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50 years ago this week, migrants and refugees from Eastern Europe rioted at the Bonegilla migrant reception centre outside Albury-Wodonga. The Federal Immigration Minister said such behaviour was not tolerated in this country, but investigation prompted public sympathy for the demonstrators.
X people work hard. Y people are natural athletes. Z people treat the world like they own it. Q people are violent. R people are drunkards. S people mistreat women. V people are queue jumpers. Racial generalising becomes racist only if we accept its false premise.
From Rudd's 'sorry' to the Stolen Generations, to last year's US Senate resolution apologising for slavery, the political apology has assumed freight and relevance. An apology issued in the Serbian Parliament last week is exceptional for its attempt to allow the perpetrator into the moral circle.
The only woman convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has returned to Serbia. Her guilty plea formed part of a bargain, another sign that guilt and punishments are often matters of tactics and basic arithmetic. The victims of that savage war will not be so gracious.
One of the vices of nationalism is the symptom of long memory. Punishing accused war criminal Radovan Karadzic will do little to convince those who are set in their positions — Bosnia's Muslims will feel vindicated, but Bosnian Serbs are simply weary.
Adrian Lane is currently preparing a CD of his poems. An Anglican minister, he has a heart for the former Yugoslavia, and currently teaches Preaching and Pastoral Care at Ridley College in Melbourne.
The history, the current circumstances
We can all take it as read that various shivers have gone down various spines in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The real question is whether one is going down ours.
Dan Madigan, Abdullah Saeed and Frank Brennan examine religious conflict in Australia as part of the Jesuit Seminar Series.
Will America take over the world? Not necessarily, says David Glanz.
Nation-building is a fraught and messy business. Michael Ignatieff knows that well.
Mark Carkeet celebrates the life and work of Evelyn Waugh.