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Australian Academics
Advocate Legalized Torture

By Gideon Polya

22 May, 2005
Countercurrents.org

According to mainstream media and official US and Israeli sources, jihadist and Palestinian violence has been responsible for the deaths of about 5,000 Western civilians over the last 20 years, of whom 3,000 died on 9/11. The post-9/11 "War on Terror" has been associated with post-invasion avoidable mortality (excess mortality) and under-5 infant mortality in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories of about 1.9 million and 1.5 million, respectively.

However in addition to the immense death, destruction and suffering in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been an extraordinary upsurge of legislated human rights constraints and human rights abuses in the Anglo-American Coalition countries that is reminiscent of the "anti-terror laws" and abuses of the early years of Nazi Germany. The most repugnant of such abuses is the widespread torture of typically Asian and Muslim prisoners both in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories and elsewhere in the Anglo-American-dominated world. Such horrendous abuses by US military interrogators ranges from mental torture - such as the well-documented and appalling desecrations of the Holy Koran in Guantanamo Bay - to egregious beatings resulting in the death of Muslim prisoners.

Australia is only a small part of the Anglo-American World but is currently contemplating draconian extensions of post-9/11 "anti-terror" laws that already severely constrain human rights.

Some of the current human rights abuses of Australians and within Australia are notable: over 30 Australians illegally detained and abused by Australian Immigration officials; illegal and secret deportation of a sick Filipino Australian citizen and the criminal giving away of one of her three Australian children; indefinite imprisonment without charge in remote desert concentration camps of thousands of mostly Asian and Muslim refugees including hundreds of severely traumatized children; appalling and continuing deaths in custody of indigenous Australians; the ANNUAL excess mortality of about 7,000 indigenous Australians (aboriginal Australians) due to their appalling Third World living conditions in one of the richest countries in the World; illegal detention and torture of Australian inmates at Guantanamo Bay; US- and Australian-complicit torture of an Arab Australian in Pakistan and Egypt; and continuing torture and imprisonment of an Arab Australian citizen in Kuwait allegedly involving Australian officials.

Now two Australian law academics have caused a storm in Australia by their advocacy of legalised torture (see ABC News On-line: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1370447.htm).

In a paper to be published in July in the University of San Francisco's Law Review Journal, the Head of the Law School at Melbourne's Deakin University (Professor Mirko Bagaric) and a female colleague (Julie Clarke) argue for the use of torture in interrogation of terrorist suspects.

Of course in this day and age "terrorist suspects" implies Asian and African Muslims - and an immediate prospect is that this "expert" academic argument will be used to justify the horrendous, continuing use of torture by US interrogators (in Guantanamo Bay and Occupied Iraq) or by US surrogates (in Egypt, Uzbekhistan and elsewhere in Asia, Africa and Latin America).

Indeed the US and its world-wide surrogates have been using both torture and terrorism throughout the world for half a century - and for over a century in Central America, the Caribbean and South America in particular (see "CIA Diary. Inside the Company" by Philip Agee).

Worse still, academic advocacy of legalized torture may well result in exactly that, namely "anti-terror" legislation permitting torture of suspects i.e. legalization of what is patently a widespread practice already in the world dominated by Anglo-American democratic imperialism (democratic Nazism)..

Notwithstanding the outrage of victims of torture, refugee support and human rights groups, Deakin University has supported the right to free speech of these pro-torture academics. On interview, the law professor Mirko Bagaric has favoured PINS UNDER FINGERNAILS as a torture method of choice (see the Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Torture-advocate-dismays-colleagues-survivors/2005/05/17/1116095964778.html).

What's in a name? An unfortunate COINCIDENCE derives from reading the official 1946 State Commission Report on crimes in the Jasenovac Concentration Camp of World War 2 (WW2) Croatia - "NEEDLES UNDER FINGERNAILS" was merely one of numerous horrendous torture abuses practised there and one of the Croatian Nazi (Ustashe) officers was a "Karlo BAGARIC" (see Report of the State Commission: http://www.pavelicpapers.com/features/jasenovac1946.pdf). The Jasenovac Concentration Camp was the third largest Nazi death camp of WW2. 200,000 of the 800,000 Serbian, Jewish, Bosnian and Roma men, women and children killed by the Croatian Nazi Ustashe in WW2 Yugoslavia were tortured and murdered in Jasenovac (see Flame: http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/yugoslavia_catholic_church.htm).

Controversially, Professor Bagaric sits on the Refugee Review Tribunal which passes judgement on desperate refugees, of whom many have suffered torture and other human rights abuses.

The previous claim to notoriety of the second-rank Deakin University was a professor who faked his commercially-linked contraceptive pill research and subsequently died in disgrace.

Australia has an appalling 2 century record of genocide, slavery, racism and involvement in brutal British imperialism. While the repugnant White Australia policy was shelved about 30 years ago, resurgent White Australian racism in the last decade has seen indefinite incarceration of thousands of mainly Asian and Muslim refugees (including hundreds of traumatized children) in desert detention centres (concentration camps).

Australia participated in the illegal US-UK-led invasion and occupation of Iraq that has been associated with a post-invasion avoidable mortality (excess mortality) of about 370,000 people and an under-5 infant mortality of 260,000 (as readily estimated from the latest UN and UNICEF data but not reported by the holocaust-denying, mainstream Anglo-American media).

Current Australian excesses - gross human rights abuse of refugees and other non-Europeans, complicity in the non-reported 1.9 million avoidable deaths in post-invasion Iraq and Afghanistan, and now academic advocacy of torture - all reflect a profound moral crisis within the countries of the Anglo-American Coalition.

Peace is the only way. Decent people can act by making ethical decisions about who they support or do business with - would you use or buy soap made in Auschwitz or associate with universities linked to advocacy of torture? Crucially, decent people should inform others - silence kills and silence is complicity.

Dr Gideon Polya
29 Dwyer Street, Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria, 3085, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]
website: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html
Day & night telephone: +61 3 9459 3649
Credentials: Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently writing a book on global mortality - numerous articles on this matter can be found by a simple Google search for "Gideon Polya" and on his website: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html


 

 

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