tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/massacres-12903/articles
Massacres – The Conversation
2024-02-22T19:19:08Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222262
2024-02-22T19:19:08Z
2024-02-22T19:19:08Z
Friday essay: neither a monster nor a saint … Sir Samuel Griffith, Queensland’s violent frontier and the rigours of truth-telling
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576652/original/file-20240220-18-hovvkz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C2000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation, Pexels, The State Library of Queensland/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>First Nations readers please be advised this article speaks of racially discriminating moments in history, including the distress and death of First Nations people.</em></p>
<p>Social historians – among whom I am happily one – are those utter nuisances of people who adamantly insist on reminding others of all the things they are trying so desperately to forget.</p>
<p>Australian historian Manning Clark, channelling Tolstoy, <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/speaking-out-of-turn-electronic-book-text">once compared them</a> to deaf people who continually keep answering questions that no-one is asking.</p>
<p>Before this new breed of professional troublemaker appeared in the 1960s, Australian History for the majority was a much simpler and more comforting affair. The stray bits of it I picked up at school in the 1950s told of a strictly peaceful, happy land, peppered with heroic pioneers, doughty diggers and colourful swaggies; and overflowing with sheep and sparkling golden nuggets.</p>
<p>Aboriginal peoples, if they were mentioned at all, were way off on the margins somewhere, throwing boomerangs, going walkabout and eating grubs and snakes. In the <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/2014575">most studied Australian history book of this era</a>, edited by Gordon Greenwood, First Nation Peoples literally disappear. They are not in the index, and we are even told by one contributor: </p>
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<p>The country was empty […] empty grazing country awaiting occupation.</p>
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<p>The principal shock here is not just that this was published without intervention but that no-one who reviewed it pulled anyone up for spreading this academic gas-lighting.</p>
<p>Many older readers can perhaps recall that balmy time, so reassuring for white Australians. I know it has never entirely left my consciousness. It was the only world about which we were “publicly instructed”. But it is a far distant place from the one where we are heading in this essay.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-more-ethical-histories-be-written-about-early-colonial-expeditions-a-new-project-seeks-to-do-just-that-221974">Can more ethical histories be written about early colonial expeditions? A new project seeks to do just that</a>
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<h2>Explanatory lodestars</h2>
<p>The present modish word for the seemingly recent realisation that the Australian story is not all cosy and blameless is <em>truth-telling</em>. In some quarters, this gets presented as a very sudden epiphany. Yet it has a long pedigree. Even while the tortuous frontier process was unfolding in the 19th century, there were always these brave, lone whistle-blowers valiantly attempting to get the truth out and being slammed and shunned for doing so.</p>
<p>With Federation in 1901 and its sense of ebullient nationalism, such voices were gradually stilled and abolished. But then, in the 1960s, with the global burgeoning of decolonisation, desegregation and the diminution of scientific racism following the Holocaust, such voices re-emerged. Even here, in distant, sunny Australia, a small number of us began clearing our throats. Truth-telling was cautiously back on the agenda.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-great-australian-silence-50-years-on-100737">Friday essay: the 'great Australian silence' 50 years on</a>
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<p>It is hard now to convey how much in the dark we then were on the subject of race. In 1965, I produced for my history honours thesis probably the first extended academic account of an Australian mainland frontier. Every day spent poring over official documents, private manuscripts and old newspapers was startlingly revelatory to me. Virtually everything I was discovering seemed to be so new and beyond the historical pale. It left me feeling exposed and nervous rather than confidently assertive.</p>
<p>At the same time, race relations historian Henry Reynolds was hearing for the first time about Australian frontier struggle, not from within his own land and culture, but as a young teacher, out of Tasmania, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/why-werent-we-told-9780140278422">listening in astonishment to an African public speaker in Hyde Park, London</a>.</p>
<p>So truth-telling stutters and meanders its unstable and episodic course through our past. It encounters the blank stare of denialism especially on subjects to which a tinge of shame is attached. And Queensland in particular, with arguably the most forbidding frontier experience and the most severe convict penal station, is a ripe candidate for such evasion.</p>
<p>In his recent volume, <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/truth-telling/">Truth-Telling. History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement</a>, Reynolds states:</p>
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<p>Truth-telling is now more important than ever. What has been a personal choice is now a national imperative […] Denialism is no longer a viable option. A wall of scholarship built by many hands over the last fifty years stands in the way.</p>
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<p>So, in building the case for “truth-telling”, Reynolds expands on its “critical importance”. It will “weave new stories and make old ones richer and more complex”. These involve the travails of those who became “victims of great wrong”. Complexity, he writes, will have to replace “simple sagas of heroic achievement”, even if this involves a degree of painful iconoclasm. It will likely produce controversy as “the coals of dormant culture wars are fanned back into life”, fundamental reassessments are made, “reputations are called into question” and “status is re-assigned”.</p>
<p>To this tall order of realigning the consensual interpretive framework, I would add, as a professional historian, that, in the process, we should not forget the often slippery and elusive nature of historical truth itself. For, as every working historian knows, historical accuracy is pursued via vigorous empirical attention to detail in extant, relevant documentation. Fact-finding and truth-seeking need to precede any stern truth-telling.</p>
<p>Dependable analysis also entails a careful awareness of the tensions discovered in texts – a difficult grafting process of measuring opposing knowledges. All this, we hope, will lead us closer to a clearer sense of accuracy, balance and probability in grasping the past.</p>
<p>As historians, we are thus more in the business of producing explanation than in issuing clarion calls for action, doling out blame or pursuing the singular advocacy of a pressing cause. We do know that the past’s “other countries” once had definite and ascertainable structures that both constrained and enabled human beliefs, actions and agency. So, we try to seek these out and explain them in the present. But we cannot re-enter and relive them, and thus fully know them.</p>
<p>“We can’t return. We can only look behind from where we came,” <a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/1317681-Joni-Mitchell-Ladies-Of-The-Canyon">as the song goes</a>. This involves caution, as our hindsight vision is necessarily blurred and shifting, as we speculate continuously upon this elusiveness.</p>
<p>History’s truths are never fixed, total and absolute, but remain in a degree of flux, as they get worried over by researchers, especially as new data and ways of seeing come to light. Thus, truth-telling should embody the caution that history’s truths are specifically contingent and incremental ones, always prone to adjustment. They are like explanatory lodestars, leading us along while keeping us out of the swamps of pure fantasy.</p>
<p>It seems helpful to conclude that such research and writing requires balance between a certain degree of commitment and a modicum of discretion. For even as we try to keep going along this road of attempting truth, any single-minded political crusade or victorious forward march should invite some intellectual circumspection, for the bases of historical truth are invariably constructed on quick or shifting sands.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-truth-telling-so-important-our-research-shows-meaningful-reconciliation-cannot-occur-without-it-197685">Why is truth-telling so important? Our research shows meaningful reconciliation cannot occur without it</a>
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<h2>Much to agree on</h2>
<p>With this in mind, let us focus once more on the 2021 volume of Reynolds’ Truth-Telling. My own copy’s text is heavily underscored. The margins are peppered with supportive ticks and asterisks and even the occasional “Good!”. Based upon decades of immersion in racial studies myself, I already know that Reynolds and I have much to agree upon.</p>
<p>We both independently began unfolding the dispossession/resistance model of frontier studies in the early 1970s. We have written on similar themes and reviewed each other’s published work, mostly positively, since that time. From the late 1990s, we occupied the same trench against the <a href="https://quadrant.org.au/">Quadrant</a> marauders throughout the farcical, media-driven <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/the-history-wars-paperback-softback">History Wars</a>.</p>
<p>Both bodies of our numerous writings have dealt with the ongoing partnership between excessive race violence and tight-lipped denial of it. Reynolds asks:</p>
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<p>[…] why did the country’s leading post-war historians not notice [frontier violence] at all? Was it oversight or deliberate evasion? How could they think that Australians had been remarkably slow to kill each other, that frontiersmen rarely had to go armed into the outback and [that] we had an inimitably peaceful history … ?</p>
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<p>In similar vein, <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/data/UQ_203563/DU120_G6E83_1999.pdf?Expires=1707198277&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJKNBJ4MJBJNC6NLQ&Signature=FERZMoHT24ScUpPhOicE%7EUrs7U2-VRYdHrjTn3XRpHEk-qrHQNCOj6pT7sioqAvkcjmK3ISMstpHghMCEDa6EizIsK-LuAYCENZBWwgJGskKbHYNyOvc9954UPGIfvbJXimFqGWRgI92mpXYU7tTb8HmFMuUBH8lcw5pIQFKzSVbb0VMod5quZzIYpa9CCnvtOL20hP0b-J6SfXhadbZM7cJeJcwwD-8VeL2ARTxqg1Vmw%7EESCXxSAlNZuxrQKzivDnqIqyuzlxCYttHh7TtsNZPZdYbxiPxwCAX0lB2SkiAP7iUnBCHQjT4%7ErBcj3iBttKCZa6orXyACAdEobtybg__">I wrote</a> in 1999 of finding a “glaring dissonance” between the startling documents I was reading and the published preoccupations of Australia’s premier historians such as Douglas Pike in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13724454-australia">The Quiet Continent</a> or <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ward-russel-braddock-29606">Russell Ward’s</a> outback of congenial mateship. </p>
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<p>It was all […] very much like ‘another country’.</p>
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<p>So, as I perused Truth-Telling, I was on board with almost everything Reynolds has to say. Especially between pages 184 and 191, where he favourably addresses the statistical accounting of frontier casualties compiled recently <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003015550-6/pale-death-around-footprints-springs-1-assessing-violent-mortality-queensland-frontier-state-private-exterminatory-practices-raymond-evans-robert-%C3%B8rsted-jensen">by Robert Ørsted-Jensen and myself</a>.</p>
<p>This work nullifies prior estimates suggested by Reynolds by a wide margin: that is, our tabulation of over 65,000 Aboriginal frontier mortalities in Queensland opposing Reynolds’ earlier guestimate of 20,000 dead, Australia-wide over a longer timeframe. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, he is good enough to write that our calculations:</p>
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<p>[…] have to be taken very seriously indeed. Once they are widely accepted as they should be, Australian history will never be the same again. It will no longer be possible to hide the bodies or skirt around the violence.</p>
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<p>So, one can no doubt appreciate how much I am enjoying this book. Even when the focus of blame for horrific slaughter in Queensland begins to descend rather exclusively onto the shoulders of Samuel Griffith, arguably Australia’s premier legal mind and pre-eminent statesman, I remain in interpretive accord, adding my approving marginalia to the text.</p>
<p>Allow me now to zero in more intimately upon Sir Samuel; as I need to explain the process by which my position on his degree of culpability for frontier violence began to change.</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/henry-reynolds-australia-was-founded-on-a-hypocrisy-that-haunts-us-to-this-day-101679">Henry Reynolds: Australia was founded on a hypocrisy that haunts us to this day</a>
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<h2>‘Hands stained with blood?’</h2>
<p>In August 2020, I had been asked by Justice Peter Applegarth to contribute to a <a href="https://www.sclqld.org.au/collections/explore-the-law/past-lectures/2020-selden-society-australia-lecture-program">group Webinar</a> at the Queensland Supreme Court on the <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/griffith-sir-samuel-walker-445">“great man”</a> (twice Queensland Premier, architect of the Australian Constitution and first Chief Justice of the High Court).</p>
<p>This invitation was based not only on my record as a historian but also because both Griffith and I were born in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. So, initially my talk was constructed as a bit of a romp, accompanying Griffith back to his hometown in April 1887, with “massed choirs”, a big brass band and a mock-Tudor castle.</p>
<p>Matters grew more serious when Ashley Hay, the then editor of Griffith Review, asked me to broaden that talk into a <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/griffiths-welsh-odyssey/">more encompassing essay</a> that eventually appeared in their Acts of Reckoning edition of 2022. In undertaking this, I began to think more comprehensively about Griffith in that 1880s era and the class and ethnic dimensions of both Wales and Queensland as colonial entities.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576428/original/file-20240219-21-42nfsl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576428/original/file-20240219-21-42nfsl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576428/original/file-20240219-21-42nfsl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576428/original/file-20240219-21-42nfsl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576428/original/file-20240219-21-42nfsl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576428/original/file-20240219-21-42nfsl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576428/original/file-20240219-21-42nfsl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576428/original/file-20240219-21-42nfsl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sir Samuel Griffith circa 1890.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Queensland_State_Archives_3064_Portrait_of_The_Honourable_Sir_Samuel_Walker_Griffith_Premier_of_Queensland_c_1890.png">Queensland State Archives/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Griffith did not emerge looking too splendidly from that original research foray. His 1888 election campaign had helped excite extreme anti-Chinese agitation, though not as vehemently as his successful opponent, Thomas McIlwraith. Several years later, as premier, he helped engineer a crushing of the great Shearers’ Strike of 1891. </p>
<p>Also in 1891, he had not acquitted himself well when ambushed by a Melbourne journalist on the matter of racial outrages in North Queensland.</p>
<p>Two Presbyterian scholars touring the North had returned with a damning report of race relations there. As stated by one of the investigators, Professor Rintoul, it “threw a ghastly light upon […] deeds of lust, reprisal and doom”.</p>
<p>Apparently caught unawares, Griffith had ducked and parried in a less than convincing manner by trying to claim that such yarns were more than 20 years old.</p>
<p>In a stinging and detailed reply letter, Rintoul rebuked Griffith – who, he said, was someone he had regarded in high “esteem” for his vital interest “in the cause of the kanaka and aborigines and of all oppressed people” – for the dismissive sarcasm of his response. He challenged Griffith to further public debate – but Griffith did not respond.</p>
<p>So, I thought: Here we have Rintoul’s contemporary broadside of 1891 alongside Reynolds’ 2021 charges that Griffith must be “guilty of what, after 1945, came to be known as crimes against humanity”.</p>
<p>Furthermore, in the same 2022 issue of Griffith Review that contained my essay, Reynolds <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/on-the-queensland-frontier/">had sharpened his attack</a> by declaring rhetorically that Sir Samuel’s “neatly manicured lawyers’ hands were deeply stained with the blood of murdered men, women and children”.</p>
<p>This set me wondering … There must be actual evidence in the primary sources that would enhance this damning case, rendering it not only supportable but probably cementing it. As a troublesome social historian, my bloodhound instincts for deeper empirical research were now aroused. Just how guilty was Griffith among his contemporaries of frontier violence? What body of imprecating evidence could be amassed?</p>
<p>At this point, I felt particularly scathing towards something Griffith had said to the Melbourne Daily Telegraph reporter in January 1891. When challenged over what was he “doing about the blacks”, he had shot back: “What I should be doing”, quickly adding “at all events, few had taken more interest in the welfare of the native population than I have”.</p>
<p>Influenced by Rintoul and Reynolds, I mentally scoffed at this defensive self-assessment. I was intent on finding all the historical data that would nail him. But, as indicated above, historical truth can be shifting and slippery. It does not always take you where you expect it should go.</p>
<p>Truth-telling requires careful truth-finding to precede it. And for such truth-seeking to work, the evidence should lead the way, with the researcher in train – not yet quite knowing the outcome. For one should not start research certain of a destination – one ideally begins in ignorance and curiosity. </p>
<p>If the opposite is the case, one is simply satisfying a confirmation bias – the contrived endorsement of a preconception.</p>
<h2>An absence</h2>
<p>I began the research odyssey conventionally enough, with a scan of all the secondary Queensland frontier histories for any evidence of Griffith as pre-eminent culprit. To my surprise, he was absent from virtually all the indexes. </p>
<p>It reminded me of Greenwood’s volume and the invisible Aborigines. Not only did Griffith receive no condemnatory mentions – but he also largely received no mentions at all. In the published literature, he didn’t appear to play much of a role.</p>
<p>Throughout my own published writings on Aboriginal dispossession, Griffith does not figure until 2022. And in the most comprehensive recent overviews on frontier violence by <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Timothy-Bottoms-Conspiracy-of-Silence-9781743313824">Timothy Bottoms</a>, <a href="https://boolarongpress.com.au/product/queenslands-frontier-wars/">Jack Drake</a> and <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/3288918">Tony Roberts</a>, who together give the reader the story in startling and comprehensive detail (over 1,100 pages of text) they find no need to provide him with a single mention. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576429/original/file-20240219-18-khsyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576429/original/file-20240219-18-khsyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576429/original/file-20240219-18-khsyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576429/original/file-20240219-18-khsyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576429/original/file-20240219-18-khsyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576429/original/file-20240219-18-khsyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576429/original/file-20240219-18-khsyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576429/original/file-20240219-18-khsyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Allen & Unwin</span></span>
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<p>Since my essay was written, David Marr’s massive biographical journey, Killing for Country and Wal Walker’s richly documented study of pastoral occupation, <a href="https://www.squattersgrab.com.au/">The Squatters’ Grab</a> similarly have nothing to say about Griffith either.</p>
<p>This also applies to Reynolds’ own voluminous frontier work. In over a score of texts produced across many decades, Griffith is mentioned just once, uttering a <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/1791303">single enigmatic sentence</a> he will repeat in Truth-Telling, while being confusingly cast as a “young Brisbane lawyer” in 1880. It is the only time Griffith receives a speaking part in his recent, general indictment.</p>
<p>So … curiouser and curiouser, I thought … </p>
<p>Especially as the three texts that do give some significant mentions to Griffith and the frontier tend to cast him in a positive rather than a negative light. These volumes are Noel Loos’ highly referenced <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/28747">Invasion and Resistance</a>, Gordon Reid’s expansive <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/3584281">That Unhappy Race</a> and Robert Ørsted-Jensen’s closely argued <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/5778269">Frontier History Revisited</a>. </p>
<p>Most recently, in 2023, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1031461X.2023.2208585">historians Mark Finnane and Jonathan Richards have contributed more case studies</a>, demonstrating Griffith’s belief that “violence against Aboriginal British subjects was not acceptable and should be dealt with [with] severity”.</p>
<p>By all these researchers, he is shown as intent on pursuing progressive reform and legal balance in face of a colonial society, mainly calling for “blood and yet more blood” – a culture insisting furiously that whites should never be punished for harming or killing non-whites. For this was the nature of the socio-cultural order that anyone considering mitigative reform was up against.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-cant-argue-away-the-shame-frontier-violence-and-family-history-converge-in-david-marrs-harrowing-and-important-new-book-215050">'I can't argue away the shame': frontier violence and family history converge in David Marr's harrowing and important new book</a>
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<h2>The documentary records</h2>
<p>So, did Griffith pursue frontier reform? Did he rather plot and perpetuate “crimes against humanity” – or even, as lawyer Tony McAvoy, <a href="https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/the-palgrave-handbook-on-rethinking-colonial-commemorations">has recently claimed</a>, “war crimes”? – or, at best, did he do nothing to stop them? The hard data, however, was now starting to pull me in the opposite direction, especially as the bumpy research ride moved up a gear <a href="https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/reason-and-reckoning-provocations-and-conversations-about-re-imag">into the documentary records</a>.</p>
<p>The logical starting point here were the primary sources of the Colonial Secretary’s Office, for this mega-department was directly responsible for the operations of the Queensland Native Police – the main frontier destroyers. </p>
<p>From 1859 until 1897, there were 18 local politicians ostensibly running the Native Police force as Colonial Secretaries across 22 terms of office. A dozen – or two-thirds – of these men were also leading pastoralists in whose immediate economic interests the force operated.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-mapping-project-shows-how-extensive-frontier-violence-was-in-queensland-this-is-why-truth-telling-matters-216726">Our mapping project shows how extensive frontier violence was in Queensland. This is why truth-telling matters</a>
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<p>Serving as Colonial Secretary for around two years and four months between November 1883 and April 1886, Griffith had the sixth longest incumbency in the role. Prior to this, the two most enduring Colonial Secretaries, Robert Herbert and Arthur Palmer, had overseen 15 years’ service, from the early 1860s to the early 1880s, when racial violence was at its height. They both had large squatting interests and were <a href="https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/1890325/Samuel-Griffith-Essay-Dec2024.pdf">the force’s greatest apologists</a>.</p>
<p>Griffith held the office when the frontier was radically contracting into the far northern Cape and the outlying lands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. These remote places were both scenes of acutely continuing frontier violence; and Griffith, while Colonial Secretary, officially oversaw all of this – at least nominally.</p>
<p>I suggest “nominally” here, for, as archaeologist and historian Michael Slack points out, regarding the Gulf Country, it was local pastoralists, acting privately, then more formally as Justices of the Peace, who “influenced and ultimately controlled the agenda” of the distant Native Police rather than “a centralised government” in faraway Brisbane. As he argues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The vast distance separating Western Burke and the […] government in Brisbane, although immense in terms of physical distance, was even greater in terms of authority […] the frontier territory was run on a largely autonomous basis, firstly by the pastoralists and then by their own bureaucratic constructions [ie the JPs, meting out racial ‘justice’]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The same, more or less, might be said of far Cape York. As Queensland reached its fullest dimensions by the 1880s – around two-thirds the size of Europe – its unwieldy size made it increasingly difficult to oversee, service and control administratively. A tendency towards regional excess in <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/3796249">the process of land seizure prevailed</a>.</p>
<p>Yet, if we closed off the analysis at this point, we leave Griffith, as Colonial Secretary, politically responsible for frontier warfare during mainly 1884 and 1885. Reynolds <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56883944">writes that</a> while in office he did “little” or “nothing” to assuage the bloodshed and “took no action to protect Aboriginal rights […]”</p>
<p>This led me to ask: Did he really do “nothing”? Or if, rather, he only did “little”, what exactly does “little” mean? Is this to be seen in hindsight, employing modern expectations and looking back with judgmental frowns … Or is “little” to be weighed in the context of his time and place – in comparison and contrast with his contemporary political officeholders? How does one therefore quantify “little” within its immediate historical circumstances?</p>
<h2>‘Altogether averse to the Native Police’</h2>
<p>So, I started examining Griffith’s procedures in that office as forensically as the records would allow. The results continued to surprise me, as they may now surprise you. The specifics of this are presented in some detail in <a href="https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/1890325/Samuel-Griffith-Essay-Dec2024.pdf">my recent pamphlet, Samuel Griffith and Queensland’s “War of Extermination”</a>. I shall merely summarise them here. </p>
<p>Basically, contingent with Griffith’s considerable raft of reforms over the oppressive Melanesian labour trade in the 1880s, he was attempting to forward local remedies in domestic “native policy”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576643/original/file-20240220-27-e33uox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576643/original/file-20240220-27-e33uox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576643/original/file-20240220-27-e33uox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576643/original/file-20240220-27-e33uox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576643/original/file-20240220-27-e33uox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576643/original/file-20240220-27-e33uox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576643/original/file-20240220-27-e33uox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576643/original/file-20240220-27-e33uox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kanaka workers photographed on a sugarcane plantation with the overseer at the back of the group. ca. 1890. Cairns.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbirding#/media/File:Groupe_de_Kanakas_dans_une_exploitation_de_canne_%C3%A0_sucre_du_Queensland.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-slave-state-how-blackbirding-in-colonial-australia-created-a-legacy-of-racism-187782">Friday essay: a slave state - how blackbirding in colonial Australia created a legacy of racism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This begins soon after he became Colonial Secretary in late 1883 with moves to prosecute individual white employers of Aboriginal labour in the shameful frontier maritime industries. </p>
<p>This was followed in July 1884 with “the first attempt” to introduce protective legislation for Aboriginal workers, then exploited as quasi-slaves – The Native Labourers Protection Act. Though passed into law, the Bill was <a href="https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/1890325/Samuel-Griffith-Essay-Dec2024.pdf">emasculated by the pastoral and planter lobby</a> in the Legislative Council.</p>
<p>Concurrently, The Oaths Act Amendment Act was forwarded, allowing First Nation peoples, for virtually the first time, the right to present their evidence in a colonial court of law. Queensland was the last Australian colony to concede this; and Griffith here completed a process he had set in train while Attorney General in 1876. This reduced Aboriginal people’s vulnerability at law, though it did not, of course, obliterate it.</p>
<p>Then, following a much-publicised massacre of fringe-dwelling Aborigines at Irvinebank, inland from Herberton, in October 1884, Griffith began tentative moves against the existing Native Police system. Murder trials were instituted against the white commanding officer, Sub-Inspector William Nichols and the seven implicated Aboriginal troopers.</p>
<p>To Griffith’s disappointment and anger, the vagaries of local white “justice” thwarted the initiative. As a prosecuting attorney, however, he was by now used to this outcome. While Attorney General in the 1870’s, he had unsuccessfully tried to pursue four other cases of serious criminal intent against Native Police officers. He was the first such Queensland official to attempt this. </p>
<p>Such forays in 1875-76 and 1884 were the only efforts to bring a balanced sense of justice to bear upon the Native Police. As a result, officers and troopers were dismissed, though not convicted.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-unearthing-queenslands-native-police-camps-gives-us-a-window-onto-colonial-violence-100814">How unearthing Queensland's 'native police' camps gives us a window onto colonial violence</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Following the failed Irvinebank trials of October-November 1884, Griffith terminated the responsible Native Police camp (at – excuse the name – Nigger Creek), replacing it with a conventional police station. This led on, during 1885, to a new policy, developed by Griffith in coordination with his Police Commissioner: a measured implementation of what was termed “complete substitution”.</p>
