Also filed here:
- Categories
- No categories
International law from conservative commentators
May 12, 2008 · Print This Article
Not sure if people saw this great post from Ben down in the feeds
Gerard Henderson goes all populist in his rant denying that past Australian Government policy and actions towards Indigenous Australians might ever have amounted to genocide. Because the “person on the street” understands genocide as mass murder, and because mass murder didn’t take place, therefore Australian Governments can’t possibly have committed genocide against Indigenous Australians.
He knows, of course, but glibly dismisses – “legalisms and academic debates aside” – that the real definition of genocide in international law is something quite different.
Genocide is the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, through acts including murder, inflicting life conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction of the group, preventing births within the group, and forcibly transferring children away from the group. continue reading over at Ben’s
Hi Age,
This is tripe from Henderson. Public opinion has nothing to do with truth, or definition. Just because the average person on the street thinks something doesn’t mean anything! Geez this sort of stuff makes me angry. There is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that genocide has been committed in this country; Henderson is trying to get around it by using “person on the street”. Terrible logic.
Anyway…sorry about that bit of rage there.
No feel free. I like a good rant.
That’s why Ben wrote it and I thought it needed some praxis air time
Did you follow the link? There is a couple of good comments.