Editorial – The Politics of Counter-Terrorism

Since 2001, over 40 security-related laws and statutes have been passed in Australia. Australia's internal security infrastructure, police and intelligence agencies have been expanded to an unprecedented degree. This special issue of Chain Reaction explores the impacts of this wave of counter-terrorism expansion and the challenges from Australia's civil society.

In late 2001, whilst governments throughout the Western world were hastily drafting counter-terrorism legislation in the wake of the September 11 attacks, human rights networks, legal and civil liberties organisations were quick to warn of the dangers of undermining basic rights and freedoms.

Six years later, these concerns have largely been realised. The war in Iraq has indeed escalated the global terror threat. Muslim communities are targeted and increasingly isolated. We have witnessed a startling overreach of executive power made possible by these laws.

Less visible has been the shrinking of our treasured and precious political space, the space within which we can safely voice our dissent and work for change. Restrictions on political space can be legal or political, as well as internal inhibitions. This political 'chill effect' limits our ability to take political action in subtle ways, silencing us, encouraging activists to reign in their own behaviour whilst preventing others from even becoming active.

Most explicitly, this shrinking of political space has been experienced by Muslims, as described by many of the contributors to this issue. Muslim people in Australia have felt the full brunt of this extraordinary legislative and policing mentality, and the resultant fear, isolation and insecurity as highlighted by Agnes Chong from the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network.  Marika Dias from the Federation of Community Legal Centres highlights the silencing of political and religious communications in Muslim communities. Nina Philadelphoff-Puren asserts, when discussing the silencing of Mamdouh Habib, "We must not turn away".

'Enemy creep' is a feature of counter-terrorism politics around the world – the gradual shift in the definition of terrorist to fit a widening circle of dissenters. We are seeing this in Australia. Asylum seekers have languished on islands and in camps for years on dubious national security grounds, while US peace activist Scott Parkin was deported due to a secret ASIO assessment. In 2006, Victorian police utilised counter-terror powers to search activists from the Black GST protest group. Environmental activists faced charges designed to thwart terror attacks on shipping. A political artist had public work removed unlawfully by local police on the grounds that it could be seditious. In 2007, the houses of activists associated with the G20 protests were raided by officers from a NSW counter-terror unit. The massive security operation surrounding the APEC summit in Sydney provided a chilling picture of how counter-terror laws and resources are increasingly shifting toward the containment of domestic protest movements.

None of this is happening in isolation from the economic or political context. Counter-terror laws are made in a world of vast socio- economic inequities, and at a time in which governments are highly aware of the social upheavals likely with rampant climate change.  Counter-terror initiatives are coordinated globally as an adjunct to decades of militarised corporate globalisation.

Since 2001, counter-terror regimes have been blatantly used by autocratic and democratic countries alike for the containment of internal conflict and liberation struggles. The listing of many overseas political organisations – including the Kurdish PKK, which poses no perceivable threat to Australia – as "terrorist organisations", and the recent charging of Aruran Vinayagamoorthy and Sivarajah Yathavan for allegedly "making funds available" to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka are prominent examples of Australia’s complicity in this.

But things are shifting. Five years ago David Hicks was largely ignored by the Australian public. It took years of dogged advocacy and mobilisation but public pressure was eventually brought to bear. These days, as we saw with Dr Haneef's detention earlier in 2007, the public response is a rapid mobilisation of concern and outrage. Australians are becoming sensitive to the complex injustices and human rights violations perpetrated in the name of our "security" – Hicks's five years of detention without trial, the injustice over Jack Thomas's control order, Scott Parkin's deportation, the treatment of the Barwon 13.

This shift in public response has largely been due to the tireless efforts of people like the contributors to this special issue of Chain Reaction and the organisations they represent. In effect, Australia’s counter terror- regime has been shadowed by an unprecedented campaign of popular human rights education.

Australian human rights, legal and civil liberties networks have been examining and challenging counter-terror laws. There have been senate enquiries, public meetings, forums, countless submissions made and now a growing list of legal challenges and defence strategies.  Numerous groups, such as Civil Rights Defence, have demonstrated the importance of grassroots street protests and defiant acts of public support.

This Chain Reaction issue represents a cross-section of this movement in Australia. Over six years a range of standpoints and strategies have emerged. Phil Lynch, from the Human Rights Law Resource Centre, highlights the importance of strengthening international human rights mechanisms and the role of the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council as it relates to Australia's counter-terror laws. 

Spencer Zifcak from New Matilda argues that the need for a human rights act is "more acute now than at any time since this country went through an eerily similar 'war on communism' fifty years ago". 

Other contributors highlight the continuing need for solidarity and support for those imprisoned, deported or swept up by politicised charges, national security hysteria, enemy creep, and those communities targeted and ostracised.

As activists we need to recognise that we are working in a changing environment. This means more than adopting safer and more security- conscious practices. Brian Martin discusses some basic initiatives that activists and groups can undertake to build resilience to increasing levels of political repression.

By working strategically and with a greater ability to mobilise the community, the array of legal bodies, human rights networks and grassroots activist groups can form a chain of protection against injustices in name of the "war on terror". But if we are to build movements capable of stopping wars and dangerous climate change, as Holly Creenaune warns, Australian social change movements must place the protection of our political space high on our agenda.

Anthony Kelly is the editor of <activistrights.org.au> and a trainer with Peace Brigades International. James Whelan is co-director of The Change Agency.