11/19/08
3/4/08
The paramilitary wing of the AFP
Bruce Haigh says that under Mick Keelty (pictured), the AFP has developed a paramilitary capacity.
Terrorism has been a feature of global policing from the mid 1960s, although listening to the Howard government and the Australian Federal Police you could be forgiven for believing that terrorism began on September 11, 2001.
The AFP has made good use of the so-called war on terror and associated hysteria to embark on a program of unprecedented expansion. The AFP of today is a product of the Howard government. In the symbiotic relationship that developed between former Prime Minister John Howard and the Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty, the latter was allowed his head in developing and announcing policy and force structure.
Under the umbrella of the war on terror the AFP increased its powers, budget and numbers. It reaches into major government departments. The AFP has increased its power and influence without change in the level of ministerial control and parliamentary oversight and scrutiny. The ubiquitous war on terror does not require the degree of secrecy and compliance that Keelty claims necessary.
In every posting I served in as an Australian diplomat from 1972 until 1994 there were groups, of one persuasion or another, carrying out acts of terror. All embassies had procedures in place to deal with the aftermath of an attack.
There are now over 6,000 police in the AFP. The budget has gone from $365 million in 2000-2001 to $1.86 billion in 2005-2006.
Under the guise of preventing terrorists cells getting a toe hold the AFP has become active in the region, most notably in the Solomons. This undertaking was entered into with the ADF who were critical of the manner in which the AFP undertook their peace keeping duties. Writing in the Australian Army Journal Lt Col John Hutcheson referred to major failings which he said were an " ... inability to prioritise tasks to achieve a particular outcome and a tendency to take inadequate force protection measures".
International Deployment Group
In early 2006, acknowledging the fact that the AFP was encroaching on Foreign Affairs territory, the head of the department, L'Estrange, admitted that the AFP was operating in "a foreign policy space". It was a theme picked up by Keelty when arguing for more resources for the AFP International Deployment Group (IDG).
The IDG grew out of AFP involvement in the Solomons and East Timor.
In August 2007 IDG numbered 600 officers. AFP documents claim that by August 2008 the force will number about 1,200 or close to two Battalions of Infantry. In recent documents the AFP refers to the IDG as a paramilitary force. In September 2006 Howard announced $500 million for the IDG and in the 2006-2007 Budget the AFP received $219 million "to boost their paramilitary capability". Whether this was in addition to the earlier allocation is unclear.
What is quite clear is that under Keelty, using terrorism, the arc of instability and climate change, the AFP has developed a paramilitary capacity, devouring a quarter of its budget and undertaking military training including in the use of weapons, transport and other logistics. To further the development of this force senior AFP officers attached to the IDG are attending, the ADF Staff College in order "to understand military concepts of command and control ..."
An AFP paper last year, "Policing the neighbourhood and keeping peace in the Pacific" stated that part of the Futures Strategy "was the establishment of an operation planning cell which will work closely with the ADF and exchange best practice concepts". The paper also states that the AFP plans to have "interoperability with ADF command, control and mission orders" and that "Both organisations have agreed to a number of senior officer out postings to key areas within the ADF ..."
The AFP is the only police force in a liberal democracy to have such an organisation. The AFP needs greater accountability. In one of his many headland speeches, used to carve out and defend territory, Keelty claimed accountability through the process of answering to his Minister and Senate Committees.
AFP Minister
There is no Senate Committee which oversees the activities of the AFP. The Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has given the AFP a glance but this was a one-off. The auditor-general examines the AFP but only from the perspective of administrative procedures not policy.
The AFP needs to be taken in hand. It needs to return to policing duties. Forays into Foreign Affairs should be taken off its agenda.
The AFP has the staff and budget of a major federal government department. It requires a Minister, preferably a strong one, and a dedicated Senate Committee to oversee its activities.
The AFP is currently pushing for a greater role in Afghanistan, no doubt to try and help secure funding of the IDG. It is the wrong cause to push. Few analysts believe the war can be one. Topography, geography and history will dictate the course of events in Afghanistan.
Keelty has encroached into the public service under what, until now has been the unchallengeable mantra of terrorism. When faced with deciding a course of action following the boarding of a Japanese whaling vessel by two activists, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith, said the AFP were providing him with advice on the legalities of their action and the procedures to be followed.
This is not the role of the AFP. The AFP is there to uphold the law, not interpret the law. Foreign Affairs and the Attorney-General's department have well qualified lawyers to provide advice on issues involving The Law of the Sea. The trigger for the involvement of the AFP was the incomprehensible claim that the actions of the activists might constitute an act of terror.
It is with this mechanism that the AFP have been able to clear the arena, allowing inroads into the Departments of Immigration, Foreign Affairs, Defence, AusAid and Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Terrorism has been the vehicle for unrestrained empire building by Keelty and the AFP with minimum accountability and an apparent desire to avoid it.
Bruce Haigh is a retired Australian diplomat with 35 years' experience in foreign policy and security analysis. He served twice in Pakistan and Afghanistan and also in Iran and Saudi Arabia. This piece was previously published by Online Opinion.
12/12/07
Solomon Islands government in crisis after parliamentarians join opposition
By Patrick O’Connor
12 December 2007
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The Solomon Islands government of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has been thrown into crisis by the defection of 12 parliamentarians to the opposition last month. Among them were nine ministers, including Deputy Prime Minister Toswell Kaua and Finance Minister Gordon Darcy Lilo, who triggered the political turmoil by quitting the government after he was demoted to the justice ministry on November 8. Sogavare has since accused Lilo of corruption and mismanagement of public funds.
While opposition leader Fred Fono claimed he had the numbers to force a vote of no-confidence and form a new government, some of the 12 MPs have since switched back to Sogavare, along with other opposition members who have accepted government positions. The prime minister now says he has a 25-23 majority in the 48-member parliament, though Fono disputes this. It remains unclear when the parliament will next meet. The governor-general has ruled that it is to be convened tomorrow while Sogavare has insisted that government members will not attend until December 24.
Australian police and heavily-armed soldiers were deployed yesterday and today to strategic locations around Honiara. The authorities claimed that this was for security reasons but there is little doubt that the show of force is intended to strengthen the opposition. Australian troops wearing camouflage gear are currently guarding the gated entrance to Honiara Hotel, where opposition parliamentarians have based themselves. Government MPs earlier accused opposition leaders of locking away their supporters to prevent them switching over to the government side.
