Selective Democracy

Good evening ladies and gents. After a hard days work at the slave driver I call Coles, I wish to enthrall you with some aggressive and argumentative prose about an issue involving an Australian citizen: David Hicks.

Now, as we should all be aware, yes, Mr. Hicks was released the other day. Needless to say, the sensationalist media has plastered his picture everywhere, rendering his privacy redundant. "But he hates Australia" I heard an ignorant voice say. "He wants to kill us." Well, if I were in his position right now, so would I.

I recall not long ago have a school discussion with some friends over the David Hicks issue, back when he was still 'safely' behind bars. I was prone to think that the Australian government should have been working harder to protect Hicks. Everyone else I talked to thought differently, that he was a filthy terrorist and should be locked up.
Looking back on that discussion, my beliefs haven't changed a whole lot. I still think the Australian government failed in its duty to care for Hicks. And that is where the title of this rant comes into play.

David Hicks was confined in Guantanamo Bay for an extended period, in which God-knows-what happened to him. There were no laws, no 'rights', just America's controlling arm. The Australian Government did little, or at least, not enough, to attempt to rescue one of of its citizens. We live in a democracy. To me, democracy is not just the political state of this country; it is also an ideal, that is, that each person in the country has the same rights and freedoms. Every man is born equal.

Now, David Hicks was not treated equally. Now, I will not profess to condone terrorism, especially against the country I love. But criminal acts have been, in the past, ignored by the government when they attempted to 'rescue' a citizen from the laws of a foreign country. Take Schapelle Corby, the alleged drug smuggler who was taken into a prison in Bali. The government saw that one of its citizens had received a raw deal, and acted accordingly, guilty or not. David Hicks did not receive the same treatment. He may or may not be guilty. He was not rescued by Australia. He has fallen through the cracks or our 'fair and loving' society.

Why wasn't Mr. Hicks treated fairly? I have a pretty solid idea, which is obvious to many. It was not profitable for the government. And by profit, I do not refer to quantities of money. I refer to profitable image in the eyes of the Australian public. The difference between the Schapelle Corby and David Hicks cases, despite the government actions, was that the people felt sorry (or a large number of them did) for Schapelle Corby, whereas the majority of people hate David Hicks. So the government tried to follow the people's views and pursued Corby's freedom more ruthlessly than Hicks'. "But Corby wasn't trying to kill people" I hear someone say, with an indignant voice. Lets imagine for a moment that both Corby and Hicks are guilty of their respective crimes. If Hicks is not stopped, Australian people die. That is worse than fucked up. But if Corby succeeds, which is far more liekly than Hicks succeeding (or it should be, what with all the money going into de-fucking-fence) then numerous people become addicted to drugs, a slow, painful, isolated world, in which you kill to get another fix. I'm not weighing the crimes together in terms of who is more guilty; rather, I am showing that both sides are guilty of a crime (if we stay true to the scenario) that would ruin lives, and yet each had different treatment.

To me, the government failed the people. They fell into the mindset of 'sucking up' to all of the voting citizens within Australia but, more importantly, they failed David Hicks. The man may, for all intents and purposes, be a scumbag terrorists who hates Australia. Regardless, he should still serve out his jail time in Australia, and be treated like a citizen, just like Corby was.