Australian
Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Thursday had to be bundled out of a Canberra
restaurant by security service agents after it was surrounded by furious
Aboriginal rights protesters.
Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott were
stranded in The Lobby restaurant as dozens of demonstrators from a protest
against Australia Day, which marks the arrival of British settlers in 1788,
converged on the hotel.
The two leaders were dramatically escorted
through the crowd by security agents and riot police brandishing shields, and
the visibly rattled Gillard tripped and fell during the rush.
She later made light of the incident, saying
she was "made of pretty tough stuff and the police did a great job."
Gillard had been presenting medals to
emergency services workers when the protest erupted and said
"the only thing that angers me is that it
distracted from such a wonderful event."
The demonstrators had reportedly pounded the
building's glass walls, shouting "shame" and "racist".
They had been attending so-called
"Invasion Day" commemorations at the nearby Aboriginal tent embassy,
a permanent camp of indigenous activists celebrating its 40th anniversary this
year.
Michael Anderson, founder of the tent embassy,
said the group had been angered by remarks Abbott made earlier in the day about
the Aboriginal protest no longer being relevant.
"He said the Aboriginal embassy had to
go, we heard it on a radio broadcast," Anderson told the Australian
Associated Press news agency.
"We thought no way, so we circled around
the building."
"What (Abbott) said amounts to inciting
racial riots," he added.
Aborigines, whose cultures stretch back tens
of thousands of years, are believed to have numbered around one million at the
time of British settlement, but there are now just 470,000 out of a total
population of 22 million.
They are Australia's most disadvantaged
minority, with shorter life expectancy and much higher rates of imprisonment
and disease than their non-Aboriginal counterparts.
AFP
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