Mannie De Saxe

Co-coordinator with Kendall Lovett of:

Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves

c/o PO Box 1675

Preston South

Vic 3072

22 July 2019

On 19 July 2019 we received the following information:

“Last week at short notice, WestConnex advised (Sydney City) Council (SCC) they were overriding our (SCC) permissions to force their way into the (Sydney) park to undertake investigation work for tunnelling associated with the project.

“This appears to mean large trucks and drilling rigs digging deep holes in the (Sydney) park, slated to commence this week. It’s outrageous that this project will impact even more on the inner city’s precious parklands. The City (SCC) will continue to fight to ensure Sydney Park is preserved, not trashed for the sake of a toll road.”

Sydney Park is home to Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves - SPAIDS, established between 1994 and 2012 to commemorate hundreds of people who died during the worst years of the AIDS crisis – 1985 to 1997 and for some years beyond. There have also been ashes scattered in the area of the SPAIDS Groves, turning the area into a cemetery and it is generally accepted internationally that cemeteries are grounds which are protected to remember people from all walks of life, and areas where people can still quietly and peacefully walk around or sit in quiet contemplation of those they loved or to whom they were close over time.

Details of Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves may be found at:

Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves

If the New South Wales Government permits this sacrilege then it will be necessary to raise an outcry internationally with the AIDS communities and those who have been involved with them over time in order to stop this disaster from occurring.

The San Francisco AIDS Memorial Garden in Golden Gate Park has been registered as a national AIDS Memorial and the outcry in the United States of America would reverberate internationally if any state or local government tried to tamper with it.

Here is some information about this Memorial:

National AIDS Memorial Grove: National AIDS Memorial Grove

About the National AIDS Memorial

The mission of the National AIDS Memorial Grove is to provide, in perpetuity, a place of remembrance so that the lives of people who died from AIDS are not forgotten and the story is known by future generations.

The National AIDS Memorial Grove, located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, is a dedicated space in the national landscape where millions of Americans touched directly or indirectly by AIDS can gather to heal, hope, and remember. Its mission is to provide, in perpetuity, a place of remembrance so that the lives of people who died from AIDS are not forgotten and the story is known by future generations. For all the promising prospects on the horizon, AIDS continues to invade our lives, violate our past, and rob us of our comfortable assumptions about the future. The sacred ground of this 10-acre living memorial honors all who have confronted this tragic pandemic; those who have died, and those who have shared their struggle, kept the vigils, and supported each other during the final hours.

Conception

The idea for the National AIDS Memorial was first conceived in 1988 by a small group of San Francisco residents representing a community devastated by the AIDS epidemic, but with no positive way to express their collective grief. They envisioned a serene place where people would come alone or in groups to hold memorial services, to remember among the rhododendrons and redwoods. It was to be a place dedicated to all lives touched by AIDS. As news of the AIDS Memorial Grove initiative grew, so did support and interest. The group selected as the site for the Grove the de Laveaga Dell, near the park’s tennis courts, in world-renowned Golden Gate Park. Due to park budget cuts and lack of funding, the Dell had fallen into a state of disrepair. It was overgrown and unusable by the public. A team of prominent architects, landscape architects, and designers volunteered countless hours to create a landscape plan that would be fitting as a timeless living memorial. Site renovation began in September 1991, and is still in progress. The Grove is an award-winning example of civic beautification, combining both public and private sectors in urban-park restoration and promoting AIDS awareness. In 1999, it was bestowed the Rudy Bruner Silver Medal Award for excellence in the urban environment. The Grove’s board of directors obtained a 99-year renewable lease with the City of San Francisco to create and maintain the Grove. Public officials praise the project as the perfect example of a public-private partnership, a model project for like-minded groups throughout the world.

National Status

In October 1996, through the passage of legislation spearheaded by Representative Nancy Pelosi and signed by President Bill Clinton, the ‘AIDS Memorial Grove Act of 1996’ designated the Grove as this nation’s AIDS Memorial. This official designation as the National AIDS Memorial Grove, a status comparable to that of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, and the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, proclaims to the world that there is a dedicated space in the national public landscape where anyone who has been touched by AIDS can grieve openly without being stigmatized, can find comfort among others whose lives have been affected by AIDS, and can experience the feelings of renewal and hope inherent in nature. As the AIDS pandemic continues to invade humanity in unprecedented numbers, the establishment of the Grove as the national gathering place for healing, hope and remembrance also serves as an important marker in the history of this dreadful disease.

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When the co-coordinators of SPAIDS tried to obtain heritage status for the AIDS Groves it was rejected by the Heritage Council. The fact is that the Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves in Sydney Park is the biggest AIDS Memorial in Australia and should be treated as such by governments in this country.

The equivalent to its desecration would be as if the Field of Mars, Rookwood, Waverley, Macquarie Park, Woronora Memorial Park, Gore Hill and Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park cemeteries, to mention a few, were to have heavy machinery allowed to ride over graves and gravestone areas, and have tunnels dug beneath them without consideration of the history of Australian citizens, as has been done to the original inhabitants of the country without any care and consideration of that portion of the population who inhabited this country for centuries before it was invaded by people from other countries.

National Tree Day is an annual event occurring during the last weekend of July, and if WestConnex continues to be allowed to ride roughshod over the government of New South Wales, there is no knowing where the trees of Australia will be buried.

