On October 5, 2001, Mamdouh Habib, an Australian
citizen, was arrested in Pakistan. He was accused of having
links with Al Qaeda. He is now being held in Guantanamo Bay
as a prisoner of war.
So, is he a guilty man? My friend seems to think so. The fact
that he has been detained for so many months, she says, is
proof that they must have some dirt on him.
"Like what?" I asked.
"Well I don't know, but SOMETHING," she said.
"Doesn't it matter that he has not been charged with
anything? Doesn't the fact that he has been detained for no
obvious reason worry you?"
"No, why would it worry me, he deserves it," she
opined. So much for the presumption of innocence -- and, she
is a practising lawyer.
Australian politicians don't fare much better. When asked
whether the Australian government would do anything to help
Habib, the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander
Downer, said, "People who muck about with organisations
like Al Qaeda are bound to get themselves into trouble." This is despite the fact that no evidence has ever been shown
to connect Habib with Al Qaeda, and he was in fact arrested
well-before combat began in
Afghanistan.
If these are our lawyers and ministers in government, what
can we expect the rest of the populace to do when it comes
to the presumption of innocence? Although there is no concrete
evidence on who committed the attacks on Bali on October 12,
if asked who did it, the man and woman on the Australian street
are quick to announce that it was, without doubt, "Islamic
fundamentalists".
By association, it seems all Muslims have become suspects;
regardless of the fact that there is, so far, no irrefutable
evidence that the bombers were Muslim, and even if there were,
no proof of a connection between these miscreants and other
innocent Muslims in Australia.
Consider some of the events that happened in Australia in
the five days following the attacks on Bali. In that short
time, a multitude of verbal and physical attacks on Muslims
occurred. On Tuesday night the family home of the President
of the Islamic Association of Western Sydney was attacked
by a mob in the dead of night; a girl wearing a veil was seen
verbally abused and was told "Bali is all your fault"
by a man on a crowded train, and when visibly trembling, no
one came to her aid; two mosques in Sydney and Melbourne were
attacked; Molotov cocktails were thrown through the window
of a Melbourne Islamic centre at Doncaster; talk back radio
was inundated with calls about "Islamic fundamentalist
barbarians" and "extremist Muslim terrorists";
and people stayed at a 5 metre radius away from a Muslim girl
at a bus stop just because there was an abandoned bag near
where she sat.
Are these merely isolated incidents committed by deranged
or uneducated members of society? Unfortunately not. The Australian
Government has also shown contempt for the presumption of
innocence. To date, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
(ASIO) has raided thirty homes, all Muslim families, some
with young children and babies, some with elderly men and
women. As many as 30 men would surround a suburban Muslim
home, all of them with black balaclavas, black flak jackets,
with submachine guns ready to shoot. Sometimes they would
knock first, but other times without warning, they would break
down the front door of these homes with sledgehammers. These
men would point sub-machine guns at the heads of 14-year old
girls, they held grown men to the ground by putting their
foot on their head, and confiscated those critical elements
of terrorist activities: family videos, passports, birth and
marriage certificates, scanners, printers, and in one case,
the all-important tabloid newspaper.
None of the raids have led to any charges of any kind -- yet
another indication that ASIO was too zealous in its presumptions
of guilt of the homes of the people it raided.
The link between these men and the Bali bombings? The fact
that they attended lectures of Abu Bakar Basyir, who is allegedly
the leader of Jamaah Islamiyyah (unproven), which allegedly
supported the people (unproven) who allegedly committed the
crimes (unproven).
It is not only that these things have happened that is disturbing,
but that it seems to be going on with wide community support.
In one recent survey, 89 per cent of Australians felt that
it was acceptable. Of those who said yes, only 30 per cent
felt that concrete evidence was necessary for any raid to
proceed.
It seems that there is yet another victim of the tragic, shocking,
unnerving and deplorable bombings in Bali and the other terror
attacks around the world: the presumption of innocence. This
is all the more saddening and surprising since the victim
is one Western society's greatest treasures.
The presumption of innocence means that the government has
the burden of proving every element of a crime beyond reasonable
doubt. It is one of the most basic human rights of which liberal
democracies - like Australia -- are so proud; all the while,
admonishing Muslim countries for their poor human rights records
and inadequate judicial systems. Are Western societies sacrificing
their basic principles at the altar of hypocrisy?
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© 2007 Allied Media Corp. All rights reserved