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Race, riots and an Australian national disgrace

EDITORIAL

17 February 2004 - Race riots, however suddenly they may seem to erupt, never come completely unheralded. The violence that broke out in the Sydney suburb of Redfern at the weekend had at least two causes. The immediate trigger was the violent death of a young Aboriginal man, impaled on a metal fence. But it was the broader experience which encouraged the local population automatically to blame the police. Poverty, alcohol, drugs and weeks of stifling heat did the rest.

The result was Sydney's worst race riot for years. The local railway station was destroyed. Houses were vandalised and more than 40 police were injured. No fewer than three official inquiries have been set up to establish how the young man died and whether the police were involved. Some local people say he was being pursued by police and that the chase precipitated the accident which caused his death.

It is, of course, essential to find out the acts of the case and avoid the rush to judgement. The reality is, however, that as far as the local, mainly Aboriginal population is concerned, minds have already been made up and another chapter has been written in the history of Australia's lamentable race relations.

For whatever merits Australia as a country can claim - and there are many - sensitivity towards ethnic differences and racial tolerance has traditionally not been among them. Australia's colour bar on immigrants endured well into the 1960s and persists today in the inhumane way it seeks to isolate and discourage asylum-seekers. Its policy si among the most discriminatory and least generous of any developed country.

Until very recently, Australia's treatment of its own indigenous people was, if anything, even more reprehensible. That an Aboriginal sportswoman was chosen to light the Olympic flame before the Sydney Games in 2000 was supposed to mark a change in attitudes. Regrettably, it remained largely symbolic. There will be no substantial improvement as long as white Australians and the country's political leaders refuse to recognise the state of race relations fort the national disgrace it is. The best that could come out of the 2004 Redfern riot is that it could give an impetus to change.

Source: Independent (UK)

Further information: redfern riots