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A tale of two tragedies: Australia’s different responses to the atrocities in Gaza and Myanmar

A tale of two tragedies: Australia’s different responses to the atrocities in Gaza and Myanmar

The human catastrophe in Gaza over the past 12 months has shone a spotlight on Australia’s responses to the growing number of mass atrocities overseas.

In a recent article published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs, I have argued that, with rare exceptions, foreign crises involving atrocity crimes remain a low priority for both media reporting and public policy deliberations. Past responses — and their conspicuous absence — to genocide and other distant atrocities have exposed significant obstacles to public engagement, due in part to a lack of political leadership, flawed media coverage and domestic focus on local policies.

Like most people around the world, Australians prioritise domestic issues which directly affect their lives: jobs, tax policy, housing and health. Even though matters involving foreign policy do often have implications for domestic politics — such as national security, asylum seeker policies and key trade deals — humanitarian crises caused by distant conflicts rarely garner sustained media or public interest.

It is clear that better media coverage can lead to more constructive public engagement with Australia’s policies in response to foreign atrocities, and that this in turn could improve the nation’s adherence to its core commitments and principles of “good international citizenship”.

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The violence against and displacement of the Rohingya in Myanmar in 2016–2017 is an interesting case in point. My findings highlight several important dynamics in the relationship among media reporting, public opinion and foreign policy. For example, the decision to focus public deliberation on the likely consequences or side-effects of the crisis — like increased refugee intake or humanitarian aid — may have overshadowed discussions of the more direct ways Australia could assist in halting the violence in Myanmar.

Another question arising from the data, which would require further investigation, is whether Australia’s relatively modest levels of clout and capabilities — diplomatic, economic and military — may have inhibited not only the Australian government’s appetite for more meaningful engagement with foreign crises, but also Australians’ expectations of what actions their country could take.

In reality, few states possess sufficient clout to influence on their own important policy decisions by belligerent regimes or governments. To expect, therefore, that a middle power like Australia would be willing and able to expend enough resources or other capital to change the military junta’s cost-benefit analysis on a key policy issue like that of the Rohingya, would have been overly optimistic.

How to improve Australia’s response to foreign atrocities

One of the conspicuous shortcomings in media coverage has been the failure of journalists to include in their reporting additional policy options to those suggested by the federal government on how Australia could, and should, respond to atrocities overseas. These alternatives may be raised by human rights NGOs, which often struggle these days to gain media access and visibility for their early warnings, risk analyses and policy recommendations.

Another way of improving Australia’s responses could involve increased collaboration with other like-minded middle powers in the region and further afield. Taking leadership over global challenges insufficiently addressed by the major powers, is what middle powers such as Australia have done in the past, and forming alliances with other middle powers will increase both the legitimacy and effectiveness of these endeavours.

A more meaningful discussion of Australia’s policy responses would also require a change to the bipartisan practices of avoiding public challenges to government foreign policies by the primary federal opposition party. While this practice did manifest with respect to the Rohingya crisis, it was a different story when it came to the war in Gaza.

Different attitudes to the Rohingya and Gaza crises

There were clear differences between the way Australians responded to the conflict in Gaza and their response to the Rohingya crisis. What are some of the factors behind these differences?

Gaza has featured prominently in news coverage every day for over a year. This media attention was sustained by a steady stream of interrelated stories, including: weekly pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Australia’s capital cities, tensions around the pro-Palestinian encampments on major university campuses, the significant increase of both antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents in Australia, and political opposition (from the left and the right) to the federal government’s statements and policies.

The Rohingya crisis, by contrast, received a small fraction of this kind of coverage. The lack of significant Burmese or Rohingya diasporas in Australia, along with the enduring global focus on and preoccupation with the Holy Land — at times to the detriment of other less visible but not necessarily less violent or destructive crises elsewhere — would help explain some of the differences.

Still, further research would be needed to expand our understanding of the differences and similarities between Gaza, the Rohingya and other crises, especially when it comes to the influence of media coverage and public engagement with Australia’s policymaking.

What policies were advanced, by whom, for what purposes and with what effects? How was the domestic focus divided between the consequences of mass violence and stopping the violence itself, and what was envisaged as feasible for Australia to achieve — individually or in collaboration with other states? These are only some of the many questions still awaiting public attention and scholarly scrutiny.

My next research project — on opinion-media-policy dynamics in relation to Gaza and to other crises involving mass atrocities — will be addressing these and related questions. 

Eyal Mayroz is Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Reluctant Interveners: America’s Failed Responses to Genocide from Bosnia to Darfur. An earlier version of this article originally appeared on 360.

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