Divine Non-Intervention
So in Fiji, two men, including one Australian, are jailed for consensual sex, with the Fijian judge claiming such consensual sex are acts "so disgusting that it would make any decent man vomit". I'm not entirely sure there is a legal precedent for such a reasoned finding, but let's leave that for a moment.How does our government respond? Pretty piss-weakly, no surprise, saying they will not appeal to the Fijian government to release the men and that "when Australians are overseas, they need to respect the laws of the country they are in."
And yet, such respect for other countries' laws will apparently be not such an imperative should Schapelle Corby be convicted of drug trafficking by an Indonesian court, with our Justice Minister assuring us that "(the Howard government goes) into overdrive in making representations to avoid (the death penalty) being carried out." Overdrive. Vroom vroom.
So obviously the lesson here, dear Aussie, is that you may expect your government to work its little tush off to protect your legal interests overseas only if you are a former Gold Coast beauty student who cries a lot on camera. The rest of you butt-fuckers and carpet-munchers can fry.
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I know asking the questions these days, "Does the Howard government know no shame? Are there any depths to which it won't plummet?" is pretty much redundant, but seriously, undermining the independence of the Reserve Bank and drawing it into its web of lies for the sake of garnering votes?
Interest rates rise in part because of a $66b pre-election spending/bribe orgy by the Libs, who then spread mendacious propaganda about the dangers of interest rates rising under a Labor government, using the RBA to brand their lies with credibility?
As two wise women named Barbra and Donna once proclaimed: Enough is enough is enough.
posted by Sam @ Monday, April 11, 2005
4 Comments:
As I said on Mr. Lefty's blog:
We dont have any business getting involved here. This is very, very different to Corby in that she is innocent, whereas this man is quite obviously guilty. The laws of Fiji state that homosexual acts are illegal. Regardless of the stupidity of such laws, McCoskar should have known they existed and obeyed them. Whether he didnt know, or he did know and chose to ignore them, is irrelevant.
We should not be getting on our moral high-horses and demanding that he be released on account of their laws being contrary to our ideology. Their laws are THEIR laws, and we have no right to change them or demand that we be above them. That would be ridiculous.
The jail term is justified and he can sit there for the two years as far as Im concerned.
Nic: Firstly, Corby is not definitely innocent. She is saying she is, yes - doesn't automatically mean it's true.
Secondly, my posting was not about the guilt or otherwise of the people involved, it was about the consequent punishments issued by Indonesia and Fiji and how Australia reacts if/when its citizens are convicted.
Australia cannot have it both ways - it cannot object to the extremity of one nation's punishment (eg Indonesia's death penalty) upon an Australian citizen, without objecting to extremities in other nations (ie 2 years for sex between consenting adults). If the DFA is truly serious about Australians having to respect the laws of other countries, it should not interfere with Corby's execution (and whether or not we believe she is innocent, this is generally what happens when people are found guilty of breaching Indonesia's anti-drug trafficking laws).
I think the fact that this judgment will likely be overturned and the Fiji judiciary will itself acquit these men more than validates my right to get on the high horse and ride it remorselessly.
Sam, the 1998 revision og the Fiji constitution prohibits discrimination of sexual orientation.
McCoskar broke no law in Fiji- the '98 constitution invalidated all the sodomy laws.
Why didn't the magistrate know this?
Ignorance of the law is no excuse..!
Armed with the Fijian constitutional information, Downer has no excuse not to intervene. An Australian citizen has been convicted under a law that had been superseded.
Have a look at my blog for a closer examination.
http://tinyurl.com/5mke2
-weez
Thanks weez, I did not know this but it certainly makes this case a lot more clear-cut in my mind.
And it makes me all the more furious that Downer did fuck-all when they probably did know or should have known about this all the time.
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