The ICHRRF Board of Directors and Executive Committee expressed heartfelt condolences to the bereaved Jewish families in Australia. The ICHRRF stands in solidarity with the injured and families of the deceased victims of the mass shooting on the Jewish festival of Hannukah at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. So far, 16 victims are confirmed dead and dozens more injured seriously.

At this juncture, all prima facie indicators point to religious motivation. Both the terrorists had a Pakistan connection, and two ISIS flags were found in their cars. The joyful gathering at Bondi Beach was purely social and religious, with no political overtones. The innocent people gathered there did not include any political leaders or activists of any note. The firing by the two terrorists was indiscriminate, targeting people at this event solely on the basis that it was a gathering around the Jewish festival of Hannukah.

ICHRRF has time and again raised the alarm of a well-funded international network of institutes embedded even in urban non-Islamic secular nations that radicalize members of the Islamic diaspora. This is another link in the chain of such tragedies that now wraps itself across all continents.

The links of the two shooters to the Pakistani state and military also spotlights the geostrategic angle of nation-states that are active incubators and sponsors of international Islamic terror as a permanent facet of their foreign policy. In a related twist, a vast section of online accounts that have been amplifying far right racist and religious bigotry against ethnic minorities on American social media have also been identified as Pakistan-based accounts pretending to be white and Christian.

ICHRRF emphasizes the need for right-thinking members of all faiths and ethnicities in all societies to stand in solidarity and speak up, regularly and without prevarication. This should always happen, and not only in reaction to such tragedies. All right thinking nations, governments, international institutions must address this wanton and hateful destruction of innocent human lives and take corrective legal, constitutional, social preventive actions to prevent future occurrence of this repetitive, radicalized, religious-framed  violence against innocent people of any faith.