Turning a deaf ear to suffering

It isn't really a question of turning a deaf ear to suffering. It is turning a deaf ear to wrongdoing by one's own government or thinking that torture was justified somehow by the war on terror, or that it would be wrong to "tie the hands" of those doing dirty work to supposedly keep us safe. It is turning a blind eye to the fact that terror suspects are denied legal protections that are supposed to be part of basic human rights in democracies.

Turning a deaf ear to suffering
Email Print Normal font Large font Nina Philadelphoff-Puren
June 16, 2007

The Australian Government is in denial about its role in the torture of one of its citizens, writes Nina Philadephoff-Puren.

PRIMO Levi, the great witness to the Holocaust, was plagued by a recurring nightmare while in Auschwitz. It would begin as an innocent dream. In it, he is sitting at a table with people who know him. With intense relief, he tells them of all that

had happened during his imprisonment: beatings, hunger, unspeakable suffering. But as his tale unfolds, he notices something dreadful — his audience is no longer paying attention. Unbearably, they have turned away from him, indifferent to his story. And at this point, Levi's nightmare begins: the nightmare of finally uttering his testimony, only to find that his listeners refuse to hear it.

This story highlights the moral responsibility of political communities to listen to those who allege that they have suffered terrible crimes. In the so-called war on terror, some communities have shown they can do this better than others. Consider the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen. He was tortured for a year in Syria after being taken into United States custody in New York. He was beaten, interrogated and made to sign false confessions, after a long confinement in a tiny cell that he described as "a grave". On his return to Canada without charge, he provided detailed testimony to Amnesty International about his deportation and incarceration. This led to a public inquiry into his allegations only four months later, which resulted in Arar receiving compensation and an apology from the Canadian Government.

In providing a public examination of his claims, the Canadians fulfilled their responsibility as ethical listeners. The Arar case begs comparison with Mamdouh Habib, detained in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere for more than three years without charge, before his release to Australia in January 2005.

Consider the following attempts to make Habib fall silent. Former Opposition Leader Kim Beazley opposed his request to address a Senate committee about his experiences in Guantanamo Bay. Former Education Minister Brendan Nelson condemned a university for permitting

him to speak to students about what had happened to him. Three men in Sydney stabbed him outside his home, saying only that "you better keep quiet".

This is a man possessed of dangerous words. Our democratic instincts should be aroused by these efforts to stop us hearing them. As the ABC's Four Corners program Ghost Prisoners revealed this week, the story he has to tell goes to the heart of our democratic society and its integrity.

Habib was arrested as a terrorist suspect in October 2001 and interrogated in Pakistan before being rendered to Egypt. He reports that he was then tortured for months: beaten, threatened with dogs and electric cattle-prods, locked in a tiny box and kept for hours in a room that was filled with water up to his chin. By the time he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay the following May, he was diagnosed with

post-traumatic stress disorder.

What is chilling about this story is that Habib says that an Australian official was present during at least one of his interrogation sessions, a claim the Government denies. Habib insists his Egyptian interrogators relied on information ASIO officers had taken from his house in Sydney.

As the Four Corners program indicated, this all raises disturbing and frankly disorienting questions. The Australian Government repeatedly said it could not confirm that Habib was in Egypt. Documents revealed on the Four Corners program suggest otherwise. It is clear that officers of both the Australian Federal Police and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade knew exactly where he was. If the Government knew that an Australian citizen was there, it should have rung alarm bells. It sends a chill down the spine to think that they did nothing.

Habib is currently suing the Commonwealth in the Federal Court, claiming that the Government was complicit in his kidnap, false imprisonment and torture. The Government has tried to have his case struck out. Beyond the serious legal ramifications of this situation, the cruelty of the official obfuscations in this matter cannot be overstated. It is well known that torture attacks the voice as well as the body. A key aspect in any torture survivor's recovery is the ability to tell their story and have it acknowledged. Years of government denials have deprived Habib of that recognition.

Against enormous odds, Mamdouh Habib continues to speak out about his ordeal. His testimony is troubling, disruptive and no doubt inconvenient. His claims strike at the heart of the integrity of our institutions, our relationship with the US and our conduct in the "war on terror".

Dr Nina Philadelphoff-Puren is a lecturer in the school of English, communications and performance studies at Monash University.