Australian Government Imposes Military-Police Regime on Aborigines

By the Socialist Equality Party (Australia); 23 June 2007 - World Socialist Web Site (www.wsws.org)

[Editorial Note: Mostly Water does not endorse or support the Socialist Equality Party of Australia, or similar organizations in 'Canada'.]

Under the cynical guise of protecting indigenous children from sexual abuse, the [John] Howard government announced on Thursday a “national emergency” plan to take control of dozens of Aboriginal communities throughout the Northern Territory and impose virtual martial law conditions. Over [the] coming weeks, police and troops will flood into as many as 60 towns and camps to enforce a series of draconian measures.

Welfare and family payments will be halved, with the seized portions transferred to food and clothing vouchers. All payments will be cut off if children fail to attend school, or are considered “at risk”. Forced labour will be imposed, via “work for the dole” programs, to “clean up” communities.

In “prescribed” zones across the Northern Territory, all children under the age of 16 will be subjected to compulsory medical checks for sexual abuse. Alcohol and X-rated pornography will be banned, with individuals as well as suppliers facing imprisonment.

At the same time, the existing permit system, which allows indigenous communities to restrict access to their lands, will be scrapped. Business managers—so-called “tsars”—will take charge of all public housing and government enterprises. These people will function as modern-day versions of the “administrators” and “protectors” who exercised complete authority over Aboriginal reservations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Federal parliament will be recalled for a special mid-winter session to pass extraordinary, yet-to-be-seen legislation to authorise the takeover. The proposal was immediately endorsed by the Labor Party, whose leader Kevin Rudd pledged to give Prime Minister John Howard whatever support he needed.

Howard insisted that the catalyst for his government’s “hardline approach” was a recently released Northern Territory government inquiry report, “Little Children are Sacred,” which found that child sexual abuse was serious, widespread and often unreported. But Howard and Minister for Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough have brushed aside the report’s findings and recommendations, which called for better education and family support services, together with empowerment of Aboriginal communities.

The report concluded that “most Aboriginal people are willing and committed to solving problems and helping their children”. Aboriginal people were “not the only perpetrators of sexual abuse”—it existed throughout Australia and internationally. In indigenous communities, the roots lay in social problems that had developed over many decades: “the combined effects of poor health, alcohol and drug abuse, unemployment, gambling, pornography, poor education and housing, and a general loss of identity and control”. Above all, “Improvements in health and social services are desperately needed.”

On the contrary, Howard’s package includes not a single cent for health care, education, housing or social services. Such is the acute shortage of medical staff throughout indigenous communities, the government is asking doctors to donate their services to implement the mandatory medical checks. While the myth is routinely peddled that millions of dollars have already been “squandered” on Aboriginal welfare, every available statistic points to decades of chronic under-funding.

Less than three months ago, Oxfam Australia condemned Australia’s “health gap”—the fact that the federal government spent approximately 70 cents per person on the health of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders for every $1 spent on the rest of the population. The “Close the Gap” report ranked Australia as the worst among wealthy nations at improving the health of indigenous people. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders still died nearly 20 years younger than other Australians, and infant mortality was three times higher.

Dr Paul Bauert, head of pediatrics at Royal Darwin Hospital, denounced the government for ignoring the huge medical challenge produced by poverty-related illnesses. The indigenous children he had seen suffered “pus coming out of their ears, rheumatic heart disease, pus in their lungs [because] they’re living in a house with 20 other people, with three bedrooms and one bathroom and one toilet”. He said existing resources were “minimal,” with the Northern Territory having only a quarter of the doctors needed to conduct regular visits to remote townships.

Far from addressing this social catastrophe, Howard’s measures will deepen it.

What will happen to the families whose welfare payments are cut off? What will be done with those children who fail the medical checks? How many more Aboriginal men will be jailed, when the indigenous imprisonment rate is already 30 times the national average?

According to Aboriginal health specialist, Dr Ben Bartlett, conducting forced medical examinations would be traumatic and could, in itself, constitute sexual abuse. Another expert insisted that the inevitable result of the government’s “knee-jerk ... military response” would be increased suicide and violence. “There will be greater feelings of despair,” said Southern Cross University professor Judy Atkinson, the author of three previous reports on child sexual abuse in indigenous communities.

Child welfare workers are warning of a new “Stolen Generation” of children placed in institutions or foster homes. Already, figures released this month by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show that the number of children aged between 12 and 17 removed from their family in 2006 rose to 9,276, up one-third since 1998. Of these children, 1,170, or about 13 percent, were indigenous, although indigenous people make up just 2 percent of the population.

Howard’s political agenda

At Thursday’s media conference, Howard declared that “constitutional niceties” had to be cast aside for “the care and protection of young children”. In the first instance, the new regime will be imposed in the Northern Territory, which operates under a different legal framework than the states. But Howard has called for urgent meetings with the six state Labor governments to adopt similar blueprints.

