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“Try this for size” Caged father urges Howard” Rebecca Digirolamo Sydney Morning Herald June 22 2003 The article raises the controversial issue regarding the indefinite imprisonment of an Australian, David Hicks, at an American military base in Guantanamo Bay Cuba.. The article discusses Mr Hicks’ capture whilst fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2000, in the war proclaimed by America as a war on terror principally aimed at decapitating the Al –Qaeda network, led by Osama Bin laden. Bin Laden is the alledged mastermind of the September 11 bombings on the World Trade Centre. The article depicts Terry Hick’s adamant protest against the unlawful and illegal detention of his son. In an attempt to attract attention and seek broad support he staged a replica of the cage that is imprisoning his son in Cuba outside the Liberal Party’s recent national convention. Legally this issue is concerned with international law, namely treaties which govern human rights globally. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) is the world’s largest and most influential forum for the discussion, protection, and promotion of human rights and is significant in that in surrounding the controversial debate as to the legality of the United States’ actions in holding the captured prisoners from the War on Terror but not providing them with the rights of POWs outlined in the Geneva Convention. The United States has symbolically by- passed this convention by refusing to define these captives as POWs, thus avoiding its obligation to this internationally recognised convention.
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