INTRO
My name is Bryan Law, I'm 53 years old. I'm a husband, a father, and a nonviolent social justice activist. I drive a taxi in Cairns for money.
You already know what's involved in family life, and how rewarding/challenging it can be. Most of you will know a little bit about the theory and practice of nonviolence. You'll have heard of Mohandas Gandhi, and of Martin Luther King Jr as giant practitioners of an invigorated form of spiritual nonviolence in the 20th Century. Fewer of you will have read and heard about Dorothy Day as a founder of the Catholic Worker movement in contemporary USA, and around the world.
During this trial, I'll be spending some time presenting evidence about spiritual nonviolence and its relevance to our lives today - because it's central, absolutely central, to why and how I carried out the entry into Pine Gap for which I'm now on trial.
Many of you are Christians, at least nominally, and you'll be aware of the loving nonviolent Jesus in the Gospels. Love one another. Love your enemy. While I was baptised and confirmed in the Anglican church, I became apostate for a period in my late teens and twenties. My pathway back to Christian values came from India via the USA.
I began concientously to adopt the principles and practices of what I call Gandhian nonviolence in 1981, in Brisbane, while I was studying at Griffith University. For 25 years since, I've developed and refined my ability to understand and practise Gandhian nonviolence. The Citizen's Inspection of Pine Gap by Christians Against ALL Terrorism on 9 December 2005 was in many ways the culmination of all my learning and practice. That is the act for which I and my friends are on trial today.
I got my Bachelor's degree from Griffith University, in Modern Asian studies, and went on to do some post-graduate work. My field of interest in the last few years of University was strategic weapons sytems and security issues in the Asia/Pacific basin. I was aware of the existance and role of Pine Gap then. I met Professor Des Ball then. I was looking for a practical program in how to disarm.
I can't explain why it is so, but since I was 10 years old and US President Kennedy was assassinated, I have had an abiding interest in the politics of peace, of how to achieve international systems of peace. Since I adopted Gandhian nonviolence I can document a consistant and persistant involvement in community-based campaigns to transform the machinery of war into equipment for harmonious society.
The Biblical authority is Isaiah 2:4 : "
In secular thinking the process is called Peace Conversion, and in relation to Pine Gap it involves transforming the ownership and use of the base - using it for arms control and not for inflicting terror. It's an important point to remember that Christians Against ALL Terrorism does not call for Pine Gap to be dismantled, but to be transformed and brought under United Nations control. We say strip it of its present war-fighting and terror-waging role, and make it a force for world peace. I'd like you to remember this point as we proceed through the trial. It's important.
I'd also like you to understand that our actions are not isolated instances of frustration and despair welling up as some kind of futile protest action. I know that some people are driven to such actions, and that it's a common stereotype of peace activists as being a few sandwiches short of a picnic when it comes to knowledge and judgement. Elements of the media (all of the Murdoch media) portray us that way regularly. In February 2003, when hundreds of thousands of Australians demonstrated against the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Prime Minister John Howard labelled us as "the mob" and dismissed our thinking out of hand.
We are better people than John Howard gives us credit for.
There's no denying that I and my friends can experience immense frustration as we see the violence in our world - we can be frustrated, but we do not despair. We act. We act with a plan. We believe in the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi - to transform hate into love, and war into peace. To act as a force for good in the world. We act as part of a global peace community that is building the resource to end war and promote effective reconciliation and social justice. I can and will demonstrate to you during this trial that nonviolence is a most powerful tool for achieving practical results.
Our Citizens' Inspection of Pine Gap in December 2005 was deliberately, rationally calculated to materially intervene into the war-fighting operation of Pine Gap, under the public gaze. It is in turn part of a wider effective campaign to limit the damage from war in Iraq in the short term, end the war in the middle east in the medium term, and bring about global disarmament along the way. We can prove how serious and talented we are by showing how our daggy little group of ordinary citizens invaded the inner compound of the most sensitive and best guarded military base in Australia. After we told them who we were, and when we'd be coming. What we'd be doing - and then doing it. Setting new standards for political honesty in Australia. The authorities didn't do so well.
Now I imagine that you'll hear once or twice from the prosecution that this is all irrelevant to the case in front of you, which is based solely on whether or not we defendents were at a certain place, at a certain time, without a permission slip or authority issued by the appropriate bureaucrat.
