World's governments being asked to help the Aborigines
Posted March 24th, 2009 by Diet Simonhttp://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/worlds-governments-being-asked-help-aborigines
Goodooga, northwest-NSW, 24 March 09 - - As Australia is having to answer to the United Nations Human Rights Committee over its treatment of Aborigines, a northwest-NSW Aboriginal leader is asking the governments of all member countries of the UN to help overturn the Northern Territory intervention and recognise Aboriginal sovereignty.
This follows an urgent decision by the UN's Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on 13 March condemning Australia's suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act as part of the intervention.
Michael Anderson, Leader of the Euahlayi Nation and elected spokesman of the 16 clans in the Gumilaroi nation, has lobbied at past CERD conferences and has written the letter below to member countries' missions in New York.
"Australia must be held accountable by the international community for its Human Rights breaches and abuses against Aboriginal Peoples in Australia and its strident opposition to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples," Anderson says in the letter.
Anderson and other Aboriginal leaders from all over Australia have also asked President Barack Obama to intervene (http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/media-release-aboriginal-people-brief-barack-obama-his-meeting-kevin-rudd) when he meets with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Washington on Wednesday our time (early Tuesday US).
Here is the letter to the UN missions:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
23 March 2009
Your Excellency,
Australia's continued human rights violations and abuses of Aboriginal peoples
We enter into this correspondence with you to highlight the fact that Australia has not earned the right to have permanency status on the UN Security Council.
Australia is the only country in the world that has a constitution that allows for the imposition of laws and/or regulations that target specific racial groups. Section 51 (xxvi) says:
Australian Constitution - Section 51 - Legislative powers of the Parliament
The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:-
(xxvi.) The people of any race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws:
In the Hindmarsh Island Court case, Justice Kirby pointed out that this section does not necessarily require any Australian government, whether they be Labor, Liberal or National Party, to always pass beneficial laws, rather it permits the passing of laws that can be detrimental or against any race as they deem necessary. [Kartinyeri-v-The Commonwealth 1998 HCA (High Court of Australia) 22 at para 163]
If we are to question why this section exists at all in the Australian constitution, we only have to visit some key documents that describe the thinking that existed in Australia pre-federation of 1901 and immediately thereafter.
In 1901 the first federal prime minister, Edmund Barton, advocated for a continent that could be free of ‘contamination' by foreign and unwanted racial impurities by quoting Professor Pearson:
'The fear of Chinese immigration which the Australian democracy cherishes ... is in fact, the instinct of self-preservation, quickened by experience ... We are guarding the last part of the world in which the higher races can live and increase freely for the higher civilisation ... The day will come ... when the European observers will look around the globe girdled with a continuous zone of the yellow and black races. It is idle to say that if all this should come to pass our pride and place will not be humiliated. We are struggling among ourselves for supremacy in a world which we thought of as destined to belong to the Aryan race; and to the Christian faith; to the letters and arts and charms which we have inherited from the best of times.'
Unfortunately the majority of European and non-Aboriginal thinking in Australia today continues to reflect racist ideologies, which in turn permits the continued emergence of prejudice and discrimination against Aboriginal Peoples by the dominant society.
Australia is a country of contradictions. On the one hand, it promotes living in harmony and reconciliation, without any real effort to enter into meaningful dialogue with the Aboriginal communities throughout Australia. This reflects Australia's unwillingness to recognise Aboriginal Peoples for who we really are.
Aboriginal people continue to argue that we have never been defeated in battle, neither have we ceded nor relinquished our sovereignty.
Australia continues to operate in the world under a flawed legal assumption that Australia is bona fide by virtue of an antiquated international doctrine as is referred to in the Mabo judgment No. 2 when Brennan J relied upon:
'The acquisition of territory by a sovereign state for the
first time is an act of state which cannot be challenged,
controlled or interfered with by the courts of that state.'[Mabo v Queensland (No 2) ("Mabo case") [1992] HCA 23; (1992)
175 CLR 1 (3 June 1992) at para 31]
It cannot be a fact that a civilised society, which has been invaded in this manner, does not have any legal rights to question the powers of the invading authorities. In respect to the claim of Act of State, former chief Justice Mason of the High Court commented after the Mabo decision that Blackstone's Commentaries on international law at the time clearly suggest that the Aboriginal Nation States could be recognised and therefore treaties and other arrangements could be entered into, if the invading State had chosen to. There is sufficient correspondence between the invaders in Australia and British colonialists in England that suggested and recommended that treaties with the Aborigines be entered into but the colonial authorities in the invaded territories refused.
