Tag: Russia

‘Together we will win’

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Before it all started – a soldier guards the Ukraine border at Belarus, December 2021, Wikipedia CC

Group One winning jockey Craig Williams took a moment on national television last Saturday to remind people about the war in Ukraine.“Razom my peremozhemo – it means together we will win,” he said, raising three fingers* for the Channel Seven camera, only minutes after winning Australia’s richest race, the $15 million Everest sprint.

Williams, 45, knows all about winning big races – he’s won 68 Group 1 races – the top races for the best horses. Among them he’s won the Melbourne Cup, Cox Plate, Caulfield Cup, The Doncaster and now the Everest. But there’s another side to the champion jockey and that is the humanitarian aid programme he and his Ukrainian-born wife Larysa started this year. Larysa’s parents are safe, but they started thinking ‘What can we do?’

Craig and Larysa flew to Poland in June with a consignment of suitcases containing 92 trauma kits for distribution to civilians and soldiers.The initial project was funded by donations ($30,000) but for the second, winter campaign, Rotary Australia got involved as did the Australian racing industry. Last I checked the tally was up around $300,000. It will take all of that and more. The team purchased vehicles in Poland to take humanitarian aid packages directly into Ukraine. For the second campaign (mid-November), Craig and Larysa are hoping people will donate warm clothing to help people through the harsh northern winter. The couple established the fund with the humanitarian objective of supporting the people of Ukraine by supplying vital equipment and clothing. This includes medical trauma kits for treatment of wounded Ukrainian civilians and soldiers. Trauma kits usually contain tourniquets, chest tubes, compression bandages and other life-saving equipment used by medics in the field.They made an eight-minute documentary about their first mission which can be seen here.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is now in its eighth month, with the world looking on anxiously as Ukraine fights back. As Craig says in the couple’s latest video, people in Ukraine have no electricity, no heating, no fresh water and in some places where there have been missile strikes, they don’t even have a roof over their heads.“Everything is deemed essential. We are looking for companies who can supply clothing, anything suitable for minus degree temperatures (thermals). There is also a need for hydrolytes and water purification (tablets) for the trauma kits”.

In terms of the disruption within the country and the humanitarian plight of refugees, Craig and Larysa’s campaign is a relatively small gesture.The Australian Red Cross says it is 64% of the way towards its $10 million target and there have been many other humanitarian fund-raisers. Australia’s Ukranian community (around 38,000 people) includes 16,830 people who were born there, according to the 2021 Census. The Ukrainian connection is small compared to Canada, where people born in the Ukraine comprise 4% of the country’s population. But here, everybody knows someone who knows a person with connections to Ukraine. Warwick resident Sally Edwards is hopeful the Ukrainian family she raised funds for can be brought to Australia by Christmas. Sally, whose Ukrainian friends live at the Gold Coast, raised $25,000 in a three-week campaign, to bring their extended family to Australia.

As we see every night on our television news and on social media videos, things are grim in Ukraine. Martial law has now been declared in occupied parts of the country.As New York Times correspondent Matthew Mpoke Bigg reported in a month-by-month update on the conflict, Ukraine started fighting back in August.

Ukraine deployed newly arrived missile systems supplied by the US and other Western countries to destroy Russian ammunition dumps and other military infrastructure. In September, Ukraine recaptured much of the north-eastern Kharkiv region, including the city of Izium, a key Russian logistics hub. The advance, which continues, enabled Kyiv to seize the momentum in the war, he wrote.

Meanwhile, Russian leader Vladimir Putin looks increasingly isolated, not just on the world stage, but inside Russia as well, according to academic Matthew Sussex, writing in The Conversation last week.

“The longer the war goes on, the harder it will be for him to extricate himself with any credibility, either at home or abroad,” said Assoc Prof Sussex of the Australian National University.

Sussex detailed the obstacles facing Putin, not the least the estimated 700,000 Russians who exited the country when Putin called for more troops to be mobilised.

Then there was the United Nations General Assembly’s vote condemning Russia’s sham “referendums”, annexing chunks of Ukraine. The vote censuring Russia was 143 votes in favour, 35 abstentions and five against (including Russia itself).

Sussex notes that among countries abstaining from the vote were China and India; both have publicly signalled their disquiet about Putin’s war.

What do we know about an unexpected war between two countries that were once part of the Soviet Union? Given past events, millions of Ukrainians did not wait to find out, fleeing the country in late February and March. Millions more have been displaced within the country as a result of occupation, attacks and missile strikes.

What we do know is that by early October, 6,200 people had died in the conflict, including 396 children. There have been similar numbers of casualties on the Russian side.

