How Australia’s terror laws are fracturing social cohesion
Counter-terror laws originally intended to protect citizens are now being weaponised against them
The Irish band Kneecap made headlines a fortnight ago when one of its members, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, was charged in the UK with a terror offence. His alleged crime: displaying a Hezbollah flag at a London concert last November.
While seemingly an extreme response, such charges aren't isolated. Similar raids and prosecutions have occurred in Australia, raising concerns about the expanding use of counter-terror (CT) laws to suppress political expression – particularly in support of Palestine.
"Terrorism ... it's a word that is infused with emotion and judgment and fear, and the main effect of it – and I would say the intended effect of it – is to generate fear," says Isabelle Skaburskis, a criminal law specialist and international human rights law expert based in Melbourne.
Last October, the Australian Federal Police's (AFP) Counter Terrorism and Special Investigations Command launched Operation Ardvarna targeting "prohibited symbols" – in this case, the public display of Hezbollah flags.
The operation resulted in 37-year-old Melbourne man Vahid Alzubayedi being charged in December for allegedly displaying the flag at a pro-Palestine protest, as well as a house raid in Sydney days later.
The AFP's counter-terrorism commander, Nick Read, disclosed at the time that "more than 1,100 hours" of the AFP's resources had been devoted to hunting flag-bearers at anti-genocide protests, "reviewing more than 100 hours of CCTV footage and police body-worn camera footage".
"[CT legislation] is not really grounded in a national security lens, which I guess is what CT is meant to be all about," Skaburskis told Deepcut.
"The law has been moving more and more towards ideology and representations as the harm or the subject matter and away from acts of violence or actual harm, which is what the criminal law traditionally attaches to," she says.
'Who actually is the enemy?'
CT legislation that was passed in Australia following the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City, "has lent itself from the beginning to a very politicised application," says Skaburskis.
"We have a range of legislation that really started in 2003 and 2004, and were sort of reinvigorated in 2014 that captures a range of conduct that goes far, far beyond what would be the normal subject matter of criminal law."
One consequence of the politicised nature of such legislation is that it drifts towards what Skaburskis describes as "preparatory conduct that doesn't actually involve any kind of harm". It is from this drift that symbols and affiliations with particular ideologies or political expressions have become ensnared in the highly-charged offence of terrorism.
Another consequence is the politicisation of the 'who' – who gets designated a terrorist, and who makes the call?
"Certainly with the advent of ISIS, the enemy was very clear and I think that what we've been seeing since is that the enemy gets more and more unclear," Skaburskis says.
"Now the enemy is maybe right-wing extremists, maybe it's not quite right-wing extremists and so we don't prosecute them with terrorism legislation. Maybe it's Palestinians, maybe it's the Hamas supporter, who actually is the enemy? And I think there's a lot more political, there's a lot more social conflicts around this."
A look at Australia's terror listings shows a record of designations motivated by politics, and not necessarily by national security.
"I can also think of the PKK, which is also a very politically-motivated designation," says Skaburskis. Australia listed the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, a Kurdish political and militant organisation, as a terror organisation in 2005. "Whether or not this Kurdish group should actually be considered a terrorist organisation in Australia seems to have very, very, very little rationale."
Pro-Israel lobby's role in Hamas, Hezbollah terror listings
The two organisations – both ethno-religious nationalist groups that emerged in response to Israeli military actions – were added to Australia's terror list in full only recently. Hezbollah was added in November 2021, and Hamas in March 2022, despite the Australian government noting that neither group poses a direct threat to Australia.
Their designations have stirred controversy, and the AFP’s contentious pursuit of pro-Palestine protesters under terror legislation has further exposed the system’s flaws.
Both organisations possess political wings as well as humanitarian arms, as illustrated in parliamentary submissions in September 2022 from the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) and the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC).
"Hamas is a broad movement, with many functions within its network," APAN's submission read. "Some parts of Hamas have a humanitarian focus, as they run hospitals and welfare services. Some parts of Hamas have an educational focus, such as universities or schools."
