Conscience has compelled a Burmese man to come forward and admit that he murdered many people when he was a member of a government death squad in that junta controlled country. This raises the question of whether he should face justice here in Australia.
This man is now an Australian citizen - and he has a wife and children here. He shows remorse for the time he and his squad infiltrated student ranks and posed as agitators to identify leaders of the student movement for democracy - who were then murdered !
It is a strange situation. There is no appeal from the Burmese government for his extradition to face murder charges because that government recruited and trained him to commit those murders, and while it is a government in power by rigged elections - it is the legitimate government of Burma.
There must be many - perhaps even thousands - of people now living in Australia who have a past that includes what we would consider murder. Both sides in the struggles that included ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia were guilty of slaughtering their neighbors - and we have citizens who were former residents of places like Biafra, Congo,Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda - and many more similar trouble spots.
In many cases citizens were press ganged into service and forced to carry out killings - and in others they believed that what they were doing was the right thing at that time. It is impossible to bring them to court and deliver clear justice for events that happened in another place - and in the fog of civil war.
Probably the best policy is to adapt to the outlook that applied to those who joined the French foreign legion.
The past was the past - and no questions were asked.
Coming to Australia for many is to embark on a new life. Perhaps the time they step ashore should start the clock ticking on where their record of history commences !
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