Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to support this motion and I congratulate and thank the member for Fremantle on highlighting, in the Australian parliament, this very important issue. The situation in Syria is nothing short of a humanitarian disaster. The conflict which began in March 2011 has devastated the country and inflicted considerable pressure on the surrounding region.

In four years, this bloody conflict has resulted in the deaths of 190,000 people, many of them in shockingly brutal circumstances, and the displacement of another 6.5 million refugees internally and 3½ million people externally. The situation at the moment is dire. In September 2014, United Nations human rights investigators released evidence of atrocities which continue to be committed in Syria by both Islamic extremists and—

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