E/CN.4/Sub.2/434. page 5
was therefore necessary to change the situation. He proposed that the Group, and the Sub-Commission, should take a clear stand on this question. At the same time, he emphasized that the Group should not criticise individual governments, since governments were making efforts to improve the living and working conditions of their citizens. Rather, the Group should make constructive recommendations that would help governments in formulating their policies.
14. Other participants pointed out that policies, in order to be effective, should penetrate through the entire power structure down to the village level, since it was often the landed interests which held local power and were able to oppose any change.ww
15. It was also stated that the Group, in examining structures of inequality in land ownership, should pay attention to the growing role of multinational food companies, which owned hundreds of thousands of acres throughout the developing world and distorted food production to produce luxury items for the Western countries rather than food for local consumption. In this view, slavery-like practices would continue until equitable forms of land ownership and production were re-established.
16. The importance of illiteracy among the rural people in the developing countries was also emphasized as a major obstacle to successful action. In this connexion, one participant suggested that the Working Group, in co-operation with UNESCO and local organizations (an example given was the National Labour Institute of India) should promote information campaigns among village people to educate them about their rights under national legislation and international instruments, and to help them organize to obtain their rights.
B. Slavery and the slave trade
The
17. The Working Group heard a statement by a representative of the Minority Rights Group concerning the situation of Aborigines on remote pastoral stations in Australia, in particular in Western Australia and Queensland. The representative, who had spent two years working with Aborigines, part of the time as a Government official, stated that slavery-like practices against Aborigines still existed in these regions. He " described how historically, colonial settlement was accompanied by the seizure of Aboriginal land, the denial of land rights and of the recognition of the Aborigines as a nation, and measures aimed at forcing the Aborigines to work for the settlers. Although new legislation affecting Aborigines had been introduced in 1967, they were still forced to work for little or no wages in these remote areas, and women were forced to prostitute themselves to. the European landowners. Rights of social security, such as old age benefits, were denied because of a lack of records. isolation of the Aborigines was reinforced until the 1960s by laws prohibiting outsiders to speak with them. Although legislation had been changed, property rights were such that landowners could refuse entry to outsiders, (including Government officials, as had been the case with trachoma workers in Queensland), for fear that they might bring new ideas to the Aborigines. He pointed out that, for the Aborigines, the only way to escape their slavery-like conditions was to leave their ancestral land, which they were reluctant to do since they had a spiritual affiliation to it. When they left, or were forced to leave, they gravitated to towns where they had little means of supporting themselves and were often prey to · alcoholism, disease, starvation and high infant mortality, as was shown by the relevant statistics. He indicated that foreign companies, in particular the cattle industry and certain mining concerns exploiting diamonds, bauxite, and uranium, were increasingly enoroaching upon the Aborigines' ancestral lands and subjecting them to new forms of slavery. He emphasized the direct link between the lack of land guarantees for Aborigines and the slavery-like practices to which they are subjected.
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