Cindy Sheehan calls for David Hicks' release

November 17, 1993
Issue 

Gerard Morel, Melbourne

At a lunchtime rally outside the Liberal Party's Victorian head office on May 26, US anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and the Democrats' Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja called for an end to the US military's imprisonment of David Hicks.

The protest was organised by Civil Rights Defence, a campaign group committed to the repeal of the Howard government's police-state "anti-terrorism" laws.

Speaking for the CRD, Jeff Sparrow compared the massive media attention received by two Beaconsfield miners, who were imprisoned underground for two weeks, with that of Hicks, who has been imprisoned at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without trial for four-and-a-half years in conditions "you wouldn't keep your dog in".

Stott-Despoja reiterated the Democrats' opposition to Australia's participation in the US-led war in Iraq and the "anti-terrorism" laws.

Sheehan, who was in Melbourne for the May 27 Unity for Peace conference, linked John Howard to US President George Bush and British PM Tony Blair as "criminals" responsible for an illegal war. They are waging "a war of terror", rather than a "war on terror", she said.

CRD is organising a second solidarity bus trip to Barwon Prison in support of 23 other Muslim men imprisoned there without trial as "terror suspects". For more information, phone Gerard on 0407 856 628.

From Green Left Weekly, May 31, 2006.
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