If there is a collective human threshold when it comes to the tolerance of evil in our world, then Syria's murderous leader Bashar al-Assad exceeded it long ago.
If you could point to the very moment when the ordinary citizens of the world stopped and said "enough", it was probably about a year ago. That was when video footage of the mutilated body of 13-year-old Syrian schoolboy Hamza Ali al-Khateeb emerged.
Syria's security forces snatched the boy in May 2011 from a peaceful protest against the Assad regime in Deraa (he had chanted "down with the regime") and returned his swollen, broken body (replete with cigarette burns, broken arms and fingers, knife wounds and bullet holes) to his family about a month later.
Since then we have witnessed a series of sieges and massacres, as well as the brutal repression of peaceful protests across Syria at the hands of Assad's military. By some estimates, including those of the United Nations, 9000 civilians have died. Thousands more members of the rebel Free Syrian Army and the Syrian Army have also died.
The killing has continued - with no deference to recent UN monitoring or ceasefires - for 15 months. Now, suddenly, the world of exhaust-all-avenues diplomacy - which, of necessity and by nature, operates in slow motion - has also blown the whistle. Enough! But action, thanks to Chinese and Russian intransigence at the UN, is elusive.
The trigger was the nightmarish pictures and video footage of the bodies of the 116 civilians (mostly women and children) who Assad's forces allegedly murdered in Houla about a week ago.
Those among the Syrian diaspora here who oppose Assad (and a good many do not) were pleased when Australia was at the vanguard of moves involving some European Union countries and the US to expel Syrian diplomats. The Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, was among the first to act - expelling the two most senior diplomats from the Syrian embassy in Canberra, including charge d'affaires Jawdat Ali. Ali had been the most senior Syrian diplomat here since the sudden recall to Damascus in early 2011 of the then ambassador, Tammam Sulaiman.
Ali's expulsion was well overdue. The shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, whose paternal grandfather came from Aleppo in Syria, called for his expulsion in March on the grounds he was "a close personal friend of Assad" who should be sent home to tell the President ''the depth of disgust Australians have about what is happening in Syria". Hockey is due to make a speech on Syria in Sydney tomorrow.
The Foreign Affairs and the Attorney-General's departments are attuned to concerns about the Syrian embassy's communications with Syrian dissidents and their advocates. This week, an advocate for Syrian dissidents living in Australia told me a representative of the Syrian embassy rang him while he was organising an international conference of young peaceful Syrian dissidents in Tunisia (the advocate, who declined to be named, also has a business in Syria). He said the embassy representative called "to say that he could not guarantee my safety in Syria".
"This was October last year. He said I should not go, and that foreigners should stay out of Syria's internal problems. I told him that I had no plans to go to Syria. He responded … that 'we know you do'. He told me that I would be putting the young Syrians who would attend the conference 'in danger' and that they should be 'very careful'. I do not know how he found out about the conference.
"I was told that 'people like you represent the problem in Syria'. I was told that the government 'will shut your fraud of a business down'. A week later, the premises of my business [in Syria] was trashed by thugs. Nearing the conference, the calls got more frequent and more aggressive. Gradually these calls came less from the embassy but also from Syrian government officials in Damascus, directly to my mobile. A mix of Arabic and English was used.
"While a good deal of the Syrian diaspora in Australia supported Assad until very recently, there was a vocal minority of Syrians working with a number of peaceful opposition groups. I know they have been threatened - worse yet, they have had their families back in Syria threatened."
Dissidents have a right to be free from threats here in Australia. It is shameful that some have apparently not been.
