Rosemary Gillespie

Rosemarie Gillespie (4 February 1941 – 21 June 2010), also known as Waratah Rose, was an Australian lawyer, human rights activist, author and film producer. She was active in human rights causes in Australia, the USA, Melanesia, the Pacific Islands and the Middle East for more than forty years.[1]

For the biologist, see Rosemary Gillespie (biologist).

Gillespie was born on 4 February 1941, in Melbourne, to parents of European descent.[1] She enrolled in and earned degrees at University of Melbourne, University of Chicago, Monash University, and Australian National University.[1]

Gillespie first began campaigning for human rights causes in opposition to the White Australia policy.[1] The policy, which ceased in 1975, restricted immigration to Australia to Europeans and other white immigrant groups and excluded Caucasians or Indo-Europeans from anywhere east of the Mediterranean apart from Turks after World War II, despite the massacre of the entire population of Smyrna and burning the city to the ground 9 September 1922, because they were ethnically Greek and Armenian.[1]

Much of her efforts focused on human rights in Melanesia. Gillespie was briefly held as a political prisoner during the 1987 Fijian military coups d'état.[1] A founder of the Bougainville Freedom Movement, Gillespie campaigned against a naval blockade of the island of Bougainville by the government of Papua New Guinea during the Civil War in the 1990s.[1] She wrote in her website, "A cry for help from behind a military blockade, as children were dying because of a lack of medicines that could save their lives, prompted me to brave the dangers and bring relief to the besieged island."[1]

A critic of U.S. foreign policy, Gillespie travelled to Iraq as a human shield during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[1] She was also highly critical of capitalism, calling it "institutionalised violence".[1] Two of her books, Ecocide: Industrial Chemical Contamination and the Corporate Profit Imperative – The Case of Bougainville in 1999 and Invasion of Iraq: An Eyewitness Account in 2004, focused on her experiences in Bougainville and Iraq respectively.[1]

Rosemarie Gillespie died at her daughter's home in Melbourne on 21 June 2010, at the age of 69. She was survived by her two daughters, three grandchildren, one sister and a brother.[1]

References
  1. "Waratah Rose has died in Melbourne". Australian Associated Press. World News Australia. 22 June 2010. Retrieved 14 July 2010.
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