UN Human Rights Committee on Australia, 20 July 2000 Mr Amor, Tunisia: �commendable, outstanding report, particularly the third report which is particularly voluminous and rich. It�s difficult sometimes to grasp, difficult to understand at times, but it is a very thorough and responsible job of work, which is most profitable, useful and gives a lot of food for thought. I thank you for that. I wish also to take this opportunity of pay a tribute to Mrs Evatt. I knew her through her writings, particularly on the Aboriginal Peoples and I have known her better in the framework of this Committee. That has provided me with the opportunity of appreciating her professionalism and her great powers and competence. Madam Chairman, I appreciate the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural policy, multi-religious body politic of Australia. A great deal has been done and I think there is an unquestionable will to foster diversity while safeguarding difference in a spirit of comprehensive tolerance. Nonetheless, at times, a few questions do spring to mind. I shall try and ask two sorts of questions. The distinguished Ambassador began his statement by telling us that the Aboriginals are under-privileged. This is a self-evident statement which has been very clearly put forward. I think the Aboriginals are not simply underprivileged but perhaps, and above all, misunderstood. At the very least they are not sufficiently understood, because the questions of the Aboriginals forces us to deal with two forms of thinking, which may not simply be merely different, but, indeed, frankly contradictory. The authorities try to take into consideration the special characteristics and features of the Aboriginals, but they try to pour those into a mould, which is not their own; into a spirit, a thinking, a liberal individualism, but, nonetheless, individualism, which really is grounded in one communities dominance over another. So it seems to me that what is happening is that the spirit of those people is one that is community based, not individual based and so I think there are difficulties for the Aboriginals and therefore this is why so many initiatives have failed, because at times overall there is a deep rooted misunderstanding. This understanding emerges in various issues in the perception of land, for instance. The perception of land, according to positive Australian law is a perception based on the concept of ownership, on the individual appropriation of land, whereas the meaning of land for the Aboriginals cannot be simply reduced to an economic fiction. It has a far deeper and quite different meaning. It is not easy therefore for these two conflicting forms of thinking to come together. But for them to meet there must be a judgement on the basis of their own value system and not on the basis of a value system of the person making the judgement. Let me be specific. The sacred sites. The Australian authorities have done a great deal in this respect but here again this meeting of two minds is very difficult because the sacred nature of a site is hedged about with secrecy for some groups of Aboriginal people there are only groups of women within those groups who are in a position, where need be, to transmit and convey those secrets to their daughters and those secrets are not to be transmitted to men and therefore cannot be managed or dealt with by men. I know that a lot has been undertaken by the authorities of Australia, but I know that there is a deep-rooted misunderstanding that has emerged. When a man was called upon instead of woman, because a woman who had been placed in charge could have been the person to whom, for the sacred sites� business, the women could have confided in. Now, work. There are a lot of unemployed Aboriginals. There�s a very large proportion vis-�-vis the non-Aboriginal. It is understandable why, because, for instance, an Aboriginal person who is hired in an enterprise according to specific hours of work and rules and conditions cannot infringe his or her own identity by failing in some of their own community. For example, for an Aboriginal person, if there is a death in the group then that person has to go to take part in the funeral ceremonies and observe a period of grieving. This may take days, weeks or months, but, of course this thinking cannot be offered as a excuse to an employer who has to deal with economic necessities. I am just trying not to judge or criticise, but to offer an example of the clash of these two forms of thinking, so that we can all see how points of convergence can be found and some way found to preserve the rights of the Aboriginal Peoples. Third example: Those children, those children that missionaries felt they had to take with violence from their parents by force, to bring them into the world as they saw it of civilisation. What a weird civilisation that may have saved a few, but gave rise to absolutely insoluble tragedies, that I saw for myself. People absolutely branded for life by what happened to them, and so they go to alcohol, to drugs. They turn to anything and so, of course, they find themselves in treatment or in prison an there the authorities may offer them what is correct, but, nonetheless, there is no real understanding of them. Now, when it comes to the patrimony of Aboriginals, some assets have a religious significance. This you find pretty much everywhere. I think in London a lot was done but there are certain things that have a special religious significance, which have still not been recovered or restored and the recovery of those assets or goods of a sacred or religious nature need to be returned to them because this is a return to their roots, a recognition, an acknowledgement of their dignity, of their culture. Have the discussions with the British authorities led to resolving some of those religious assets that are found in some London and other museums. That is all I will say about the Aboriginals and I will take up my other questions tomorrow. On the Aboriginals I should simply like to say that I have a question about the reserved jobs. Is there any logic to having posta that are reserved for Aboriginal people? Is this a sort of positive discrimination. These are reserved jobs that will take into consideration the special sets of circumstances of the Aboriginal Peoples. This sort of question I should like to ask tomorrow morning. -- ********************************** 'Click' to protect the rainforest: Make the Rainforest Site your homepage! http://www.therainforestsite.com/ ********************************** ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." 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