<p>It would have been tactically fatal to eliminate the Native Police in one fell swoop. Several years earlier, while in Opposition in 1880, Griffith had played a leading role – alongside John Douglas, the Parliamentary Opposition Leader – in pushing for a Royal Commission into the force. This had failed in Parliament on the votes by a considerable margin. In 1885, the outcry and backlash against sudden termination would probably have outshouted the furore in 1884 when Griffith tried to have two convicted white murderers executed for killing Pacific Islanders.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, by mid-1885, Griffith was asserting, both privately and publicly, that he was “altogether averse to the Native Police” and telling Parliament he wanted “to abolish [them] […] altogether”. As I acknowledge <a href="https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/1890325/Samuel-Griffith-Essay-Dec2024.pdf">in my essay</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is crucial to recognise that […] Griffith was not simply uttering vague phrases, regretting frontier behaviour without any accompanying action. Reynolds is simply mistaken on this. Being tactically astute is not the same as doing [“little” or] “nothing”. Given the clearly exterminatory cast of much of Queensland society […] it would have been politically futile and probably suicidal to have faced colonial electors with the force’s sudden, immediate abolition.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576431/original/file-20240219-16-s9jkjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576431/original/file-20240219-16-s9jkjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576431/original/file-20240219-16-s9jkjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576431/original/file-20240219-16-s9jkjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576431/original/file-20240219-16-s9jkjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576431/original/file-20240219-16-s9jkjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576431/original/file-20240219-16-s9jkjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576431/original/file-20240219-16-s9jkjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drawing by Aboriginal boy Oscar of Native Police operation circa 1897 near Camooweal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscarnativepolice.jpg">National Library of Australia/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So, between them, Griffith and Police Commissioner David Seymour advanced a more gradual policy. This envisaged that by replacing Native Police encampments with conventional police stations and substituting the illegal, quasi-military armed white officer/native trooper detachments with regular police sergeants, senior constables and one or two unarmed Aboriginal trackers, the original force could be progressively phased out. The process began at Irvinebank, Watsonville and Herberton during 1885.</p>
<p>By the end of the 1880s, there had been around a 65% reduction in Native Police detachments, replaced by some 19 regular bush police stations over much of the North. As historian, Noel Loos observes, Commissioner Seymour, “with Griffith’s instructions and no alternatives” carried the policy of gradualism forward, despite protests from local whites.</p>
<p>In late September 1885, Griffith told Parliament:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The practice of black police making raids through the country as in times past would not be allowed any longer […] It would be intended to assimilate the system as nearly as possible to that of the white police.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To my reading, this is clear evidence of significant policy change. Though Griffith did not succeed in abolishing the force outright, neither did anyone else. It simply faded away by gradual attrition and the frayed endings of the long frontier process. The last camp at Coen was not terminated until 1929.</p>
<p>Furthermore, from around 1883 (sometimes due to local initiatives) ration distribution centres were slowly established, often adjacent to some of the new police stations. The authorities were now observing that many Aboriginal raids were motivated by acute tribal starvation. So, ration stations, where bullocks were killed for meat, and tea, flour, tobacco and sugar sometimes provided, were opened first at Thornborough, Union Camp, Mitchell River, Northcote and Atherton.</p>
<p>Simultaneously, the Griffith regime began encouraging missionary enterprise from 1885 across Cape York, first by Lutherans and later by Presbyterians and Anglicans. These provided sanctuary against frontier excesses and doubtlessly saved lives. As historian, Jasper Ludewig concludes, it was the Griffith ministry:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] which gazetted Aboriginal reserves and provided support for missionary measures, including […] access, cash subsidies, rations and limited building supplies. The State’s administration of missionary work fell to the Colonial Secretary’s Department, which received and processed all […] correspondence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Within several years, he finds, “Christian missions were fast becoming the solution of choice”. By Federation, “close to thirty mission stations had been opened throughout Cape York and the Torres Strait”.</p>
<h2>On the side of reform</h2>
<p>In sum, what does this demonstrate? It hardly seems to equate with the actions of a leader, singled out from the rest, as pre-eminently guilty of “crimes against humanity” – his hands awash with blood. “Is any other conclusion possible?” Truth-Telling rhetorically asks. Well yes, I think there is.</p>
<p>Indeed, we might cautiously conclude that this tranche of changes represents unique and piecemeal, though progressive and expanding, policy measures. The primary research task discloses:</p>
<ul>
<li>A radical attrition of Native Police services</li>
<li>Implementation of normalised policing</li>
<li>Novel introduction of Aboriginal court testimony</li>
<li>An attempted initiative to rein in the frontier “black-birding” of Aboriginal workers</li>
<li>Prosecution of white frontier crimes inflicted on First Nation peoples</li>
<li>The burgeoning of missionary enterprise across the North</li>
</ul>
<p>So deeper primary investigation, to my increasing surprise, had altered my initial conceptualisation. Official efforts from 1883-86 add up to more than rhetorical virtue-signalling. They mark a degree of reformation from <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/4058607">outright exterminatory policies</a> employing Snider and Martini-Henry rifles. Has a well-oiled blame crusade simply trampled over all this in a rush towards a sensational, disparaging verdict?</p>
<p>However bad things were in this era – and they were definitely atrocious – liability cannot be laid on any one individual’s shoulders, whomever he may be. Griffith’s reform attempts confronted an implacable socio-cultural order in Northern and Western Queensland – and the challenge often outstripped the response. </p>
<p>A travelling press reporter there in 1880 found one colonist after another, including “highly educated persons […] openly professing the doctrine of extermination”. They look upon “any talk of humanity [or] philanthropy”, he wrote, “as the mere sentimental language of those who do not know what it is to live” there.</p>
<p>The remainder of Queensland society was not much different. A former Minister of Justice, John Malbon Thompson despairingly told Scottish Catholic missionary, Duncan McNab that year that, “Nineteen-twentieths of the population care nothing about [the Blacks] and the other twentieth regard them as a nuisance to be got rid of”.</p>
<p>Outspoken frontier journalist, Carl Feilberg concurrently agreed that while a certain minority “acted with barbarity”, the vast majority did nothing, as a small minority actively protested.</p>
<p>That majority of enablers were as guilty as the frontier killers, Feilberg reasoned: “[They] condone and share the crime”.</p>
<h2>A culture of genocidal intent</h2>
<p>What we observe here is a culture of genocidal intent and anyone hoping to confront it was certainly going to have his hands full. Frontier reform was never mentioned at election time – it was a political minefield. So, Queensland electorates had to be slowly cajoled into accepting any redemptive moves. Reform attempts needed to proceed with extreme caution, in an incremental and almost unobserved fashion.</p>
<p>Thus, positive initiatives by Griffith, during his relatively short tenure in the key office of Colonial Secretary, were arguably <em>bold</em> ones in the context of their time and place:</p>
<p>What modern hindsight may condemn as doing “little” or “nothing” may equally be conceived as doing rather <em>much</em> within what was effectively operating as a genocidal culture, where widespread extra-judicial killing was a permissible norm.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-killed-by-natives-the-stories-and-violent-reprisals-behind-some-of-australias-settler-memorials-198981">Friday essay: 'killed by Natives'. The stories – and violent reprisals – behind some of Australia's settler memorials</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>So, by this point, I had dramatically flipped interpretively and was now asking: Was it in any way fair or reasonable to single out Griffith as principal miscreant and hold him – perhaps due to his enviable accomplishments and gifted, tall poppy status – as a scapegoat, made accountable for the crimes and excesses of an entire society, and thereby isolated for blame?</p>
<p>As Charlie Campbell states in his study, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/12538648">Scapegoat. A History of Blaming Others</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The public is most easily appeased by the creation of a scapegoat. As always, the more serious the crisis, the more important the fall guy […] The urge to blame is sometimes incited in us […] The notion of collective responsibility is one that we prefer not to engage with […]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, “collective responsibility” is the much harder pill to swallow. Pointing the finger at Griffith, Reynolds, in Truth-Telling declares:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He did little to stop the killing. How then should history remember him? Will his high reputation survive the rigours of truth-telling? Perhaps, more to the point, should it survive?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet rigorous truth-seeking shows us that among almost a score of Colonial Secretaries and a dozen or so attorney generals, Griffith appears to be the only one ever attempting anything practically mitigative while holding office. </p>
<p>While I had originally scoffed at Griffith’s defensive claim in 1891 that few had “taken more interest in the welfare of the native population” than himself, I was now beginning to realise he was probably right. He had done more on the side of reform. It is not, of course, a broad claim to make, given that virtually all his Queensland political and legal contemporaries had either done nothing positive for Aboriginal welfare or made the situation worse.</p>
<h2>Frontier perpetrators</h2>
<p>Griffith appears alone among those directly responsible for the Native Police as well as all those overseeing the law in attempting anything even mildly reformative in the face of chronic frontier ruination and disorder – as well as the widespread public approval of it. </p>
<p>So, must he be singled out as some pre-eminent culprit, allegedly with “blood on his hands” for perpetuating “crimes against humanity” by doing so “little”? Is it helpful to trash a high-level historical reputation in this way in order to watch how spectacularly and far a tall “fall guy” might fall?</p>
<p>Feilberg wrote in 1880 that it was Queensland’s hands, in general, that were “foully bestrained [sic] with blood” – and it is clear there was blood on so many hands in the colony. Over many decades it had been a virtual free-for-all, with no effective legal redress. </p>
<p>A register of the known names of frontier perpetrators, and those in politics and law who had abetted them, as well as all those in whose direct economic interest the brutality and killing had occurred, would be an extremely long one.</p>
<p>There are many such names. Here are some thumb-nail sketches of just a few who might precede Griffith in any compilation of indictments:</p>
<p><strong>William Forster</strong>, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/forster-william-3553">Premier of New South Wales in 1859</a> who bequeathed the Native Police to the new colony. Historian, Wal Walker typifies him as “a most […] vindictive hater of Indigenous Australians”. </p>
<p>As a squatter in the Burnett district from 1848, he had taken up 64,000 acres of Aboriginal lands. In 1849 and 1850, he led reprisal raids against Taribiland and Gurang peoples near Bingara and at Paddy’s Island, heading settler armies of up to 100 mounted whites, allegedly killing hundreds of Aboriginal men, women and children.</p>
<p><strong>George Bowen</strong>, Queensland’s first Governor, ignoring official instructions that Aborigines were British subjects, under protection of the Crown, while <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/the-secret-war-a-true-history-of-queenslands-native-police">re-defining his official role</a> as extending “border warfare […] carried out under some control on the part of the government” against “hostile savages’ as his proud "contribution towards the general defence of the Empire”.</p>
<p><strong>Robert Herbert</strong>: The first and longest continually serving Colonial Secretary, known as the Native Police’s staunchest friend. He wrote of Aborigines officially as “criminals”, “cannibals” and “very dangerous savages, deficient in intellect”. </p>
<p>He looked forward to their inevitable extinction. He used Native Police to secure Gugu Badhun territory with violence for his investment syndicate, seizing these lands in the Valley of Lagoons, inland from Cardwell.</p>
<p><strong>David Seymour</strong>: Police Commissioner for 32 years across 16 colonial governments, directly supervising the Native Police and suppressing evidence of their massacres, as he advanced his substantial financial speculations in gold and tin mining, pastoral landholding and timber-getting across the colony.</p>
<p><strong>Robert Ramsey MacKenzie</strong>: Premier and Colonial Secretary in 1866-67. Established a white-washing enquiry in the Native Police while Treasurer in 1861, stacking the board with squatters holding over 3.5 million acres of Aboriginal lands. Himself a mega-pastoralist, leasing 52 runs – later made a baronet. </p>
<p>Before entering the northern regions in 1840, he was involved, along with his brother, in a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/155840417">mass poisoning</a> of Gringai people at Wattenbahk Station, north-west of Newcastle.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576439/original/file-20240219-26-4gxcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576439/original/file-20240219-26-4gxcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576439/original/file-20240219-26-4gxcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576439/original/file-20240219-26-4gxcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576439/original/file-20240219-26-4gxcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576439/original/file-20240219-26-4gxcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576439/original/file-20240219-26-4gxcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576439/original/file-20240219-26-4gxcmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Boyd Morehead in 1888.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=Boyd+Morehead+&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Boyd Morehead</strong>: <a href="https://adb.anu.edu/biography/morehead-boyd-dunlop-4240/text6845;">Colonial Secretary, 1888 to 1890</a>. His family virtually ran the Scottish Australian investment Company, one of the largest speculators in Queensland pastoral holdings. </p>
<p>He stated in Parliament in 1880 that: “If there were no Aboriginals it would be a very good thing”. “There was not a member in the House”, he claimed, “who did not feel they had to be got out of the way”. This “wretched, mean race […] had to go and go they must […] They mainly got only what they richly deserved”.</p>
<p><strong>Anderson Dawson</strong>: Queensland leader of the short-lived first Labour Government in the world in 1899. He boasted to the Brisbane Worker, as part of his CV as a sterling white man, that in 1886 at the Kimberley gold-rush, he had played his part in what the paper termed a “nigger massacre”. </p>
<p>Historical research claims between 40 and 100 Kitja people were killed. Dawson subsequently became Minister of Defence in the first Federal Labor Government in 1904.</p>
<h2>Beyond individual blame</h2>
<p>I could continue with this listing, but this is probably enough to make the point. I think it is true to say that most readers would not have even heard many of these names before – yet Griffith, the outstanding historical personage, is well known – a big scalp, so to speak, and thus readily targeted.</p>
<p>Like him, however, most of these people have streets, suburbs, towns, districts, electorates, rivers or mountain ranges named after them. Unlike Griffith, though, most of them held wide-scale pastoral interests – interests that the Native Police were defending over extended time-frames against very determined Aboriginal resistance.</p>
<p>So, it would seem that a class/communal explanation for the remorseless dispossession might be a better way to determine causation, motivation and responsibility – in short, a pursuit of a systems analysis of colonialism as a more constructive way of grasping the fundamentals of this history. This can establish the driving rationale and structural underpinnings of occupation, rather than pursuing a singular crusade of individual blame for the manifest theft and violence.</p>
<p>This explanation is at first class-based because it is clearly a dominant minority class sector of, predominantly, pastoralists – but also plantation and mine owners – who were the principal land-takers, dependent initially on Native Police sorties and violent raids by their employees to secure the purloined landed wealth.</p>
<p>Using the excellent compilation work of the late Queensland historian, Bill Thorpe, we find there were over 3000 pastoral run-holders in 1876, contracting to little more than 1000 by Federation. These represented only 1.8% of the colonial or migrant population in the 1870s, down to only 0.2% by the 1900s.</p>
<p>But this tiny sector accounted for most of the privately held landholding in Queensland. Furthermore, in the latter stages, it was mostly foreign owned by corporations and banks operating outside of the colony and State.</p>
<p>These people and organisations – often also at centres of political power – were the direct beneficiaries of profit from the captured lands. The various genocidal processes adopted, publicly and privately, to achieve this were in such people’s immediate material interests.</p>
<p>Communally, most of the white colonial population cooperated, in one way or another, with the seizure and displacement process; and a minority of frontier actors took a leading part in inflicting and perpetuating it, thinking they were “advancing civilization” or “extending the margins of Empire” in so doing. Thus, we might conclude, the colonial takeover was class-based in its ultimate economic interest and communally driven in its comprehensive, destructive thrust.</p>
<p>As David Marr puts it in his recent <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/155840417">Killing for Country</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Australia was fought for in an endless war of little cruel battles […] Nowhere would the occupation […] prove bloodier than here [in Queensland] and no instrument of state [was] as culpable as the Native Police. Slaughter was bricked into the foundations of Queensland.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In mid-1880, a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald, travelling around North Queensland, wrote these prophetic words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Those who consent to such things and those who approve of them must look well as to how they will stand in future times with posterity, when the early history of this country comes to be written.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576641/original/file-20240220-30-p3ks18.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Killing for Country cover." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576641/original/file-20240220-30-p3ks18.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576641/original/file-20240220-30-p3ks18.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576641/original/file-20240220-30-p3ks18.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576641/original/file-20240220-30-p3ks18.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576641/original/file-20240220-30-p3ks18.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576641/original/file-20240220-30-p3ks18.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576641/original/file-20240220-30-p3ks18.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Goodreads</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>We people here and now are that “posterity” – and it is imperative that any truth-telling we engage in should be well-targeted, balanced and comprehensive. Truth-telling, as Reynolds advises us, is “complex” – and with that I would agree.</p>
<p>Yet my research indicates that Samuel Griffith did not “consent to such things” nor “approve of them”, although he is neither the untarnished hero of this story nor its exceptional villain. And he was not, as Reynolds’ accounts claim, “especially culpable”. Available primary evidence does not appear to bear this out. “That is”, as John Lennon once famously sang, “I think I disagree”.</p>
<p>Griffith is part of and party to – among so many others – the British Imperial/colonial venture that created, for good or ill, present-day Queensland society. As a socio-economic formation and a culture, we have been very slow to accept how utterly that land-taking venture was steeped in bloodshed – and our collective responsibility, historically speaking, for this. </p>
<p>Yet, is it not ironic that the lone public figure who apparently attempted, however inadequately, to challenge the mayhem should now be freighted with the principal blame for it?</p>
<p>Griffith was neither a monster nor a saint. In determining his specific role, it is probably best not to be too certain in mounting clamorous, angry calls for redress, bearing in mind that truth-telling, where history is concerned, can be multi-layered, elusively structured, endlessly surprising and perhaps at times chimerical.</p>
<p>For, even after the rigorous application of exhaustive research, history remains mercurial and subject to change – within reach without falling into one’s final definitive grasp. The “rigours of truth-telling” warn us never to be too sure of the outcome.</p>
<p><em>This article is an edited version of a lecture given last night to the Selden Society for the Supreme Court of Queensland and Griffith University.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222262/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raymond Evans has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>
Many argue Samuel Griffith, twice Queensland premier and our first chief justice, is guilty of colonial war crimes. Raymond Evans searched for the evidence to nail him but found a different story.
Raymond Evans, Adjunct Professor, Griffith University, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197685
2023-09-07T04:45:50Z
2023-09-07T04:45:50Z
Why is truth-telling so important? Our research shows meaningful reconciliation cannot occur without it
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542733/original/file-20230815-29-tity3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C4%2C613%2C409&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Invasion Day Reflection and smoking ceremony on parliament steps, Melbourne.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=Invasion+day+2022&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article mentions ongoing colonial violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and contains references that feature antiquated language.</em></p>
<p>Truth-telling is a key demand in the <a href="https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/">Uluru Statement</a> and is seen as a vital step for both the Voice to Parliament and a Treaty. However, there has been <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-12/voice-to-parliament-language-barrier-hear-the-same-truth/101956684">ongoing debate</a> as to whether historical injustices against First Nations peoples need to be addressed today.</p>
<p>Wiradjuri and Wailwan lawyer Teela Reid <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/2020-year-of-reckoning/">posed a question</a> in a 2020 essay, is Australia ready to Gari Yala (speak truth) and reckon with its past? </p>
<p>We recently conducted a <a href="https://www.reconciliation.org.au/publication/recognising-community-truth-telling/">study</a> to investigate this question by looking at First Nations community truth-telling practices. Our study found these communities have shown significant leadership in truth-telling, often without resources or support. Importantly, they have invited non-Indigenous people to also take part in truth-telling.</p>
<p>Truth-telling can take the form of memorial and commemorative events, repatriation of remains and cultural artefacts, the renaming of places, and the creation of public artworks and healing sites. A recent example is the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s truth-telling commission. Yoorrook released the truth-telling <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/interactive/hub/media/tearout-excerpt/20323/Yoorrook-for-Justice-Report-summary-w-foreword-(1).pdf">report</a> this week, providing 46 recommendations for reforms into Victoria’s justice and child protection systems.</p>
<p>We found when non-Indigenous people participated in truth-telling with First Nations communities, it helped build a deeper shared understanding of the past and the achievements of First Nations peoples. This is why truth-telling is a collective social responsibility and non-Indigenous Australians are crucial participants.</p>
<p>But there is still much work to do. Many important historical events and First Nations achievements remain largely unrecognised. Sustained funding and support and the recognition of Australia’s difficult historical truths are crucial.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/first-nations-people-have-made-a-plea-for-truth-telling-by-reckoning-with-its-past-australia-can-finally-help-improve-our-future-202137">First Nations people have made a plea for 'truth-telling'. By reckoning with its past, Australia can finally help improve our future</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Our research findings</h2>
<p>Our research focused on documenting community truth-telling that reclaimed First Nations sovereignty and self-determination, as well as recognising colonial violence. We did in-depth investigations through 25 case studies, including ten in which we held yarning interviews with community organisers. These interviews helped shed new light on rich and diverse ways to engage with the truths of colonial history. </p>
<p>In the MacArthur region of New South Wales, reconciliation group <a href="https://wingamyamly.com/">Winga Myamly</a> worked to make sure the <a href="https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/appin_massacre">1816 Appin massacre</a> on Dharawal Country is recognised and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-17/200-years-since-aboriginal-massacre-outside-sydney-appin/7331502">commemorated annually</a>. </p>
<p>In the massacre, at least 14 <a href="https://australian.museum/learn/first-nations/unsettled/fighting-wars/appin-massacre/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwib2mBhDWARIsAPZUn_kqp2NWnY_XL4e7JekAd2wt2T6sTJulDelYN3p1-4ZHpS2iJ37nlWgaAg3PEALw_wcB">(likely more)</a> Aboriginal men, women and children were killed by members of a British Army regiment. The regiment chased the group to nearby cliffs at Cataract Gorge where many jumped to their deaths.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/01/when-glenda-met-sandy-descendants-of-massacre-survivor-and-soldier-unite-in-grief">2019 commemoration</a> brought together Dharawal Elder Aunty Glenda Chalker, a descendent of Giribunger, one of the survivors of the massacre, and Sandy Hamilton, descended from Stephen Partridge, who served with the regiment that carried out the attack. </p>
<p>In Portland, Victoria, a towering gum leaf sculpture, <a href="https://natureglenelg.org.au/from-mountain-to-sea-the-kang-o-meerteek-project-celebrates-the-power-of-community-art-history-and-story-telling/">Mayapa Weeyn</a> (meaning “make fire”) was erected near the site of the <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2699521">Convincing Ground massacre</a>. This is where between 20 and 200 members of the Kilcarer Gunditj clan were killed by British whalers. </p>
<p>The sculpture recognises all 59 Gunditjmara clans, many of whom were killed during the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/how-the-fighting-gunditjmara-used-country-to-wage-a-15-year-war-of-resistance/1ghh36cu1">Eumeralla Wars</a> that followed the Convincing Ground massacre. Gunditjmara Elder Walter Saunders, who designed the sculpture, spent two years building it and talking with local residents in an informal process of truth-telling.</p>
<p>In Tasmania, the <a href="https://www.oric.gov.au/publications/spotlight/breathing-mannalargenna">Mannalargenna Day Festival</a> commemorates Pairrebeenne/Trawlwoolway leader Mannalargenna. Mannalargenna tried to negotiate to save the lives of Aboriginal people in Tasmania who had been devastated by the <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/the-black-line">Black War</a> during the 1830s.</p>
<p>Our study found truth-telling is more effective when it occurs through immersive experiences. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural practices, such as smoking ceremonies, walking on Country, storytelling and personal engagements with survivors, contributed to healing, dialogue and a deeper shared understanding of history. </p>
<p>Through these events Indigenous people deepened their connections to community, history and Country and non-Indigenous people learned about these connections from them. The increasing attendance at events such as the Appin massacre memorial, the Mannalargenna Day Festival and similar commemorations is evidence of the impact of this type of truth-telling. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-didnt-we-know-is-no-excuse-non-indigenous-australians-must-listen-to-the-difficult-historical-truths-told-by-first-nations-people-208780">'Why didn't we know?' is no excuse. Non-Indigenous Australians must listen to the difficult historical truths told by First Nations people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Why is truth-telling important?</h2>
<p>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have <a href="https://www.reconciliation.org.au/our-work/truth-telling/">long called</a> for Australia’s history to be told truthfully. The local truth-telling activities we have documented are examples of how communities have responded to this desire. They emphasise the importance of supporting communities to tell their stories, rather than government directing how truth-telling occurs. </p>
<p>While truth-telling does not guarantee reconciliation, the participants in our study stressed that meaningful reconciliation cannot occur without it. They emphasised the importance of reconciliation between First Nations and non-Indigenous communities because for some people these relationships have never existed, or are in need of repair.</p>
<p>Truth-telling is also crucial for political and social transformation. For example, the Queensland government is using <a href="https://www.qld.gov.au/firstnations/treaty/truth-telling-healing#:%7E:text=Queensland's%20truth%2Dtelling%20and%20healing,the%20First%20Nations%20Treaty%20Institute">truth-telling</a> to help inform the path to Treaty. In Victoria, the <a href="https://yoorrookjusticecommission.org.au/hearings/">Yoorrook Justice Commission</a> is investigating historic and ongoing injustices experienced by First Nations peoples, alongside ongoing Treaty negotiations.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-naidoc-week-how-did-it-start-and-what-does-it-celebrate-208936">What is NAIDOC week? How did it start and what does it celebrate?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Community truth-telling can demonstrate the power of Indigenous identity and self-determination. It can also counter <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25617044">past attempts</a> to erase Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from Australian history. </p>
<p>Truth-telling highlights the crucial roles and contributions of First Nations peoples. Their acts of bravery and sacrifice, resistance against colonialism and contributions to communities.</p>
<p>Although some local governments have played a key role in supporting truth-telling, more support for local initiatives is required. National proposals, such as a <a href="https://antar.org.au/issues/native-title/make-mabo-day-a-national-public-holiday/">national recognition</a> of Mabo Day and a <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/dean-ashenden/2022/10/2022/remembrance-or-forgetting">formal remembrance</a> for frontier conflicts, have the potential to create a better environment for truth-telling.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197685/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vanessa Barolsky received funding to conduct research on community truth-telling from Reconciliation Australia, Deakin University and the Centre for Inclusive and Resilient Societies. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yin Paradies receives funding to conduct research on community truth-telling from Reconciliation Australia, Deakin University and the Centre for Inclusive and Resilient Societies.</span></em></p>
Truth-telling between First Nations and non-Indigenous people is a vital step in recognising past colonial wrongdoing. And research has found it is also a step towards self-determination and healing.