The Solomons’ government has been the target of a long-running “regime change” campaign orchestrated in Canberra. The former Howard government first targeted Sogavare for removal in mid-2006 after he was identified as an obstacle to Australia’s ongoing military-police occupation of the impoverished Pacific country.
In July 2003, more than 2,000 soldiers and federal police were dispatched under the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), along with scores of bureaucrats, legal officials, and financial “advisors” who took effective control of the country’s state apparatus, including its police force, prisons, courts, public service, central bank and treasury. The neo-colonial takeover was driven by Canberra’s concern to safeguard Australian corporate interests and maintain its regional domination amid intensifying great power rivalries that have been stoked by China’s growing economic and diplomatic influence in the South Pacific. RAMSI was hailed as a model for future interventions in neighbouring countries such as Papua New Guinea.
Sogavare came to power in May 2006 and moved to wind back certain aspects of RAMSI’s control, especially over public spending and economic reform. The Howard government responded by orchestrating a series of filthy operations—involving lies, dirty tricks and provocations—against the prime minister and senior government members.
Attorney-general Julian Moti was targeted on the basis of a trumped up extradition order relating to statutory rape charges that were thrown out of a Vanuatu court years earlier. Moti had been centrally involved in establishing the still ongoing Commission of Inquiry into the April 2006 Honiara riots. Australian officials adamantly opposed the inquiry, fearing any examination of RAMSI’s responsibility for the disturbances. Significant evidence indicates that RAMSI police and soldiers were deliberately stood down to allow the destruction to proceed. (See “The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots”) Moti also played an important role in establishing a pending parliamentary review, which threatens to strip RAMSI personnel of their blanket immunity from Solomons’ law.
Opposition leader Fono has aligned himself with Canberra and pledged to satisfy RAMSI’s demands, including the extradition of Moti. Two opposition attempts to unseat the government through no-confidence motions, in October 2006 and August this year, failed, despite enjoying the support of the Howard government and RAMSI authorities.
Government minister Charles Dausabea has claimed that RAMSI is directly backing the opposition in its third no-confidence attempt. “They want to topple the government led by Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare,” he said on December 3. “I appeal to RAMSI to stay out of politics and let the leaders of the country solve this issue. We are the people ... mandated by the people to run this country and not RAMSI.”
Dausabea said he had lodged a formal complaint to police after two officers, one a Solomon Islander and the other a New Zealand national working with RAMSI, followed him as he was driving around Honiara on government business. “They said that they received information from their special unit that I was planning another riot,” he told a press conference. “This is just unbelievable. I told them straight that they have no solid evidence to justify their allegations.” Dausabea alleged that the police national intelligence unit told the prime minister’s office he was planning to stage a riot if the government were removed.
Dausabea, who has opposed RAMSI, was arrested by Australian police immediately after the April 2006 riots and charged with incitement and related offences. The parliamentarian was repeatedly refused bail by Australian judges working in the Solomons’ court system and held in prison for eight months, before being acquitted of the central charges last August. If it is true that RAMSI personnel are now spreading rumours that senior government figures are preparing violence, this represents another provocative intervention by Australian authorities.
The full extent of Australian involvement in behind-the-scenes manoeuvring against the Sogavare government cannot yet be determined. There is no doubt, however, that the RAMSI leadership wants a more compliant administration. In a revealing episode, senior RAMSI personnel directly intervened in the trial of former prime minister Allen Kemakeza to ensure he evaded imprisonment despite being found guilty on December 6 on charges of demanding money with menace, intimidation, and larceny.
Kemakeza was prime minister in 2003 and played a critical role in facilitating Canberra’s takeover. His government acceded to Howard’s demands that the Australian-led forces be formally invited to intervene and also approved the Facilitation Act, which granted RAMSI legal immunity and is now under parliamentary review. The Kemakeza government functioned as little more than a fig-leaf for Canberra’s control. While RAMSI authorities arrested and charged a series of senior Solomons’ politicians for alleged corruption and complicity with rival Guadalcanal and Malaitan militias, Kemakeza was never investigated despite being widely suspected of involvement in criminal conduct. The quid pro quo was obvious—Kemakeza did RAMSI’s bidding in return for avoiding imprisonment.
National elections in April 2006 saw the Kemakeza government thrown out of office amid overwhelming opposition to his government’s corrupt record, as well as growing dissatisfaction with RAMSI’s presence. Kemakeza subsequently joined the anti-Sogavare opposition after he retained his seat. Last month, however, the government claimed that the former prime minister had switched sides and accepted a government post. Opposition leader Fono has denied this and insists Kemakeza remains on board. According to some calculations, government and opposition MPs are evenly divided, with Kemakeza holding the deciding vote. The Solomon Star reported that the former prime minister earlier declared himself neutral, pending the outcome of his court case.
Kemakeza was found guilty of ordering members of the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF) militia to destroy and steal equipment from Australian-run law firm Sol Law in May 2002. He reportedly told the militants that the firm had too much influence over the country’s financial institutions. While four members of the MEF pleaded guilty and received prison sentences of up to 30 months, Kemakeza, who denied the charges, was sentenced to two months jail, with another three months suspended and a fine of $SI7,500 ($US1,100). Under Solomons’ legislation, parliamentarians lose their seats only if sentenced to six months imprisonment or more—leaving Kemakeza free to continue as a MP. In addition, the court granted bail pending an appeal, allowing him to participate in upcoming parliamentary sessions.
According to an AAP report, Australian magistrate Chris Vass “said he was lenient in his sentencing and took into account referees’ accounts of Kemakeza’s service to the nation... He particularly cited Kemakeza’s role in helping restore peace to the Solomons after years of ethnic unrest and his role in inviting in the Australian-led regional assistance mission.”
Among the “referees’ accounts” were those from Australian Federal Police officer Ben McDevitt, who headed RAMSI’s policing component when the intervention was first launched, and former RAMSI chiefs Nick Warner and James Batley. “The improvements that have taken place in security and economic well-being is due to the work of RAMSI members from Pacific countries in partnership with many Solomon Islanders,” Warner and McDevitt declared in a joint statement to the court. “But without Sir Allan Kemakeza’s vision and support, it is likely there would not have been a RAMSI.”
