Anti-Australian sentiment
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anti-Australian sentiment, or Anti-Australianism, is a hostility towards or disapproval of the culture, history, and/or people of Australia. The term indicates a broad-ranging animosity, rather than hostility confined to specific issues (such as opposition to recent Australian government policies); however, specific issues may eventually give rise to broader hostility.
While Australia enjoys friendly, often sports-based, rivalries with other nations — such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand — some differences are more bitter.
In terms of the country's image overseas, modern Australia's origins as a British penal colony have proved particularly difficult to shake off. However, the most significant wave of immigration — in relative or proportional terms — was that of free, non-convict immigrants who arrived during the Australian gold rushes of the 1850s. Between 1850 and 1861, the European population increased from 400,000 to 1.2 million. Moreover, the largest wave of immigration, in terms of absolute numbers, occurred after 1947.
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[edit] Geography and history
Geography and history play an important part in anti-Australianism. In spite of its location near South East Asia, Australia is predominantly populated by people of European ethnic origins, who are decidedly members of a western culture.
By comparison, Indonesia, separated from Australia by about 200 kilometres of sea at the closest point, is the most populous Islamic nation in the world. Proximity, combined with great cultural differences, is a major cause of friction. Modern Australia's origins and culture evoke unpleasant echoes of colonialism in neighbouring countries, where the populations were dominated by Europeans, for centuries in some cases.
There is also a perception that Australia does not respect its neighbours' sovereignty. For example, criticism in the Australian media of human rights abuses in neighbouring countries is often interpreted by them as attempts to meddle in their internal affairs. This perception was heightened by a 2004 incident in which Prime Minister John Howard stated his willingness to embark on preemptive strikes against terrorists in neighbouring countries, after the Australian embassy in Bali was attacked by a truck-bomb by an Islamic terrorist organisation.
[edit] Ties to the United States
- Further information: Anglosphere
Australia has long been a military ally of the United States, with close military ties dating back to the Pacific War of WWII. Since then, Australia has fought alongside the US in Korea, Vietnam, the 1990–1991 and 2003 Iraq invasions, and the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Although Australian contingents have been much smaller than their US counterparts, they have included a high proportion of special forces troops, making them more significant than their size would otherwise suggest.
While the reliability of Australia's support has improved its standing with the US, it has caused hostility elsewhere: critics of the association have portrayed it as an extension of American imperialism; Australia is viewed by some as a US puppet in the predominantly Asian region. Thus, Australia has attracted hostility not only for its own actions in such wars, but also for its closeness to the US, with anti-American sentiment feeding anti-Australian sentiment by association.
This phenomenon is strong among Islamist and nationalist groups in South-East Asia. Because of Australia's proximity to Malaysia and Indonesia, it makes a convenient surrogate for anti-American hostility, although there are several other causes for friction between Australia and these countries.
A 1999 Bulletin article described John Howard as the US's "deputy sheriff" in the Asia-Pacific region. This was a label which Howard initially partially accepted,[1][2] though he later attempted to repudiate it; nevertheless, it has become a popular catchphrase among his detractors, adding to the perception of Australia as an extension of the US.
[edit] East Timor
A particular point of contention was Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, and the subsequent independence process. While the Australian government long avoided commenting on the Indonesian occupation, some pro-independence East Timorese used Australia as a base, and drew a great deal of sympathy from the Australian public. Following the demise of the Suharto regime in 1998, Canberra moved to supporting self-determination for the territory, which prompted the new President, Jusuf Habibie, to raise the possibility of independence for East Timor in early 1999.
Many Indonesians saw this move as hypocritical, as the Whitlam government knew in advance about Indonesian plans to invade and annex East Timor in November 1975; it may even have actively encouraged these plans [3]. Subsequent to the invasion, Australia was the only country in the world to acknowledge Indonesia's sovereignty over East Timor.
In fact, Prime Minister John Howard had always supported Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor, even when in opposition, criticising Labor governments for not being close enough to Indonesia and placing too much importance on human rights and East Timor. In a letter to President Habibie in December 1998, he wrote, "I want to emphasise that Australia's support for Indonesia's sovereignty is unchanged. It has been a longstanding Australian position that the interests of Australia, Indonesia and East Timor are best served by East Timor remaining part of Indonesia." He added that, "The successful implementation of an autonomy package with a built-in review mechanism would allow time to convince the East Timorese of the benefits of autonomy within the Indonesian republic."
Many Indonesian nationalists also believed that Australia was attempting to weaken its neighbour by supporting independence movements in West Papua and Aceh, although Australia has moved to reinforce its support for Indonesia's integrity since East Timor's independence.
