|
|
Change Your Life! |
Aborigines say Australian leaders ignore Mandela |
|
News
|
|
|
September 8, 2000
SYDNEY (AP) - Aboriginal leaders have accused the Australian government of being rude to former South African President Nelson Mandela for bypassing a reconciliation conference he will address. "Nelson Mandela has been snubbed," Geoff Clark, the chairman of Australia's largest indigenous body, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, said Thursday. Australia's only Aboriginal member of federal Parliament, Aden Ridgeway, said it was "shameful and unconscionable" that almost no Australian political leaders would attend the function, a World Reconciliation Day event in the southern city of Melbourne. Organizers said invitations were sent to all federal and state political leaders, but only Premier Steve Bracks of Victoria, the host state, and Ridgeway had agreed to go. Prime Minister John Howard's office said he would be unable to attend because he would not be back in Australia from the U.N.'s Millennium Summit in time. Reconciliation Minister Philip Ruddock said he had a prior engagement. Mandela, who is on a speaking tour of Australia, on Thursday compared racial divisions in South Africa to those in Australia, warning that "the scars of the past remain and fester unless they are addressed." In three separate reports over the past year, United Nations committees have criticized Howard's conservative government, over its treatment of the country's 386,000 indigenous people, the Aborigines. Aborigines form the poorest, sickest, worst educated and most likely to be jailed section of Australian society. Howard met Mandela at two functions before leaving for the U.N. summit in New York.
|