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G4EBT > STOLEN 01.02.08 20:58l 140 Lines 5894 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 217782G4EBT
Read: GUEST
Subj: "Stolen Generations" FAQs 2/2
Path: DB0FHN<DB0MRW<DF0ANN<DB0ZDF<DB0LJ<DB0RES<DK0WUE<GB7FCR
Sent: 080201/1503Z @:GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU #:60221 [Blackpool] FBB-7.03a $:217782G4
From: G4EBT@GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU
To : STOLEN@WW
The "Stolen Generations" - Frequently Asked Questions, Part 2 of 2:
Cont'd:
5. Lots of children have been removed from their families - from poor
families or from single mothers - not just Indigenous children. Why do
Aboriginal children who were removed deserve their own National Inquiry?
The Inquiry found that the main reason for removal of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander children from their families was not concern for a
child's well-being.
The majority of children were removed simply because they were Indigenous.
The removal of vast numbers of children on the grounds of their race was
the unique experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
No other Australians were subject to discriminatory assimilation policies
from the moment they were born. And no other section of the Australian
community had their children taken away in such a systematic and
insensitive manner.
6. How can you judge the past from the perspective of the present? At the
time people thought they were doing the right thing by the children.
The Inquiry was careful to evaluate past actions in the light of values
and legal standards operating at that time. It has become clear since the
release of the Inquiry's report that although many Australians knew that
Indigenous children were removed, they did not know of the extent of the
laws which made removal possible or the atrocities that those children
suffered.
There were also many Australians that simply didn't know that Indigenous
children were systematically removed from their families for decades. The
outrage expressed today at the findings of the Inquiry could well have
been just as strong in the past if the same information had been publicly
available.
Dissenting voices were not absent at the time of these policies and
practices, they were simply not listened to. In November 1950 the
Government Secretary to the administrator of the Northern Territory,
R.S. Leydin, wrote:
I cannot imagine any practice which is more likely to involve the
government in criticism for violation of the present-day [1950]
conception of 'human rights'.
7. Why was the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
children genocide?
The crime of genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate physical
destruction of a group. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 and
ratified by Australia in 1949, defines genocide in Article II as such:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm of members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the groups
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The Convention recognises that genocide is a crime against humanity and
expressed a shared international outrage about genocide and empowered any
country to prosecute an offender.
The Inquiry's examination of historical documents found that the clear
intent of removal policies was to absorb, merge or assimilate children so
that Aboriginal people, as a distinct racial group, would disappear.
Policies and laws are genocidal even if they are not solely motivated by
animosity or hatred. The Inquiry found that a principle aim of removing
children was to eliminate Indigenous cultures as distinct entities. The
fact that people may have believed they were removing Indigenous children
for "their own good" was immaterial. The removal remains genocidal.
The Inquiry found that the forcible removal of Indigenous children was a
gross violation of their human rights. It was racially discriminatory and
continued after Australia, as a member of the United Nations from 1945,
committed itself to abolish racial discrimination.
The Inquiry also concluded that even before international human rights law
developed in the 1940s the treatment of Indigenous people breached
Australian legal standards.
In July 1996 Australia's then Prime Minister, John Howard, who has only
recently left office, had this to say about the value of families:
Quote:
I believe that Australian families not only provide the greatest source of
emotional and spiritual comfort to Australian individuals but beyond that
a functioning united coherent family is the most effective social welfare
system that any nation has ever seen.
The widening gap between rich and poor, much of the social disintegration
of this country and much of the unemployment of this country can be traced
to the disintegration of family life.
End quote.
Given the former Prime Minister's reluctance to officially apologise
to the 'stolen generations', the above statement is ambiguous and
contradictory.
It appeared to be a case of the government dictating one set of values
for Indigenous Australians, and another for the rest of the country.
But time has moved on.
Kevin Rudd, the new Prime Minister, has said that his first item of
business when he opens parliament on 13 February 2008 will be to
deliver an apology to the "stolen generations".
Hopefully, a new era is dawning, which may afford opportunities for the
indigenous children of today and tomorrow, so cruelly denied many of those
of yesteryear.
Information, reports and teaching resources
from the Social Justice Library of HREOC at:
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/bth_report/index.html
Best wishes
David, G4EBT @ GB7FCR
Cottingham, East Yorkshire.
Message timed: 13:32 on 2008-Feb-01
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