As well as again demonstrating the hypocrisy of Canberra’s claim to be advancing the rule of law in the Solomons, the political character of Kemakeza’s sentencing suggests that a deal may have been done whereby Australian authorities ensure that the former prime minister stays out of jail in return for his political support against Sogavare.
The Solomon Islands prime minister has responded to the latest political ructions by redoubling his efforts to reach an accommodation with Canberra. For all his anti-colonial rhetoric, Sogavare has no principled opposition to RAMSI and Australian imperialism. He represents a layer of the Solomons’ ruling elite which has grown dissatisfied with aspects of the Australian intervention, hopes to recast RAMSI on a new basis more favourable to its commercial and political interests and is looking to other powers for support.
Throughout the period when the Howard government was seeking to destabilise and overthrow his administration, Sogavare repeatedly pleaded for negotiations. Howard, however, had too much at stake politically to compromise. His government’s entire strategic orientation in the South Pacific was tied up with RAMSI’s fortunes; it was feared that any concession to Sogavare would weaken Canberra’s position by emboldening other regional leaders, such as PNG’s Michael Somare, who were similarly looking for more room to manoeuvre with other powers.
Last month’s defeat of Howard has raised hopes in Honiara for an end to hostilities. Sogavare quickly extended his congratulations to new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd after the November 24 vote and has since said he intends to invite both Rudd and Duncan Kerr, Labor’s parliamentary secretary for the Pacific, to visit the Solomons. “I would like to see all the issues clouding our relationship to be dealt with as quickly as possible so we can move on with our lives and get on with the business of development,” Sogavare declared.
The Rudd government will be no less ruthless than its predecessor in prosecuting Australian interests in the South Pacific. The Labor Party fully supported all the Howard government’s manoeuvres in the region, including its military-led interventions in East Timor in 1999 and 2006 and in the Solomons in 2003. It encouraged the Howard government to move toward a “Pacific Union” that would systematically integrate the region’s economy and administrative apparatuses under Canberra’s domination. More recently, however, Labor criticised the former government for an over-reliance on military force and a failure to utilise diplomatic, aid and other instruments to advance Australian corporate interests. These tactical criticisms reflected concerns within the foreign policy establishment that the Howard government’s approach was generating too much opposition from both ordinary people and the political elites of the South Pacific countries.
Kerr, who was dean of law at the University of Papua New Guinea before entering the Australian parliament in 1987, said he hoped to establish better relations with PNG and the Solomon Islands. “We are not big brother,” he declared the day after being appointed parliamentary secretary. “We can’t demand outcomes that are always in accordance with Australia’s view of the world, but we can do everything possible to get us outcomes that are consistent with the national aspirations... I think there is no doubt that at least some of the leaders of our neighbours have seen Australia as somewhat too ready to use instruction rather than a partnership relationship.”
Such remarks may foreshadow the negotiation of a new arrangement between Canberra and the Solomons’ government. Whatever adjustments may be made to RAMSI, however, there is no doubt that the Rudd government will insist that Canberra retains control over the indefinite intervention.
For his part, Sogavare has again stressed that his attempts to reduce RAMSI’s influence and review its operations are not intended to force the Australian personnel out. A number of the recent parliamentarians’ defections, both to and from the government, may strengthen calls from within Sogavare’s ranks for a complete capitulation to Canberra’s demands. Significantly, Peter Boyers is among those opposition parliamentarians who have recently joined the government. Boyers was finance minister under the previous government and has now been appointed to the same post by Sogavare. He has been among the most vociferous pro-RAMSI parliamentarians. A leaked email written by a RAMSI finance official in April 2006 described Boyers as RAMSI’s “effective voice in cabinet”.
Boyers only left the opposition after the prime minister gave him a written guarantee that the government would “uphold the existing arrangements” with RAMSI.
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9/28/07
“Policing the neighbourhood”—Australia’s new para-military police
Part 2
By Mike Head
28 September 2007This is the conclusion of a two-part series on the Australian Federal Police. Part 1 was posted on September 27.
The AFP and the Honiara riots The real face of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) as a para-military arm of Canberra’s neo-colonial policy has nowhere been more graphically demonstrated than in the Solomon Islands.
The New Matilda online magazine has published fresh evidence about the AFP’s role in the April 18-19, 2006 riots in Honiara, the Solomons’ capital. These riots, which began outside parliament house and culminated in the burning down of the city’s Chinatown and other commercial and tourism buildings, provided the justification for the dispatch of more than 400 Australian, New Zealand and other troops and police, bolstering the ongoing security contingent of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) to more than 1,000.
The WSWS has previously reported evidence that suggests that Australian forces may have deliberately provoked the rioting to create the conditions for the Howard government to reinforce the RAMSI operation following a general election in which its favoured candidate, Prime Minister Allen Kemakeza, was defeated.
After newly-elected MPs defied the thrust of the election outcome by voting to install Snyder Rini, Kemakeza’s deputy, as prime minister, Solomon Islanders reacted with outrage, generally believing the parliamentary vote to have been rigged through corruption and bribery. An angry crowd converged on parliament to demand Rini’s resignation.
Luke Johnston, an Australian NGO worker who was at parliament, told New Matilda he had not spoken out before because of fear of retribution from Australian authorities. He said the crowd that gathered outside parliament to hear the announcement of the new prime minister was agitated but not violent. The people were willing to negotiate—until the AFP’s riot squad stepped in.
“These guys [the AFP’s Operational Response Group] came flying down the driveway at full speed, right towards the crowd. There were two or possibly three Land-cruisers full with all the kit: bullet-proof vests, big shields, lots of weapons. The crowd just scattered. That was the first turning point. The second one was when they cleared the driveway, they started manhandling people. The first physical contact was made by the AFP officers. They weren’t brutal, but they were shoving and pushing, and that’s when people got cranky,” Johnston told the magazine.
“Then they [the police] tried to bust the PM out. They rushed him out to the car under guard of the riot squad, and that’s when the first stone came. The police began firing stuff, and that really set the crowd abuzz, because it sounds and looks like guns. They started freaking, shouting ‘you’re shooting us’. They went mad, just hysterical, and they trashed every vehicle, and they ran down the hill and started burning things down,” he said.
The police then withdrew and seemed to allow the burning and looting to proceed. “So I had to stand on my verandah for two nights with a crowbar with the whole town abandoned to these mobs, which just grew and grew, and watch as [the police] dealt with the situation from the air. They put the helicopter over the house and they were firing tear gas out of the helicopter.”