What Pine Gap does, they will say, is irrelevant to the charges, and is something which should not be aired in this Court for reasons of national security. Pine Gap should be kept secret, because the government says so. The war in Iraq, they will say, is irrelevant to the charges. This is another issue in which government privilege is said to operate. Theirs the decision to go to war, whatever its purpose or consequence. Ours to bow and scrape.
Well, I can see why they'd think that. Keep things simple. Strip our act of all its context. Shield government from accountability. There's nothing too difficult to understand here.
But
You won't be surprised
I disagree.
The war in Iraq, Australia's involvement with the war in Iraq, and Australia's military alliance with the USA which got us into the war in Iraq, are growing emergent catastrophes for all of us.
A direct threat to civilians in Australia is the growing likelihood of a bloody terrorist attack in this country. Probably Melbourne or Sydney, but it could be anywhere. Maybe the Gold Coast. Maybe Cairns, where I and my family live. Maybe Alice Springs.
While horrible, this threat pales into insignificance when compared with the slaughter of innocents in Iraq. Ali Allawi, a former Iraqi defence minister estimate 250,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq and consequent breakdown in civil order. 250,000! My friend and colleague Donna Mulhearn will provide you with eye-witness testimony, as she provided eye-witness testimony to me in 2005, about the impacts and effects of this war on Iraqi civilians. Donna was in Baghdad in March 2003, and Falujah in April 2004. She is an eye-witness to US war crimes in Iraq.
The war in Iraq has created the unparallelled production, arming and training of para-militaries, guerillas, terrorists and gangsters to a severe and pervasive standard. In Iraq, throughout the middle east and around the world. My son's grandchildren may still be paying for that.
The war in Iraq is the first war being fought under the 2002 Bush Doctrine, and is indistinguishable from a war of aggression. Wars of aggression are crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. There is eminent opinion that the invasion of Iraq was illegal in international law.
I believe that all this amounts to a dire emergency in world affairs. Therefore and also in my community. An emergency which is unfolding like a train wreck. An emergency about which effective action may still be taken. You will see from the evidence in this trial that Christians Against ALL Terrorism decided to take this kind of action. Action which we will show to be both a proportionate and a reasonable response to the emergency confronting us. This constitutes the defence of "necessity".
"Well, so what?" the Prosecution will say. "We live in a Parliamentary democracy. If citizens disagree with a government policy, they have legitimate methods to affect change through the ballot box. They must not become vigilantes. Christians Against ALL Terrorism are vigilantes. There is no justification or excuse for their actions".
Well I say their is a justification for my action, and that justification begins with the illegitimate and criminal nature of the Howard so-called government of Australia.
I'm 53 years old, and I've lived all my life in Australia.
The Parliamentary democracy I grew up in regulated the power of the executive through a a convention of Ministerial accountability - whereby a Minister might lie to the public as much as they like, but they could not lie to Parliament, and must resign if found to have exercised insufficient care in meeting their responsibilities.
That convention has disappeared under the Howard government.
I remember February 4 2003 when Prime Minister Howard told the Parliament that the Australian government "knew" (the Australian government "knows") that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction, and was working actively to acquire nuclear weapons. A gross and deliberate lie. A knowing lie. 250,000 dead civilians. A country in ruin. That's not Parliamenatry democracy. That's criminal conspiracy.
Nor is it Parliamentary democracy when civil servants are politicised and rewarded/bullied according to how well they toe the government line. It appears that elements within ASIO and ONA were prepared to doctor intelligence so that it supported the government's political conclusion. Andrew Wilkie can tell you about that. AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty was swiftly brought to heel (by the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff) in 2004 after saying that our involvement in Iraq made us a bigger terrorist target. Which Wheat Board was it bribed Saddam Husseign with $300 mil?
The Howard government has corrupted more than one of the conventions protecting our Parliamentary democracy, and is simply unavailable for policy change using the more traditional methods of lobbying, or vote touting, or public demonstration alone. The times compel civil disobedience.
I'm not just saying this as just a matter of speculation.
Since November 2001 I and various friends formed a local peace group in Cairns, and used every available method of standard political influence. All documented on our web-site. www.cairnspeacebypeace.org In February 2003 when activists world-wide collectively acheived a massive display of public majority opposition to the coming invasion, when hundreds of thousands marched in Australia, John Howard called us a mob. He had Rupert Murdoch on his side, so I guess he felt pretty safe election-wise. (Rupert thought the war would bring the prices of oil down to $20/barrel).
