My name is Commander Shane Connelly, I’m the manager of operation submissions Australian Federal Police in a national deployment group. I look after the 440 women and men that are deployed in 11 missions throughout the world.
Well it’s very, very different. The Australian Defence Force brings about security on a larger scale, we work with the local police force to bring about security at the local level of the community level, ensuring the rules of that country are upheld through enforcement of what’s called the ‘Rule of Law’. The Rule of Law, if they don’t have a legal system, may be imposed by the United Nations through their mandate, so we’d work either as the police on the ground or with the local police force to ensure that law and order is restored, restoring community confidence, ensuring that there isn’t crimes being committed and when crimes are committed, that they are investigated.
I was deployed in 1992 to the United Nations mission in Cambodia. I was one of ten AFP officers deployed we were in fact deployed with a very large ADF contingent although we worked separately, in a small village called Thmar Pouk which is in the north-west of Cambodia, an area that was controlled by the Khmer Rouge and two other non-government forces. This was at the end of the war, the experiences I had were joyous and tragic, obviously we saw many, many mine victims, we saw a complete breakdown of the rule of law, we saw people that were very scared even to venture out at night. Our job was to ensure their security and to restore law and order to that small village and in fact the whole district. We saw mass poverty, we also saw some really positive things in the community rebuilding itself, once they knew that they were safe they came out and started working their rice fields again, creating food, restoring a sense of society and feeding their community, so it was very joyous in that respect.