Vanessa Barolsky, Research Associate, Deakin University
Yin Paradies, Professor of Race Relations, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/198981
2023-02-23T19:03:26Z
2023-02-23T19:03:26Z
Friday essay: ‘killed by Natives’. The stories – and violent reprisals – behind some of Australia’s settler memorials
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510232/original/file-20230215-18-n18u61.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=41%2C29%2C3952%2C1964&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>First Nations people please be advised this article contains distressing imagery of a retaliatory shooting.</em></p>
<p>Some commemorations across this continent, despite their original intentions, inadvertently testify to the fact that Aboriginal peoples did, in fact, “fight back” and that colonisation was, in fact, violent. These commemorations typically consist of graves, memorial monuments and even place names, and they are dedicated to white settlers who were “killed by Natives”.</p>
<p>These commemorations serve to uphold the pioneer legend that honours the brave settler and the characteristic representation of the “Natives” as being savage and vengeful, and their attacks unmotivated and unpredictable. </p>
<p>Typically, the events are decontextualised; there is no account of what led up to an incident, what actions by the settlers prompted the attacks made by Aboriginal peoples on them. </p>
<p>There is also usually no account of the retaliatory attacks that followed, where settlers sought retribution through the indiscriminate brutal massacre of Aboriginal peoples that went <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/erea/5821">unpunished and largely undocumented</a>. </p>
<p>In Port Lincoln, South Australia, there stands a monument that states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>ERECTED BY PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTION THROUGH THE PORT LINCOLN PROGRESS COMMITTEE IN MEMORY OF FRANK HAWSON AGED 10 YEARS WHO WAS SPEARED BY THE BLACKS OCTOBER 5TH 1840, BURIED IN TRAFALGAR ST 1840 <br>
RE-INTERRED UNDER THIS MONUMENT MARCH 30 1911. <br>
ALTHOUGH ONLY A LAD HE DIED A HERO. <br>
GONE. BUT NOT FORGOTTEN.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Frank’s remains were re-interred with a new monument when it was noticed that his grave was in a neglected state. Public subscriptions were invited so as to erect a more suitable monument, and particularly <a href="https://hawsonstory.wordpress.com/frank%E2%80%90hawson/">targeted school children</a> “to whom the story of the lad’s end has been made known through a school publication”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509956/original/file-20230214-20-rpgcnn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509956/original/file-20230214-20-rpgcnn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509956/original/file-20230214-20-rpgcnn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509956/original/file-20230214-20-rpgcnn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509956/original/file-20230214-20-rpgcnn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509956/original/file-20230214-20-rpgcnn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509956/original/file-20230214-20-rpgcnn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509956/original/file-20230214-20-rpgcnn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1911 photograph of the erection of the Frank Hawson monument.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of South Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was an opportunity to further the agenda of Black erasure and white permanence – to romanticise the frontier, to perpetuate the pioneer legend and demonise Aboriginal peoples as the murderers of innocent settler children.</p>
<p>So how did poor Frank die a hero? While the details are sketchy and vary depending on the source, an account <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/%20newspaper/article/30589406">published in a newspaper</a> almost 100 years later states that Frank was left alone guarding a shepherd’s hut on the Hawson family’s station while his older brother Edward rode to Port Lincoln. </p>
<p>A group of “Natives” appeared, asking for food, and despite Frank giving them all that was on hand, they were not satisfied and tried to enter the hut. Despite firing a gun and wounding one of the attackers, Frank ended up with two spears embedded in the chest, which, once the attackers fled, Frank tried to remove by cutting and sawing the shafts, but to no avail. Frank then attempted to walk the four miles to Port Lincoln, but this proved too excruciating.</p>
<p>Frank returned to the hut and set the shafts in the fire in an attempt to burn them, which is where Edward, having returned, found the injured child. Edward sawed off the shafts and took Frank to Port Lincoln on horseback, to be attended by a doctor and a surgeon. </p>
<p>Upon noting the two barbed spears, one of which had passed through to Frank’s back, they both agreed that removal would be highly traumatic and would result in instant death. Instead, they chose to leave the spears in place and permit Frank, who allegedly claimed not to be afraid of death, “to die a lingering, but not a painful death in preference to a hasty and violent one”.</p>
<p>While <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/%20newspaper/article/30589406">this 1940 account</a> makes no mention of the events that led up to the attack on Frank, it does note, interestingly, that Frank’s was the first murder of a settler on the Eyre Peninsula, and the shock of it was so profound that the governor, fearing “indiscriminate punitive measures”, felt it necessary to issue a proclamation against retaliation. Although this may have staved off any initial reprisal attacks, massacres of Aboriginal peoples in the region were to come later that decade. </p>
<h2>The massacres that followed</h2>
<p>Irene Hogan, a historian and descendant of the Hawson family, has managed to lend the legendary tale some balance by exploring what may have provoked the attack on Frank. On a <a href="https://hawsonstory.wordpress.com/frank%E2%80%90hawson/">website</a> dedicated to the history of the Hawson family, Hogan notes that while early relations between the British colonists and local Aboriginal peoples appeared smooth, violent clashes soon erupted as a result of the British taking over land and preventing Aboriginal access to hunting and other food sources.</p>
<p>It is only in recent decades that recognition has been given to events that led up to Aboriginal attacks on white settlers, and notably to the reprisal massacres that followed. </p>
<p>Two particular Aboriginal attacks on white settlers, the Hornet Bank Massacre and the Wills Massacre, have been notorious for the role of the Aboriginal attackers. However, the notoriety has steadily shifted to those responsible for retaliatory attacks that followed: as historians have brought to light preceding and subsequent events surrounding the massacres, it has become apparent that surely the “massacre” is what followed.</p>
<p>The Hornet Bank Massacre, as it is known today, refers to the 1857 killing of 11 white settlers, eight of whom, including adults and children, were members of the Fraser family. A memorial at the grave site was erected at Hornet Bank in Taroom, Queensland, on the centenary of the massacre. </p>
<p>The attack was carried out by the Iman people of the region (also referred to as the Yeeman, Yiman, Eoman and Jiman), who <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2374720">had suffered numerous attacks</a> by the settlers, including poisonings and shootings.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509948/original/file-20230214-22-w5i76x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A stone memorial in a field." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509948/original/file-20230214-22-w5i76x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509948/original/file-20230214-22-w5i76x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509948/original/file-20230214-22-w5i76x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509948/original/file-20230214-22-w5i76x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509948/original/file-20230214-22-w5i76x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509948/original/file-20230214-22-w5i76x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509948/original/file-20230214-22-w5i76x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Fraser family grave site and memorial Hornet Bank.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State of Queensland: Queensland Heritage Register</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the Fraser children, aged 14, was injured but survived the attack. An older brother, William, who was away from the station at the time, “<a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2374720">became obsessed with revenge and reprisal</a>”. </p>
<p>William was joined by numerous other settlers in the region and, together with the Native Police, set out on a series of bloody and indiscriminate killing sprees. He was actively supported by the judicial system, and together their exploits were highly approved of by many other settlers on the frontier, which saw them promoted to hero status. </p>
<p>By March 1858 it was estimated that up to 300 Iman had been killed, and Aboriginal academic Eva Fesl <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2374720">has claimed</a> the number was closer to 500.</p>
<p>Although it was believed that by the 1880s the Iman had been totally wiped out, this has been disputed, and descendants of this group <a href="https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/chinchilla/a-place-to-call-home-native-title-granted-to-iman-people-over-lands-surrounding-taroom-and-wandoan/news-story/d575fb347d908fcfe41aa069146541f0">have recently been recognised</a> by the High Court of Australia as the original custodians of the land surrounding Taroom.</p>
<p>In 2012, research blogger Ingrid Piller highlighted that the reprisals following the Hornet Bank Massacre were more of a massacre than the event itself. </p>
<p>Piller noted that Wikipedia had an entry for “Hornet Bank Massacre” but none for “Iman Massacre” or similar, but it does appear in a “list of massacres of Indigenous Australians”. At the time of writing, the <a href="https://www.monumentaustralia.org.au/">Monument Australia website</a> lists no memorials to the massacre of the Iman, but does list the Hornet Bank Massacre memorial.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509949/original/file-20230214-24-q1lply.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white painting depicting a massacre." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509949/original/file-20230214-24-q1lply.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509949/original/file-20230214-24-q1lply.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509949/original/file-20230214-24-q1lply.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509949/original/file-20230214-24-q1lply.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509949/original/file-20230214-24-q1lply.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509949/original/file-20230214-24-q1lply.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509949/original/file-20230214-24-q1lply.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1925 sketch in The Daily Mail of the retaliation after the Hornet Bank Massacre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>William Fraser, who died in 1914, was still held in high regard despite being reported to have personally killed more than 100 Aboriginal people, yet he is <a href="https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/yiman-does-not-have-a-word-for-massacre">not listed</a> among Australia’s mass murderers.</p>
<h2>Repercussions and reprisals</h2>
<p>The Wills Massacre refers to the 1861 killing of 19 white settlers by the Gayiri people on Cullin-La-Ringo Station near Springsure, Queensland – the largest recorded massacre of white settlers by Aboriginal people in Australian history. A sign to the entrance of the Cullin-La-Ringo historic site erected in 2009 states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>THIS IS THE SITE OF THE MASSACRE OF 19 PEOPLE BY A LOCAL ABORIGINAL TRIBE ON 17 OCTOBER 1861</p>
<p>THE PEOPLE KILLED WERE IN A PARTY LED BY HORATIO WILLS AND WERE RESTING IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON WHEN THE TRIBE MOVED INTO CAMP AND KILLED THE TEN MEN, TWO WOMEN AND SEVEN CHILDREN</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The sign fails even to name the Gayiri people and provides no context as to why the massacre occurred, <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/6976621">nor what happened after</a>. White settlers <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14443058009386807">had taken over precious water supplies</a>, interrupted native animals and other food sources, and had disturbed sacred sites. </p>
<p>The Gayiri had suffered an attack by Native Police as punishment for allegedly stealing sheep – an accusation that proved to be false, as the sheep were found later. Unfortunately, Horatio Wills resembled the owner of the adjoining station, Jesse Gregson, who had joined with the Native Police in a series of massacres of Gayiri and is presumed to have been the actual target of their retaliation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509951/original/file-20230214-22-ztqi8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509951/original/file-20230214-22-ztqi8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509951/original/file-20230214-22-ztqi8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509951/original/file-20230214-22-ztqi8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509951/original/file-20230214-22-ztqi8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509951/original/file-20230214-22-ztqi8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509951/original/file-20230214-22-ztqi8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509951/original/file-20230214-22-ztqi8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">T. G. Moyle, The Wills Tragedy, 1861, held at the State Library of Queensland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In response to the Wills Massacre, the colonial Queensland government reacted by sending seven Native Police detachments to the district. It is <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-10/wills-massacre-marked-turning-point-australian-history/7919894">estimated</a> that 300-400 Aboriginal people were killed, and further tens of thousands died as a result of the repercussions sparked by the government’s response. </p>
<p>The Wills Massacre is also seen as an important Aboriginal victory in the struggle against the settlers – it resulted in a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14443058009386807">dramatic setback</a> for settler occupation of Aboriginal Country. Interestingly, Horatio’s child Cedric Wills blamed the massacre squarely on the actions of Gregson, the neighbouring station owner who had attacked the Gayiri.</p>
<p>Horatio’s other child, Tom Wills, who was away when the family was massacred, has until recently been recorded as having had no interest in participating in any retributions. </p>
<p>Instead, Wills went on to coach an Aboriginal cricket team from western Victoria that became the first “Australian” cricket team to tour England and became known as the pioneer of the Australian Football League game. However, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-18/suggests-afl-pioneer-tom-wills-participated-indigenous-massacres/100463708#:%7E:text=A%20startling%20discovery%20by%20a,la%2Dringo%20massacre%20of%201861.">recent research by sports history researcher Gary Fearon</a> has unearthed a Chicago Tribune article from 1895 in which the author claims Wills spoke of his participation in reprisal massacres.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509950/original/file-20230214-16-snnk84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509950/original/file-20230214-16-snnk84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509950/original/file-20230214-16-snnk84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509950/original/file-20230214-16-snnk84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509950/original/file-20230214-16-snnk84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509950/original/file-20230214-16-snnk84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509950/original/file-20230214-16-snnk84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509950/original/file-20230214-16-snnk84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=695&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian cricket coach and AFL pioneer Tom Wills, circa 1863.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Testimonies of resistance</h2>
<p>In some cases, commemorations to settlers “killed by Natives” have gained social significance for Aboriginal communities. In Northam, Western Australia, Noongar Country, a memorial grave tablet states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>CENTENARY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA 1929 SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF PETER CHIDLOW AGED 35 YEARS AND EDWARD JONES AGED 30 YEARS WHO WERE KILLED BY NATIVES 15TH JUNE 1837. <br></p>
<p>IN THE MIDST OF LIFE, WE ARE IN DEATH<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chidlow and Jones had been working on a property that later became known as Katrine, when it is believed a group of Aboriginal warriors, angered by the arrest of some of their group, approached and demanded food. This resulted in an altercation, ending with both Chidlow and Jones being speared to death. </p>
<p>The tablet was erected in 1929 in celebration of the centenary of WA, but today is also revered by the local Aboriginal community for what it inadvertently represents – a testimony of Aboriginal resistance.</p>
<p>Other such testimonies are scattered across the continent. At Esk, Queensland, a stone cairn reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>CAPTAIN PATRICK LOGAN</p>
<p>This plaque was erected in remembrance of Patrick Logan, an enthusiastic and energetic explorer of Southern Queensland.</p>
<p>Captain Logan made two expeditions up the Brisbane and Stanley Rivers, and visited the group of hills located to the east of this plaque naming them “Irwin’s Range”. This range includes the high rocky outcrop of “Glen Rock” located north-east of this plaque, and the peak of Mount Esk may be seen to the east from Glen Rock.</p>
<p>It is said that Captain Logan may have climbed Glen Rock the afternoon before he was attacked and murdered by Aborigines whilst camped at Logan Creek on 18 October, 1830.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509953/original/file-20230214-24-2fv5ga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509953/original/file-20230214-24-2fv5ga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509953/original/file-20230214-24-2fv5ga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509953/original/file-20230214-24-2fv5ga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509953/original/file-20230214-24-2fv5ga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509953/original/file-20230214-24-2fv5ga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509953/original/file-20230214-24-2fv5ga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509953/original/file-20230214-24-2fv5ga.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Patrick Logan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The erection of this cairn and plaque was proposed and funded by Douglas Jolly, a person keenly interested in the history of Queensland, and a member of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland. He unveiled this plaque on October 28 1984.</p>
<p>Many people, possibly including Jolly who funded the cairn, regard Logan as the true founder of Queensland. The wording of the plaque suggests that the motivation behind erecting the cairn was certainly to record and honour Logan and his achievements, despite the fact <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/5970">Logan was also reportedly</a> “hated by convicts and the Aboriginal population alike for his violence” and thereby “met a just end”, upon which “the jailed convicts celebrated with joyful singing for days”. </p>
<p>The cairn also now serves as a record of Aboriginal resistance.</p>
<p>At a place called “Chippers Leap”, formerly known as “Chipper’s Leap” (it’s all about the apostrophe), in Greenmount, WA, there is a heritage-listed commemoration consisting of a plaque on a rock that states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>CHIPPER’S LEAP ON THE 3RD OF FEBRUARY 1832, JOHN CHIPPER AND REUBEN BEACHAM A BOY OF FOURTEEN, WHILE DRIVING A CART FROM GUILDFORD TO YORK WERE ATTACKED BY NATIVES NEAR THIS SPOT. <br></p>
<p>BEACHAM WAS KILLED BUT CHIPPER, ALTHOUGH SPEARED, ESCAPED AND LEAPED FROM THIS ROCK NOW KNOWN AS CHIPPER’S LEAP, AND EVENTUALLY REACHED GOVERNOR STIRLING’S HOUSE AT WOODBRIDGE. <br></p>
<p>THIS TABLET WAS PLACED HERE BY THE WESTERN AUSTRALIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 1930.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1932, on the centenary of this incident, <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.%20news%E2%80%90article206643943">an article in the Swan Express</a> criticised the erection of the commemoration, highlighting that Reuben Beacham had, in fact, been only 11 years of age and noting:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The story itself has no claim on public recognition, and is not of a nature to be handed down through the ages. The sooner it is forgotten the better. A strong, big boned, active man, Chipper was practically in the position of a father to the boy in the circumstances, yet he made not the least effort to save the child, but left him to his fate. In his official report, Chipper states that he heard the screams of the boy behind him, while he ran for his life. The boy was 11 years of age — a little chap he could have tucked under his arm! </p>
<p>The record is of interest only as a picture of early life in the State, and the boy Beacham is more worthy of recognition on the tablet. The work of the W.A. Historical Society is highly appreciated and the State is grateful to this body for its labors, but while so many deeds of self-sacrifice and bravery are left unrecorded, the story of Chipper is not one that should be told to our children.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The article concluded with a note that a “Mrs Cowan”, vice-president of the historical society, perhaps anticipating that not everyone would treat the commemoration with the respect the society felt it deserved, urged all present to combat vandalism.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509980/original/file-20230214-26-iupsgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509980/original/file-20230214-26-iupsgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509980/original/file-20230214-26-iupsgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509980/original/file-20230214-26-iupsgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509980/original/file-20230214-26-iupsgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509980/original/file-20230214-26-iupsgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509980/original/file-20230214-26-iupsgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509980/original/file-20230214-26-iupsgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chippers Leap approached from the west.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Chippers Leap was acknowledged as a site of significance during the 1988 Australian bicentennial commemorations, being included in the state’s Heritage Trail Program.</p>
<p>However, Elliott Chipper, the great-great-great-grandson of John Chipper, has acknowledged that this commemoration is an open attempt by the WA Historical Society to perpetuate the pioneer legend and foster a sense of pride in settler history.</p>
<p>Elliott Chipper <a href="http://thehistorydiaries.blogspot.com/2013/03/my-own-personal-western-australian.html">identifies two stories</a> that have been omitted from the plaque. One is that of Beacham — why is it not called “Beacham’s Rock”? He surmises this is because the image of a child dying on the side of the road just does not inspire a romantic sense of pride in the brave pioneer battling all manner of hostilities.</p>
<p>The other story is that of the Noongar people who were also involved in this event. Elliott Chipper <a href="http://thehistorydiaries.blogspot.com/2013/03/my-own-personal-western-australian.html">notes that</a> after John Chipper made it to Governor Stirling’s house, a large group of people were assembled to retrieve the child’s body and enact revenge on the Noongar people.</p>
<p>It was documented that 12 Aboriginal people were caught and hanged from the trees as punishment for the attack.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-was-first-governor-condoned-killing-of-noongar-people-despite-proclaiming-all-equal-under-law-165871">New research shows WA's first governor condoned killing of Noongar people despite proclaiming all equal under law</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘May your spirits live on and walk beside your people’</h2>
<p>Over recent years, various communities have erected their own unofficial monuments commemorating the Frontier Wars. In Orford, Victoria, just metres from the town’s war memorial, is what is known as the Orford Aboriginal Memorial, which states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>IN MEMORY OF THE HUNDREDS OF ABORIGINAL MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN THIS AREA MAY YOUR SPIRITS LIVE ON AND WALK BESIDE YOUR PEOPLE NOW REST IN PEACE WUWUURK<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Aborigines of Port Phillip monument at Sorrento, Victoria, states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In memory of Aborigines who were killed or wounded during the first British visits to Port Phillip Bay under the command of Lieutenant John Murray in 1803.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was a breach of official British policy, which was to avoid conflict with Aboriginal people. At least one Aboriginal person, Bunja Logan, still bore old gunfire wounds when permanent settlers came to Port Phillip Bay in 1835.</p>
<p>At Woodford Bay, Longueville, New South Wales, the site of the first recorded meeting in the Lane Cove area between the Cameraygal people and the British in 1790, the Cameraygal Resistance monument in part states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>MEMORIAL PLAQUE TO HONOUR AND RECOGNISE THE CAMERAYGAL PEOPLE WHO DEFENDED THEIR COUNTRY BY RESISTING BRITISH INVASION</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Nunawading, Victoria, Wurundjeri-Balluk Country, the Year of Mourning Garden has a plaque that states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>IN MEMORY OF ALL KOORIE MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN MURDERED BY THE INVADER; KOORIE WOMEN & CHILDREN WHO WERE SEXUALLY ABUSED; KOORIE CHILDREN WHO WERE ABDUCTED AND NEVER FOUND THEIR PARENTS; KOORIES WHO WERE ENSLAVED AND THOSE WHO DIED THROUGH MALNUTRITION, POISONING AND INTRODUCED DISEASES. YEAR OF MOURNING 1988.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 2007, in an area now known as the Murrup Brarn Yarra Flats Billabongs, just a few hundred metres from the Yarra Glen township in Victoria, Wurundjeri Country, a boulder with two plaques commemorates what is known today as the Battle of Yering. The memorial was <a href="http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/plaques-unveiled-confrontation-between-wurundjeri-and-border-police">organised by</a> the Friends of the Yarra Flats Billabongs in conjunction with Yarra Ranges Friends in Reconciliation and Nillumbik Reconciliation Group. The plaques describe the battle:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“THE BATTLE OF YERING” </p>
<p>On the 13th of January 1840 an armed conflict took place on William Ryrie’s Yering Station between some 50 Wurundjeri clansmen and troopers of the Border Police led by Captain Henry Gisborne who had been dispatched from Melbourne by Superintendent Charles Joseph La Trobe to capture the charismatic Wurundjeri leader, Jaga Jaga.</p>
<p>Upon learning of Jaga Jaga’s capture the Wurundjeri approached the homestead with muskets and spears, whereupon Gisborne and his troopers mounted a counterattack, during which several shots were exchanged, forcing the Wurundjeri to retreat into the nearby billabong.</p>
<p>Having thus successfully drawn the troopers away from their imprisoned leader, others of the clan sped up to the homestead to quickly secure his release.</p>
<p>-Unveiled by Wurundjeri Ngurungaeta, Murrundindi, on the 13th January 2007.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the unveiling, Wurundjeri Ngurungaeta (head person) Murrundindi noted <a href="http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/plaques-unveiled-confrontation-between-wurundjeri-and-border-police">the importance of acknowledging the events of the past</a> and that while these events cannot be changed, they can be acknowledged and recognised.</p>
<p>In 2002, through community consultation and considerable effort from numerous Aboriginal peoples and their supporters, including the local reconciliation group Projects for Reconciliation, and with funding from Reconciliation NSW, a memorial garden at the St John of God Hospital in North Richmond, New South Wales, was <a href="https://nit.com.au/12-11-2019/832/dharug-massacre-memorial-site-teaches-young-aboriginal-students-about-colonial-history">created to commemorate the Battle of Richmond Hill</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
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<p>The Battle of Richmond Hill is described by John Connor in the book <a href="https://unsw.press/books/australian-frontier-wars-1788-1838/">The Australian Frontier Wars 1788–1838</a> as possibly the first frontier war on this continent and the first recorded battle between Aboriginal people and settlers. According to Connor, it took place in an area the settlers had named Richmond Hill, along what they called the Hawkesbury-Nepean River, in May-June 1795.</p>
<p>The land belongs to the Dharug peoples, and the arrival of more than 400 settlers in the area in 1794 resulted in numerous crimes, including the destruction of native food sources, stealing Dharug children to work as unpaid labour and holding them against their will, the murder of Dharug people, and <a href="https://unsw.press/books/australian-frontier-wars-1788-1838/">even the torture of a Dharug child</a>.</p>
<p>The Dharug responded by killing settlers, raiding farms and taking corn. Raiding was so intense that Lieutenant-Governor William Paterson perceived it to be a serious threat to the future of the Hawkesbury settlement and ordered a detachment of the New South Wales Corps to kill any Dharug they found and hang their bodies on public display as a warning to others. The conflict <a href="https://unsw.press/books/australian-frontier-wars-1788-1838/">that resulted</a> took lives from both sides, even of children. </p>
<p>A permanent garrison was deployed to the region, the corps was expanded and troops were distributed among the farms to regularly seek out and kill Dharug. The Dharug became the <a href="https://unsw.press/books/australian-frontier-wars-1788-1838/">first Aboriginal people to develop tactics for use specifically in frontier warfare</a>, responding with a sustained campaign of raiding that lasted until 1805 and included stealing corn, attacking farmhouses, and using fire to destroy structures and crops.</p>
<p>Dharug knowledge-holder Chris Tobin, who was involved in establishing the Battle of Richmond Hill memorial, <a href="https://nit.com.au/12-11-2019/832/dharug-massacre-memorial-site-teaches-young-aboriginal-students-about-colonial-history">saw it as a step towards truth-telling</a> and correcting common myths that there was no Aboriginal resistance to colonisation and that settlement was peaceful.</p>
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<p>For youth who today are walking in the footprints of those who fought in the Battle of Richmond Hill, Tobin feels it is vital they learn about the efforts of those who came before them. </p>
<p>These were people who fought valiantly for their Country, who stood up for what was right, and their stories are something in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and settlers can find pride. For Tobin, <a href="https://nit.com.au/12-11-2019/832/dharug-massacre-memorial-site-teaches-young-aboriginal-students-about-colonial-history">just knowing the memorial is there</a> means the town is easier to live in.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://shop.aiatsis.gov.au/products/monumental-disruptions">Monumental Disruptions</a>: Aboriginal people and colonial commemorations in so-called Australia by Bronwyn Carlson and Terri Farrelly (Aboriginal Studies Press).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Across Australia, there are memorials to white people ‘killed by Natives’. But there is a silence about what led to these attacks, or the reprisal massacres that typically followed.
