Political Violence: Genocide in Australia
Australia
isn’t known for much political violence in their past. Their transformation to a separate country
from Britain was not done through a revolution, and there have been no civil
wars that I can find. However, after some searching there is a disputed case of
genocide within the Australian history.
This was known as the aboriginal genocide. “White
settlers killed some 10,000 blacks in Queensland between 1824 and 1908.”
(Tatz) Often when thinking of genocide
people may be inclined to think of death camps and other forms of mass
systematic killing. However this is not
necessarily the case in Australia.
According to a report in the Journal of Genocide Research, “Aboriginal children
were abducted for use in forced labor, women were raped and tortured and given
poisoned flour, and the men were shot. They were systematically disposed of in
ones, twos and threes, or in dozens, rather than in one planned, full-scale
massacre.” (Tatz) In the textbook genocide is defined as, “a deliberate and
coordinated effort to eliminate all members of a particular ethnic, religious,
or national group through mass murder.” (Samuels) In this specific case there are many parts of
the definition which fits the scenario.
The killings were very deliberate which can be seen in the before
mentioned article. Poisoned flour is a
case of very deliberate planning in order to achieve the death of certain
individuals. Furthermore, this was done
in order to eliminate a very specific group of people: the aboriginal people.
The part that may be contested is the mass murder. As stated before there were no death camps in
Australia; however I would argue that this case does deal with mass
murder. Although it wasn’t all done at
the same time there were many deaths for the same reason in a short period of
time. This can be seen as a mass murder
for this was the intention of the people. The definition the book provides
seems to be an effective one in this instance and as a suitable definition for
the act of genocide as political violence.
Works Cited
Samuels, David J. Comparative Politics. San Francisco: Pearson
Education, Inc, 1967.
Tatz, Colin. “Genocide in Australia.” Journal of Genocide Research
Vol.1 Iss. 3 1999.
Interesting article. Never knew about this.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting subject. I think this case of political violence is rarely thought of by most of the world.
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