The prime minister claimed he detected a new “mood” among “average Australians” who felt shame and anger about the sexual abuse of indigenous children, and expected governments to respond. With the enthusiastic assistance of the media, he is seeking to divert legitimate public outrage at the terrible conditions in remote Aboriginal townships away from those responsible—successive federal, territory and state governments.

Howard’s claim to be concerned for the plight of poor indigenous children is contemptible. In reality, he is using the social distress caused by decades of official neglect and deprivation, on top of two centuries of massacres, dispossession and forced separation of children, as the pretext for a new form of state repression. Alcohol and substance abuse, domestic violence and sexual abuse are symptoms of deep and longstanding social problems: poverty, deprivation and denial of essential infrastructure and services, including health care and schools.

The government’s turn—with full bipartisan support—to punitive police-state measures against the most disadvantaged layers of the Australian population has far-reaching implications for the lives, social conditions and basic democratic rights of all working people. During his media conference, Howard revealed that federal cabinet is drawing up similar measures for all welfare recipients. Precedents are being established, using the most vulnerable members of society, that will be extended throughout the country.

At the centre of the new scheme is a massive land grab. The Howard government will override the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act and the 1976 Land Rights Act—which granted land tenure to Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory—in order to take over land, initially through five-year leases. No compensation will be paid to the current landholders, despite a constitutional requirement to do so. Instead, they will be paid “in kind”—through government services—a proposal reminiscent of the days when cattle station owners gave Aboriginal workers rations of tea, sugar and flour in lieu of wages.

To enforce these deeply anti-democratic measures, police will be mobilised from across the country, backed by military units. According to Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough, a former army officer, the police will arrive in military vehicles and the army will provide logistical backup for frontline policing.

Brough likened the situation to a community being struck by a cyclone or flood. “Certain things have to be put aside. Certain normalities have to be discarded.” But the epidemic of ill-health and abuse among indigenous children is not a natural disaster—nor has it emerged overnight. It is a social disaster, which is now being exploited to radically extend the domestic role of the armed forces.

While Labor is marching lockstep with Howard, and a whole layer of privileged Aboriginal leaders is collaborating with the government, significant voices of opposition have already emerged among health professionals, scholars, lawyers and local Aboriginal leaders. Among them is the winner of the 2007 Miles Franklin literary award, indigenous writer Alexis Wright. She accused the government of “riding roughshod yet again, trampling heavily, bringing down the sledgehammer approach”. This opposition will grow and broaden as the true character of the government’s takeover becomes clearer.

As numbers of commentators have observed, there is an element of desperate election politics in Howard’s announcement. Facing the prospect of defeat at this year’s election, according to opinion polls, Howard is anxiously seeking another reactionary diversion, like the 2001 “children overboard” refugee accusations or the 2003 “weapons of mass destruction” fabrications.

But the plan is part of a wider agenda. Throughout his political career, Howard has made a point of whitewashing the genocidal policies carried out during the past 200 years against Australia’s indigenous population. His government has dismantled representative Aboriginal bodies, such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and consistently blamed Aboriginal people for their own plight. He has also sought to abolish native and communal title. Under the Northern Territory takeover, entire communities are likely to be dispersed and their land cleared for unfettered exploitation by mining companies and pastoralists.

Virtually every media outlet, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has adopted the government’s line. The Murdoch media, in particular, has hailed Howard’s announcement. According to Nicolas Rothwell’s “analysis” on the Australian’s front page, Howard moved with “rapier speed and devastating force” to sweep away “a generation’s worth of political assumptions” and impose a “completely new pattern of surveillance and control” on indigenous people.

While this assault has a distinctly racist component, it is directed against the entire working class. As the social polarisation produced by more than two decades of “free market” policies intensifies, the Howard government is erecting the scaffolding for a police state. At the same time as it turns to militarism abroad—in Iraq, East Timor and the South Pacific—to realise its economic and strategic agenda, the Australian ruling elite is trampling over basic civil liberties and democratic rights at home.

The Socialist Equality Party calls on the working class as a whole—indigenous and non-indigenous alike—to oppose Howard’s deeply reactionary plan and make a political break with the entire official political apparatus, including the Labor Party. What is required is the unification of the working class on the basis of a socialist program to completely reorganise economic and social life to meet human need, not corporate profit. Such a program must include the allocation of billions of dollars in resources to overcome the social disadvantage suffered by Australia’s indigenous population, and to rectify the historic crimes perpetrated against it.

Copyright 1998-2007
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved

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AUSSIES IMPOSE MARTIAL LAW ON ABORGINES
www.mohawknationnews.com

MNN. June 24, 2007. In the 1920’s there was a failed artist who was bitter about his lack of success in Vienna, Austria. He had visions of gaining control over the whole human race. He came up with a scheme and put it into a book called “Main Kampf”.

