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Australian Indigenous Leaders Condemn Zimbabwe Bashings

20 March 2007 - kooriweb.org - Some of Australia’s most eminent Aboriginal community leaders, artists, educators and performers have expressed their horror at the brutal bashing and torture of Zimbabwean grandmother Mrs Sekai Holland and other opposition leaders at the hands of the Mugabe regime in Harare.

Many Aboriginal Australians who were involved in the anti-apartheid movement in the early 1970s have strong and fond memories of Sekai Holland. She was a staunch supporter of the Aboriginal Land Rights movement and the 1972 Aboriginal Embassy.

Naomi Mayer’s of the Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service said that Sekai was and is a strong but gentle person of principle and great integrity and that it was outrageous for a grandmother to be brutalized in this manner. Mrs. Mayers said that both the Redfern Legal Centre and the Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service has written to the South African High Commission (the major international sponsor of the Mugabe regime) expressing concern for the safety of Mrs Holland and other opposition leaders in Zimbabwe.

Other Aboriginal rights leaders and Aboriginal community members who said that they were shocked and outraged by the actions of the Mugabe Government included, Jenny Munro, Lyall Munro, Gary Foley, Sol Bellear, Gary Williams, NSW MP Linda Burney, novelist and historian Tony Birch, Kaye Bellear (widow of Aboriginal District Court Judge Bob Bellear), novelist and Miles Franklin Award nominee Alexis Wright, artists Richard Bell and Sam Wickman, Dulcie Flower, Lloyd McDermott, Lowitja O’Donohue, Evelyn Scott, Faith Bandler, Hans Bandler, Lester Bostock, Euphemia Bostock, Joyce Clague and Colin Clague.

Activist and historian Gary Foley, who knew Sekai from the late 1960s said that it was particularly ironic that the ANC Government of South Africa were propping up the Mugabe regime at a time when the Zimbabwe government is brutalizing a grandmother who once stood beside Australian Aboriginal activists to fight against South African apartheid.

Mr. Foley said that Mugabe has dismissed criticism from the West as just ‘white racists’. “Well it is time for Mugabe and his thugs to realize there are black people in the west who also condemn his actions. Fascism is fascism, whether its face is white or black!”

The Aboriginal Australians also called on the Australian government do more to ensure the safety and security of Sekai Holland and her opposition colleagues in Zimbabwe. They said the Australian government, which had rushed in to help depose Sadam Hussein have an obligation to take more firm action against a worse tyrant in Zimbabwe.

Source: Scoop (NZ) and kooriweb.org

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