{"id":126364,"date":"2014-06-26T16:34:40","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T16:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=126364"},"modified":"2014-06-26T16:34:40","modified_gmt":"2014-06-26T16:34:40","slug":"australian-governments-phony-defence-journalist-jailed-egypt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/australian-governments-phony-defence-journalist-jailed-egypt\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian government\u2019s phony defence of journalist jailed in Egypt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Head<\/em><\/p>\n

After refusing for months to lift a finger to defend Australian journalist Peter Greste, who has been imprisoned by Egypt\u2019s dictatorship since December 29, the Australian government has in recent days postured as championing his release.<\/p>\n

However, while claiming to be dismayed by Greste\u2019s fate, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his ministers have underscored their support for the US-backed military junta headed by ex-general Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.<\/p>\n

Abbott phoned President Sisi last weekend, on the eve of Monday\u2019s court proceedings, in which Greste and two fellow Al Jazeera journalists\u2013Cairo bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy and news producer Baher Mohamed\u2013were sentenced to between seven and ten years\u2019 imprisonment. They were convicted on fabricated charges of conspiring with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood (MB) to discredit the Cairo regime.<\/p>\n

After his phone call, Abbott told the media that he was confident that Sisi understood Australia\u2019s position on the Greste case. \u201cI discussed a number of subjects with the president of Egypt, including the deteriorating security situation in the Middle East,\u201d Abbott said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI congratulated him on the work that the new government of Egypt had done to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood,\u201d Abbott disclosed, adding: \u201cI think that the new President of Egypt will do whatever he reasonably can to ensure that we have peace and security in Egypt and more broadly in the Middle East. He is obviously concerned about the militant and radical tendencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a chillingly explicit endorsement of a regime that has killed nearly 2,000 people in crackdowns since its July 3 coup last year, \u201cdisappeared\u201d hundreds of others, and jailed at least 16,000 political prisoners. In recent months, the junta\u2019s courts have handed down a series of mass death sentences. In two court sessions alone, lasting for a total of 100 minutes, 529 prisoners were sentenced to death, without being allowed to call a single witness in their defence.<\/p>\n

This repression not only seeks to destroy the MB\u2013a right-wing bourgeois opposition party. It is a wider drive to terrorise the Egyptian masses and prevent any renewed revolutionary struggles by the working class, like those that toppled the decades-long US-backed dictatorship of Sisi\u2019s predecessor Hosni Mubarak in 2011.<\/p>\n

As Abbott\u2019s comments indicate, Sisi has the backing of the US and the other imperialist powers, which fear the ongoing social unrest of the Egyptian working class and are also counting on Sisi\u2019s regime to help counter their debacle in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Greste is a veteran foreign correspondent. From 1991 to 1995 he was based in London, Bosnia and South Africa, working at various times for Reuters, CNN, WTN and the BBC. Since 2005, he has worked for Al Jazeera in Africa.<\/p>\n

Greste and other Al Jazeera journalists have no doubt been singled out by Sisi\u2019s regime and its US sponsors partly because Al Jazeera is financed by Qatar\u2019s ruling al-Thani family. Qatar has backed the Muslim Brotherhood, as well other Islamists in the region, most recently the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that has swept through northwestern Iraq.<\/p>\n

But the show trial of Greste and his two colleagues, along with 17 other defendants, including 11 in absentia, on such charges as \u201cspreading false news,\u201d is part of the wider pattern of political repression. More than 65 journalists have also been detained since the coup, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.<\/p>\n

Once the sentences were handed down, Abbott declared that his government would not engage in \u201cmegaphone diplomacy\u201d in a bid to secure Greste\u2019s release. \u201cWhat we want to do is to talk calmly, patiently and reasonably to the Egyptian government,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want what\u2019s best for the long-term interest of Egypt, as well as what\u2019s best for Peter Greste and his colleagues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said the government would formally request Sisi to intervene in the Greste case. This diversion was shot down within hours, however, when Sisi declared on Tuesday morning: \u201cWe will not interfere in judicial rulings. We must respect judicial rulings and not criticise them even if others do not understand this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sisi could only make such remarks confident of the continuing support of the US and its allies, including Australia. In fact, Abbott made his government\u2019s position plain on March 29, when he made his first statement on Greste\u2019s jailing. Facing criticism\u2013including by Greste himself\u2013of his three months of silence since Greste\u2019s detention in December, Abbott sought to head off the growing public concern over the journalist\u2019s plight. While claiming to have made representations on Greste\u2019s behalf, he said he had \u201ca lot of sympathy with the Egyptian government\u201d and \u201cabsolutely\u201d accepted that \u201cthe Egyptian justice system has to be allowed to run its course.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sisi\u2019s refusal to intervene also came just hours after the White House issued a token statement of displeasure over the journalists\u2019 sentences, and two days after US Secretary of State John Kerry held talks with Sisi and pledged to release a further $575 million in US military aid to Egypt.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s backing for Sisi was equally reflected in the response of Australia\u2019s Labor opposition. Labor leader Bill Shorten and his deputy, Labor\u2019s foreign affairs spokesperson Tanya Plibersek, refused to criticise the Abbott government\u2019s posture, instead declaring that they were \u201cunited\u201d with it.<\/p>\n

On the Australian Broadcasting Corporation\u2019s \u201cLateline\u201d program, Plibersek was asked whether Kerry\u2019s release of military aid to Cairo was \u201cpremature,\u201d given that the regime had \u201cthumbed its nose at democracy and press freedom.\u201d Plibersek replied: \u201cWell I think it\u2019s an indication that the United States is hoping to have a close relationship with the new Egyptian government. And it is important that we keep the channels of communication open.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within the Australian political establishment, there is bipartisan commitment to the interests of the US, which includes participating in all Washington\u2019s military and political interventions in the Middle East, as well as the Obama administration\u2019s \u201cpivot\u201d to Asia to confront China. Journalists like Greste are simply regarded as collateral damage in these imperialist machinations.<\/p>\n

The defence of Greste, all the imprisoned journalists\u2013and the thousands of other detainees of the Sisi regime\u2013is bound up with the defence of the democratic and social rights of the working class in Egypt and internationally, and thus the political struggle against US imperialism and its accomplices, including in Canberra.<\/p>\n

Reprinted<\/a> with permission<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike Head After refusing for months to lift a finger to defend Australian journalist Peter Greste, who has been imprisoned by Egypt\u2019s dictatorship since December 29, the Australian government has in recent days postured as championing his release. However, while claiming to be dismayed by Greste\u2019s fate, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his ministers have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-126364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}