Bronwyn Carlson, Professor, Indigenous Studies and Director of The Centre for Global Indigenous Futures, Macquarie University
Terri Farrelly, Adjunct Fellow, Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/192292
2023-02-14T13:27:19Z
2023-02-14T13:27:19Z
‘Closure is a myth’: A school psychologist explains how to help students and teachers deal with grief after a school shooting
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509856/original/file-20230213-18-e7nzrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C10%2C6689%2C4456&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Simply returning to a school where a shooting took place can be a struggle for many students.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/elementary-african-american-girl-with-mom-on-first-royalty-free-image/1152649948?phrase=fearful%20students&adppopup=true">fstop123 via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Whenever a school shooting takes place, such as the one that claimed the lives of three adults and three children at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 27, 2023, school officials often arrange for grief counseling services to be made available for whoever needs them. But what exactly do those services entail?</em></p>
<p><em>To answer that question, The Conversation reached out to Philip J. Lazarus, a school psychology professor at Florida International University who counseled students and educators affected by the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which took place in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day, 2018.</em> </p>
<p><em>Below, Lazarus recounts some of the experiences he had as he provided grief counseling. He also offers insights on what students and educators need as the nation confronts record levels of shootings with <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-years-after-parkland-school-shootings-havent-stopped-and-kill-more-people-198224">higher and higher death tolls</a>.</em></p>
<h2>Shattered sense of security</h2>
<p>A few days after Parkland, a seventh grade boy at a nearby school told me his plan for how to make schools safer.</p>
<p>“We need to have a conveyor belt to check all kids for guns, then we need to have bulletproof windows on the outside, then we need to have bulletproof closets that we can all run into in case a shooter enters the building,” the boy told me at the time. “We need to put up a 10-foot barbed-wire fence outside the playground, and more police.”</p>
<p>I wondered if this is the future we as a society want. Five years later, more elements of that future are now here.</p>
<p>In Newport News, Virginia, for example, officials decided to install 90 walk-through <a href="https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/local/mycity/newport-news/newport-news-school-board-update-richneck-elementary-shooting/291-649e59eb-8cf4-4352-bb8b-0d1a0128e3e7#:%7E:text=%E2%80%94%20All%20schools%20in%20Newport%20News,school%20officials%20announced%20Thursday%20afternoon.">metal detectors in schools across the district</a>. The measure comes in response to one of the most shocking cases of a school shooting – one in which a first grader reportedly shot and wounded his teacher, Abigail Zwerner, at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News on Jan. 6, 2023.</p>
<p>In Texas, tens of millions of dollars were spent on <a href="https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/texas/50-million-grant-program-ballistic-shields-texas-schools/285-d372fc47-1559-462f-b04b-3858fa468f37">providing schools with ballistic shields</a> for school police officers. Some schools have installed <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2022/07/12/2478202/0/en/National-Safety-Shelters-Partners-With-School-District-to-Improve-School-Security-With-Safety-Pods.html">bulletproof “safety pods”</a> to protect students against active shooters.</p>
<p>When tragedies like the ones in Parkland; Newport News; Uvalde, Texas; and Nashville take place, they don’t affect just the school itself – they affect surrounding schools as well. Which is why, when I returned a few days after the Parkland shooting from the National Association of School Psychologists convention in Chicago to Broward County, where I live and where the Parkland shooting took place, I connected with Frank Zenere, one of my former students, an adjunct lecturer at Florida International University and the crisis coordinator for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, as well as a team from Nova Southeastern University and another team of school psychologists from Volusia County to provide psychological intervention. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nasponline.org/books-and-products/products/books/titles/school-crisis-the-prepare-model-2nd-edition">These interventions</a> included debriefing students, which means students talking about their reactions to the horrific event, short-term individual and group counseling, and consultation with school leaders and parents about how to handle children’s grief and how best to open reopen schools.</p>
<h2>Fears and uncertainty</h2>
<p>One thing all school-based mental health providers learn in crisis intervention is that all students have a story to tell, <a href="https://www.perlego.com/book/1554947/creating-safe-and-supportive-schools-and-fostering-students-mental-health-pdf?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&campaignid=15825112969&adgroupid=132780878835&gclid=CjwKCAiA3KefBhByEiwAi2LDHNSDG_QcZfbiJ63pweSIasQJ7H1YnMPpXNdarXVMFkKuc4CUspkLjBoCsDYQAvD_BwE">even if they have problems articulating their thoughts</a>.</p>
<p>The job of the mental health provider is to listen. However, listening is often not enough. After Parkland, some students in the surrounding area were afraid to enter their own schools. A few were concerned that they would be attacked by a copycat killer. Some students emotionally broke down. </p>
<p>One sixth grade boy I met at a nearby charter school was afraid to go into his school building, and I was contacted by the principal to help. The boy just stood outside. So, I walked up to him and started talking and asked him why he did not walk home if he was so afraid. He told me that his parents drove him to this charter school, and he lived more than 10 miles away. I asked him if I walked right next to him and did not leave his side if he would be willing to go inside the building. He agreed. We talked for about 30 minutes. He said, “My body does not feel well. It doesn’t feel right, it feels crazy inside, and I cannot describe it.” </p>
<p>I told him that his feelings were normal. Then he was asked to rate his level of well-being from 1 to 10 from when he arrived at school to now, with 1 meaning feeling great to 10 meaning feeling terribly scared and anxious. He responded that when he entered my temporary office in the school, it was an 11, and now after about 30 minutes of recounting his experiences, reactions and feelings with me, he was at a 5 or 6. </p>
<p>He told me that he was taking yoga classes, and I worked with that to his advantage. I taught him how to imagine yoga music reverberating through his body to help him calm down. I taught him how he could make the music go faster or slower, louder or softer, and how to regulate his breathing. This provided him a sense of control over his internal feelings. Through a series of other techniques, such as using deep breathing, he learned how to enter a highly relaxed state. He reported by the end of our 90-minute meeting that he was now a 2. </p>
<p>I asked him to practice what he had learned at least three times before he came to school the following day. The next day he saw me and rushed up and said, “I’m a 1.”</p>
<h2>Normalcy is elusive</h2>
<p>Sadly, as my colleague Frank told me, for many others the interventions will not be as easy or the responses as quick. </p>
<p>For example, young people directly affected by a tragedy, especially those in classrooms where students were killed, will require deep understanding, empathy and guidance from family, friends, teachers, religious leaders and mental health professionals as they struggle to cope. Some may require <a href="https://grievingstudents.org">years of therapy</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/10377761">Closure is a myth</a>. The trauma and grief may never go away. Yet young people can learn lessons from the past and move forward with help from their friends, families, faith, communities and mental health providers. For all those affected, their lives will never be the same, but with care and understanding from others and by focusing on the future, they can recover and thrive.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated to reflect a shooting that took place in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 27, 2023.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192292/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip J. Lazarus does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Students may need a listening ear and reassurance in the aftermath of having witnessed a school shooting.
Philip J. Lazarus, Associate Professor, Counseling, Recreation and School Psychology, Florida International University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/192087
2022-10-07T06:16:58Z
2022-10-07T06:16:58Z
Tragic Thai massacre raises issues of mental health, drug use and gun control ahead of next year’s election
<p>At least <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-06/mass-shooting-thailand-daycare-centre-dozens-dead/101510188">37 people were killed</a> on Thursday by a lone assailant at a day care centre in Thailand’s north-eastern province of Nongbua Lamphu, local police say. Among the dead are at least 24 children, while the alleged gunman also killed his wife and child, then himself.</p>
<p>The alleged killer was a former member of the police force, who was facing trial on a methamphetamine possession charge after having been <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-06/mass-shooting-thailand-daycare-centre-dozens-dead/101510188">dismissed over drug allegations</a>.</p>
<p>This shocking incident will trigger a national conversation around gun control and drug use, as well as on questions of mental health after a really difficult couple of years since the onset of COVID-19, ahead of the next election scheduled for around May 2023.</p>
<h2>Lone assailants rare</h2>
<p>Lone gunman massacres have been very rare in Thailand.</p>
<p>Aside from yesterday’s tragic killings, there’s only one other similar incident in the country’s modern history. That occurred in February 2020, when a disgruntled Thai soldier <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/thai-soldier-kills-at-least-17-people-in-shooting-rampage/2020/02/08/06ea65de-4a76-11ea-8a1f-de1597be6cbc_story.html">killed 29 people</a> and wounded 58 others in the city of Nakhon Ratchasima, most of whom were shot at a shopping mall.</p>
<p>Other mass shooting incidents have occurred when the military has put down popular demonstrations. For example, the “Black May” mass demonstrations in 1992 where <a href="https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2311654/remembering-bloody-may-1992">over 50 civilians were killed</a>, and the 2010 military crackdown following the “red shirts” protests in which <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/5/21/a-thai-mothers-long-fight-for-justice-over-2010-deadly-crackdown">just under 100 people were killed</a>.</p>
<h2>COVID, poverty and mental health</h2>
<p>I think (and hope) this incident will trigger a national conversation in Thailand about issues surrounding mental health. But I have my doubts. There’s somewhat of an attitude of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/edens/thailand/buddhism.htm">Buddhist-informed</a> stoicism in the country, to accept the reality of suffering and just keep going in the face of hardship.</p>
<p>There has been serious adversity since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and there’s an accumulating resentment towards the current government. The country has had a very <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358249053_Thailand's_Covid-19_Crisis_A_Tale_in_Two_Parts">difficult time</a> over the last two years, as the national economy <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2021/06/21/na062121-5-things-to-know-about-thailands-economy-and-covid-19#:%7E:text=Like%20many%20countries%2C%20Thailand's%20economy,tourism%20sector%2C%20lost%20their%20jobs.">shrunk by more than 6% in 2020</a> and scores of workers lost their jobs particularly in the hospitality and tourism sectors. Some of the worst affected have been poorer families, whose kids stopped going to school. They may not return, which suggests this could turn out to be an ongoing generational issue.</p>
<p>Thailand isn’t very well-resourced when it comes to support for mental health. A 2015 <a href="https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.virtual.anu.edu.au/share/GXRUAMKKWKFV3TXAREUV?target=10.1111/appy.12200">study</a> found “an urgent need to invest in the policy, practice, and research capacity for mental health promotion” in Thailand.</p>
<p>While the country is better than a lot of parts of Southeast Asia in terms of welfare payments (they have been prepared to take on government debt during the pandemic), there are still problems rolling it out. Consequently, there’s been growing resentment directed towards the current prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who’s very unpopular.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-country-belongs-to-the-people-why-young-thais-are-no-longer-afraid-to-take-on-the-monarchy-146562">'This country belongs to the people': why young Thais are no longer afraid to take on the monarchy</a>
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<h2>Security force reform?</h2>
<p>This massacre has happened just ahead of the next election, which is scheduled for the first half of next year. Politicians are starting to get into campaign mode. </p>
<p>In the past, opposition parties have occasionally campaigned on issues around reforming the security forces, and in recent years there have been signs the government wants to be seen to be doing things on this issue. One such topic has been that of military conscription – all men over 21 years of age in the country must register for the draft, which takes the form of a lottery every April. </p>
<p>This practice is very unpopular, and became a political issue in the last election. The military has <a href="https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/general/40020534">floated ways to scale back conscription</a>, but whether changes will actually be implemented is another matter.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thai-Military-Power-Accommodation-Monographs/dp/8776942392">My studies</a> of the Thai military over a long period suggest such announcements are often quietly shelved later.</p>
<p>Indeed there’s relatively little oversight of the security forces, because of the country’s governance – in many respects, the military is the government. Other agencies of the government are reluctant to put any pressure on the security forces, as is the country’s anti corruption commission. Military reform is left to the military itself.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-good-coup-military-rule-is-unlikely-to-heal-thailand-28589">A good coup? Military rule is unlikely to heal Thailand</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<hr>
<h2>Drug use and gun control</h2>
<p>Another central issue that will likely be raised in the national conversation is methamphetamine. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has for some time been warning about the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2022/June/unodc-report_-over-one-billion-methamphetamine-tablets-seized-in-east-and-southeast-asia-in-2021-as-the-regional-drug-trade-continues-to-expand.html">volume of meth moving through the Mekong region</a>, a lot of which is being shipped through Thailand.</p>
<p>There’s a view among anti-drug agencies that such volumes of probably couldn’t be moved around without <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/southeastasiaandpacific/Publications/2019/SEA_TOCTA_2019_web.pdf">high-levels of the security forces being involved</a>. The issue of corruption among security forces isn’t new, and dates back to the mid-20th century where the “Golden Triangle” (at the confluence of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar) was a notorious haven for drug lords and opium production.</p>
<p>In the 1950s, Thailand’s most powerful generals Sarit Thanarat, Phao Sriyanond and Phin Choonhaven worked with Chinese syndicates in <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Opium-Uncovering-Politics-Pierre-Arnaud-Chouvy/dp/0674051343">opium and heroin trafficking</a>. </p>
<p>Manufacturing has been slowly pivoting from opium to meth, as the latter is much less visible than vast poppy fields.</p>
<p>Drug issues have from time to time become a national issue, such as in 2003 when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched an <a href="https://theconversation.com/dutertes-war-on-drugs-bitter-lessons-from-thailands-failed-campaign-66096">anti-drug campaign</a>, which featured extra-judicial killings. Hence this period has since been compared to that of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s infamous war on drugs.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dutertes-war-on-drugs-bitter-lessons-from-thailands-failed-campaign-66096">Duterte’s war on drugs: bitter lessons from Thailand’s failed campaign</a>
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</em>
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<p>At least one prominent Thai, the Director of Thailand’s Moral Promotion Center Dr Suriyadeo Tripathi, <a href="https://www.thaipbs.or.th/news/content/320207">has called for gun control</a> since the massacre, but it’s a relatively new debate in the country.</p>
<p>The alleged killer who carried out this week’s massacre <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-06/mass-shooting-thailand-daycare-centre-dozens-dead/101510188">legally purchased the gun</a> he used in the attack (though he mostly used a knife).</p>
<p>There’s a <a href="https://time.com/6220339/thailand-gun-control-mass-shooting/">significant number of weapons in the community</a> and it’s relatively easy to get your hands on one.</p>
<p>There’s never been mass community outrage about gun control (and there’s no United States’ style gun lobby in Thailand) though this latest massacre may spark a reckoning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192087/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Greg Raymond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Lone gunman incidents have been very rare in Thailand’s history.
