NEWS.com.au, Australia
March 24 2008
Stolen Generations listed as genocide
By Rosemary Sorensen and Ashleigh Wilson
March 24, 2008 03:20am
THE forced removal of children from Aboriginal families has been
included in an international compilation of genocide events, reviving
the controversy about the use of the term to describe the Stolen
Generations.
Paul Bartrop, who co-authored The Dictionary of Genocide with US
scholar Samuel Totten, has rejected the use of the word genocide to
describe Australian colonial history in general but says the use of
the term can be "sustained relatively easily" when describing the
Stolen Generations.
Dr Bartrop, who wrote the entry titled "Australia, Genocide in:",
said he used the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide, as cited by Ronald Wilson in his 1997
Bringing Them Home report, as the benchmark for the use of the term
genocide.
"It’s a very misunderstood word," Dr Bartrop said, "as it’s more than
just killing. If you use it as a slogan word, it may lose its power."
The entry contradicts a growing consensus among Australian academics
that Sir Ronald was wrong to describe the forced removals as
genocide.
Earlier this month, La Trobe University professor Robert Manne said
it was now "generally acknowledged" that the authors of the Bringing
Them Home report were wrong to argue that Australian authorities had
committed genocide by removing indigenous children from their
families.
Writing in the March edition of The Monthly, Professor Manne says
"assimilation has never been regarded in law as equivalent to
genocide".
"There is almost no one who would now support the way Bringing Them
Home arrived at the conclusion that Aboriginal child removal policies
involved the crime of genocide," Professor Manne writes.
Dr Bartrop said that while genocide was "absolutely" the correct word
in the case of the 20th-century Stolen Generations, it gets "tricky"
to prove that in the 19th century there was an "intent to destroy".
"The word is often abused," he said.
"We’ve seen the Dalai Lama refer to cultural genocide but that is a
misuse of the term."
His claims were criticised by conservative historian Keith
Windschuttle, who said that Dr Bartrop should not rely on the
Bringing Them Home report to describe the Stolen Generations as
genocide.
"It’s astonishing," Mr Windschuttle said yesterday.
"If it’s this easy (to describe the Stolen Generations as genocide),
then why has the commonwealth Government not used the word? The
reason is that the charge can’t be sustained."
Historian Inga Clendinnen was reluctant to comment without further
detail about Dr Bartrop’s claims, but said the term genocide rested
on the "question of intentionality".
"There’s not much doubt, with great murderous performances that were
typically called genocide, that they were deliberate and
intentional," she said. "Beyond that, it always gets very murky."
The dictionary, published in the US, sets out to "explain the history
and suffering of ethnic groups experiencing genocide throughout the
world".
It provides students and scholars with information about "people,
places, governments, agencies, documents, legal terms and all other
aspects of genocide".
Entries in the two-volume publication include Afghanistan Genocide,
Armenian Genocide, Mao Zedong, Hutu Power and Kim Il-sung.
Dr Bartrop’s entry states that the charge of genocide was "vehemently
rejected by many who had previously viewed genocide only from the
perspective of killing.
Others agreed that removals had taken place, but that the report was
unfair in labelling the policy as genocide in view of the fact that
those carrying it out were acting from good intentions".
"When we look at the Stolen Children, it’s unequivocal," said Dr
Bartrop, head of the History Department at Bialik College in
Melbourne.
"But there seems to be a strong view among Australians that we’re too
good for that, we’re all good blokes and we don’t do those things
here. People who think that way need to grow up and face facts."
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