The following Editorial was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of
the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, September
17th, 2003. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney.
2010 Australia.
Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795.
CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au>
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Editorial : Silencing dissent
The severe attack on those opposed to the policies of the Federal
Government and their determination to silence dissent has been
demonstrated by the attack on Andrew Wilkie and on the ABC by leading
federal Ministers and by PM John Howard himself.
The daily newspapers and the commentaries by some extreme right-wing
columnists such as Gerard Henderson have added to the attacks on Wilkie
and the ABC.
Wilkie's crime is that he blew the whistle on the lies being told by
Howard and his Government in their attempts to justify the invasion and
occupation of Iraq by the US, Britain and Australia.
Apart from all other considerations, the fact is that no weapons of mass
destruction have been found in Iraq and even the investigators appointed
directly by the US Government did not find any weapons. The publication
of the report that this team was to have made has been postponed
indefinitely, yet again confirming that the huge propaganda campaign was
based on monstrous lies.
Andrew Wilkie declared as early as March that the claims of the Howard
Government were "exaggerated, skewed, used selectively and fabricated".
Personal abuse and denunciations have been heaped on him ever since in
an attempt to discredit him and his exposure. He is being attacked, not
because his claims were false but because he was telling the truth.
In the most recent attempt, a Liberal Party member who was part of the
Senate inquiry into the "sexed up" propaganda claims of the Government,
was provided with and used secret intelligence information. The
publication of security information is a crime under federal law.
Defence Minister Robert Hill admitted that the Liberal Senator concerned
had been briefed by the Defence Department before Andrew Wilkie was to
give evidence to the inquiry. Alexander Downer, the Minister for Foreign
Affairs has refused to deny that his office had seen a top-secret report
in the days before it was leaked at the inquiry.
As part of a smear campaign a WA Senator, David Johnston said Mr Wilkie
was "very unstable, is unreliable and is flaky and irrational". Not to
be out-done the neo-fascist and arch anti-communist Gerard Henderson
wrote of Wilkie's "media-choreographed resignation from the Office of
National Assessments".
But Wilkie is absolutely right and his claims are fully confirmed by the
total failure of the investigators to find a single weapon of mass
destruction in Iraq.
If the character assassins are so sure of their assertions, why doesn't
the Australian Government have an open inquiry in the same terms as the
Hutton inquiry in Britain?
On another front, it was Liberal Senator Alston who alleged that the ABC
had displayed an anti-American bias in its coverage of the Iraq conflict
only to have all but two of his 68 complaints rejected by an ABC inquiry.
The treatment of Wilkie and attack on the ABC are two examples of how
the Government is determined to push its line and silence any attempts
to question it. In the first example, it attempted to silence an insider
who is in a position to know the truth about the Howard Government's
assertions and in the case of the ABC, to intimidate and silence the
independent voice of our public broadcaster.
The Howard Government represents the interests of the big corporations
who are the real, but minority, ruling class in Australia. They will
take any measure to retain their economic and political power and are in
the process of taking away the democratic rights that have been won and
established in Australia over the last 100 years or more.
They have already provided themselves with the "legal" means by which to
persecute all opposition by given sweeping powers to the police and
so-called "security" organisations to arrest and jail those they
consider to be a threat to their power and control.
Not only are the people of the world being threatened with endless war
but also with fascist-type laws which have the aim of silencing dissent
so that no voice and no opinion other than that of the ruling class is
heard in Australia.
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