Greg Raymond, Lecturer, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/190165
2022-09-19T18:43:04Z
2022-09-19T18:43:04Z
The Tadamon Massacre: Two researchers secretly investigate mass murders in Syria
<p><em>Addressing reporters on 17 August, the French National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office said that it had received “significant documentation relating to possible crimes committed by Syrian regime forces… during the Tadamon massacre in Damascus in 2013”. The French foreign affairs ministry continued, “the alleged facts are likely to constitute the most serious international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity and war crimes,” crimes for which French justice has universal jurisdiction. Last month’s development prompts us to recommend that you read this article/interview on the edifying investigation that brought the Tadamon massacre and the identity of some of its perpetrators to light.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In early 2019, at an international academic conference in Paris, a Syrian political activist approached a scholar of mass violence affiliated with the <a href="https://www.niod.nl/en">NIOD Institute of War, Holocaust & Genocide Studies</a> (University of Amsterdam). Could they meet privately? A few hours later, the professor had in his possession 27 unedited videos documenting mass atrocities committed by members of Syria’s security forces. The videos had been copied from a computer located in the Damascus headquarters of Syria’s Office of Military Intelligence by a young soldier assumed to be loyal to Assad.</p>
<h2>Two academics’ quest for justice</h2>
<p>Three years later, on April 27, 2022, <em>The Guardian</em> published <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/27/massacre-in-tadamon-how-two-academics-hunted-down-a-syrian-war-criminal">shocking images</a> of the execution of 41 civilians that had taken place on April 16, 2013, in a neighbourhood on the south side of Damascus. The British newspaper named the two researchers from the University of Amsterdam who had provided the images and further evidence identifying the perpetrators of the massacre: on the one hand, <a href="https://www.niod.nl/en/staff/ugur-umit-ungor">Uğur Ümit Üngör</a>, the above-mentioned scholar, a German historian of Turkish origins, and on the other, Annsar Shahhoud, a PhD student born in Syria who was researching incidents of mass violence in her country during the current conflict.</p>
<p>The day after <em>The Guardian</em> released the images, <em>New Lines</em>, an US magazine specialising in the Middle East, published <a href="https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/how-a-massacre-of-nearly-300-in-syria-was-revealed/">an article</a> by the researchers in which the two described how they used covert tactics to communicate with the murderers themselves. The work took three years, during which time they spoke to almost nobody else about what they were doing, not even to members of their families.</p>
<p>The one video that has been released to the public so far tells only part of the story. According to the researchers, 288 civilians lost their lives during the Tadamon Massacre, including 7 women and 12 children. The remaining footage records many more scenes of murder, other forms of violence, and clandestine efforts to clean up the carnage to hide the evidence.</p>
<p>Once their research completed, Uğur and Annsar turned the 27 videos over to the appropriate government authorities in the Netherlands, France and other European countries. They do not know what further use will be made of them.</p>
<p>[<em>More than 80,000 readers look to The Conversation France’s newsletter for expert insights into the world’s most pressing issues</em>. <a href="https://theconversation.com/fr/newsletters/la-newsletter-quotidienne-5?utm_source=inline-70ksignup">Sign up now</a>]</p>
<p>Given my personal research interests and concern that the French-reading public know about the Tadamon Massacre, I asked Annsar and Uğur for an interview to hear about how they conducted their research. I reached them through a Syrian activist who had been a political prisoner. My own work examines the ways people have been describing the Syrian conflict by analysing the lexicon and narrative forms used by different factions.</p>
<p>Annsar and Uğur responded immediately to my request for an interview. What follows is a summary of our conversation via Zoom in which they described, step by step, how they went about conducting their secret investigation.</p>
<h2>The case against making the videos public immediately</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2022/apr/27/investigating-a-war-crime-part-1-searching-for-the-shadow-man-podcast">Today in Focus</a>, Uğur explained that from the moment he received the videos in 2019 until <em>The Guardian</em> published some of the images in April 2022, he and Annsar told nobody about them, with the exception of the Dutch police in compliance with the country’s “fiduciary obligations”, which required them to inform the authorities about the videos while they temporarily made private use of them.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Our goal was to find a way to speak to these ‘professionals,’ who specialised in committing acts of mass violence. They did not know we had video evidence of their crimes.” (Uğur Ümit Üngör)</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467029/original/file-20220604-12-wv5u00.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467029/original/file-20220604-12-wv5u00.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467029/original/file-20220604-12-wv5u00.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467029/original/file-20220604-12-wv5u00.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467029/original/file-20220604-12-wv5u00.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467029/original/file-20220604-12-wv5u00.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467029/original/file-20220604-12-wv5u00.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Tadamon neighbourhood in South Damascus, Syria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Guardian</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Uğur explained they had two options: go public with the videos immediately, via the media, or incorporate them into an ongoing project on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2021.1979907">mass violence in Syria</a> sponsored by their research institute.</p>
<p>Going public right away with the videos would have been a mistake, Uğur concluded. Had we done so, Syrian activists would have immediately identified and denounced the killers on social media, which would have made it very difficult to get more information about the massacre. Once the videos went viral, the culprits would have gone underground and the Syrian government would have denied the authenticity of the footage. Releasing the videos would have no doubt produced 5 sensational minutes of emotional overkill, without providing anything more substantial. What is more, Uğur added, “we couldn’t make the videos public until the young soldier who had risked his life copying them had left Syria, which he only succeeded in doing at the end of 2021”.</p>
<h2>How a fake Facebook profile gained a pro-Assad network’s trust</h2>
<p>When Uğur returned to Amsterdam with the videos, he contacted Annsar Shahhoud, who was doing her PhD thesis on the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14623528.2021.1979908?needAccess=true&journalCode=cjgr20">role Syrian doctors had been playing since 2011 in government-sponsored campaigns of torture and murder</a>.</p>
<p>To gather information for her dissertation, she had created a Facebook page under the pseudonym “Anna Sh.”. Mixing fact with fiction, Anna Sh. identified herself as a Syrian researcher based in the Netherlands, who was an Alawite loyalist of Assad. She was doing research, she explained, on the “successes” of the Syrian army since the conflict began in 2011.</p>
<p>Under this alias, Annsar had already attracted a network of several dozen Facebook friends affiliated with the Syrian government, including soldiers in the regular army, military intelligence agents and members of Assad’s special militia (NDF).</p>
<p>The videos now opened new avenues of research. Together, Uğur and Annsar decided to focus on 3 out of 27, each 6 minutes long, during which soldiers took turns filming one another committing acts of violence. As they raise their rifles and take aim, they move slowly, almost lethargically, with bored expressions on their faces.</p>
<h2>The facts and the investigation</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5wMtWrH2PE">only video released</a> to the public so far is not recommended for sensitive people:</p>
<p>Surrounded by other members of his unit and filmed in broad daylight, a soldier kills 41 people. The victims arrive in a minibus. As they are forced out of the vehicle, we see that they are blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs. Someone orders them to run, one by one, to escape the gunfire of “a local sniper”. In a matter of seconds, each victim lunges forward and disappears into the ditch prepared for the corpses, hit by a bullet or two in the back. When night falls, the soldiers burn the bodies, a detail confirmed by the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J1gqCp6C0s&t=35s">images published in <em>The Guardian</em></a>.</p>
<p>By examining the videos’ metadata, Uğur and Annsar were able to determine the date of the mass murders, as April 16, 2013, but neither the location, the killers’ identities, nor the office responsible for ordering the massacre. For a year, they believed that this horrific crime had taken place in Yelda, a suburb south of Damascus, until a few research assistants from Syria, who came from the southern part of Damascus, recognised a road from the Tadamon district of the city in a few isolated frames from the videos Uğur and Annsar had shared with them.</p>
<h2>Identifying Tadamon’s assassin</h2>
<p>In January 2021, after a year and a half of research, the two researchers got a big break: While combing through thousands of profiles linked to followers of Anna Sh.’s Facebook page, Annsar pinned down the profile of a man whose face she had seen in one of the videos. This was the very same person she had watched kill almost all of the victims in that particular six-minute sequence.</p>
<p>Annsar contacted the man immediately. For a while they quickly communicated back and forth, before he grew suspicious and pulled back. Six months later, he contacted her again and opened up, during which time Anna Sh. succeeded in recording two video conferences with him.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466373/original/file-20220531-26-q5hf4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466373/original/file-20220531-26-q5hf4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466373/original/file-20220531-26-q5hf4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=659&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466373/original/file-20220531-26-q5hf4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=659&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466373/original/file-20220531-26-q5hf4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=659&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466373/original/file-20220531-26-q5hf4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466373/original/file-20220531-26-q5hf4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466373/original/file-20220531-26-q5hf4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Amjad Youssef, a warrant officer from the Damascus Office of Military Intelligence (Branch 227), was filmed executing several dozens of people.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The man was a warrant officer from the Damascus headquarters of the Office of Military Intelligence. In their conversations, they did not talk about Tadamon, but he admitted he “could not even remember how many people he had killed; there had been so many”.</p>
<p>With this breakthrough, the investigation not only identified the alleged assassin, but connected him to Syria’s Office of Military Intelligence, <a href="https://www.vdc-sy.info/index.php/en/reports/militarybranch227#.Yqb6VsVBxph">Branch 227</a>. And in doing so, Annsar and Uğur produced the first piece of documented visual evidence of a mass murder that indisputably implicated the security apparatus of the Syrian government in crimes against humanity.</p>
<p>A few days after my conversation with Uğur and Annsar, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) <a href="https://snhr.org/blog/2022/05/30/the-syrian-regime-detains-the-criminal-amjad-yousef-who-killed-dozens-of-syrians-and-raped-dozens-of-women-in-al-tadamun-neighborhood-in-damascus/">announced</a> that Amjad Youssef had been placed “under arrest” by his superiors in Branch 227. The network did not yet know what would become of him.</p>
<p>As for the victims themselves, they went from being described in general terms among the tens of thousands of <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/tenth-annual-report-enforced-disappearance-syria-international-day">civilians forcibly disappeared</a> since 2013, to casualties of the “Tadamon Massacre,” murdered – and filmed – by members of Syria’s military intelligence.</p>
<h2>The details of mass violence</h2>
<p>As scholars of mass violence with special expertise in the Syrian case, Uğur and Annsar analyse the Tadamon Massacre through a theoretical lens that extends well beyond what they could see in the videos alone. But they also look at this specific case through what they call a ‘micro-space’, focusing on details that might elude those who only analyse mass violence at the macro, national level.</p>
<p>Uğur and Annsar show us that the Tadamon Massacre is only one “instantaneous sequence” of events, a single illustration of what Syria’s security forces have been doing since 2012 across the southern districts and suburbs of Damascus. Over time, they contend that the state policy went on to systematically exterminate and cleanse the region of people suspected, for one reason or another, as being in the opposition.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In the Syrian case, it is important to distinguish between acts of mass violence, carried out by the secret police, which reflect the professional training of the killers, and acts of violence by amateur civilians, engaged in armed conflict.” (Uğur Ümit Üngör)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In order to effectively analyse how the Syrian government has resorted to violence to “cleanse” the nation, Uğur and Annsar use case studies. They divide the country up into “micro-spaces- by province, city, neighbourhood, or village – which yield more conclusive results”. Their goal is to establish, as completely as possible, the chain of command in each of the cases, all the way up the political hierarchy to the president of the country, with the aim of incriminating members of the security forces along the way.</p>
<p>Annsar Shahhoud clarifies what this means:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Our studies of micro-spaces in Syria make it possible to distinguish between the primary goal of the regime – mass violence – and the specific tactics the government uses to escalate local disputes until all chaos breaks out. Our methodology allows us to follow the way the regime manipulates tensions within each community, in different spatial environments. In Homs, for example, in 2011, before the demonstrations had reached that city, the regime found ways to exacerbate feuds between Sunni and Alawite neighbourhoods, leading people to kidnap one another, creating an atmosphere of civil war. What you see in the Tadamon video is characteristic of the kinds of political tactics used by the regime in various other Syrian micro-spaces. The social nature of a particular space, its ethnic and religious composition and other sociological factors, determines which strategies the regime will adopt in one place or another as it lays the groundwork for achieving its final goal.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, in certain places such as Tadamon or the city of Homs, the regime would like us to see political factions lining up neatly along traditional ethnic and religious divisions (Alawites and Sunnis). And when that does not happen, seemingly on its own, with just a little encouragement from the outside, as it did not happen in Aleppo, then the regime immediately resorts to mass violence, against the entire civilian population, particularly when the area is controlled by anti-government forces.</p>
<h2>Is the Syrian conflict a revolution, a civil war, or genocidal war?</h2>
<p>Given Uğur and Annsar’s theoretical approach to the study of mass violence and their methodological innovations in the study of the Syrian case (micro-spatial methodology and Facebook interviews), their project makes an invaluable contribution to narratives about the Syrian conflict.</p>
<p>Thanks to their analysis, the confusing explanations routinely given for why civil war has broken out in Syria begin to evaporate.</p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2021.1979907">article</a> on mass violence, Uğur stresses that in order to identify forms of violence in the context of a particular conflict, it helps to make a conceptual distinction between “the scale of fighting taking place among different military factions” and “the degree of mass violence committed against civilians.”</p>
<p>In Uğur’s opinion, the rapid outbreak of violence in Syria following the uprising in 2011, led to “a complex and lopsided civil war. Nevertheless, he added, the form and scale of the violence on the part of the Syrian regime can only be described as premeditated genocide directed in an indiscriminate way against the entire population in zones controlled by the rebels”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466375/original/file-20220531-18-h22f6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466375/original/file-20220531-18-h22f6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466375/original/file-20220531-18-h22f6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466375/original/file-20220531-18-h22f6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466375/original/file-20220531-18-h22f6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466375/original/file-20220531-18-h22f6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466375/original/file-20220531-18-h22f6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Uğur provided this diagram to help place their research in the wider context of the Syrian conflict. The largest frame represents the ‘conflict’, where the armed opposition is divided between two or more factions. Within the conflict there is a revolution in which some of the fighters are engaged in a civil conflict (ethnic and/or ideological). However, alongside this familiar kind of violence, typically seen in civil wars, there is another kind of violence in the Syrian case that is highly sophisticated, but rarely studied – ‘mass violence,’ state-sponsored violence, that targets the civilian population, pure and simple, without caring about where individual people stand politically.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466420/original/file-20220531-24-npsaet.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466420/original/file-20220531-24-npsaet.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466420/original/file-20220531-24-npsaet.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466420/original/file-20220531-24-npsaet.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466420/original/file-20220531-24-npsaet.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466420/original/file-20220531-24-npsaet.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466420/original/file-20220531-24-npsaet.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A comment identifies the ‘authors of the Tadamon massacre’ following an interview of Annsar and Uğur broadcast on the YouTube channel of Syria TV, an opposition media based in Turkey. ‘6 assassins, 5 Alawites and one Druze,’ it goes on. ‘Spread the word everywhere, brothers’.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In sum, Uğur claims that it is not exactly wrong to identify what is going on in Syria as a “civil war”. But in doing so, analysts obscure the well-documented fact that “from the very beginning of this revolution, the Syrian government has been organising and orchestrating mass violence”.</p>
<p>The video of the Tadamon Massacre further complicates the familiar narrative about the nature of Syria’s conflict. At first glance, for Syrians watching the video, the footage provides a simplistic and typical picture of a civil war: an Alawite soldier (recognised as such by his accent) methodically kills 41 civilians from a district in Damascus inhabited by Sunnis.</p>
<p>Uğur completed this observation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Yes, one of the murders in the video is Alawite, while the other one, who is filming, is Druze. But their boss is Sunni and the boss of their boss is Alawite. These ethnic/religious identities have nothing to do with the Syrian conflict. I firmly believe that the one and only relevant sect in Syria is Mukhabarat.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Since Hafez Al-Assad built his security state empire, the term <a href="https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/jcs/article/view/11815/12636">Mukhabarat</a> [i.e. the military intelligence service of the Syrian government] resonates in Syrian society like the eye of Big Brother. Its secret agents are everywhere. They tap telephone lines; they infiltrate places of work and, depending on the part of the country, they find their way into people’s homes.</p>
<p>According to Uğur, those who belong to the Mukhabarat take on imaginary or supernatural personalities and assume unidentifiable nicknames, like “Abu Ali,” “Abu Stef,” “Abu Saqr,” etc. Annsar adds, having learned this from her interviews with members of the secret service:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“While talking to people working for Mukhabarat, you must never pronounce the word ‘Mukhabarat’ itself, because they are frightened by the very idea of the agency! It’s a never-ending circle of fear, paranoia, and terror.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As for Amjad Youssef, the Syrian Network of Human Rights has confirmed that he never received a warrant or any other official document justifying his arrest.</p>
<p>Uğur had already made the same point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The regime is intelligent and keeps its criminals under tight control. It spies on them, keeps them together, or disposes of them as needed. Syria is a sealed box, a state of killers.”</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p><em>This text was translated from French by Judith Friedlander, Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Hunter College (CUNY).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190165/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mohamad Moustafa Alabsi ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>
Two academics have identified the perpetrators of a massacre committed in 2013 by Syrian loyalist forces. An episode that says a lot about the reality of Syria in the last 10 years.
Mohamad Moustafa Alabsi, Chercheur postdoctoral au Mellon Fellowship Program, Columbia Global Centers, Amman, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH)
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/186842
2022-08-11T15:24:48Z
2022-08-11T15:24:48Z
Nowhere to run: the plight of Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474282/original/file-20220715-22-da64l1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Eritrean refugee children in Ethiopia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eduardo Soteras/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ethiopia has hosted large numbers of Eritrean refugees for years.
Before the recent conflict, about <a href="https://www.unrefugees.org/news/ethiopia-s-tigray-refugee-crisis-explained/">100,000</a> Eritrean refugees lived in camps in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. </p>
<p>They have fled some of the <a href="https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/313615_ERITREA-2021-HUMAN-RIGHTS-REPORT.pdf">worst human rights</a> conditions in the world, including widespread persecution and forced military conscription. Eritrea is a highly authoritarian country. Those who speak out, or are even suspected of opposition to government policy, have been jailed for years, tortured, executed, and disappeared. </p>
<p>However, since late 2020, these Eritrean refugees found themselves caught up in the conflict between Tigrayan forces, the central government, and other regional armed groups. The conflict quickly spiralled into a full-fledged civil war, with dangerous <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61009077">ethnic dimensions</a>. It has made many parts of Ethiopia unsafe for the refugees. </p>
<p>There has been progress toward peace, but the humanitarian need for Ethiopians and refugees that it hosts is still great. In fact, the World Food Programme just <a href="https://www.wfp.org/news/wfp-unhcr-rrs-appeal-funding-continue-feeding-over-750000-refugees-ethiopia">announced</a> that it could run out of food for refugees as soon as October if action is not taken.</p>
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<p>I’m <a href="https://www.refugeesinternational.org/sarah-miller">an expert</a> on refugee issues and published a <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/506c8ea1e4b01d9450dd53f5/t/621fe06b67fab200e77dd641/1646256236952/Eritrea+Brief+-+March+2022+%281%29.pdf">recent report</a> to highlight the specific needs of Eritrean refugees. It pulls together data from interviews with refugees, UN, NGO, government and civil society individuals.</p>
<p>I’ve found that Eritrean refugees in Tigray and other parts of Ethiopia have been attacked by nearly all fighting groups.</p>
<p>Before the conflict, Ethiopia was considered a safe place for refugees. It hosts one of the <a href="https://data.unhcr.org/en/country/eth">largest refugee populations</a> in Africa, and is among Africa’s economic <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2019/03/26/ethiopia-africas-next-powerhouse/">powerhouses</a>. But, it is now clear that Eritrean refugees, as well as other populations of refugees and some internally displaced groups, are struggling to find safety in Ethiopia. </p>
<h2>Nowhere to run</h2>
<p>Eritrean refugees have been attacked by the Ethiopian Defense Forces, Eritrean troops (that have invaded and remain in northern Ethiopia), Tigrayan groups, Amharan militia, among others. </p>
<p>In some cases they were inadvertently caught in harm’s way. In other cases, they were explicitly targeted because of their ethnicity. Eritreans can easily be confused with Tigrayans, both of whom speak Tigrinya, and thus be targeted by those attacking Tigrayans. They have also been attacked by Eritrean troops, in some cases even <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/11/disturbing-un-says-safety-of-eritrean-refugees-greatly-at-risk">kidnapped</a> and taken back to Eritrea.</p>
<p>The UN and wider aid community – even with the conflict subsiding – have no means to <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/briefing/2022/1/61ea6fe74/deteriorating-conditions-eritrean-refugees-grave-risk-tigray.html">guarantee their</a> <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/briefing/2022/1/61ea6fe74/deteriorating-conditions-eritrean-refugees-grave-risk-tigray.html">safety</a>, let alone reach them with consistent and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/international-news-eritrea-abiy-ahmed-ethiopia-united-nations-344e7156295eb1801f9441a9359c2dab">adequate aid</a>. </p>
<p>Early in the conflict, <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/506c8ea1e4b01d9450dd53f5/t/621fe06b67fab200e77dd641/1646256236952/Eritrea+Brief+-+March+2022+%281%29.pdf">Eritrean troops entered</a> Ethiopia and destroyed Ethiopia’s northern Eritrean refugee camps of Hitsats and Shimelba. Tens of thousands of Eritrean refugees were forced to flee further into the Tigrayan warzone. Others were killed or kidnapped back to Eritrea, and some <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/09/16/ethiopia-eritrean-refugees-targeted-tigray">became the targets</a> of other groups, as well. </p>
<p>While some have managed to reach other camps in Ethiopia, or neighbouring countries like Sudan, most remain without anywhere to go and adequate <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/briefing/2022/1/61ea6fe74/deteriorating-conditions-eritrean-refugees-grave-risk-tigray.html">assistance</a>. For example, Eritrean refugees in the newly constructed Alemwach camp <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jul/28/eritrean-refugees-claim-arbitrarily-arrested-beaten-detained-in-ethiopian-camps-unhcr?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">report</a> dangerous conditions and a lack of food and medicine.</p>
<h2>Devastating war</h2>
<p>To be clear, the wider population of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, as well as parts of Amhara and Afar, have also been in dire straits over the course of the conflict. </p>
<p>Famine has been used as a <a href="https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/29548/in-the-tigray-war-weaponized-starvation-takes-a-devastating-toll">weapon of war</a> in Tigray, with devastating <a href="https://apnews.com/article/africa-united-nations-only-on-ap-famine-kenya-0598a26af21928d11d5734b7b826e988">consequences</a>. According to the World Food Programme, <a href="https://nation.africa/africa/news/to-fight-hunger-us-envoy-s-visit-to-ethiopia-must-emphasise-peace-and-accountability-3894686">two million people</a> are severely hungry.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/06/crimes-against-humanity-and-ethnic-cleansing-ethiopias-western-tigray-zone">Human rights violations</a>, including <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/08/ethiopia-troops-and-militia-rape-abduct-women-and-girls-in-tigray-conflict-new-report/">sexual violence</a>, massacres and widespread detention, have also been widely reported over the course of the conflict. Making matters worse, Ethiopia is now facing a crippling drought that could be the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/04/1116872">worst in 40 years</a>. </p>
<p>This unfolding scenario is already affecting the entire region, and refugees – already in a vulnerable state – will face further suffering, as well.</p>
<h2>A safe place</h2>
<p>Even if the Ethiopian government were to renew its commitment to protecting and assisting refugees on their territory – as it is bound to do under <a href="https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports/2021/6/9/from-displacement-to-development-how-ethiopia-can-create-shared-growth-by-facilitating-economic-inclusion-for-refugees">domestic</a> and <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/protect/PROTECTION/3b73b0d63.pdf">international law</a> – would it be able to ensure protection and assistance for displaced groups amid such a fractured political, security, and ethnic landscape? </p>
<p>The reality is that even if peace were achieved today (and there are still some major <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/ethiopia/long-last-ethiopia-prepares-peace-talks">obstacles</a> to overcome before a peace deal is reached) and humanitarian assistance was exponentially increased, Ethiopia will struggle to provide adequate protection and assistance to Eritrean refugees in the coming years.</p>
<p>While Ethiopia is first and foremost responsible for protecting and assisting refugees on its territory, the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ethics-and-international-affairs/article/abs/normative-terrain-of-the-global-refugee-regime/3F91A61887D7748A525CD7103FFEEFCA">global refugee regime</a> dictates that the rest of the world – states, NGOs, the UN, civil society and others – also have a duty to help Eritrean refugees caught in the crossfire. They need help finding safety elsewhere in the form of a durable solution whereby they can live in dignity and support themselves.</p>
<p>The traditional refugee solutions of returning to their home country or locally integrating into the host country offer little for Eritreans at this stage. Thus resettlement to other countries, including the United States, must be increased.</p>
<p>Some 932 Eritrean refugees were <a href="https://eritreanrefugees.org/refugee-stats/">admitted</a> to the US in 2019, and <a href="https://eritreanrefugees.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Refugee-Arrivals-by-State-and-Nationality-as-of-30-June-2022.pdf">around 200</a> Eritrean refugees arrived in the US between October 2021 and June 2022. There are about <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi3uPO9ptr4AhWHhIkEHRiJDbQQFnoECBcQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2Fworld%2F2021%2F03%2F24%2Feritreans-us-worry-loved-ones-ethiopia-refugee-camps%2F6981923002%2F&usg=AOvVaw0XpNrCTe7qTYvRm_vs-g5A">35,000</a> Eritreans in the US to date. But this is a drop in the bucket compared to the level of need still in the region. </p>
<p>However, even if the US and other resettlement countries found resettlement places for much larger numbers of Eritreans and other refugees in need – scaling up staff is necessary to undertake the long screening process, which can sometimes take years for US-bound refugees – it will not be enough for those who need help now.</p>
<p>While increasing resettlement capacity in the US and other states is an important long-term response, there are other immediate steps that must be taken. <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/">UNHCR</a>, NGOs and others in the humanitarian community need to continue to insist on unfettered access to all parts of Ethiopia, including the beleaguered camps where Eritreans have fled or been forced to reside.</p>
<p>Humanitarians must also help Eritreans who seek to leave Tigray and they must work with parties to the conflict to find ways to secure the refugee camps in other parts of Ethiopia where Eritreans are staying.</p>
<p>Finally, the UN and US must continue to work toward lasting peace in Ethiopia, which includes accountability for denying humanitarian access and starving civilians. Without this broader context, Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia will never find safety or a solution to their displacement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186842/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia are caught in a conflict in a country that was supposed to provide them refuge.
