Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in the matters of public interest debate, scheduled in the red and the Notice Paper today. I note that we have visiting our parliament today Dr Ines Alberdi, Executive Director of UNIFEM, who is currently briefing the Australia-United Nations parliamentary group on the launch of UNIFEM’s Progress of the world’s women report for 2008. Although I was only able to hear a few moments of her briefing, it is certainly again compelling evidence of the stark reality of the lives that many women in the world face—which many women in Australia can perhaps not hope to understand, given the challenges.

I want to speak about some specific human rights issues in our region. I start by noting that, since the signing of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the campaign for human rights across the world has in fact made huge advances. The recognition and protection of fundamental human rights have become international norms and they are no less valued for the fact that they are frequently dishonoured. Our basic human rights—the right to life, liberty and security of person; freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment; recognition before the law; freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention or exile; the right to equality and a fair trial; the right to freedom of opinion and freedom of religion; the right to education—are all building blocks of any just and peaceful society. However, in many countries in our region and beyond, these rights are often honoured more in breach than in observation. In the Asia-Pacific region, human rights remain fundamentally vulnerable. Australia, with other like-minded countries, must redouble our efforts to ensure the protection of basic human rights everywhere and for every person, without distinction of any kind, as the UN declaration says.

I want to focus today on several specific situations in our region where human rights remain, at best, fragile. Let me begin by making reference to Burma, where human rights are under constant and serious threat. After the military junta in Burma violently suppressed peaceful democracy protests in August and September 2007, the number of political prisoners in that country more than doubled. That left over 2,000 people in prison for simply expressing their political views. Since late November 2008, the situation for many of those political prisoners has declined. Sentences for government critics have been handed down in trials that were neither transparent nor fair. At least 210 of those individuals have been transferred to remote prisons, away from the capital and away from their families. For political prisoners and minority groups in Burma, torture is a common experience. Indeed, Amnesty International has said that torture has ‘become an institution’ in Burma. Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and the UN have repeatedly provided reports of terrible abuse, including the extremes of murder, torture, rape, detention without trial, massive forced relocations and forced labour. Freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of religion are all denied by Burma’s military rulers.

There is little prospect for improvement in the foreseeable future. Elections promised by the Burmese junta are unlikely to be either free or fair. Instead, one imagines the elections will be used as an attempt by the regime to strengthen its grip on the levers of power in Burma and to try and legitimise the last 20 years of undemocratic rule. However, nowhere is the regime’s contempt for free and fair elections and democratic rule more evident than in the fate of Burma’s most prominent political prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi. As the rightful winner of Burma’s last democratic elections in 1990, which the military refused to recognise, Suu Kyi has been in detention for much of the time since—indeed, for 14 of the last 20 years.

In May this year, a few months before Suu Kyi’s current term of house arrest was due to conclude, an American well-wisher swam to her house—which is, I note, guarded by members of the Burmese military. The swimmer was, curiously, allowed to enter the location. With the 2010 elections not far away, the Burmese junta used this event to arrest Suu Kyi for violation of the terms of her house arrest, notwithstanding the fact that the law under which Suu Kyi has been charged is part of a constitution which was abolished 25 years ago. Popular support for Aung San Suu Kyi is so strong that Burma’s rulers delayed the verdict on these charges for over two months for fear of a backlash.

This week, however, the regime announced its decision to sentence Suu Kyi to three years jail with hard labour, commuted to 18 months house arrest. This is a contemptible decision. It is an outrage and a disgrace and it is a transparent attempt by the regime to ensure Suu Kyi will not upset their private election plans. For Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma there is little reason to believe the promised elections will in any way resemble democracy. The one certainty is that the Burmese regime has acted and will continue to act only in the interests of its own perverse self-preservation and with blatant disregard for human rights, due process and democracy.

Australia can and should do more to help in Burma. I acknowledge that the Minister for Foreign Affairs has called for the immediate and unconditional release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners in Burma, but there is much more that Australia can usefully do. We can work further with the international community to condemn the actions taken against Suu Kyi. In particular, we can use our influence with ASEAN member countries and all nations with closer relations to Burma to pressure the military junta to release Suu Kyi and other political prisoners. There have been recent news reports that Burma is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability. The government could also join in the international campaign to support a global arms embargo against Burma. Australia cannot remain complacent in the face of such egregious human rights abuses as those taking place in Burma today.

