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EDITORIAL: A peace of Australia
ISSUE 190 - 12 Nov 2009
ISSUE 190, November 12, 2009:The Sydney Peace Prize has undoubtedly been awarded to several deserving people. The first - in 1998 - was handed to Professor Muhammad Yunus for his work at the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, an inspiring micro-credit project which is helping to eliminate poverty around the world.
In 1999, it was presented to Archbishop Desmond Tutu for his tireless work in reconciling his country of South Africa.
Other recipients have included East Timorese freedom fighter and current Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, Indian author and human rights campaigner Arundhati Roy and nuclear disarmament campaigner Hans Blix.
All of these people, and the others who I haven't mentioned but who are no less worthy, have struggled to achieve human rights in their respective countries or fields.
The award has not been limited by borders, or it seems by political ideologies, as seen by the controversy over presenting it to Palestinian activist Dr Hanan Ashrawl.
When we think of these people doing amazing work overseas, we forget that there is still a lot to be done in Australia.
Our biggest problem - how we treat Aboriginal people - is as important an issue as fighting racial tensions in Africa or fighting for the rights of Palestinian people to their own land.
This can be seen by the fact that in the past two years, the award has stayed safely in our own country.
Last year, "Father of Reconciliation" Patrick Dodson became the first Aboriginal person to receive the award, and only the second Australian (after former Governor General Sir William Dean in 2001).
This year, the award has been presented to an Australian ex-pat, influential journalist and filmmaker John Pilger.
Although Pilger has reported from war zones all around the world, his speech mainly targeted Australia and its great silence, focusing on asylum seekers, Australia's commitment to war and its shameful treatment of Aboriginal people.
Dodson's speech also obviously focused mainly on Indigenous Australia, particularly when he targeted the Northern Territory intervention as being a "crude, racist and poorly considered policy".
But why have these men been awarded a prize specifically for peace? Australia does not seem like a war-torn country. By the looks of our postcard beaches and landmarks, we are anything but.
We do not face the daily burden of bomb threats, and most of us have not experienced the grinding poverty that affects those in developing countries.
But if a country is to truly be at peace with itself, it must rectify the way we treat our most vulnerable citizens.
And that includes breaking the silence, as Pilger so eloquently put it in his speech last week.
"In the 1960s, when I first went to South Africa to report apartheid, I was welcomed by decent, liberal people whose complicit silence was the underpinning of that tyranny," Pilger said.
"They told me that Australians and white South Africans had much in common, and they were right.
"The good people of Johannesburg could live within a few kilometres of a community called Alexandra, which lacked the most basic services, the children stricken with disease. But they looked from the side and did nothing.
"In Australia, our indifference is different. We have become highly competent at divide and rule: at promoting those black Australians who tell us what we want to hear.
"At professional conferences their keynote speeches are applauded, especially when they blame their own people and provide the excuses we need. We create boards and commissions on which sit nice, decent liberal people like the prime minister's wife. And nothing changes.
"We certainly don't like comparisons with apartheid South Africa. That breaks the Australian silence."
If you think this hasn't changed, just check out this edition's special feature by Chris Graham. Or look up the horrific statistics that have become commonplace in Indigenous Affairs, and try and paint real people into the numbers.
We cannot achieve peace without reconciling the people who have had their land, children, money and culture stolen from them.
- Amy McQuire, acting editor
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