ansport Workers 'Union, the WWF organised the purchase, delivery and installation of the bakery. p> In the run-up to the 1965 FCAATSI conference, Aboriginal wharfies held lunch hour meetings to explain the issues to their fellow workers. In 1968, with other unions, the WWF bought a car for Aborigines in northern Australia campaigning for their rights. By 1969, the WWF was one of seven unions which had set up committees to organise support for Aborigine and Torres Strait Islander demands at the request of the FCAATSI.
According to the definition of genocide under international law and used by the UN - yes. Australia is a signatory to a number of UN Charters, Conventions and Declarations which outlaw the very practices carried out here. The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Ratified by Australia in 1949) made it clear that genocide includes any actions which have the effect of "destroying, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. "It defines genocide as:" ... killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting ... conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measur es intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group ... "
Australia's treatment of Aborigines qualifies as genocide on every single count.
So at the same time as Australian governments were grandstanding internationally, they were deliberately ignoring their own commitments, and they continued their genocidal practices for decades afterwards.
"There are certain restrictions which must remain imposed on Aborigines even though they are at variance with the complete ideals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "
The UN Conventions also make it clear that acting out of "good intentions "is no excuse - it's the effects which count, not the purpose. Nor can a state use the excuse that "it was lawful under its own laws". For example, the Holocaust was genocide, even though much of the persecution of the Jews in Germany was legal under the Nuremberg Laws of 1938.
"Official policy and legislation for Indigenous families and children was contrary to accepted legal principle imported into Australia as British common law and, from late 1946, constituted a crime against humanity. It offended accepted standards of the time and was the subject of dissent and resistance. The implementation of the legislation was marked by breaches of fundamental obligations on the part of officials and others to the detriment of vulnerable and dependent children whose parents were powerless to know their whereabouts and protect them from exploitation and abuse. "
UN Conventions also stipulate that, where genocide is established, reparation must follow. Australia would not be the first country to do this. The report documents a number of cases where it has been done, and more recently the Canadian government made an apology to its indigenous people for similar practices and allocated substantial funds towards a reparations program.
While nothing can adequately compensate for the damage, the prospects for healing are further reduced in the absence of acknowledgement and reparation.
Financial compensation is only a part of this. Equally important are an open and official acknowledgement of and apology for the past, the establishment of mechanisms to help people find out about themselves and to reunite with their families where that is possible and legislation to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again. These and the other recommendations of the inquiry should be implemented immediately, but the Howard government has rejected most of them.
The government response to the report, announced in December 1997, is nothing less than an insult to the stolen generations. The paltry sum of $ 63 million dollars will be spent - over four years - on such things as counselling, regional support networks, family support programs, link-up services, a culture and language maintenance program and an oral history project. Minister Herron once again reiterated the tired old Coalition party line justifying the government's refusal to offer an apology: "You might as well go and ask the British for an apology for coming to Australia with the convicts ", he said. "You can't judge past practices by today's standards. "
Herron also ruled out any financial compensation, saying "It was believed cash compensation to individuals would not achieve a great deal. " Meanwhile, stolen children who want to seek compensation for abuse in government and church institutions through the courts are being prevented from doing so by lack of money to fight the cases and what lawyers describe as an almost impossible hunt for documentation. Matthew Stor...
