Australian PM Rudd apologizesto 500,000 child victims- Australia pide perdón a sus huérfanos

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Australia pide perdón a sus huérfanos

Hèctor Brau - 17/11/2009

AUSTRALIA El primer ministro australiano, Kevin Rudd, pidió ayer perdón a unos 500.000 australianos que de niños sufrieron abusos físicos, psicológicos y sexuales en orfanatos, y extendió la disculpa a los siete mil niños que el Reino Unido envió al país como mano de obra barata. Son los llamados "australianos olvidados", víctimas de políticas aplicadas entre 1920 y 1970. Los británicos del Programa de Niños Inmigrantes fueron trasladados de internados del Reino Unido a Australia, Canadá y otras colonias. Muchos tenían padres, pero el Estado lo ignoró, y al llegar a Australia se les obligó a trabajar. Unas mil víctimas y sus representantes presenciaron el discurso de Rudd en el Parlamento, y miles de ciudadanos lo siguieron por televisión. La disculpa, aprobada como moción parlamentaria, es muy parecida a la ofrecida en el 2008 a las víctimas aborígenes de la "generación robada" (niños aborígenes que fueron apartados de sus familias para ser criados como blancos en el siglo XX). La alta comisionada británica en Australia, la baronesa Valerie Amos, dijo que el Gobierno británico también pedirá perdón. ...

Australian PM Rudd apologizes to 500,000 child victims of institutional abuse

SYDNEY —

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized Monday to 500,000 victims of childhood abuse in the country’s orphanages and government-run institutional care facilities between 1930 and 1970. Australian children and thousands of young migrants who were sent to Australia from Britain suffered decades of neglect and emotional, sexual and physical abuse at the hands of caregivers.

Many children were told they were orphans and others were separated from their siblings.

Known as the ‘‘Forgotten Australians,’’ around 1,000 victims traveled to Parliament House in Canberra to hear Rudd and opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull give emotional apologies.

‘‘We come together today to deal with an ugly chapter of our nation’s history and we come together today to offer our nation’s apology,’’ Rudd said.

‘‘To you, the ‘Forgotten Australians’ and those who were sent to our shores as children without their consent…we are sorry.’‘

‘‘Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where you were so often abused, sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love of tenderness of care,’’ he said.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also plans to apologize on behalf of his government to the 130,000 children sent to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Zimbabwe from 1618 to 1967 under Britain’s Child Migration Programme.

Some 7,000 of the Australian victims were sent from Britain, often as young as 3 and often without their parents’ knowledge.

Most were from disadvantaged families and promised a better life in Australia.

According to the Child Migrants Trust, a British charity that helps reunite former child migrants with their families, there were many reasons for the program.

‘‘Child migrants were viewed as a convenient source of cheap labor on Canada’s farms, as a means of boosting Australia’s post-war population and as a way to preserve a white, managerial elite in the former Rhodesia (Zimbabwe),’’ the organization says on its website.

The Alliance for Forgotten Australian said victims suffered devastating, long-term effects from their experience, including ‘‘difficulty forming and maintaining relationships, trauma and depression, low education levels, widespread illiteracy and poor physical health.’‘

In 2004 an Australian Senate committee recommended the government formally apologize.

Compensation for victims of the mistreatment was not mentioned in the apology, but Rudd has said earlier the government is planning special measures for their care in old age.