What is genocide?
According to the Genocide 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, such as:
- 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;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
By this definition, genocide in Australia could look like, but is not limited to:
- Frontier Wars
- The Stolen Generations
- Aboriginal Child Removals
- Over-Incarceration of First Peoples
- Aboriginal Deaths in Custody
- Apartheid-like sanctions facing First Peoples such as the Northern Territory Emergency Response, income management, curfew laws
- Desecration of Country, including sacred birthing, cultural and custodial sites.
Submissions strengthen the push for this bill to be passed into legislation.
This inquiry is playing a vital part in Truth-Telling of this country’s history and can contribute to changing the understanding of this history.
Please feel free to reach out to others and share this information with those you feel would be able to make a submission.
Find out more:
The Inquiry: What is it and next steps