Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to join the two previous speakers, who have long-term credibility in association with Middle Eastern Christians and their causes. There is one group who are not included in the motion because they have no constituents in this country to advocate for them. They are quite small. They are the Yazidis, who are misdescribed often as devil worshippers. In the last two years, they have suffered a particularly horrific attack, when Islamic fundamentalists sent a truckload of explosives into one of their small villages and murdered hundreds of people.

I do not want to enter into the debate between the two previous speakers about the connection between the Western intervention in Iraq and the persecution of Christians; I do, however, note that the former Bishop of Parramatta, Kevin Manning, in his strenuous opposition to the war, placed a very heavy emphasis on what he predicted to be its outcome for Christians. That was because of his close association with the Catholic Bishop of Baghdad. There were very early predictions that, because of the association of Christianity with the Western world, there would be very counterproductive outcomes for them. That is not to say by itself the intervention was right or wrong, but it is certainly a factor in what has occurred.

There is no doubt that we have witnessed a significant long-term assault on the Christian minority in Iraq. It has been characterised by the kidnapping of bishops and at least 12 priests and by car bomb attacks on churches. In November of last year there was a physical siege of a major church, leading to the murder of 52 people. I noticed a report by Serena Chaudhry in Reuters in the last month or so, during Easter, which talked about a person, Raad, who had lost 30 personal friends in that murder of 52 people.

I agree with the member for Berowra on one point—that it would be an unfortunate outcome if we spent all of our energy on facilitating the departure of Christians from the Middle East. Obviously the genesis of Christianity is in that region, there are many historical ties to the Middle East and there are various important religious centres there. I read a book in the last year or so about the experience of a Baghdad Jewish family who had an internal debate in their family about whether they should go to Israel in the early years of its establishment and the way in which various Zionist organisations paid Jews to leave Baghdad at that stage to build up Israel. It was a heart-wrenching decision for members of that family. Some of them stayed in Baghdad because of thousands of years of connection with the city and only left later when persecution occurred and they became the victims of internal political struggles in Iraq, whereas others left earlier.

I do not think the aim should be that we put everyone on planes and send them to America and Australia, but there is no doubt that significant numbers of Christians have fled the region and should become a major consideration of countries with regard to their refugee intake. There is quite a bit of debate about the figures. Austen Ivereigh, in October 2010, talked about there only being 800,000 Christians in the early 1990s. Other figures are in the area of 1.15 million, going down to 850,000 in recent years. The member for Fowler has cited other figures from the US Department of State. But what is very fundamental is that a very large number—of the order of hundreds of thousands—of Christians are fleeing to Jordan and Syria in particular.

I want to say in passing that another threat they face is right on the horizon today and that is the question of what occurs in Syria. No-one would defend the Assad regime; no-one would stand by its attack on Homs in the 1990s or the current shooting down of demonstrators. But in this week's New York Review of Books, Melise Ruthven makes this point:

While its massacre in Hama was horrendous and it has an abysmal record on human rights, engaging in torture and severe political repression, it—

that is, the Syrian government—

had a good, even excellent one when it came to protecting the pluralism of the religious culture that is one of Syria's most enduring and attractive qualities. Some of these virtues are captured in Brooke Allen's engaging account of her travels in Syria, The Other Side of the Mirror, where she meets ordinary people from different backgrounds and rejoices in the natural friendliness of Syria's people and the extraordinary richness of its past. Instead of the Soviet-style grayness she expected to find from accounts in the US media, she discovers a sophisticated cosmopolitan society where life is being lived in many different styles and varieties.

The author of the book review goes on to say:

Visiting several mosques, churches, and shrines, she provides impressive testimony of the country's religious diversity and the regime's commitment to religious freedom. It would be tragic if the pursuit of democracy led to the shredding of this bright human canopy, where religious and cultural differences seem to have flourished under the iron grip of a minority sectarian regime.

The reality is that we might not have much time for the Assad regime—we know that it is Alawite self-interest which preserves this pluralism—but one of the realities that Christians in the Middle East understand is that, whatever we say about their lack of democracy and the suppression of human rights, we have a serious problem now with what is going to happen to Christians in Syria, including the significant number of Iraqi Christians who have fled there. I had a discussion with former Minister for Foreign Affairs Downer recently and he was making the same point. As I say, it is a very complex picture.

I would hope that many Muslims would join Shaikh Shuja, the Chairman of the British Muslim Council, who, in the attacks of November last year stated:

For more than 1,000 years Christians, Jews and Muslims have lived in peace and harmony as good neighbours, and we have no doubt that they will continue to do so. The present suffering of Christians is a part of the tragic political situation suffered by all the people of Iraq. The Christians in Iraq are a part of Iraq. The majority of the Christians are not likely to leave Iraq and, if they do so, those who are left there are likely to be more vulnerable …

It is important that the Muslims in Iraq and the world over should come forward to express their condemnation of persecution of the Christian minority and to give whatever spiritual, material and practical help they can.

This important statement by, as I say, British Muslims shows that they appreciate just how dire have been the circumstances of Christians in recent years. This is, as the member for Fowler has indicated, a matter of great significance to significant numbers of Christians who have entered Australia and who tend to reside in the member for Fowler's electorate, my electorate and other parts of the Liverpool region.

They have been assiduous in lobbying members of parliament to make sure that there is an understanding of the continuing plight their people suffer in the region and to make sure that, when we consider the size of our refugee intake and where we take people from, this continues to be a significant factor. As both members have indicated, they have proven to be a very good group of citizens. They are highly concentrated in areas such as jewellery and IT. They are essentially—more, perhaps, in the case of the Mandaeans than the other groups—very Western oriented. If you went to their events, you would see the way in which they have integrated very fully, not only to the employment opportunities in this country but to the actual culture. One of the things that particularly impresses me about the Mandaeans, amongst all the other groups, is that they have been outward going. They have made sure that they have associated themselves with Australian NGOs and with community groups outside their own community. They have not been insular; they have not been separate—they have sought to come into the mainstream of this nation.

As I say, I fully associate myself with the two previous speakers in raising an important matter. In a world that has many similar human rights issues where large numbers of people flee from persecution, it is important, given Australian involvement. We are not saying for one moment that it is necessarily the be-all of association. It is a complex situation. There are Islamist fundamentalists, Salafis, who would have murdered Christians at the drop of a hat. It did not necessarily require Western intervention. But we did have it, it is an ingredient, and we should make sure that we continue to focus on this area, to press government and to press departments to make sure that this group remains in our minds with regard to the refugee humanitarian intake.

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