In her Mamamia column this week, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop writes about peace, civil liberties, human rights, and Australia’s role in promoting them.
With one pencil and three words, Australian cartoonist David Pope poignantly conveyed the gravity of the terrorist attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last January.
Pope’s cartoon ‘He drew first’ was one of several powerful images that went viral as details of the vicious attack emerged, prompting global solidarity against an unprecedented and deliberate attack on freedom of speech.
Last week in Paris I presented Pope’s cartoon to the remaining staff of Charlie Hebdo as a gesture of sympathy and support to them but also – that Australia acknowledges a global challenge that extends well beyond their office.
Charlie Hebdo’s staff are among the many cartoonists and journalists playing a crucial role in ensuring that the flow of ideas is unabated and is shining a light on those that jeopardise our civil liberties.
Following the Paris attacks we were reminded of UNESCO’s founding principle – since wars begin in the minds of men and women, it is in the minds of men and women that the defences of peace must be constructed.
Related Content: Julie Bishop on why young Australian women are becoming radicalised.
The media has played a role in protecting our civil liberties for over 100 years.
It was an Australian journalist, Keith Murdoch, who helped expose the full horrors of war during the battle at Gallipoli. His letter home to the then Australian Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher, was recently inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register.
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Top Comments
How about addressing and condemning what's happening at home ... i.e. the "Great Australian Patriot" (GAP) and all the "Reclaim Australia" rallies? They are going after Muslim people en-masse to the point of violence, women being accosted in public, on public transport, online. Take a look at some of their Facebook pages - people celebrating the burning of mosques, making threats and remarks about harming Muslim people. It's disgusting.
The GAP is anything but a patriot because you're right Julie Bishop - our country embraces freedom of thought, worship, speech and association and this nitwit doesn't realise that the very freedoms that he's enjoying to have his little rallies, think what he likes and express himself are the same freedoms he's trying to curtail for others.
The problem is that the longer this anti-Muslim sentiment festers, the more it builds in terms of numbers and intensity and eventually, we're going to have a repeat of the Cronulla riots. People are going to get hurt or killed. And/or, we're going to end up like the USA with gangs forming for self-protection (e.g. the Latin Kings, one of the largest and most violent gangs in the USA initially formed because immigrating Latinos were facing racism and prejudice by Americans who feared that the influx would threaten their "way of life" ... hmmm, sounds familiar).
The government needs to address in no uncertain terms the anti-Muslim movement that is going on at the moment because these people are not just dangerous in terms of harming other people, but damaging our economy also with all their anti-halal rubbish.
Dear god, I can't keep up with the madness. I agree, something has to be done, just NOT a "Great Aussie Patriot ACT"!
I've been impressed with Julie bishop individually but I just find it too hard to take anything she writes about human rights seriously. Her party really does not care about human rights and thinks the UN is an irritating flea of an institution. Every time I see her name next to an article like this I think it must be satire until I read two paragraphs and realise she is being serious at which point I stop reading because it then becomes farcical.