Category: Australia

Front page newspaper stories and torn excerpts from a damning report into war crimes allegedly committed by Australian soldiers will play a feature role in a month-long exhibition in western Sydney about the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan.

The documents form the foundation of a confronting collection of protest collage artworks by Elyas Alavi, as he struggled to process the stark and shocking findings contained in the Brereton report into war crimes in Afghanistan.

Among the mediums used in the collection are washes of the artist’s own blood.

“As an Afghan Australian I struggled to imagine how Australian defense forces could do such crimes,” he told Guardian Australia.

“I have this paper called citizenship, I am safe, but in Afghanistan there are victims, and here there are families of victims.

“Afghanistan is so far away, the government says it’s a tragic country, there’s nothing more we can do, but Australia went there to help, and innocent people were killed by Australian soldiers. That is why I’m using my blood.”

About 50,000 Afghans now living in Australia will mark the first anniversary of the Taliban moving into Kabul later this month.

More than one in five of those Afghan nationals, most who have arrived in Australia as refugees in the past 20 years, now reside in the greater Sydney area.

With the redacted version of the Inspector-General of the Australian Defense Force Afghanistan Inquiry Report, commonly known as the Brereton report, now in the public domain, these relatively new Australians are grappling with a disturbing truth about how their adoptive country treated their people.

Confronting Australia’s role as co-saviour, co-conspirator and co-offender is one of the dominant themes in Twenty Years: The War in Afghanistan, which officially opens on Thursday at the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre.

The program includes a series of forums co-ordinated by Maryam Zahid, founder of Afghan women on the Move, with speakers drawn from the Afghan community including public interest lawyer Lala Pordeli, SBS journalist Abdullah Alikhil, and exiled Kabul court judge Farah Altaf Atahee, who fled to Australia with her husband and three children shortly after the Taliban took control of the capital last August.

On 24 August the Afghan war crimes whistleblower David McBride will join an online forum discussing the future of Afghanistan and the social and political challenges Australia faces when dealing with a militant Islamist government.

McBride was one of the subjects in an exhibition of Hoda Afshar’s photographic portraits recognizing the work of whistleblowers, which toured earlier this year.

The work of another exiled photojournalist, Najiba Noori, is featured in the Twenty Years exhibition. Noori was working for Agence France-Presse (AFP) as a video journalist based in Kabul until the Taliban took power a year ago. She is now based in Paris.

Noori told the Guardian last October that she feared for her family, friends and colleagues left behind. The new head of the University of Kabul, where her younger brother was a music student, had just called for the death of all journalists.

In February, the International Federation of Journalists reported that about half of media outlets in Afghanistan had collapsed in the preceding five months, and more than 70% of journalists who had fled or gone into hiding were women.

Journalist and film-maker Antony Loewenstein co-curated the extensive program with artist and writer Alana Hunt. He wants the exhibition to provoke, inspire outrage and prompt a wider section of the community to confront Australia’s role in the longest war in this country’s history.

Loewenstein spent time in Afghanistan in 2012 and 2015; he says while the US-led war there may be officially over, its grim legacy lives on.

“We’re all responsible as Australians for the current situation in Afghanistan,” he tells the Guardian. “We occupied the country for 20 years, committed war crimes against Afghan civilians and have very little [that’s] positive to show for our involvement.

“The war has fallen down the memory hole… our legacy there as a nation is tarnished,” he says.

Calls to put the focus back on Afghanistan

A federal government-funded Australian War Memorial project, launched in 2016 to investigate Australia’s military commitment in conflicts in Timor-Leste and the Middle East, is part of a controversial $500m expansion plan for the national war museum.

Australia’s official military historians, however, have not yet been granted access to the full, unredacted Brereton report, which may not be released until investigations are complete later this decade.

Loewenstein says the Afghan community is concerned that if historians are not granted full access to the report, the War Memorial exhibit will continue to present a glossed-over narrative on Australia’s 20-year presence.

The concerns are not without grounds. The existing exhibition documenting Australian forces in Afghanistan makes no mention of alleged war crimes, despite the fact that, as Guardian columnist Paul Daley pointed out almost two years ago, the Brereton inquiry was already at that stage 18 months old.

Loewenstein says organizers hope the Twenty Years exhibition and symposium will throw some of the media attention back on Afghanistan which, perhaps due to entrenched racism, has been left behind by the media and public policy. When Kabul fell, for instance, the Morrison government promised refuge to just 3,000 Afghan asylum seekers in its annual allotment of 13,000; meanwhile, more than 8,000 Australian visas for Ukrainian refugees have been issued since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Both countries have roughly the same population, of around 40 million.

“All refugees should be treated equally and the new Australian government has an opportunity to repair the damage caused by [the occupation],” Loewenstein says. “Australia has a moral responsibility to help the Afghan people.”

Twenty Years: The War in Afghanistan is at the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Center until 3 September

The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, has said she intends to block a coalmine project backed by mining billionaire Clive Palmer that would have dug for the fossil fuel just 10km from Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef coastline.

Palmer’s Central Queensland Coal project would have mined up to 18m tonnes a year from two open-cut pits near Rockhampton.

It comes amid calls from the Greens to ban new coal and gas projects as the Albanese government’s bill to enshrine a 43% cut to greenhouse gas emissions made its way to the Senate.

The decision is the new environment minister’s first in the portfolio.

Environmentalists said the proposed refusal was a victory for the state, for the Great Barrier Reef, for the environment and for the climate.

A Queensland state government assessment said last year the Central Queensland Coal project was “not suitable” and would risk damaging the reef as well as wetlands, fish habitat and ecosystems that depended on groundwater.

