“The people of Gaza have absolutely no way to escape the killing: they are literally a captive population.”
Chris Sidoti knows the brutality of conflict too well, his experience investigating international crimes is devastatingly comprehensive. But he sees a categoric difference in the violence in Gaza.
“People cannot escape.”
A former human rights commissioner and one of Australia’s most experienced international legal experts, Sidoti has spent the past four years – since before the 7 October 2023 attacks – as a member of the UN independent international commission of inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
This month that commission of inquiry issued a report stating that the Israeli government and military were committing genocide in Gaza.
Half a world away in Sydney, in the lead-up to a speech at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Sidoti considers the genocides that have blighted global history.
Those fleeing were forced from their homes by some of the most horrific atrocities imaginable, Sidoti says.
From Rwanda in 1994, Tutsis escaped Hutu mobs to Burundi and Tanzania. As Islamic State rampaged across Syria a decade ago, millions fled to neighbouring Turkey and Lebanon.
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