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Australians slam govt. over plans against aboriginals

Friday, 10 April 2015 9:29 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 10 April 2015 9:29 PM ]

Reme Sakr
Press TV, Sydney

They came out in their thousands during last year’s G20 summit, strongly demanding their rights and sovereignty, but it seems that their international display of discontent has fallen on deaf ears.

Furious with the Abbott government’s latest decision to close down hundreds of Aboriginal communities in Western Australia, indigenous Australians are back in the spotlight waving their flags and chanting for their rights.

The Australian government says the reason for the community closures is that it simply can’t afford to fund them anymore, but the protesters here disagreed saying the move is racially motivated.

Protesters marched from Belmore park to The Block in Redfern, which is home to a large Aboriginal community who are also under threat of eviction because of a $70 commercial development project.

Despite the government saying Aboriginal leaders will be involved in the process of this forced closure, the leaders say they have very much been kept in the dark. They don’t know which particular communities will be forced to shut down, and they don’t know where they will go after. To Australia’s Aboriginals, the reality is that their history of displacement and subjugation continues.

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