There is one phrase notable by its near-total omission from “A National Response to Islamophobia: A Strategic Framework for Inclusion, Safety, and Prosperity”, the long-awaited report from Aftab Malik, the federal government’s first particular envoy to fight Islamophobia. That phrase is Christchurch.
The title of the city the place an Australian terrorist murdered 51 Muslims at their locations of worship, in Aotearoa-New Zealand in 2019, is talked about solely as soon as, and solely within the context of mosques threatened “with chilling reference to the Christchurch assaults”, slightly than an evaluation of the assault itself. Elsewhere, there’s a photograph of a person studying a newspaper through which the assault is splashed throughout the entrance web page, and in a collage of anti-Muslim headlines, one is a few mosque being graffitied with the terrorist’s title.
It is baffling {that a} landmark report on Islamophobia in Australia ought to attribute so little significance to a significant Islamophobic hate crime, one not solely dedicated on this nation’s doorstep but additionally undertaken by one in all its residents. The report by the royal fee into the assault doesn’t seem in Malik’s bibliography, regardless of its discovering that the terrorist’s Islamophobic worldview was obvious from his highschool years in Grafton, and that by the point of his arrival in New Zealand, he supposed to commit a terrorist assault. This was an Australian crime that occurred to happen on the soil of Aotearoa-New Zealand.
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Yet although Malik’s second advice is to formally recognise the UN’s International Day to Combat Islamophobia on March 15, he fails to elucidate the importance of that exact date. (Clue: in Aotearoa-New Zealand, the occasion that’s elsewhere described because the Christchurch assault is usually known as March 15.)
Malik partially redressed this failure throughout the press convention launching the report, stating, “It was an Australian citizen who was chargeable for killing 51 Muslims of their place of worship within the Christchurch terror assault. This truth alone ought to compel us to behave.”
Indeed. And such “motion” may usefully have included trying throughout the Tasman slightly than simply the United Kingdom and the United States for concepts on methods to fight Islamophobia. Why, for instance, would a report that highlights the risks of on-line hate fail to say the Christchurch Call, the much-acclaimed post-March 15 initiative to get rid of terrorist and violent extremist content material on-line?
Most Australian Muslims have nonetheless welcomed the report, regardless of our misgivings concerning the position of envoys and our scepticism that the federal government will meaningfully act upon its suggestions. For instance, modifications to counter-terrorism laws that has disproportionately focused Muslims can be a productive (if unlikely) final result of the report. Anti-Palestine racism receives extra recognition from the envoy than had been feared, given his earlier remarks on that subject, even when there is no such thing as a point out of Palestine below his suggestions to DFAT.
But occasions over the previous fortnight have solely highlighted the inadequacy of envoys as a mechanism for combating racism. As a Muslim lady “of South Asian look”, I used to be shocked to search out myself extra conscious of my South Asian than my Muslim identification whereas observing the “March for Australia” rallies in individual in Melbourne a fortnight in the past. Perhaps Islamophobic slogans have grow to be so acquainted that they fail to pack the identical punch as rants concerning the invasion from India. But it was obvious that the protesters’ hate may fasten onto anybody thought to be alien to a white supremacist imaginative and prescient of Australia. “Mass migration” is a usefully liquid time period in that regard.
It was instructive to overhear among the fascists referring to their anti-racist opponents as “the Palestinians” — utilizing “Palestinian” as a generic time period for the enemy, the undesirable. Likewise, the phrase “Indian” is being utilized in the identical sense because the UK time period “—aki” (usually intently adopted by the phrase “bashing”) to explain anybody of South Asian descent. Palestinians, Indians and, after all, First Nations peoples — all undesirable, all loathsome.
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I’ve lined a variety of far-right occasions for Crikey over the previous decade; the March for Australia rallies have been probably the most terrifying. This was attributable to not solely the massive numbers of protesters concerned or the bodily violence unleashed, but additionally the truth that the alt-right is not pretending it’s simply there for the lols and the shitposting.
The alt-right “tricksters” have been nonetheless there, after all. But I used to be extra disturbed by the variety of middle-aged to aged protesters, their faces glowing with ecstasy as they listened to neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell ship his fascist speech. Tomorrow doesn’t belong to those pensioners armed with their wheelie-walkers and mobility scooters, however they’re decided to make sure that it doesn’t belong to the “Indian” migrant subsequent door, both.
As The Age experiences, some Indian neighborhood leaders have referred to as for the appointment of an envoy to deal with the surge in anti-Indian racism. But appointing envoys because the perceived want arises is a distraction from work that may be extra successfully undertaken by the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Office of Multicultural Affairs.
Should each migrant neighborhood argue their case for an envoy? This thought occurred to me as I witnessed some threatening behaviour in the direction of a 30-something-year-old man “of African look” who apparently simply obtained caught within the crush whereas attempting to get to Flinders St Station. He tried to push in opposition to the group, saying that he was simply attempting to get via, and a girl yelled that if he wasn’t with the protest, he shouldn’t be wherever close to right here. Similar abuse from others. I hope he obtained out safely.
As for me, after I lie awake haunted by the spectre of the group of nannas giving an out-of-key rendition of “You’re the Voice” whereas carrying Australian flag capes and waving placards about mass migration, I search solace within the considered my most well-liked alternative of anti-racism envoy. That can be one other man “of African look” that I noticed close to the march, his hair wrapped in a durag, a tinned beverage raised in the direction of the sky. As he stood on a bench surrounded by so-called patriots chanting about mass migration, he yelled, “You’re too late! We’re already right here! We’re already right here, and there’s extra of us coming! And you’re going to like our music, and also you’re going to like our meals, and it’s going to be GREAT!”
