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Australian Freedom Ride confronts racism

from Green Left Weekly | 20.02.2005 15:18 | World

A Freedom Ride bus trip by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students of Sydney University has found crass racism in northern and north-western New South Wales. The trip began in Sydney on February 12 to retrace the steps of a 1965 Freedom Ride for Aboriginal rights. A participant said the experience so far had been “incredible” and that they had encountered “racism and segregation, as well as community programs and organising”.

A report in the “Green Left Weekly” describes how
- an Aboriginal man was not allowed on a long-distance bus despite a valid ticket and a vacant seat;
- an Aboriginal woman was told not to take her pillow on the bus as it ‘might carry head lice’;
- Aboriginal mothers are not allowed to take prams into a supermarket, while non-Indigenous woman can;
- some people still live in makeshift tin houses, not too different to what the original Freedom Riders saw in 1965.
Aboriginal leader Michael Anderson* said, “conditions are worse than what they were in the ‘60s. The only difference is the style of homes and we’ve got running water. But there are no jobs and no education.”
For the full story go to  http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/616/616p3.htm.

* http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Michael+Anderson+Aboriginal&btnG=Go

from Green Left Weekly

Comments

Hide the following comment

australia is sick

20.02.2005 17:44

"Behind the facade, nothing has changed for the first Australians. Their life expectancy is at least 25 years less than that of whites; walk through any Aboriginal cemetery and you see that most of the graves belong to the young. Australia is the only developed country on a World Health Organisation 'shame list' of countries where endemic trachoma still blinds children. Unlike Sri Lanka, rich Australia has yet to marshal its energies to beat this entirely preventable disease.

Although representing less than 3 per cent of the population, Aborigines fill the lock-ups and prisons. In the Northern Territory, one dies in custody every two weeks - a rate said to be higher than the death of imprisoned blacks in apartheid South Africa."

so reported John Pilger in 1998. australia is a country with a brutal racist past and a brutal racist present. read pilger's book, secret country, it's all there. the current australian government seems very happy to perpetuate this situation.

green left review seems to publish some good stuff for oz watchers.



 http://pilger.carlton.com/australia/articles

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