In any conflict, there’s the other side of the story and in this case it is Russia believing it has the right to re-claim territories it once regarded as part of the Soviet Union.

You may recall it did so in 2014 when annexing the republic of Crimea from previous control by Ukraine.

Lacking any real understanding of geopolitics in that part of the world and suspecting bias of one kind or another in reporting, I sought out an independent source.

The Institute for the Study of War keeps a watching brief on this and other conflicts around the world. In its latest bulletin, Frederick Kagan claims that Ukraine has every right to fight to liberate all the territory Russia has illegally seized.

“Kyiv’s insistence on regaining control of Ukrainian territory to the internationally-recognized borders is not an absolutist or extremist demand. It is the normal position of a state defending itself against an unprovoked attack as part of a war of conquest.

Ukraine must regain certain specific areas currently under Russian occupation to ensure its long-term security and economic viability,” he writes.

The more chilling ramifications of this conflict boiling over into other countries rests on what Kagan calls “Russia’s demonstrated irresponsibility toward nuclear facilities in Ukraine.”

Russian forces damaged the inactive Chernobyl facilities, and then used Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) grounds as a base for conventional military operations.

“(It) shows a similarly cavalier attitude toward the dangers of bringing war to a massive nuclear power plant.

“Allowing Moscow to retain control of the ZNPP puts Ukraine and all Black Sea states at permanent risk of the downstream consequences of Russia’s willingness to play with nuclear fire.”

Given the news that Russia has knocked out 30% of Ukraine’s power generation, there will be much need of blankets and warm clothing.

  • The three-finger salute, a pro-democracy gesture, symbolises the emblem of Ukraine

 

 

Discrimination in the 1960s, by an unofficial feminist

Despite being ranked equal first for educational attainment, Australia came in at 44th overall in the Global Gender Gap Index 2020 rankings, slipping five places from the previous year. But things are better than the discrimination evident in the 1960s and 1970s*.

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She Who Rides Trail Bikes

By Laurel Wilson

In 1965, Merle Thornton and her friend Rosalie Bogner walked into the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane and chained themselves to the Public Bar as a protest about the discrimination which forbade women from drinking there (instead, relegated to the ‘Ladies’ Lounge’ to drink their Shandies).

At the time, I remember wondering why any self-respecting woman would want to drink in the noisy, smelly, smoke-filled drinking pit that was the usual Public Bar. But then I was just a naive teenager, content to wear the black stockings, gloves and hat that my school rules required, even in the midst of a Brisbane summer. That same school had a rule in which the girls were not allowed to talk to the boys – the playground was separated into the girls’ section and the boys’ section. It seems a ridiculous rule now, and I thought the same at the time. I do remember attempting a small rebellion at one stage, encouraging the girls to sit on one side of the dividing path and the boys on the other, but it came to naught, so my incipient reputation as a ‘stirrer’ was saved for another day.

Then on to University, where it was often rumoured that the women were in danger of being harassed for ‘favours’ by some of the male tutors and lecturers. I didn’t experience this myself, but it seemed to be common knowledge who to avoid.

Prior to graduating, I came to the realisation that because of discrimination, women were officially paid less than men for doing the same job, apparently under the assumption that men needed more money in order to provide for a family. The flaws in this ‘logic’ are too gaping to bother elucidating. I decided at the time that I wouldn’t seek any employment that had such a discriminatory policy. By the time I was in my last year of University, the female wage for teachers was 90% of that for men and there was equal pay by the time I graduated. The requirement that women resign on marriage had gone by the board some time previously (see time-line below).

I had a Holden Ute and a trail bike which I used to race on the dirt track at Tivoli near Ipswich. Of course I had to have a full set of leathers. I had a red leather jacket and black pants (with red hearts on the knee patches). As I was wearing a full-face helmet, it was sometimes a bit difficult to tell there was a female on the bike, except that I was pretty slow. There were a couple of other women racers as well. We’d race in the same races as the men, but there was usually also a ‘ladies’ race’. I didn’t think of it as pioneering anything at the time, but I guess it was a bit unusual.

I asked an artistic friend of mine to paint a red Suzuki ‘S’ on the driver’s side door, which he duly did, but added an embellishment of his own by painting the Women’s Lib sign on the tailgate. I don’t think that the rather conservative principal of the school where I was teaching was favourably impressed with that.

