I'd like to show you the levels that My Fine DFAT Friend will go to
protect his reputation.  Given the opportunity to effectively ban a
movie that made his point of view look wrong, Downer leapt at the
chance.

This entry was originally posted  on my private blog in early May 

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[From News.com.au]

FOREIGN
Minister Alexander Downer has admitted he was a behind a decision to
withdraw funds from an Indonesia film festival, leaving organisers in
the lurch on the eve of its opening night.

Last December, the
government pulled funding from the Jakarta International Film Festival
because it objected to the screening of some movies.

On the eve of
the festival, organisers were told they would not be receiving the
$16,000 promised by the Australia-Indonesia Institute (AII).

The
AII, a government-funded body set up to promote friendship between the
two countries, had sponsored the festival in previous years.

In
response to a question on notice asking who made the decision to
withdraw funding at the last minute, Mr Downer said: "I did."

Mr Downer demonstrates his new karaoke technique

The World Socialist Web Site reported last December that:

The Australian films in question are: The President versus David Hicks, which exposes the illegal detention of Australian citizen David Hicks in Guantánamo Bay; Garuda’s Deadly Upgrade, about the murder of Indonesian human rights campaigner Munir Said Thalib; Dhakiyarr versus the King,
a documentary on the murder trial and subsequent disappearance of
Aboriginal leader Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda over 70 years ago; and We Have Decided Not To Die,
an 11-minute short about three individuals who escape death in a number
of different and unusual ways. Indonesian censors had cleared all four
films for the festival.

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 All worth considering while Downer says that the only thing wrong with Hicks is a bad back  while experts and lawyers say he's being subjected to CIA psychological torture.. yet another Alexander Downer Fraud

[extract from ABCTV Lateline Transcript]

TONY JONES: Do you have any direct evidence that David Hicks was
subject over a prolonged period to the sort of things you're talking
about, sensory deprivation on that scale with hoods and masks and so on
because from what I've read he was subjected to that in the very early
days for a short period of time.

PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: That's correct, yes.

TONY JONES: And then he was put in solitary confinement.

PROFESSOR
ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: Yes, he was put in an extreme
form of solitary confinement for 244 days. OK? A dark cell denied any
sunlight, denied any emotional support. His contact limited to once a
week visits with his military chaplain, OK? So imagine that? 244 days
locked up inside a cell with no human contact, no sunlight. That's an
extreme form of sensory disorientation. That leads to tremendous
psychological damage and when Hicks' civilian attorney Joshua Dratel
first met him for the first time he found Hicks was in a severely
damaged and stressed psychological state, obsessed with himself, unable
to grasp reality and unable to focus on the real issues in this case.
Showing all the signs, the same kind of signs that the FBI noted in
their emails about the treatment of other Guantanamo detainees.
Treatment by the way that the International Red Cross has called
torture.

TONY JONES: Alfred McCoy, one of the strange things
about the Hicks case is he appears to have virtually incriminated
himself in a freely given interview with the Australian Federal Police
where over a very long period of time he spells out - and evidently
under no duress - he spells out how he had training in three phases in
al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Given that he openly gave that
information to Australian interrogators, why would there be any need to
torture him?

PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN:
Guantanamo itself is a system of torture, OK? The complete isolation,
the harsh conditions, the daily harsh treatment, that is a carefully
constructed system, designed to break down the detainees. Now, why was
David Hicks being singled out to be broken down? Very simply he was
picked to be the first detainee among 700 placed before the military
commissions. I think the Guantanamo Administration was trying to break
him down in order to have him capitulate, co-operate and legitimate
what is in fact an illegal, an uncivilised form of military justice
that's been repudiated by the United Nations Commission on torture and
indeed 76 eminent Australian journalists and the Attorney-General of
the United Kingdom. So this was designed to break Hicks down and make
him capitulate and co-operate with the military commission, something
he's not done. Something that he's resisted in a way that very few of
the other detainees have been able to do.

Now that the US has caved in and will allow a US representative to  take Hick's Oath of Allegiance
as a citizen of Great Britain, hiding the movie from a few Indonesians
doesn't look that great on our Foreign Minister's Curriculum Vita