Needed: European action on Indigenous Australians' rights

One of the website’s prime discussion topics is whether Britain still has responsibility for Indigenous Australians and, if so, whether it is a legal or a moral one. What could Britain and the British people do? Should there be a British apology?

Many British Members of Parliament think there should be. Forty-nine of them have signed a "Sorry motion", tabled by Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, apologising to Aboriginal people for past British policies. The motion also calls on the Governments and peoples of Australia to mark the Centenary of Federation by committing themselves to redress the discrimination suffered by Aboriginal people, and to recognise the special status and rights of Aboriginal peoples as the Indigenous peoples of Australia.

Even if the British government shows no sign of apologising, it is moving on another issue. Amid reports that at least 40 British museums are preparing to hand their collections of ancestral remains back to Australian Aborigines and other Indigenous peoples, the government has just set up a working group to consider changing the law to make it easier for some museums to release their collections.

This initiative has come after years of pressure from Aboriginal campaigners. One of them, Lyndon Ormond Parker, was the only Indigenous person to give evidence to the House of Commons Committee whose report recommended that the new working group be set up. "It was quite a good experience," he says, "having gone over the last three years from the stage where museums weren’t answering any correspondence."

The policy shift on ancestral remains has also been brought about by a meeting last year between Prime Ministers John Howard and Tony Blair. Ormond Parker believes that the British Government is falling into line with its Australian and American counterparts, all of whom are in favour of repatriation. "It is political pressure which forced the scientific and museum community in those countries to accept that they no longer had sole rights to decide what should happen to the Indigenous human remains in their countries," he says.

For the first time, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Brisbane in October will also feel political pressure on the subject of Indigenous people’s rights.

Supported with funds from the European Commission, the London-based Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICS) has set up a project on Indigenous people’s rights. Although at least 100 million of the world’s 250 million Indigenous peoples live in Commonwealth countries, there is no Commonwealth commitment to inquiring into or improving their conditions of life. The ICS project aims to build up information about the Commonwealth’s Indigenous citizens and bring home their rights and needs to member states. Among its aims are to encourage Commonwealth governments to apologise to Indigenous peoples for past injustices, and restore to them their lands, autonomy and culture.

The restoration of land rights is being pursued at the World Court in The Hague. August 2001 saw the arrival there of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, which is establishing an international outpost on neutral diplomatic ground. Aboriginal land rights activist and Wiradjuri custodian Isabell Coe is leading the delegation, which plans to take its case for genocide and dispossession to the International Court of Justice.

"We have been to the highest courts in Australia over genocide and our sovereign land rights and there has been no justice," says Coe. "The courts of Australia have said that our sovereignty can only be determined by the British courts or the World Court."

On August 30 the delegation visited the First Secretary of the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, "to raise the question of who can decide Aboriginal Sovereignty if the Australian High Courts cannot?"

This year has seen Australia facing criticism from London-based Amnesty International which, in its annual assessment of Australia, states that the country’s human rights reputation is at an "historic low".

Among Amnesty’s concerns are the Federal government’s failure to recognise past wrongs against Aborigines, its opposition to recommendations for practical reconciliation measures, continued mandatory sentencing and the high rate of Aboriginal deaths in custody. The report expresses particular concern at the government’s review of its commitment to United Nations human rights organizations following criticism of government policies by four separate UN bodies.