AFIC, the peak Muslim body in Australia, wrote at the time that, "In its entirety, including the civilian social services arm of Hamas, Hamas cannot be properly characterised as a terrorist organisation". AFIC warned that "such a decision could lead to significant humanitarian impacts for Palestinian people living in highly impoverished and precarious conditions".
Both APAN and AFIC condemned the review process that led to Hamas's designation. APAN noted the parliamentary committee "only heard from organisations who advocate for Israeli's interests ... not one Palestinian ... gave evidence".
AFIC expressed "extreme disappointment that public hearings did not include Palestinian, international law and humanitarian aid perspectives".
Hezbollah, too, has civil and political arms. It participated last month in municipal elections in Lebanon, winning contests in Beirut, south Lebanon and the Bekaa – areas with significant Shia Muslim populations.
Similarly with Hamas, the designation of Hezbollah as a terror organisation in Australia occurred after a parliamentary review where mostly right-wing, pro-Israel groups presented evidence. In fact, a submission by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, a prominent right-wing, pro-Israel lobby group, cited the display of the Hezbollah flag at pro-Palestine protests in May 2021 as a reason to list the whole organisation as a terror group.
CT laws harming social cohesion
The risk of such designations is that racialised communities become disproportionately policed and targeted, as made evident by the AFP's Operation Ardvarna.
"What happens when these sort of security powers are used against our own population much more broadly? I think what you're seeing now is what that actually looks like," Skaburskis says.
As the boundaries of national security law continue to blur, experts warn that Australia's CT powers – originally introduced to protect citizens – are now being weaponised against them.
"One aspect of it is the deployment of counter-terrorism resources and policing and surveillance against our own population and, in particular, against probably more a certain segment of the population than another. But you're seeing the other side of it as well, which is a sort of a grievance of the unevenness of the deployment.
"It becomes a vicious circle because once you start deploying it in one direction, there's calls to deploy it in the other direction.
"How you maintain a semblance of democracy without the race to the bottom is very, very difficult."
Things that caught my eye in West Asia:
Massacre after massacre is unfolding at aid distribution points in Gaza. At least 31 starving Palestinians were mowed down on Sunday by Israeli forces as they approached an Israeli-controlled aid site. The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, called for an "independent investigation", adding that it is "unacceptable that Palestinians are risking their lives for food". A day later, Israeli forces did it again, slaughtering 27 desperate Palestinians seeking aid. The Gaza media office says Israel has "lured" and killed 108 starving Palestinians in eight days.
As the killing of Palestinians in Gaza continues, Syria's new leadership appears determined to detach itself from the Palestinian cause. Syria's al-Qaeda leader-turned-president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, extended another olive branch to Israel last week, saying "we have common enemies, and we can play a major role in regional security". The common enemy Sharaa is referring to is Iran.
That outreach effort was disrupted when a few rockets were reportedly fired yesterday from Syrian territory into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It’s unclear who fired the rockets, but it prompted an Israeli response that, according to the IDF, "struck weapons belonging to the Syrian regime". The IDF said the "Syrian regime is responsible for the current situation in Syria, and will continue to bear the consequences". The Syrian foreign ministry accused "several parties" of "seeking to destabilise the region", adding that the new government "will not pose a threat to any party in the region".
My take: The rocket attack highlights the challenge for the new Syrian regime in establishing its authority across the country. I noted two weeks ago Marco Rubio's remarks that the regime's hold on Syria was fragile and at risk of collapse. Perhaps that's the reason the Trump administration gave the new regime a green light to incorporate 3,500 foreign extremist fighters, mainly Uighurs from China, into its armed forces. An astonishing turnaround for the US after a two-decade 'war on terror', and another example of how the word 'terror' shifts with the political winds.
Iran has supposedly offered a compromise over uranium enrichment in its negotiations with the US. It's been unclear over the last few days where exactly the US stands on the enrichment question, amid conflicting reports about whether or not it allowed for limited enrichment in its last proposal. Axios now reports that Iran is open to a regional consortium that would include "countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and even Turkey" and enrich uranium on Iranian soil with regular inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
As Alex noted yesterday, he's off next week so it'll just be my newsletter next Thursday. Stay tuned!