During the referendum process, and especially after the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence, the region was plunged into violence as anti-independence militia embarked on a scorched earth campaign; at least some of the anti-independence groups were armed, trained, and funded by elements of the Indonesian military. Australia led a United Nations peacekeeping force to quell this violence; some took the arrival of Australian troops in what they thought of as Indonesian territory as a further insult to Indonesia.
In one incident during the peacekeeping mission, Australian and Indonesian patrols came into conflict near the East Timorese border, with a small number of Indonesian soldiers killed; it appears confusion caused by differing maps led both groups to believe they were on their own side of the border, and the other was intruding. Australian troops within East Timor also reported seeing Kopassus (Indonesian special forces) troops attempting to scout their positions. Such incidents further fuelled tensions between Australia and Indonesia.
Ironically anti-Australian feelings in East Timor also run high. Australia's motives for involvement in East Timor have also been questioned by the East Timorese themselves, especially in connection to the division of revenue from the Timor Gap oil reserves — an arrangement that is currently highly favourable to Australia. Many East Timorese, including the political leaders; and indeed some Australians — see this state of affairs as exploitative and unfair, especially since East Timor desperately needs money to further its development and has few other valuable resources.
[edit] Attacks on Australians
While it is now believed that the 2002 Bali terrorist bombing targeted westerners in general, the fact that many of the victims were Australian, and the subsequent heavy involvement of Australian police and intelligence authorities in the investigation, added to perceptions of an anti-Australian motive. By comparison, the much less deadly bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta, in 2004, appears to have been targeted specifically at Australians, although the victims were chiefly Indonesian.
[edit] Australian domestic policies
Australia has at times faced hostility for being deemed unusually racist. The White Australia Policy played a large role in this. Also, the fate of Indigenous Australians has been a source of harsh criticism abroad and often domestically as well - specifically the accounts of the Stolen Generation and the Tasmanian Aborigines.
In more recent times the Tampa Boat Crisis and Children Overboard affairs are seen as evidence of racism continuing in their immigration policy. The incidents were shown as indicating Australians may have white supremacist views, even though Australia has a relatively large number of East Asian immigrants. Some people in Norway see the intrusion of the SASR on-board the freighter Tampa as an act of war.[citation needed]
The mandatory detention in Australia of asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by illegal means (that is, without visas) is widely criticized by other nations and by many Australians themselves. Institutions such as Woomera Detention Centre are often compared to prisons or even concentration camps. The Australian government has received much criticism regarding this policy. Australians seeing the detention policy as unnecessary are divided into two camps: one group believes the detainees should be included in the Australian community, while the other group believes that the detainees should be promptly sent back to their point of origin.
[edit] Stereotypes
Sometimes, global mass media stereotypically portray Anglo-Celtic Australians as wild, uncouth, boorish, uncultured, agrestic, sport-obsessed, alcoholic layabouts obsessed with consuming beer — especially successful export products such as Fosters and XXXX (which are often, incorrectly, assumed to be the most popular beers on the Australian market). While some Australians (deliberately or otherwise) conform to such stereotypes, both at home and abroad, many Australians are deeply offended by such perceptions. They point to statistics showing that Australia has lower rates of alcohol consumption than many countries, higher productivity, high rates of attendance at cultural and arts events/facilities, and a very high degree of urbanisation.
In spite of — or some might say because of — the many ties between the United Kingdom and Australia (including a large number of Australian expatriates in the United Kingdom, and vice versa) some British cultural conservatives dislike the supposed vulgarity and/or bad examples for young British people, demonstrated by Australian popular culture. The most common targets of such discontent are Australian soap operas shown on British television, such as Neighbours and Home and Away. Ironically, such programs are often far more popular in the UK, where they sometimes attract many millions of viewers, than in Australia. The relationship between New Zealand and Australia is also an example of a love-hate relationship.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Australia as regional police doctrine puts Howard in damage control, 7:30 Report, 27 September, 1999: "The cornerstone according to the cover story in last weeks Bulletin is this notion that Australia could be deputy in the region to the global policeman, the United States."
- ^ Gerard Henderson, At last, a point of policy discord, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 May, 2002: "Howard did not use the word 'sheriff' but he did accept the term 'deputy' as a description of Australia's relationship with the US in the region. It was an unfortunate word usage which was later effectively withdrawn."
- ^ Mike Head, Documents reveal that Australia urged Indonesia to invade East Timor in 1975, World Socialist Web Site, 18 September 2002
