Tens of thousands of Australians protested over the treatment of indigenous people yesterday as the country celebrated a national holiday marking the arrival of British colonizers in 1788.
Crowds rallied in Sydney, Melbourne and other cities on Australia Day, decrying the high incarceration rates, poor health and historic persecution of the continent’s first inhabitants, whose ancestry stretches back 60,000 years.
The Jan. 26 national day commemorates the arrival of a British fleet in Sydney Harbour to establish a penal colony.
Photo: AFP
For many Australians, it is a day to celebrate with friends and family at beaches and backyard barbecues, but for rights activists “Invasion Day” marks a period of oppression of indigenous peoples, including the dispossession of their lands, massacres and the removal of children from their families.
In Melbourne, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, some brandishing placards proclaiming “abolish the date” and “no pride in genocide.”
“When white people came to Australia, black people started dying. Like, why do you choose that day? It’s insane, I don’t understand,” protester Andrew Baker said.
“It’s a day of mourning for me and my mob,” indigenous woman Tammy Miller said.
“It’s about changing the date, but it’s more about making people aware of our injustices that have been since and still ongoing since [the] white man came,” Miller said.
“We’re still here fighting the same things that my grandparents were, but seeing all the people here makes me so proud,” she said.
In the run-up to Australia Day, vandals poured red paint over a statue in Sydney of British explorer James Cook, toppled a monument in Melbourne to a 19th-century pioneer and daubed a war memorial in the city with the words: “land back.”
At a citizenship ceremony in Canberra for 24 immigrants — one of nearly 300 held around the country — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hailed “the unique privilege that we have of sharing this oldest continent with the world’s oldest continuous culture.”
“It is a responsibility all of us owe to future generations to safeguard our social cohesion, to uphold Australian fairness and continue Australia’s progress,” he said.
The choice of Jan. 26 as the national day has long divided Australians.
A Resolve Strategic survey published on Friday in the Sydney Morning Herald indicated support for the holiday date had grown over the past two years from 47 percent to 61 percent.
Attitudes appeared to have hardened since a constitutional referendum on Indigenous rights reforms was heavily defeated on Oct. 14, 2023, the paper said.
An estimated 3.8 percent of Australia’s 26 million people are indigenous, official data showed.
Indigenous people have a life expectancy of eight years shorter than other Australians, higher rates of incarceration, more youth unemployment and poorer education.
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