The New Nation - Internet Edition

Maswood Alam Khan

Beseeching apology to the stolen generations of aborigines Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has entered history as a courageous leader to relieve his nation from an emotional burden, removing a blight from his nation's soul and helping a Day of Atonement dawn for original inhabitants of Australia.

A new episode has been opened in Australia's tortured relations with its indigenous peoples pointing other world leaders in the direction of a novelty to 'right a historic wrong', a courageous approach to emancipate incarcerated conscience, a redemption of the posterity from the sins of their predecessors' misdeeds.

Politicians indulge in tall talks before election campaigns only to court cheap popularity and shy away from a pledge that may not appeal to each and every voter. Rudd was an exception by pledging before his November election that 'He would apologize to aborigines'---an idea not favorable to each voter---if he were elected to the Prime Minister's office. He has put his campaign pledge into practice as he became Prime Minister knowing full well that many Australians would deem such an admission of guilt disgraceful and a dishonor to their forefathers.

Pakistan regime had an ulterior motive to transfuse our tongues to speak in Urdu forgetting our mother tongue. By the same token, aboriginal children in Australia were also systematically snatched away from their mothers and sent to live with white families, where they grew up often unaware of their indigenous background in an attempt by the government to dilute their indigenous culture under a ('blackmailing') policy of assimilation that began in 1910 and lasted into the early 1970s, a period Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has termed 'a black era in his nation's history'.

Stolen children while living with white families were perplexed to see a difference in their skin and body structures with those of their foster guardians and could not fathom out why they did often feel an inner emptiness and a trauma until the truth of their removal from their families emerged years later. A 1997 national inquiry into the stolen generation found that many children suffered long-term psychological effects from the loss of family and culture.

Aborigines in some parts of Australia were governed by laws covering wildlife and plants and it was not before a referendum in 1967 that gave the indigenous people the same legal rights as everyone else. Since that recognition of humans as humans it has taken more than 40 years for an Australian Prime Minister to utter a simple, five-letter word---sorry!

On 13 February, Aborigines smeared with white body paint and playing didgeridoos opened Parliament for the first time where was echoed the premier's apologetic voice saying "For the pain, suffering and hurt of these 'Stolen Generations', their descendants and for their families and communities, we say sorry; and for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry." February 13 will remain a momentous day for acknowledgement of injustices suffered by Aborigines for more than 200 years after European colonization that began in late 1700s.

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard missed the train to journey into the pages of history by not lending his ears to an official report of a commission on Australia's past assimilation policies that urged the government about 11 years back to issue a formal apology to the Aborigines. Howard refused to show any contrition, insisting that current generation of Australians should not apologize for injustices of the past, a stance still harbored unfortunately by a number of Australian politicians.

The difference between Mr. Rudd and Mr. Howard as Prime Ministers has thus been the divergence between a statesman and a political leader: one statesman who is ready to navigate his nation taking full responsibility for the past, the present and the future and one political leader who feels loath to budge an inch beyond the narrow confines of time and space of his limited tenure. Aborigines, who under Howard, felt alienated and segregated by Australian society are now the same people feeling embraced and valued by the same society under Rudd---a difference in captaincy denoting a difference between captivity and liberty.

Now is the time for Australians not only to embrace the aborigines as their siblings who comprise two percent of the country's population of 21 million but also to address acute problems related to their ill-health, unemployment and imprisonment.

The pink complexioned race (better known as white race) that went to the shores of America brought in shiploads of slaves from Africa. Have they ever apologized to the blacks? Instead of apologizing they think by enchaining the black slaves they rather developed the land and taught those 'human like beasts' how to add and subtract enabling them to count their children on arithmetic formula other than on their fingers and toes. But they while playing God are oblivious of their roots, the reason they were shipped to America: most of the Europeans who arrived on the shores of North America at the early part of settlement in the new-found-land were convicts who had to be segregated in islands far from the civilized world.

Hollywood movies have left an impression with us that great Indian wars came in the Old West of America during the late 1800s. But in fact that was a 'mopping up' effort. By that time Red Indians were nearly finished, their subjugation complete, their numbers decimated. The killing, enslavement, and the land theft had begun immediately after the arrival of Europeans on the shores of America. It reached its nadir in 1838 and 1839 when under President Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate under duress. The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march. Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died. Have the Americans ever begged apology to the American aborigines who were known as Red Indians?

Many historians believe that Japan compelled up to 200,000 women---mostly Chinese and Koreans---to become sex slaves or in other words 'comfort women' who were employed in army garrisons to calm the nerves of Japanese troops, though Japanese politicians deny that force was used to round up the women. But, there is no denying the fact that during our liberation war Pakistani military personnel in connivance with Bangladeshi brokers broke into our peoples' homes and took many of our women by force. When will a Kevin Rudd emerge in Japan or Pakistan to beg apology to China, Korea or Bangladesh? Have those Bangladeshi collaborators who helped Pakistani aggressors kidnap our women ever begged apology to our freedom fighters?

We humans err in our attempts to do any activity in our mundane life and learning from our past mistakes next time we rather err on the side of caution. When mistakes committed turn out to be irreparable we beg apology, we say 'sorry' to one who suffers from our fault. Saying sorry to the aggrieved man does not help him get back his lost time or his lost son or his lost money, but greatly helps him heal his wounded soul---like a soothing balm on our lacerated skin.

Some Titas Gas employees who made fortunes by grabbing bribes from dishonest subscribers at the expense of our national exchequer had recently felt heavy with the burden of their guilt conscience and in an attempt to unburden their torments they queued up to redeem their sins by returning their wealth so accumulated. They said 'sorry' and the government may also forgive them, though the loss to our national resources due to their bribery is beyond redemption.

Our former President Husain Mohammad Ershad did not find his popularity plummet to naught after his begging apology in a public meeting in Purana Paltan saying: "I tried to serve the nation to the best possible way, but during my tenure as President of your country I committed some irreparable mistakes and I fervently beg your pardon, my dear people".

Neither did former American President Bill Clinton find people hate him when he begged apology by saying: "I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. I misled people, including even my wife. I deeply regret that. I also let you down, and I let my family down, and I let this country down. But I'm trying to make it right. And I'm determined never to let anything like that happen again. And I'm determined to redeem the trust. So I ask you for your understanding, for your forgiveness on this journey we're on. I hope this will be a time of reconciliation and healing."

Spending a day in a jail on the part of an innocent person is too long a period. But, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world are spending years after years inside prisons before or without trials and many innocent people are being convicted due to mismatching of evidences. Thanks to cutting edge of forensic technology proving an innocent guilty and a guilty innocent, pundits in the world of jurisprudence are repenting of what blunders they as the prosecution had committed as many of their past judgments and arguments are now emerging as irreparably wrongful.

Whenever we hear about an innocent person getting convicted or harassed by any miscarriage of justice a towering figure like apparitions of a tall man in his prison costume come into our mental view reverberating the courtroom with his uproarious voice: "Firiye Dao Amaar Shei Baroti Bosor" ("Give me back twelve years vanished from my life") the most outstanding actor of Bengali cinema Chhabi Biswas who in 1955 Bangla movie "Sabar Uparey" shouted as he was proven innocent only after spending 12 years of imprisonment on a wrongful judgment.

What could be the most appropriate answer to Chhabi Biswas's demand? A simple five-letter word: Sorry?