The son of Curtis Cheng, the New South Wales police accountant who was murdered last year, has asked Pauline Hanson to stop using his father’s death to justify her opposition to Muslim migration.
Cheng was shot dead outside the NSW police headquarters in Parramatta in October. The 15-year-old gunman, Farhad Jabar, was shot and killed by police after the attack.
Four other men have been charged with plotting the terrorist attack, including an 18-year-old from Guildford who had supplied Jabar with the gun.
Hanson’s One Nation party mentions Cheng’s murder in its policy on Islam as evidence for its statement that “civil tension” led by Australians “feeling the impact of Islam on their lives and distaste for its beliefs” is on the rise.
Hanson also cited Cheng’s murder in her appearance on the ABC’s Q&A program earlier this month.
Alpha Cheng, Curtis Cheng’s son, published an open letter on Monday afternoon in which he accused the incoming Queensland senator and her party of sabotaging hopes for a “more harmonious Australia”.
He called on her to stop linking his father’s death, the siege by Man Haron Monis at the Sydney Lindt Cafe and “this fear and anxiety” to Australia’s Muslim population.
“My father was murdered by a 15-year-old boy. I cannot deny the fact that the perpetrators professed to be followers of Islamic State.
“However, it does not follow from these facts that Muslims should be feared. It was not the boy’s faith that has caused his action. He was using his faith as an excuse for violent and antisocial extreme acts.”
He wrote that he believed Jabar felt disenfranchised or alienated by society, and that “generalisations and fearful attitudes” would only put more Australians at risk.
The letter was published by Fairfax Media. In April, Alpha Cheng wrote that greater restrictions on firearms could have prevented his father’s death.
Hanson has been contacted for comment via One Nation.
Cheng said he had felt “ostracised and isolated” by supporters of One Nation’s anti-immigration policies upon his family’s arrival in Australia from Hong Kong in the 1990s.
“I remember being a victim of the hateful and fearful attitudes that the One Nation Party promoted. I remember being told I will be sent back to where I came from because I was Asian and, therefore, not Australian.
“I do not want the same to happen for the new ‘scapegoats’ in this extreme and simplistic view of society.”
He concluded with a call for a more united Australia: “We need to look how we can heal and build; not how we can divide and exclude.
“My dad was a gentle and peaceful man; his name should not be used to promote fear and exclusion.”
