Moti and Hu: Do the Charges fit their Crimes?
Susan Merrell | July 31, 2009
Montesquieu would turn in his grave.
One of the abiding principles that underpin our Australian democracy is that the judiciary should act independently of all other strata of government.
Should the judiciary be used as an instrument, to effect or safeguard, political or commercial government interests; it creates a situation such as is occurring in China with Stern Hu. For although the Chinese government has maintained that the charges against Hu are not related to bilateral trade, commercial, or national security concerns; we’re not buying that, are we?
It seems to me they are trumped up charges used to remove Stern Hu from a particular sphere of influence.
Isn’t that reprehensible? Aren’t you glad that wouldn’t happen in Australia?
Really? Read on.
In the Queensland Supreme Court there is a case pending against Julian Moti the former Attorney General of the Solomon Islands. He has been charged with sex-tourism with an underage girl as a result of an alleged incident that occurred in Vanuatu 1997, an incident for which he was first charged in Vanuatu and found to have no case to answer. The matter didn’t even reach trial.
So what’s he doing in court again 12 years later? The clue lies in the fact that he is now the former Attorney General of the Solomon Islands. Arresting him and charging him in Australia (he is an Australian citizen) has effectively removed him from his sphere of influence. Bingo!
For had Australian authorities believed that the charges needed to be looked at again, surely back in 1999 once the Vanuatuan authorities had finished with the case would have been the time. After all, if Australian authorities really think that Moti is a heinous paedophile surely not picking up the investigation until more than five years later (end of 2004) would amount to gross incompetence, wouldn’t it?
But there’s more to it than that.
Moti has always been a political thorn in the side of the Australian government, especially the Howard government. His political vision for the Pacific is not simpatico with Australia’s.
As a constitutional lawyer, Moti has advised government ministers and officials in the Pacific. He’s been especially active in the Solomon Islands giving legal advice to the highest echelons of their government up to and including the Governor General. This advice was rarely what Australia would have considered in its best interests.
But people have the right to promote their political vision provided they use the democratic process and keep within the law and spirit of the law. One side in this stoush has demonstrably failed to do this.
Professor Clive Moore, of the University of Queensland and President of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Pacific Studies believes that Australian representatives in the Solomon Islands “overstepped the mark” on more than one occasion.
For at the end of 2004, when the then Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands Sir Allan Kemakeza announced at a function in Sydney that he was appointing Moti as his Attorney General, the Australian Federal Police commenced a new investigation into the old Vanuatuan charges. What a coincidence.
Subsequently, Moti was not appointed. I suspect considerable pressure would have been brought to bear from Australian authorities, which, if they were able to be proved, would mean that Australia was interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. That’s overstepping the mark.
Things then quietened down on the sex-charges front only to begin again in earnest when the new Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare took the reins of power. Sogavare replaced Snyder Rini whose election to the top job had precipitated rioting in Honiara. On appointment, Sogavare promptly ordered a Commission of Inquiry into the riots and asked Moti to draft the terms of reference. Not much later he offered Moti the role of Attorney General.
This was to the expressed displeasure of Prime Minister John Howard and his Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. There had been talk that the Australian-led peacekeeping forces, the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) had acted with deliberate neglect and/or gross negligence. It wasn’t in Australia’s best interests to have such an Inquiry.
Professor Moore believes that the Australian government did all they could to destabilise the Sogavare government, and they must have thought they were succeeding when Sogavare faced a motion of ‘no confidence’ towards the end of September 2006.
Needing the legal advice of his Attorney General elect, Sogavare summoned Moti to Honiara. What happened next reads like a poorly written episode of the British spy television drama Spooks.
The Australian authorities had Moti arrested when he was in transit in Papua New Guinea. In a long story that I need to cut short: neither the Papuan New Guinea nor the Solomon Islands authorities buckled to Australian pressure to have Moti extradited. Neither country being convinced of the bona fides of the Australian charges.
After this incident relations in the Pacific hit an all-time low.
When a change of government in the Solomon Islands saw the new Prime Minister Dr. Derek Sikua sack Moti and surrender him to the Australian authorities, the relationship between Australia and the Solomon Islands improved.
So Moti’s gone. He no longer influences the politics of the Solomon Islands. For his sins he’s facing a potential 17-year jail term.
The question we should be asking is: what exactly are his sins?
If Stern Hu’s cries of ‘politically motivated charges’ fall on deaf Chinese ears, Moti is finding Australians to be equally hearing deficient.
Susan Merrell is a Sydney-based, freelance journalist who publishes articles regularly, and blogs on Open Forum, ABC Unleashed and Eureka Street. Susan also holds a Ph.D in political science.
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RUUM
July 31, 2009 at 2:41 am
Moti & Hu
How easy it is to forget that our Pacific Island neighbours are sovereign nations not just Tasmanias with better climates. Our politicians will get a lot more respect if they also show respect for the rights of our neighbours. How long before the legacy of the Howard years is laid bare for the sham that it truly was.
harry
August 3, 2009 at 7:59 am
Moti
How refreshing to have balance with the Moti story.None of this alleged hideous crime has been proved nor has Moti been convicted of any crime, just persecuted by Australian authorities that did not want Moti to be Attorney General of the Solomon Islands The arrogance of the Howard Government and that of the Australian High Commissioner Patrick Cole a fundamentalist and a bully I think is unprecedented in Australian intervention in an independent Soverign State, I look forward to the outcome of the Moti case and thank you for your balanced reporting of this injustice
ejames
July 31, 2009 at 3:16 am
Flexibility
Sovereignty seems to have become a flexible notion that can be bent to fit the foot it is on at the time. It seems very apparent in this case that the Australian government has manipulated the shoe well enough, perhaps through the subtext that as they are securing the country they have the right to make decisions, to intervene.
It begs the question, what else is going on behind doors that we don’t know about? What other shady deals in dark corners are taking place with secret handshakes?
Daniel Filan
August 10, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Very interesting
What a refreshing story! So many people think that Australia is always the ‘goodie’, fighting the never-ending fight for justice and never doing anything bad or wrong. It’s nice to see someone debunk this myth.