Page 2804 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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MR LAMONT (11.03): I appreciate this very brief opportunity in the life of this Assembly to concentrate on human rights issues, particularly as they affect Africa. Madam Speaker, in 1969 I had my attention drawn to a range of measures being put into place in Uganda and a number of other African countries with the demise of the colonial powers that had sustained those countries. I am not going to comment in too much detail on the way in which they sustained those African countries. Nevertheless, there was a gradual realisation, which was demonstrated over the next decade and a half, that the colonisation by European countries of Africa should cease; that the way in which the colonial powers had established themselves in those countries was not in the best interests of the indigenous populations. The rise and rise of Idi Amin, as one example, showed that what filled the vacuum created by the removal of the colonising powers was quite often worse in terms of the absolute misery and abject terror that resulted as the new regimes proceeded to have their way with their fellow human beings in Africa.
Although today is a day to focus on human rights violations and on positive developments in African countries, we should also focus on what is happening in our own country and indeed in other Western countries. When we are either scornful of or praising what is happening in countries such as South Africa, we often forget that countries such as Australia and the United States of America are still in fact operating their own apartheid. It is not the political apartheid of South Africa that is institutionalised and enshrined in law, but it is economic apartheid. We see it most clearly in countries such as America. Economic apartheid has in fact been a mainstay of that country for the last 200 years. While we have this opportunity to focus on human rights issues and, at the suggestion of Amnesty International support this motion today, we should have a look at some of the issues that Mr Connolly raised in mentioning people in this country who have attempted to bring attention to and end economic and political apartheid and oppression in Africa.
I was extremely fortunate to be involved in a group of people who were responsible for erecting the Southern African Liberation Centre outside the South African Embassy. We believed that there needed to be a permanent reminder to the people of the ACT and, because Canberra is the national seat of government, to the people of Australia that, while atrocities in South Africa had not been in the news every single day of our lives for the last 20 years, they were continuing every single day of our lives. I believe that that permanent reminder, which some people are attempting to have removed, is a proper demonstration of people's concern that such atrocities are something which should be addressed not on one day of the year but on every day of the year.
That is the object of Amnesty's program on Uganda. It is quite proper that we do not just stand up with some piety and suggest that we need to address the problems in Uganda on this day. We should be doing it every single day. Indeed, in my view, Amnesty's role allows us to concentrate on these issues every single day of our lives. It is through the activities of organisations such as Amnesty and our parliamentary branch of Amnesty that such issues are continually drawn to the public's attention. We as members of the human race have a responsibility to ensure that, wherever there is the type of oppression which exists and has existed in Uganda, South Africa, Mozambique and other African countries, we draw the attention of our fellow countrypeople not only to that but also, as I said in my opening remarks, to the type of oppression which exists in our country and focus on those issues.
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