The New Matilda series also drew attention to a World Vision submission to the current Senate inquiry into Australian “peacekeeping operations”. The submission included claims by serving AFP officers that International Deployment Group (IDG) members of the ADF used non-approved munitions during the Honiara riots, and were instructed to fire at people’s heads or shoot them in the back as they fled. World Vision’s submission welcomed the AFP’s participation in RAMSI as a “positive development”, while voicing concerns that these practices could undermine support for the operation.
According to World Vision, the munitions “included either 40 mm bean bag rounds or 40 mm foam rounds, 12 gauge bean bag rounds, CS Gas and possibly Stinger grenades containing rubber balls. We understand that these munitions were used by IDG members on 18th April 2006 in Honiara, despite them not being approved use of force options at the time under Commissioner’s Order 3 (CO3). We further understand that on 19th April, CO3 was retrospectively amended for a 28-day period to permit the use of previously non-approved munitions.”
World Vision said its sources reported that an IDG Team Leader had given chilling instructions to Australian and New Zealand police officers in the Solomon Islands. He “reportedly informed participants that, from his experience in PNG [Papua New Guinea], a person’s neck was a good place to aim with a 12 gauge bean bag round, since this would render the person unconscious, and that shooting people in the back as they were fleeing was also acceptable.”
During a Senate committee public hearing in Melbourne, World Vision representatives were admonished for attracting media attention to “specific grievances”, and the committee refused to pursue the claims. Justice Minister David Johnston said he was satisfied that the claims had been investigated internally, but a World Vision spokesman said no eye witnesses had been interviewed in the internal probe, including the officers who spoke to the organisation.
The Howard government and the AFP have insisted that the police conduct during the Honiara riots constituted an exemplary display of the AFP’s new role. In the June 2006 edition of AFP News, the agency’s newsletter, AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty said the response by AFP members “would be remembered as a very proud moment in the AFP’s history”. He described the “bravery and courage” shown by police officers as an “inspiration to us all at the AFP”. They “did an incredible job in extremely volatile circumstances, exercising enormous restraint and putting their own safety at risk to protect others”.
As the WSWS has documented, the Howard government has sought to block or derail the Solomon Islands government’s own commission of inquiry into the Honiara riots. Its campaign has included attempts to arrest and extradite the country’s attorney-general, Julian Moti, on trumped-up statutory rape charges (see “Solomon Islands government rebuts Canberra’s child sex allegations against attorney-general”).
The fresh evidence raises many further questions about the IDG’s part in the Honiara riots. Did AFP commanders provoke the disturbances and then stand aside while Honiara burnt, in order to give the Howard government a pretext to fly in more troops to fortify the RAMSI intervention? Were orders given to use potentially lethal force? Were those orders retrospectively authorised? Has a high-level cover-up taken place?
A domestic “gendarmerie” Commissioner Keelty has referred to the AFP becoming a “pseudo-gendarmerie” of Australian foreign policy. The same could be said of its growing para-military and political role domestically.
As the Howard government has turned to military and police interventions in the Asia-Pacific regions, it has also dramatically escalated the AFP’s powers, resources and activity at home.
This was on display at the recent Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney. According to official sources, some 450 AFP officers were deployed, alongside 2,500 state police and 1,500 military personnel, who included Special Air Services (SAS) commandos on standby.
The AFP said its contingent included dog squads (“canine explosives teams”), heavily-armed bodyguards (“personal protection officers”), intelligence analysts and airport security personnel. Commissioner Keelty described it as “a huge deployment, the biggest we have had”.
Because many police personnel removed their name tags, it was impossible to determine how many AFP officers were among the squads of armoured riot police, equipped with pistols, mace spray, taser guns, batons, shields, armoured vehicles, water cannon and helicopters, that surrounded the 10,000 demonstrators protesting against the Iraq war and the policies of the Howard government and the Bush administration.
In the lead-up to the summit, police commandos joined SAS and other military personnel in “anti-terrorism” exercises, featuring helicopters whirring through the city, gunboats speeding up Sydney Harbour and simulated live ammunition shootouts at railway stations.
Over recent months, the AFP has also played a leading part, as an adjunct to the military, in the Howard government’s takeover of Aboriginal townships and camps across the Northern Territory. Police have been stationed in scores of communities to enforce such measures as welfare cutoffs, medical checks on children, crackdowns on truancy and the seizures of control over houses and land.
The Howard government clearly regards the IDG’s experiences overseas as valuable for its internal operations. That was illustrated by the initial appointment as Northern Territory taskforce commander of Shane Castles, the former Australian police chief of the Solomon Islands RAMSI operation. Castles subsequently declined the Northern Territory post, and was replaced by an army officer, Major-General David Chalmers.
The connection between the foreign and domestic work of the AFP was discussed with rare candour in a June 27 Canberra ABC radio interview with acting Australian Capital Territory (ACT) police commissioner Andy Hughes, another AFP officer with neo-colonial experience. He had been forced to leave Fiji, where he had been installed as Police Commissioner, after last year’s military takeover in Fiji.
ABC host Ross Solly asked Hughes whether AFP officers had the “special set of skills” needed to go into indigenous areas, following reports that local people feared and opposed the intervention. Hughes replied: “Look I don’t think anyone is doubting that it is a big job. No question of that. But, ACT Policing members and indeed AFP have had considerable experience in difficult environments including recently of course, East Timor, Solomon Islands, and other UN missions over time. We’re in Afghanistan, Sudan, so you know, the track record of AFP and Australian Policing generally in difficult circumstances is very good.”
The AFP was also centrally involved in the Howard government’s ultimately unsuccessful operation to frame-up Indian Muslim doctor, Mohammed Haneef, on terrorism charges. Haneef was detained for nearly two weeks without trial, and then stripped of his visa to block his release. Amid lurid media claims of a “doctors’ jihad network”—obviously fed by prejudicial police and government leaks—Prime Minister Howard and leading ministers declared that his arrest was a wake-up call to Australians that terrorists could strike on home soil.
Within three weeks the case collapsed. It emerged that prosecutors, acting on AFP information, had wrongly told a court that Haneef’s former mobile phone SIM card was found in the jeep that rammed into Glasgow airport in late June. Haneef’s lawyers released the transcripts of two AFP interviews with their client, providing a devastating picture of the AFP’s modus operandi: false, unsubstantiated and highly damaging allegations had been levelled against an innocent man and peddled to the media and the courts (see “Haneef police transcript exposes Australian government’s ‘terrorist conspiracy’ claims”).
