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| Australian prime minister Julia Gillard, center, is escorted by police and bodyguards out of an award ceremony after aboriginal tent embassy demonstrators, protesting the settlement of Australia some 224 years ago, tried to get into the building in Canberra on Thursday. About 200 protesters trapped Prime Minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott in a Canberra restaurant before police arrived to clear a passage for the pair. (EPA Photo) |
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Sydney.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott were
bundled out of a Canberra building on Thursday after it was besieged by
Aborigines angry at Abbott’s call for the 40-year-old “Aboriginal Tent Embassy”
to be demolished.
What is
little more than a hut near Parliament House is a totem of Aboriginal activism
and a must-see building for tourists visiting the national capital.
Gillard
slipped and almost fell as she was hustled out of the building by security
personnel and through a cordon of protesters chanting “shame” and “racist.” The
prime minister lost a shoe as she was dragged to her car by security officers.
The demonstrators chased the car, banging on the hood and the roof.
No one was
injured and no arrests were made.
Tent
embassy founder Michael Anderson accused Abbott of “inciting racial riots” by
picking Australia’s national day to call for the site to be cleared.
Australia
Day symbolically marks the arrival of white settlers in 1788 and the
proclamation of British sovereignty over what was then claimed to be an
uninhabited island.
“You’ve got
1,000 people here peacefully protesting, and to make a statement about tearing
down the embassy — it’s just madness on the part of Tony Abbott,” Anderson
said.
Indigenous
Australians number around 500,000 out of a population of 23 million.
Suicides
are twice the national average, murders are six times as high and Aborigines
are 11 times more likely to be imprisoned than other Australians.
Most live
on welfare and 60 percent of Aboriginal pupils do not finish high school and
only 12 percent go on to some form of higher education.
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