An official notice said the minister is proposing to refuse the mine under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and has invited public comment on her draft decision, with submissions closing on 18 August.

In a statement, the minister said: “Based on the information available to me at this stage, I believe that the project would be likely to have unacceptable impacts to the Great Barrier Reef marine park, and the values ​​of the Great Barrier Reef world heritage. area and national heritage place.”

“The available evidence also suggests that the project would be likely to have unacceptable impacts on water resources in the area.”

She said Palmer’s company had been contacted, adding a final decision would be made after public comments were received.

“While I am seeking comment on my proposed decision, and until I make my final decision on this project, I am unable to make any further statements on the matter.”

Last year Queensland’s state government sent a final assessment of the mine to the federal government, saying it posed “a number of unacceptable risks”.

Conservationists had called on the previous environment minister, Sussan Ley, to refuse the mine.

Palmer’s company had rejected claims the mine would do unacceptable damage. Guardian Australia called the Brisbane office of Central Queensland Coal, but was told nobody was available to speak as “everyone from the company is on site in central Queensland”.

The director of the Queensland Conservation Council, Dave Copeman, said: “This prompt decision is a welcome change from the delayed and questionable decision making approach of the previous Morrison government.”

“It looks like we now have a minister who understands the science, is willing to listen to community concerns, and act accordingly.

“We won’t reach Australia’s 43% 2030 emissions reduction targets, that passed the House of Representatives today, without strong decisions such as this.

“This will be overwhelmingly positive news for the many locals and organizations who have been making clear the local and scientific opposition to this project.”

Cherry Muddle, a Great barrier Reef campaigner at the Australian Marine Conservation Society, said they hoped the minister “rejects this mine once and for all” and pointed to modeling suggesting mine sediments would have had disastrous impacts on an area that was rich in marine life .

“In the wake of the fourth mass bleaching event on the reef since 2016, it is vital new coal and gas projects like this one are refused,” Muddle said.

“It shows the government are serious about saving the reef and tackling the issues that threaten it.”

Julian Assange’s family have said the Albanese government needs to intervene in the case before he is extradited to the US, saying it would effectively be a “death sentence” for the WikiLeaks founder if there was no intervention.

The plight of Assange, who is being held in the UK’s Belmarsh prison pending an appeal against his extradition to the US, has been raised with the new US ambassador to Australia, Caroline Kennedy, by Assange’s Australian solicitor, Stephen Kenny.

Attending Parliament House on Wednesday, Assange’s father, John Shipton, and brother, Gabriel Shipton, raised concern that there had been little progress made since the May election, and urged the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to make the issue “non-negotiable” with the US.

The family expressed frustration that they had been unable to secure a meeting with either Albanese, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, or the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, despite requests.

Since the election, Albanese has said the government intends to pursue the matter diplomatically, saying “not all foreign affairs is best done with the loudhailer.”

Gabriel Shipton said he had initially been encouraged by Albanese’s remarks as opposition leader that “enough is enough” in regards to Assange’s incarceration, but was frustrated with the lack of progress since the election.

“It is months ago now that he said this stuff and made the statement that enough is enough, but when is enough, enough?” he said. “Julian’s still in prison. He’s been there for three years and he is not a convicted criminal.

“They could pick up the phone and call Joe Biden and make it a non-negotiable.

“We are strategically vital to the US at the moment, they need our resources, if it was made a non-negotiable, Julian would be here tomorrow.”

Supporters have raised concern about an incoming government brief sent to Dreyfus about the case, which said that “if surrendered, convicted and sentenced in the US, Assange could apply under the ITP [international transfer of prisoners] scheme to serve his sentence in Australia’”.

But sources stressed that this document did not indicate a prisoner transfer was the government’s preferred strategy, saying it merely outlined the conditions of such a process.

John Shipton, Assange’s 77-year-old father who has been leading the campaign to bring Assange home to Australia, described the possibility of delaying intervention until Assange was tried and convicted in the US as “grotesque”. He said the process would take many years, and could result in Assange being detained for more than 20 years since the publication of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks in 2010.

He said the Americans “stole all his court papers and people say to us ‘put Julian in their hands, he will be safe,’ it is ridiculous, it is grotesque”.

“It is the most feasible way for them to continue to sit on their hands and do nothing,” he said.

Gabriel Shipton pointed to expert witness testimony given to the Westminster magistrates court that said Assange would be at risk of suicide if extradition to the US became imminent.

“That scenario is a death sentence for Julian,” he said.

He urged the Australian government to be more vocal on Assange’s plight, suggesting the case was being treated differently because it involved Australia’s closest ally.

“We’re dealing with this prosecution or persecution that in any normal circumstance would be seen as totally illegal, and if it was Iran doing it to somebody, or China, or Vietnam, the government would be calling them out,” he said.

“It is not just about Julian’s life and his wellbeing, it is a matter of principle, and if Australia wants to be the sort of country that calls out nations on their press freedom record, they could definitely be more vocal.”

The Shiptons said Assange was not in a good physical or mental state, having already suffered a stroke in October, with fears he may suffer another. He is being held in a maximum security cell with limited phone and visiting rights, in what his wife, Stella Moris, has described as “atrocious” conditions.

The US has given assurances that if extradited, Assange would not be subject to “special administrative measures” or held at a maximum security facility, which the UK high court ruling described as “solemn undertakings offered by one government to another”.

But advocates remain concerned that Assange will not be given a fair trial for the 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse he faces, which carry a potential combined prison sentence of up to 175 years.