The entire witchhunt was aimed at drumming up new public fears of terrorism in advance of the federal elections, due by the end of this year. As well, its aim was to justify the battery of unprecedented powers, such as detention and interrogation without trial, wide-ranging definitions of terrorism, the executive banning of organisations, semi-secret trials and the outlawing of urging support for resistance to Australian military interventions, handed to the AFP and its intelligence partner, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), since 2002.
Taken together, the scope and scale of the AFP’s “new paradigm of policing” amounts to the erection of the scaffolding of a police-state within Australia along with the para-military enforcement of Australian strategic and corporate interests throughout the region.
Concluded
See Also:
The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots
Part 1
[21 February 2007]
The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots
Part 2
[22 February 2007]
9/27/07
“Policing the neighbourhood”—Australia’s new para-military police
Part 1
By Mike Head
27 September 2007
This is the first in a two-part series on the Australian Federal Police.
At the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit held in Sydney this month, Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, initialled a highly significant agreement. Made under the Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation signed by the two governments in Japan earlier this year, the agreement established that the Australian Federal Police would train Japanese police to serve in “international hot spots”.
The AFP’s training program highlights the growing interest in foreign capitals in a new model of para-military intervention, developed by the Howard government, around the AFP’s International Deployment Group (IDG).
The Japanese government’s interest in using heavily-armed police agencies in overseas operations is particularly noteworthy. Japan’s post-World War II constitution formally forbids the establishment of military forces, and there has been deep opposition within the population to the involvement of the country’s so-called “self-defence” military units in the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
But interest in the IDG is not confined to Tokyo. According to a recent series in New Matilda, an on-line liberal magazine: “The expansion of the International Deployment Group will see the AFP operating significantly outside its original mandate—in areas that would seem to be a more natural fit for the military, NGOs or aid agencies—and is attracting considerable global attention as the first of its kind.”
The Howard government established the IDG in February 2004, seven months after sending more than 2,000 troops and police to the Solomon Islands in 2003. The specific role of the hundreds of AFP officers was to form the backbone of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), which took control of key aspects of the small country’s administration, including the police, legal system, prisons and finance ministry.
The deployment marked an unprecedented new phase in the life of the AFP, which has traditionally been a small domestic force, primarily responsible for enforcing federal criminal law, policing the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and guarding diplomatic and other official buildings. Under the Australian Constitution, the far-larger state police forces carry out most internal policing.
The AFP was only established in 1979, through a merger of the ACT Police and the old Commonwealth Police. The amalgamation resulted from the still-unexplained 1978 bomb explosion outside the Sydney Hilton Hotel, the venue for a Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting. The blast became the pretext for the conservative Fraser government to declare that the “age of terrorism” had arrived in Australia, requiring a dramatic boost to the size and powers of the federal police, intelligence and security services.
Today, the “war on terror” declared by the Bush administration after the September 11 terror attacks in the US, is being exploited by the Howard government to enlarge and transform the role of the AFP. By the end of 2008, the IDG will have grown to 1,200 members, equipped with advanced military-style weaponry, including armoured personnel carriers, and consuming one-third of the AFP’s annual budget. In 1979, the AFP’s personnel numbered some 2,952. By next year, the force will have more than doubled.
The IDG already has teams in 10 countries—Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Cyprus, Cambodia, East Timor, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Nauru and Tonga. The AFP also has trainers or exchange personnel in other locations, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Micronesia.
To date, the IDG’s main operations are concentrated in the Solomons, where about 230 officers dominate RAMSI and the local police force. The next largest contingent of 60 is in East Timor, where some 200 police accompanied the hundreds of Australian troops deployed last year by the Howard government as part of its efforts to secure the removal of the Fretilin administration of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.
The IDG is designed to provide a “rapid response” capacity to aid the military in the event of popular unrest. Its role as a regional policing agency was underscored last November, when 64 IDG members were sent to Tonga after riots in the capital Nuku’olofa. Three AFP “advisers” are still there.
The AFP’s submission to a current Senate committee inquiry into “Australia’s involvement in peacekeeping operations” pointed to the neo-colonial character of these operations. It also outlined the rationale for police, rather than troops, to occupy the front line against the local population—at least after the initial show of military force, as happened in East Timor and the Solomons.
“Sovereignty, respect and understanding of host nation culture and laws will assist in the acceptance of police contributions. Sovereignty will however be used in a variety of circumstances to obstruct change which may reduce the benefits of police interventions or capacity building missions as they threaten the status quo enjoyed by local elites,” the submission stated.
In other words, paying lip service to “host nation culture and laws” helps legitimise the operation in the eyes of the local population, but “sovereignty”—i.e., national independence—remains a barrier to enforcing Australian interests. While the “police interventions” are presented as humanitarian or “capacity building” missions to assist impoverished populations, their real purpose is to assert Australian strategic, diplomatic and economic domination over the entire South Pacific region.
The submission said the AFP was “revolutionising its approach to offshore operations” for two reasons. One was a turn away from the “bygone era” of “traditional peacekeeping”, based on UN or multilateral operations—with the consent of warring parties—to unilateral interventions, often in so-called “failed” or “fragile” states.
This shift is bound up with growing conflicts between the major powers, particularly the US, Europe, China and Russia. In the Asia-Pacific region, backed by the US, Canberra is intent on establishing unchallenged hegemony, which means not only ousting regimes regarded as obstacles to its interests, but also combating the influence of rival powers, especially China.
The other reason given by the AFP was the need for a long-term presence, lasting well beyond the normal span of a military engagement. Although the submission’s language was cautious, it pointed to the need to establish new regimes—basically puppet administrations—which would require armed police backing. “In the power vacuum that frequently exists, the international community may be required to establish transitional administration authorities that provide traditional government functions including executive policing.”
Such “executive policing” would require a greater use of weaponry and lethal force than normally involved in Australian domestic policing. “These environments are volatile and have resulted in a shift, in the case of police, in the authority to bear arms and use deadly force,” the submission stated.
Drawing on the experiences of Timor and the Solomons, the AFP said the command of the intervention could fluctuate. During the initial stages, “an effective military response” would be primary; followed by a policing focus, with the possibility of transferring back to military command “in certain forms of crises”.
