Australia takes right step forward

The Australian government has finally apologised to the hundreds of thousands of people shipped there from Britain as children in the past three centuries with the false promise of a better life, only to suffer physical and sexual abuse in state care institutions.

British authorities believed they were acting in the "children's best interests", but the migration was also intended to stop them from being a burden on the British state, while supplying the receiving countries with potential workers.

A 1998 British parliamentary inquiry noted that "a further motive was racist: the importation of ‘good white stock'".

The move to apologise for the repugnant crime committed against those children is a step in the right direction. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is also set to apologise for that policy, described by British Children's Secretary Ed Balls as "a stain on our society".

Certainly, the apology would not compensate for the horrors and pain suffered by those children, who were as little as three years old. Nevertheless, it is symbolically important.

But what about the racism and injustices suffered by millions of people who were colonised and exploited by the British Empire and other colonial powers?

This is a question not intended to open old wounds or stir anti-Western sentiments. But it is a serious question that needs to be debated, as it could be the basis for a new East-West relationship.