Timor activists appeal harsh sentence

Timor activists appeal harsh sentence

BRISBANE — On May 16, Jim Dowling and Ciaron O'Reilly, from the Catholic Worker organisation, were sentenced to three months' jail for a sit-in at the Defence Recruiting Centre here during Easter week, in protest at the training and arming of Indonesian troops by the Australian military.

A Josephite nun, Sr Kay McFadden, was place on a three-year good behaviour bond.

The excessive sentences followed a hearing of "trespass" charges in the Magistrates Court. The three had used a defence under the Criminal Code, arguing that a threat existed to the lives of Timorese people, thereby justifying their trespass.

Magistrate Webster cited Dowling and O'Reilly's extensive "criminal history" from the 1970s and 1980s as a basis for his sentencing.

O'Reilly told the magistrate that their previous convictions were "histories of heroic citizenship" under a government and police force that the Fitzgerald Inquiry had exposed as intrinsically corrupt and undemocratic. He said the police should be embarrassed to put forward these convictions from the Bjelke-Petersen-Lewis era.

Dowling and O'Reilly were immediately taken into custody, but were released the following day on Supreme Court bail, pending appeal.

From GLW issue 189