As a result, the line between the military and the police is becoming blurred. A feature of the IDG is closer “interoperability” with the military, including the “embedding” of AFP officers in “Joint Operations Command and the Australian Defence Force Warfare Centre”. The submission predicted: “Joint operations with the Australian Defence Force as part of national offshore crisis response will become more frequent and increased interoperability will be necessary”.
Addressing the National Press Club in Canberra last October, AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty spoke of “policing in a new paradigm” in which the police became “the new deployable arm of Australian government policy”. “If a government wishes to intervene in the issues of another state, it has traditionally been achieved through the deployment of military force to deliver on the government’s objective,” he noted. But because of the political sensitivities involved, the AFP was being transformed into a “pseudo-gendarmerie”.
Keelty drew a parallel with the formation of “Special Weapons and Operation style teams in Australia”. Over the past 20 years, para-military police units have been established in every Australian state, operating with sub-machine guns, armoured vehicles and riot gear.
Among the witnesses testifying at the Senate inquiry was Flinders University law professor Andrew Goldsmith, the lead researcher in “Policing the neighbourhood”—a three-year Australian Research Council-funded study, in partnership with the AFP, of the AFP’s experiences in East Timor, the Solomons and Papua New Guinea. He emphasised the need for the “management of perceptions” in IDG operations to overcome local hostility.
“Australia faces an almost inevitable perception in the region of being a kind of symbolic big brother, and that poses a number of legitimacy problems,” he advised the senators. Later, he added: “Australia’s involvement in oil and gas with Timor has coloured our ability to operate as effectively as we would like in Timor-Leste.”
Goldsmith’s testimony illustrates one of the central preoccupations behind the Senate inquiry’s ongoing deliberations and the work of the IDG: how best to camouflage the underlying economic and strategic interests of the Australian political and corporate establishment, including control over the lucrative oil and gas reserves under the Timor Sea, throughout the region.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/sep2007/afpo-s27.shtmlTo be continued
See Also:
The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots
Part 1
[21 February 2007]
The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots
Part 2
[22 February 2007]
9/26/07
Climate change biggest security risk, says Australia's top cop
What kind of bald head palagi kaka is this, looks more like calculated political opportunism to me. Hungry and thirsty Pacific Islanders & Asians will be swarming into Australia so we gotta stop the invasion so thats why were are armed to the max and have become a paramilitary police force. If you clowns were listening, Pacific political leaders 10 years ago, and Pacific activists 20-30 years ago where telling ya what we needed to ensure the survival of our people, lands, culture & environment,Then as now you are racist, self interested, imperial slaves to corporate masters.
Hare Atu Poaka-Get Out Of The Pacific
Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty. The big bacon
SYDNEY (AFP) — Climate change poses this century's biggest security threat, possibly forcing the migration of millions of people from countries such as China, Australia's top policeman has warned.Water and food shortages could send waves of migrants across oceans and borders in the Asia-Pacific region, causing social disruption and unrest, said Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty.
Prime Minister John Howard Tuesday refused to comment on Keelty's unexpected foray into the politics of global warming delivered in a speech in Adelaide on Monday night.
The police chief's comments were seen as diplomatically-sensitive by some local media, with a reference to the possibility of China being unable to feed its population viewed as particularly provocative.
"For China to feed its predicted 2030 population, it needs to increase its food production by about 50 percent above today's levels," Keelty said.
"How does it achieve this, if its available land is dramatically shrinking and millions of people are on the move because of land and water.
"In their millions, people could begin to look for new land and they'll cross oceans and borders to do it."
The mass displacement of people "particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, could create a great deal of social uncertainty and unrest in the region," Keelty said.
"The potential security issues are enormous and should not be underestimated."
Even if only some of the predictions of catastrophic change wrought by global warming materialised, "climate change is going to be the security issue of the 21st century," Keelty said.
His remarks drew immediate criticism from refugee rights activists, who said the prospect of millions of displaced people trying to reach Australia was a humanitarian problem not a matter of border security.
"The issue of displaced people and Australia's obligations to those who need our help has always been a humanitarian issue, invoking our international obligations rather than engaging the issue of border security," said Project SafeCom spokesman Jack Smit.
Australia and the United States are the only two developed countries in the world to have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the main international treaty on fighting climate change
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9/24/07
AFP Expansion: Don’t Mention the Riots
After the extraordinary bungling of the Dr Mohammed Haneef case you’d think the Australian Federal Police (AFP) were having enough difficulty looking after their own backyard at the moment, let alone someone else’s. But by mid-next year our federal police force will be spending close to a third of its operating budget on policing other countries.
The AFP’s International Deployment Group is currently undergoing a rapid expansion into a 1200-strong paramilitary-style force that will cost $480 million over the next five years. The expanded IDG will be an all-singing, all-dancing peacekeeping and capacity building team; a highly equipped rapid response force who will then be required to turn their hand to aid work.
The expansion is a major shift in the AFP’s mandate — and globally, an unprecedented use of police power in what are essentially foreign policy objectives. Depending on who you talk to, it’s either an exciting opportunity or a terrifying precedent.
‘I know of no other police force in the world that has had to respond in such a way across areas which, if we are to be completely frank, are not just about policing,’ says Andrew Goldsmith, co-author of ‘Policing the Neighbourhood’, a three year study (jointly funded by the Australian Research Council and the AFP) into the AFP interventions in East Timor, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. ‘These are big expectations, big shifts, that we are asking ordinary Australian police officers to undertake.’
Peacekeeping ain’t what it used to be. What was once strictly United Nations ‘blue helmet’ business is increasingly being undertaken through bi- or multi-lateral agreements in what have become known as ‘peace and stability operations,’ and Australia is at the forefront of the trend. According to Goldsmith, our use of police offshore — placing large numbers of officers on the ground in so-called ‘nation building’ roles — is virtually untried.
Rebuilding a nation is no small task — and one that has far-reaching implications if you happen to stuff it up. So is the AFP up to the job?
In August last year the Howard Government rubber-stamped the biggest single increase in staff since the AFP was established in 1979. By June next year the International Deployment Group will have a high capability, rapid response force of around 200 officers, a ‘missions component’ of 750, and an Australian-based support staff of 250. The Group will be equipped with the latest weaponry, armoured personnel carriers and the authority to dispense lethal force.
