Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) released this statement on April 8.
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On Saturday, Reclaim Australia were held rallies across the country.
These rallies promoted messages of racism, hatred and oppression. Participants were draped in the Australian flag, were covered in swastika tattoos and carried banners with dehumanising messages.
Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) attended the counter rally (Rally Against Racism) and burnt three Australian flags. WAR hold no affinity to this flag.
Australia’s national flag is a symbol of racism, genocide and dispossession. It represents the bloodshed of our ancestors at the hands of the brutal colonisation of this land. The Australian flag represents a long history of oppression that we continue to endure under the colonial system. It is entwined with racism and represents an entire colonial nation built on the deliberate and systematic extermination and destruction of the first people of this country.
This flag is founded in the belief of ‘terra nullius’, the failure to recognise the longest living culture on earth, and its continued use delegitimises our existence and is insulting to our people.
In more recent times, this flag also represents the malicious and racist treatment of ethnic minorities. The flag represents a white nation, a nation built by white people for white people.
Members of WAR didn't just burn the Australian flag, we set fire to an expression of Australian racism in an act of anti-colonial resistance. Burning the Australian flag is an act of defiance against the colonial state, a symbolic gesture of our continual fight for freedom and a message that is hoped to reverberate outside of the monopolised media within this country.
Our ultimate goal is to end the colonial control of our lands and lives and to restore our tribal sovereignty. We want freedom and independence and we will continue to fight to rid our people and our communities of the interfering and oppressive hands of the colonial Australian state. We call on Australian government to cease violent domination of Aboriginal lives and immediately stop all destruction of Aboriginal land and culture across this continent.