The Sydney cafe siege has ended. At about 4 am today local time Australian forces moved into the Lindt Cage after gunfire was heard. As I type this three people including the gunman have been confirmed dead and others are injured.
The gunman has been identified as Man Haron Monis. It seems pretty clear that he was acting on his own rather than part of a larger organisation.
He was well known to the authorities. Over the past couple of years he had been charged with conspiracy to murder his wife as well as more recently with multiple sexual assault charges allegedly committed while performing “spiritual healing” and had achieved some notoriety by writing poison letters to the families of dead Australian soldiers.
He had been in Court last week and had failed in an attempt to get charges against him dropped.
He also had a Facebook page where his posts had become more and more bizarre over recent days. Clearly he was unwell.
His actions in harassing the families of dead families, although bizarre, is not something exclusive to members of the Muslim faith. After all Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church used to picket the funerals of dead soldiers. All religions have their extremists.
The Sydney experience eerily matches the Canadian experience where Michael Zehaf-Bibeau killed a Canadian soldier before himself being killed. Behalf-Bibeau had been living on the street and had been described by his mother as being “a very troubled and disturbed man who had turned to Islam and often talked of demons.” He was another person with personal problems acting alone influenced by the hatred and despair caused by military action.
The incident has the potential to ignite hatred against Muslims. Twitter has responded with the hashtag #illridewithyou started by a young Australian woman called Tessa Kum who proposes that Muslims be befriended on public transport to make them feel safe. Well done Tessa.
No doubt there will be a call for increased surveillance powers. Tau Henare has already tweeted that the recent law changes were justified.
Given what we now know he was clearly wrong.
But you have to ask, would increased surveillance powers have made any difference? After all Mr Monis was well known to authorities and anyone with a Facebook account could have followed what he was doing and predicted his descent into chaos. The problem is not a lack of state power, it is that in a city of 4 million there will always be mentally unwell people who engage in tragic behaviour.
What can help these people on the edge is to create a society based on tolerance and respect. Instead of fighting wars for political advantage our political leadership should engage peacefully with other nations and support a society where diversity is respected and cherished.
I hope that everyone including the Kiwiblog commentators get this incident into perspective. It is noticeable that they leapt to the conclusion the siege was part of an organised attack and they condemned a religion out of hand rather than wait for more information and make an informed decision. This sort of mind set only makes matters more dangerous, not less.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress