Australia will pay A$75,000, or roughly €47,000, per person to many Aboriginal people who were forcibly removed from their families as children. Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced this on Thursday. Apologies have been made in the past, but no compensation.
Thousands of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait natives were removed from their families and placed in white families, as part of an official “policy of assimilation” that continued into the 1970s. The victims belong to the so-called “stolen generations”.
Our actions must continue to match our words.
Prime Minister Morrison spoke in Parliament of a “shameful chapter in our national history”. The Australian government has apologized before, but “our actions must continue to match our words,” the prime minister said.
The Australian government has allocated around €236 million in reparations. Part of the compensation is also giving victims the opportunity to tell their story to a government official and receive personal apologies in conversation or on paper.
1 billion Australian dollars
The Australian government has a plan of around A$1 billion (626 million euros) to improve the position of Indigenous peoples in the community. Many of them are severely deprived in terms of wages, health care and education.
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