Jim McIlroy, Brisbane
Supporters of civil liberties, unionists, Aborigines, students and many ordinary citizens will join a rally in the city square here on May 3 to remember the dictatorial regime of former Queensland National Party Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, on the day of his funeral.
The rally will also protest the decision of Premier Peter Beattie's state Labor government to authorise a state funeral for the man who ruled over Queensland with an iron fist for 19 years, until 1987.
Supporters of the No State Funeral for Joh Committee had originally called for a picket of the funeral in Bjelke-Peterson's hometown of Kingaroy. However, after an open letter from Joh's grandson Justin Noack was published in the media, the committee said it was "deeply sympathetic" to calls for the family to be allowed to mourn in peace.
The committee replied to Noack that due to his "sincere letter, which even our skeptical supporters felt has not got the slick gloss of National Party or Labor Party spin, we intend to give your family the benefit of our sincere doubt" and cancel the picket, concentrating on the rally in Brisbane on May 3.
Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who died on April 23, was infamous throughout Queensland, Australia and internationally as the corrupt and reactionary leader of a brutal government, which used racist police to assault anti-apartheid protesters in 1971, banned street marches in the late 1970s, jailed sacked electricity workers during the SEQEB dispute of 1985-86, and used corrupt police as a direct arm of government policy.
Joh only just escaped imprisonment on corruption charges at the end of the 1980s. The National Party government under Bjelke-Petersen was an undemocratic regime, which managed to utilise a blatant gerrymander to maintain power with only 23% of the state's votes.
Writing in a special supplement for the inner-city radical magazine Neighborhood News, shortly before Joh died, leading Aboriginal activist Sam Watson declared: "Pure and simple, Joh is a political thug who ruled this state for almost two decades as though it was his own private kingdom. His hillbilly administration was characterised by rampant corruption that infected every level of public administration and tainted the private sector. Leading business people fell into the habit of courting Joh's administration with paper bags that were filled with unmarked bills....
"Aboriginal people in particular have great cause to curse Joh and his government. For instance, many of my older relatives from the Cherbourg reserve were forced to work on Joh's peanut crops for $1 a day."
Socialist academic Gary MacLennan, writing in the same Neighbourhood News supplement, warned correctly that, "We must now batten down for an absolute orgy of lies and cant that will be poured out in official eulogies".
"It is true that we must forgive, but that is not the issue here. What we must protest against is the refusal to see Petersen's legacy for what it is. No one has offered an apology and compensation to all the victims of his rule. Worse, some like Peter Beattie have tried to make us forget when it is vital that we remember, lest it happen again.
"There should certainly be a day of mourning when Petersen finally breathes his last, but it should not be for the corrupt old bigot, but for those who were crushed under his regime."
Those attending the rally in Brisbane on May 3 will certainly be commemorating the people's struggles against Joh, and noting the necessity to maintain the fight for democratic and human rights under attack again today in this country.
From Green Left Weekly, May 4, 2005.
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