This week's stories: Police May Have Murdered Suspect...Treat People
Like Animals, and Funnily Enough...Private Schools Allowed to Persecute
Students...Police and ASIO To Get New Powers By the Back
Door?...Internet Filters Engage in Secret Censorship...37 Months' Jail
For Joking About the President...No Right of Conscience for Israeli
Soldiers...Quote of the Week.
A policeman says that members of the Victorian drug squad planted a gun
after they shot Graeme Jensen in 1988, and falsely claimed that they
fired on him in self-defence.
Detective Sergeant Malcolm Rosenes was in charge of the surveillance
unit following Jensen, who was suspected of armed robbery, when he was
shot. He has now been arrested on drug charges, and made the claim to a
police Ethical Standards Department team investigating corruption in the
drug squad.
(The Age, January 4).
Refugees caused about $8 million damage to the Baxter, Port Hedland,
Woomera and Christmas Island detention centres over the Christmas
period. The government has denied that their refugee policy is in
crisis. Refugees suspected of causing damage to the centres have been
held in jails and police lockups. Acting Immigration Minister Daryl
Williams said that "they are in administrative detention and they can be
held indefinitely", without being charged or facing trial.
(The Age, January 1 and 4).
The New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board says that both Labor and
Liberal state governments have ignored persecution of gay people by
religious schools.
The Board's chairman, Chris Puplick, said that "it is outrageous that
private and independent schools are still able to impose terms and
conditions of discrimination against gay and lesbian students which
would be unacceptable in state schools, despite the fact that they take
public money to finance their activities. it is unacceptable and it
occurs only because of the bloody-minded gutlessness of successive state
governments".
Mr Puplick said that governments "rolled over whenever the independent
schools - particularly Catholic schools - have threatened them politically".
The Victorian Equal Opportunity Act allows discrimination by religious
organisations if it "conforms with the doctrines of the religion".
Almost all religions condemn homosexuality. Churches and religious
schools in New South Wales are exempt from the Anti-Discrimination Act
altogether. In August a 16 year old gay student sued Melbourne's
Hillcrest Christian College. The student said that the school principal
told him to lie about his sexuality, and another staff member told him
he had the devil in him but that she could "get him straightened out".
(Melbourne Community Voice, December 20).
The new Australian Crime Commission will have extensive powers,
including the power to require suspects to answer questions under threat
of five years jail. The Director-General of ASIO and police
commissioners will both sit on the Commission.
The government recently attempted to give ASIO extra powers, but was
defeated in Parliament after public pressure. The Commission was
supported by both the government and Labor Party.
(The Australian, December 27).
A study of 'web filters' - programs designed to stop children accessing
pornography - has found that they also block health information sites.
A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that
gay sites in particular were blocked, even if they had nothing to do
with sex. The words "gay" and "lesbian" were blocked more often than any
other terms.
(Melbourne Community Voice, December 20).
An American who made a remark about a "burning bush" was sentenced this
month to 37 months in prison for "threatening to kill or harm the
president." Richard Humphreys said he got into a barroom discussion with
a truck driver in which he joked about the biblical expression "burning
bush."
A bartender who overheard the conversation knew that Bush was visiting
the area the next day and so telephoned police. "I said God might speak
to the world through a burning Bush," Humphreys testified during his
trial. "I had said that before and I thought it was funny."
(SchNews, Christmas 2002 issue).
Israel's High Court has ruled that Israeli soldiers have no right to
refuse to serve in the occupied territories of Palestine. The soldiers
said that their duties there involved "dominating, expelling, starving
and humiliating" Palestinians. At least 1755 Palestinians and 675
Isrealis have been killed since September 2000 in fighting over Israel's
occupation of Palestine. Palestinians recently accused Israeli troops
of beating a Palestinian teenager to death. At least one soldier will
be returned to a military prison for refusing to serve.
(The Age, January 1).
Quote of the Week:
"We have 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. In
this situation, our real job in the coming period is to devise a pattern
of relationships which permit us to maintain this position of disparity.
To do so, we have to dispense with all sentimentality ... we should
cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and
democratisation."
- US state Department senior planner George Kennan, 1948.
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