We assert that the court got it right when it states that the issue of Aboriginal Sovereignty cannot be dealt with by the High Court and it belongs to another jurisdiction. Brennan J concludes in the High Court Mabo No.2 Judgment:
‘1. The Crown's acquisition of sovereignty over the several parts of Australia cannot be challenged in an Australian municipal court.‘ [at para 83]
All laws passed in relation to Native Title rights and interests are legally presumptuous and therefore the judgements are dubious, because the issue of the Sovereignty of Aboriginal Peoples is still subject to international legal definition. While the Mabo judgement No. 2 erased the myth of terra nullius, we cannot permit Australia to continue with another myth, which is that associated with the High Court's right to rule on Aboriginal proprietary interests in land (Native Title rights) without first having resolved the issue of Aboriginal Sovereignty in Australia by the international legal jurisdiction.
I also wish to draw attention to the Northern Territory Emergency Response. Advice given to me suggests that this NT Intervention is a response to an alleged state of emergency associated with child abuse and domestic violence and that the executive government in 2007 irrationally decreed this Northern Territory Emergency Response, which has its origin in martial law.
Since colonisation there have been a number of proclamations of a similar nature, which gave the police and the military absolute power and authority over Aboriginal Peoples in a defined area, e.g. Governor Macquarie's Proclamation of 1815.
Under the existing Northern Territory ‘state of emergency' all powers have been vested in the military, which has engaged the Federal Police to police the communities, thus presenting an image of civil control outside of the military. This practice is merely a façade to shield the military powers. In order for the NT Intervention to remain ‘legal' it requires the continuation of the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) 1975 in Australia.
On 13 March 2009 the Urgent Action CERD decision from Fatimata-Binta Victoire Dah, Chairperson of the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, condemned Australia's suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975:
'... in order to continue a constructive dialogue with your Government, the Committee requests the State party to submit further details and information on the following issues no later than 31 July 2009:
Aboriginal people question how can compulsorily acquiring peoples' land protect children and why does the Australian government need until September before they reverse the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act. It is within their power (if the political will is there) to repeal the Northern Territory Emergency Response Acts and reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act in the next winter sitting of Federal Parliament. The question is why do they wait till our next spring sitting before they do it.
Today, 23 March 2009, the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Jenny Macklin, has advised the Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs that she has extended the deadline for the Tangentyere Council to sign over their leases of the Town Camps, under their jurisdiction, by 2 May 2009, otherwise no housing projects will be funded nor will any community infrastructure be put in place for Aboriginal communities in these Town Camps. This is an act by an intolerant minister, who is dictating and blackmailing defenceless and disadvantaged peoples.
Detail of the racism imposed by the Northern Territory Intervention recently sent to President Obama is available from this link:
In conclusion, it is our hope that from this piece of correspondence your government will raise the seriousness of the issues that we have discussed with the Australian Labor government and urge them, in the strongest terms, to take immediate steps to reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act that affects the civil liberties, rights and freedoms of Aboriginal Peoples in Australia, under the Early Warning and Urgent Action procedures of the CERD.
Moreover, we ask that you include in your correspondence, should your government decide to do so, to urge in the strongest terms to repeal the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 in the Native Title Amendment Act 1998, as was recommended by CERD and ECOSOC, and to permit the courts of Australia to consider Aboriginal proprietary interests and rights in land as a common law right, as was the case in the original Mabo No. 2 judgement, as opposed to having the courts decide rights and interests based upon a coded legislative regime set by the Australian Parliament.
Australia must be held accountable by the international community for its Human Rights breaches and abuses against Aboriginal Peoples in Australia and its strident opposition to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
This is why we have criticised Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd's ambition to seek permanency status on the UN Security Council. Australia has not earned this right and responsibility.
Yours faithfully
Michael Anderson
Leader of Euahlayi Nation
+61 (0) 427 292 492 and +61 2 6829 6355
No comments:
Post a Comment