ABSTRACT
When Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stood in Parliament in February 2008 to deliver a speech to the Aboriginal population of the country, it was hailed as an ‘historic apology’ and a ‘watershed’ in the history of the Australian nation. This gesture of reconciliation for injustices committed over more than a century to Australia’s Aborigines had been arduously pursued. Failure to address the injustices done to Australia’s indigenous people was ‘a great stain’ on the nation’s soul, Rudd told Parliament, adding, ‘We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.’1 Equally significant were the events taking place in Chile a few years earlier when Patricio Ailwyn ousted Augusto Pinochet in the presidential elections of 1990. It was not long before the new president went on television and offered a state apology to victims of injustices committed under his predecessor. This symbolic speech crowned a reparations package to victims of human rights violations during the Pinochet era, following the results of an official inquiry into the matter. A similar sense of victory can be detected in the struggle of the JapaneseAmericans when their lobbying efforts resulted in a congressional bill requesting the US Government to pay them reparations. A cheque, accompanied by a letter of apology, reached each Japanese-American wrongfully interned by the US Government during the hype of the Second World War. The same cannot be said though about their fellow African-American compatriots. Descendants of the victims of slavery have yet to see their longstanding demands for justice and reparations recognised and redressed by the Government of the United States. Likewise, Korean ‘comfort women’, victims of injustices committed by the Japanese army during the Second World War, are still assembling every Wednesday in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in objection to the Japanese Government’s ongoing refusal to adequately address
their plight.2 International practice and modern history are replete with stories of justice achieved as much as with others where justice is denied. Is there a recipe for success?