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Photo by the author |
The IDG is, for the most part, a regional deployment force. It was created around the same time that John Howard was crowned regional Sheriff by his friend George W Bush, and was telling Australians we had to take responsibility for ‘our patch.’ But since it was formed in February 2004, it hasn’t made a great name for itself in the region — particularly in the Solomon Islands, where the majority of the current Group is now deployed as part of RAMSI’s Participating Police Force (PPF).
Solomon Islanders have accused the policing arm of RAMSI of being everything from culturally insensitive to racist and just plain incompetent. A raid on the Prime Minister’s office by four White PPF officers in October last year had locals up in arms and prompted insiders to admit that the Force was becoming a liability to the rest of the RAMSI mission. Last month, a Solomon Islands Commission of Inquiry into the April 2006 Honiara riots found that AFP officers in command of the country’s police forces at the time were asleep at the wheel.
‘Any kind of police reform strategy in any country is inevitably political in nature and will engender debate [and] controversy,’ says Goldsmith. ‘The transition from peacekeeping to capacity building [is] a shift from something which is relatively universally accepted locally to something which is more contestable at the local political level.’
Luke Johnston, an Australian NGO worker, was at Parliament House in Honiara on April 18 last year — the first day of the two-day riots that saw much of Chinatown razed. When I met him last October, he wasn’t keen to talk on the record about what he had witnessed that day because of fear of retribution — not from those responsible for the riots, but from Australian officials.
‘They don’t like anyone saying anything that goes against their version of events,’ Johnston told me. ‘I’m probably being a bit paranoid, but it’s the whole way that the regime in Australia has gone these days. They’re really targeting anyone who doesn’t fit their mould.’
On ‘Black Tuesday’ as Solomon Islanders have dubbed it, Johnston watched what he says was a rowdy but co-operative crowd turn into a raging mob directly because of PPF mishandling.
‘Of the AFP officers that were there, I reckon the average age was 21,’ says Johnston. ‘One young lady was literally on the verge of tears saying, “I’ve just arrived here, my mum’s gonna freak out when she sees the news.” They were kids, they really were.’
Johnston says the crowd that had gathered at Parliament that day to hear the announcement of the new Prime Minister was agitated but not violent — and was willing to negotiate — ‘until someone had the bright idea to bring the riot police in.’
‘The whole dialogue broke down at that point,’ he says.
‘These guys [the AFP’s Operational Response Group] came flying down the driveway at full speed, right towards the crowd. There were two or possibly three Land-cruisers’ full with all the kit: bullet proof vests, big shields, lots of weapons. The crowd just scattered. That was the first turning point. The second one was when they cleared the driveway, they started manhandling people. The first physical contact was made by the AFP officers. They weren’t brutal, but they were shoving and pushing, and that’s when people got cranky,’ says Johnston.
‘The crowd were saying “what are you doing? Who do you think you are to come and push us around in our own country?” Mainly in Pijin — and that’s another thing, so few of the Australian police here actually have an understanding of Pijin, they couldn’t understand what the crowd was saying.’
‘Then they tried to bust the PM out,’ says Johnston. ‘They rushed him out to the car under guard of riot squad, and that’s when the first stone came.’
‘The police began firing stuff, and that really set the crowd abuzz, because it sounds and looks like guns. They started freaking, shouting “you’re shooting us.” They went mad, just hysterical, and they trashed every vehicle, and they ran down the hill and started burning things down. That made it so much worse, because they dispersed everybody. I mean they had a little crowd that was peaceful and in the end they turned them into this raging mob. The place was littered with canisters, so they used a lot of things.’
‘But then, knowing that this situation had blown up, they didn’t take control of a single bridge, a single intersection or anything.’
‘So I had to stand on my verandah for two nights with a crowbar with the whole town abandoned to these mobs, which just grew and grew, and watch as [the police] dealt with the situation from the air. They put the helicopter over the house and they were firing tear gas out of the helicopter.’
‘It wasn’t until early Friday morning when the [Australian Defence Force] moved in that the situation finally calmed down,’ says Johnston. ‘The army is totally different — they’re cool-headed and professional, they don’t have these cowboy elements, and the people respect them.’
‘It looks to me like the police really stuffed up on this,’ says Johnston. ‘They gave control away — surely somebody should lose their job for that. But immediately [the PPF] spun it, saying: “it was a conspiracy, it was much bigger then we ever realised.” It was a bunch of kids with rocks. I’m sorry, but there wasn’t a single weapon and they’ve got a multi-million dollar police force here. It doesn’t make sense to me. The minimum you would say is that it’s a bad example of incompetence. They really were negligent.’
No one will admit it publicly but the Honiara riots severely embarrassed the AFP and the Howard Government — who like to hold RAMSI up as the poster boy of successful interventions. The official line is that there was an intelligence failure, that the PPF was caught by surprise, and anyway that they were only acting in an advisory role to the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIP) at the time.
According to Mike Wheatley, who was Assistant Police Commissioner in command of the armed constabulary component of the RSIP from 1995 until 2000, if forces had been pre-deployed as per usual Solomon Islands procedures then there wouldn’t have been a Black Tuesday — and certainly no Wednesday.
‘Firstly, let’s get it clear that, in the Solomon Islands, there is no point asking the State for protection because the RSIP were disarmed, neutered and rendered innocuous by RAMSI,’ Wheatley wrote in NewMatilda.com soon after the riots.
‘Forces are usually deployed at Parliament House, on the approaches to Chinatown and other key locations on a direct route from Parliament House. Such a strategy allows one to block or deflect riotous assembly as opposed to the riskier strategy of following it into Chinatown, as one Indigenous officer noted in despair. This latter strategy is better suited to the Fire Brigade.’
‘The implications of this stuff up are region-wide,’ says Wheatley. ‘Every pacific country that is participating in RAMSI or could be subject to a RAMSI style intervention then began to ask: what’s the point, if a whole suburb can be destroyed even while foreign troops are there? It’s a command control issue — how do the AFP work with the locals? It calls into question a whole methodology.’
‘Where’s the stench of burning reputations to match the stench of burning Chinese stores?’
Next week: Police or Paramilitary? ‘Let’s get down to the definition of what a police force is. The AFP are fully armed with rifles and other weapons — they are operating overseas like a paramilitary force.’
