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Workers Power Global, Melbourne, 10 August 2003
On 8 August the TV and newspapers were filled with angry Australians saying how pleased they were with the death penalty passed down on convicted Bali bomber Amrozi. It's an ugly sight to see so many people baying for blood.
It gets worse when the Prime Minister of the country makes statements supporting the sentence. In fact Howard has sparked a whole new debate on capital punishment in Australia.
A debate which has not been helped by the position that Labor Party leader Simon Creen has taken. Creen has said that of course he is opposed to capital punishment but he's not going to make any complaints about the verdict in Indonesia.
There are real problems in the position that both Howard and Creen have taken. One that has already been pointed out by more progressive commentators in the press.
The fact is that Australia abolished the death penalty in all states finally in 1985. Since then it has had a record of appealing to other countries to do the same. And it has consistently opposed the use of the death penalty on Australian nationals convicted of crimes overseas.
To now refuse to say anything about the death penalty for Amrozi is terrible hypocrisy. It suggests that somehow the death penalty is fine for foreign nationals, just not Australians. And more than that, it is buying into the popular anger about the Bali bombings.
The bombing last year saw a massive outpouring of nationalist sentiment in Australia. Sentiment encouraged by the government and supported by the Labor Party. There were days of mourning and rememberance, minutes of silence in schools and workplaces and of course an increase in anti-Muslim feelings in the community.
In the last year there has been a change in reporting the whole story. JI were originally reported as a shadowy group, really not more than a rumour. Within a few weeks they were being reported as definitely existing and having possible links to al-Qaida. Now they are reported as having trained in Afghanistan in the 1990's and having 300 members all waiting quietly for their chance.
Does JI exist? Is it linked to al-Queda? Are they responsible for both bombings? The answer has to be a substantial maybe. What we can say for certain is that it is extremely convenient for the continuation of the war on terror if these attacks can be linked back to the bogeyman of al-Queda and Islamic fundamentalism.
The Australian gutter press is full of adjective laden descriptions of JI. They are "fanatical terrorists". And the papers are also full of warnings that more attacks are likely. The whole situation leaves Australians feeling fearful. And all this at a time when it has become clear that George Bush is not the only person to have mislead his nation with tall stories before the beginning of the war in Iraq. John Howard has been facing difficult questions about whether he knew the truth about Iraqi nuclear capacity or the strangely undiscovered weapons of mass destruction.
The Amrozi circus in the newspapers and the debate about the death penalty must be a welcome distraction from Howard's obvious lies.
Amrozi, despite his thumbs up gestures when sentence was passed, has decided to appeal. His lawyers in fact think he has a case. He has never been charged with murder, but instead under special and retrospective legislation passed in Indonesia. Legislation which is in direct contradiction to even the Indonesian constitution and certainly to any ideas of law supposedly upheld in Australia.
Appeals will certainly stretch on for years and could even see Amrozi walk free. In the meantime there are 29 more suspects up for trial.
But already the point is being made among progressives in Australia - Howard, Creen and indeed many Australians are happy to see Amrozi face a firing squad while in Aceh the Indonesian government carries out a policy of terror against the people there and Indonesian military convicted of atrocities in East Timor walk free after a few years jail.
It's pretty clear that in the racist balances of these people 80 Australian lives are worth an awful lot more than the thousands of Acehenese and East Timorese that the Indonesian state with the complicity of Australia have been responsible for destroying.
our schools, out on the streets ö now!
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