Ethnic trouble stirs in Australian Indian Ocean territory
Updated
Racial tension has flared in the idyllic Cocos Islands, a tiny Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, that is strategically located in an increasingly contested stretch of water. Some locals say neo-colonial attitudes - among a few in leadership positions on the islands - are the core problem, while those accused of racism say a minority of agitators is to blame. But others say the Australian government itself needs to show more leadership over the issue of the islands as relations between the Muslim, Cocos Malay majority, and the white minority drop to a new low.
Presenter: Linda Mottram, Canberra correspondent
Speakers: Ron Grant, former Cocos Islands shire president and councillor; Pauline Bunce, former Cocos Islands school teacher;
Trish Crossin, senator, Australian Labor Party; Julian Yates, department representative, Australian attorney general
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MOTTRAM: In the Indian Ocean, 3,700 kilometres west of Darwin, the 27 coral atolls of the Cocos Keeling group are home to fewer than 600 people. Most are Cocos Malays who live on Home Island. A smaller number are of European descent living mostly on West Island. Part of Australia since 1955, they're administered through a complex combination of local state and federal laws, with Canberra's Attorney General's department having overarching responsibility for the non-self-governing territory. Canberra contributes more than 75-Million Australian dollars to the upkeep of Cocos and Christmas Island which together form Australia's Indian Ocean Territories. With few opportunities on the islands, a lot of that goes on welfare payments. But long simmering complaints about economic disadvantage recently flared into more overt ethnic tensions, over the underpayment of Cocos Malay workers, restrictions on the use of their language in the shire council and the school and finally, the defacing of a Cocos Malay trade union sign to read the word "pork".
GRANT: For some Europeans to turn around and deface the sign and put pork there, they've not only kind of insulted a small group that might have been protesting, but they've insulted the total Cocos Malay population.
MOTTRAM: Ron Grant lives in the Cocos Malay kampung on Home Island with his Cocos Malay wife and their children. He converted to Islam in the late 1970s and has served on the shire council, including as shire president. Cocos Malays, he says are gentle, respectful people. But the issue of years of under-payment in some cases, uncovered by a trade union official the Malays called in, led to protest.
GRANT: Living on Cocos is very expensive, a lot of families on Cocos have children on the mainland which they've got to maintain for year 11 and 12 and it's very very difficult. And then to find out they have not been paid correctly, which is what the union is telling them, over a number of years that got them extremely angry, extremely angry.
MOTTRAM: Some refunds have begun to flow but former Cocos English teacher Pauline Bunce, who also speaks Cocos Malay, says that on a recent visit to her former students on the islands, she was appalled.
BUNCE: I've never seen relationships between the two islands, between the two culturally different communities be so far apart. A lot of my ex-students told me in confidence of episodes at work that can only really be described as racism.
MOTTRAM: So dismayed was she that Pauline Bunce inquired with Australia's Human Rights Commission about the legality of school language constraints.
BUNCE: And I got a reply to my inquiry that said quite possibly it is a breach of two articles of the Convention of the Rights of the Child.
MOTTRAM: That issue's gone no further so far. But the broader issues were recently raised during a public hearing of the Australian Parliament's committee on the Indian Ocean Territories, by Senator for the region, Trish Crossin.
CROSSIN: The racial tension that's been developed on the island for me is incredibly worrying. After eleven years in this job I've not known it to be as bad as that and I'm just trying to get a sense from you about whether the department started to act immediately and pro-actively to move into the community and try and assist with some sort of negotiated resolution about what's going on up there.
YATES: And this is the actions that's been taken by Mr Clay at the moment.
MOTTRAM: Attorney General's department representative Julian Yates referring to the current Canberra bureaucrat who's acting administrator on Cocos. Which points to what some say is a key issue .. that there's been policy drift in Canberra on the fate of the Cocos Islands, evidenced its said by the failure to appoint a permanent administrator. The Cocos Islands Shire wouldn't comment on air about the issues ahead of a council meeting this week to discuss them, other than to say its a small number of agitators obscuring the good things going on the Islands. More to the point though, the islands could yet stand as an example of how well Australia can manage inter-racial relations, with some cautioning Cocos Malays may seek connections away from Australia, back in South East Asia, while other experts worry that failure to successfully hold the Cocos Islands could leave open a chance, if very slim, of an opportunistic neighbour seeking to seize the territory.
Statement by Cocos Islands Shire Council.
"All Council workers are employed under an award, most being the Local Government Employees and Officers' Cocos (Keeling) Islands Award 2001, and receive payments and conditions in accordance with their award.
The Council is dealing with the issues and aims to have them resolved through due process. It is very unfortunate that these matters have led to the considerable adverse publicity that Cocos has received in the national press, as it does not represent the views of the majority of the community , and is not a true representation of the Cocos people or their cultures.
There are a number of positive projects happening on Cocos at present, it is disappointing that this process has adversely affected the community as a whole."
