The world is reacting with shock (and some derision) today at the sight of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard being dragged to her motorcade by a scrum of bodyguards and riot police who were protecting her from jeering Aborigines.
In fact, they whisked her through such a frantic, chaotic, and jostled path to safety that the prime minister ended up losing her shoes. Never mind that the only people blocking her path were spooked policemen falling all over themselves.
Meanwhile, the irony is that the prime minister was just caught in the line of verbal fire. Because the target of the Aborigines’ ire was opposition leader Tony Abbott – who has been making imperious calls for them to cease and desist with their protests for sovereignty and land rights.
But just imagine the spectacle of President Obama being manhandled by the Secret Service in this manner – in reaction not to bullets ringing out, but to political epithets being hurled at him by a bunch of Native Indians about violating their sovereignty and stealing their land.
This prime minister’s bodyguards and the Australian police clearly have some ‘splainin to do for subjecting her to such pedestrian chaos and embarrassment.
That said, those of us who have shown an interest in the plight of the Aborigines know that they have been engaged in a non-violent, but largely ignored, struggle for their civil rights for decades. The only difference now is that they have adopted the tactics that were (and are still being) deployed by pro-democracy protesters throughout the Arab world and by Occupy Wall Street protesters throughout the Western world.
For example, the Aborigines have erected tents and shelters right on the lawn of Parliament House.
So, given efforts by government officials in the United States and Europe to rid public spaces of the unsightly and unhygienic mess similar encampments have become, it’s hardly surprising that Abbott and others are now pushing to rid Parliament House of its new Aboriginal settlers.
But the Aborigines should stay put and force the Australian government to either provide adequate assurances about redressing their civil-rights concerns or remove them by force. Because Australian authorities know full well that the latter would conjure up untenable images of white police dispersing black civil-rights protesters in America during the 1960s by hosing them with water cannons and beating them over the head with batons.
This is why, once she regains her composure, I urge PM Gillard to make a public show of inviting Aboriginal leaders to negotiate a final settlement of their claims. This frankly is long overdue.
For years, I’ve been pricking the conscience of my white Australian friends by arguing that it’s easy for them to accuse white Americans of virulent racism from their lily white haven down under; i.e., that they could sit on their high horse only because the few blacks (or non-whites) in their midst were so passive.
I always found their accusations against Americans especially hypocritical considering that these self-righteous stone casters were (indeed are) still forcing Australia’s Aborigines to live under Apartheid-like conditions – with nary a peep of condemnation, incidentally, from the international community.
(“Australia’s disgrace,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 17, 2005)
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* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Thursday, at 2:37 pm