A Sudanese woman, Nyadol Nyuon, who moved to Australia after living in a refugee camp, went on Australian television to tell those who welcomed her that the nation founded by the UK has "no white culture" and that she had "no intention of assimilating." She further said that migrants who come to Australia want to bring their own culture and do not wish to be Australian. This was all during a debate on mass migration.
"I have no intention of assimilating," Nyuon said after being asked if it's racist for Australians to talk about Anglo-Celtic culture. As she did so, she wore what appeared to be traditional garb of her native Sudan. "But there is no white culture," she said. "I just think that if we start talking about terms like Anglo-Celtic and stuff it creates this idea that there is some form of white culture that exists somewhere that then can be recreated here in Australia. It goes back to this idea that Australia is sort of monocultural."
Nyuon goes on to praise the Indigenous people who were in Australia before it was colonized, saying they "spoke multiple lanuages and consider themselves to be people of different nations." She claims there is "Italian culture, there is French culture, there is, I don't know, Argentinian culture, but there is this notion of sort of a white culture that is being threatened."
She sounded the alarm on "far right groups" and "white nationalism" before saying that she believes "what the character of Australia is through immigration, because we are entering a world in which Western countries are no longer the center of the world. We're seeing that across the board."
Nyuon came to Australia when she was 18 after spending time in Sudanese refugee camps. She gained citizenship and was given an education with many diversity scholarships. She earned a Juris Doctor. Much of her career in Australia has been about racism in Australia "and the role of African Australians in building the nation." In June, she stated her intention of renouncing her Australian citizenship.
Her declaration came after she accused her employer, Victoria University, of racism and said she was being used as "corporate blackface." The program she was working with, WorkSafe Victoria, "was plagued with delays and allegations of mismanagement," reports News AU.
Her father, Drew Palvou reports, was "a Sudanese warlord who abducted and enslaved hundreds of child soldiers, dozens of whom starved to death." He found a report from Human Rights Watch in 1995 accusing William Nyuon Bany of that very thing. It was called "Children in Sudan: Slaves, Street Children, and Child Soldiers."
Bany was one of the founders of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army and was 3rd in command before he splintered off to be part of the SSIA. Under that banner, boys were lured from their homes on the false promise of education, only to be used for the military. "The boys received little food and no medical attention" and were eventually sent to a UN relief site. Many died.
Nyuon disputed these claims and said her father was a freedom fighter. In a podcast, she said she doesn't "know much about him. Most of the stuff I know about my father, I heard second-hand. Because of the role he played in the South Sudanese and the Sudanese political movements, both military as well the more conventional politics, he was always absent. So I never got to see him much. I think I have only one recollection of ever interacting with him. I won’t say I know much of him."
