Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the opposition, it gives me great pleasure to lend both my personal and our collective support to this motion by the member for Blair in relation to human rights abuses and the condemnation of human rights abuses in Iran. It is a strength of the Australian parliament that there is generally a unanimous view in relation to the protection of human rights around the world. We must not be immune from self-examination—I believe that is absolutely the case—but, as we look around the world, nor should we be afraid of drawing to light breaches of the UN charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Those are three foundation documents which define rights and which, to my mind, represent a common human conception rather than a paradigm imposed by one country at one stage of development, as has been argued from time to time.

Let me start from the principle of belief in the notion of universal human rights. There may be marginal differences, but the fundamental elements of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are common, consistent and abiding. They are, first and foremost: the right to life, the right to freedom, the right to association, the right to freedom of belief, the right to freedom of worship and, perhaps above all else, the right to elect a government which will be democratically elected and democratically put in place as the paramount guarantor of all other rights. Where there is no such government, then it is incumbent upon the members of the international community to do all that they can to protect, highlight and seek justice in cases where there is no internal democratic mechanism or where the elements of that democratic structure are broken.

I wanted to set down that structure and theory, because I believe it is critical as to our justification for pointing out human rights abuses in other countries. There is in my view a sense of common humanity and a truth to the notion that there are universal human rights. It is inconceivable to me that simply because somebody comes from another country or culture they have waived their right to freedom of religion, to freedom of expression, to freedom of association and, above all else, to protection of their lives against arbitrary loss. These are fundamental issues.

I want to put this secondly into the context of my own experience. Along the way my teaching and part of my work was in the international human rights sphere, and there are two experiences which stand out for me above all else. I lead all of this as a path to discussing the issue of human rights in Iran and the specific motion. I worked for the Centre for Human Rights in Geneva, in particular I was an intern with the UN special representative for human rights abuses in the former Yugoslavia in 1993. That role as an intern lead me to compile reports of atrocities coming out of the former Yugoslavia.

This was at a time when there was some light being shed on the issue, but much was still hidden. We did not know of the full horrors of Srebrenica. We did not know of all of the atrocities that were occurring in Bosnia. Part of my job was to seek and compile information while based in Geneva, which was coming from different field agencies be they from arms of the United Nations, the work of the media which was incredibly important in the former Yugoslavia or from different rights groups and non-government organisations. The stories were compelling, and I remember to this day the stories of families being locked away in houses and the houses being incinerated from the outside.

Similarly, I spent time travelling with Medecins Sans Frontieres in Rwanda in the period not long after the atrocities there and branching out from Kigali and visiting Goma across the border into Zaire. As many people did, I also discovered stories which were compelling and profound and they carry with me the beliefs which are fundamental and which help form the policy that Australia took under the leadership of Alexander Downer to support the creation of an international war crimes tribunal. I believe it was fundamental.

This brings me to the challenge in Iran today, which must be seen in those consequences. Iran has made some progress in some areas, but let it be absolutely clear: Iran is not a democracy. The recent elections were largely fraudulent. They were not carried out in a free and fair manner, and they were not acceptable either to the international community or, more importantly, to the people of Iran who demonstrated on the streets their concern, their commitment and their grievance. Beyond that, there are powerful individual cases which flow naturally from the fact that the bulwarks of individual protection are not in place.

Firstly, I want to raise the case of Sakineh Ashtiani, who, on the latest advice I have from Amnesty International, is 43 and a mother of two from the north-west of Iran. She spent a number of years in prison always with the expectation that her life was to be cut short on the basis of a case which is clearly of very dubious origin—firstly, a charge of murder, which was subsequently reduced and which remains highly contentious.

There is also an extremely highly contended case of alleged adultery. This case is problematic on at least three grounds. Firstly, although states choose capital punishment, I will remain resolutely opposed throughout my working life and I have no doubt until my dying day to capital punishment wherever and under whatever circumstances, no matter how heinous the crime. I may have no sympathy for the individual but I cannot countenance or support that punishment. Secondly, we have here the notion of a fair trial, and the judicial reasoning for the conviction was not on the basis of evidence adduced but on the basis that the judge believed that there was ‘knowledge of the judge adduced from assessing the character and the demeanour of the individual’, not on the basis of any known evidence before the court. It is in effect a blanket judicial discretion to introduce arbitrary capital punishment. So in my view not only is there a flaw with capital punishment, and that remains the case whether it is in the United States, Indonesia, China or wherever else it may be, but in this case there is no protection against arbitrary decisions of a system which clearly has the most limited of judicial protections that one would wish to see. Thirdly, the form of punishment here includes the potential for stoning. Of all of the different forms of capital punishment, stoning must surely be in the modern age the most unacceptable, the most egregious, because of the pain, because of the agony, because of the inhumanity and because it incites the lowest and most base of human emotions within the community.

I believe that this case is unjust of and in itself but it is an exemplar of a system which allows women to be treated as chattels, of a system which has destroyed the rule of law in many cases, of a system which introduces an arbitrary notion and of a system which, above all else, flows from the lack of democratic structure. It is not to be justified on the basis of a religious notion. Every country, every society has the capacity for religious differences and cultural differences but no society can use those differences to take away the basics of individual liberty, of an individual right to a fair trial, of an individual right to be protected against arbitrary imprisonment and, above all else, the effective extrajudicial killing which will result from the manifest injustice in this case.

Sakineh Ashtiani’s case is an exemplar of a system which is broken, a system which must be changed, and along with other countries we will continue to work to see a genuine universal system of human rights.

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