|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: War & Peace |
|
Australian media commentator silenced on war crimes in Fallujah |
Current rating: 4 |
by posted with Tony Kevin's permission
(No verified email address) |
10 Nov 2004
|
|
Australian writer, ex-diplomat Tony Kevin, perhaps best known in recent years for his determined efforts to uncover the truth behind the sabotage and sinking of the refugee boat SIEVX, has been silenced by crypto-techno disturbances, as he was due to speak out about the US assault on the citizens of Fallujah today. Kevin wonders to what extent Australian security authorities might be involved in, or might have authorised, this interference with his right to free speech, and CNN's right as an America-based international television broadcaster to broadcast his view that the present US attack on Fallujah is a war crime ? |
Media Release, 10 November 2004
Author: Tony Kevin
Technical disruption of a CNN interview with Tony Kevin, regarding what is happening in Fallujah
This morning, sophisticated technical means were used to disrupt a scheduled and pre-announced CNN International television news interview with me at 11.35 am Australian time, that had been requested and arranged yesterday by CNN Hong Kong, following the publication of my controversial opinion piece in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, 9 November 2004:
"All the makings of a war crime - with Australia silently onside", by Tony Kevin
The text is still accessible on-line (capture it while you can) at
http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/11/08/1099781320025.html
I do not know whether Australian or United States technical security agencies, or a combination of the two, were involved in or sanctioned this interference, which left the technical staff of CNN Hong Kong and of the ANU Video-Conferencing Facility entirely non-plussed.
Both offices have extensive and sophisticated fail-safe systems in place, including multiple channels and numbers. Nothing worked, though they tried for over an hour to establish a two-way video connection. ANU technical staff told me they had never encountered a problem like this before - it was outside their normal experience.
The managerial response at CNN Hong Kong was disturbing also. Initially, CNN staff in Hong Kong set up a fall-back audio telephone link which I was happy to use.
That link was working perfectly, but then it appears that the CNN Head Office in Atlanta, USA instructed the Hong Kong Station Managing Editor, Paul Cutler, that station policy was not to do telephone-audio recording.
I was flatly told by Cutler, personally and with apologies, that the interview was cancelled.
I resisted this strenuously, noting that the interview had already been announced on CNN a few minutes before I was due to go on air (I heard the pre-announcement) and that the station's reputation as a free public broadcaster was at stake.
As a result, CNN Hong Kong tried unsuccessfully to re-establish the video connection for the 12.35 pm slot. Again, the connection was inoperable.
The initial program producer, Natalie Jacob- Scharli, then left me a phone message saying that CNN Hong Kong would try to reschedule the interview in coming days. We shall see.
I am frightened to think that my own small voice can be so threatening to those who are now killing large numbers of innocent Iraqi civilians in Fallujah, and destroying what is left of their city , that they have to try to block me from reaching a CNN international audience.
I wonder to what extent Australian security authorities might be involved in, or might have authorised, this interference with my right as an Australian citizen to free speech, and CNN's right as an America-based international television broadcaster to broadcast my view that the present US attack on Fallujah is a war crime ?
The only way to defend our freedom is to exercise it. I am exercising my freedom as an Australian in putting out this media release on this very unsettling incident.
I hope Australian media will exercise their freedom by reporting this and following it up.
For further enquiries and documentation:
Tony Kevin 02 6295 6588 or 0414 822 171.
Email tonykevin (at) webone.com.au
website www.tonykevin.com
--------------------------------------------
The article in the SMH
"All the makings of a war crime - with Australia silently onside" by Tony Kevin
November 9, 2004
http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/11/08/1099781320025.html
A US-led attack on the Iraqi Sunni-stronghold will breach the Geneva conventions, writes Tony Kevin.
We need to be clear on what is about to happen in the Iraqi city of Falluja, about 64 kilometres west of Baghdad and a key centre of Sunni population in Iraq. This city has for many months held out as a centre of Sunni-based political-military resistance, refusing to accept the authority either of the former US-led occupying authority nor, since July, of the interim Iraqi administration led by the Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi.
Falluja is now to be brought to heel by overwhelming military power. As I write this, the US attack on the city has begun. The message to Falluja from the US armed forces in Iraq and from Allawi was brutally simple: submit now to Baghdad's authority or face attack.
