Five Years’ Moldering, Now

Remember David Hicks (also known as Abu Muslim al-Austraili and Mohammed Dawood)? It’s important that we do, what with Human Rights Day just gone and a new year just beginning. But if you don’t, it may be because the man has many guises: suspect terrorist, cowboy who got in with the wrong crowd, martyred son of Australia, the worst of the worst, “celebrated bogan”, mortal enemy of freedom, luckless scapegoat. It could also be because he’s been mouldering away in Guantánamo Bay for five years without trial.

That last sentence may imply undue sympathy for Hicks. Well, that’s because I am. Sympathetic, that is, but not excessively. His story is difficult to understand, its complications and implications obscured by Hicks’ frequently incommunicado detainment and, of course, his long-delayed court hearing. The known facts are that Hicks made choices to convert to Islam, to study Arabic, to serve with the Kosovo Liberation Army in Albania, Lashkare Tayyiba in Pakistan, and to train with al Qaida in Afghanistan. He was not in Afghanistan during the 9/11 attacks, but returned there afterwards and was captured by the Northern Alliance.

The reasons for Hicks’ choices are unclear. That they were freely made is a likely assumption. What is beyond assumption is that Hicks is being detained for choices that did not lead to proven acts of terrorism, but to charges of conspiracy, attempted murder, and aiding the enemy, all to which he plead not guilty. The 2004 military commission responsible for laying these charges was later determined illegal under United States law and in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The mouldering of Hicks has continued to this day, with only allegations of his abuse at the hands of his interrogators adding a little spice to his stint in Cuba.

Hicks’ story is bound up in so many other matters that it really shouldn’t have a personal pronoun assigned to it; although it is represented by people, mostly men, ‘his story’ is global, political, legal, religious, and moral. The imprisonment of Hicks, and my sympathy for him, mingled as it is with fear, is difficult to express. So on my last Christmas list was a wish to slot into the body of Shaun Carney à la Being John Malkovich, because he’s achieved the impossible and articulated a view of Hicks that a lot of Australians share. In The Age, Carney writes in the vein of ‘I know Hicks was an idiot, a possibly homicidal idiot, but…’ — the space after this ‘but’ reserved for his compassion and anger:

“There can be no doubt that Hicks is the chief author of his own misfortune…But he is not the sole creator of his own story. It was Hicks’ bad luck to hail from a country whose elected political leadership not only does not give a stuff about him or his legal rights, but appears to actively want his life to be broken as some sort of example or sacrifice…

I do not like what David Hicks did. I do not like the way he lived his life. I think many of his choices were stupid and wrong. In Afghanistan he made a conscious choice to do the bidding of very bad people. The Taliban are evil and Hicks appears to have taken up arms on their behalf. At the very least, he hung out with them and fashioned himself a fellow traveller. Morally, there is no defence for that. But we long ago left behind the practice of deciding what to do with our citizens based solely on our judgement of their morals. Instead, we have laws; they are the spine of our society. Laws are to be applied equally, free of political preferment and interference.” ((“Sacrificing David Hicks”, Shaun Carney The Age.com.au)

I could just write ‘The End’ and leave it there, case closed. But Carney wrote this article long before the 9th and 10th of December 2006 and so doesn’t explain why a couple of thousand Australian people were lining up to protest against Hicks’ detention on their weekend. It’s worth mentioning that the Adelaide contingent of this national rally braved 41°C heat on Saturday, our dedication to the cause quite sweeping from our minds the ubiquitous summer warnings about melanomas and other sun-induced goodies. Those whose wardrobes were accommodating wore orange to echo the overalls worn by Gitmo detainees — I had on my ‘America is Scary’ T-shirt (flown all the way from Canada) and between the car park and Victoria Square, a friend of mine acquired a badge with photos of Hicks and George W. Bush headed by the caption ‘Spot the Terrorist’. Near the speakers’ stage, black-hooded figures languished in a cage and didn’t drink a drop for the whole two hours.

Is it surprising there was passion in our not-so-large numbers? And in addition to that, feelings of rage, disgust, concern and betrayal? Most of this was directed at the government, proving that Hicks has become yet another symbol through which Australians can communicate their discontent with Howard’s leadership. Kay Danes, an Australian woman who was pardoned after nearly a year of imprisonment in Laos, asked what made Hicks so exceptional that Saddam Hussien has been tried before him. Former magistrate Brian Deegan, whose son was killed as a result of the 2003 Bali bombings, announced to Messrs Bush and Howard that you “can’t fight terrorism with terrorism”. Adelaide writer Mem Fox wondered how the same gentlemen could disregard the age-old writ of habeus corpus and could justify pushing their “odious democracy” onto others if the treatment of Hicks was an example of its values. Away from the microphone, I, because I think I’m such a slick bastard, pointed out that pinning a crime on Hicks has proved as tricky as uncovering those weapons of mass destruction we all used to hear so much about. A friend put in that stupidity is not a crime, and another friend that Australia has really backed itself into a corner over Hicks and won’t ever try to secure his release now; they’re too afraid of losing face.

Lastly, Terry Hicks, father of David, compared the conditions of his son’s imprisonment to the Russian gulag. At this point I remembered Primo Levi. Not that the men or the conditions of their imprisonment are similar in my mind: Hicks is detained as a suspected terrorist, not a Muslim; Levi was detained because he was Jewish and because this was taken as something inherent in him, as race. The most common thing between Levi and Hicks is the disregard for their human rights and the breaching of Geneva Conventions their detention involves — things that are, alas, common between many people. At least in this sense I feel I can dare to say with words borrowed from Levi himself that weighing up Auschwitz and Guántanamo, like Auschwitz and the gulag, is a “lugubrious comparison between two models of hell.”

The resounding message at this demonstration was that Australians are only too aware that Hicks has not been given the ‘fair go’ of Australian lore that John Howard, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer and Attorney General Philip Ruddock are so fond of evoking. Now we can see what will happen if you allegedly turn your back on your country: your country will fully and completely, without hesitation, turn its back on you, leave you to rot in a place that has been created away from the rules protecting your human rights, all the while pushing its desire to spread its way of life: Western, Christian, capitalistic, strong, blond and Aryan . . . Sorry, got my wires crossed. Easy mistake.

As Carney suggests, although Australia may seem indifferent to Hicks, or feel sorry for or even hate him for the directions in life he has taken, whatever moral code he has abjured with his actions is irrelevant to the law. This is why so many Australians are sending the message to convict Hicks if he is guilty, release him if he is innocent, but bring him to trial so his freedom is quick or his detention is justified. The Howard Government, dragging its feet on the matter of extradition, bleating to the press that Hicks should be put on trial but not doing a thing to bring it about, shows that it does not care for the rights of this particular Australian citizen, who has broken none of this country’s laws. A five-year limbo in Guántanamo Bay is an unlawful state for a man who is merely a suspect.

Despite all the difficulties I’ve had over this issue, and drawing my comments to a close, I am besieged with ideas I haven’t addressed. I think of Hicks’ legal team who has demanded of a deaf government their client’s extradition, and of others who have demanded a trial in the name of faith, under which so much right and so much wrong has been done. I think of how that great bastion of democracy, the United States of America, has betrayed its traditions of upholding civil and international rights to rationalise its actions in Hicks’ case. I think of how there has been no (court) case. I think about the fear and hatred that exists, even though it may not in the way Mr Murdoch’s press would have everyone believe. Lastly I think that even though I veer on the side of godless, I might just take it upon myself to utter a prayer to whatever deity that’ll listen, to have a trial date set for David Hicks soon, for all our sakes.