It’s easy to sit here in our Crikey ivory towers sipping sharia-compliant champagne while we ponder why 800 police officers are required for raids that yield a handful of arrests across three cities. But we can’t help but notice that all the fuss about lone-wolf, suspected Muslim terrorists has been somewhat absent in other cases.
I’ve been seriously trying not to be cynical about the Abbott government’s mini-Domestic-War-On-Terror-Suspects and almost succeeded when I noticed a piece published in yesterday’s Canberra Times. At a time when deceased teenage suspect Numan Haider was a mere toddler, a suspected war criminal named Krunoslav Bonic was openly and comfortably living in Canberra within 30 minutes of the Federal Police HQ.
In the grand scheme of horrors that was the 1990s’ Balkan Wars — horrors committed on all sides that include concentration camps, mass murders in cities and towns like Srebrenica, gang rapes of civilian women, ethnic cleansing, etc — Bonic’s crimes aren’t at the most gruesome end.
Bonic is not accused of orchestrating the gang rapes of girls as young as 12. He was not part of a force that massacred 8000 men and boys over a few days. He did not hold emaciated civilians to be beaten and tortured in concentration camps. It isn’t suggested that he destroyed world heritage monuments such as the famous 16th-century Ottoman Stari Most Bridge.
The War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague has heard evidence that Bonic cut the ears and other bodily parts off dead soldiers to make money. He also rounded up and beat civilians.
True, it’s only a tad worse than the actions of our allies at Abu Ghraib. But if the evidence survives court scrutiny, Bonic’s alleged actions would almost certainly constitute war crimes. He would be yet another war criminal our authorities ignored in favour of pursuing potential terrorists.
One would hope that pursuing potential war criminals would also warrant a media circus, even if (in the case of ACT-based Bonic) only worthy of a few local Canberra newspapers. War criminals do matter, and not just as friendly hosts to our asylum seekers.
“I’ve been seriously trying not to be cynical about the Abbott government’s mini-Domestic-War-On-Terror-Suspects…”
That’s as good a working definition of cognitive dissonance as any…
Nice bit of ‘waddaboutism’ – can we just agree that skyfairies & nationalism are no better than racism?
Of course the ultimate war crimes are genocide and the illegal invasion of another country.
The war criminal and politically dominant Australian Coalition and Labor Right (aka the Lib-Labs or Liberal-Laborals) back the anti-Arab anti-Semitic , Islamophobic and indeed anti-Jewish anti-Semitic racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel and their Western backers variously involved in the ongoing Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Genocide, Somali Genocide, Afghan Genocide and the Muslim Genocide associated, so far, with deaths from violence or violently –imposed deprivation totalling, respectively, 2 million (since 1936), 4.6 million (since 1990), 2.2 million (since 1992), 5.5 million (since 2001) and 12 million (since 1990) (see “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ ).
The pro-war, pro-Zionist, US lackey anti-Arab anti-Semitic Australian Coalition Government with the backing of the cowardly, craven, pro-war, pro-Zionist, US lackey, anti-Arab anti-Semitic Labor Right (aka the Lib-Labs or Liberal –Laborals) have now resumed White Australia’s war criminal war on distant Iraq that commenced nearly 100 years ago in 1915 and which since 1990 has been associated with 4.6 million Iraqi deaths from violence (1.7million) or from violently-imposed deprivation (2.9 million). 2 million Iraqi under-5 year old Iraqi infants have died since 1990, 90% avoidable and due to gross violation of the Geneva Convention by the US Alliance and Lib-Lab Australia (see ”Iraqi Holocaust Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ ).
This latest Australian invasion of Iraq (the first was in 1915) grossly violates International Law in a dozen ways but principally because (a) Iraq has not invaded Australia, (b) there is no UN sanction and (c) as for “Iraqi government permission” there are 3 governments in Iraq, namely IS, the Kurds and the US invader-installed Shia Government in Baghdad (see Gideon Polya, “Obama Iraq War And Obama Syrian War Will Both Involve US Alliance In 12 Types Of War Crimes”, Countercurrents, 13 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya130914.htm ).
Decent pro-peace, anti-racism, pro-International Law Australians will utterly reject the war criminal, genocidal, child-killing, anti-Arab anti-Semitic Coalition and Labor Right (aka the Lib-labs or Liberal-Laborals), vote 1 Green and put the Coalition last (there are a couple of decent, anti-racist Labor MPs decent Australians can vote for e.g. Melissa Parke from WA and Maria Vamvakinou from Melbourne).