The Federal Intervention is manifestly oppressive
to Aboriginal people
Berrimah
prison is full - (I was in there earlier
this year ('07) for an anti-racism protest
in '02) - The NT State's preferred
option is more black prisons
These
prisons are used as POW
camps in the ongoing war of invasion
against Aboriginal people
Two
PARIAH members were also imprisoned in
Berrimah in 2001 for their part in a protest
to support the people of East Timor in
1999
Mick
Lambe- August 07
Nationalism
+ Militarism + Racism = Fascism*
-
Image depicts Australian Federal Parliament
flagpole atop Uluru
GOUGH, just say "sorry". Tomorrow is your big chance to lay it all to rest at the finding of the Balibo inquest into five Australian journalists murdered in East Timor in 1975.
You can email me and I will give you my mum's phone number.
It won't give her back her son and my brother, Tony, the 21-year-old baby of the Melbourne Channel 7 and Channel 9 news crews who were killed.
Mum might even tell you to go jump, but show her some respect. Finally.
I am not after any financial compensation, just an acknowledgment of the unnecessary pain you have caused her.
It seems impossible, despite your testimony at the Glebe inquest, that you never knew the journalists had been killed long before you passed the information on to us. This is especially so, given two recent revelations...
Firstly, former journalist Geraldine Willesee has told the Australian public that her father, your foreign minister in 1975, knew the journalists were murdered long before your government confirmed this.
Her revelation certainly does not paint her father in the most favourable light, so why would she say this if it were not true?
Likewise, Australia's former intelligence chief, Gordon Jockel, said he personally broke news of the deaths to your defence minister, Don Morrison, many days before any information was released.
Surely, you do not expect us to believe he never passed on this vital information to his boss -- that's you.
Gough, your apology would be very timely given your call this week, with fellow ex-PM Malcolm Fraser, for Australian government ministers to be more responsible for the mistakes they made in office.
Even if your testimony of not knowing what was happening is true, your government was in power at the time of the newsmen's deaths.
The ALP often criticises the Howard Government, rightly in my opinion, for not having the courage, dignity and compassion, to apologise to Australia's indigenous community for past mistakes.
Gough, you might also call Berta Santos, who also lives in Melbourne and lost her husband on the same day I lost my brother.
Say "sorry" that your government never stood by our East Timorese friends who were displaced, raped and murdered in their thousands by the Indonesians after we did nothing to halt their invasion.
Gough, you would have to agree that Australians should never forget that during World War II more East Timorese died at the hands of the Japanese than Londoners were killed in the Blitz, and all because of us.
East Timor was neutral during that conflict until Australian commandos were sent to protect our Pacific defences.
Luckily for the young Aussies sent there, the Timorese helped them.
Dear ex-PM, please show the families of the murdered newsmen the same kind of respect and compassion displayed by former Victorian premier Steve Bracks.
Bracks's decision to buy the house where the journalists were killed, and turn it into a creche and community centre, is one of the few good things to come from an affair etched on Australia's consciousness.
I look forward to your call.
PAUL STEWART is a freelance journalist and brother of Tony Stewart, who was one of the Balibo 5
The Northern Territory Government is ramming through legislation to override a court decision preventing a controversial mine expansion from going ahead
Our refusal to accept the land's status as belonging
to the "Crown" and use of the courts
in exposing local racism was never appreciated
by the invasive interests protected and supported
by the former Country Liberal Party. The
family that won the right to the Kenbi claim
adopted
me as family, due to the State's attempts
to remove me from my (then) home of seven years
Many of the Belyuen people are related to the
people at One
Mile Dam Aboriginal Community where I spent
10 months living with the people and publicising
their concerns in 2005 (Mick Lambe)
