I have never been so ashamed of my country

End the complicit silence on Afrin

Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is gloating over his brutal victory in Afrin, and threatening to invade the other Kurdish cantons of Syria.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed by his relentless bombing. Much of the city’s infrastructure is destroyed. Erdoğan’s ISIS and Al Qaeda proxies are looting the city and beheading people who disagree with their twisted ideology.

Two hundred thousand civilians have fled to swell the refugee tide in Syria; anticipating Erdoğan’s threats to ethnically-cleanse the Kurds.

Australia rightly condemned Russia and Assad in the United Nations for the killings in Eastern Ghouta, yet is silent on the tragedy of Afrin.

Australian Kurds have tried in vain to speak to Prime Minister Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop ignores pleas to speak out on this crime.

Their silence amounts to complicity.

In a past era, Bertolt Brecht wrote of similar refusals to confront dictators:

When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out “stop!”
When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible.
When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard.
The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.

I have never been so ashamed of my country.
Professor John Tully Honorary Professor/Educator PhD College of Arts and Education Victoria University Melbourne Australia.