We're still organising today. Letters go unanswered, lies keep coming. I'm connected to the Internet, so I can monitor the global situation. Lies get exposed, but they don't stop coming. Have you heard the one about "the surge is working"?
As citizens, you know for yourselves the condition of our democracy today.
And you must also know by now that the decision by John Howard to join the Coalition of the Killing and invade Iraq is not the legitimate decision of a legitimate government, it is the mad act of a radical usurper. John Howard's New Order in Australia is fascistic - nationalism and militarism combined, with civil liberties reduced.
Fortunately there are nonviolent methods within democracy which are able to correct for usurpers like these. Not only is nonviolence a tool for waging peace, it's also a tool for building and re-building democracy. It depends on how many people take it up, and how well organised they are.
In the USA we've seen the Boston Tea Party, the Civil Rights movement, and the US Peace Movement itself - which has now, after five years' determined effort, organised a change in both houses of their parliament to one which will both withdraw from Iraq when able, and defeat the neo-con presidency in 2008.
Many peace groups in the USA have used civil disobedience as part of this campaign which has achieved parliamentary change. Some acts have been purely symbolic, such as getting arrested trying to deliver a petition to the Whitehouse. Some have been strongly interventionary, such as damaging military equipment bound for Iraq. Our Citizens' Inspection of Pine Gap is at the conservative end of the interventionary spectrum.
We'll give you plenty of evidence about the open, respectful, truthful and nonviolent nature of our action during the course of this trial, as will all the prosecution witnesses. We follow Christ's direction to love our enemies. We wish more did.
Now, speaking just for myself, I'm happy to acknowledge and agree to many of the facts as alleged by the prosecution.
I was happy to acknowledge them in the interview I gave Northern Territory Police at Alice Springs watch-house some hours after my arrest on 9 December 2005. Indeed, I was happy to predict them at a speech I made at a public meeting at the Arid Lands Environment Centre on 6 December 2005, 3 days before our arrest. You'll hear evidence about this meeting from Federal Agent David Perry, who came from Darwin to attend our public meeting covertly and gather evidence. Indeed you'll see the evidence he gathered, and hear about the report he made to Inspector Ken Napier of the Australian Federal Police.
You may hear evidence about the presence of ASIO at Pine Gap, and their surveillance of nonviolent political dissidents in Australia.
I understand clearly that the government wishes to keep information about Pine Gap as secret as it can - from the Australian people. I understand that way back in 1967 Defence Minister Alan Fairhall declared an area around Pine Gap to be a prohibited area under Section 8 of the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act of 1952. I agree that we were warned by Defence Minister Robert Hill in 2005 that our proposed inspection could draw prosecution under that Act and Declaration. I agree that efforts to reason with Minister Hill proved fruitless, and that I and others entered what is said to be the Pine Gap prohibited area, at various times in the early hours of 9 December 2005. I agree that I cut such fences as were necessary to affect entrance into the Pine Gap terror base. I'm glad I did it. I had reasons for doing it. If I must, I'll do it again.
Where I disgree with the prosecution is that I believe I had a lawful justification for being there, which constitutes a legal excuse to the charges laid against me.
I was compelled to take some action out of necessity to avoid or ameliorate the imminant dire consequences (loss of life/others and property) arising out of the extraordinary emergency created by Australian participation in the war in Iraq. Under all the circumstances, the best action I could organise to take was the Citizen's inspection of Pine Gap on 9 December 2005. I say that it's a rational and reasonable way to achieve withdrawal and disarmament - as part of a coherent and effective peace movement which is hard at work all around the world right now.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury - this is your chance to think deeply and speak clearly. If you agree that the atrocities that were committed and are still being committed in Iraq represent the kind of heinous and demonic war crimes that I see them as, and that under those circumstances our response to it is a reasonable and proportionate response calculated to end the emergency, you must vote Not Guilty. You'll not only acquit us from serious criminal charges, but you'll send a message around the world about what's right and just in the year of Our Lord 2007.
It's right and just that citizens of good conscience take whatever action is available to them to bring this stupid, bloody and criminal war to a speedy end.
Cheers
Bryan
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