The 'Counter Terrorists' visit West End

The phone call came a few days after our Ash Wednesday liturgy on the Queen
Street steps of Petroz Mining Company. Over 100 folks had gathered to show
solidarity with the East Timorese people living and dying under a genocidal
armed robbery by the Indonesian military and Australian oil companies. We
burnt the Petroz annual report, celebrating the repentance ritual of the
ashes, to begin a Lenten focus on our complicity in the suffering of the East
Timorese. The caller indicated that he had attended the liturgy and wanted to
discuss with me more about our activities regarding East Timor. I agreed to
meet him that afternoon at the Sitting Duck Cafe. Before concluding our phone
conversation, he informed me that he worked for the Queensland Police Service
and would be bringing someone from the Air Force with him.

Allan, Dale and I ordered our coffees and our meeting began. It became
immediately obvious that both men were present on a professional basis, no
crisis of conscience here! It also became apparent that our friend from the
Queensland Police Service was well read - on me, on my past peace activism in
the US and Australia, the Catholic Worker, The Anarchist newspaper, and
Neighbourhood News. I began to feel increasingly like a sitting duck
myself-so I guess I was in the right place! I shared with them my fears that
they were setting me up. The fears that in the absence of any real terrorists
that "anti-terrorist" experts often created terrorists to justify their
careers, budgets, promotions and existence. I cited the examples of Ananda
Marga, the Guilford 4, Birmingham 6 and Fr. Brian Gore. They responded that
this was not what this meeting was about.

Being of humble disposition, I tried the "Enough about me, more about you!"
turn of conversation. I asked if he was aware of a file being retained by the
Anti-Terrorist Squad on me? He said he could neither confirm or deny whether
such a file was being retained. I asked if he worked for the section of the
police service that retained such files? He confirmed that he did - this is
the "Counter Terrorist Section of the Queensland Police Service". I asked him
if he was aware that the Catholic Worker is a a pacifist movement - he was. I
asked how could such a file on me or surveillance of the Ash Wednesday
liturgy be justified on the basis of counter-terrorism? I asked if he was
aware of reports that the Australian Defence Department has been passing
information on the Catholic Worker community to the Indonesian Government -
making our members vulnerable to Indonesian operatives in Australia? He said
he was aware of these reports. I now want to know what his Counter Terrorist
Section of the Queensland Police Service is doing about investigating such
reports? What they are doing about protecting Australian citizens from a
security force that has slain five Australian journalists, 200,000 Timorese
Catholics and over half a million of their own people? Given what a more
mainstream French government did to a more mainstream Greenpeace organisation
- this should be of some concern.

At this point in the discussion the Air Force dimension kicked in. The
Queensland Police officer read a long list of military bases where the
Catholic Worker community has carried out nonviolent actions: Cabarlah,
Canungra, Nurrungar, Pine Gap, Harewood (NZ), Griffiss (US), Richmond and
Watsonia. Compacted and rattled off like that - it sounded quite impressive.
He asked, "We've always wondered why you've never been to Amberley?" The guy
from the Air Force was introduced as the head of security at Amberley. They
were wondering what we had planned for the imminent arrival of American F-16
fighters, KC-135 refuelers for the "Downunder '95" joint military exercises -
all planes that had been used extensively in the Gulf Massacre. I was a
little embarrassed that we didn't have anything planned and were only
marginally aware of their arrival. So I replied that we weren't Gandhians -
so I didn't feel obliged to tell them what we were going to do. I assured
both of them that we are pacifists and conduct our public actions with a
strict nonviolent discipline.

The Air Force security guy stated that his job "is to make Amberley a safe
place". I replied, "Well, my suggestion is for you to begin by removing all
the explosives from the area and deny entry to any hi-tech weapons of mass
destruction". This was answered by a sigh of exhaustion. For about fifty
minutes, I attempted to discuss with these two experts on "terror" and
"security", the subjects of their expertise. Are the sources of terror more
likely to be found at our Ash Wednesday liturgy or the Canungra Jungle
Warfare Training Centre where Indonesian troops are occasionally put through
their paces? In that month a US nuclear submarine carrying Polaris warheads
pulled into Brisbane to pick up the elite SAS of the Australian Army for
exercises. A week later, Indonesian paratroopers - the same folks that
jumped, landed and massacred in West Papua and East Timor - were in the skies
over Rockhampton. Were these organisations that have such a history of
terror, and stench of death, under surveillance? Were the F-16s, KC-135s and
Phantoms that were used extensively in the Gulf Massacre of January/February
1991 - when over 88,500 tons of explosives were dropped on the people of Iraq
- making us any more secure by their presence? Was it not the case that these
hi-tech weapons have little to do with "security" or "defence" but are in
fact the muscle that enforces the global theft by transnational corporations
sanctioned by the United States? Had the Middle East become any more secure
since the orgy of death carried out by these weapon systems? I told them that
when we had nonviolently disarmed a war-ready B-52 bomber in New York State,
that we had exposed the double illusion "the weapons are secure/they secure
us".

So as we parted company I couldn't help but feel that the warlords,
corporations and governments that rule had made sitting ducks of us all in
our own way. To the empire, Allan, Dale and I are equally expendable. I quite
liked Allan and Dale - we shared moments of humour and humanity over the
fifty minutes. I have a religious belief that our lives are sacred-as sacred
as the Timorese, as Saddam's, Bill's, those on death rows and in firing
lines. I believe the bureaucracies they serve are wielders of terror and
fonts of insecurity for our world.

On the morning of March 21st, 40,000 Turkish troops - funded, trained and
informed by the United States - invaded northern Iraq to wipe our Kurdish
villages. Turkish pilots are flying F-16s into combat. American aircraft and
satellites are providing constant intelligence.

Also that morning, fifteen friends of the Catholic Worker accompanied Anne
Rampa and myself to Amberley Air Force Base. We attempted to make our way to
the American F-16s and KC-135s, en transit to US bases in Southern Turkey.
These planes' stated mission is to enforce the partitioning of Iraq and the
crippling sanctions policy that is costing thousands of Iraqi lives through
starvation and disease. Anne and I carried a basketful of food, medical
supplies, a hammer and a "home handyman's guide to disarmament".

About five feet into the base we were blocked by Australian Air Force
personnel. We then blocked the entrance to the base, the gates were chained
shut behind us. After some time a vehicle of American pilots attempted to
gain access through the exit gate. I moved over to sit in front of the car
and was arrested. Anne and her four month old son Joseph, were taken into
custody shortly after.

These are the gifts we believe can bring real security to our world and
counter terror - community, responsibility and nonviolent resistance. The
illusions peddled by the state's security forces find their full expressions
of terror in the faces of the children of Kurdistan and Timor.

As Albert Camus reflected in 1948 on the Church's silence and abstraction in
the face of preparations for World War Two: "For a long time during those
frightful years I waited for a great voice to speak up (in the Church). I, an
unbeliever? Precisely. For I knew that the spirit would be lost if it did not
utter a cry of condemnation when faced with force... What the world expects
of Christians is that Christians should speak out loud and clear... That they
should get away from abstraction and confront the bloodstained face history
has taken on today. The grouping we need is a grouping of people resolved to
speak out clearly and to pay up personally."
Ciaron O'Reilly

Reprinted from West End Neighbourhood News (April 1995, no. 21)