Aussies see US double standard

 



  SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - Within days of the Sept. 11 attacks on New 
York and Washington, Australia was one of the first countries to 
offer support for the US war against terrorism - pledging 1,500 
troops to the Afghan offensive. And public opinion was solidly 
behind the war effort.

  But the detention by US forces of Australian Taliban fighter 
David Hicks has provoked tensions that could fray the bilateral 
goodwill. It highlights what some see as a US double standard in 
international law.

  Simply put, American John Walker Lindh now faces a civilian 
trial in the US. But some 400 foreign detainees - who are being 
held without charges in Cuba and Afghanistan - and could face US 
military tribunals.

  Mr. Hicks is one of a handful of Westerners - including three 
British fighters - who fought with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

  Not only has Australia's opposition Labor Party called for 
Hicks, currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be returned 
home, but a Supreme Court justice has described Hicks as "a 
casualty" of his own government's attempt to maintain favor in 
Washington.

  "Clearly, if it were not for our relations with the US, we would 
be protesting his continued imprisonment without proper trial," 
says Justice John Dowd, a former conservative attorney general 
who is also president of the Australian chapter of the 
International Commission of Jurists. "The Australian government 
is, frankly, pathetic in that, for the argument of convenience, 
we are letting this man be held in conditions that clearly 
violate established conventions on the treatment of prisoners."

  The US government classifies the men as "illegal combatants," 
not prisoners of war, and therefore they don't have the rights 
laid out in the Geneva Convention.

  Opposition justice spokesman Darryl Melham says the Australian 
government's refusal to demand consular access to its citizen 
compares poorly with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's 
immediate insistence that three British nationals captured with 
Al Qaeda should face neither a military tribunal nor the death 
penalty. "Jack Straw was very strong about this in a way our 
government has not been," says Mr. Melham. "The Americans seem 
to have retreated from an earlier position of the death penalty 
for foreigners, but we are still worried about the extent to 
which this guy's legal rights are being subjugated to the 
Australian government's shuttle diplomacy with the US."

  British officials have visited the British captives at 
Guantanamo Bay and said they have "no complaints about their 
treatment," which contrasts greatly with the feelings expressed 
in some of the British press.

  If Hicks and other foreign captives receive markedly different 
treatment to Walker, even though all men served the same 
Taliban, Melham predicts damage to the international coalition 
against terrorism. "You will have people saying why are 
different standards being applied, on the basis of nationality, 
for what appears to be the same offenses."

  Hicks, a 26-year-old Muslim convert from Adelaide in South 
Australia, was captured Dec. 9 by Northern Alliance troops in 
Afghanistan, where he had been fighting with Taliban forces, and 
later handed over to the Americans. Hicks had also fought 
alongside ethnic Albanian Muslims in the Kosovo Liberation Army 
against Serbia in 1999.

  Now he awaits an uncertain fate and is getting little sympathy 
from the Australian government.

  "You have to be realistic about the nature of the potential 
threat that the prisoners who have been transferred to Cuba 
represent," says Attorney General, Darryl Williams. "They have 
been trained to be terrorists and to act in accordance with the 
objective of Al Qaeda. That makes them about as dangerous as a 
person can be in modern times."

  Mr. Williams says "neither the US nor Australia is in a position 
to begin a prosecution against Hicks," acknowledging that he may 
not have committed any offenses under Australian law.

  So far, a slight majority of Australians seem indifferent to 
David Hicks's fate. No opinion polls have been taken, but talk 
radio, a popular medium that politicians use as a barometer of 
national opinion, is running slightly against him, according to 
the media monitoring agency Rehame Australia.

  But according to media analyst Kate Flanders, dissent is 
emerging. "You're now getting a lot of callers saying he is an 
Australian citizen, and Australia is not the 51st state of 
America," she says.

  Perhaps the best indicator of the changing tone is the popular 
press, which a month ago labeled Hicks a traitor. This week, 
Sydney's Sun-Herald said he was not a traitor but "a naive, 
patently stupid young man who chose the wrong heroes."


Copyright @ 2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights 
reserved.