AFP Expansion: Helping Friends or Helping Ourselves?
article originally posted:
http://www.newmatilda.com
This is the second article in a three part series about the expansion of the AFP’s International Deployment Group (IDG). To read the first installment click here.
‘There is nothing off the shelf that says “this is what an [International Deployment Group] looks like,”’ says Commander Mark Walters, Manager of the Australian Federal Police’s IDG. ‘There is no one anywhere doing what we are doing, and to the extent that we are doing it, so we are right out there in front.’
The expansion of the International Deployment Group will see the AFP operating significantly outside its original mandate — in areas that would seem to be a more natural fit for the military, NGOs or aid agencies — and is attracting considerable global attention as the first of its kind.
As Australia prepares to pour millions of dollars into offshore police operations, the question needs to be asked: Who is scrutinising this shift? When the AFP can get off scot-free for a bungling as serious as the Mohammed Haneef case, Australians should rightfully be concerned about the accountability of our Federal Police Force.
‘The AFP has grown like topsy in recent years,’ says retired diplomat and avid AFP-watcher Bruce Haigh. ‘It’s evolved to its current structure without much thought and is operating to no real plan other than to meet the needs of John Howard’s agenda on terrorism.’
‘Nominally the AFP answers to the Justice Minister, but because of the War on Terror, it now for all intents and purposes answers to Howard, through the National Security Committee of Cabinet,’ says Haigh.
There is no doubt that the AFP has become Howard’s tool of choice in the War on Terror, and Australia’s forays into the Pacific can be viewed in the context of forward deployment in the fight against terrorism — but there’s also much more to the story.
Australia will soon be keeping a much closer eye on its neighbours. By June next year we’ll be in charge of a readily deployable police and paramilitary force — capable of everything from rapid responses in so-called failed States to the training and reconstruction of Pacific Island law and justice sectors. But are we really ‘helping friends,’ or merely helping ourselves?
‘One could be skeptical about some of the objectives behind capacity building because it’s really teaching police in these other countries to do things the way we want them to,’ says Andrew Goldsmith, co-author of Policing the Neighbourhood. ‘Criminal investigations and anti-corruption are the two things [that Australia is interested in influencing] . So there is self interest, there’s no question.’
‘There are [also] new players in the Pacific in which Australia might have a strategic interest,’ says Goldsmith. ‘There are big geopolitical games here.’
Goldsmith says the rapid expansion of the IDG has placed stress on key AFP staff members, who have done ‘a very difficult job in a very short time without a whole lot of guidance and with a whole lot of expectations being thrust upon them.’ ‘To a large extent we are in the dark, and that increases the likelihood of getting it wrong.’
Recent AFP interventions in the region have involved close collaboration with the Australian Defence Force, and the line between the two organisations is beginning to blur. The AFP is now expanding its own logistic capabilities — including acquiring armed personnel carriers — so that it will be able to deploy to regional hot spots independently of the ADF.
Associate Professor Jude McCulloch, author of Blue Army: Paramilitary Policing in Australia, says the War on Terror has seen the line between police and military become much less distinct — ‘and the international deployments are part of that because they are done largely under the banner of national security and the counter terrorism framework.’
‘The sections of the police that are paramilitary are expanding,’ says McCulloch. ‘These paramilitary units … train with the military, include former members of the military, use a wide range of military weapons and equipment, and use extremely high levels of force. In short, the units straddle the line between the [ADF and the AFP].’
‘Unlike the military, police are operationally independent from the Government,’ she says. ‘They get their funding from the Government, the Government can decide on policy, but in their day to day operations they are independent - and that’s so that nobody is above the law.’
As such, in a paramilitary unit, ‘Police command, rather than an elected Government, decide where and when this “military” force will be used.’
Claims made by a serving AFP officer in a recent Senate Inquiry into Australia’s role in peacekeeping have highlighted the lack of oversight of the AFP’s activities, and left some serious allegations about the Force’s conduct overseas unresolved.
The claims were made in a submission by World Vision to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade.
World Vision’s Melanie Gow described meeting with a ‘highly respected AFP officer who was a team leader in one of Australia’s most elite policing units.’ The source claimed that an IDG team leader had instructed police serving in the Solomon Islands that a person’s neck was a good place to aim with a 12 gauge bean bag round, since this would generally knock the person out, and that shooting people in the back as they were trying to flee was also a good idea.
The source also told World Vision that non-approved munitions had been used during the April 2006 Honiara riots and that the AFP had retrospectively amended the Commissioner’s Order 3 — which outlines acceptable use of force — to permit their use for a 28-day period.
The AFP says it has investigated the claims and denies them. But according to World Vision’s Director of Policy and Programs, Paul Ronalds, the officer in question was not interviewed as part of the investigation, and nor were other key witnesses. Ronalds says the officer is now facing serious internal pressure not to take the issue further.
‘[We are] concerned by the possibility and the perception that use of force options are being approved for use in overseas deployments which would not be approved in Australia,’ says Ronalds.
World Vision was invited to present their case at a public hearing in Melbourne last month, but the committee’s response was not what they expected — they were told they’d come to the wrong place, and that the committee was not in the business of addressing specific grievances. The claims have been given no further scrutiny.
Bizarrely, during the public hearing, Gow practically apologised for exposing the matter, and for inadvertently attracting media attention to the allegations, saying that World Vision ‘did not go looking for these issues,’ but felt a ‘moral obligation to raise them’ once the source was established as credible.
‘We stand by our submission and further state that, to the best of our knowledge, some of these issues have not been thoroughly investigated,’ she said. ‘Such investigations would presumably, at a minimum, include interviews with the officer and his personnel and other witnesses to the alleged incidents.’
During the hearing, Gow offered to give the committee the name and contact details of the officer but they declined. Furthermore, the Justice Minister is satisfied that the claims have been investigated internally, and the Ombudsman’s office says they haven’t received a complaint.
Which is all kind of concerning in the context of the AFP’s submission to the same Inquiry, which says that the AFP is currently in the process of ‘revolutionising’ its approach to offshore operations: ‘The increasing likelihood of deployment to volatile environments has resulted in a shift, in the case of police, in the authority to bear arms and use deadly force,’ it reads.
Next week: Right Cop for the Job? ‘A police officer from Belconnen is not necessarily naturally well-prepared to do capacity development in Baucau, East Timor.’