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| Aborigines confront Australian PM on Invasion Day |
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Scores of police escorted Gillard and the leader of the opposition Tony Abbott from Canberra's Lobby restaurant after it was surrounded by around two hundred Aboriginal protesters, BBC reported.
Gillard appeared distressed as she was pulled away from the encirclement of protesters but escaped unhurt.
Supporters of indigenous rights had besieged the restaurant and banged its windows while Gillard and Abbott were inside officiating at an award ceremony to commemorate Australia's national day.
Chaos followed as a bodyguard grabbed Gillard, with one of her shoes off, by the shoulders and shoved her into a car. Many protesters chased the Australian prime minister and continued to bang on the car's rooftop and the bonnet as it was driven off.
On Friday, Canberra’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy spokesman Mark McMurtrie hit out at police on ABC News Breakfast.
“The only violence you can see came from the police, so don't say it was a violent protest, it was a violent reaction to the protest,” he said.
“We went there to ask her [the prime minister] and Mr. Abbott to come down and speak to us, that’s all we went there for. We went there [peacefully].”
Australia celebrates January 26 as Australia Day to mark the arrival of the British First Fleet, which came to Sydney in 1788 to establish the penal colony of New South Wales and to begin the European colonization of the Australian continent.
The Aborigines mourn the day as an Invasion Day, saying the Europeans invaded their continent and systematically massacred hundreds of thousands of indigenous people, killed with guns, poisoned water and food, and many died from diseases, such as smallpox, measles, and influenza, introduced by the invaders.
It was estimated that about one million Australian Aborigines inhabited the country within 500 different tribes in 1788. Today, 224 years later, there are some 300,000 Aborigines left in the country.
Speaking at an Australia Day function at her official residence after the incident, Gillard said she was fine.
“I am made of pretty tough stuff and the police did a great job,” she boasted.
An indigenous leader, Chris Graham of the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council, told ABC that “an offer has also been made for the prime minister to come to the embassy to collect her shoe.”
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