UN: Aboriginal Program Violates Human Rights

Source: Associated Press

Feb. 24, 2010
UN: Aboriginal Program Violates Human Rights
UN Expert: Australia's Program To Curb Abuse In Aboriginal Communities Violates Human Rights

SYDNEY (AP) - An Australian government program imposing radical restrictions on Aborigines in a crackdown on child abuse is inherently racist, breaches international human rights obligations and must be changed immediately, a U.N. official said Wednesday.

In an advance copy of a report to be released next week, the United Nations special rapporteur on indigenous human rights, James Anaya, expressed serious concerns over the controversial initiative known as "the intervention."

The program forced a series of tough rules on Aborigines in the Northern Territory - including bans on alcohol and hard-core pornography - in response to an investigation that found rampant child sex abuse in remote indigenous communities.

~snip~
In 2007, a government-commissioned inquiry concluded that child sexual abuse in remote Aboriginal communities had grown to catastrophic levels, though it didn't provide actual numbers. The government quickly suspended its own anti-discrimination law - the Racial Discrimination Act - so it could ban alcohol and hard-core pornography in Aboriginal communities and restrict how Aborigines spend their welfare checks. The restrictions do not apply to Australians of other races.





Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/23/ap/asia/main6236911.shtml

n/t

and I was like, :wtf:

or indigenous community has ever managed to solve.

Indigenous Australians exist in a kind of limbo: their traditional way of life (neolithic hunter-gatherer across the entire Australian continent) is not compatible with the 21st century (and wasn't compatible with the 20th or the 19th, for that matter), and yet to assimilate, they would have to leave most of that culture behind. Many indigenous communities are welfare enclaves where there's enough money around to keep from starving, but no real way forward short of leaving the community and reinventing yourself as an Australian like all the rest.

There is a kind of halfway assimilation that people try -- taking on training and/or education, getting a regular 9-to-5 job, while respecting at least some of the traditions of your forbears, but the cost of that is increasing alienation from a community that would prefer not to assimilate at all, and sees in assimilation a kind of death.

In the communities, alcoholism, child abuse, domestic violence, poor dietary practices, and early death are common. The government sees a segment of the population suffering in a way that other segments aren't, and tries to find solutions. They seldom have the intended effect.

The answer? I have no idea.

the people themselves have volunteered to be "dry."

Maybe the solution is to have the communities assume additional restrictions voluntarily.

Where ever the europeans go they bring there system of justice with them,the system is a biased one,a set of rules for the natives another for themselves.In africa,the so called new world(america),australia,people of color have always been subjected to double standards.