LETTER | Western world’s double standard in killings by Australian forces

LETTER | When it comes to human rights, double standards are not and will never be absent from the Western world’s dictionary.

The Australian government recently released the damning Brereton Report, detailing how its defence forces committed gruesome massacres against 39 Afghan civilians from 2009 to 2013.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison who denied being a deputy sheriff in the US-China tensions has been championing liberal democracy and human rights as universal values, but these do not seem to apply equally to everybody.

No one from the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) or government officials are coming out to bow down and claim responsibility, let alone to face any slightest reprimand if not being sacked or demoted despite the serious allegations.

Should a similar incident happen in any of the third world countries, the Western government would be busy issuing statements to condemn it.

For example, Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, once a peace icon, has been labelled as an outcast on the allegation of mistreatment against the Rohingya. Yet, the Western world has failed to see the complexity of the Myanmar political situation before labelling her as such.

And now when the ADF has been found to commit a horrendous massacre against the Afghans, no Western government has come out calling for Canberra to be censured or punished for failing to bring the culprits to justice. Not even the media treats these killings with the same audacity as the situation in Myanmar.



It is, however, unsurprising that the Western world has kept quiet on the massacre as the United States and the United Kingdom do the same when it comes to the war in Afghanistan.



In January 2010, the US Army started their killing spree against the Afghans, treating them as a game and hunting them for pleasure.



Worst, the mastermind, US Staff Sgt. Calvin R Gibbs who was found guilty for murder, kept the corpses as trophies and buried them with weapons to portray them as Taliban terrorists.



Next year, Gibbs will be eligible for parole after serving a jail sentence in military prison. He may walk free and may be reunited with his friends and family but the Afghans who were murdered in cold blood would never get their justice.



Even those in the US Army who have not completed their jail sentences can look forward to getting their president’s pardon. Two convicted murderers who were involved in the killing of Afghan civilians received Donald Trump’s pardon without any good justification.



On the other hand, a United Kingdom inquiry into alleged unlawful killings by British troops in Afghanistan known as Operation Northmoor was shut down in 2017 without any charges being brought.

 If the convicted murderers were from the army, they would receive lighter punishments.

The Western world is practising hypocrisy by killing the developing countries’ citizens while protecting the murderers in the name of patriotism.
 
So how can we trust the human rights concept propagated by the Western world?