Gitmo Detainees

So now we (Australia that is) have been asked, twice by the US, if Australia will accept ‘a few’ Gitmo detainees. Why not? For starters many, if not most should never have been sent to Guantanamo Bay in the first place – quite a few have been released without charge. Certainly some of them have engaged in very serious ‘anti-social’ activities in Afghanistan and other locations but as I have said many times before, look at the reason why these people engage in such activities! People normally do not choose to do what they are alleged to have done without (in their estimation) a just cause.

Apart from a few criminal elements, which are found everywhere not just amongst the Arabs, people do not normally kill others or destroy property without considerable provocation. In their (the Gitmo detainees and others) eyes ‘they’ – brother Arabs in Palestine - have been disenfranchised; they have no land which is a fundamental right for normal human happiness and security. They are refugees living in incredibly overcrowded conditions in Gaza. Their rights as human beings are being denied; they have little or no fresh water or food; hospitals have run out of medical supplies; they have limited electricity and worst of all they are being subjected to ‘group’ punishment by the Israelis, which is prohibited by the UN. There is nothing ethical about the treatment of those in Gaza or in Gitmo. Those now held at Gitmo and others, feel sympathy towards their brother Arabs. Who can blame them?

While I certainly do not condone the methods they employ, much of what they do is born of frustration in that no one, who does not have a vested interest, has really listened to their complaints – not for sixty years at least. No one has sat down with the Arabs and said, “Ok. The situation in Gaza is X, we, the non-Arab countries in the Middle East would like Y, what do you want? Let’s work from this point forward?” Where there is a Will, there is a Way.

The Israelis and the Americans have to wake up and realise that they are part of the problem. People cannot be treated as trash without there being some consequences. The Law of Cause and Effect cannot be evaded, cannot be avoided – every action or deed has a consequence. It must be so. As individuals we cannot possible envisage the consequences of EVERYTHING we do. There will be consequences, without a doubt – positive and negative; some will be immediately apparent; some may take many years to ‘work through the system’. The only certainty is that somewhere down the line the initiator of the deed or action will themselves be affected – that is only fair.

To get back to the original question “Why not accept some Gitmo detainees in Australia?” Indeed why not? Give them a chance; give them back their humanity, their dignity and their pride. Allow them to develop as human beings in their own way. Draw a line in the sand and say, “What happened in recent history was unfair and unjust and in many respects unconscionable but it is history and cannot be changed. You are here now – in Australia (or wherever) – what do you, as a human being, want to now become?” There is nothing wrong with being an Arab. There is nothing wrong with being a Muslim. They may be ‘different’ to us White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Australians or Americans but then we are ‘different’ to them too!

The only way, and I repeat only, is to treat others the way you would like to be treated. There is no other viable alternative.