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Australia’s first veiled senator quits Labor Party
Fatima Payman
Two years after entering through the front door into the political history of Australia, this land of plenty where her Afghan parents found refuge when she was still a child, Fatima Payman, 29, no longer smiles under the hijab that made her unique. It was, in fact, with a serious expression and a heavy heart that the first Muslim and veiled senator of the Parliament of Western Australia, who was considered a rising star of the Labor Party, appeared before the media to announce her terrible decision, the most “difficult and heartbreaking of her life”: she is throwing in the towel. Cruelly disillusioned after being suspended by her peers, the one who oscillated between laughter and tears on the evening of her resounding victory in the federal elections on June 20, 2022, and whose praises were sung by Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, is paying a high price for her unwavering commitment to the martyred land of Palestine. Yesterday praised, today sacrificed on the altar of base compromises, Fatima Payman, unable to bear it any longer, prefers to resign, head held high and conscience clear, rather than continue to seriously mislead herself within a party whose indifference to the unspeakable suffering of the people of Gaza she condemns. “My family did not flee a country at war and obtain refugee status here in Australia so that I, today, remain silent in the face of the atrocities inflicted on innocent people in Gaza. When I see our government’s indifference to the greatest and most horrific injustice of our time, I wonder where this party is going,” she said indignantly during her highly publicized press conference. Ostracized for signing a Green Party motion in favor of recognizing a Palestinian state, the eldest daughter of Afghan refugees, who had won hearts and votes, and whose strength of conviction and eloquence were unanimously praised by her party’s leaders, refuses to be humiliated any longer. “We have all seen the bloody images of young children losing limbs, being amputated without anaesthetic and dying of hunger as Israel continues its assault, broadcast live around the world. This is an issue on which I cannot compromise,” she insisted, her voice trembling with emotion. Far from giving up the noble exercise of politics, as she sees it, Fatima Payman is leaving the Labour ranks to sit elsewhere, in this case on the bench of independent deputies.