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Last week, Javier Rebolledo, an investigative journalist specialising in uncovering dictatorship era crimes, was taken to court by a convicted torturer and former member of Pinochet's secret police. It is an act of political violence against a committed journalist. Chile needs people like Rebolledo if memory is to survive.
In the early hours of a brand new year, two small boys had their lives extinguished by a purportedly depressed father. For me this event brought to mind two cases from a past life, when I was the manager of Melbourne Lifeline. One was a woman who disclosed that she had killed her two small children a decade earlier. In a second case, a belligerent suicidal man expressed rage towards his former partner, who was about to remarry. I asked pertinent questions. Would he harm his children? 'Yes.'
Ministerial discretion over citizenship can't replace court processes. Such executive overreach, which contradicts democratic principle, has already found expression in law. From July 1st, workers involved in immigration detention, including doctors and teachers, are subject to two years imprisonment for speaking publicly about what they witness. In other words, whistleblowing has been penalised.
Judgmental attitudes towards women who are victims of male violence are never far from the surface. A crass example occurred recently when a priest suggested to his congregation that if rape-murder victim Jill Meagher had been more ‘faith-filled’ she would have been home instead of out late on the night when she was raped and murdered. There is greater public moral outrage when acts of violence are committed against women considered 'virtuous' than others such as sex industry workers.
The naming of participating in women's ordination as a crime against faith os disconcerting. I recently attended the ordination of a woman friend in another church. The celebration was prayerful and joyful, and promised to be the prelude to a fruitful ministry by faithful and committed candidates.
Eventually the Vatican will have to stand in solidarity with the victims of abuse. The Church is capable of acting well and badly. To separate individuals from the Church diminishes the responsibility of the whole body.
Two Aboriginal men are currently being held in immigration detention under threat of deportation because they are not Australian citizens. The case raises far-reaching implications concerning the status of the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and the state.
Might the experience of humiliation open the possibility of turning out to others instead of in on oneself? Might it seed compassion for others in their humiliation, and lead in turn to a society more sensitive to the wounds that humiliation causes both to the humiliated and the bystanders?
If we wish to persuade the public that a group of people is being treated unjustly, we portray them as innocent victims. We represent them as a class and as virtuous in order to change public opinion. Stories of violent behaviour by members of the group, however, reveal the reality that no group is uniformly composed of the virtuous and innocent.
Assange's latest court appearance coincided with the launch of the Right to Know campaign, backed by the major press organisations in Australia as well as the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. To its immense credit, the MEAA has consistently defended him. But many prominent Australian journalists have not.
No-one should be fooled: the politicians and commentators who condemn civil disobedience are the same politicians and commentators who attack the UN for passing resolutions on carbon; who tell scientists to get back to the lab when they speak out on politics; who do everything they can to keep climate out of the parliament.
All of this has the hallmarks of danger. Previous US administrations have been cavalier with using stretched evidence, to justify military action. The region still labours with the fantasies that drove the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The dangers of misreading also extend to the cognitive failings of US foreign policy in the Middle East.
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