Sarah Miller, Assistant Research Professor and Senior Fellow, Georgetown University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/180657
2022-04-06T20:00:04Z
2022-04-06T20:00:04Z
As horrific evidence of massacres is uncovered in Ukraine, Russian propaganda gathers pace
<p><em>Warning: this article contains distressing details.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The appalling crimes against humanity <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russian-war-report-kremlin-claims-bucha-massacre-was-staged-by-ukraine/">allegedly committed by Russian soldiers</a> against Ukrainians are a sobering reminder that the most brutal behaviour can be cynically weaponised for political and strategic purposes.</p>
<p>Shortly after images of dead bodies littering the streets of Bucha on Kyiv’s outskirts – <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-bucha-killings-russia-/31785129.html">some with their hands bound</a> – went viral, the Russian propaganda machine kicked into overdrive with a predictable series of spurious “false flag” claims. </p>
<p>For example: the deaths couldn’t have been caused by Russians because its forces <a href="https://twitter.com/BrendanKeefe/status/1511477641341194243?s=20&t=2VpYpFFtn-vnpyKgx33CnA">had already left</a>. Clearly, it was a <a href="https://twitter.com/francska1/status/1510993878018670595?s=20&t=2VpYpFFtn-vnpyKgx33CnA">British psychological operation</a>. Or it was Ukrainian fascists linked to the infamous Azov Battalion. Or maybe both. In any event, the whole thing was <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/lavrov-bucha-fake-ukraine-russia-b2050463.html">staged</a>. </p>
<p>In doing so, they recalled the maxim, often loosely attributed to Josef Goebbels, that accusing others of acts for which you are responsible can be one of the most effective uses of propaganda.</p>
<p>Official Russian channels have quickly repeated the lines pushed by state media, starting with President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-ally-says-bucha-killings-are-fake-propaganda-2022-04-05/">Dmitry Peskov</a>, Russia’s <a href="https://media.un.org/en/asset/k1u/k1uucq2mcm">UN Ambassador</a>, and numerous Russian embassies worldwide, including in <a href="https://twitter.com/chrizap/status/1511202943022043136?s=20&t=2VpYpFFtn-vnpyKgx33CnA">Australia</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1511202943022043136"}"></div></p>
<p>Russia even attempted to convene the <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/russia-seeks-monday-un-security-council-meet-on-bucha-ukraine-/6513990.html">UN Security Council</a> to discuss atrocities – which its forces were clearly responsible for – that it alleged were committed by Ukraine.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-west-owes-ukraine-much-more-than-just-arms-and-admiration-179383">The West owes Ukraine much more than just arms and admiration</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Revealing Russia’s lies</h2>
<p>A range of logical arguments reveal Russia’s claims, echoed by the Kremlin’s diminished online army of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/28/germanys-putin-caressers-start-coming-to-terms-with-their-naivety">Putinversteher</a>, to be ludicrous. </p>
<p>How is it that Western intelligence agencies are so capable as to organise massacres whenever Russian forces are in the vicinity? How can so-called “<a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/04/04/ukra-a04.html">Ukrainian fascists</a>” maintain such tight operational security that they prevent evidence of their culpability from leaking out? Where are all the storehouses of <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/apr/04/russian-ministry-defense/russia-pushes-false-crisis-actor-claims-about-vide/">crisis actors</a> able to deploy quickly to war zones and film fake videos?</p>
<p>But even more compelling is the clear empirical evidence that the Kremlin’s claims are a total sham: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/60981238">satellite images</a> showing bodies in Bucha lying in the streets for days, well before Russian troops withdrew.</p>
<p>As Ukrainian forces regain territory previously occupied by Russian troops, more tales of atrocities are emerging. Human Rights Watch has detailed reports of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/03/ukraine-apparent-war-crimes-russia-controlled-areas">summary executions</a> in numerous villages, echoing the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09668136.2016.1209460">zachistki</a> (“clean-up” or, more accurately, “cleansing”) operations conducted against Chechens from 1999-2005. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456493/original/file-20220406-26-wq10zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456493/original/file-20220406-26-wq10zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456493/original/file-20220406-26-wq10zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456493/original/file-20220406-26-wq10zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456493/original/file-20220406-26-wq10zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456493/original/file-20220406-26-wq10zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456493/original/file-20220406-26-wq10zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Ukrainian town of Bucha has been utterly devastated by the Russian invasion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/AP/Maca Vojtech Darvik</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/ukrainian-officials-uncover-russian-torture-chambers-in-bucha/news-story/8decd95e0c1b3c49d16787b20a892b7f">Other reports</a> suggest Russian forces used a children’s hospital as a torture chamber. <a href="https://www.space.com/ukraine-mass-grave-bucha-satellite-photos">Mass graves</a> in Ukraine are visible from space. <a href="https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1510333131320090633?s=20&t=AYauuTsNsT9wOwpiTKjAPA">Ukrainian sources</a> claim the bodies of naked women, some partially burned, have been found dumped by roadsides. The bound corpses of the mayor of <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-village-mayor-4-others-found-dead-with-hands-tied-behind-their-backs/">Motyzhyn</a> and her family were uncovered, partly buried, outside their village.</p>
<p>Then there is the mounting evidence of systematic humiliation and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/03/all-wars-are-like-this-used-as-a-weapon-of-war-in-ukraine">rape</a>. One incident, shared by Ukraine’s ambassador to Estonia, <a href="https://twitter.com/Mariana_Betsa/status/1510966912724963328?s=20&t=2VpYpFFtn-vnpyKgx33CnA">involved a three-year-old girl</a>. Others include tales of mothers repeatedly sexually assaulted <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/27/russian-soldiers-raping-and-sexually-assaulting-women-says-ukraine-mp">in front of their own children</a>. Yet another report from <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/liberated-from-the-russians-a-visit-to-trostyanets-after-the-end-of-the-occupation-a-c088be53-5f6c-4059-8d46-68803276e473">Der Spiegel</a> claimed that Russian soldiers occupying the town of Trostyanets had defecated on the bodies of dead Ukrainians.</p>
<h2>Russian propaganda in the digital age</h2>
<p>The tactics by which official narratives seek to explain acts like these are not new, and have been tools of propaganda and psychological warfare for centuries. </p>
<p>But one of the truisms of the digital age is that online ecosystems give contemporary propagandists new opportunities to shape perceptions through size, scope and veracity. </p>
<p>First, the amount of information available to consumers makes it impossible to process it all. That encourages individuals to <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1710966114">self-select</a> into information belief systems, constructing their own “truths”. </p>
<p>Second, the ability to reach <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/misinformation-evidence-its-scope-how-we-encounter-it-and-our-perceptions-it">new audiences</a> allows malign ideas to be seeded in groups that typically would not seek out such information. </p>
<p>Third, as COVID conspiracies and the Deep State movement have shown, the internet is a great <a href="https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/misinformation-more-likely-to-use-non-specific-authority-references-twitter-analysis-of-two-covid-19-myths/">leveller</a> in terms of authoritative and false information.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guns-tanks-and-twitter-how-russia-and-ukraine-are-using-social-media-as-the-war-drags-on-180131">Guns, tanks and Twitter: how Russia and Ukraine are using social media as the war drags on</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Russian disinformation is adept at using these enablers. Its <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html">messaging</a> follows the golden rules of effective propaganda: it is simplistic, didactic, and gives its target audiences someone else to blame. This means its interpretation of atrocities has both international and domestic effects. </p>
<p>Internally, the claim Ukrainian fascists and the West were behind alleged war crimes to justify sanctions and provide Kyiv with aid reinforces the Kremlin narrative that the war is really an “existential crisis” for Russia, in which <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-02-23/ukraine-russia-putin-invasion-sanctions-biden">its very survival</a> is at stake.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456499/original/file-20220406-16-zph6pc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456499/original/file-20220406-16-zph6pc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456499/original/file-20220406-16-zph6pc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456499/original/file-20220406-16-zph6pc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456499/original/file-20220406-16-zph6pc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456499/original/file-20220406-16-zph6pc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456499/original/file-20220406-16-zph6pc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russian propaganda reframes its invasion of Ukraine as a necessary action to ensure its very survival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/AP/Mikhail Klimentyev</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Internationally, it seeks to tap into the pathologies of Western publics that have grown cynical and mistrustful of their own governments, raising doubt and <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2714.html">deepening the fragmentation</a> of societies. </p>
<p>And even if Russia’s own public doesn’t believe the Kremlin line, the likely result is not anger and resistance, but <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/22/putin-disinformation-apathy-00018974">apathy</a> – a sense that all governments are lying to them.</p>
<p>This is deeply worrying, because it raises the spectre that the events in Ukraine will be disbelieved or ignored by one of the few constituencies that might be able to alter their course. Having been conditioned by Putin’s deliberate promotion of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/world/europe/russia-military-putin-kremlin.html">militaristic culture</a> celebrating violence as honourable, many in Russia have met news of the conduct of their forces with a shrug at best, or vehement approval at worst.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/putin-is-on-a-personal-mission-to-rewrite-cold-war-history-making-the-risks-in-ukraine-far-graver-177730">Putin is on a personal mission to rewrite Cold War history, making the risks in Ukraine far graver</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Seeking justice: the weakness of international humanitarian law</h2>
<p>If everyday Russians are unlikely to react by pressing for change, what about international humanitarian law as a way of seeking justice? </p>
<p>That many of the acts attributed to Russian forces constitute war crimes is beyond doubt. They are in clear violation of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-what-the-rules-of-war-tell-us-about-the-deliberate-targeting-of-civilians-178691">Geneva Conventions</a>, particularly those dealing with isolated or local massacres, as well as the <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/INTRO/470">1977 Additional Protocol</a> on avoiding targeting civilians. </p>
<p>The barbarity in Ukraine also meets the criteria for other instruments in the human rights toolkit, such as the <a href="https://www.globalr2p.org/what-is-r2p/">Responsibility to Protect</a>.</p>
<p>It is even likely the acts committed in Ukraine fit into the broader category of genocide, which according to the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%2520on%2520the%2520Prevention%2520and%2520Punishment%2520of%2520the%2520Crime%2520of%2520Genocide.pdf">1948 UN Convention</a> is defined as “acts committed in whole or in part” to destroy national, religious or ethnic groups. </p>
<p>They go beyond attempts to colonise a people, as Putin initially envisaged when depicting Ukrainian statehood as illegitimate. Instead, this has become a systemic campaign aimed at removing the very idea of Ukraine. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/05/russia-is-committing-genocide-in-ukraine/">Eugene Finkel</a> has pointed out in the Washington Post, there is clear intent, as detailed in Russia’s state-controlled media, that Ukraine’s “name likely cannot be retained”; that its elite needs to be “liquidated”; that a “substantial part of the populace” is also guilty of rampant nationalism; and that Ukraine requires “re-education and ideological repressions lasting at least a generation”.</p>
<p>But we are unlikely to see the perpetrators of these acts arraigned in the dock at an international war crimes tribunal. </p>
<p>For one thing, neither Russia nor Ukraine is party to the <a href="https://asp.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/asp/states%2520parties/pages/the%2520states%2520parties%2520to%2520the%2520rome%2520statute.aspx">Rome Statute</a>, the founding document of the International Criminal Court. </p>
<p>Other alternatives, such as a special tribunal, would be unlikely to see alleged war criminals delivered into custody unless captured by Ukrainian forces. And while branding <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/04/joe-biden-vladimir-putin-face-war-crimes-trial-ukraine">Putin</a> and other members of the Russian elite as war criminals is useful for signalling and rhetorical purposes, the only way they are likely to face justice is through the total upending of the Russian political system, and a commitment by any new government to hand them over.</p>
<p>With the first of these highly unlikely, and the second by no means guaranteed, there can be little optimism the perpetrators will face justice any time soon, if ever. </p>
<p>It also puts pressure on both Kyiv and Moscow to end the conflict militarily on their terms, so they can shape the future of what is revealed about its events. </p>
<p>Under those circumstances, the only option for those committed to human dignity is to give Ukraine every tool it requires to protect its people from the horrors that continue to be visited upon them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180657/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Sussex has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the International Studies Association, the Carnegie Foundation, and various Australian government agencies.</span></em></p>
As terrible images from Bucha and other Ukrainian towns are shown around the world, Russian authorities continue to frame their invasion as a fight for their country’s survival.
Matthew Sussex, Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/171830
2021-11-25T14:33:00Z
2021-11-25T14:33:00Z
New book on South Africa’s history puts black people at the centre, for a change
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433151/original/file-20211122-13-1ufvxwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, former South African President FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela after signing a peace pledge ahead of the first democratic elections in 1994.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Schamotta/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thula Simpson’s new <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/thula-simpson-history-of-south-africa/cpbl-7180-g030?referrer=googlemerchant&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkNiMBhCxARIsAIDDKNUU7XlVLrUqPmgkQdKsNe1ZHc3EloPMUPMN9stKope-Ofx6kCBjnMIaAv-MEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds">book</a>, History of South Africa from 1902 to the Present, is an event-packed narrative history. It is reminiscent of the style of Eric Walker’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Southern-Africa-Walker/dp/B0028A9JIE">History of Southern Africa</a> eight decades ago – a very influential book, prescribed for many university history classes – except this time black South Africans are central to the story, not confined to its margins.</p>
<p>The author, <a href="https://www.up.ac.za/historical-heritage-studies/article/2353404/prof-thula-simpson">an associate professor</a> at the University of Pretoria, most recently published the book, <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/thula-simpson-umkhonto-we-sizwe/mmhj-3406-g720?referrer=googlemerchant&gclid=CjwKCAiAnO2MBhApEiwA8q0HYXLl7yeiRyOOyRove8-Y1Hz7bkQHygZnWsKo7u-6FLsArWOs6kf9UxoCytgQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle</a>, in 2016. This was also written in an event-by-event narrative style.</p>
<p>The author’s choice of 1902 as his starting point is presumably because from then on South Africa was under one political ruler – first, the British imperial government; then white settlers; and since 1994, majoritarian democratic rule. The trade-off for dense detail of twentieth century is that the reader forgoes older periods that haven’t received much attention.</p>
<p>A wealth of archaeological research has breathed life into thousand year old trade routes, and the <a href="https://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/bokoni-mpumalanga">Bokoni</a>, a pre-colonial mixed farming society, from the 1500s and other forgotten kingdoms and chiefdoms.</p>
<p>This history covers twelve decades, from the surrender of Boer guerrillas in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/second-anglo-boer-war-1899-1902">Second Anglo-Boer War</a> in 1902 to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-lies-behind-social-unrest-in-south-africa-and-what-might-be-done-about-it-166130">July 2021 looting spree</a> in two of South Africa’s provinces. Usefully, this history provides the results of every election since 1910. As the publisher’s blurb states,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the book follows the South African people through the battles, elections, repression, resistance, strikes, insurrections, massacres, economic crashes and health crises that have shaped the nation’s character.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This book is new scholarship, which fills a gap with the release of new documents.</p>
<p>This history traces that as far back as the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/paris-peace">Versailles peace conference of 1919</a>, to settle the post - World War 1 arrangements. Rival delegations to the conference came from the South African Native National Congress (today South Africa’s governing ANC) and JBM Hertzog’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">Nasionale Party</a>, to lobby for opposite causes. Both lobbied in vain the British Prime Minister Lloyd George: the one for an Afrikaner republic; the other to defend the Cape franchise for blacks.</p>
<h2>Capturing history</h2>
<p>This historical narrative covers the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-bulhoek-massacre">Bulhoek massacre</a> in 1921, about a church stand to keep their meeting ground, but ignores the <a href="https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/40685?ln=en">1922 Bondelzwart rebellion</a> against the South African Government imposing a sixfold increase in their effective taxes. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It covers the crushing of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rand-rebellion-1922">1922 Rand revolt</a> against hiring African miners instead of higher paid white miners, and the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40206586">Pact government’s legislative victory</a> for the defeated white mine workers. The Pact government was constituted by an Afrikaner majority, with support from English-speaking white mineworkers. This was about firing black workers in skilled jobs. It also reminds one of the statutory anti-Semitism of the 1930 <a href="https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/28071/08chapter8.pdf?sequence=9&isAllowed=y">Quota Act</a>, which dramatically blocked Jewish refugees’ emigration to South Africa, as did the <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201503/act-53-1986.pdf">Aliens Act of 1937</a>. </p>
<p>This book is a good reminder that, notwithstanding Prime Minister Jan Smuts’ “segregation has fallen on evil days” speech in 1942, (p.131), his government subsequently repealed not one segregation law. But, to the contrary, it added to segregation laws against Indians, while a parliamentary Marriage Commission proposed in 1939 a ban on interracial marriages (p.162). This was immediately implemented by the apartheid regime in 1949.</p>
<p>The decades of struggle between the apartheid government and the <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/">African National Congress</a>, <a href="http://pac.org.za/">Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania</a>, <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03192.htm">Azanian People’s Organisation</a>, the <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">South African Communist Party</a>, and trade unions are chronicled, culminating in the mass struggles for freedom of the 1980s, and the fraught negotiations of 1990-93 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">to end apartheid</a>.</p>
<p>The current struggles by the families of killed detainees to get prosecution of torturers from the Special Branch – the notorious apartheid police unit – makes topical this books’ reminder that President F W de Klerk’s last action in office was to grant amnesty from prosecution to Adrian Vlok, Magnus Malan, apartheid police and military leaders, respectively, and 3,500 policemen and others, for atrocities committed to uphold apartheid. (p.352)</p>
<p>The winning of democracy a generation ago fills seven chapters. With hindsight, we can assess the consequences that in 1997 <a href="https://theconversation.com/jacob-zuma-likes-to-be-cast-as-a-man-of-the-people-but-is-he-50665">Jacob Zuma</a> was appointed to head the ANC cadre deployment committee: (p.373) chapter 29 is titled Captive State.</p>
<p>The ANC will look back to its 2009 election peak of 70% of votes; the opposition Democratic Alliance will similarly recall its 2014 election peak of 22% of the votes, reaching 30% in Gauteng. (pp. 404, 421) </p>
<h2>Criticism</h2>
<p>Inevitably, a six hundred page history book will have a few mistakes.</p>
<p>Walvis Bay in Namibia, then South West Africa under South African rule, was not conquered by South Africa in 1914 as claimed on page 47. It was annexed to the Cape Colony in 1884, as Simpson himself writes on page 243.</p>
<p>The Special Branch was not founded “about 1935” (p.150): <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Party">United Party</a> cabinet minister Harry Lawrence ordered it set up in 1947. Before that, Criminal Investigation Department detectives did political snooping, ever since the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/international-socialist-league-isl">International Socialist League</a> of the Cape Colony in the 1900s.</p>
<p>In 1968, University of Cape Town (UCT) appointments did not have to be confirmed by the government (p.216). The government threatened that it would extend the apartheid colour bar to academic posts unless the UCT Council rescinded its appointment of Archie Mafeje. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archie-mafeje">Mafeje</a>, a black man, was an emerging scholar who became a major academic critic of the discipline of social anthropology itself.</p>
<p>There will always be more facts than there is space for. But this history should have mentioned that the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/liberal-party-south-africa-lpsa">Liberal Party</a> by 1960, and the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03491.htm">Progressive Federal Party</a> by 1979, had updated their policies to accept universal franchise. Also, bar the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/document-77-yu-chi-chan-club-pamphlet-no-ii-conquest-power-south-africa-1963">Yu Chi Chan Club</a>, there is not even one sentence on any organisations of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/non-european-unity-movement-neum">Non-European Unity Movement</a> family. Their activists influenced the boycott strategy of the <a href="https://africanactivist.msu.edu/organization.php?name=South+African+Non-Racial+Olympic+Committee">South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee</a>.</p>
<h2>Bleak conclusion</h2>
<p>This history paints a bleak conclusion to its twelve decades: xenophobic “pogroms and lynching had become a routine feature of South African life” from 2008 (p.400) with poor blacks attacking other poor blacks. A 153-day strike became the longest ever in South African mining history (p.415) in 2012, and we witnessed the Marikana massacre in 2012.</p>
<p>Chapter 30 is titled False Dawn in its summary of <a href="https://theconversation.com/precarious-power-tilts-towards-ramaphosa-in-battle-inside-south-africas-governing-party-158251">President Cyril Ramaphosa’s</a> difficult first years in power. COVID-19 and the lockdowns culminated in the KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng looting spree of July 2021, mixing opportunism and Zuma diehards <a href="https://theconversation.com/violence-in-south-africa-an-uprising-of-elites-not-of-the-people-164968">incensed by his incarceration for contempt of court</a>. </p>
<p>But it’s not all bad. South Africa spends 45% of its annual budget on the poorest 40% of its citizens. (p.393). Its constitutional democracy, and enforceable <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng-02.pdf">Bill of Rights</a>, remain rare beacons on the African continent. Corruption triggered a huge backlash, including Ramaphosa’s appointment of new prosecutors.</p>
<p>If this history book runs to a second edition in a decade’s time (as Eric Walker’s did) we will await with interest any revision of its conclusions, which are that South Africa is on a downward path.</p>
<p>This is a thorough, fact-packed history that deserves to be in every school library and on every home bookshelf.</p>
<p><em>History of South Africa from 1902 to the Present is published by <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/thula-simpson-history-of-south-africa/cpbl-7180-g030?referrer=googlemerchant&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkNiMBhCxARIsAIDDKNUU7XlVLrUqPmgkQdKsNe1ZHc3EloPMUPMN9stKope-Ofx6kCBjnMIaAv-MEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds">Penguin Random House</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171830/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is a member of the ANC, but writes this review in his professional capacity as a political scientist. </span></em></p>
This history covers twelve decades, from the surrender of Boer guerrillas in the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1902 to the July 2021 looting spree and violence.
Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/154315
2021-02-15T16:06:34Z
2021-02-15T16:06:34Z
Colombia’s fragile peace deal threatened by the return of mass killings
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-55806414">The murder of five students</a> at a farm in Buga, in south-western Colombia, on January 24 highlights the fragility of the 2016 peace deal which brought to an end more than five decades of civil conflict between successive governments and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). </p>
<p>January 2021 was the most violent month since the peace deal was signed, with 12 mass killings and total of 45 people murdered, <a href="http://www.indepaz.org.co/informe-de-masacres-en-colombia-durante-el-2020/">according to the Colombian NGO INDEPAZ</a>. The <a href="https://colombia.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/english_version_20_enero_2021_informesg_dic2020.pdf">United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia</a> and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/02/10/left-undefended/killings-rights-defenders-colombias-remote-communities">Human Rights Watch</a> have recorded the deaths of 261 FARC ex-combatants and more than 400 human rights defenders and social leaders since 2016. </p>
<p>Colombia’s savage civil war between the central government and members of the left-wing FARC militia finally came to an end in November 2016 after years of negotiation. An initial referendum on the deal on October 2 was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/02/colombia-referendum-rejects-peace-deal-with-farc">rejected by 50.2%</a> of voters, but after further negotiation, an amended peace deal was finally signed at the Colón Theatre in Bogotá <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/24/colombia-signs-historic-peace-deal-with-farc-rebels">on November 24</a>, and ratified by Colombia’s Congress on November 30. This date officially marks the end of the armed conflict in Colombia.</p>
<p>Álvaro Daza was one of many local community leaders who watched on television as the peace deal was signed. As a president of the Community Action Board Organisation (JAC) of the small town of El Vado in the Department of Cauca, south-western Colombia – and as a resident of one of the regions <a href="http://centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/descargas/informes2016/basta-ya-ingles/BASTA-YA-ingles.pdf">most heavily affected</a> by the armed conflict – he was feeling extremely optimistic about the future. As he told members of JAC that day: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The peace agreement is an opportunity to help us as a community to ‘move on’ from past human rights abuses and turn the page of violence. Our victims will have peace on the day that we can reach justice. This is the best way to honour our dead. But to achieve reconciliation we need to promote sustainable development and peaceful coexistence across Colombia. This is our responsibility as social leaders. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>On April 29 2020, two armed men – <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/colombia2020/territorio/masacre-en-mercaderes-lideres-sociales-en-medio-de-guerrilla-y-paramilitares-articulo-917381/">allegedly former FARC fighters</a> – murdered Daza at his home in El Vado, along with his wife, son and granddaughter. A few months later, on October 30, <a href="https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/dos-masacres-en-la-misma-casa-asi-exterminaron-a-la-familia-de-lider-social-en-cauca/202018/">unidentified armed men</a> invaded the same house and killed his sister, brother-in-law and nephew. </p>
<p>The Colombian police <a href="https://www.france24.com/es/am%C3%A9rica-latina/20201101-colombia-masacre-lider-social-familia">said at the time</a> that these murders were the work of illegal armed groups who saw the entire Daza family as an obstacle to achieving control of the region. But a report from Human Rights Watch said that the massacres occurred with <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/02/10/left-undefended/killings-rights-defenders-colombias-remote-communities">the complicity and inaction</a> of state forces that operate in south-western Colombia.</p>
<p>The Daza family’s case is far from unique. Across the region, former paramilitary groups, drug trafficking organisations and former FARC militia members are using massacres as a way to resolve disputes. These mainly take place in territory previously controlled by FARC where there is competition to dominate drug trafficking and illegal mining and there is little in the way of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBgwjJKfxRA&t=3s">government support</a> to implement the peace agreement. </p>
<p>Massacres have been used strategically for decades in Colombia as a means to spread fear and terror. According to the <a href="http://centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/descargas/informes2016/basta-ya-ingles/BASTA-YA-ingles.pdf">National Centre for Historical Memory of Colombia</a>, there were more than 1,982 massacres of civilians between 1980 and 2012. In 2020 alone, <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/12/1080082">the UN</a> and Colombian NGO <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/colombia2020/pais/un-ano-marcado-por-las-masacres/">INDEPAZ</a> recorded that 375 people died in 89 massacres (the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/crimes-against-humanity.shtml">UN defines a massacre</a> as the killing of three or more people at one time). </p>
<h2>Massacres as a method of violence</h2>
<p>My <a href="https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7576-7562">research suggests</a> there are two main reasons for the resurgence of massacres in Colombia. First, the 2016 deal set in place various mechanisms to achieve peace, including reconciliation and truth and justice investigations. These are a serious threat to illegal organisations in post-conflict Colombia, and criminal groups are using mass killings to <a href="https://centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/el-salado-esa-guerra-no-era-nuestra/">let civilians know</a> about the high cost of supporting the peace agreement. </p>
<p>Second, massacres – especially during long-term armed conflicts – tend to contribute to a culture of the <a href="https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/557/55703508.pdf">“theatricalisation” of violence</a>. Dismemberment and mutilation of victims – in these cases mainly human rights defenders and community leaders – send powerful messages of humiliation and work to dehumanise the opponents of the perpetrators. In post-conflict Colombia, the massacred bodies of human rights defenders and social leaders <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2020/09/13/espanol/america-latina/colombia-protestas-masacres.html">are often used as trophies</a> by the groups that have rejected the peace deal. </p>
<p>The resurgence of massacres is the most critical challenge currently facing Colombia. The country’s president, Iván Duque, who was elected in June 2018, came to power with the promise that he would renegotiate what he described as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombia-elects-a-conservative-who-promises-to-correct-its-peace-accord-98273">“lenient” peace deal</a>, but also pledged not to “tear the agreement to shreds”.</p>
<p>But his government is in denial, referring euphemistically to “<a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/colombia-massacres-august/">multiple homicides</a>” rather than “massacres” and blaming the peace agreement and the <a href="https://www.eltiempo.com/politica/proceso-de-paz/analista-dice-que-duque-no-debe-culpar-a-santos-de-masacres-sino-evitar-que-sigan-ocurriendo-533982">previous administration</a> for what Duque sees as the deal’s shortcomings.</p>
<p>Despite <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/12/1080082">calls from the UN</a> for the Colombian government to take action to protect civilians, critics say that the government is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/oct/08/colombia-activists-murder-amnesty-international">not doing anything concrete</a> to provide a solution to the violence. </p>
<p>The impact of massacres on the implementation of the peace agreement is colossal. Peacebuilding is a lengthy process requiring long-term engagement and commitment from a diverse range of people and institutions. Community leaders and human rights defenders play a key role in representing the interests of ordinary people during the implementation of the peace deal and are vital in the fabric of social life after the war. </p>
<p>But these are the people being murdered in large numbers. If the Colombian government continues in denial like it has been, the 2016 peace agreement is under severe threat.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154315/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Senior Adviser in Transitional Justice for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) appointed to Colombia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission </span></em></p>
Despite a landmark deal in 2016 which brought an end to five decades of conflict, an upsurge in mass killings is threatening peace in Colombia.
