CANBERRA, Australia - Australia's Prime Minister John Howard announced plans to ban pornography and alcohol for the country’s Aboriginal population. According to a recent report, the ban is an attempt to fight child sex abuse among the Aborigines.
The move has been met with disagreement by some Aboriginal leaders, according to the Associated Press, calling the Prime Minister’s decision "discriminatory and would violate the civil rights of the country's original inhabitants."
"I'm absolutely disgusted by this patronizing government control," Mitch, a member of a government board helping Aborigines who were taken from their parents under past assimilations, told the Associated Press. "And tying drinking with welfare payments is just disgusting."
"This is a national emergency," Howard told Parliament. "We're dealing with a group of young Australians for whom the concept of childhood innocence has never been present."
The new measure would only apply to the Australia’s more rural Northern Territory (where 40,000 of the country’s 60,000 Aborigines live), but Howard suggested all states should adopt the bans.
According to the AP report, the federal government can change laws in the territory with an act of Parliament, where Howard has a majority that ensures he can implement his policy.
Under Howard’s initiative, hardcore pornography will be completely banned, and any computers that are publicly funded will be ceased and checked for pornography. The sale, possession and transportation of alcohol in the Northern Territory will also be banned, along with tighter restrictions on welfare payments. The bans will be enacted for six months, after which the policy would be reviewed, according to the report.
Howard’s initiatives are based a controversial report, commissioned by the Northern Territory government, which found abuse existed in all of the 45 remote communities it visited but was unable to quantify the problem, instead suggesting that many abuse cases went unreported.
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