarians. We do try very much to speak on issues of human rights without partisanship and, in that regard, the member for Cook is an example to all who would come into this parliament, and I would hope that many follow his examples.

In this instance, the issue arose after the events of 8 May to which the member for Cook has referred. The Zimbabwe police violently stopped a demonstration organised by the Law Society of Zimbabwe to protest against what they asserted to be the unlawful arrest and ill-treatment of two of their fellow lawyers. Those two lawyers have been released subsequently but only after proceedings in the Zimbabwe courts, which were ignored for a very long period of time. The episode of 8 May was associated with the unprovoked beating of lawyers demonstrating peacefully in Harare. I have reports that the former president of the Law Society of Zimbabwe, Mordecai Mahlangu, was assaulted after seeking to present the Minister of Justice and Commissioner of Police with a petition protesting the unlawful arrest and detention of two colleagues. Of course, there were also reports that lawyers were beaten with rubber truncheons, batons and sticks. The current president of the Law Society of Zimbabwe, Mrs Beatrice Mtetwa, was arrested with three others and severely assaulted, according to the International Commission of Jurists.

These matters obviously demand attention in Zimbabwe. Beyond that, the regime that is operating in Zimbabwe has passed a point where it is proper to close one’s eyes to the routinisation of those kinds of abuses. Of course, the United States, with Guantanamo Bay and various other abuses that it is involved in, is hardly a shining light for those of us who take concerns about human rights seriously, but it does have a very useful reporting process. The US State Department routinely, on an annual basis, reports on human rights abuses around the globe. In relation to Zimbabwe, it reports: unlawful killings; politically motivated kidnappings; state sanctioned use of excessive force and torture; torture of members of the opposition, union leaders and civil society activists by security forces; arbitrary arrest and detention of journalists, demonstrators and religious leaders; executive influence and interference with the judiciary; repressive laws to suppress freedom of speech, press assembly movement and association, and academic freedom; public threats of violence against demonstrators by high-ranking government officials; harassment of human rights and humanitarian non-governmental organisations; and interference with attempts to provide humanitarian assistance.

There has been a visit by the African Commission, and the Zimbabwean government says that they are looking at its recommendations. One hopes that they will address those matters with some degree of seriousness. I hope that we as a parliament will bring focused attention not just to Zimbabwe but to every instance where human rights are abused across this globe. We cannot give protection and comfort to human rights abuses perpetrated by those we like or whose ideology we support, nor can we ignore it when it is done by those we condemn, and nor should we judge it differently in relation to those two instances. I thank the honourable member for Cook for raising this matter. I hope this resolution obtains support across both sides of this House and also from the Independents.

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