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14 4 31 March 2014
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Fashion statement MINARET College has joined a world-wide movement to help people better understand the hijab. Students including Afsoon, Maliha, Fatima and Sahar took part in a World Hijab Day event at the Keysborough campus on 13 March demonstrate a stylish way to wear the hijab.They invited peers from non-Islamic schools to attend and look at why women chose to wear the head covering. A blogger shared her tips on how to dress modestly with a hijab in a fashionable way, and a doctor spoke about her experiences of wearing a hijab in a professional field. The first annual World Hijab Day was held on 1 February last year, thanks to New York resident Nazma Khan who encountered discrimination when she moved to the Bronx from Bangladesh at age 11. 115414 Picture: STEWART CHAMBERS
It’s race hate, mate LOCAL African groups are worried that the Federal Government’s proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act may spur on hatreds laid bare in 2007. Saturnino Onyala, secretary-general of the Dandenong-based Sudanese Community Association of Australia, said the draft changes released last week were an invitation to racism that could stir “bad feelings” between community groups. He fears it could revive the persecutory effect felt by Greater Dandenong’s Sudanese community in 2007 when
then-Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said Sudanese people weren’t integrating. At the time, members of the Sudanese Australian community blamed Mr Andrews’s words for creating a “climate” for violent attacks against its young people. Jose Gonsalves, project manager of Noble Park-based African Communities Foundation Australia, writes in his Community Voice in today’s Journal that Mr Andrews’s comments were like an “endorsement to attacks against us at the time”. He said Federal Attorney-General George Brandis’s view last week that
“people have the right to be bigots” has a “massive impact”. “Greater Dandenong is very suggestive to hate speech debates like this because of its diversity and sensitive nature to bigotry and race offensive language.” A spokesman for Mr Brandis did not respond to the the comments by the Journal’s deadline. However, a press release on the Attorney-General’s website states that the reforms to the Racial Discrimination Act will strengthen protections against racism while at the same time removing provisions which unreasonably limit freedom of speech. Race Discrimination Commissioner
Dr Tim Soutphommasane said he had “very serious concerns” with “seriously weakening protections against racial vilification”. He said proposed exemptions were broad, “obliterating” the line between free speech and hate speech. In other words, promoting “freedom without responsibility”. “The signals we send are important for racial harmony,” he said. “We expect leaders to give signals that bigotry is unacceptable in a liberal democracy.” Jane Dixon SC, president of Liberty Victoria, said the draft amendments were “a massive overreach”.
“We value free speech. The purpose of the changes is strengthening free speech but it hasn’t got the balance right in that regard. “It just makes it easier for people to make humiliating and denigrating statements based on racial or religious backgrounds. State Multicultural Affairs Minister Matthew Guy said he was concerned by the changes and would make a submission based on the state government being “unambiguously opposed to any form of discrimination based on an individual’s race, faith, gender, or for any other reason”. Community Voice, page 10.
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By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS