ASIO Harassment

Originally published by Green Left Weekly. 

On Tuesday the 16^th of April, I received a knock on the door from two members of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, better known as ASIO.

The two told me they would like to have a conversation. When I asked what they wanted to speak about, they told me they were doing their job - protecting national security – and had a few questions about my involvement in activism in Sydney.

Apparently the latest threat to national security is “political violence” in the activist community. As a Palestine solidarity activist involved in organising the Sydney rally to commemorate Nakba (the catastrophe, when the state of Israel was created and Palestinians dispossessed) the agents wanted to speak to me about any concerns I might have, or for me to identify any individuals who I was worried might be responsible for acts of political violence.

I replied that the only fears of violence that I had from my involvement in Palestine solidarity activism were from the far right groups and individuals who often organise counter mobilisations – or simply send threatening and intimidatory emails, messages and phone calls in an attempt to stop or derail our protests and other events.

I was also questioned by the employees about the recent rally against police violence at Mardi Gras – which I didn’t attend – and the picket lines at the University of Sydney, where I study, organised by the National Tertiary Education Union. Once again, my answer was that the only violence I have seen in my time as an activist has been initiated by those seeking to silence our right to protest. 

 

In the case of Sydney University, this comes from members of the “Public Order and Riot” Squad of the NSW Police force, who have been sentin to break up the picket and other protests to defend education and student rights. At the latest picket, they were responsible for breaking one student's leg and another's ribs.

Other people in Sydney and Melbourne involved in campaign groups have also been approached by ASIO and asked not to speak about these visits.

In a context of the “war on terror” overseas — which has involved Australian troops involved in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past decade — there is a war on civil liberties at home.

ASIO’s mandate is broad and without scrutiny. The organisation is responsible for providing security assessment for refugees seeking asylum in Australia, with no public oversight. Tamil asylum seeker Ranjini and her two sons are locked up in Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre because ASIO decided she is a “security risk”.

 

Security organisations have had their powers expanded and budgets increased by Labor and Coalition governments, and consequently have increased their monitoring of Australians.

As $900 million is being slashed from our universities through an “efficiency dividend”, the new ASIO headquarter building in Canberra is facing yet another costly delay in opening. After being estimated to cost $460 million when construction began under the Howard government, the full price tag is now being estimated at over$631 million dollars – over 2/3 of the university cuts.

Construction has had no parliamentary oversight, and there was no public consultation.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979 (the ASIO Act) even makes it illegal to publish the identity of any officer, agent or employee of the organisation. 

Last year, Green Left Weekly reported on activists involved in pro-Palestine and pro-Tamil solidarity campaigns in Adelaide who had also been visited by South Australian Police working in “security and intelligence”.

These visits are an attempt to intimidate people into ending their involvement in legitimate political organisations. Organising and attending demonstrations is not illegal and people involved in these activities should not be monitored by ASIO.

There is no law that prevents people from speaking publicly about a visit from ASIO. Shining a light on these practices is important to show that we will not be intimidated into exercising our democratic right to protest.

If the powers that be were serious about national security, they might abolish this spy agency - and withdraw our troops from the costly and unjustifiable occupation of Afghanistan - instead of harassing activists who are only exercising their democratic right to protest.

Not a Moment of Silence, but a Lifetime of Struggle.

There's been a lot of talk amongst activist circles about death lately - from the brutal murder of Mustafa Tamimi by the IDF to the passing of the late Christopher Hitchens which has certainly created some intense debate. To me, no death is more or less important than any other; but I'd like to take a moment to say a few things about one in particular which I think resonate with certain truths.

Sometimes, in death someone speaks power to truth in ways which they never could have dreamed of doing through their lives. A year ago today, a man did just this when he set off a chain of events that would lead to his death. Perhaps for him, his act was driven by shame, or desperation, or sheer hopelessness. I certainly don't agree with claims such those made by this report by CNN, which states that his death was "a cry for dignity, justice, and opportunity". Yet his desperate act spoke to the many injustices that the people of his nation and region had suffered for far too long. It spoke to the intolerable cruelty of police states, and the obedient cruelty of those people who make themselves cogs in the machinery of such states. It spoke to the sheer inhuman cruelty of IMF and World Bank policies that split Tunisia into three zones of varying degrees of economic exploitation and in this way denied millions the right to decent fulfilling employment. And above all, it spoke to the cruelty of the global capitalist system, which is built on human suffering just a shade less than slavery.

Just as the confiscation of his vegetable cart became his final straw, Mohamed Bouazizi's death became the final straw for the Tunisian people. Perhaps it's not entirely accurate to call Tunisia's revolution or the Arab Spring it inspired his legacy, when the cruelty was bound to lead to an expression at some point. Yet his desperate act certainly galvanised and strengthened the resolve of all those who knew the regime's cruelty. And it spoke not just to the cruelty of the regime and the situation, but the intolerabe injustice of it - and this realisation, that the situation created by neoliberal capitalism for the majority world is not just unjust, but intolerably and impossibly injust, proved the necessary catalyst to bring down Ben Ali.

Now that "the Protester" has been named the Time Person of the Year, the global capitalist media has come out to continue their campaign of distortion against the revolutionary movements of Tunisia and Egypt, just as they did during the two recent elections. Events like the Bardo sit-in, which don't fit with the narrative that the Tunisians just wanted the right to free and fair elections and to get rid of a few scapegoats - and everything can go back to normal now as soon as the "unrest" of ongoing protests and strikes is over - are ignored.

Yet we should take this December 17 to remember that nothing has changed, that the intolerable cruelty is the same in Tunisia. Even if the provincial poor have the right to vote, they are still poor, the same corrupt officials and police are still hassling them, and the same IMF & World Bank are still presiding over the whole affair. We sitting here on our laptops and smartphones in the first world are still consuming the majority of the world's resources while people are dying of hunger and thirst and curable diseases (unlike Christopher Hitchens, who died of cancer - which itself speaks to the injustice of a world where curable diseases generally get cured for the few and generally don't for the majority). And until a lot more people say no more, take Bouazizi's desperate act as their nadir, and refuse to tolerate the injustice of this system any further, then nothing is going to change.

For our Dead and Disappeared, Not a Moment of Silence, But a Lifetime of Struggle (http://neanarchist.net/sinfronteras/about)