Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on this motion to mark the International Day of Democracy, 15 September, a day instituted by the UN General Assembly in a resolution in November 2007. It is appropriate that my colleague the honourable member for Fremantle has moved this motion. Before she came to parliament, her work in the United Nations took her to Kosovo, Lebanon and Cyprus, all places that have seen ethnic and political conflict and all places that are building stable democracies despite their problems. She follows in the footsteps of the previous member for Fremantle, Dr Carmen Lawrence, a tireless campaigner for democratic rights in Australia and overseas.

The instigation of the International Day of Democracy by the UN General Assembly is itself a significant development. For many years throughout the 1970s and 1980s the UN General Assembly was dominated by a bloc of undemocratic regimes—communist regimes from the Soviet bloc, military juntas in Latin America, dictatorships and absolute monarchies in the Middle East, and more dictatorships in East Asia and South-East Asia. It is hard to imagine the UN General Assembly as it was then—when in 1973 it welcomed a gun-toting Yasser Arafat to the podium—agreeing to a resolution on the International Day of Democracy. Such a resolution would have been denounced as an imperialist, neocolonialist ploy by the Soviet bloc and leaders of the so-called non-aligned movement, mainly a mixture of Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern dictatorships, as I have said, most of them falsely claiming to be people’s democracies of one kind or another.

Over the past 20 years, we have seen the world transformed at the political level. The Soviet bloc has collapsed, allowing democracy to emerge in eastern and central Europe, in the Baltic states and in the Caucasus, although sadly not in all of the former Soviet republics. Every state in Latin America except Cuba is now a democracy, although some of them are a bit rocky, withdrawing civil rights, as in Venezuela at the moment. In Africa, apartheid has ended and in southern Africa many new democracies have emerged. Last week we saw free elections in Angola, a country long wracked by civil war and emerging from 25 years of authoritarian rule.

In our own region, democracy has emerged in South Korea, Mongolia, Taiwan and, most encouragingly and importantly, in Indonesia, where the courageous leadership of Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Soekarnoputri in leading the ‘Reformasi’ movement culminated in the fall of the Soeharto regime. We have also seen East Timor become an independent and democratic state, thanks in part to the timely intervention of Australia under the auspices of the UN.

These developments owe much to the courage and sacrifice of many people. Let me mention such heroic figures as Natan Sharansky; Lech Walesa, in Poland; Vaclav Havel, in Czechoslovakia; Nelson Mandela, in South Africa; and Corazon Aquino, in the Philippines. These are famous names, people who win Nobel prizes—and deservedly so. But we should also honour the thousands of unknown and anonymous heroes in the struggle for democracy, many of whom spent years in prison or paid for it with their lives. We recall the students who rioted in Soweto; those who stood against the tanks in Tiananmen Square; those who have dared to rebel against the junta in Burma; those who took part in the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine or the Rose Revolution in Georgia; the Catholic and Buddhist leaders who were imprisoned in China and Vietnam; and all those who risked beatings or death to vote against Mugabe.

It would be nice to say that the tide of democratic reform—the ‘end of history’ about which Francis Fukuyama theorised—which has swept the world over the last 20 years, sweeping aside despotic and unelected rulers, was a permanent thing. Unfortunately, it appears this is not the case. In our own region, communist and perhaps postcommunist authoritarian regimes still hold power in China, Vietnam and Laos, while North Korea continues to suffer under the world’s last remaining genuine Stalinist autocracy. Burma still languishes under a corrupt, incompetent and obscure military regime. We should honour the people who struggle for democracy in these countries and who have not been successful, at least not yet. The most notable of these of course is Aung San Suu Kyi, who won overwhelmingly Burma’s only free election in 1990 but was then denied the fruits of her victory by the military junta and has spent most of the last 19 years under house arrest. I think also of my friends in the Chinese democracy movement, such as Wei Jingsheng and labour leader Han Dongfang. Wei Jingsheng spent many years in the lao gai, including years in solitary confinement. Their day will come.

One such leader whose time is coming very soon is Morgan Tsvangirai, a man of enormous bravery who stood firm against the despotic Mugabe and his thugs in the face of violence, intimidation, legal harassment and threats to his life. I was involved in the previous election in Zimbabwe in 2004, when a disgraceful SBS episode of Dateline tried to paint Mr Tsvangirai as organising the assassination of Robert Mugabe. I am very pleased to see on Google still the article that I wrote exposing the two Zimbabwean government agents behind that called ‘Of liars and lives’. That is very highly rated on Google and continues to perform a role in exposing those who have tried to discredit that great democrat Morgan Tsvangirai.

It is a sad fact that the main exception to the worldwide spread of democracy has been the Arab-Islamic world. In that region the only stable democracy is Israel, which this year has marked its 60th anniversary as an independent democratic state. There has been great progress made in Lebanon following the Cedar Revolution, but that country unfortunately remains riven by ethnic and religious conflicts, with the minority Syrian Hezbollah interest group assassinating government MPs so that they can literally shoot down the majority. The US-led intervention in Iraq has allowed the creation of a constitutional state and the holding of elections, but I think Iraq has a long way to go before becoming a genuine democracy. Other Arab countries remain either absolute monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia, or dictatorships, such as Egypt, Syria and Libya.

