The sign was on the colonnade next to fish pond at University House, scene of quiet academic debate in Canberra for more than 30 years. The fish obeyed the sign. It was a brilliant Canberra winter’s day.
The meeting was the ANU Centre for International and Public Law’s conference on Australia and Human Rights.
Suddenly a hand-held megaphone shattered the quiet: “”What about human right in East Timor. Stop the genocide.”
Human rights were on test. The Foreign Minister, Senator Gareth Evans, was to address the conference.
Two protesters’ rights to free speech as amplified through a megaphone and later a whistle were to be pitted against the right of the 200 people in the audience to hear what Senator Evans had to say.
Senator Evans referred briefly to the contribution to uninterrupted debate from outside and then for more than half and hour spoke about human rights while the megaphone and whistle continued. Eventually, industrial deafness took over and the megaphone became an irrelevant background drone so one could concentrate on the speech. Only occasionally did the words “”East Timor”, or “”genocide” break through.
Senator Evans spoke of the growing internationalisation of human rights.
The international community was willing to take “”strong collective interventionist, and even punitive, measures in cases of widespread and gross human rights abuses, in circumstances which might in the past have been regarded as internal in character and thus beyond the reach of any such international action,” he said.
A new international-law principle was emerging of a humanitarian right to intervene. But knee-jerk reactions had to be avoided.
Immediate cuts in, for example, defence ties after human-rights breaches might be counter-productive as those ties were often a good way to influence and moderate behaviour. He sought more bilateral exchanges to promote human rights.
In making human-rights representations overseas, Australia had to focus on rights which were accepted as universal and to apply criticism consistently.
“”Consistency means simply adopting so far as possible the same approach to all cases of alleged human-rights abuse wherever they way occur, not picking and choosing between countries on other grounds.” he said.
In the past five years Australia had made more than 2300 official representations to 120 countries, including close allies like the US, major trading partners like Japan, China and Britain, near neighbours like Indonesia, paua New Guinea, Singapore and Indonesia.
Some states, which like Australia thought human rights were important, were not consistent. He did not name the states concerned, but said they “”provided military advisers or even arms to nationalist or “democratic’ governments or even opposition groups as part of their efforts to encourage the growth of democracy and thus of human rights,” but were less concerned with gross human-rights violations of allegedly “”non-democratic” forces.
Human-rights commentators other than Senator Evans have referred to this inconsistent application of human-rights concerns with special reference to the US.
Senator Evans said that to be credible Australia not only had to sign international agreements but had to acknowledge our own deficiencies and do something about them.
On Timor, Senator Evans said the invasion and integration in 1975 was indefensible and unjustifiable. But as a practical matter is was impossible to expect Indonesia to reverse it. It would result in other Indonesian minorities wanting to do the same thing. Recognising that, Australia was in a better position to convince Indonesia to improve the situation for the people on the ground.
The Dili massacre of November last year was an appalling case of human-rights abuse. But it was not state policy, like in China and Burma. It was an aberrant and extreme conduct by a section of the military.
Indonesian authorities, on Indonesian standards, had reacted far more strongly than ever before. The President, General Suharto, had distanced himself from the military’s conduct in an unprecedented way.
That being the case, Australia did not think it appropriate to engage in a knee-jerk reaction. It was a watershed after which things would hopefully improve.
He accepted that the outcome had not been perfect. According to reports from Indonesia, members of the military were given sentences not higher than 18 months, but one demonstration organiser got life and other up to 15 years.
Senator Evans said the disparity had been explained by the Indonesians by the fragility of the state and the fact there were two different systems of law under which the two groups were tried.
He referred to the difference between the sentences as an “”unhappy disparity.”
Outside, the two demonstrators keep up their megaphoned message about “”genocide in East Timor” for some time after Senator Evans had left by another exit.