Danby v China
NAOMI LEVIN
MICHAEL Danby is making quite a name for himself doing something that few others dare: speaking loudly and consistently against the Chinese government.
A parliamentarian for 11 years and a backbencher for all that time, Danby has become adept at occupying a niche.
For almost 10 of those 11 years he was the sole Jewish federal MP, and fought for the Jewish community and Israel from the opposition side before the Rudd Government won office.
During those 11 years, he also spoke out on behalf of numerous injustices. He called for recognition for the victims of the Armenian genocide in the early 20th century, raised awareness for alleged war crimes in Darfur and everything in between.
But it is the Chinese regime’s oppression of its minority groups that brings out the fighter in Danby.
This week he hit the headlines over his support for the visit of Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer to Australia.
Danby was one of the only government MPs willing to show public support for Kadeer, who has been accused by the Chinese government of inciting last month’s ethnic rioting in Xinjiang.
In a press release prior to Kadeer’s arrival, Danby made a telling ¬≠statement.
“I feel it is necessary for someone from my background to support religious or cultural minorities who pursue their rights in a non-violent manner, whether it is the Vietnamese, Catholics, Tibetan Buddhists, the Baha’i or the Uighurs.”
Danby was one of two parliamentarians to speak at Sunday’s controversial film premiere of The 10 Conditions of Love — a documentary on Kadeer’s life — the other was Greens leader Senator Bob Brown.
It was a brave move, considering the amount of pressure the Chinese government applied to have the documentary canned.
In the lead-up to the screening, newspapers reported the Chinese government had asked Melbourne’s Lord Mayor Robert Doyle to pull the plug on the film and threatened to cancel Melbourne’s sister-city relationship with the city of Tianjin. Chinese nationals have also been accused of hacking into the website of the Melbourne International Film Festival — which screened the film.
At the premiere, Danby delivered a message to Kadeer supporters from his good friend, the Dalai Lama.
“He asked me to convey to you in Melbourne that she is another one of the national leaders who is a paradigm of non-violence,” Danby told the audience.
“He wanted to make it very clear to people that the claims of this woman being a violent person, or instigating violence, is from his point of view and with all of his authority — wrong.”
Few people can call the Dalai Lama a friend, but Danby might just be one of them.
Last month, the Member for Melbourne Ports returned home from a visit to the Indian home of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
As the chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet, Danby was a member of the first-ever delegation of MPs to Dharamsala. He travelled with fellow Labor MP Melissa Parke, Liberal MP Peter Slipper, Greens senators Sarah Hanson-Young and Scott Ludlam and independent Senator Nick Xenophon.
Despite having met the Dalai Lama — the leader of Tibet’s government-in-exile — a number of times, Danby said his eyes were opened in Dharamsala.
“The thing that would strike you if you went there is that everything is so well organised,” he said. “Everything is so frugal, everything is so modest, but they have institutions for archives, for medicine, an institute of the arts with Tibetan artists, institutions for refugees, for retraining nuns.
“What strikes you is that here is a people who get no support from the United Nations, not a dollar, who get very little assistance from any government apart from the Indian government, and who have these handwritten signs on buildings, who have everything.”
Danby, who travelled to India straight from Israel, where he attended the Australia Israel Leadership Forum, contrasted the set-up in Dharamsala with the Palestinian government in Ramallah.
“The difference in the mentality and institutions is something,” he said. “Here you have Ramallah, [and] the Palestinians, who are having butter gorged down their throats by the United Nations, by the European Union, and yet they don’t have anything by comparison to the Tibetans.
“It is not something that you can really make a wider point about outside the Jewish community, but inside the Jewish community people would understand. It is so maddening to see this.”
Danby was diplomatic when it came to discussing the way the Chinese treat the Tibetans. The Chinese government considers the Tibetans to be a minority ethnic group living within China’s borders. However, Tibetans consider themselves to be an independent nation.
“It is a very bleak period in their history. Discussions after the Olympics with the Chinese broke down completely,” Danby reported, adding he hoped to raise the plight of the Tibetan people through his position as an MP.
He did not hold back though, when calling on Australians to alter the way they view China, particularly in the wake of the arrest of Rio Tinto businessman Stern Hu.
“Our relationship with them should be businesslike, cordial, but hard-headed. We know who you are,” Danby said of the Chinese.
Danby said the “Rudyard Kipling-Australian National University school of appeasement” favours carrots over sticks. But Kevin Rudd is much mor aware than they are of these kinds of things.”
His recommendation was that Australia should utilise China “to keep us out of recession”, but should avoid “idealising” the country.
“It is interesting, among young people, they have no illusions about China at all,” Danby noted. “They regard it as one of the international bad guys.
“Those born since 1989 have a completely different view. When I was young, with the Chinese Revolution and Chairman Mao, we used to wear Mao T-shirts just like people wear Che Guevara T-shirts now. They don’t do that anymore.”
As an influential government backbencher and chair of the parliamentary foreign affairs sub-committee, Danby is hoping his ongoing David and Goliath battle for justice for minority groups against the Chinese government will ultimately be successful.
comments