Rudd fails the test on human rights
Labor's leader will not stick to principles in his bid for election, write Ben Saul and Anish Bhasin.
THE memory of the victims of the Bali bombings does not demand Australian complicity in the execution of fellow human beings. Nothing is gained by responding to the cult of death, which animated the Bali terrorists with a culture of death of our own.
It also does a disservice to those who died at Bali to support killing in their name.
This week Kevin Rudd has dispelled the romantic view of the Labor Party as the party committed to human rights in Australia. The Labor leader overruled the nuanced approach of his foreign affairs spokesman with the crude assertion that "terrorists should rot in jail for the term of their natural lives and then one day be removed in a pine box".
Rudd would not intervene in support of a terrorist's life, although his government would still look after Australian citizens facing the death penalty overseas. It is not clear whether that policy would also protect an Australian terrorist on death row, where Rudd may be torn between his desire to see terrorists executed and the need to take care of our own (as in the case of David Hicks).
Australians should be abundantly clear about what a Rudd government would now stand for. It would be OK to execute Asians, Africans, Americans or Europeans but not Australians. It would be all right to execute terrorists, but not war criminals, genocidaires, murderers, rapists or drug traffickers.
While there is bipartisan opposition to the death penalty within Australia, the Rudd policy is premised on the arbitrary and xenophobic idea that Australian lives are worth more than the lives of foreigners. As a policy it is breathtakingly vengeful, crude, counterproductive and hypocritical.
It also entirely contradicts Rudd's previous position on the death penalty. In December 2005, he said in a doorstop interview that "Australia must work through the United Nations to abolish the death penalty universally" and that "whether we are talking about individuals in Iraq or Indonesia or elsewhere, our policy has to be consistent". In January this year, Rudd properly opposed the execution of Saddam Hussein.
The about-face in policy shows that Rudd is a fair-weather friend of human rights which is no friend at all. Human dignity is not something that can be surrendered for bad behaviour, traded away in a vengeful political climate obsessed by polling numbers, or eclipsed by a public sentiment of toxic retribution.
Human rights law is based on the fundamental idea that every human life is equally precious and entitled at all times to dignified treatment. Politicians are not entitled to pick and choose who they will bestow with rights and dignity, and from whom rights and dignity will be withdrawn.
A selective commitment to human rights, to the dignity of some but not others, is fatally at odds with the very idea of human rights, which values all human life equally. The bedrock of equal dignity explains why we do not shoot the disabled, or murder Jews, or beat up monks or imprison those with different political views. It also provides a sufficient moral reason not to execute terrorists, even though they appear to have taken themselves outside the bounds of all civilised behaviour.
Along with 60 other countries, Australia has signed an international treaty that requires it to abolish the death penalty in Australia, in a step towards protecting the human right to life. While there is no strict legal obligation to oppose the death penalty overseas, it is within the spirit of that treaty to do what we can to eliminate the death penalty everywhere.
In the Asian region, the death penalty is actively retained by at least 14 countries, including Australia's good friends Indonesia, Japan, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and China. There is much scope for Australian governments to play a quiet and constructive diplomatic role in encouraging more countries in our region to abolish the death penalty, without preaching.
Using our diplomats in this way may not increase our exports and create investment or gain access to new markets. But being Australian is about more than a commitment to economic growth and must surely include a non-negotiable belief in protecting the value of human life, and preventing governments from capriciously taking it away.
The failures of the death penalty are well known. As Rudd said in his 2005 interview, there is no "credible evidence" that it deters crime. It all too often kills the innocent. It frequently discriminates against minority races, juveniles, and those with a low IQ who may give false confessions.
It also deprives criminals of any chance of rehabilitation. Experience overseas shows that some rehabilitated terrorists have been extremely useful in re-educating other disaffected, vulnerable or radical young people to shun terrorist recruiters and turn away from any involvement in terrorist organisations.
Australians should be wary of a Labor leader willing to backslide on human rights. Already Labor has conspicuously failed to oppose drastic anti-terrorism laws, and continues to support the policy of mandatory immigration detention introduced by a previous Labor government and which has caused untold human suffering. It might be hoped that Rudd would offer a leadership of principle, not a leadership of death.
Ben Saul is director of the Sydney Centre for International Law at Sydney University. Anish Bhasin is an intern at the centre and worked on death penalty cases in Texas.