Jakarta bombing confirms Iraq intervention has increased the threat of terrorism: Troops home now!

September 9, 2004

“Today’s bomb blast outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta confirms what was already blindingly obvious”, Lisa Macdonald, Socialist Alliance co-convener and candidate for Reid, said today. “By involving Australia in Bush’s criminal war in Iraq, the Howard government has increased the risk of terrorist attacks on all of us, as federal police commissioner Mick Keelty warned.”

Macdonald condemned the attack in Jakarta and at the same time stressed that the bombing “showed that the Howard government’s ‘anti-terrorist’ legislation—fully supported by the ALP—does nothing to reduce the risk of terrorism at the same time as it contains dangerous attacks on everyone’s civil liberties.”

“George Bush and John Howard talk of the war on terror as something that may continue for decades”, Raul Bassi, Socialist Alliance national co-convener and candidate for Blaxland, said. “It’s as if there is a precise number of terrorists out there, and once they’re liquidated the problem of terrorism will cease to exist.

“But terrorists are not born with terrorist ideas, terrorists are produced by lives of poverty, repression and humiliation—the exact situation that Australia and the other occupying forces are imposing on Iraq”, Bassi stressed.

“In this way the Israelis perpetuate the Palestinian suicide bombings by their ongoing repression of the Palestinian people. And likewise, the Russians in Chechnya, with tragic consequences.”

Macdonald said: “These terrorist responses against civilians are horrific and counterproductive, but when all hope has been destroyed, people are reduced to hitting back with little regard for consequences.”

From this standpoint, the Socialist Alliance spokepeople concluded, “the ‘war on terror’ will only generate more terrorism. The only effective way to fight terrorism is by ending poverty and repression by providing economic aid and allowing political self-determination.”

Lisa Macdonald and Raul Bassi will be speaking at a special public meeting on the Howard government’s “anti-terrorism” legislation in Bankstown, this Saturday, September 11. For details see over.

For further information and interviews: Lisa Macdonald (0413 031 108) Raul Bassi (0403 037 376).

Special public meeting

Stop the ‘anti-terrorism’ laws!

Saturday September 11, 2-5pm

Bankstown Town Hall gallery (corner Chapel St & Rickard Rd)

“Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has refused to rule out using [US Guantanamo Bay-style] military commissions here in the war against terror.”—Sunday Telegraph, August 29.

Speakers

Kerry Nettle (Greens)

Aden Ridgeway (Australian Democrats)

Raul Bassi (Socialist Alliance)

NSW Council for Civil Liberties

Scott Poynting (author of Bin Laden in the Suburbs)

Canterbury-Bankstown Teachers Federation

Islamic Association of Western Sydney

Supreme Islamic Council of NSW

Lebanese Muslim Association

Muslims for Peace

Initiated by the Socialist Alliance and the Canterbury-Bankstown Peace Group .