Documentary of the Week - tonight (Thurs 19th Dec)

[Serial_Apologist]

10.35 Utopia

Bafta Award-winning director John Pilger presents a documentary detailing the plight of the Aboriginal population in Australia's poorest region, Utopia. Drawing on extensive archive footage and numerous interviews, Pilger exposers the abuses suffered by the Aborigines from the early days of white settlers to the modern day, and draws parallels to South Africa during the era of apartheid

Pilger documentaries are special, but pretty rare on TV these days - I intend making myself stay awake for this one.

[Richard Tarleton]

Pilger documentaries are special, but pretty rare on TV these days - I intend making myself stay awake for this one.

Thaks for the reminder - I'm recording this one, too upsetting for late night viewing. See http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...784#post347784 for essential background reading.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thaks for the reminder - I'm recording this one, too upsetting for late night viewing. See http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...784#post347784 for essential background reading.

Many thanks, Richard.

[Richard Tarleton]

Did anyone else watch this? Unimaginable horror, in present-day Australia. Nothing has changed - the latest round of suffering and dispossession for first-nation Australians as they prefer to be called prompted by mining interests, it seems, plus some appalling politicians. A lot of good people also appear in the film.

[Serial_Apologist]

Did anyone else watch this? Unimaginable horror, in present-day Australia. Nothing has changed - the latest round of suffering and dispossession for first-nation Australians as they prefer to be called prompted by mining interests, it seems, plus some appalling politicians. A lot of good people also appear in the film.

Yes. The drugs and alchohol dependency widespread among first-nation Australians, used in part, as if there weren't too many others, as one excuse among many for their mistreatment, is tragically indicative of a culture that has had little use for violence and therefore faced with it, internalises it self-destructively. A few years ago these people were being consulted by the authorities in one of the northern territories about environmental management, something "aboringinals" have understood through the beliefs and practices of millennia, faced as they were by bush fires resulting from mismanagement; one thought or at any rate hoped things had started to change.

[aeolium]

Yes, a depressing picture of a combination of government inaction, misinformation and mistreatment of the aborigines. It was a powerful and moving documentary full of compassion and anger. Thanks for alerting me to this, S_A.

[Sydney Grew]

. . . Unimaginable horror, in present-day Australia. Nothing has changed - the latest round of suffering and dispossession for first-nation Australians as they prefer to be called prompted by mining interests, it seems, plus some appalling politicians. . . .

Indeed so. The latest lot of politicians (since November) are the worst ever. If I may say so, they - particularly Morrison and Abbott - are beginning to remind me of the Hilterites. All the poor and desperate refugees who now arrive are at once locked up indefinitely in concentration camps - men, women, and thousands of children are now in the camps. There have been recent reports (again over the past two or three months) of these people in the camps being deprived of sufficient water and food. And there have similarly been recent reports about them being badly mistreated by their guards (sex and violence). The children are given no education, and the adults have no hope. The latest report (just this week) is that refugees were tortured by Australian sailors who made them hold onto pieces of hot metal, kicking them in the genitals the while. All the politicians have dismissed the reports out of hand, protesting that the navy - such a fine body of men - could not possibly have done such a thing. Their response to the photographic evidence is - so far - only that "these must be refugees' self-inflicted wounds."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/22/asylum-seekers-say-they-were-burned-and-beaten-during-towback

How much better would it be to welcome refugees with open arms! It is not as though the land belongs to the whites (who are generally drawn from the lowest orders of humanity) - two hundred years ago they took it from the original inhabitants by force of arms.

[ahinton]

Indeed so. The latest lot of politicians (since November) are the worst ever. If I may say so, they - particularly Morrison and Abbott - are beginning to remind me of the Hilterites. All the poor and desperate refugees who now arrive are at once locked up indefinitely in concentration camps - men, women, and thousands of children are now in the camps. There have been recent reports (again over the past two or three months) of these people in the camps being deprived of sufficient water and food. And there have similarly been recent reports about them being badly mistreated by their guards (sex and violence). The children are given no education, and the adults have no hope. The latest report (just this week) is that refugees were tortured by Australian sailors who made them hold onto pieces of hot metal, kicking them in the genitals the while. All the politicians have dismissed the reports out of hand, protesting that the navy - such a fine body of men - could not possibly have done such a thing. Their response to the photographic evidence is - so far - only that "these must be refugees' self-inflicted wounds."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/22/asylum-seekers-say-they-were-burned-and-beaten-during-towback

How much better would it be to welcome refugees with open arms! It is not as though the land belongs to the whites (who are generally drawn from the lowest orders of humanity) - two hundred years ago they took it from the original inhabitants by force of arms.

Thank you for this. There is much here to attract sympathy and concern on a considerable scale and, if these reports are all true, the more widely they are disseminated, publicised and discussed the better.

[Sydney Grew]

The latest news from the concentration camps set up up by the Australian government is that brutal guards have begun to drag refugees out of their beds and beat them with rubber hoses and rocks:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/18/voices-from-manus-we-are-in-danger-somebody-please-help-us