If you were tortured with gases forced into your rectum by tubes, shackled in the fetal position to a grimy floor, questioned about information you do not know about, told you were never going home to your family, beaten, and then released with no charges years later; what would you do? In Australia, 51-year-old Mamdouh Habib, released in February 2005 from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had to ask himself this very question. Rather then sue, Mamdouh Habib returned home and is campaigning for Parliament.

“I’m from this community. The people in Parliament are not from us – they’re rich people,” Habib said to The New York Times.

“We have to be inside the Parliament to know what’s going on, and to let the people on the outside know what is going on, and that is why we are doing this,” Raul Bassi, an Argentinean now living in Australia who recruited Habib to run, said to The New York Times.

Habib went to Pakistan in 2001 to find a religious school for his four children and was seized by American and Australian troops, suspected to be a terrorist with al-Qaeda.
After being seized in Pakistan, he was allegedly tortured by English-speaking men and flown to Egypt, where he was held for several months. Then in 2002, Habib was transferred to the American detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.

Three years later, Habib was released by the Bush administration with no charges, because the American government did not want the alleged torture accusations brought to court, according to The New York Times.

With a budget of $2,000, Habib is running for a seat on the Sydney, Australia, Parliament to fight back and promote change. Habib said to The New York Times that he does not expect to win, even though he has many supporters, but he does not plan to stop fighting.

Habib’s campaign has raised awareness in Australia towards who should be in Parliament.

“It’s an alternative to the two major parties,” said 41-year-old supporter of Habib, Mike Newman, to The New York Times. “On race and immigration issues, there is not a lot of difference between the two parties.”

However, some people think that it is a bad idea for Habib to run for Parliament due to his being tortured. Torture techniques sometimes include severe emotional and mental trauma.

“You can’t take your anger with you,” Habib said to The New York Times. “You have to control yourself.”

Habib continued to say that he does not harbor any harsh feelings towards the government because they were only doing their job.

“The fact that Guantánamo Bay exists in the first place is a testament to the failure of representative democracy and illustrates the need for direct democracy,” said first-year Eric Ginsburg via e-mail.

Direct democracy is when a government directly correlates with what the citizens want rather than representative government, where someone is elected to represent a select group of people.

Habib is an example of someone who is from the community entering Parliament to represent the community. Although this is not a direct democracy, it is a step towards having representation from people within the actual community instead of having those of different classes representing a community they may not be from.