Aborigines

I would like to reply to anonymous letter (Aug. 6) which defends the present Australian race relations.

The correspondent tries to bluff the reading public with Bill Clinton's quote that race relations in Australia are just "dandy."

History speaks for itself, particularly when it is revealed; from the 1950s until the late 1960s Australian police and bureaucrats rode into Aboriginal communities and tore new born babies from the arms of their mothers, casting them into institutions and servitude.

This was called assimilation. In 1967 the Aborigines were finally given the right to vote in their own country, and from then on Aboriginal people have struggled to rebuild shattered lives and families and reclaim their stolen land.

As it stands now in 1997, Aboriginal families are still denied access to basic necessities such as housing, drinking water and medical services, some of whom suffer from Third World diseases like leprosy.

Ninety percent of Aboriginal people are unemployed or underemployed. The infant mortality rate is 10 times higher than the national average. Life expectancy is 50 years, lower for Aboriginal men. Finally people account for 1 percent of the Australian population but represent a disgraceful 50 percent of the national prison population.

I don't care what anyone says, this is wrong, this racism!

FRANCESCO

Jakarta