http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/02/02/1013132463126.html

If we want a civilised world we must practise what we preach

By MALCOLM FRASER
February 2 2002
The Age

Since September 11, some disturbing tendencies have emerged through the Western world, especially in the United States and Australia. Nothing can ever justify what was done to the World Trade Centre and to the Pentagon. They were barbaric acts and certainly deserve the heaviest penalties. War against terrorism needs to be pursued, but the horror of the events and the damage those events caused should not preclude a debate about how we go about our business.

A matter of concern seems to be that people involved in such things are now seen as so terrible, so outside the civilised world, that we no longer need treat them as people - and thus behaviour on our part, which we would otherwise condemn, is accepted and condoned.

The world has had a long march through two centuries to try to create civilised behaviour. The Geneva Conventions were a landmark. They determined how prisoners of war should be treated. Standards of behaviour were set. We in the West have taken the harshest view of countries that breach those standards.

The Geneva Conventions set certain minimum standards. There is no part in the conventions that says, "if my enemy does not treat me decently, I need not treat him decently". There is nothing in the conventions that suggests condemnation of a particular act provides justification for unreasonable or unjust behaviour. The conventions do not allow exceptions on the grounds of necessity or self defence.

People detained as war criminals from the Second World War and from wars since, including the wars in the Balkans, were all treated according to these conventions. It would appear that some alleged war criminals in the Balkans were responsible for more deaths than was Osama bin Laden on September 11. Nobody has said that that therefore justifies holding them in unusually harsh conditions or that they do not deserve basic human treatment. But now there is a subtle acceptance in the air: these terrorists are so evil that we do not need to behave with common humanity. In the minds of many, they are judged guilty without trial, without "due process".

I also read into this a strong element of racism; it is easier for people to move into that thought mode because the people concerned are Iraqis, Afghans and Muslims. If they were Caucasian and Christian, would that alter the judgment?

Terror takes many forms. It has been present in Northern Ireland for decades. It would be interesting to ask President Bush whether his war on terror will include war on those who have funded and supplied arms to the IRA through those decades.

We should not forget the IRA sought to blow up then prime minister Margaret Thatcher and half her government. If there is to be war on terror, it needs to be war on all terrorism, not just terrorism which meets the disapproval of the United States.

This has a particular relevance to Australia because of David Hicks, the Australian alleged to be a Taliban fighter. We are told Hicks is being held in the makeshift prison at Camp X-ray at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He is an Australian national and entitled to civilised behaviour. Are we sure he is getting it? Would we treat prisoners as they are being treated at this American base?

There is another point. The Australian Government has made us partners in the war against terror. Does not partnership give us the right to deal with our own? We are justified in pursuing that right, and we ought to assert it.

There is a golden rule that should govern the behaviour of all democracies, indeed all people, if we want a civilised world. That golden rule proclaims that all people, endowed with reason and conscience, must accept a responsibility to each and all, to families and communities, to races, nations and religions, in a spirit of solidarity: "What you do not wish to be done to yourself, do not do to others."

This is the only basis on which there can be civilised behaviour within a nation and between nations. If bad behaviour by one justifies bad behaviour by another, then there will inevitably be a competition to see who will be toughest, perhaps in the hope that that will deter the opponent. That has never worked, and it will not work now.

Great errors, terrible acts, do not justify breaching that rule. We need to act by our own standards and not by lower standards that others may set. By so doing we would hope to move to a world where those higher standards were more widely accepted.

A great step forward was made in 1948 with the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Steady but slow progress has been made in the years since to advance human rights and decent behaviour. The West needs to look closely at its own house, to make sure that what happens in the coming months does not defile those standards. We need future generations to be able to read about what we did in our time, and to be able to conclude that we behaved with humanity and common decency, in accordance with "due process" and the rule of law. If we do not, we betray ourselves and our futures.

This is particularly relevant for Australia. After September 11, the government drew linkages in an effort to justify treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. It is now abundantly clear that we are treating refugees and asylum seekers with great inhumanity. People who have suffered years of desperation have pressures on their minds that most of us cannot comprehend. These pressures are obviously magnified many times when women and children are involved.

The government won an election on defending Australia's borders, but our borders were not under threat; the rhetoric, the suggestion that there were millions queuing up to come to Australia, was never true. Four or five thousand people a year, many of them women and children, offer no threat to the sovereignty of Australia. Europe manages a problem of more than 400,000 asylum seekers a year with much greater compassion and humanity than Australia shows to a relatively trivial number.

Australia has denied such people "due process" under normal protection of the law. Our government has put them outside the law and thus sought to justify treatment that would be condemned in any civilised society. Their sin, exercising their right in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the refugee convention, is nothing more than seeking haven. Australia has responded harshly. Their periods in prison are often lengthy, running into years.

So much for common humanity.

Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser writes regularly for this page. E-mail: [log in to unmask]