Page 1922 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 5 August 2014
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I am sure members share the disbelief I feel towards this callous act and profound sadness that so many innocent people could lose their lives in such a cruel and senseless way. The grief is compounded when we hear the stories of the victims and the happy circumstances which took them overseas: visiting family, setting out on a retirement adventure, showing young children the wonders of the world.
We share feelings of anger and bewilderment at the evil of it—the shooting down, whether deliberate or accidental, of a civilian passenger aircraft. Most of all, our hearts go out to the loved ones of those who were killed. We cannot understand as they do the full impact of the tragedy, but we do feel the loss. We try to understand the grief, anger and despair that these people must be feeling and we hope wherever we can to ease the burden through thoughts, prayers and messages of condolence.
On Saturday, 26 July I attended a service at the Ukrainian church with members of the Ukrainian community, together with ambassadors and representatives of the Ukraine, Netherlands, United States, Romania and New Zealand embassies, along with my Assembly colleague Mr Steve Doszpot. It was a touching service reminding us that no matter how difficult things can be, how violent some acts are, how tragic the deaths of so many, that strength can be drawn from the international community standing together, recommitting to the values that unite us all as international citizens, searching for peace and for peaceful resolutions of conflicts across the world.
The words spoken at the service of pain and loss affect us all. We were confronted with thoughts of the images of the tragedy in real time: bodies, people’s personal belongings, teddy bears, passports, wallets and souvenirs of holidays, such treasured memories which were blown apart in one horrific and violent act in the sky. Whilst these images confronted us and horrified us at the same time in the Ukraine, the Netherlands, Malaysia and Australia we saw people coming together to pray, mourn and pay respect to those who had lost their lives that day.
Despite the dangers of conflict, we saw local Ukrainian people fill churches and bring flowers and toys to the crash site, simple but important signs to those bereaved by this tragedy that people cared about their loss and the ongoing grief inflicted on hundreds of innocent families through this senseless act.
As members know, a condolence book sits at the entrance to the Assembly for the messages of Canberrans in response to the tragedy of MH17, and on Thursday, on behalf of the people of the ACT, I will join the Prime Minister and other Australian first ministers for a national memorial service in Melbourne.
The grief and loss being felt around the world is certainly not eased by the knowledge that this tragedy was the result of wilful and violent actions, that there have been grave injustices since the incident, and that proper investigations of the crash site have taken so long to get underway. After all they have endured, the very least the families deserve is to have their loved ones and their belongings brought home and to know that an independent investigation of the events that resulted in this catastrophic loss will be allowed to proceed.
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