It is still possible that resistance in Falluja will melt away in the face of US attack. While this would be a more optimistic scenario, I think it more likely at this point that the insurgents will fight, because too much is at stake politically for them to accept a bloodless Allawi victory. I look here at the - in my judgement, now more likely - scenario that Falluja insurgents will dig in and defy the invasion force.
What I believe is then likely to be done to Falluja will be a war crime and crime against humanity, morally indefensible by any civilised standard or for that matter, by the Statute of the International Criminal Court (to which, conveniently, neither the US nor Iraqi Government adheres).
This will be no neat, surgical strike. To get the measure of this, think of the Warsaw rising in 1944, or the Russian Army's destruction of the Chechen capital, Grozny. In 1999 this already battered city (of originally 400,000 people) was finally destroyed by massive Russian bombardment. Today, insurgents still fight it out with Russian troops among the ruins.
Eighteen months ago, before the US-led invasion of Iraq, Falluja was a living city of 300,000 people. Now - depopulated of most of its civilians by intimidation and fear - what is left looks like it is about to be blasted out of existence, simply as a demonstration of overwhelming US power in Iraq.
Of course, the US Army has been for weeks "humanely" encouraging women and children to leave the encircled city through checkpoints while there is still time to save their lives.
The Russians did the same before and during the destruction of Grozny. In a few days, as the battle and the flight of civilians expands, there may be tens of thousands of new refugees in tent cities, and tens of thousands of women left without husbands, and children left without fathers.
If this attack goes ahead as appears inevitable, it will obviously breach the laws of war and the Geneva conventions. First, it will grossly exceed proportionality in terms of ends and means. What intended political or military objective could justify so much death, the creation of so many new refugees, and wholesale destruction of homes?
What threat does the city of Falluja pose to the Iraqi state at this point? Allawi has claimed that free elections cannot take place unless Falluja is subdued. What a spurious argument.
The truth is that this city, which has become a symbol of Sunni-Iraqi political resistance to the occupiers, is to be made an example of, to deter others. The message the siege of Falluja sends is brutally simple: resist us and we will destroy you. It is the same message that the Wehrmacht sent in Warsaw in 1944, and the Russian Army in Grozny in 1999.
This attack will also violate the rules of war and the Geneva conventions in having grossly indiscriminate effects on civilians and civilian homes and infrastructure. America's largely untrained in battle but over-armed forces will start their attack "humanely", but as they inevitably take numbers of lethal casualties, their tactics will quickly escalate to indiscriminate bombing and shelling of the city using their WMD armouries.
Eventually, the attackers will flatten the city and kill everyone that still resists in it. Falluja will be the Iraqi people's Masada, and it will sow seeds of deep anti-Western hatred in the Middle East for decades to come.
The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, understands all this, in pleading for a negotiated solution. And as usual, Washington is summarily ignoring his pleas.
As a military ally with our troops in Iraq, Australia is morally implicated in this. While Australian former SAS commanders, the Governor-General, Major-General Michael Jeffery, and the Australian Christian Lobby's executive chairman, Brigadier Jim Wallace, moralise about abortions and gay marriages, Australia's military ally is about to destroy a living city and its families.
An unnamed US military commander in the tightening military ring around Falluja proudly boasted (as heard on ABC Radio yesterday) that this battle will go down in US military history as another Hue. Indeed it will - who can forget the wholesale artillery destruction of that sacred, historic Vietnamese city? "We had to destroy it in order to save it" was the line at the time. Now it looks like our military ally in Iraq is about to do it all over again in Falluja.
What are Australian political leaders - Government or Opposition - saying to Washington at this point? Are they saying anything at all? We reap what we sow.
Tony Kevin, a former Australian diplomat, is a visiting fellow at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. |
See also:
http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/11/08/1099781320025.html
http://www.tonykevin.com
|
This work is in the public domain |
|
Re: Australian media commentator silenced on war crimes in Fallujah |
by Tennessee Leeuwenburg
tennessee (nospam) tennessee.id.au (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
12 Nov 2004
|
I have lot lot of respect for the ability of technology to fail without being forced to do so.
Frankly, while I think the article itself contains a lot of truth, this opinion is hardly one that's unique. I don't see why the ubiquitous "they" would stuffing their finger in this particular hole in the dam wall.
That said, it does seem a little convenient. Hopefully free speech will prevail. Try ripping a local interview to disk and sending in the post... |
