While it may be the reality that selective government sanctions on companies and individuals are of limited value in the real world, they serve as powerful symbols. They state that the Australian government is involved in the world around it, in support of shared values such as democracy and human rights. The hypocrisy lies in the way Canberra determines which corporations and which individuals are to be sanctioned.
The Australian Federal Government recently announced it has ‘imposed Magnitsky-style targeted financial sanctions and travel bans on seven Israeli individuals, and targeted financial sanctions on one entity [the Hilltop Youth movement], for involvement in settler violence against Palestinians’. This is according to Foreign Minister Penny Wong. Similar sanctions have been imposed on Russian companies and individuals, retaliation for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Similar restrictions have been imposed on others as well. The hypocrisy and the reality lies in the highly selective nature of the cases Canberra chooses to speak and act upon.
July 2024 marks 50 years since the Turkish invasion of the Republic of Cyprus. It is no coincidence the invasion of a member of the United Nations took place only months after the Yom Kippur War (October 6-25, 1973), while the world was dealing with the Oil Price Shock which followed Israel defending itself from foreign attack.
In the five decades since July 20, 1974, the Occupied Territories of Cyprus – 37 per cent of the island – have been transformed from a Mediterranean society to an Anatolian Turkish one. The Christian population – Hellenes, Armenians and Maronites – has been virtually extinguished through forced emigration. Their churches and monasteries desecrated and converted to mosques, cultural centres, stables or worse.
The legal owners of personal and communal properties are systematically denied access to, and use of, their properties, in violation of judgments by Cypriot and European Union Courts.
How many sanctions has the Australian government – regardless of political party – imposed on Turkish companies and individuals involved in violence against the people of the Republic of Cyprus?
Between December 2022 and September 2023, Azeri authorities maintained a near complete blockade of Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated region in the South Caucasus. Starved of food, medical supplies and energy for nine-months, the indigenous Armenian population was in no position to resist the onslaught of the Azeri armed forces when they attacked. Within days, Artsakh was depopulated of its native people, driven into exile by the government in Baku.
How many sanctions has the Australian government – regardless of political party – imposed on Turkish and Azeri companies and individuals involved in violence against the Armenian people of Artsakh and the Republic of Armenia?
Then there is the disparity between Federal government approaches to the Shoah (Holocaust, the genocide of European Jewry) and the Genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians and Hellenes. That is a discussion for another time.
Political expediency has been a fact of geopolitics since time immemorial. If we are serious about building a better world, such expediency needs to be moderated. Hatred based on ethnicity or religion must be combatted at every turn. So does hypocrisy, especially at the highest levels of political leadership.
Dr Panayiotis Diamadis, Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
