Linda Kirk (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak again on behalf of one of my South Australian constituents David Hicks, who is being held in Guantanamo Bay by the US administration, and to call again on the government to take action following the release of a United Nations report into Guantanamo Bay which was made public last month, on 16 February. This report makes it very clear that the facility at Guantanamo Bay should be closed down. The UN report says that Guantanamo Bay operates in violation of international treaties, a point that has been made many times before. The UN report says that the prisoners there are denied justice. It accuses the United States of perpetrating acts on Guantanamo detainees which amount to torture. It calls for the prosecution by US courts of officers and politicians ‘up to the highest level’ for their involvement in the torture of detainees.

This is not the first time we have seen allegations of human rights abuses and a failure to provide justice at Guantanamo Bay. The Australian government has time and again ignored reports of mistreatment, abuse and torture of Guantanamo Bay detainees. With the release of this report by the world’s highest human rights organisation, the government cannot continue to bury its head in the sand in relation to this issue. The Prime Minister, Mr Howard, the Attorney-General, Mr Ruddock, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, must act urgently on this matter. They must listen to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has backed this report saying that the US must shut down Guantanamo Bay. Our government must not ignore the British, French and German ambassadors to Washington, who now also say that Guantanamo Bay must be closed.

This 54-page UN report is a summary of investigations by five independent experts. The findings were based on interviews with lawyers and former detainees. The US government has criticised the report, saying that the authors had not visited Guantanamo Bay. However, according to the report, the envoys had sought permission to visit and to interview prisoners but were refused by the US administration. As an aside, I have also had experience in trying to gain permission to visit Guantanamo Bay. Last year I was invited to visit Mr Hicks, accompanied by his military lawyer, Major Michael Mori. However, the response I received, which was relayed through the Australian Embassy in Washington, said:

Visits by non-US nationals are, with very few exceptions, restricted to those related to law enforcement and intelligence purposes. No parliamentarians from third countries have been permitted to visit the facility.

As a senator for South Australia, I am one of David Hicks’s political representatives and I believe that was a reasonable request. We have to ask: what are they trying to hide? I have to say that I found this refusal for me to visit Guantanamo particularly galling because, according to the US Secretary for Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, 77 members of the US House of Representatives and Senate have been to visit Guantanamo Bay. Why does our government accept a situation where US political representatives are permitted to visit Guantanamo Bay but elected Australian representatives, in particular those who have a constituent in the facility, are denied access?

I would like to spend a few minutes on what I consider to be five of the most serious findings in the United Nations report. I will go through these quoting from the report:

1. “The executive branch of the United States Government operates as judge, prosecutor and defence counsel of the Guantanamo Bay detainees: this constitutes serious violations of various guarantees of the right to a fair trial before an independent tribunal as provided for by article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

2. “Attempts by the United States Administration to redefine ‘torture’ in the framework of the struggle against terrorism in order to allow certain interrogation techniques that would not be permitted under the internationally accepted definition of torture are of the utmost concern.”

3. “The interrogation techniques authorized by the Department of Defense, particularly if used simultaneously, amount to degrading treatment in violation of article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and article 16 of the Convention Against Torture. If in individual cases, which were described in the interviews, the victim experienced severe pain or suffering, these acts amounted to torture as defined in article 1 of the Convention.”

4. “The excessive violence used in many cases during transportation, in operations by the Initial Reaction Forces and force-feeding of detainees on hunger strike must be assessed as amounting to torture under article 1 of the Convention Against Torture.”

5. “The lack of impartial investigation into allegations of torture and ill-treatment and the resulting impunity of the perpetrators amount to a violation of articles 12 and 13 of the Convention Against Torture.”

As I said, those are just five of the most serious and disturbing findings of the UN report.

There are still some 500 people being held inside Guantanamo Bay. My constituent David Hicks, who, as we know, is one of only 10 who have been charged, is awaiting trial as part of a military process which many have said is fatally flawed. I have spoken previously on the subject of the military trial process that is to take place at Guantanamo Bay and I do not intend to again go into the detail of all the fatal flaws and defects that exist in that process. However, I do want to comment briefly on a recent report, on 2 March this year, in the Age newspaper that one-third of detainees at Guantanamo Bay are to be transferred to their home countries. We were also told that another 14 detainees will be released outright. Yes, just like that—these men, who have been locked up for years, stripped of all dignity, possibly mistreated and tortured, are now deemed to be such a low risk that they can go home. But what about David Hicks? In the words of his civilian lawyer, South Australian David McLeod, ‘Does David have to be the last detainee left at Guantanamo Bay or die in captivity before the irrationality of his continued detention is exposed?’

Today I am calling on the Australian government to, at the very least, request that the US government set up an independent inquiry into Guantanamo Bay, including the allegations of torture and mistreatment, as well as into the extraordinary rendition process. This UN report just adds more fuel to arguments that the way Guantanamo Bay is operating is fundamentally inconsistent with international law and conventions. Our government should, of course, also demand immediate justice for Mr Hicks. If the government is not prepared or does not have the courage to go to the US administration and demand that Guantanamo Bay be shut down, it should at the very least demand of the US that an impartial investigation take place into the flood of allegations that are now being made about the operations of Guantanamo Bay.