So much of Sydney has already been demolished and destroyed, and we are about to have one of the few remaining lungs for Sydneysiders to go and breathe some unadulterated air removed from us.

From Al Jazeera, 7 JULY 2019

Nelson Mandela's grandson slams 'Israeli apartheid'

Zwelivelile Mandela says Israeli apartheid is the worst form of apartheid ever witnessed.

by Gavin O'Toole

3 hours ago

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Mandela sketched out a damning picture of the discrimination experienced by the Palestinian people [File: Leon Neal/Getty Images]

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London, United Kingdom - The grandson of anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela has delivered a damning condemnation of "Israeli apartheid", in a high-profile expression of solidarity between South Africans and Palestinians.

Zwelivelile Mandela, an MP of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), made the comments on Saturday at the Palestine Expo, an annual event in London aimed at showcasing Palestinian history, heritage and culture. Last year, it attracted 15,000 visitors.

Addressing a large audience, Mandela said that the Nation-State Law passed in 2018 declaring Israel to be the historical homeland of the Jewish people "confirmed what we have always known to be the true character and reality of Israel: Israel is an apartheid state".

He also outlined what had constituted apartheid for black South Africans - from the creation of bantustan reservations to land expropriation and the daily assault on dignity.

"All these characteristics were present in apartheid Israel since its inception but have now been codified and given a constitutional status and expression by the Nation-State Law.

"Apartheid Israel perpetuates statutory discrimination through the very definition by the law as a Jewish state; by doing so it renders non-Jews as second-class citizens, alternately as foreigners in the land of their birth."

Anti-Semitism allegations

Also speaking at the event was Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who criticised efforts by the United States to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through investment.

He told the London audience that not only could the deal not be taken seriously, but if it were pursued it would put an end to "all Palestinian rights and aspirations", and added that, as a result, a global intervention was now required to put pressure on Israel.

"We need the world because Israel will not change by itself - as long as Israel and Israelis are not punished and don't pay for the occupation, for the crimes, don't expect any change. It will not come from within Israel."

Levy was also scathing about how Western politicians and media have succumbed to a "very efficient" campaign by Israel to label any criticism of the country's activities as anti-Semitic.

"Here we face now a new stage in which criticising Israel becomes not only impossible but almost criminal. I have never seen such a phenomenon in which struggling for justice becomes criminalised - this is unheard of.

"The formula is very formalised and very efficient, and we shouldn't let it be so efficient: you dare to criticise the occupation? You dare to criticise Israel? You dare to have some sympathy with the Palestinians, the victims? You dare to speak about justice? You know what you are: you are an anti-Semite. This paralyses everybody."

OPINION

Why aren't Europeans calling Israel an apartheid state?

by John Dugard

 

Ilan Pappe, a professor at the University of Exeter and director of the European Centre for Palestinian Studies, also blasted the mainstream media's coverage of Israeli activities and how these have been concealed behind the "fabrication of institutional anti-Semitism".

Pappe said it was important to acknowledge the historical context in which the treatment of Palestinians in areas such as Gaza had taken place.

"Unfortunately, the world doesn't know what goes on in Gaza. In this country, the mainstream media, whether it is Sky News or the BBC, or the main newspapers, don't mention the Gaza Strip.

"They mention every word that they think attests to institutional anti-Semitism in the Labour Party but they would not mention what happened yesterday when 49 young Palestinians were shot by Israeli snipers. Neither did they mention the 52 who were shot last week."

Home demolitions

Human rights activist Issa Amro, who is based in Hebron - which is at the sharp end of Israeli settler appropriation of Palestinian land - told attendees that the city had become the "micro-centre of apartheid, discrimination and segregation".

Amro described his activism trying to resist the growing scale at which Palestinian homes were being demolished by the Israeli authorities in order for settlers to take their land and resources.

READ MORE

Israel opens 'apartheid road' in occupied West Bank

He said demolitions had increased significantly since Donald Trump became the US president in early 2017, and current Israeli policy was to now even require some Palestinians to demolish their own homes.

"Don't be afraid of 'anti-Semitism' because the message of this conference should be that criticising Israeli human rights violations is not anti-Semitism," he said.

Daphna Baram, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions UK, outlined the scale of demolitions, pointing out that 201 Palestinian structures were demolished in June alone - bringing those destroyed since 1967 to 49,336.

"This is the daily grind of the occupation that is turning the life of the Palestinians impossible," she said. "This is not by accident, this is making the lives of the Palestinians impossible by design.

"This has been the design of the Israeli government for generations to get rid of the Palestinians and make them go away in various ways, shapes and forms, and one of the main ways to do this is by house demolitions."

Global south 'neglect'

OPINION

Love in times of Israeli apartheid

by Yara Hawari 

 

Palestinian journalist and author Ramzy Baroud - who had just returned from a 10-day solidarity tour to Kenya - told the event in the UK capital that a new front in Palestinian activity should be aimed at the developing world.

Palestinian activism had neglected the "global south" because of the Oslo peace process and a changing discourse that had convinced people that their fate lay in the capitals of the developed world.

"But Israel has rediscovered the global south and they have penetrated Africa and South America and other places," Baroud said. "We need to go back there and we need to resurrect their solidarity.

"One thing about Africa that I noticed is that we don't have to contend with the tiny little bits of the discourse - nobody accuses you of anti-Semitism, it is not even on the agenda of African audiences: what they talk about there is national liberation."

SOURCE: Al Jazeera News