NEWLY inducted into the WA Women’s Hall of Fame, hostage survivor and human rights lawyer Rabia Siddique has used the moment to deliver a blunt warning to prime minister Anthony Albanese, labelling his call to “take the temperature down” on the escalating Middle East conflict “naive” and “ignorant”.

“So it’s all very well for our prime minister to say, ‘take the temperature down’,” Ms Siddique said this week.

“As an international humanitarian lawyer, what is extremely significant and concerning was that he was the first leader of a nation to publicly lend his support to Trump’s decision.

“To say, ‘take the temperature town, we’re all the way over here in Australia’, I think it is naive. I think is ignorant. And I think that our prime minister fails to grasp that the political is very personal, particularly at this moment in time.”

Ms Siddique, who served as a legal officer with the British Army and later successfully sued the UK Ministry of Defence for discrimination, said the timing of the Hall of Fame honour felt “particularly poignant” given recent violence at home and abroad.

• Human rights lawyer and WA Women’s Hall of Fame inductee Radia Siddique. Photo by Karen Wheatland

“It’s uncanny, really, that almost the day that we’re speaking, there’s the aftermath of Bondi, there’s the aftermath of the foiling of the terror attacks against the Islamic community in Perth, the arrest of that Bindoon individual, there’s the aftermath of the attempted terrorism at the Australia Day protest, and, of course, internationally in the Middle East region, what’s been going on in the last two days,” she said.

For Ms Siddique, whose ancestry is Persian and whose family and colleagues span the region, the conflict is not abstract.

“So my father grew up in India, but actually on my father’s side, my ancestry is Persian, which, of course, is what predated Iran. And I have close family all across the Middle East region.

“I have friends, I have colleagues, many of which are involved in humanitarian work, in medical aid. You know, I still have friends in the armed forces from many nations. So this feels very personal to me.

“I hold great fears,” she said. “I hold fears for family and colleagues, but I hold fears for everyone in the region and beyond.”

In the first 24 hours of the latest escalation, she noted, “Dubai International Airport was struck,” and “a girls school in Iran was struck in the name of what the Americans called, a preemptive strike, where almost 100 children were killed.”

“And this is just the beginning,” she said.

Ms Siddique believes history offers stark lessons about so-called protective military action.

“I wrote an article and published it yesterday,” she said. “I spoke about where offensive action, military action, aggressive action, that is initiated in the name of protection… opens the door to proliferation and escalated long term violence and division and hatred and becomes the breeding ground of even more extreme action.”

Referring to past interventions, she said: “You know, Trump is repeating the playbook of Iraq, where he has unilaterally made a decision without congressional approval, unconstitutional, some would argue illegal, to mount an aggressive action against a nation where we knew that retaliation would very quickly spread through a region.”

As a former military international human rights lawyer, Ms Siddique said she has seen how decisions are made.

“The week that I commissioned as an officer in the British Army was what turned out to be the week of 911, so of course, the whole world changed,” she said. “One of the things that I was initially involved in was providing advice to the armed forces, and through that, through the Ministry of Defence, about the legality of invading Iraq.”

“Myself and my colleagues provided the strongest possible advice that this was contrary to UN convention, that this was contrary to international law,” she said.

“But of course, there has to also be the openness to follow it.”

Asked who drives such conflicts, Ms Siddique did not hesitate.

“I have observed a pattern,” she said. “So you know, leaders and politicians and then the ones behind them that hold the power, that are the ones lobbying and pressing for certain decisions.

Empire

“So it is people in power. You know, whether there be economically, from a power position, from a resources and oil position, or from an empire building and a statehood territory building agenda, they’re the ones that are on the other side.”

For all her criticism of global leadership, Siddique insists community remains the antidote.

“Coming back to the category that I’ve been inducted in, community is more important than ever,” she said.

“Community isn’t built by comfort and convenience. It’s built when we choose courage over silence, and it’s built when we choose service over self, and it’s built when we choose trust over fear.”

Her own life has been defined by those choices.

Born in Perth to a culturally diverse family, she became the first Muslim school captain of a Uniting Church school, the youngest federal prosecutor in Australia and the first woman of colour and Muslim officer in the British Army legal corps.

While serving in Iraq in 2005, Ms Siddique and two SAS soldiers were captured by insurgents after attending a meeting with local judges. Held at gunpoint and threatened with execution, she later said the experience reshaped her understanding of humanity.

“I wouldn’t wish what I had experienced on anyone, but I don’t regret it for a second, because I think for me, it changed my life,” she said.

“It taught me so much about individual strength and resilience… if we’re willing to look for the goodness in humanity, invariably, we can find it.”

She believes it was trust that saved her.

“If you’re able to find common ground, appeal to someone’s humanity, and be able to build even just the smallest degree of trust and integrity and respect, it can make all the difference,” she said.

“And I think the ability to do that in that moment is essentially what saved my life and the lives of all my colleagues.”

Nearly two decades on from the hostage crisis and her successful discrimination case against the British government, Ms Siddique says the lesson endures.

“If this honour stands for anything, I hope it stands for a life that I’ve tried to commit to lifting others and will continue to do till my last breath, and importantly, leaving the door wider open for women and girls who come next,” she said.

by STEVE GRANT

Fremantle Herald Interactive

Message History

Delivery option(s)