UN a tool, not the answer
The call by Geoff Clark, chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Commission, for the federal government to invite members of the
United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
to Australia should be supported.
The Coalition has attempted to cover up its racist record by complaining
that CERD members have judged the government's commitment to recognising
indigenous people's rights from afar -- yet it declines to issue the required
invitation. Clark's call exposes this.
A higher-intensity UN spotlight on human rights abuses in this country
would help publicise these crimes to the world and to the Australian people,
and may help move them into political action against racism.
But the UN's human rights has already done that, after receiving a six-hour
oral submission and a written submission from the government.
The federal government has never had any compunction about ignoring
recommendations from UN bodies that it does not like -- and taking up those
it does. Compare the government's wilful refusal to countenance CERD requests
to review native title laws to the prime minister's immediate embrace of
UN committee criticisms of drug reform measures in Australia.
This flouting of committee recommendations is built into the UN structure.
The UN General Assembly and nearly all its committees, commissions and
special rapporteurs are toothless tigers, with little or no way to enforce
their recommendations.
The one UN body with teeth, which can interfere in the internal affairs
of sovereign nations, is the Security Council, which is controlled by the
United States and other imperialist countries, and is run in their interests.
Not surprisingly, the Australian government usually supports Security Council
decisions.
Many indigenous, migrant, women's rights and environment organisations
in Australia have sought UN support for overturning unjust laws, regarding
the UN committees as some kind of “umpire”. This is especially understandable
in the case of the indigenous rights movement, which confronts entrenched
state racism.
But the effectiveness of UN criticism rests on the good will of governments,
and their ability to feel shame. When a government has no good will, and
is shameless, as the Australian government is, the reports, requests and
recommendations of UN committees hit their limits.
If UN conventions protecting human rights and outlawing racial discrimination
are going to be put into effect in this country, we can't wait for the
prime minister to have a change of heart or see reason.
Rather, there needs to be a strong on-the-ground campaign, which uses
the information UN and other bodies gather to mobilise public opinion to
force change, rather than simply recommend it.
Not good enough
Prime Minister John Howard's April 6 “apology” for a government report
that denied the existence of the stolen generations (“falsely constructed
history”) is worthless and shameless.
It is worthless because the apology itself contains a lie: “I am sorry
about that because the document was not designed to offend anybody”. In
fact, the report -- which claimed that the practice of forcibly taking
Aboriginal children from their parents was “benign” -- was clearly intended
to offend.
The apology is also worthless because Howard did not retract the report,
prepared by his own advisors, nor did he apologise for the government policy
which created the stolen generations in the first place, nor did he offer
even the most token forms of compensation for wrongs done.
The apology is shameless because there is no sincerity in it. It is
a desperate and doomed attempt by a desperate and doomed leader to damp
down rising public anger.
