Gareth Smith from the Palestine Liberation Centre says he has posted a petition with 4,291 signatures to federal Attorney-General Christian Porter, calling on him to drop charges against barrister Bernard Collaery and his client, Witness K, who exposed the federal government’s bugging of the Timor Leste government.
The petition states, ‘These are honourable men who bravely exposed Australia’s subterfuge in its negotiations with the government of Timor Leste’.
Oil and gas grab
Mr Smith said, ‘I was in Timor Leste in 1999 as a District Electoral Officer, and experienced the acute poverty and bravery of the people who sacrificed so much to help Australia during WWII’.
‘There is a cairn erected by Australia outside Dili as a gesture of thanks to the Timorese, but its message now rings hollow and hypocritical in light of Australia’s unscrupulous bugging of the Timorese Parliament so that it could gain an unfair advantage over the Timor Sea oil and gas negotiations.
‘Just how low can you get when you diddle the Timorese, the poorest people in the world? And the men who exposed this contemptible swindle are now being viciously calumniated by a rotten government and face imprisonment. Shame, Australia, shame!’.
You can sign the petition online at change.org.
Why no link to the petition?
If it’s still open we can and should all sign, if we want to believe that we live in a countrytruth about the many and frequent abuses of power in Australia.
Yeah, well good luck with that , but have you heard how the good’ol OZ Govt. has treated that brave reporter Julian Assange, who had the gall to prove the war crimes our ‘boys’ are committing in the Middle East.
G”)
So, if I am understanding this article correctly,
the Australian government acted illegally and unethically to another government, and were caught out and exposed, and now they are trying to imprison, to deprive of freedom, the person who exposed their crime?
So, what does that tell you about the moral code of this government?
Anyone is susceptible to becoming their victim, it’s own citizens included.
And what implications for their other activities and dealings?