My thoughts this evening are with the Sudanese Australian community, with the horrifying reports of the massacre of more than 2,000 civilians by the Rapid Support Forces group in the famine stricken town of El Fasher in Sudan. The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale have been monitoring the awful situation in Sudan at the moment, and I want to quote to you from Nathaniel Raymond. What they do at the research centre is use satellite imaging to try and work out what is actually happening on the ground. This is his quote:
We are only at the beginning of a wave of violence … I have never seen a level of violence against an area like we are seeing now. This is only comparable with a Rwandan style killing in the first 24 hours.
The situation in Sudan is a human catastrophe. There are 14 million people displaced, 30 million are dependent on foreign aid and over 150,000 have been killed. It is a human catastrophe.
I know the impact this is having on the Sudanese Australian community here in Australia, including in my home state of Queensland. I know that members of the community feel as if the world has forgotten this conflict, as if they have been forgotten, and I know the burden that places upon them. I know because I’ve heard from members of the community what it is like to wake up in the morning and check your phone to see if your loved ones are still alive. I know what it feels to obtain news that your loved ones are now deceased—that they’ve been lost forever and there is nothing you can do about it because you’re located thousands of miles away from them.
Just recently, on a visit to Melbourne, I met one family who told me of the pressure that they’re under after a mother and a mother-in-law had come to visit their newly born grandson here in Australia before the war broke out in April 2023. Their homes have been destroyed. They have nothing to go back to. They’ve put in visa applications seeking sanctuary here in Australia, and they’re enduring the pressure of not knowing whether or not they will be able to safely reside here in Australia with their family—a family who, in so many ways, is contributing to Australia.
President, I call upon the Australian government to do everything that it possibly can to support our Sudanese Australian community at this very, very difficult time. I call upon the Australian government to consider humanitarian pathways for those who are currently in Australia with loved ones, with family members, so they do not have to return to the human catastrophe unfolding in Sudan. I call upon the Australian government to do everything it possibly can through international forums to hold accountable those people who are committing these human rights atrocities in Sudan and to hold accountable those foreign actors who are providing arms to the people who are perpetrating these monstrous crimes in Sudan. I call upon the Australian government to provide whatever aid it can provide to assist the tens of millions of people in Sudan who have been displaced and who are suffering from starvation at this difficult time.
Earlier in the year, I attended an awards event which was organised by the Sudanese Community Association of Queensland, and it was a joy to attend that event, to see members of the Australian community who are contributing in so many different ways to our beautiful country. That was a time, a moment, when they could celebrate those successes and, just for a moment, forget what is happening in Sudan—if it’s possible to forget that. They are wonderful people, a wonderful community, adding and contributing to our beautiful country, and I just want to make sure the community knows they have not been forgotten. We need to know and follow what’s happening in Sudan.
