Xi Jinping, reacting to the controversy that
has so outraged Australians over the throat-slitting image based on Australian
war crimes in Afghanistan, did not say yesterday:
“The Chinese Government condemns the Australian atrocities in Afghanistan. The thoughts of all Chinese are with the families of those who have lost their lives in these barbaric acts. We will not remove the image. Freedom of expression is the cornerstone of a free society.”
However, Australian Prime Monster Tony
Abbott did say in relation to terrorist attacks on the offices of the
Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in 2015:
"The government condemns the atrocity in Paris overnight. The thoughts of all Australians are with the families of those who have lost their lives in this barbaric act. Freedom of expression is the cornerstone of a free society.”
It does strike me as slightly hypocritical
of current PM Scummo Morrison that he can demand the removal of the offending
image, and also demand an apology from the Chinese.
I once supported China when it was still a
socialist country. But after Mao’s
death, Deng Xiaoping introduced capitalist reforms that eventually saw the
country change its direction, not only practicing capitalism at home, but also
accumulating “overseas interests” that it now has to project military power to
defend.
The image that has so offended Morrison and
a great many Australians is provocative and designed to offend. But it is also grounded in the reality of
allegations made by serving Australian soldiers to a 2015-16 enquiry
commissioned by the Army under sociologist Dr. Samantha Crompvoets following rumours
of Australian war crimes.
Crompvoets repeated allegations made by the
soldiers she interviewed: when helicopters landed in villages, any villagers
running away were fired upon, “killing many of these men and boys (and
sometimes women and children) shooting them in the back, while running away.”
Other soldiers would take any surviving men and boys “and ‘interrogate’ them,
meaning tie them up and torture them…for days and the whole village would be
deprived of food, water and medicines…When the Special Forces left, the men and
boys would be found dead: shot in the head or blindfolded and with throats
slit,’’ she wrote.
One “disturbing example” given by soldier informants occurred when Australian soldiers driving along a road saw two 14-year old boys who they decided might be Taliban sympathisers. “They were stopped and searched and then their throats slit. The rest of the troop then had to ‘clean up the mess’…the bodies were bagged and thrown in a nearby river.”
It was this report, delivered in 2015 but
kept secret at the time, that led Angus Campbell to commission the report into
allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. Campbell (now head of all
Australian Defence Forces) did that in March 2016.
The more recent report is heavily redacted
(sections blacked out) and it is not known whether the throat-slitting
allegations were among those that were regarded as sufficiently credible to
warrant charges of murder.
But given that those allegations are now in
the public arena, is it at all surprising that people and countries critical of
Australia should throw these allegations back at us?
And would it not have been more
statesman-like for Scummo to have responded by saying that he regrets the
content of the image, but regrets even more the allegations on which it is based
and the shame brought to Australia by findings of credible evidence of war
crimes by Australian soldiers?
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