Lee Rhiannon initiated the Juanita Nielsen Memorial Lecture series in 2001 when she was a New South Wales state MP. Lee was also a Greens Senator. She has been involved in a range of political campaigns since the 1960s.
In 1975, Sydney gangsters kidnapped and murdered the campaigning journalist Juanita Nielsen. Nielsen had been a champion of Sydney’s poor residents against social cleansing, earning herself the hatred of property developers, politicians, and their underworld allies.
Victims of decades of racist pogroms, state violence, and military occupation, the Tamil minority has long fought for liberation in Sri Lanka. We should not ignore their struggle.