The indigenous senator Lydia Thorpe has shouted anti-colonial slogans at king Charles III on his visit to the Australian Parliament, where his colleagues and other dignitaries were scandalized.
«Give us back our land! “Give us what you stole from us!” Thorpe shouted in an almost minute-long tirade after the 75-year-old British monarch’s speech. “This is not your land, you are not my king,” the independent legislator insisted, after citing the “genocide” of indigenous Australians at the hands of European settlers.
Australia was a British colony for more than a century, during which thousands of Aboriginal people were killed and entire communities displaced. The country gained de facto independence in 1901, but never became a full-fledged republic. Charles IIYo He is the head of state.
The monarch performs a nine-day tour of Australia and Samoaon his first trip abroad since he was diagnosed with cancer months ago. Thorpe is known for her flamboyant political maneuvers and fierce opposition to the monarchy.
When sworn into office in 2022, Thorpe raised his right fist as he reluctantly vowed to serve Queen Elizabeth IIthen head of state of Australia.
«I, sovereign, Lydia Thorpe“I solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and will maintain true loyalty to her colonizing majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” she said before being refuted by a Senate authority. “Senator Thorpe, Senator Thorpe, you must recite the oath exactly as it is on the card,” the president of the upper house, Sue Lines, rebuked her.
Australians voted narrowly in 1999 against removing the queen as head of state, amid a dispute over whether her replacement would be chosen by Parliament or the public. In 2003, Australians voted overwhelmingly against measures to recognize Aboriginal people in the constitution and create an indigenous consultative assembly.
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