Camilo Tamayo Gomez, Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Security Studies, Birmingham City University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/154475
2021-02-09T19:08:01Z
2021-02-09T19:08:01Z
How historically accurate is the film High Ground? The violence it depicts is uncomfortably close to the truth
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382893/original/file-20210207-14-1shv6c1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jacob Junior Nayinggul (left) and Simon Baker in High Ground (2020).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maxo, Bunya Productions, Savage Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Australian film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9286908/?ref_=ttpl_pl_tt">High Ground</a>, set mostly at a mission in Arnhem Land in the 1930s, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/people-weren-t-ready-australian-massacre-aired-at-berlin-premiere-20200224-p543r9.html">blends stories</a> (and languages) from Indigenous Nations across the region.</p>
<p>It is a <a href="https://thelatch.com.au/high-ground-movie/">fictionalised story</a>, inspired, says director Stephen Maxwell Johnson, by “true history”. At times, the film resembles a shoot-em-up Western. But it gets a lot right.</p>
<p>High Ground was written by Chris Anastassiades and co-produced by Witiyana Marika, (a founding member of Yothu Yindi), who appears in a supporting role as Grandfather Dharrpa and was the film’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/feb/09/i-did-this-for-my-family-how-high-ground-used-a-both-ways-approach-to-tell-australias-story">senior cultural advisor</a>. It tells of a police massacre of Aboriginal people and the repercussions that follow.</p>
<p>Massacres at the hands of police and settlers were tragically common through northern Australia. The opening scene, depicting a massacre beside a waterhole in 1919, echoes the 1911 <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/detail.php?r=715">Gan Gan Massacre</a> in which mounted police killed more than 30 Yolngu people in a “punishment expedition”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WL-G4oCoDF0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>The mission</h2>
<p>In the film, a young boy, Gutjuk, who survives the massacre of his family, is taken to a mission. The <a href="https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/nt/YE00010">Roper River Mission</a> (now Ngukurr), established in 1908 and run by the Church Missionary Society, really did take in Aboriginal children who had either lost kin, or been forcibly removed from their families. </p>
<p>By the 1920s, there were so many children at Roper River that the society established a <a href="https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/nt/YE00011">new mission</a> just for them on Groote Eylandt. Another mission opened at <a href="https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/nt/YE00012">Oenpelli</a> (now Gunbalanya) in 1925, the subject of <a href="https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/series/aboriginal-history/bible-buffalo-country">our recent book</a>. </p>
<p>Parts of High Ground were shot in the vicinity of Oenpelli, which likely inspired the mission in the film.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382961/original/file-20210208-15-f3dztb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382961/original/file-20210208-15-f3dztb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382961/original/file-20210208-15-f3dztb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382961/original/file-20210208-15-f3dztb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382961/original/file-20210208-15-f3dztb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382961/original/file-20210208-15-f3dztb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382961/original/file-20210208-15-f3dztb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382961/original/file-20210208-15-f3dztb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jacob Junior Nayinggul as Gutjuk, who survives a massacre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maxo, Bunya Productions, Savage Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The real station</h2>
<p>Before it was a mission, Oenpelli was a cattle station and buffalo shooters’ camp run by a man named Paddy Cahill. In the film, a young woman, Gulwirri, who fights to defend her people, has worked as a “house girl” on a station and speaks of the violence she experienced. </p>
<p>Cahill had a <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-76231-9_5">reputation for brutality</a>. He wrote of chaining Aboriginal people by the neck. The community remembers how he used to shoot people’s dogs, and his son was known to give workers a “hiding”. There are rumours, too, that Paddy was involved in a massacre. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382138/original/file-20210203-13-prxarz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Gurrhwek Mangiru (left) with baby Gurrhwek Mangiru (left) Albert Balmana, and unidentified woman and baby (right), Oenpelli, Northern Territory Archives Service." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382138/original/file-20210203-13-prxarz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382138/original/file-20210203-13-prxarz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382138/original/file-20210203-13-prxarz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382138/original/file-20210203-13-prxarz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382138/original/file-20210203-13-prxarz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382138/original/file-20210203-13-prxarz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382138/original/file-20210203-13-prxarz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gurrhwek Mangiru (left) with baby Albert Balmana, and unidentified woman and baby (right), Oenpelli, c.1925.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Northern Territory Archives Service</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Provoked by his behaviour, traditional owners instigated a plot to take out Cahill and his household. In 1917, strychnine was mixed into the family’s butter, killing their dog, and making Paddy’s wife Maria and two Aboriginal housemaids, Marealmark and Topsy seriously ill. Punishment for those Cahill suspected to be responsible was swift and violent. </p>
<p>In High Ground, the police officers’ earlier experience as soldiers fuels their bloody tactics. After Cahill left Oenpelli in 1922, caretaker Don Campbell managed the station until missionaries arrived. Campbell, too, was a returned serviceman, described as violent. Incoming missionary, Rev Alf Dyer <a href="https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n7284/pdf/book.pdf">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are plenty [of Aboriginal people] about. Mr. Campbell said he had about 300 last Christmas. His policy has been to hunt them, because of the cattle killing; as you read between the lines you will see plenty of problems for the Superintendent of Oenpelli — we will have an uphill fight.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The real missionaries</h2>
<p>In High Ground, the mission is run by a young brother and sister team. The latter, Claire, speaks the local language.</p>
<p>The original missionaries at Oenpelli were an older, socially awkward couple with prior experience: Alf and Mary Dyer. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382137/original/file-20210203-13-lvzz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Alf and Mary Dyer, c.1930" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382137/original/file-20210203-13-lvzz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382137/original/file-20210203-13-lvzz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382137/original/file-20210203-13-lvzz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382137/original/file-20210203-13-lvzz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382137/original/file-20210203-13-lvzz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382137/original/file-20210203-13-lvzz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382137/original/file-20210203-13-lvzz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alf and Mary Dyer, c.1930, Northern Territory Archives Service.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some have questioned whether a missionary woman would have learned language in the 1930s. But the character of Claire resembles the real figure of Nell Harris, who arrived at Oenpelli in 1933, aged 29. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-dreaming-of-a-white-christmas-on-the-aboriginal-missions-88381">Friday essay: dreaming of a 'white Christmas' on the Aboriginal missions</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Thanks to her Aboriginal teachers, Harris quickly began learning Kunwinkju and, together with local women Hannah Mangiru and Rachel Maralngurra, translated the Gospel of Mark.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382856/original/file-20210207-20-zx5rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Outside the Church at Oenpelli, c.1930, Northern Territory Archives Service." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382856/original/file-20210207-20-zx5rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382856/original/file-20210207-20-zx5rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382856/original/file-20210207-20-zx5rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382856/original/file-20210207-20-zx5rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382856/original/file-20210207-20-zx5rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382856/original/file-20210207-20-zx5rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382856/original/file-20210207-20-zx5rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Outside the Church at Oenpelli, c.1930.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Northern Territory Archives Service</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The real Gutjuk</h2>
<p>In the film, Gutjuk (played as an adult by Jacob Junior Nayinggul), grows up at the mission. He uses this affiliation to work for the interests of his kin in defending themselves against the police, who come looking for his uncle, Baywara, a warrior and survivor of the 1919 massacre. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382859/original/file-20210207-13-fovbdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382859/original/file-20210207-13-fovbdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382859/original/file-20210207-13-fovbdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382859/original/file-20210207-13-fovbdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382859/original/file-20210207-13-fovbdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382859/original/file-20210207-13-fovbdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382859/original/file-20210207-13-fovbdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382859/original/file-20210207-13-fovbdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nipper Marakarra Gumurdul standing behind seated man. Frank ‘Naluwud’ Girrabul on crutches.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Northern Territory Archives Service</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This reminds us of a real historical figure, Narlim. Narlim was eldest son of senior traditional owner of the land at Oenpelli — Nipper Marakarra. Narlim was born in 1909, making him around the same age as the fictional Gutjuk. </p>
<p>Narlim grew up at the mission because, after working for Cahill, Nipper saw strategic value in an alliance with missionaries. He also wanted his children to learn to read and speak English. This alliance was a way to ensure continued life on Country and to maintain sovereignty as traditional owners.</p>
<p>But, as in the film, missionary cooperation with police was disastrous for Narlim. When a policeman visited in the late 1930s, he found Narlim had an infectious disease. The policeman handcuffed Narlim, intending to chain him with a group of others to be sent to Darwin.</p>
<p>The missionaries said the chains were unnecessary as Narlim “would behave”, but they did not save him. Narlim was exiled from the mission and his country under police escort, baby daughter on one shoulder and spears on the other, never to return. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382139/original/file-20210203-23-1dfcs78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Narlim, stock-worker, c.1929’" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382139/original/file-20210203-23-1dfcs78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382139/original/file-20210203-23-1dfcs78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382139/original/file-20210203-23-1dfcs78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382139/original/file-20210203-23-1dfcs78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382139/original/file-20210203-23-1dfcs78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382139/original/file-20210203-23-1dfcs78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382139/original/file-20210203-23-1dfcs78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Narlim, stock-worker, c.1929.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Northern Territory Archive Services</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His daughter, Peggy eventually came home and became a strong community leader.</p>
<h2>The real ‘punishment’ and ‘peace’ expeditions</h2>
<p>In 1932, Yolngu warriors killed a party of Japanese pearlers trespassing on their country. Constable Albert McColl was sent in; he too was speared. So police proposed a “punishment expedition”, not unlike those depicted in High Ground. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-dr-g-yunupinu-took-yolnu-culture-to-the-world-81676">How Dr G.Yunupiŋu took Yolŋu culture to the world</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>After a humanitarian outcry, the society proposed a “peace expedition” instead. The expedition went unarmed to the Yolngu warriors. Unlike events depicted in the film, three were convinced to come to Darwin for trial. The men were found guilty but eventually released. Yet one, Dhakiyarr, disappeared after his release. The open secret in Darwin was that Dhakiyarr was <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dhakiyarr-wirrpanda-12885">drowned in the harbour</a> in an extra-judicial police killing.</p>
<p>The film gets right the ambiguous missionary relationship to violence. Missions were meant to be a refuge from inter-tribal and settler violence. Missionaries understood their humanitarian and evangelistic work as seeking to atone for the bloodshed of colonisation. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382895/original/file-20210207-15-oc83vk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382895/original/file-20210207-15-oc83vk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382895/original/file-20210207-15-oc83vk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382895/original/file-20210207-15-oc83vk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382895/original/file-20210207-15-oc83vk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382895/original/file-20210207-15-oc83vk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382895/original/file-20210207-15-oc83vk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382895/original/file-20210207-15-oc83vk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An attempt at negotiation on the mission in High Ground. Claire and her brother are on the right, Grandfather Dharrpa seated on the left.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maxo, Bunya Productions, Savage Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But they also relied upon and enabled the ongoing violence of settler authorities. As “Aboriginal Protectors” missionaries functioned as local sheriffs and carried guns. Missionaries would send Aboriginal people for trial in Darwin, or else implement their own punishments.</p>
<p>As portrayed in the film, missionaries joined expeditions to capture supposed lawbreakers. Alf Dyer, for instance, led the so-called “peace expedition” to convince Yolngu men to face trial in white courts.</p>
<h2>The historical record</h2>
<p>High Ground also shows how self-conscious white authorities were creating a historical record. </p>
<p>The chief of police, played by Jack Thompson, seems to be always directing a photographer to take portraits. These images were good for fund raising, for impressing officials. They do not reflect the full story of the community. But they do give us a glimpse of the complex relationships in Arnhem Land in the 1930s.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382140/original/file-20210203-19-jeeq9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Group of girls at the Oenpelli Mission c.1930, Northern Territory Archives Service" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382140/original/file-20210203-19-jeeq9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382140/original/file-20210203-19-jeeq9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382140/original/file-20210203-19-jeeq9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382140/original/file-20210203-19-jeeq9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382140/original/file-20210203-19-jeeq9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382140/original/file-20210203-19-jeeq9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382140/original/file-20210203-19-jeeq9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Group of girls at the Oenpelli Mission c.1930, Northern Territory Archives Service.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Northern Territory Archive Services</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>High Ground, of course, is a highly dramatised piece of art. But, as the filmmakers have said, it’s closer to <a href="https://thelatch.com.au/high-ground-movie/">uncomfortable historical truths</a> than we might expect. By showcasing such stories, the film will hopefully encourage broader reflection on Australia’s violent history, and its enduring legacies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154475/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Rademaker receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally K. May receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Narndal Gumurdul does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In depicting brutal massacres and mission life, this film gets a lot right. And the model for its central protagonist may well be a young man called Narlim, exiled from his country in the late 1930s.
Laura Rademaker, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Research Centre for Deep History, Australian National University
Julie Narndal Gumurdul, Senior Traditional Owner, Gunbalanya community, Western Arnhem Land, Indigenous Knowledge
Sally K. May, Senior Research Fellow, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/145165
2021-02-09T01:58:16Z
2021-02-09T01:58:16Z
Truth telling and giving back: how settler colonials are coming to terms with painful family histories
<p>There is a quiet movement among settler colonials in Australia and the US to critically examine their family histories as a way of re-examining the impact of centuries of dispossession and slavery of Indigenous peoples. </p>
<p>Critical family histories enable a shift from celebratory tropes of benign settlement to deep considerations of legitimacy. The myth of great white men and women, bravely opening new worlds and taming the wilderness, including the “savage” Indigenes, is now being challenged by a search for the truth. </p>
<p>As Diane Kenaston, an American pastor and genealogist, explains in her book <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/16TtyJTFPsPi7HWJkc4orLrC9SdpXOdGle0mfxZIvWvI/edit#">Genealogy and Anti-Racism: A Resource for White People</a>, genealogy has long been entwined with white supremacy. And family history research has been the preserve of white privilege.</p>
<p>But, she writes, critical family history can also “change the narratives within our own families”. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our ancestors were works in progress, just as we are. They, like us, sometimes participated in oppressive systems and sometimes resisted them. [We need to] engage this complex legacy. </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-great-australian-silence-50-years-on-100737">Friday essay: the 'great Australian silence' 50 years on</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.christinesleeter.org/">Education activist Christine Sleeter</a> <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2005615X.2015.1048607">first adopted</a> the use of critical family history in this way. While researching teaching methods for the multicultural classroom, she discovered that intersections of race, class, culture, gender and other forms of difference and power had shaped her own <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00131940801944587">family history</a>.</p>
<p>In her research, Sleeter found </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a history and legacy of not only European American immigration, but also of Appalachia, of slave ownership, of African Americans passing as white and leaving family behind, and of Jim Crow. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her awareness led to a sense of responsibility and debt. In 2017, she <a href="https://www.christinesleeter.org/returning-what-was-stolen">returned to the Ute people US$250,000</a>, which she had inherited from the sale of a homestead on land stolen from the Ute people in Colorado in 1881.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sleeter (second from right) returning money to the Ute tribe in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Founding fathers as ancestors</h2>
<p>In Australia, David Denborough, a writer and academic, thought there would be nothing of interest in the stories of his ancestors. </p>
<p>Working alongside Aboriginal people, documenting their stories of dispossession and survival, he was challenged by <a href="https://dulwichcentre.com.au/national-sorry-day.pdf">Jane Lester</a>, a Yangkunytjatjara/Antikirinya woman, to find his ancestors. </p>
<p>Now, 20 years later, <a href="https://dulwichcentre.com.au/product/unsettling-australian-histories/">he is publishing a book</a> of letters to his great-great-grandfather, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/griffith-sir-samuel-walker-445">Sir Samuel Walker Griffith</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sir Samuel Walker Griffith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Queensland</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Griffith, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/the-life-and-times-of-samuel-griffith/12589996">a celebrated founding father of Australia</a>, was premier of Queensland during the “<a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/conspiracy-of-silence-timothy-bottoms/book/9781743313824.html">killing times</a>” and later became the country’s first chief justice. </p>
<p>The relationships between Denborough’s ancestors and Aboriginal people were marked by colonisation, racism and often inhumane treatment. While Griffith wrote <em><a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/cook/legend-and-legacy/challenging-terra-nullius">terra nullius</a></em> into the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2020/August/Samuel_Griffith">Australian constitution</a>, another ancestor, Charles Cummins Stone Anning, was <a href="https://www.welcometocountry.org/anning-familys-murderous-frontier-history-exposed/">responsible for atrocities against Aboriginal people in Queensland</a>.</p>
<p>Denborough is determined to tell the truth as part of his healing journey and his close relationship with Aboriginal people. He has <a href="https://dulwichcentre.com.au/product/unsettling-australian-histories/">realised</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>there is no sense in moral superiority towards my ancestry because colonial violence in this country has not ended; no place for hopelessness because First Nations resistance has never wavered; and, no time for paralysing shame because invitations to partnerships are still being offered by Aboriginal people … and [there is] so much to be done.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>White deaths at black hands, black deaths at white hands</h2>
<p>James Brown was 16 years old and shepherding alone on a remote sheep run near present-day Quorn, South Australia, in 1852. He was found tragically clubbed to death and mutilated in unknown circumstances. </p>
<p>An unwritten rule of the frontier was that attacks on white people, no matter the circumstances, were followed by vigilante violence. Men, women and children were often <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php">massacred</a> in retribution.</p>
<p>Seventeen men, including Brown’s brothers and two Aboriginal trackers, rode out. They reported killing four Aboriginal men. Tellingly, though, two of the 15 men would not swear this on the Bible. </p>
<p>Mike Brown, a descendent of this family who took over land in the Flinders Ranges area, knew very little of the Aboriginal history of Australia. After hearing <a href="https://www.aboriginalvictoria.vic.gov.au/reg-blow">Reg Blow, a Gureng Gureng elder</a>, speak about the true history of the criminal takeover of Aboriginal lands, Brown was inspired to research his own family history. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-masters-of-the-future-or-heirs-of-the-past-mining-history-and-indigenous-ownership-153879">Friday essay: masters of the future or heirs of the past? Mining, history and Indigenous ownership</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Wanting to investigate the Aboriginal stories of the 1852 massacre, he found a lifetime friend in Ken McKenzie, a prominent Kuyani-Adnyamathana elder, from whom he received “the dignity of forgiveness”. </p>
<p>Brown is now working with others on a documentary, <a href="https://documentaryaustralia.com.au/project/beyond-sorry-wt/">Beyond Sorry</a>, to reveal the full story of the massacre. He told me,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s how we discover who we really are as a people and our relationship to this land […] we need to be released from the illusion we live under that affects our attitudes to ‘others’, to be free.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In NSW, playwright Clare Britton was also shocked to discover the story of brutally murdered relatives in her <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5185dd7ee4b09995885e5772/t/5b0223fb1ae6cf341ddf978b/1526866948953/Posts+essay.pdf">family history</a>. </p>
<p>The pregnant Elizabeth O'Brien and her infant son Poggy were clubbed to death by the Aboriginal “bushrangers” <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/bushrangers-new-south-wales/governor-brothers">Jimmy and Joe Governor</a> in 1900. With the help of descendents of the Governor family and Aboriginal elders, Britton’s theatre company produced a play based on this story, <a href="http://www.mydarlingpatricia.com/postsinthepaddock">Posts in a Paddock</a>. The title refers to all that remained of the O'Brien household when she visited, a stark memorial to the family tragedy. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The hunt for the Governor bushrangers in 1900: a posse of mounted police, Aboriginal trackers and district volunteers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Britton explained that elder Aunty Rhonda Dixon Grovenor introduced the concept of <em>dadirri</em> “deep listening” to the ensemble. They sat with their Aboriginal collaborators and each other’s families. And listened to each other. She said,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>so many Indigenous people were killed, separated from their families and taken away from their homes and you can’t read about that in the same way because those stories were not recorded. [These murders] were thoroughly documented because my family and the other victims were white. </p>
<p>The understandings I formed then have changed me. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Giving back</h2>
<p>In the US, artist <a href="http://annemavor.com/">Anne Mavor</a> was inspired to learn about her ancestors after attending a public meeting where a local Indigenous person challenged the white audience to critically examine their histories. </p>
<p>Mavor put together an exhibition, <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2019/03/26/i-am-my-white-ancestors-claims-legacy-of-oppression/">I Am My White Ancestors: Claiming the Legacy of Oppression</a>, comprised of 12 pieces of art depicting her ancestors. They include royal figures, a slave owner, warriors, farmers and a pilgrim — all with Mavor’s face. The life-size portraits make whiteness visible and accountable. </p>
<p>Mavor told me she seeks </p>
<blockquote>
<p>to inspire white viewers … to claim both positive and negative aspects of their own family histories to contribute to the end of racism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She says white people <a href="https://www.christinesleeter.org/legacy-of-oppression">don’t get a pass</a> by ignoring the oppression of their ancestors. They need to ask: What is the legacy of this oppression and how does this affect me now? </p>
<p>This is just one of many projects designed to give back to Indigenous peoples. In Seattle, residents can pay rent to the city’s first inhabitants, <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2019/09/10/seattle-rent-native-tribe-recognition-reparations/">the Duwamish people</a>, who have long been rejected by the US government for federal recognition as a Native American tribe. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explorer-navigator-coloniser-revisit-captain-cooks-legacy-with-the-click-of-a-mouse-137390">Explorer, navigator, coloniser: revisit Captain Cook’s legacy with the click of a mouse</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites has developed the “Real Rent” program as a means of restitution, but also to educate the broader public about the plight of the Duwamish.</p>
<p>Another project, <a href="https://www.reconciliationrising.org/">Reconciliation Rising</a>, coordinated by <a href="https://matc.unl.edu/education/2018MATCSpeakerFiles/Kevin_Abourezk.php">Lakota journalist Kevin Abourezk</a> and <a href="https://history.unl.edu/margaret-jacobs">academic Margaret Jacobs</a>, showcases the work of those engaged in confronting painful and traumatic histories as a way towards reconciliation. </p>
<p>Their website lists examples of <a href="https://omaha.com/livewellnebraska/hansen-after-more-than-years-the-mayo-clinic-finally-apologizes/article_9adcf8e0-334b-5c6a-92ca-2c40d9602372.html">apologies</a>, <a href="https://www.focusonvictoria.ca/focus-magazine-septoct-2018/marion-cummings-indomitable-spirit-r2/">notable activists</a> and many instances of the <a href="https://www.reconciliationrising.org/links-1">return of ancestral lands</a>. </p>
<p>Land hand-backs are happening in Australia, too. Tom and Jane Teniswood have <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-21/tasmanian-private-land-handed-back-to-aboriginal-community/10825984">returned half of their 220-acre property</a> in Tasmania to the local Aboriginal community. The Teniswoods advocate individual action over government reconciliation efforts, saying</p>
<blockquote>
<p>reconciliation is great but it is so much talk, so many documents and so little action. This is just a symbol of action.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is easy to agree with them. While government leadership in truth-telling is vital, we will see more of these acts of profound generosity and genuine reconciliation from settler colonials. </p>
<h2>In the spirit of Makaratta</h2>
<p>Settler colonials are beginning to understand the true impacts of the criminal takeover of Indigenous lands. They are seeking to right the balance and achieve a spiritual resolution.</p>
<p>This is the Aboriginal way of approaching history, in order to move forward after a conflict. A common process across the continent, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-10/makarrata-explainer-yolngu-word-more-than-synonym-for-treaty/8790452">it is called Makaratta by the yolngu people of Arnhemland</a>. In the same way, a critical approach to family histories involves a great deal of communication between settler colonials and Indigenous peoples. It enables the forging of new relationships.</p>
<p>It is histories such as these that will change people through deep understanding and empathy. They also present an opportunity to truly and indelibly change the nature of our society and leave a meaningful legacy for our children.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145165/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Grieve Williams receives funding from the ARC. </span></em></p>
Settler colonials are beginning to understand the true impacts of the criminal takeover of Indigenous lands. They are seeking to right the balance and achieve a spiritual resolution.
Victoria Grieves Williams, Adjunct Professor, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/123434
2019-09-16T11:59:41Z
2019-09-16T11:59:41Z
British troops massacred Indians in Amritsar – and a century later, there’s been no official apology
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292306/original/file-20190912-190002-cvd3j2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jallianwala Bagh, in Amritsar, India, where hundreds were killed on April 13, 1919, under British colonial rule.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/India-Jallianwala-Bagh/528950b8b49f4cc6a1e031b0f1504c33/2/0">AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby recently visited the site of a brutal massacre that happened in 1919 under the British colonial rule in India and offered his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/10/justin-welby-apologises-in-name-of-christ-british-massacre-amritsar">personal apologies</a>. He expressed his “deep sense of grief” for a “terrible atrocity.” </p>
<p>Earlier in April, then U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May <a href="https://time.com/5566864/india-massacre-apology/">told the House of Commons</a> that the episode was “a shameful scar on British-Indian history.” However, she had stopped short of apologizing.</p>
<p>The massacre is still remembered in India as a symbol of colonial cruelty. Here’s what happened a hundred years ago. </p>
<h2>Killing unarmed protesters</h2>
<p>After World War I, the British, who controlled a vast empire in India, agreed to give Indians limited self-government due to India’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33317368">substantial contribution</a> to the war effort. </p>
<p>These reforms, named the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/gentlemanly-terrorists/reforms-of-1919-montaguchelmsford-the-rowlatt-act-jails-commission-and-the-royal-amnesty/D97CA2DF6D0AEBDD9AD2066DB1504C04/core-reader">Montagu-Chelmsford reforms</a> after the secretary of state for India and the viceroy of India, promised to lead to more substantial self-government over time.</p>
<p>However, around the same time the British had passed the draconian Rowlatt Acts, which allowed certain political cases to be tried without trial. And the trial was also to be conducted without juries. The acts were <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/gentlemanly-terrorists/reforms-of-1919-montaguchelmsford-the-rowlatt-act-jails-commission-and-the-royal-amnesty/D97CA2DF6D0AEBDD9AD2066DB1504C04/core-reader">designed to ruthlessly suppress</a> all forms of political dissent. </p>
<p>The Rowlatt Acts were designed to replace the constraints on political activity that had been embodied in colonial rules, known as the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4366436?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Defense of India Rules</a>, which had been in force during World War I. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, there were <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Gandhi.html?id=boDAE8MLAJMC">widespread public protests</a>, led by the noted Indian nationalist leader, Mahatma Gandhi. </p>
<p>As part of this nationwide agitation, some 10,000 individuals gathered in a park in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on April 13, 1919. Since this protest was in defiance of a curfew which prohibited political gatherings, Brigadier-General <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Butcher_of_Amritsar.html?id=XuQC5pgzCw4C">Reginald Dyer</a>, who was stationed in the nearby city of Jalandhar, decided to take action. </p>
<p>Troops under his command blocked the sole entrance to the park, called Jallianwallah Bagh. Without warning they <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/amritsar-massacre">opened fire</a>. The British <a href="https://www.theweek.in/theweek/cover/2019/04/12/jallianwala-bagh-100-how-many-people-actually-died-a-numbers-tale.html">officially estimated that 379</a> people died. The unofficial count was more. Close to <a href="https://www.thestatesman.com/india/100-years-on-britain-admits-jallianwala-bagh-massacre-a-shameful-scar-1502744574.html">1,200</a> were injured.</p>
<p>Dyer’s men stopped firing only after they had run out of ammunition. The soldiers did not offer any medical assistance to the wounded, and others could not come to their aid because of the imposition of a curfew on the city. </p>
<h2>An apology long overdue</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A wall of the Jallianwala Bagh, the site of the 1919 massacre, with bullet marks on it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/India-US/6500ffc8801f48ec8daa8e49731ef339/6/0">AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford, convened an inquiry commission which led to Dyer being relieved of his command. However, upon returning to the United Kingdom, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/650872?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">he found support</a> for his actions among a segment of the British population. </p>
<p>In India, there was widespread shock and horror over this wanton use of force. The Nobel Laureate in literature, Rabindranath Tagore, protested by renouncing his knighthood, which he had received from the British Crown in 1915. <a href="http://dart.columbia.edu/library/tagore-letter/letter.html">Writing to the viceroy</a>, Tagore decried “the disproportionate severity of the punishment inflicted upon the unfortunate people.” </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://polisci.indiana.edu/about/faculty/ganguly-sumit.html">political scientist</a> who has written on the impact of British colonialism on India, I believe that the legacy of this episode, along with <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674027244">a host of other ugly events</a>, continues to trouble Indo-British relations.</p>
<p>Britain, for the most part, has failed to come to terms with its tragic colonial heritage in South Asia and elsewhere. In the wake of the the archbishop’s apology, I believe, it is time for the British government to follow suit. </p>
<p>An unequivocal apology to the memory of the victims is long overdue.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123434/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sumit Ganguly receives funding from the US Department of State, I am a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.</span></em></p>
A hundred years ago, peaceful Indian protesters were massacred under British colonial rule. A scholar argues why a formal apology is overdue.
