Melbourne Civil Rights Rally
(File Photo) (Indymedia)

AUSTRALIA: The Howard Government wants to give police executing preventative detention orders the power to shoot to kill. This is shoot to kill madness.

State and territory leaders are starting to back away from these powers, but the Federal Government is refusing to back down. We have an important opportunity to stop these provisions before they even get to Parliament.

State and Territory leaders need to use their bargaining power to ensure shoot to kill powers do not apply to any of the state, territory or federal preventative detention provisions.

Click the link below to demand that your state and territory leaders tell Phillip Ruddock that they will not be part of any deal on preventative detention laws that include shoot to kill provisions at a state or federal level:

The power to shoot to kill is considered the last resort for police exercising their power to arrest suspects they reasonably believe have committed a crime. The Howard Government now wants to significantly extend this power.

The Howard Government wants police to also have this power when they are detaining someone under the authority of a preventative detention order, even though these orders can be issued against persons that the police do not believe are terrorists.

This is shoot to kill madness. The president of the NSW Law Society, John McIntyre, told ABC Radio that police would be able to obtain a preventative detention order "without a person being reasonably suspected of committing of an offence". According to Mr McIntyre;

"If the [police] are armed with one of these [orders] ... and if this person attempts to flee the arrest, he can be shot and fatally shot ... The police might knock on the door and [the person] might leg it out the back door without even being told why the police are there, and under these provisions they can be called on to stop and if they don't stop, they can be shot."

Three law professors from the Australian national university recently wrote that proposed shoot to kill powers "have echoes of the shoot to kill' policy in the United Kingdom, which lead to the fatal shooting by police of innocent commuter Jean Chalres De Menezes in July 2005."

Click the link to act now and demand this madness is rejected at a state and federal level:

 http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ShootToKillMadness

There's more information about the laws including links to expert legal analysis and media interviews on our blog.

Victory on the shoot to kill provisions is in sight. Stand by for ways you can counter other extreme measures in this legislation.

Thanks,

The GetUp Team

Ed: If you contact though GetUp I suggest you add your additional complaints about the whole draconian package and not just the Shoot to Kill part when you email your respective elected leader.

Ed. E-mail - to Morris Iemma

Restrictive laws are not In the National Interest. Preventive detention orders made, on the balance of probabilities, with the onus on the defendant to prove they no nothing is repugnant to common law. The penalty of an order for a period of 12 months and until further notice with restrictions of xxx, undermines common sense and general communication. The period can be extended, after the first 12-months lapses, this should ring 'alarm bells'.

Preventive detention has already been made in NSW and defeated by the High Court under the provisions of the Community Protection Act 1994. No one can predict the future.

On that basis the laws are flawed and draconian. Some people will be prevented from fundamental principals like communication and no longer be able to use Internet, phone, fax etc.

Dragging sedition into anti-terror legislation is draconian and people being sent to prison for speaking out is cheating our democracy. Rights I believe you should oppose.

Some people will be prevented from reporting on matters of importance because of their fears, but it is everyone's right to report. Preventing people from communicating with other people about what happened or the degree in relation to the circumstances is sinister. The community must report and there ought to be no restriction on their reporting.

People in a civilised society cannot just drop off the map. They could even be prevented from answering their mail? Out of sight out of mind! These laws smell of countering dissent.

But like fire, air, and water all communication belongs to the community and cannot be bought or sold. Otherwise personal expression, safety, consideration and education are also undermined. Human beings must share ideas otherwise people could end up making ill informed decisions.

Shoot to kill without a just defense is an illegal and degrading form of authority.

Isolation in AAA Supermax can also kill you in 14 days. Similarly to being placed from a very warm climate into a chilling experience, this is so damaging to the human psych. Those people may never recover from that experience. Clean skins who've never been to a prison being held with the 'worst of the worst' for the 'first time' is disturbing and 'distorting' the communities understanding of the difference between knowing 'right' from 'wrong'.

Domestic violence and general violence can ultimately lead to war and terrorism.

'The punishment is the crime for a world without violence'. That is the root of preventing domestic violence, wars and terrorism.

Shooting to kill is one thing and going to prison in AAA conditions is another and I implore you to think again and change your mind for the sake of the whole community.

You have been so lucky to have lived in a freer democracy until it has now come to your turn to make a decision for NSW. On that basis we don't think that you could possibly let your people down.

Being locked up in solitary can lead to a person feeling alienated and confinement can lead to a human beings premature death, just as a bullet in the head would kill you, so too can solitary confinement.

Thank you for your time.

Related:

Shoot-to-kill bluff

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Images from the civil liberties rally in Melbourne against the terror laws proposed by John Howard.

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