As we have seen in Indonesia over the past decade, as we have seen in Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan and as we are seeing in Malaysia at the moment, there is nothing inherent in Islamic societies that makes them immune to the attractions of democracy and freedom. Oppressed millions in the Arab world, in Egypt and Syria in particular, want the same kind of freedom, democracy and prosperity that people in Australia, Europe and the US have. The worldwide advance of democracy over recent times has not been without its setbacks. Even in our region we have seen military coups in Thailand and Fiji. Thailand has now restored democratic government, although it has not achieved stability. Fiji is still languishing under military rule. I would like to see Australia and our Pacific neighbours doing more to help the people of Fiji recover their freedom.

Recently we have had the emergence of a bloc of antidemocratic states led by China and Russia, allied with Iran and the post-Soviet dictatorships of Central Asia. This Eurasian bloc, imagined by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, is organised into an organisation called the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which has great economic power in the current circumstances because its members have large reserves of oil and gas. It uses that power to oppose the spread of democracy; to subsidise and prop up oppressive and undemocratic regimes such as those in Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe; and to give those regimes diplomatic cover at the UN, where of course the Russians and the Chinese have Security Council vetoes. This is a worrying development.

As we recently saw in Georgia, Russia under Vladimir Putin has become once again an expansionist power, seeking to re-establish its hegemony in the Caucasus at the expense of the new democratic states there. Moscow is also seeking to bully the Ukraine back into the Russian sphere of influence. The stranglehold that Russia has over western Europe’s gas supplies has made the European powers reluctant to face up to the facts of Russian expansionism, let alone to take firm steps to stop it. Those who remember the history of 20th century Europe can see a familiar pattern repeating itself. If the democratic powers fail to stand up to dictatorships and fail to defend small democracies, those dictatorships will grow bolder and their appetites will increase. It may be that one should not overextend the boundaries of NATO, but I hope the democracies will find a way to prevent that historical parallel coming to pass.

China, by contrast, has shown no evident desire to expand at the expense of its neighbours. I would argue that it is against China’s interests to be seen in the company of regimes such as those in Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe. The Chinese leaders are surely wise enough to see that their future does not lie in joining a Eurasian bloc of anti-Western, antidemocratic powers led by Putin’s Russia and Ahmadinejad’s Iran. Rather, it should lie in partnership and alliance with the newly emerging, dynamic and increasingly prosperous Asian democratic powers of India, Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea.

Despite these worrying developments, I remain optimistic about the future of democracy in our region and in the world. Antidemocratic forces may be mobilising, but so are the forces of democracy and freedom. One of the leading forces for democracy in the world is the World Movement for Democracy, an international organisation in which I am proud to be an active participant. Some honourable members may only know the acronym WMD as standing for ‘weapons of mass destruction’, but I am pleased to say that it now has a new and more positive meaning. The WMD is a global network of democrats from almost every country in the world, including academics, policymakers and parliamentarians.

Using the technology of the internet for information, the World Movement for Democracy is arousing world opinion to press for democratic change in countries like Malaysia, Iran, Burma, Cuba, Zimbabwe and Egypt. It is part of a growing global movement which includes bodies such as Amnesty International, Medecins Sans Frontieres, Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House and the US National Endowment for Democracy. Many other bodies are also part of this movement. Unfortunately, the WMD is hamstrung at the UN by Russian and Chinese vetoes. Over the past few years, I attended WMD congresses in Istanbul and Kiev and was inspired by the optimism and enthusiasm of the hundreds of democracy activists I met there. These included the great Egyptian political scientist and freedom activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim and opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia, who is on the cusp of democratic victory in his country.

As the honourable member for Fremantle said, democracy means more than just freedom and regular elections—although I am sure the people of Burma, for example, would be happy to have even those freedoms. It means social and economic emancipation, particularly for women and children. It means the struggle against poverty, against illiteracy, against epidemic diseases such as HIV-AIDS and malaria, against organised crime, corruption and people-trafficking, against racial, religious and political persecution and against international terrorism. All these causes are linked. They are major challenges for the world, particularly when we are facing economic upheaval and the challenges of climate change.

I have always been inspired by the example of the brave democracy activists I have met, activists from many countries, through the World Movement for Democracy, the Federation for a Democratic China, the National Endowment for Democracy and other international organisations with which I am involved. The institution of International Day of Democracy is a symbolic but nevertheless important recognition of their struggles and their sacrifices. I urge all honourable members who share my enthusiasm for democratic change to lend their support to those who work for these worthy organisations.

It is an inspiration to know people like Saad Ibrahim of Egypt, who led the democratic opposition to the Mubarak regime. It was an inspiration in Istanbul to meet Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia. I hope Anwar will one day come to Australia as Prime Minister of Malaysia and be welcomed by this parliament. I know my friends in the democratic opposition in Malaysia, hopefully soon to become the democratic majority, are struggling at this very moment against all kinds of smears, arrests and the improper use of Malaysian laws to achieve a parliamentary majority there.

Having visited Malaysia recently, I can say that it is a country that is very successful and prosperous, and you can just feel the winds of democratic change coming. People in Malaysia argue that a more democratic system which will enable people to have transparency and openness and to oppose corruption will actually help the economic prosperity of that society. And isn’t that one of the messages of democratic reform throughout the world? One of the messages that we can take from this UN General Assembly resolution is that democracy, as practiced in Australia and other countries, helps with the openness and transparency of the economic system as well, and that prevents the kind of corruption endemic to so many of these previously undemocratic countries like Malaysia. Let us hope, for the sake of Saad Ibrahim and Anwar Ibrahim, that democracy will prevail soon in Egypt and, imminently, in Malaysia.

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