Radio Brisvaani
Thousands of people converged on Hyde Park in Sydney to protest against Australia Day, which they described as the start of an “attempted subjugation of over 500 different nations”.
While official celebrations to mark the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 took place around the country on Saturday, so too did events that highlighted the tens of thousands of years of occupation by Indigenous Australians.
The Invasion Day protest in Sydney began with a smoking ceremony at Hyde Park and ended at the Yabun Festival, an official Australia Day event, at Victoria Park.
“It is offensive to celebrate genocide and the attempted subjugation of over 500 different nations,” an organiser said of the broader Australia Day commemorations.
Organisers said they were not just protesting for a change of date but generating further attention about issues such as deaths in custody and the horrors of the Stolen Generation when many children were removed from their parents by state and federal governments and church missions.
“We acknowledge that today is not the day to celebrate the many achievements in Australia but reflect on the reality of invasion and what the First Nations people continue to suffer today,” NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge told the growing crowd.
“We don’t [just] need to change the date, we need to change the systemic problems, we need to change the country. Reverse the forced adoptions laws,” he said.
The crowd heard from a wide range of speakers, from representatives from the Maritime Union of Australia to the General Union of Palestinian Workers of Australia.
The energised crowd rotated through chants, shouting, “They say accident, we say murder”, “Always was, always will be aboriginal land”, and “Sovereignty, never ceded,” to the sound of drums.
‘Two can co-exist’
Support for the Invasion Day protests has been mounting in recent years. Saturday’s gathering in the city follows last year’s event that attracted about 30,000 people.
Temperatures, though, may have been a deterrent, with Sydney’s Observatory Hill reaching about 35 degrees just after noon.
The debate over a date change for Australia Day has been raging for years, but Prime Minister Scott Morrison remains staunchly opposed to the idea.
Instead, Mr Morrison said earlier this month he supports creating a separate day to acknowledge the 60,000 years of Indigenous history and “the two can co-exist”.
Inquiry call
A petition entitled “Justice for TJ Hickey”, which calls on the NSW government to launch an inquiry into the circumstances around the 17-year-old Aboriginal boy’s death, was circulated at Saturday’s rally.
Mr Hickey was killed while being pursued by police in 2004, but his family still doesn’t know why or how he died.
The Indigenous Social Justice Association said it was another example of what so many Aboriginal families face in the criminal justice system: “a young life taken too soon, an inadequate police”.
The peaceful protest ended at Yabun Festival and the crowd dispersed and joined the festivities.
