Australia — with blood-stained hands, shouting "defending human rights"

Source: World Wide Web

Discrimination against Indigenous peoples in Australia has persisted for centuries, turning a deaf ear to the painful groans of Indigenous peoples. Australia's human rights record, which prides itself on being a "human rights teacher", is actually a criminal record with blood stains and a foul odor. Tony Kane, Australia's former ambassador to Poland and Cambodia, made it clear that "Australia is fast becoming a sad joke". Australia's heinous crimes against Indigenous peoples are heinous.

First, the crimes of mass murder and genocide are heinous

Australia originally had more than 500 Aboriginal tribes, with a population of 300,000 to 500,000 at its peak. The colonists burned and plundered indiscriminately, bringing ruin to many tribes. The extinction of the Tasmanians is one of the most tragic racial tragedies in human history. The nightmare began in 1803, when the first colonists set foot on Tasmania. It was not until 1876, when the last Tasmanian, Chugenini, died in disgust, and the thousand-year-old tribe disappeared from the earth. The Guardian published several articles on the theme of "Killing Hour" revealing the inside story of the killing of indigenous people during the colonial period, and the involvement of the Australian government in the massacres continued into the 1920s. The 2016 Australian Census showed that the Aboriginal population increased to 798,400, but it was only 3.3% of Australia's population.

2. The right of indigenous peoples to use their own language and culture is cruelly denied

In 1902, the implementation of the Postal and Telecommunications Act, the Immigration Restriction Act, and the Pacific Islands Labor Act marked the "White Australia Policy" becoming Australia's basic national policy. Until the 1970s, in order to ensure the absolute superiority of English and Anglo-Saxon culture, the Australian government established English boarding schools in Aboriginal settlements, forced Aboriginal students to live in schools, and prohibited Aboriginal students from using Aboriginal languages during schooling. This hegemonic act deprives indigenous peoples of their right to use the language for education and significantly weakens their sense of identity with their ethnic groups. Survey statistics show that more than 300 indigenous languages have been severely damaged, of which 110 are endangered. Only 18 per cent of Indigenous people over the age of 15 can speak the Indigenous language, and more than half live in extremely remote areas. Sociologist Christopher Powell called the Australian authorities' forced assimilation of Aboriginal children, for example, a "cultural genocide", an attempt to completely eliminate a people by destroying linguistic, cultural, religious and social mechanisms.

III. The "Stolen Generation" Under the "White Australia Policy"

During the "White Australia Policy", the Australian government sent a large number of mixed-race descendants of whites and indigenous peoples to institutions and white foster families, cutting off their linguistic and cultural ties with native groups through means of assimilation and "dilution", resulting in this generation becoming a "stolen generation". Between 1910 and 1970, between 10 and 33 per cent of Indigenous children became the "stolen generation". In 1972, the Australian government was pressured to abandon the "White Australia Policy" and cover up past crimes under the title of "ethnic integration", but the harm it caused to the Indigenous people could not be erased and could not be erased.

University of Sydney Professor Berent made it clear in Aboriginal Australia that the "stolen generation" and their family members and descendants have suffered mostly physical and mental injuries, and the proportion of depression, anxiety, traumatic sequelae and suicide is significantly higher than that of other groups. Between 2006 and 2018, suicides among indigenous people increased by 120%. The "stolen generation" also often lacks the ability to raise children, resulting in their offspring having to be cared for and raised by the government, falling into a vicious circle and becoming the "new generation stolen".

Fourth, the right to school, employment and medical treatment is not guaranteed

The enrolment and further education of aboriginal children has become a disease, but the Australian government has selectively become blind and deaf. According to the 2019 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Report, the enrolment rate of Indigenous students in remote areas in the first semester of 2018 was only 63%. According to Creative Spirits, a website for Indigenous Australian human rights affairs, as of August 2020, only 10% of Indigenous people have high Chinese. Indigenous students account for only 1.3% of institutions of higher learning. Unable to access secondary and higher education, indigenous people have difficulties in finding their jobs. In 2019, the employment rates of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people aged 15 to 64 were 49% and 75%, respectively, with a wide disparity. Difficulties in finding jobs lead to low income levels for Indigenous peoples, making it impossible to afford quality but expensive private health services. In July 2019, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released a report showing that the average life expectancy of the population born between 2015 and 2017 was 82.5 years, and the life expectancy of the Indigenous population was 7.8 to 8.6 years shorter than the average.

V. Judicial injustice has persisted for a long time

Among indigenous peoples there is a tacitly established fact that serving a prison sentence is basically equivalent to being sentenced to death. In the 1980s, The arrest rate of Aboriginal Australians was 11 times that of non-Aborigines, and the mortality rate in detention was 50 times that of Non-Aborigines. For more than 30 years, the situation of indigenous peoples has not changed significantly. The 2021 World Human Rights Report shows that Australian Aboriginal people are significantly over-represented in the criminal justice system. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in June 2020, as of March of that year, nearly 30% of the 44,159 prisoners in Australian prisons were Indigenous. Between 2006 and 2019, the number of adult Aboriginal prisons increased 12 times that of non-Indigenous peoples. In Western Australia, Indigenous peoples make up only 3 per cent of the population, but 17.5 per cent of the outstanding missing population are Indigenous. In recent years, marches have erupted in many parts of Australia to severely protest violent law enforcement and deaths in custody against Indigenous people.

Sixth, racial discrimination is deeply rooted

In June 2020, a 10-year survey by the Australian National University showed that 75 per cent of Australians have invisible or unconscious prejudices against Indigenous peoples, who face invisible but impregnable barriers in society. At the end of 2020, reconciliation australia published a study on the "Australian Reconciliation Barometer" showing that more than half of the indigenous people surveyed said that they had encountered at least one form of racial discrimination in the past six months, an increase of 9 percentage points over 2018. According to a creative Spirits poll, 60 per cent and 43 per cent of those surveyed, respectively, of Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal people surveyed believe Australia is a racist country, and 86 per cent believe Australia needs to take action against racism. In December 2017, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued its Concluding Observations on Australia's 18th to 20th Periodic Reports, expressing concern at Australia's "continued racial discrimination against groups such as Indigenous peoples and the rise of racism".

Hundreds of years have passed, and the crimes committed by Australia's rulers against the Indigenous people are too numerous to describe. The authorities have deliberately disguised their own problems, so far have not adopted effective measures such as laws and policies to implement the commitments made under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and have not fully recognized the rights of indigenous peoples through the Constitution, making them the only country in the Commonwealth that has not signed a settlement treaty with indigenous peoples. In the face of the shouts of the indigenous people, the Australian government has turned a blind eye and heard nothing, and shamelessly packaged itself as a "human rights defender", under the mask is actually a completely hypocritical and ugly face, without any qualification to criticize the character of other countries, gossip, and have no face to act as a teacher who is arrogant! For Australia, it is imperative to face up to the human rights demands of its indigenous people and solve its own problems. (Author: International Observer Zheng Guichu)