Why was the Greens leader, Bob Brown, happy yesterday?!!!

The Greens leader was very happy yesterday. He was jumping up and down the whole day. And he was smiling in front of the media cameras. So why he was so happy?

He was very happy that Burmese opposition leader, Ms Aung San Suu Kyi was released from home arrest.

We also are happy for this result. And we do not agree on any political arrest.

But immediately after Greens leader sudden happiness, it came to our mind few questions.

Why the Greens leader was not vending support for more than 45 Palestinian MPs arrested by Israeli occupation forces for the last 4 years? Why the Greens leader, and all his Greens colleagues, did not jump up and down from happiness when the Palestinian parliament speaker, Mr Aziz Duweik, was released from Israeli prison last year? Why the Greens leader do not care about arbitrary arrest of more than 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners, most of them in jail (not home arrest) without charges.

Mr Brown happiness did not stop on just jumping up and down. He also vowed to travel to Burma to visit Mr Suu Kyi and pay tribute to her.

If we compare this with the Greens stance on Israeli brutal treatment of Palestinians, we note shameful comparison. Mr Brown and all his Greens colleagues refused on several occasions to join solidarity delegations to Palestinian occupied territories. On 2002, for example, the Greens leader and his colleague, Ms Kerry Nettle, refused utterly to join solidarity and fact-finding delegation to West Bank in the aftermath of Israeli massacres in Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah. The Greens leader and his colleagues were not concerned about the home arrest of Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, for more than 3 years.

We note that the Greens leader is only vocal and active on criticising socialist regimes:
- He is very vocal on criticising Maoist rebels in Nepal. But he was not critical of brutality of the Nepalese monarchy.
- He is very critical of FARC, the Colombian Marxist rebels, but was never quoted criticising American-puppet regime of Colombia, which conducted worse crimes than the Marxists.
- He is very critical of Chinese socialist government.

Bob Brown is very interesting creature.

On the night of NSW state election, 2003, I approached him and asked him why he never criticised Israeli illegal and inhumane occupation of Palestine. He replied: “I do not know anything about this issue, can you provide me with more information, and then we will discuss taking action”. On earlier occasion, Ms Nettle, made similar admission and asked me to provide her with any literature about the Palestinian - Israeli conflict. And I did.

Imagine that the representative of the left in Australia do not know anything about the issue that is widely considered as the major threat of global security!!!

I remember when the Greens leader, Bob Brown, led noisy demonstration against Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, visit to Australia. Such noisy demonstration that was nearly resulted in his arrest.

But when a war criminal Israeli president, Moshe Katsav, visited Australia, 2005, Bob Brown and all his Greens MPs refused even to participate in protests against this visit. The Greens officials refused even to endorse such protest.

Few thoughts come to my mind when I saw Bob Brown very happy to see political prisoner released.

But it is very interesting to understand what the Greens classification of “political prisoners” is.

Last question for Bob Brown and his Greens party: would not the Australian Muslims arrested and jailed after mock trial based on medieval “Anti-Terrorism” laws, qualify to be classified as “political prisoners”?