A TORTURED DEBATE

Today is the 60th anniversary of the post-war Geneva Convention – the international covenant on the conduct of war and the treatment of prisoners – and to mark the occasion the Red Cross conducted a poll. Encouragingly it showed that 88% of Australians had heard of the Geneva Convention.  Not so encouraging were some of the other results.

More than 40% of people questioned thought it was OK to torture captured enemy soldiers to obtain ‘important military information’ and 35% thought it was legal. When those polled had military experience that figure rose to nearly 50%.

Tim McCormack, the Australian Red Cross Professor of International Humanitarian Law at the Melbourne Law School calls that ‘a diabolical statistic’.

On the other hand 57% of people polled believe torture should never be allowed.

The issue has been widely debated in recent years after the release of photos  of American forces stripping and humiliating Iraqi prisoners in a Baghdad jail. Plus the ‘waterboarding’ debate from the George W. Bush and Dick Chaney years in the White House.

And the water torture and sleep deprivation tactics by US forces in foreign jails.

But, post 9/11, it does raise legal and moral questions about how far you would go, or would want your country to go, to safeguard the world against terrorists.

If the Bali bombers had known of a plot to murder more Australians in more tourist attacks would you have sanctioned torture to get that information?

Recently, Four Corners showed one of the most chilling documentaries on the slaughter of the innocents in the Mombai terror attacks. One of the Islamic terrorists who had slaughtered men, women and children, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, at a crowded railway station, was captured.

You heard his controller on a mobile phone in Pakistan urging him to kill more hostages. Would you condone torture of that man to reveal the monsters who controlled him?  Because the men who plotted the Mumbai Massacre are still out there.

Bring it closer to home for a hypothetical. Your wife or your daughter has been abducted and buried alive. Police have the kidnapper but time is running out. If she is not found she will suffocate. Would you approve of torture to try to save her?

And then there is the argument that terrorists don’t play by any rules or legal convention anyway. It’s a tough one.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009