AUnited Nations expert on indigenous people's rights late last month labelled the Northern Territory emergency response as discriminatory, and described Australia as suffering from entrenched racism. James Anaya expressed concern over policies that ''stigmatise already stigmatised communities'' and pointed to the need for a real partnership between the Government and indigenous Australians.
In response, the former minister who launched the intervention expressed annoyance at ''pontificating about human rights''. The current one also dismissed the special rapporteur's remarks. The Liberal spokesman for indigenous affairs described the comments as ''nonsense''. A senior Aboriginal figure in the Labor Party called for the findings to be dropped in the bin ''the same as every other rapporteur's report''.
All this is reminiscent of how political leaders in Asia react to critiques of their human rights problems. The ousted prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, once countered that ''the UN is not my father'' when challenged over his policy to enable the murder of alleged drug dealers. He told a special representative studying human rights defenders to go take look at her own country, Pakistan, and stop bothering him.
His neighbour, Hun Sen, informed journalists that he wouldn't meet an expert assigned to examine human rights in Cambodia in a thousand years. And the Philippines justice secretary accused left-wing groups of brainwashing the rapporteur on extrajudicial executions Philip Alston, an Australian into believing stories of state-sponsored killings.
Australia is usually ready to join in criticism of others, but apparently its politicians are just as intolerant as Thaksin or Hun Sen when it comes to people telling them what they think of our record. Not only is this hypocritical, but it also undermines those parts of the international human rights system that need to be defended, including the group of special procedures to which the rapporteurs belong.
The barrage of complaints which followed Anaya's statement was particularly inappropriate for a number of reasons.
First, the Australian Government formally invited him here. Having done that, whether or not politicians agree with what he had to say, they should at least listen politely. The Government is entitled to adopt or reject whatever he recommends, but with decency and courtesy, upon receiving his written report.
Second, the task of a rapporteur is to assess a country against existing international standards. Anaya did this. He pointed to two human rights treaties that Australia appears to have breached, one on racial discrimination, the other on civil and political rights. Australia joined these voluntarily.
Clearly, it is not Anaya who missed the point, as an editor for The Australian fumed, but the people who either ignored or were ignorant of his assignment.
Third, the rapporteur is a volunteer. He is not one of the ''UN's self-important bureaucrats'', as a writer in The Sunday Telegraph put it. Rapporteurs receive no pay. They are not part of the system. They commit time and energy to work that they believe is important. Because they are outsiders, they can speak and act relatively freely. They can move fast to publicise and respond to urgent human rights concerns. They help to keep the UN relevant and act as a check against its bureaucratic tendencies.
Not only do rapporteurs deserve Australia's support, but they need it now more than ever.
In recent years, many governments have tried to cripple or eliminate the special procedures. This June, 35 regional and international groups addressed the Human Rights Council over ''extraordinary personal attacks'' on mandate holders. These attacks have taken place both inside and outside the council. Among those targeted was the Australian rapporteur, Alston.
Governments around the world are angry with rapporteurs and other procedures not because they are doing a bad job, but for the opposite reason entirely. They are angry because rapporteurs create debate on serious human rights problems that others do not. Rapporteurs bring accounts and analyses of those abuses to levels that others cannot. They say and do things that make policymakers and powerbrokers uncomfortable.
Whether James Anaya is right or wrong about Australia, the sharp rebukes of his assessment were an insult to him and a disservice to us all. They were out of line. They have diminished Australia's stature abroad and can but embolden politicians and autocrats in other countries who seek to ridicule universal human rights and the people who monitor them.
It is not the rapporteur's views but the shameful responses to them that should be binned.
Nick Cheesman is a member of the Asian Legal Resource Centre, Hong Kong, and a student at the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University, Canberra. He is not, and has never been, affiliated with the UN.
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