Melbourne, Australia — Hundreds of thousands of people gathered across Australia and New Zealand on Thursday for dawn services and street marches to commemorate their war dead on Anzac Day, amid tensions are rising in the US-China rivalry in the region.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon attended a dawn ceremony in his country’s largest city, Auckland, while Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese watched the sun rise over a World War II memorial in the wilderness of Australia’s closest neighbor, Papua New Guinea.
April 25, 1915 is the date the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the beaches of Gallipoli, northwest Turkey, in an ill-fated campaign that was the soldiers’ first combat of the First World War .
Albanese visited the memorial in the town of Isurava for two days with Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape. Isurava was the scene of a major battle where American and Australian troops fought the Japanese in August 1942.
“Those who enlisted for the Second World War grew up in an Australia marked by the memory of the first,” Albanese told the Nine Network audience.
“Anzac Day never asked us to extol the glories of war. Anzac Day asks us to fight the erosion of time and retain their names,” Albanese added.
Marape called for “peace to prevail in all circumstances.”
Albanese is using his trip to highlight the enduring security ties between the two countries, which deepened in December last year when he and Marape signed a wide-ranging security agreement.
The signing was delayed for six months after a security deal between Papua New Guinea and the United States sparked riots in the South Pacific country over fears the country’s sovereignty could be compromised.
Marape said in December that his government’s security arrangements with the United States and Australia did not mean he was siding with those allies in their strategic competition with China.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Papua New Guinea over the weekend to discuss establishing closer relations with Marape.
In New Zealand, Luxon told the crowd that the country had to thank its military personnel for its freedom and democracy.
“This is a sacred day for all New Zealanders. This is a chance for all of us to stop, to reflect, to remember, to commemorate the great Kiwi service men and women of the past and present who went to defend our values,” Luxon reported.
Police assured the public on Thursday there were no extremist threats to Anzac Day services and marches in Sydney. The assurance came after even teenagers accused of following violent extremist ideology were arrested in police raids in Sydney’s southwest on Wednesday.
Extremists planned mass-casualty attacks during recent Anzac Days, but police intervened before the plans were carried out.
Sydneysiders turned out in large numbers for Thursday’s events.
ABC News
