Members of the „Stolen Generation” must now receive compensation

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) hat called on the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, following his historic apology to the aborigines for the great pain, suffering and damage caused to them by the government policy in the past, to make deeds follow words. „With this gesture the Prime minister has shown that he is serious about a new start to relations with the aboriginal people, who number some 450,000”, said Yvonne Bangert, expert for indigenous peoples at the GfbV. „So we hope that he will now take the second step and make sure that the members of the ‘Stolen Generation’ who are still alive are given financial compensation for the suffering which was caused them.” The Rudd government has rejected the call for general compensation of the members of the Stolen Generation and directed those affected to go through the courts. But precisely for the older ones legal action would take much too long.

The tragic fate of the „Lost Generation” attracted attention throughout the world in 1997 when under the Keating Labour government the report „Bringing them Home” was published. This showed that between 1910 and 1970 about 100,000 aborigine children were forcibly removed from their families and placed in homes or with foster-parents. Most of them lost all contact with their families, were often sexually abused and misused as unpaid workers. It was indeed the aim to remove them from their culture and to assimilate them into Australian society. But many of them could not cope with this cultural and social uprooting. So experts see in this policy a clear cause of alcoholism, unemployment and lack of perspective, under which the native inhabitants of the 5th continent are suffering up to the present day. „Many aborigines live under catastrophic conditions”, says Bangert. „A clear sign is their life expectation, which lies about 17 years under the national average.”