One procedure in Adolph Hitler’s plan was to find a “scapegoat” that he could victimize. He planned to wreak havoc upon these people with such brutality and force that it would frighten everyone else in society who would then succumb to his schemes. It worked for a time.

He set up a plan of attack against the Jews, Gypsies and others to frighten Germans into not resisting him. He confiscated their property, took away children from their parents and intimidated them publicly before the German population. The majority of the people dared not oppose him. They allowed themselves to be swallowed up by his delusions. They imagined they were part of a superior race. The more brutal he was to his victims the more the majority of the people idolized him.

Canada is using a new version of this old weapon. We are being branded as sexual perverts or pedophiles or deviants of some sort. By doing this, government control mechanisms are being set in place. The social networks such as the Children’s Aid Society, police and even the military are becoming involved. We have been seeing the military in the outskirts of Six Nations during the reclamation of our land. The social services are being given more and more power to abduct, grab and remove our children from their families based on the claim that this is “in the best interests of the children”.

In Canada there are two frightening aspects. Television shows payouts to Indigenous people almost daily. It gives the general public the impression that natives are always winning the lottery. The public is told that huge amounts are being paid out for having been molested in the past. Sociologists and doctors propagate a myth that anyone who has been molested also becomes a molester.

At the same time they have branded the entire Indigenous population as molesters. Why? Because they are giving money for abuse that happened in the past to our children by church run residential schools. Once Indigenous declare they have been molested and divulge their past, they are put on a computer list where they are branded as “deviants” and encouraged not to have any children. This is really “Genocide Plan B”. They will use any pretext to go into Indigenous communities and take away children from parents because that community “has been contaminated by what [what they did to us] happened in the residential schools”!

There is so much assault on Indigenous cultures in Canada. Some indigenous people feel it’s a big accomplishment just to keep our children.

Presently there is a public inquiry going on in Cornwall, Ontario regarding sexual abuse from the past. The main focus is to show how police and children’s protection agencies did not do their job protecting children from the pedophiles. As a result the law is going to be changed.

The Supreme Court of Canada recently sent some of its workers to Cornwall to observe the inquiry. They are going to draft the laws to empower the child welfare agencies, the police and army with the necessary legal power to prevent this kind of holocaust ever happening again. They are going to take children away from families and place them into communal state run agencies like they did in Russia and Germany. These were complete disasters for those societies just like the residential schools were a disaster for us.

We are seeing the implementation of a gigantic totalitarian regime upon Canada. We are the initial scapegoats. They want to so frighten the public that no one will dare stand up to this take over by the totalitarian regime. All of Canadian society should be frightened by this.

In Australia the Howard government is going to implement martial law on the Aborigines to confiscate their lands and property. They also plan to attack those in vulnerable positions like the welfare recipients. The Australians are many steps ahead of Canada in implementing this kind of scheme.

Some of the band council and government established “leadership” among our people are residues from the residential schools molestation program. Some of them are selling out our people.

Another aspect is how all the public inquiries in Canada in the last few years involve Indigenous people. J.J. Harper in Winnipeg, Ipperwash, Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, Saskatchewan police murders of native youth, and the Betty Osborn murder and others. Canadians have spent a fortune studying us without allowing us our jurisdiction. During these inquiries that go on for years, statistics and information are gathered and put into huge documents. They are then dissected and studied to find out the inner workings of our communities.

Prior to the Holocaust in Germany, the Gestapo and other secret services gathered information about the blood lines of all Jews, Gypsies and other minorities and the workings of their societies. When the Germans came for these people, they knew who to locate, arrest and send to the concentration camps.

To control a group of people or society the despots take the most vulnerable people. They abuse and mistreat them so badly in front of the public that the entire society becomes frightened. The public becomes paralyzed with fear and can’t do anything. It’s like the “Stockholm Syndrome”, where an abused person gravitates towards their abuser believing they are going to be protected. This is happening on a larger scale. Colonial states are publicly committing atrocities and televising them daily. The victims gravitate towards their abusers thinking they are going to be protected. Actually, the despots will destroy everybody. There is no protection in a totalitarian state. If anyone knows about this, it’s those of us who survived.

Is Canada repeating its own history? Are they starting with us and then ending with Canada becoming a totalitarian state? They’re going to do this by branding us first as deviants. They will demonize us and then try to destroy us.

These totalitarian schemes are doomed to failure. They have been tried repeatedly throughout history and they always fail. The trouble is that there is huge suffering and loss of life in the process. If Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper does not object to this violation of aboriginal rights and international law, then we will know that he’s going their way. We need our friends and allies to object to this immediately.

Kahentinetha Horn

MNN Mohawk Nation News