After some years teaching, I took a break for a while then applied for a job with the Probation and Parole Service as it was then called. There was a vacancy in Toowoomba, which would require travelling to towns further west from time to time One of the interview questions asked was what I would do if I got a flat tyre. My reply was that I would lift the bonnet and wait for someone to give me a hand. That seemed to satisfy them, as I got the job. I’m not sure how many other women were doing that job at the time, but we were definitely in the minority. I believe it was somewhat grudgingly accepted that women employees were needed as there was a growing number of female probationers and parolees. Not that we were confined to supervising women only, so I guess you could call the Service an equal opportunity employer.

Being a State Government job, it was quite well paid, and in those days, a permanent position. I assumed that there would be no problem obtaining a loan to buy a house (for the princely sum of $17,250 – a three-bedroom weatherboard on a large block near the Showgrounds in Toowoomba.) I had quite a good deposit, and as I’d been banking with the same bank since I was at school, I assumed I’d have no problem obtaining a loan. Not without a male guarantor! I withdrew my money from the bank and never darkened their doors again. I’m looking at you, Commonwealth Bank!

Tuesday 8th March was International Women’s Day. According to an article from the BBC that I read, the date of 8th March was formalised after a strike in Russia in 1917 in which Russian women demanded “bread and peace”.

The strike began on the 8th of March and after four days, the Tsar was forced to abdicate.

We can only hope history repeats itself!

Discrimination against women in Australia 1960s-1970s

Despite the introduction of the Federal Sex Discrimination Act in 1984, women continue to be disadvantaged. In case you forgot, the Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexism, homophobia, transphobia and biphobia, as well as sex, marital or relationship status, actual or potential pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status or breastfeeding in public.

 TIMELINE

1956: Until this year women were prevented from teaching full-time after marriage. The Temporary Teachers Union lobbied for this restriction to be dropped;.

1961: Women could buy the contraceptive pill but initially it was only available (on prescription) to married women and carried a 27.5% ‘luxury item” tax;

1966: Australia lifted the legislated marriage ban, which prevented married women from holding permanent positions in the public service;

1971: The Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac) became the first Australian lender to lend money to a female without a male guarantor;

1969: First abortion rights granted (with limitations);

1972: The right to equal pay introduced (see note at end);

1972: The newly-formed Women’s Electoral Lobby made the contraceptive pill more freely available;

1972: Gough Whitlam introduced a single mother’s pension. It was later broadened to a single parent pension (available to men and women);

1973: Commonwealth employees were granted 12 weeks paid maternity leave and 40 weeks unpaid leave;

1974: The minimum wage was extended to cover women;

1975: No-fault divorce introduced, formation of women’s refuges;

1979: Women were granted 52 weeks unpaid maternity leave;

1983: Married women could apply for an Australian passport without needing an authorisation from their husbands;

1991: the marriage age in Australia of females was increased from 16 to 18 (the same as males;

2011: Federally-funded paid parental leave introduced;

2020: Gender pay gap between men and women confirmed at 13.8%;

2022: Despite the 1972 equal pay declaration, Australian  typically earn about $25,000 a year less than men (Workplace Gender Equality Agency).

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Ukraine, refugees and compassion fatigue

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Image of girl with Ukraine flag by Lewin Bormann www.flickr.com

People who feel moved to support refugees in their time of need are prone to a syndrome known as ‘compassion fatigue’. This post-traumatic-stress type condition sets in as events like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unfold.

Compassion fatigue is just that – an overwhelming sense of hopelessness as yet another refugee crisis occurs with few answers in sight. It’s not much of a comparison, but consider Queenslanders told to evacuate their homes on Sunday due to flooding. The difference being is they can return to their homes (with buckets and mops), once the crisis is passed and water levels fall.

No such reprieve for the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who last week packed suitcases and set off for the Polish border. It seemed the first and most obvious place to go, as there are already about one million Ukrainians living in Poland. Unlike some governments I could name, the Polish authorities so far have put no obstacles in their way, but the influx will put huge pressure on their social systems and infrastructure.

As Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Haddad reported last Saturday, 120,000 people had already fled Ukraine into Poland and other neighbouring countries, mostly to Poland and Moldova. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said cars were backed up for several kilometres at some border crossings (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova). These countries have mobilised to receive Ukrainians and provide shelter, food and legal help. Global News Canada forecast yesterday that the tally will be 500,000 and rising by the end of the week.

In landlocked Europe, people from Ukraine fleeing tyranny are not the first and certainly won’t be the last to seek safe haven in neighbouring countries. Australia looks on from afar, safe in the knowledge that its tough border policies will maintain the status quo. To misquote John Howard circa 2012: “We will decide how many Ukrainian refugees come here and the manner in which they come.”

For readers aged under 40, Australia did not always have a hard-line attitude to people seeking asylum. Australia has accepted 900,000 refugees since 1947.

