how long can I stay drunk on fear out in the wilderness?

Amnesty International has published its annual report, and it’s not pretty reading for Australia. New Holland comes in for criticism in relation to a range of areas, but in particular our approach to terrorism, women’s rights, and the abuse of the issue of refugees as part of the politics of fear.

Particularly heartwarming is this passage, from the foreward to the report:

The Howard government portrayed desperate asylum-seekers in leaky boats as a threat to Australia’s national security and raised a false alarm of a refugee invasion. This contributed to its election victory in 2001. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, US President George W Bush invoked the fear of terrorism to enhance his executive power, without Congressional oversight or judicial scrutiny. President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan whipped up fear among his supporters and in the Arab world that the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur would be a pretext for an Iraq-style, US-led invasion. Meanwhile, his armed forces and militia allies continued to kill, rape and plunder with impunity. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe played on racial fears to push his own political agenda of grabbing land for his supporters.

Although the media is already reporting it otherwise (shock! horror! Amnesty says Howard as bad as Mugabe!), this passage doesn’t so much equate the effects of the conduct of our Prime Minister with his companions as it does highlight that the same technique is being employed – playing on the public’s fears to retain power, albeit democratically in Australia and the U.S. and undemocratically in Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Another interesting aspect of the Amnesty report was that it attacks Australia’s reluctance to criticise its Asian neighbours – particularly Indonesia and China – for human rights abuses. With the impending Beijing Olympics (ignore the people being shot without trial, focus on the badminton) and the recent Dalai Lama saga (are our glorious leaders still “looking at their diaries”? would they have so much trouble finding a date if it were, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Pope visiting?) this is only going to become more significant as an issue.

So, what response will the report provoke? Will we have a good hard look at ourselves in the mirror, and consider the ways in which, by international standards, we are perceived in a negative light on human rights? Or will we brush aside the report as ‘political’, point out how ridiculous it is to compare Australia to third world dictators, and go about our business on the assumption that we are a ‘democracy’ where things are just fine?

EDIT: Read some of Irene Khan’s (Secretary General of Amnesty) thoughts here.