Writings

A spook in the kitchen

(National Outlook, May 1999)

From 1978, an Amnesty International group met at our house in Adelaide. We usually sat around a large table of western red cedar gleaned from old SA museum cases destined for the furnace, and some planks from an old grain store. It was intended to seat 12 although we sometimes managed to get 15 around it.

This table was designed for a particular space, along a kitchen wall. It was everybody's aim to secure a place in the wall side facing the sink and the ancient early Kooka stove, to be in the action but not of it.

There on the usual monthly basis, the members of the group sat down to a heap of urgent actions often centred, I remember, on Argentina and Chile
In those years, in the world's capitals, a welcome to the military junctures of Argentina and Chile was rare. But one nation-state, Indonesia, did maintain relationships. What was transferred was the technique of dealing with dissidence … the brave lads of the Argentine military taking their Wednesday flights (over a 2 to 3 year period) with their anaesthetised victims destined for the Atlantic, or arranging for the placement with childless military families of children born in captivity: and all in the defence of Western Christian civilisation, often, sad to say, with the support of Catholic hierarchy, including the then Nuncio to Argentina, Pio Laghi, now a cardinal and in charge of Catholic education at the Vatican. (The mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have requested removal of the Cardinal's immunity as a diplomat and Vatican citizen so he can be prosecuted.)

Each meeting brought the terrifying record of human rights violations and the world of the 'disappeared'. (During the 'Dirty War' 30,000 people disappeared or were assassinated, among them, Father Carlos Mugica and 15 other priests; the French nuns, Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet; two bishops, Enrique Angelelli and Carlos Ponce de Leon and many lay people who took the side of the poorest.)

The World Cup of 1978 was played in Buenos Aires. But there was no information in the media of the day about the fate of thousands. For the Amnesty group, it was as though we shifted from one world to another and, quite mysteriously, all these various worlds inhabited our heads without any easily explainable relationships.

One day, in the early 90s, I was walking down a Melbourne street and happened to glance in a bookstore window. I saw some postcards; one took my interest. On closer examination I saw that it was a card commemorating the first Pine Gap Conference in 1980, an occasion when Australian citizens had decided that they were not going to be intimidated by foreign power. There in the background were the white hemispheres of the US installation and there, also, was yours truly participating with others in the elemental enjoyment of releasing a cluster of brightly coloured balloons raising a sign proclaiming "Peace". It's not every day one winds up on a postcard.

I remembered standing with a tall Aboriginal woman looking over the valley at the base while police on horses milled around without making any arrests. But I've often wondered whether a job I had been offered at a national art school in Tokyo never eventuated because of that exercise in citizenship.

By 1983, there was real apprehension in South Australia regarding the US bases. Given SA history, and the fact that the state had hosted seven major and 580 minor trials of nuclear weapons; and given the secrecy about carelessness, the absolute disregard for other peoples' (notably Aboriginal) property and the later disclosure (during the Royal commission into British nuclear tests) that a radioactive cloud from one of the major tests had passed over Adelaide, there was every reason for misgivings. From time to time, it was necessary to manifest that concern in meetings and demonstrations.

Now, one of the unusual aspects of an Amnesty group is the way new members just rock up out of the blue – no introductions needed. All that is required is the capacity to write a polite letter on behalf of prisoners of conscience.

Our group was no different. One evening a new member arrived. He turned out to be always punctual, stayed for coffee and said that he enjoyed our taste in music. At our meetings there wasn't much time for interpersonal enquiry, even for light conversation except the most perfunctory. But I do remember him saying that his job took him from time to time to the US.

Anyway the concerns were getting a bit intense and the new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Bill Hayden, undertook a tour of the installations to allay public fear. The members of another group to which I belonged, one committed to nonviolence, decided to organise a little welcome demonstration for Mr Hayden at Smithfield, a US satellite relay station just outside Adelaide.

We were about 12, but somehow our presence was reported as 25 to 30! There we were with our banners – a large Adolfo Pérez Esquivel quote for Bill to read (he had just returned from a visit to that 1980 Nobel Prize winner) – when who should we see but our new Amnesty mate guiding Bill around on his tour of inspection.

Alleluia! He never came back for another meeting, coffee and good music. Disappointing, really. I had some questions about US funding of the Argentine and Chilean military and their Panama Canal training…