Aboriginal leprosy claims investigated

SOME Aboriginal children taken from their parents under past government policies were used as guinea pigs in medical experiments, an Australian senate inquiry was told yesterday.

The allegation was made by a member of the Stolen Generations Alliance of Aborigines, who were forcibly removed from their homes to be raised in white institutions in an attempt to foster assimilation.

“As well as being taken away, they were used... there are a lot of things that Australia does not know about,” Kathleen Mills told the first day of the inquiry into compensation for the so-called “Stolen Generations”.

Outside the hearing in Darwin, Mills told reporters her uncle had been a medical orderly and had told her that children were used as “guinea pigs” for leprosy treatments.

“He said it made our people very, very ill ... the treatment almost killed them,” she said. “It was a common experience and a common practice.”

The leader of the Greens party, Senator Bob Brown, said he was “shocked and alarmed” by the allegations and called for them to be investigated.

“It may be right, it may not,” he said. “It needs investigation.

“If within the indigenous community there is a feeling that children may have been experimented upon for a treatment for leprosy or anything else, the air needs to be cleared.”

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a formal apology to the Stolen Generations in an historic address to parliament in February.

Up to 50,000 mainly mixed-race children were taken from their families until 1970 in a bid to assimilate them into white society, while full-blooded Aborigines were expected to die out.

The inquiry is examining a compensation scheme for victims and their descendants that could involve payments of $20,000 (€11,700) plus $3,000 dollars for each year of institutionalisation.

The federal government will search health department archives to get to the bottom of the claims.

Ms Mills said efforts to obtain records that support the claims, such as that children were injected with serums to gauge their reaction to the medication, had been hampered.

“These are the things that have not been spoken about,” she told the inquiry.

Outside the inquiry, Ms Mills said her uncle had been a medical orderly at the Kahlin Compound in Darwin.

Ms Mills said information to do with the testing would be in health department archives and she called on the government to assist “opening Pandora’s box”.

The federal government has bowed to that request, with Health Minister Nicola Roxon saying she had ordered her department to investigate.

“These are obviously very serious allegations [and] we will do everything we can to ascertain the facts of the situation,” Ms Roxon said.

“I have asked my department to look at the archives to see if there are any documents which can shed light on this situation,” she said.

The allegations prompted reactions of shock among other politicians, including Northern Territory Indigenous Affairs MinisterMarion Scrymgour, who said she was “disturbed” by the claims.

“Members of the Stolen Generation have been exposed to so much pain,” she said.