Vannessa Hearman, Melbourne

A meeting of 500 people packed the Coburg Town Hall on July 11 to discuss the plight of David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, two Australians detained in the US base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The meeting was organised by the Moreland City Council and the Moreland Interfaith Gathering.

Terry Hicks, David Hicks’ father, reported speaking to his son a week previously. He explained how allegations against his son included conducting surveillance of British consulates that had long before closed down.

Stephen Hopper, Habib’s lawyer, said that military commissions “are not a trial”, but rather “a political tool to obtain a conviction”. He asked the audience to each play a role in correcting what he termed “the greatest travesty of injustice” in Hicks’ and Habib’s cases.

Habib’s wife Maha told the meeting that her husband “thinks we are already dead. I don’t know what they have done to him to make him think this.” Photos of the family were used in Habib’s interrogation. She urged those at the meeting to send a message to PM John Howard at the ballot box, “so Australia can become a peaceful country again”.

Refugee advocate and barrister Julian Burnside and Nicole Biske from Amnesty International also addressed the meeting. Resolutions were passed condemning the incarceration of Hicks and Habib, calling for their repatriation to Australia and calling for the foreign minister, Alexander Downer, to be sacked.

A campaign committee was also launched at the meeting. Moreland councillor and Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union organiser Stephen Roach, who initiated the meeting, told Green Left Weekly that the council at its July 15 meeting agreed unanimously to write to Howard calling for the sacking of Downer. Roach argued that the campaign for Hicks and Habib “shouldn’t be seen as pro-Labor, pro-Green or whatever, but we won’t get far without threatening the Howard government’s electoral success”.

From Green Left Weekly, July 21, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

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