Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In light of a number of events that have occurred this week, I thought it was important to again rise in the House and speak on David Hicks and Guantanamo Bay. We have learned this week that the United States has denied the British government consular access to David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay. The British government was seeking access so that they could register him as a British citizen. We have also learned that the US has suspended all military trials for suspects at the Guantanamo prison camp, where three detainees committed suicide over the weekend. Only 10 of the 460 inmates held as enemy combatants have been formally charged since the camp opened in early 2002 at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Human rights groups said that the suicides showed that the inmates were in a state of despair because of the indefinite nature of their detention. Before the three successful suicides on Saturday, the US military had reported 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees.

Professor Alfred McCoy gave an interview on the Lateline program this week. He is a Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin and has just written the book A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror. He says of Guantanamo Bay:

Guantanamo is not a conventional military prison. It’s an ad hoc laboratory for the perfection of the CIA psychological torture. Guantanamo is a complete construction. It’s a system of total psychological torture, designed to break down every detainee contained therein, designed to produce a state of hopelessness and despair that leads, tragically, sadly in this case to suicide.

Also of concern is that David Hicks’s lawyer has attacked his solitary confinement at Guantanamo Bay. As reported by a news wire, Major Mori said:

Hicks was in poor health, showing weight loss and continuing signs of depression ...

He also said that his client:

... was put back in solitary three months ago without explanation, confined to a cement room for 22 hours a day.

The news wire then states:

At one stage, Hicks spend 16 months in isolation at Guantanamo’s Camp Echo, half that time in a cell which received no sunlight.

I condemn what has happened to David Hicks. His continued indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay and the lack of effort on the part of this government to have him returned to Australia is a national disgrace. You are judged on the way you deal with your citizens. The British managed to have their citizens returned from Guantanamo Bay; Australia has remained silent. Indeed, on 14 June Minister Ellison—who had recently been to the US and had spoken with the Attorney-General—in answering a question from Senator Allison, said he:

... reinforced Australia’s earnest desire that Mr Hicks be brought before the military commission as soon as possible.

We should realise that the US government has sought to use Guantanamo Bay to create a legal black hole where people can be excluded from the American judicial process and not have the protections of the American constitution. American citizens cannot be dealt with in the way that aliens are dealt with under Guantanamo Bay and under the military commission. It is not allowed, because the American constitution protects them. So Australian citizens are being treated as second-class citizens. Hicks should be given a fair trial. He should be dealt with according to law. As I said in the past in an article I wrote that was published in the Australian:

If we are to defeat terrorism, we must uphold the human rights principles our societies hold dear. These include the basic rights of persons held in custody: the right to humane treatment; the right to be informed of the reasons for detention and to be able to challenge the lawfulness of detention; the presumption of innocence; prompt access to and assistance of a lawyer; prompt access to medical assistance; and the ability to communicate with family members.

The Geneva conventions afford those protections. They should be the benchmark. Why should we argue for them to be used? Because in the event that Australian citizens or US citizens are captured by the enemy, we would want them treated humanely. The way we are treating people in Guantanamo Bay leaves it open for our citizens, if ever they are detained or captured, to be treated in an undignified way. Human rights demand decent treatment of captured troops and captured citizens. (Time expired)