The first wave of post war migration from 1947 to 1953 saw 170,000 ‘Displaced Persons’ come to Australia after their countries were destroyed by war. Between 1953 and 1975, the Australian Government assisted a further 127,000 refugees to Australia.

Then followed a controlled system of assisted migration, ‘Ten Pound Poms’ and others who took up the government’s offer of assisted passage on the understanding they would stay in their sponsored employment for two years. That’s my Dad and his brood, escaping Scotland’s rationing, a struggling economy and notoriously cold climate.

Migrants came from all over and initially had to endure prejudice by Australians who disparagingly called them ‘Refos’ or ‘New Australians’.

They copped the abuse, lived in hostels, took on menial jobs Australians wouldn’t do and helped create the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme.

According to the UNHCR, 82.4 million people around the world have been forced to flee their homes, the majority of them internally displaced. Among them are over 26 million refugees, the highest population on record. Of those, 68% come from just five countries – Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar (the Rohingya) and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Even when Australians recognise that there are as many refugees in the world as there are people on our own continent, it is hard to empathise.

Even with some of the stark images replayed to us by 24/7 media, we remain inured by our remoteness. Trouble, whatever it is, happens ‘over there’. Australia is a vast continent surrounded by oceans, monitored by an over-zealous system set up in 2012 to discourage people from trying to reach our shores by boat.

It’s ironic, as the Norwegian Refugee Council observes, that at a time when a record 82.4 million people are being displaced, wealthy countries (Australia is named, alongside Denmark and others), are engaged in a ‘race to the bottom’. They are tightening their refugee policies, forcing displaced people to make dangerous and difficult choices. Once liberal countries like Sweden and Denmark have wound back their refugee intakes as anti-immigrant sentiment prevails.

The NRC says there are three things wealthy countries can do to bring about change; number one is the need to work together to protect refugees. When the Syrian conflict erupted a decade ago, neighbouring countries including Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Liberia took a disproportionate number of refugees compared to Saudi Arabia. Unlikely countries such as Uganda, Columbia and Lebanon take large numbers of refugees every year. But some of the richest countries in the world do almost nothing. Some, like Denmark, have wound their refugee intakes back to almost nothing.

“Japan has the world’s third largest economy and a population of 126 million. Nevertheless, it has received just 1,394 refugees in the last ten years. South Korea is at a similarly low level.  Saudi Arabia is at a similar level to Japan and the other Gulf countries are not much better.

“For most of the last decade there has been a brutal civil war in Syria, where several of these countries have been indirectly involved. It is therefore particularly inexcusable that they have not given proper protection to more of the victims of the war and taken some of the burden from neighbouring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.”

Admittedly, the Gulf countries have taken in a large number of Syrians as labour immigrants, but these people have not been granted refugee status.

Australia’s tough border policies seem overkill when held against the relatively small numbers of people they do allow in.

According to the Red Cross, Australia granted refugee status to 14,993 people in 2019-2020. This was done either through resettlement from other countries or by granting protection to people who had applied for asylum in Australia.

Compare that to Bangladesh, which in 2019 continued to host 854,782 people from Myanmar in a refugee-like situation . Likewise, Turkey granted temporary protection to 397,600 refugees from Syria in 2018. Soon Poland will be on this list for its welcome to people from the Ukraine.

Last Friday, I emailed FOMM reader Peter Willasden, who has travelled extensively in Eastern Europe. I confessed that although I felt moved to write about Ukraine, I lacked knowledge and insight. He did not take the ‘guest blogger’ bait, saying, after some observations about Vladimir Putin’s state of mind and the nuclear threat, “Sorry, I have yet to come up with a useful thought.”

Nonetheless, I did like his ‘big picture’ view:

“Stand back from the Ukraine and it highlights still something quite contrary to the expectations of only a decade ago. The end of the Soviet era, the ubiquity of social media, the economic networking of the globe led to the prediction of the rise of national, democratic movements, such as broke out of the Soviet system or led to the Arab Spring. The real consequence, seen not only in Russia but also the USA, UK, Poland, Hungary, Brazil, Turkey, China has been the rise and rise of male autocrats, tyrants and dictators. There have always been dictators but these have, uniquely, arisen using the tools of democracy or what could at least be presented as a democratic process. And Australia too is far from immune from it.” 

As Peter says, the world order is now increasingly controlled by “a small number of old white men accumulating more and more unilateral power on very questionable pretexts.”

How did we get to this point he asks, and can anything be done to reverse the situation?

Let’s check back in a year or so, Peter.

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