The legal definition of genocide, found in Article II of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948, is when “any of the following acts are committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such, killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group and or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Acts of genocide have occurred as early as the 1800’s. One of the most famous cases of genocide was the Holocaust, …show more content…
However, the extinction wasn’t perpetrated by the government but, by the European settlers who were living in Tasmania. Now, why did they do this? Why were common settlers killing, raping and murdering the natives of Tasmania? There is a common theory which can be used to truly understand why common settlers committed such acts of evil. This theory is known as “The Lucifer Effect.” According to American psychologist Philip Zimbardo, “Evil is the exercise of power... to intentionally harm people psychologically, to hurt people physically, to destroy people mortally... and to commit crimes against humanity.” When an individual is trying to understand the causes of these evils, they can use Zimbardo’s concepts of the Lucifer Effect. Zimbardo’s theory explains how there are three factors that can turn a normal human being into an evil one: dispositional, situational and systemic. These factors are what will enable us to understand why and how the Tasmanian genocide came to …show more content…
Continuing with the example of the student who is performing poorly in school. If we were to look at the situational factor, we could place blame on the teacher for not taking more interest in him. However, if one was to take a step back and look at the situation from a higher perspective, the actual problem could be with the people who hired the teacher, and created the curriculum, impacting the student negatively, which results in them performing poorly in class. These “external forces” are known as Systemic factors. By definition, systemic factors are Broad influences as in political, economic, cultural and legal power. This factor answers the question of what the system is that creates and maintains the situation. I truly believe the main reason for the entire Tasmanian population dying and or being killed, was because of policies Britain had throughout the 1800’s to the 1900’s. For instance, “governor Arthur’s policy reflected the contradictions inherent in British policy. The land was to be taken, by military force if necessary; this was done. Aboriginal access to their traditional lands was to be respected, they were to be treated humanely, perpetrators of crimes against them were to be brought to justice; all three instructions were routinely ignored.” (Breen, 8). There were never any laws or policies created to make sure the Tasmanians were protected, or that
Lawyer: the word genocide, is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.
There have been many unanswered questions in Australia about Aboriginal history. One of these is which government policy towards indigenous people has had the largest impact on Indigenous Australians? Through research the Assimilation Policy had the largest impact upon Indigenous Australians and the three supporting arguments to prove this are the Aborigines losing their rights to freedom, Aboriginal children being removed from their families, and finally the loss of aboriginality.
Key events in Aboriginal Australian history stem from the time Australia was first discovered in 1788. For instance, when Federation came into existence in 1901, there was a prevailing belief held by non Aboriginal Australians that the Aborigines were a dying race (Nichol, 2005:259) which resulted in the Indigenous people being excluded from the constitution except for two mentions – Section 127 excluded Aborigines from the census and Section 51, part 26, which gave power over Aborigines to the States rather than to the Federal Government. Aboriginal people were officially excluded from the vote, public service, the Armed Forces and pensions. The White Australia mentality/policy Australia as “White” and unfortunately this policy was not abolished until 1972. REFERENCE
To start off with, what is genocide? Genocide is the killing of a massive number of people of in a group. Genocide has not only been practices in the present day, but it has been practiced for m...
In the nineteenth century, the “History wars” became the fight between the most prominent historians revolving around the deception of frontier conflict between the labor and coalition. The debate aroused from the different interpretations of the violence that took place during the European colonization and to what degree. It became a crisis in history, emerging from the dispossession of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (ATSI) that resulted in exclusion of their traditions and culture. The ATSI were the first people of Australia that brought along a different culture, language, kinship structures and a different way of life (Face the Facts, 2012). Post European colonization was a time where the ATSI people experienced disadvantage in the land they called home. With the paramount role as future educators, it demands proficient knowledge on the Australian history and one of the most influential moments in our history started from the first European settlers.
The protection policy the first policy and had serious affects on the aboriginals of Australia. Violence against aboriginal people had been at a high rate, the white Australians felt it their duty to protect the aboriginals, the policy aimed to separate aboriginals from white Australians. They were removed and put into government reserves and church missions, where they were forced to become Christians. The aim of the policy and missions was to eradicate all aboriginals’ languages, religions and spirituality, In 1883 a protection board was set up to run the missions. The missions and camps had a paternalistic approach, treating the aboriginals the way a parent would treat a small child. The impact from this policy was horrific, with the mission being similar to a prison. Aboriginals lost their independence and became extremely reliant o...
