DISCOVERING THE YEAR OF THE BULLSHIT ENVIRONMENT

Members of Darwin’s Network Against Prohibition are picketing the opening of the Human Rights Art Exhibition at the Supreme Court on Friday, December 10th, International Human Rights Day.

We object to the venue it’s held at. The Supreme Court TAKES AWAY the rights of Territorians, imprisoning people, subjecting them to the rigors of a corrupt, racist ‘justice’ system founded on the continuing genocide of the original owners of this country and the theft of their land. What kind of a sick farce is it to pretend to celebrate human rights at this place?? Apparently the NT’s prison population is 86% black whilst indigenous Territorians make up only about 28% of the population as a whole. We wonder what kind of artwork adorns the holding cells in the basement. It’s been said that a society can be judged by how it treats its prisoners. By that measure the Territory’s not looking too good.

Indigenous Territorians are still traumatised and suffering from the injustices done to them in the past. But the racism has continued up to the present. Indigenous people are often imprisoned for offences that non-indigenous people don’t get locked up for or even charged for. An example of this is the prohibition of alcohol and cannabis in remote Aboriginal communities and the over-the-top policing that goes along with that. The media and the NT Govt. tell us that Aboriginal communities are being devastated by alcohol, cannabis and petrol sniffing, whereas NAP has maintained all along that these are symptoms of serious underlying problems like poverty, unemployment, racism and continuing disempowerment and dispossession of Aboriginal people.

When we were protesting on the Supreme Court steps last year, one of our placards said: 86% OF NT PRISONERS BLACK. One gentleman going into the exhibition saw it and remarked, “Well, they’re the ones that commit most of the crime!” What crime was he talking about, the petty offences that most Aboriginal prisoners have been locked up for, or more serious crimes like genocide and other crimes against humanity? The Australian Government STILL refuses to apologise officially for what was done in its name to members of the Stolen Generation, who were taken away from their parents in accordance with the assimilationist practices at the time of the White Australia Policy. Is genocide a crime in the NT?

Under the capitalist mindset art has been made into a commodity. It has value only when it bears a price tag and can be bought and sold. The colourful street art of Darwin youth, which brightens up the city and is done for FREE, and the more directly political street art of political activists, is not appreciated by the middle class. They see it as a nuisance and a threat to their property values. Luckily Leonardo da Vinci didn’t paint his Mona Lisa on some wall in a Darwin street. It would probably have been dismissed as the mindless vandalism of some bored street kid, and painted over, or removed by sandblasting.

People attend the exhibition opening, even purchase a work o fart, and kid themselves that they’re helping people less fortunate than themselves. Yes, they care about human rights, they’re doing something to stop injustice. But in reality, what is really achieved in concrete terms by exhibitions such as this? Is it just a ‘feel good’ exercise to perpetuate the myth that we live in a ‘caring society,’ while people at the bottom of the social heap continue to get ground down into the dirt by a racist, vicious and ruthless capitalist system?

For more information call the NAP office on 8942 0570 or see http://www.napnt.org