A group of unarmed Australian police officers has entered a war zone to secure the crash site of MH17. The contingent, which is part of a joint Dutch-Australian mission, was forced to turn back from the site this morning due to fighting between pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian troops, according to the ABC’s Stephen McDonell.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is in Kiev, holding talks with the Ukraine President to allow the officers to carry guns. “Part of that is to have the right, should it ever be necessary, to bring arms into the country for self-defence,” Bishop said this morning, stressing that Australia’s presence in the country remained a “humanitarian mission”.
As in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 88 Australians, it is right that Australia provide expertise in the form of Australian Federal Police officers to assist with identifying the perpetrators of a violent act that killed dozens of Australians. But sending unarmed police officers into an active war zone is a reckless act that could lead to more Australian deaths. Going in with guns, even if they are used for self-defence, is arguably even more so.
Such neutral visitors, attending at the behest of their governments, may make tempting human shields or kidnap targets, particularly for irregular forces of the kind opposing the Ukrainian government, to say nothing of the possibility for further tragic accidents, which are all too common in war zones.
….. but think of the headlines?
Abbott & Bishop have performed too much breast beating about “bringing home” our dead nationals.
What is the value of such an exercise when so many risks are involved? And is there any benefit to mourning families to take receipt of a broken partly-decomposed body – or limb or part of a body – as a final memory of someone they loved. I don’t claim to have an answer to the last question but it’s worth pondering.
The act of attempting to physically enter the crash zone puts political pressure on Putin. They could chill out in their London Hotels and Putin would laugh, we’d join the weak willed Europeans and the Australian dead would continue to rot in the summer heat.
If we can’t get into the zone, it’s not our fault and making that point is important. Especially for the bereaved. Zut is clearly not one of the bereaved and neither is klewso.
But Abbott can’t do anything right in the parallel universe that is Crikey so I’m not surprised at your editorial line.
David Hand, much depends on one’s attitude to death. Some people do not put sentiment into bereavement of a physical body – I am in that category hence the protracted negotiations and interminable reporting of this tragic crash site leave me bemused.
Well Zut,
Abbott, who can never win over anything in Crikey, is trying to head off the alternative Crikey editorial that goes something like, “Australian bodies rotting in Ukraine and Tony doesn’t care”, which would then be enthusiastically endorsed by you and others here as yet more proof of Abbott’s evilness.
There’s a geopolitical struggle going on here and it’s over Putin’s efforts to stop Ukraine shifting towards Europe. MH17 has come down in the middle of it and this has drawn the Australian government into it.
They’re doing a great job aren’t they.