Jim Hagan & Neville BONNER is there a LINK ? If someone knows ... please tell me.. The day before the smashing of the last stand at Noonkanbah, a delegation from the NAC left Australia for Geneva to attend sittings of the United Nations Human Rights Commission’s Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Australia’s first Indigenous delegation to appear before the United Nations consisted of its chairman, Jim Hagan, the two representatives from the Kimberley, Jimmy Bieundurry and Reg Birch, and Phil Vincent from the ALS as its legal counsel. Rob was in transit to Noonkanbah as it left. Before their departure, delegates had to confront a worried Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser. He telephoned members and invited them over to Parliament House for morning tea. The meeting with the Prime Minister emboldened the delegation. Fraser begged them not to go, but his anxiety only made the members of the delegation realise that they had hit upon something. Hagan’s media adviser, Peter O’Brien, recalls: ‘They became so excited and this was the moment in their mind, the making of the National Aboriginal Conference. Suddenly, they were someone that people had to take notice of ... they could make the Prime Minister beg them to come to morning tea!’ At the United Nations hearing, Jim Hagan’s speech created an international stir. Commencing with a sketch of the treatment of Aborigines in Australia, Hagan went on to outline the situation at Noonkanbah as an example of how Aborigines’ oppression had continued unabated. Stirring words followed: ‘The Noonkanbah Community have sought justice, and have been given obstruction. We have sought peace and have been given violence. The Australian government’s acquiescence in this continuing breach of human rights must see it condemned in the eyes of the world’. To his own surprise, Hagan created the first international furore over the treatment of Australia’s Indigenous people. The delegation was told that Hagan’s address had achieved the biggest media exposure of any delegation to the Sub-Committee on Human Rights. Newspapers from Britain to the Soviet Union covered Hagan’s speech, and the Australian government was seriously embarrassed. ‘They were very angry and there was a flurry of meetings’, O’Brien recalls. After his return from Geneva, Jim Hagan wrote of ‘the excited reaction of the world’s press, the huge support of our own people and the interest of the many other indigenous minorities around the world’. aiatsis.gov.au/lryb/PDFs/beresford_ch6.pdf
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 10:23:54 +0000
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