COMMENTARY - THE DEFENSIVE LINE OF THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT

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COMMENTARY - THE DEFENSIVE LINE OF THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT

The Australian government committed many raids against Aboriginal people, from the very first days of colonization to 1970. One of these was to take half-breed children from their families and to bring the 848j91i m in Church or state institutions. Those poor kids were obviously very unhappy and most of them suffered physical or sexual abuse. Officially the law was done to protect them "against themselves", but the reason was another: they wanted to eliminate the so called "third race", because they didn't want Europeans to mix with natives.

Finally in 1995 (very late indeed) a National Inquiry was set up, and terrible facts emerged.

The government tried obviously to defend itself, and as first reaction it denied everything, saying that "there never was a generation of stolen children". But then it had to yield before the facts.

The state increased some funding, but it always refused to apologize. Government lawyers said that this genocide was done for the children's own good.

I can't believe that people can be so bad and stupid. That proves what we already knew: in this case a whole Government behaved in a very racist way, and it happened by this day and age. There are no excuses for this. Aboriginals now live in reserves, and they have been exterminated through the years. And there are still people who compare them with animals, or with slaves. It is the same problem that emerged in Europe during World War II, with the Jews' genocide.

Reasons why lawyers continue to discriminate Aboriginals could be many: perhaps some of them are loyal sons who want to justify the memories of their fathers, or are old loyal themselves, who are now too proud and old to think about the cruel practices in which they were involved. But in my opinion most of that people have so little capacity of compassion that they can't realize the damage caused on a kid taken from his family to a racist institution, where his traditions are forbidden and people don't care about his feelings and emotions.

Chiara De Paoli, 2^ class