Dale Mills

A coalition of community and legal organisations has slammed the Australian government’s decision on February 15 to declare the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) a terrorist organisation in Australia. The listing of the PKK as a terrorist organisation is being reviewed by a parliamentary committee.

Vicki Sentas, representing community law centres in Victoria, told Green Left Weekly: “There is no evidence that the PKK poses any threat to Australia’s domestic national security. Rather, it is reasonable to suspect that the banning has been motivated more by foreign policy considerations than anything else.”

Sentas’ view is supported by the timing of the ban, which was announced by attorney-general Philip Ruddock one week after the visit of the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan.

Also opposed to the ban is Patrick Emerton, a law lecturer at Monash University. “For several years many people have been warning that new anti-terrorism laws allow the government to make criminals of those with different opinions on foreign affairs. The listing of the PPK shows that those warnings were right”, Emerton said.

“This political listing has nothing to do with protecting Australia from terrorism”, said Anthony Kelly, policy officer with the Combined Community Law Centres, Victoria. He added that the laws being used to ban the PKK could as easily have been used to ban the African National Congress and Fretilin in the past or the Free Papua Movement today.

Submissions against the banning of the PKK can be found at .

From Green Left Weekly, April 5, 2006.
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