Peace Crimes: Pine Gap, national security and dissent PDF
Preview Peace Crimes: Pine Gap, national security and dissent
Kieran Finnane is a founding journalist of the Alice Springs News, established in 1994, now publishing online. She contributes arts writing and journalism to national publications, including Griffith Review, The Saturday Paper, Artlink and Art Monthly Australasia. Her first book, Trouble: On Trial in Central Australia, was published in 2016. PRAISE FOR PEACE CRIMES ‘Peace Crimes is an engrossing and illuminating portrayal of six activists, a political trial and the secret machinations of the Five Eyes on Australian soil. Compelling to the core, Finnane is an excellent journalist who asks far more of the facts than mere repudiation; rather she asks for pause and reflection. I, for one, will never drive past or fly over these sites without thinking of all the unknowns, ever again.’ — ANNA KRIEN, AUTHOR OF NIGHT GAMES AND ACT OF GRACE PEACE CRIMES KIERAN FINNANE PINE GAP, NATIONAL SECURITY AND DISSENT Peace Crimes_Title.indd 2 30/4/20 4:34 pm PEACE CRIMES KIERAN FINNANE PINE GAP, NATIONAL SECURITY AND DISSENT Peace Crimes_Title.indd 2 30/4/20 4:34 pm First published 2020 by University of Queensland Press PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia uqp.com.au [email protected] Copyright © Kieran Finnane 2020 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher. Cover design by Josh Durham (Design by Committee) Cover photograph: ‘Pine Gap (A photograph of the Centre of Australia)’ by Kristian Laemmle-Ruff Author photo by Erwin Chlanda Typeset in 11.5/15 pt Bembo by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group The University of Queensland Press is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia ISBN 978 0 7022 6044 5 (pbk) ISBN 978 0 7022 6222 7 (epdf) ISBN 978 0 7022 6223 4 (epub) ISBN 978 0 7022 6224 1 (kindle) University of Queensland Press uses papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests and other controlled sources. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. CONTENTS Prologue vii Seeing, not seeing 1 In the dark 15 Trespass 43 Lament 63 The law 77 Ends and means 92 The sacred 111 A reckless act of prayer 128 Nothing to see here 153 Ordinary or extraordinary? 180 Conscience versus reason 209 Fields of action 231 Epilogue 249 Notes 259 Acknowledgements 281 For my parents Patricia and Peter Finnane PROLOGUE Each night, here in the centre of Australia, I go outside to look at the sky, at its crystalline beauty, its movements and seasonal changes. A few years back, I learned about the Emu that comes out at night, taking shape from long dark matter in the Milky Way where stars are not. Wanta Steve Patrick Jampijinpa was talking to artists, art workers and art historians about Warlpiri ways of seeing. Warlpiri lands, including his home community of Lajamanu, lie to the northwest of Alice Springs, which is in the heart of Arrernte country. Using a digitally enhanced photograph he showed us the Southern Cross sitting on the Emu’s head like a crown: ‘The Queen’s crown is really a late crown … there was another crown here,’ he said. ‘Stop being Australian, start being Australia. Be part of it, it’s your birthright.’ The Emu is not always visible, but once seen, I can’t unsee it. On the night of 28 September 2016 I was at home, a bush block on the south side of Alice. While I was looking up at the sky, a group of five people were walking by the same starlight through shadowy bushland unfamiliar to them, some fifteen kilometres to the west. I would come to know them as the Peace Pilgrims – father and son Jim and Franz Dowling, Margaret Pestorius, Andy Paine and Timothy Webb. Of other happenings in the world on that date, as countless as the stars, I single out one. In a village named Shadal Bazar, in the eastern vii viii PEACE CRIMES Achin district of Afghanistan, a man called Haji Rais was coming to grips with the deaths in his home of at least fifteen people. They had come to welcome him back from a pilgrimage to Mecca. After a meal of grilled sheep and a night of talk, everyone slept. The missile from a US drone struck before dawn. The survivors woke in a rain of shrapnel. The strike was one of many aimed at Islamic State (Daesh) militants, whether by plane or drone, authorised that year by US president Barack Obama. Immediately, claims swirled that most of the dead and wounded were civilians. Survivors were taken to hospital in the provincial capital Jalalabad, where they spoke to reporters: ‘I saw dead and wounded bodies everywhere,’ Raghon Shinwari told them. US Forces in Afghanistan (USFOR-A) confirmed a ‘counter- terrorism’ air strike, intended ‘to degrade, disrupt, and destroy Daesh’. Its civilian toll was condemned by the United Nations: Daesh personnel might have died, but so had students and a teacher as well as members of families considered to be pro-government. Civilian deaths raised questions of compliance with international legal obligations to protect them. By what criteria had the targets been identified? Had everything possible been done to avoid civilian casualties? Was the toll proportionate to the military objective of the attack? USFOR-A would say only that ‘this was not a civilian casualty incident’. Daesh had gained significant control over the Achin district, but the ‘dozens of men’ visiting survivors at the hospital insisted that the group was not operating within a mile of the village. ‘If we were Daesh, do you think we would get together here?’ asked Obaidullah, a university student. Mohabad Khan’s lower body had been paralysed when shrapnel hit his spine. ‘There is no Daesh in the village and every night the police go on patrols,’ he said. Haji Rais, owner of the targeted house, said nineteen people were injured in the strike; fifteen were killed. He later provided journalists with the names of the dead, matched their names with the names of their fathers and the districts they came from, writing his own name alongside the school principal’s – Hakmatullah, his son. ~ PROLOguE ix This event, calamitous for those Afghans, would never have penetrated my consciousness if not for the Peace Pilgrims. What links us – me about to go to my warm bed, the Pilgrims walking through the late September night, and these people so far away, the dead and the survivors of a US drone strike, whether militant or civilian? The answer is what this book is about and its lynchpin is Pine Gap, the secretive US military base some nineteen kilometres southwest of Alice Springs. It was where the Pilgrims were heading.
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