Video

As Australia’s PM Julia Gillard was “rescued” by riot police during a violent protest calling for Aboriginal rights (see video above), here’s a piece that contexualise the events:

While the last prime minister formally apologised to aboriginal Australians for wrongs of the past in a highly televised ceremony four years ago, this supposed turning point in the nation’s race relations did not stop the government from pursuing its “emergency intervention” into aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, sending in members of the Australian army to help compulsorily acquire aboriginal land, criminalise alcohol and pornography, and quarantine residents’ welfare payments. The obvious stigma and shame brought on aboriginal people because of the intervention were part of what led James Anaya, the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples, to condemn the intervention as indicative of Australia’s “entrenched racism” against aboriginal people.

by Australian lawyer Sarah Keenan. Read the rest here