At last week’s council meeting, councillors, staff and residents stood for a minute’s silence for those many innocent lives that have been lost, before Mayor Khal Asfour called on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to “shirt front” the Russian Ambassador by showing him the door.
“The war in Ukraine may seem a million miles away but it has in some way or another impacted most of us,” the Mayor said.
“A chilling act of aggression by Russia on its neighbour for no apparent reason than to satisfy the ego of a leader, whose actions are now being called into question, as those of an ‘erratic and unstable’ man.”
The Mayor said the assault and escalating violence on this Eastern European country with a population of around 43 million people, “will not only lead to a humanitarian crisis but an instability in the entire region for many years to come”.
“We have all seen the images, a sea of people fleeing, wave after wave of people clutching nothing but a few personal belongings … most leaving behind their loved ones,” he said.
“But if I can share one image that really struck home with me, was a small boy, maybe 10 or 11-years-old, and he was stopped at the border seemingly lost. When he was asked where his family was, he simply replied his mother had put him on a train alone and scribbled her mobile number on his arm.
“Her fate and the rest of his family’s fate are unknown. That is the human face of this war.”
Mayor Asfour says there are many people who have settled here from Europe and have contacted him in disbelief at what is happening.
“They are all very concerned about loved ones still trapped in the war zone,” he said.
Backs ‘condemnation of Russia’
ADDING its voice to the growing worldwide condemnation of the “unwarranted act of war by Russia”, Canterbury Bankstown Council has called on the Prime Minister to immediately expel Russian Ambassador, Dr Aleksey Pavlovsky.