The indigenous senator Lydia Thorpe interrupted this Monday in the Australian Parliament at the end of the speech of King Charles III to protest against indigenous rights of the country, dispossessed of their lands with the arrival of the British in 1770.
“Give us back our land (…) what you stole from our people”, » the senator shouted in front of the monarch, who is head of state of Australia, a country governed by a monarchical system with parliamentary democracy.
The senator also yelled at him “you are not our king” and condemned the “genocide” that was committed against the indigenous peoples of Australia, as well as the “looting” of “bones, skulls” and theft of native babiesbefore being forced to leave the room by security guards.
BREAK:
The end of King Charles’s speech was interrupted by a protest from an indigenous activist.
Senator Lidia Thorpe shouted on stage “you are not our king”, “this is not your land”.
She asked the king to apologize for British atrocities in Australia. pic.twitter.com/ZytV8X9OC9– Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) October 21, 2024
Senator Thorpe, dressed in a traditional kangaroo skin, He had also previously turned onto his back when speaking in Parliament. God save the king, as a sign of protest for the visit of Charles III and Queen Camilla, touring Australia and Samoa between October 18 and 26.
Thorpe’s intervention came shortly after Charles III delivered a speech to hundreds of attendees, including the Australian Prime Minister, Antoine Albanaisin which he highlighted the “long and sometimes difficult path to reconciliation” with indigenous peoples.
Indigenous population
Australia is the only Commonwealth country to It has no treaties with its indigenous populationnor does it recognize them in the Constitution in force since 1901, when the former British colony became a federated state.
THE aborigines and the Torres Strait Islanders -who are of Melanesian origin and inhabit an island territory in northeastern Australia)- are a group that represents 3.8% of more than 27 million inhabitants that Australia has.
They populated what is now Australia 65,000 years ago, until the British Crown declared the territory uninhabited in the late 18th century and relied on the concept of Terra Nulis (No Man’s Land) to claim possession.
Since then, these indigenous peoples have been victims of discrimination and they reported mistreatment, in addition to being dispossessed of their land.
Even if progress has been made in the recognition of customary rights, wounds still remain open, notably the Stolen Generationwhich covers some 100,000 indigenous minors separated from their families between 1910 and 1970 and handed over to white families or institutions for their education.
Added to this is the failure of last year’s referendum to create a body that would give indigenous peoples a voice in Parliament, among other issues of social and economic inequality.