Burma, sadly, is not an isolated case. Where there is war and conflict, human rights will always suffer. In our broad region this was recently made evident in the fighting in Pakistan’s Swat Valley and other areas of the country’s north-west. The Swat Valley area is known as the ‘Switzerland of Pakistan’ as it is renowned for its natural beauty. In the past it has thrived as a tourist destination. Today, it is devastated by war. In the last year a resurgent Taliban took control of the area, and the impact on the population was swift and severe. By April this year the Taliban had imposed its arbitrary and brutal form of sharia law on the area. For minor infractions, cruel and inhumane punishments were not uncommon, including beheadings. Militants targeted government-run schools and ensured they were closed. They set up Taliban training camps inside these schools and captured young boys and forced them to train for jihad. Popular resistance to the Taliban was reportedly punished by death. Despite promises to do so, unsurprisingly the Taliban did not disarm but sought to strengthen and spread its control over the area.

In May, the army of Pakistan launched a major offensive against the Taliban. Several months later they have made significant inroads in defeating the Taliban in this area. This is good news, but the human costs remain very high. The fighting in the Swat Valley and surrounding regions resulted in the largest internal displacement in Pakistan’s history and many civilians became casualties of the conflict. Over two million people were forced to flee their homes and communities. Now, this long-suffering population is gradually returning, but many are coming back to destroyed homes and livelihoods and to the ever-present fear that the Taliban will assert its vicious control over the area once more.

The recent experience of the brutality of war for the people of the Swat Valley is, regrettably, something far too familiar to many people all over the world. In the face of the pervasive horrors of war and conflict, it is a stain on our humanity to say that, in these circumstances, human rights become an unnecessary luxury or that the rights of individuals to life and liberty and freedom from oppression are irrelevant in war. The Geneva Conventions signed in 1949 and their additional protocols were developed precisely to protect basic human rights in war, limiting the barbarity of war for the participants and victims. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions. Today, they are the foundation international treaties that protect civilians and combatants and place limits on the ways that wars are fought. As with all human rights, the provisions of the Geneva Conventions are vulnerable to breaches and abuse, but they remain the standard by which governments and militaries of all stripes are measured by the people they purport to protect.

Wherever conflicts occur, Australia must always remain alert to the protection of innocent civilians and never accept the derogation of basic human rights in war or at any other time. In the Swat Valley, for example, we in Australia can provide desperately needed support to the population as it struggles to return and recover from the fighting—indeed, the world has an obligation to do so. We can donate to organisations assisting with the recovery and I acknowledge the government’s contribution in that regard. But the United Nations is still seeking international aid support. This is a continuing crisis and one of which we should remain cognisant.

I want to speak briefly on an example that is closer to home but equally disturbing. In Fiji, since the rise to power of Commodore Frank Bainimarama in December 2006, human rights conditions have gradually worsened. Human Rights Watch reported recently that, since 2007, dozens of people have been arbitrarily detained, sexually and otherwise assaulted, intimidated, beaten or otherwise subjected to degrading treatment. The record of brutality by the Fijian police against suspects, prison escapees and convicted criminals is growing. Since the interim government abrogated the constitution in April this year, the administration has limited the independence of the judiciary. They have removed all judicial officers from office, reconstituting courts and commissions. They have intervened in the licensing of lawyers and have legislated to prohibit legal challenges of their own acts. Freedoms of expression, of association and of assembly have all been curtailed. The media are heavily censored and, along with lawyers and human rights and political activists, are subject to harassment and arbitrary detention.

Human rights conditions in Fiji by all reports are deteriorating by the day. The Pacific Islands Forum held recently in Cairns seemed to me to have been a timely opportunity for Australia and other countries of the Pacific to take a stronger stance and to take an opportunity to put more pressure—real pressure—on Fiji. It was an opportunity to ask the forum members to make a united call for Fiji’s constitution to be reinstated and for guarantees of judicial independence or a return to democracy. Instead, they left it at expressing strong condemnation and deploring the detention of church leaders, for example. Those looking for stronger leadership from the forum on this matter were and are rightly disappointed that that opportunity was missed.

The political and human rights challenges in Burma, in Pakistan and in Fiji are very different. For the victims, though—victims of violence, assault, political imprisonment and so on—in each of those nations, basic human rights are at risk. Each of those examples and circumstances can only be addressed through concerted domestic and international action and that is something of which Australia must be a part. In every corner of the world, there will be people who continue to seek to flout or subvert human rights for their own purposes. It is only through eternal vigilance that we can ensure that they do not succeed. We have to remember, though, why we struggle for the freedoms that we enjoy in Australia. The most apposite observation comes from the UN declaration of human rights. It reads:

...recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.