A senior United Nations official condemned on Thursday Australia's controversial intervention into remote Aboriginal communities, describing the measures as discriminatory and finding entrenched racism in Australia, Reuters reported. The UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous People, James Anaya, made the findings after a 12-day visit to Australia, where he visited indigenous communities and held talks with the Australian government. Australia's former conservative government sent police and troops to remote Aboriginal communities in June 2007, and made special bans on alcohol and pornography, to stamp out widespread child sex abuse fuelled by chronic alcoholism. "These measures overtly discriminate against aboriginal peoples, infringe their right of self-determination and stigmatise already stigmatised communities," Anaya told reporters in Canberra. Anaya, the first UN Rapporteur on Indigenous People to visit Aboriginal communities, congratulated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for his 2008 parliamentary apology to Australia's Aborigines for historical injustices. But he said it was clear the entrenched racism of the past remained, and the ongoing intervention into communities in the Northern Territory continued to discriminate against Aborigines. -- SPA
