SYDNEY (AFP) - Police backed by military support will arrive in Australian Aboriginal communities within days as part of a controversial plan to end child sex abuse, Prime Minister John Howard said Sunday.
Extra police, military for Australian Aboriginal towns
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The plan, which has been criticised as heavy-handed and "racist" by some Aboriginal groups, includes bans on alcohol and pornography in Aboriginal townships and medical examinations for all children under 16.
Howard announced the interventionist strategy on Thursday after a government report detailed paedophilia and juvenile prostitution in Aboriginal communities across the territory.
The prime minister said he had been driven to take drastic measures "because I felt the old approach had totally failed."
"The biggest single problem in these communities is that the women and the children are scared to death of complaining about the violence and the molestation," Howard told commercial television.
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Western Australian Premier Alan Carpenter said he was unable to commit extra police to plan, adding that the timing of the strategy was suspiciously close to national polls due later this year.
"When an election is looming on the horizon we suddenly get this flurry of ill-thought proposals," he said.
Aborigines number about 470,000 in Australia's population of 20 million, forming the country's most impoverished community, with high rates of unemployment, alcohol dependency and preventable diseases.
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Australia to ban alcohol for Aborigines
By ROD McGUIRK Associated Press Writer 6/21/07
CANBERRA, Australia - Australia's prime minister announced plans Thursday to ban pornography and alcohol for Aborigines in northern areas and tighten control over their welfare benefits to fight child sex abuse among them.
Some Aboriginal leaders rejected the plan as paternalistic and said the measures were discriminatory and would violate the civil rights of the country's original inhabitants. But others applauded the initiative and recommended extending the welfare restrictions to Aborigines in other parts of the country.
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