For the past centuries, the world has endured mass human extinctions and brutal violence from the well-known holocaust to the under recognized Rwanda genocide. According to Dictionary.com, genocide is the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. Genocide has been occurring for centuries and centuries and continues to occur in countries such as Syria, Nigeria, Iraq and many more. These recent genocides are mostly occurring at the hands of extremist groups such as Boko Haram and ISIS
By definition, genocide is the mass extermination of a whole group of people, or an attempt to destroy an entire group of people, either in whole or in part. Whether it’s based on race, ethnicity, culture, or religion, the systematic destruction of a certain group of people constitutes as genocide. Forced transfer of the children of a group to another in an attempt to destroy a certain group also counts as genocide. Genocide covers a broad spectrum of points, and it’s surprising that so many of these points actually occur in our civilized society, but it does occur.
Within Australia, beginning from approximately the time of European settlement to late 1969, the Aboriginal population of Australia experienced the detrimental effects of the stolen generation. A majority of the abducted children were ’half-castes’, in which they had one white parent and the other of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. Following the government policies, the European police and government continued the assimilation of Aboriginal children into ‘white’ society. Oblivious to the destruction and devastation they were causing, the British had believed that they were doing this for “their [Aborigines] own good”, that they were “protecting” them as their families and culture were deemed unfit to raise them. These beliefs caused ...
We as Australians are completely unaware of all the suffering, sorrow and sadness we’ve placed upon the Aboriginal people since we set foot on their land. We’ve killed them in cold blood as we’ve had several disagreements with the Aboriginal people. Evidence even shows that all Tasmanian Aboriginals were killed and become completely extinct. We’ve given them diseases which they never used to contract and have wiped out the majority of their people and we even took Aboriginal children away from their own biological parents. The idea behind this was so they would then breed with other Australians which would rid of their full-tribal blood, making them become extinct. Thes...
Genocide is the “deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.” (Dictionary.com, 2010) In 1924, after World War I, Belgian colonists entered Rwanda and allowed the Tutsi dynasty to remain in power. However, after World War II concepts of right and wrong changed. Since the Belgians had been favouring the Tutsis, this change in ethics caused the Belgians to have compassion on the Hutus and promote the Hutu cause, creating tension. (Thompson, 2007) It was the Belgians who cre...
Since the time of federation the Aboriginal people have been fighting for their rights through protests, strikes and the notorious ‘day of mourning’. However, over the last century the Australian federal government has generated policies which manage and restrained that of the Aboriginal people’s rights, citizenships and general protection. The Australian government policy that has had the most significant impact on indigenous Australians is the assimilation policy. The reasons behind this include the influences that the stolen generation has had on the indigenous Australians, their relegated rights and their entitlement to vote and the impact that the policy has had on the indigenous people of Australia.
For example, Thomas (cited in Lakic & Wrench 1994, p. 90) writes that he ‘cannot help commiserating’ with the misfortune of the Indigenous people. Repeatedly, he laments the treatment of Indigenous Australian’s, advocating for their protection from malevolent settlers bent on retribution (Lakic & Walker 1994). Similarly, Parker (cited in Lakic & Wrench 1994, p. 86) refers to the European colonist’s actions towards Indigenous people as ‘cruel and unjustifiable’. Parker (cited in Lakic & Wrench 1994, p. 86) admits surprise that Indigenous people do not respond with an equal degree of indiscriminate violence, implying it would been well within their right to do so. While Indigenous people did engage in raids on properties, armed resistance, guerrilla campaigns and acts of sorcery in their attempt to dissuade white occupation, they ‘fought in self-defence, killing only in retaliation’ (Hewitt cited in Medcalf 1995, p. 39). Alternately, European settlers are tarnished by the violent atrocities and numerous massacres the committed against Indigenous people in the name of colonisation. Medcalf (1995) is committed to telling the bloody and forgotten history of Australia and condemns of the inhumane actions of European settlers. He states that the slaughter of many innocent Indigenous people in the Northern Rivers ‘mirrored the brutality that accompanied white
Since the British settled in Australia, Indigenous Australians have had cultural conflict. The Europeans believed that Aboriginal people were lower than the settlers and that their culture was more primitive to the culture of the British settlers. An example of this is how the Aboriginal people had a very strong spiritual connection to the land. Land could not be owned by a single person but had to be looked after by all of the community. When British settlers saw that the land had no fences they took the land for themselves to be used for farming. Many Aboriginals were losing their land. It made it worse when the Aboriginal believed that to make it fair the Europeans shared their products made from the farm. The Aboriginals then took food from the farm without consulting the British which resulted in violent conflicts between the two. Over time the government began to give the Aboriginals more rights, although still not many. They were given a certain amount of land but were not allowed to leave without permission.
The stolen generations of Aboriginal children were taken away from their families by the government, churches and welfare bodies so they could be brought up in institutions or fostered out into white families with the hope that these children would be integrated into white society. Beginning in the 1830’s and ending in the early 1970’s, many children were taken from their families in an attempt to eradicate the Aboriginal race and culture. The Australian government’s policy and practice of removing the Aboriginal children from their families was violently enforced during that time period, unfortunately this official government policy was in effect until 1969. During my research it appears that the practice of mistreating Aboriginal