Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| OLYMPIC GAMES SHOULD HIGHLIGHT OPPRESSION OF ... |
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| Moe |
| 09/16/00 at 23:24:43 |
| Assalamu'alaikum, OLYMPIC GAMES SHOULD HIGHLIGHT OPPRESSION OF ABORIGINES By: Dr. Firoz Osman http://www.mediareviewnet.com/latest/Australia-%20Dr%20Osman.htm In former president Nelson Mandelas speech at the Olympic conference in Sydney, he urged the Australians to talk through their racial problems [The Star 04/09/00]. The Australian Prime Minister John Howard however has persistently refused to apologise to the Aborigines as part of the reconciliation process. It is now opportune with the Olympics, for the world to focus on the events that Australians in general try to forget: the horrific destruction of Aboriginal communities for over 200 years. The ships of the First Fleet arrived in Australia on January 20th, 1788 carrying with them their shipment of convicts. British colonialists initially considered this region to be terra nullius [empty land], but it was in fact populated by at least 300 000 Aborigines. The British aristocracy, in an attempt to purge British society of a criminal class, transported approximately 160 000 convicts over several decades. As the convict population expanded in Australia, they encroached upon Aboriginal land. Clashes between whites and Aborigines frequently occurred as a result of the nomadic tendencies of many of the Aboriginal tribes and the expanding territories and activities of the white settlers and entrepreneurs. But the Aborigines were for the most part outmatched by the superior firepower of the settlers. This replicates our own experience in Africa. Two incidents which characterise Australias brutal treatment of the First Australians need to be recounted. The first occurred at Myall Creek, New South Wales, in 1838. In this incident eleven stockmen, in what was apparently a reprisal against the Aborigines whom they claimed stole and stampeded cattle, surrounded an Aborigine encampment and marched off with 28 abducted Aborigine men, women and children. They drove them to the nearby Myall Creek and murdered every one of them using muskets and cutlasses. The second occurred in Caulfields Lagoon on November 6th, 1873 when government officials and gold-miners hunted between 80-150 Aborigines along the Palmer River. They shot them and left their bodies floating in Caulfields Lagoon. None of the murderers were ever punished for this massacre. It was only 100 years later that the incident was confirmed to have occurred in Australias history by Australian researchers. Yet John Howard refuses to proffer an apology. Many other sites of such murderous acts of the white population will never be found, though they undoubtedly exist. For the Australian settlers were estimated to have killed more than 20 000 Aborigines in their long wars with the tribes. On the island of Tasmania alone, the Aborigines, numbering between 3000 to 4000 were almost totally wiped out within the first 75 years of colonisation. These are some of the actual truths about the process of colonisation of the Australian continent. This is Australia, a nation founded on the blood of its native inhabitants and on the sweat and tears of convict labour. In the course of time some sections of the convict population obtained their freedom, but the plight of the Aborigines scarcely improved. They were not hunted as ruthlessly as before but the loss of their lands and large numbers of their populations was irreparable. Even today when the memory of the so-called convict stain has almost sunk into oblivion, the present day Aborigines lag behind the other sections of the Australian population especially in the sphere of economic development. They have at various times also suffered the oppression of abnormal rates of imprisonment and death in police custody. According to a report by the Human Rights Commission, police systematically torture young Aborigines to get them to confess to crimes. Another report concludes that if you are black and seriously ill, you are unlikely to get an ambulance to come and get you. Aboriginal health levels are described as shameful. The death rate of black children is two and a half times that of white children; for adults, the rate is three times higher. Diseases considered preventable in white Australia ravage Aboriginal communities; tuberculosis is an epidemic. Large sections of their population are now afflicted with alcoholism- perhaps the only stimulant that can erase the memory of a history of persecution, the trauma of being robbed of all that might have been theirs and so many things they might have achieved, had not the accursed winds blown the ships of the First Fleet to Botany Bay on that fateful day in January 1788. Dr. Firoz Osman Cell: 082 337 6976 *Dr. Osman is secretary of the Media Review Network, which is an NGO advocacy group based in Laudium, Pretoria. |
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