Sumit Ganguly, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and the Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations, Indiana University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/121900
2019-08-15T17:58:24Z
2019-08-15T17:58:24Z
Peterloo massacre: how women’s bravery helped change British politics forever
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288148/original/file-20190815-136180-17z59nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Print of the Peterloo Massacre published by Richard Carlile in 1819.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/6045102539">Flickr/ManchesterArchives</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester: the <a href="http://www.peterloomassacre.org/history.html">year is 1819</a>, and a crowd of around 60,000 peaceful pro-democracy and antipoverty protesters have gathered to hear radical speaker <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Hunt">Henry Hunt</a> call for parliamentary reform. What should have been a peaceful appeal, ends with an estimated <a href="https://wiganlanebooks.co.uk/books/local-history/the-casualties-of-peterloo-by-michael-bush/">18 dead and hundreds injured</a>. </p>
<p>This was a time in Britain’s history when most people didn’t have the vote and many regarded the parliamentary system – which was based on <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/struggle_democracy/getting_vote.htm">property ownership and heavily weighted towards the south of England</a> – as unrepresentative and unfair. Factory workers had very few rights and most of them worked in appalling conditions. </p>
<p>As Hunt began his speech, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-45563005">the order was given</a> for him to be arrested. After he had given himself up and again urged the crowd to order, the volunteer Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry attacked the platform, the flags, and those around with sabres, while special constables weighed in with truncheons. A charge into the panicking crowd by the 15th Hussars completed the rout. </p>
<p>As well as an attack on the working classes, Peterloo was also an episode of violence against women. According to the <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Casualties-Peterloo-Professor-Michael-Bush/dp/1859361250">historian Michael Bush</a>, women formed perhaps one in eight of the crowd, but more than a quarter of those injured. They were not only twice as likely as men to be injured, but also more likely to be injured by truncheons and sabres. </p>
<p>This was no accident, for female reformers formed part of the guard for the flags and banners on the platform, which were attacked and seized by the Manchester Yeomanry cavalry as soon as Henry Hunt had been arrested. But how did the women come to be in such an exposed position and why were they attacked without quarter? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288144/original/file-20190815-136208-12od21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288144/original/file-20190815-136208-12od21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288144/original/file-20190815-136208-12od21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288144/original/file-20190815-136208-12od21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288144/original/file-20190815-136208-12od21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288144/original/file-20190815-136208-12od21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288144/original/file-20190815-136208-12od21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The hostile ‘Belle Alliance’ cartoon of female reformers (July 1819) by George Cruikshank.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/join_in/using_digital_images/using_digital_images.aspx?asset_id=177501001&objectId=1648229&partId=1">British Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/protest-democracy-1818-1820/female-reformers/">The female reform societies</a> of Lancashire were a novelty, formed in the summer of 1819 in the weeks before the great Manchester meeting of August 16. They were not asking for votes for women, but they were claiming the vote for families, and a say in how that vote was cast. In an address which was to have been presented on the platform at Peterloo, The Manchester Female Reformers declared that “as wives, mothers, daughters, in their social, domestic, moral capacities, they come forward in support of the sacred cause of liberty”. </p>
<p>They were there supporting their husbands, fathers and sons in the struggle for a radical reform of parliament. They took care to be feminine, but not what we would call feminists, yet they stretched the boundaries of femininity to breaking point and, in the eyes of government loyalists, renounced their right to special treatment. </p>
<p>More provocative still, parties of female reformers on reforming platforms presented flags and caps of liberty to the male reform leaders. The cap of liberty had been the symbol of revolution in France, but on the Manchester Reformers’ flag it was carried by the figure of Britannia, as shown on English coinage until the 1790s.</p>
<p>This ceremony took the patriotic ritual of women presenting colours to military regiments and adapted it to radical ends. The Manchester Female Reformers planned to proclaim: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>May our flag never be unfurled but in the cause of peace and reform, and then may a female’s curse pursue the coward who deserts the standard.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At previous meetings, the authorities had been unable to capture the radical colours and had suffered some humiliating rebuffs. The volunteer Yeomanry at Manchester were determined to reverse these defeats. When he heard the women would be on the platform again at Manchester, the Bolton magistrate and spymaster Colonel Fletcher wrote privately that such meetings “ought to be suppressed, even though in such suppression, a vigour beyond the strict letter of the law may be used in so doing”. With Fletcher looking on, this was exactly what happened at Peterloo. </p>
<h2>‘Women beaten to the ground by truncheons’</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-369224">Mary Fildes</a>, president of the Manchester Female Reformers, <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/PRfields.htm">is depicted in prints</a> waving a radical flag from the front of the platform as the troops attack. She guarded her flag until the last minute, then jumped from the platform, catching her white dress on a nail and being cut by a sabre as she struggled to get free. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288158/original/file-20190815-136203-1096zjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288158/original/file-20190815-136203-1096zjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288158/original/file-20190815-136203-1096zjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288158/original/file-20190815-136203-1096zjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288158/original/file-20190815-136203-1096zjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1183&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288158/original/file-20190815-136203-1096zjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1183&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288158/original/file-20190815-136203-1096zjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1183&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cropped version of ‘Britons strike home’ (August 1819) by George Cruikshank.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/join_in/using_digital_images/using_digital_images.aspx?asset_id=62823001&objectId=1503463&partId=1">British Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As she ran, she was beaten to the ground by a special constable who seized her embroidered handkerchief-flag, and then dodged another sabre blow and escaped into hiding for the next fortnight – although badly wounded she survived and continued to campaign for the vote.</p>
<p>Others were arrested in her stead and detained for days without trial in wretched conditions. One of them, <a href="https://phm.org.uk/blogposts/the-women-of-peterloo/">Elizabeth Gaunt</a>, suffered a miscarriage afterwards – her unborn child is listed as one of the victims of Peterloo on <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-49333004">the new memorial in Manchester</a>. </p>
<p>George Cruikshank’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-peterloo-massacre">famous graphic images</a> of troops attacking defenceless women and children formed the enduring image of Peterloo in the public mind. After this propaganda disaster, next time round, in 1832, the government dared not risk sending in troops against unarmed crowds of reformers gathered in cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. The House of Lords backed down at the third time of asking and the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/houseofcommons/reformacts/overview/reformact1832/">Great Reform Act</a> was passed.</p>
<p>Behind Britain’s famous long history of gradual reform lay the shock of Peterloo. And behind the granting of the franchise to more men lay the bravery of women.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Poole is affiliated with the Peterloo Memorial Campaign <a href="http://www.peterloomassacre.org">www.peterloomassacre.org</a> </span></em></p>
As well as an attack on the working classes, Peterloo was also an episode of violence against women.
Robert Poole, Professor of History, University of Central Lancashire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/97408
2018-11-06T16:46:50Z
2018-11-06T16:46:50Z
‘It is the job of the living to save the dead from drowning’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243241/original/file-20181031-76384-1bi69v6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C24%2C1500%2C963&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The remains of an Ixil man emerge from the ground, one of the countless victims of the civil war in Guatemala. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tristan Brand/FAFG Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I arrive in Buenos Aires in December. My fieldwork in Guatemala has ended and that in Argentina has not yet begun. I am in between things. I’ve been working with a team of forensic anthropologists exhuming mass graves and piecing together bones, labouring to identify victims of Guatemala’s recent history of political violence. After months of intimate proximity to death and terror, it is strange to arrive in the sunny cheer of Buenos Aires.</p>
<p>It’s high summer in Argentina, vacation time. I’m disoriented by the (to me) upside-down seasons of the Southern Hemisphere. I’m startled to find myself wandering the Palermo Soho neighbourhood, where tourists sip café cortados at sidewalk cafes. In leafy Parque Centenario, people practice yoga, folding themselves into the downward-dog position. I am a world away from Guatemala City with its barred windows and cautious streets. It is hard to believe that a few weeks ago I was standing in the mud of an excavation site in the remote province of Quiché, excavating bones.</p>
<p>In Guatemala, I was always with other people. We dug together and ate meals together. We shared rooms, clothes, mosquito spray, water bottles and colds. In Argentina, I am alone. My newly rented studio apartment is as bare and white as a clinic: white tiled floor, white walls, white curtains. In the bright summer light, I feel like I’m living inside an eggshell.</p>
<p>When do I realise I am not well? When I hear people laughing as they pass on the street and rush to close the curtains so they won’t glimpse me? When I skip dinner and sit hungry on the edge of my bed rather than go outside? Odd things enter my mind: a woodcut print I once saw of children in a garden. Above them, puffy summer clouds. Below them, roots of trees and plants sinking into the earth – and tangled among the roots, skeletons.</p>
<p>I constantly think of three men, how their bones were crisscrossed in the dirt. Why this exhumation and not one of the others? I don’t know, but this particular mass grave in the hills of El Quiché is always present, like a radio playing in the background. The strata of copper-tinged soil. The women from the community, arms folded, waiting at the edge of the excavation. The sound of the river and the pick axes.</p>
<h2>200,000 dead and 45,000 disappeared</h2>
<p>There are hundreds of mass graves in Guatemala. During the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jun/14/disappeared-guatemala-family-search-son-marco-antonio-molina-theissen">armed conflict from 1960 to 1996</a>, the Guatemalan military, supported by the US government, targeted Maya farming communities for their supposed sympathy with leftist guerrilla groups. Entire villages were massacred. The United Nations estimates that <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/amerika/3880">83% of the victims were indigenous Maya-speaking Guatemalans</a>. The scale of the violence is staggering: in a country with a population of 8 million people, 200,000 were killed and 45,000 disappeared. El Quiché was at the epicentre of the bloodshed: locally, the conflict is known simply as <a href="http://berkeleyjournal.org/2017/03/la-violencia-after-war-the-long-legacy-of-conflict-in-guatemala/"><em>La Violencia</em></a> – the violence.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242455/original/file-20181026-7056-bq9ruo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242455/original/file-20181026-7056-bq9ruo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=660&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242455/original/file-20181026-7056-bq9ruo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=660&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242455/original/file-20181026-7056-bq9ruo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=660&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242455/original/file-20181026-7056-bq9ruo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242455/original/file-20181026-7056-bq9ruo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242455/original/file-20181026-7056-bq9ruo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The province of El Quiche, Guatemala.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9partement_du_Quich%C3%A9">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Standing in the exhumation site, <a href="http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/35562/">we dig to find the buried bones</a>. We uncover three male skeletons. Tidy bullet holes, entry and exit, mark two of the crania; the third skull is completely shattered. As we clean away the dirt, Maxi tells us to look for machete marks, which appear as lines etched across the bone. In other mass graves, on other skeletons, we have found the tell-tale hatch marks on skulls, scapula, fibula (a blow to sever the Achilles tendon, so people can’t run away). This is the kind of forensic detail we are being trained to spot and document. It can be used as evidence to prove torture and murder, to build a case for genocide in a trial. If there ever is a trial.</p>
<p>Toothbrushes, brooms, dustpans, pink and green plastic buckets. Maxi stopped at the Walmart outside of Guatemala City to buy supplies. The tools for exhuming mass graves are ordinary. We work for hours cleaning dirt off the three bodies, careful not to displace their position in the grave. It is not the bones I find most disturbing. It is not the skulls with their expression of grinning or screaming. It is not even the cord still tied around the intricate bones of one man’s wrists. It is the boots. All the local men wear these exact boots. When I look up from my work, I see these very boots gathered around the grave, worn by the men watching us, the men hoping to find their missing father, brother, son. After work, I scrape the mud from my shoes, using a stick, just as I use a stick to clean the mud from the soles of the dead men’s boots.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242449/original/file-20181026-7053-rkuw7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242449/original/file-20181026-7053-rkuw7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242449/original/file-20181026-7053-rkuw7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242449/original/file-20181026-7053-rkuw7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242449/original/file-20181026-7053-rkuw7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242449/original/file-20181026-7053-rkuw7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242449/original/file-20181026-7053-rkuw7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Workers unearth human remains in the province of Quiché, Guatemala. Thousands of bodies have been discovered. Of the more than 200,000 people murdered or missing, 83% were indigenous-language speakers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tristan Brand/FAFG Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The three dead men are dressed in typical work clothes. As I brush the dirt off a plaid shirt, I can feel the sharp ribs beneath the fabric. I notice the even stitching of the homemade shirt. The fabric is intact and retains its colours. Some of the thread along the sleeve has rotted away (cotton degrades faster than nylon), leaving the fabric in pieces. I imagine the wives and mothers who cut and stitched the cloth.</p>
<p>Maxi tells me that when the bodies of women are found wearing <em>traje</em> (traditional dress), women from the community ask for photographs of their <em>huipil</em>, their handwoven blouses, and sometimes climb into the grave to inspect the stitching. The design of a <em>huipil</em> is unique and can give a clue to the identity of a skeleton. If a woman finds the body of her mother, she may have the same <em>huipil</em> made for herself and her daughters.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242450/original/file-20181026-7056-1qhuv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242450/original/file-20181026-7056-1qhuv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242450/original/file-20181026-7056-1qhuv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242450/original/file-20181026-7056-1qhuv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242450/original/file-20181026-7056-1qhuv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242450/original/file-20181026-7056-1qhuv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242450/original/file-20181026-7056-1qhuv2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Ixil woman participates in the search to find the remains of her brother, Quiche province.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tristan Brand/FAFG Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Recognition by <em>huipil</em> is not scientific identification. Bodies are also sometimes found with jewellery, visible tattoos and even legible identification documents. Such evidence is noted and forms part of a forensic profile. It can help establish identity, dependent on the findings of a forensic exam, and ideally, a DNA match. But identity documents can end up with someone other than their original owner. People have similar tattoos. Jewellery gets stolen. Clothes get switched.</p>
<p>Families and community members may find clothing more convincing than a forensic identification or even a DNA match. It can be hard to imagine a skeleton – or often just a fragment of bone – as a son or mother. A watch, a tattoo, a driver’s license – any of these may be more hospitable to the imaginative work entailed in accepting human remains as a missing loved one. (For more on the complications of associating bone fragments with missing people, see Renshaw, 2016 and Wagner, 2008.) Families and forensic teams sometimes measure evidence by different standards and find certainty in different forms of proof.</p>
<h2>Locating the dead</h2>
<p>In Guatemala, these different ways of knowing <a href="https://www.interventionjournal.com/content/pau-p%C3%A9rez-sales-susana-navarro-garc%C3%ADa-2007resistencias-contra-el-olvido-trabajo-psicosocial">converge on dreams</a>. In the Maya cosmovision, the dead play an active role in the lives of the living. Dreams are one of the principal channels of communication, a means by which ancestors offer counsel and give warning. From a young age, children are encouraged to remember and tell their dreams. (For more on dreams in Maya society, see Pérez-Sales and Navarro Garcia 2007; Tedlock, 1981; and Molesky-Poz, 2009. For children’s dream training, see Tedlock, 1981.) In the context of exhumations, community members report dreams in which the dead indicate where their body is located so that it can be found and given a proper burial. Without funeral rites, the dead are not at peace and cannot fulfil their communal role. (Pérez-Sales and Navarro-Garcia, 2007. For a well-documented discussion of communication between living and dead in the context of exhumation in East Timor, see Kinsella and Blau, 2013.) Exhumation helps restore the correct relationship between the living and the dead.</p>
<p>Community members seek to <a href="https://www.stabilityjournal.org/articles/10.5334/sta.au/">locate bodies through dreams</a>, but the forensic team chooses where to excavate based on archaeological evidence. They look for subtle changes in the topography that may indicate a sunken area. They dig exploratory trenches looking for signs that the dirt is <em>revuelto</em>, the layers mixed together, which is an indication that it has been previous disturbed.</p>
<h2>Dead bodies can’t drown</h2>
<p>I want to know how these competing methods of locating bodies affect the relationship between teams and communities. I ask Zulma, who is the director of an organisation that provides practical and psychological support to communities during the process of exhumation. Zulma is a social worker who grew up in Quiché, wears the <em>traje</em> of her village, and speaks Ixil and Spanish. She acts as an interpreter, not only linguistically, but socially, between the local communities, the forensic team, and other NGOs and government actors. She tells me that for Maya communities, DNA is important and dreams are too. When I ask if she feels like the forensic teams takes the dreams reported to them seriously, she pauses and says, “We have to be patient with the scientists. They have a different way of seeing the world.” She adds, “more than anything, they are interested in the colour of soil, but we are interested in dreams.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242452/original/file-20181026-7071-1f1xms1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242452/original/file-20181026-7071-1f1xms1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242452/original/file-20181026-7071-1f1xms1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242452/original/file-20181026-7071-1f1xms1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242452/original/file-20181026-7071-1f1xms1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242452/original/file-20181026-7071-1f1xms1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242452/original/file-20181026-7071-1f1xms1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Exhumation helps to restore normal relations between the living and the dead.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alicia Andre/Penninghen</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I ask Alvaro, a Spanish-speaking forensic archaeologist, what role dreams play in the team’s work. He says that just a week before, a woman approached him to relate a dream indicating that her father was buried under a big pine tree at the current site. I ask if the team will search there. He says, “We have to respect the way they see the world.” Then he sighs and says, “but there are a lot of pine trees!”</p>
<p>The site being excavated sits at the edge of a forest. We are digging by a large pine tree, whose thick roots make the shovelling hard going. It is already late in the day when we find the first bone. The air is heavy with approaching rain. As Alvaro scrapes away the earth from the femur, local men prepare a tarp to protect the site from the impending storm. In a flash of a machete blade they chop branches from trees, cutting supports and stakes cleverly notched to fit together. Maxi once said that one of the tragedies of La Violencia was that it disgraced the machete. It brought shame to a noble instrument that harvests maize and builds houses. So much death dealt by machetes, so many massacres. A tool of life made a weapon of death. The men at the site wield machetes with grace and magic, making tents over the open pits in minutes.</p>
<p>The rain begins to pour down, but the team keeps working under the tarp, fuelled by a buzz of excitement that we have found a grave. Within an hour, the distinct forms of three bodies are visible. They are skeletonized, meaning that all the flesh has decomposed and that only bone is left. There seem to be more bodies farther beneath. Alvaro guesses seven in total.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242454/original/file-20181026-7056-u7xev3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242454/original/file-20181026-7056-u7xev3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242454/original/file-20181026-7056-u7xev3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242454/original/file-20181026-7056-u7xev3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242454/original/file-20181026-7056-u7xev3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242454/original/file-20181026-7056-u7xev3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242454/original/file-20181026-7056-u7xev3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A member of the FAFG team takes a picture of some of the remains found, including a piece of a broken skull.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tristan Brand/FAFG Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the ride back to town, as the truck inches through the downpour, Maxi and Alvaro tell a story. During an exhumation in another community, a hard rain began to fall. The excavated pit with its half-exposed bodies quickly filled with water. Community members jumped in to save the people buried there from drowning. The punchline of this story is, of course, that dead bodies can’t drown.</p>
<p>A story about the dead drowning marks a boundary between the team and the families. It separates a biomedical conception of the corpse from an understanding of the dead as still in some sense vital. It divides science from the sacred. Such a boundary might seem unassailable, but the longer my fieldwork goes on, the less sure I am about the stability of such divisions. I begin to think that the boundary between scientific and non-scientific world-views is more like a porous membrane than a cement wall.</p>
<h2>Not just dreams</h2>
<p>It is not just dreams that unsettle the boundary between science and something else. It is also the potential liveliness of bones. In a lab, I see a forensic anthropologist stroke the forehead of a skull with tender touch and say, “poor guy,” as she records the trauma she reads in his bones. I notice a team member cringe when hammering a segment of femur to prepare a DNA sample. When I ask her about it, she says, “I hate doing it. It feels wrong. After everything they’ve been through.” A member of the Argentine forensic team remarks that she abhors the part of the lab protocol that requires her to place skulls in plastic bags. “It’s stupid but I feel like they’re suffocating.”</p>
<p>These are not strictly scientific reactions. The worry of suffocation is not so different than the worry of drowning. Tender touch, a visceral reluctance to break a bone or place a skull in a plastic bag imply a certain continued vitality to bones and a vulnerable personhood that persists in the dead. As Katharine Young has remarked about prohibitions against dark humour during autopsies, you can only offend a subject, not an object. So, too, it is subjects not objects who can be injured and cared for.</p>
<p>Perhaps “care” is the boundary that matters. It is not a boundary that divides scientific and non-scientific or families and forensic teams, it is one that encloses them in the same field. The field of care includes cleaning bones and examining the stitching of a <em>huipil</em>. It encompasses both dreams and DNA. As archaeologist Rosemary Joyce and human rights scholar Adam Rosenblatt have pointed out, forensic anthropologists are among the few groups of people socially sanctioned to care for dead bodies. Families and forensic teams share the duty of caring for the dead. It is the job of the living to save the dead from drowning.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The article on which this translation is based was published in collaboration with the <a href="https://blogterrain.hypotheses.org/">blog of the journal Terrain</a>. The illustrations and photos were kindly provided by the students of the <a href="https://www.penninghen.fr/">Penninghen School</a> and by the photographer <a href="https://tristanbrand.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Guatemala-Forensics/G00008wpP3TKzdIQ/I0000l1S.emeNVQg">Tristan Brand</a> with the FAFG Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97408/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexa Hagerty has worked with the FAFG Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laure Assaf is a member of the editorial team of the review Terrain.</span></em></p>
The Ixil people of Guatemala dream of the places where their dead, massacred during the country’s armed conflict might be located.
Alexa Hagerty, Anthropologist, Stanford University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104602
2018-10-23T12:18:55Z
2018-10-23T12:18:55Z
Massacre in Malaysia: why the quest for an investigation into alleged UK colonial crimes faltered
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241050/original/file-20181017-41129-13v6pku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">British troops were operating against communist insurgents in the Malay Emergency when the massacre took place.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205232396">© IWM (D 88041)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Let bygones be bygones. Let sleeping dogs lie. But not everyone would agree: for decades the families of 24 people allegedly massacred by UK soldiers in 1948 at Batang Kali, Malaysia, have been trying to get the UK to investigate – without success. Their efforts recently came to the end of the line when an application to the European Court of Human Rights <a href="http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-186724">was rejected</a>. </p>
<p>The families, led by Nyok Keyu Chong, thought the UK should investigate because in 1948 Batang Kali was within the British Empire. There had been investigations in the past, but Chong thought they were not good enough, and that new information from the Royal Malaysia Police and <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Slaughter-Deception-at-Batang-Kali/dp/9810813031">a 2009 book</a> would make a difference. However, the UK government refused a new inquiry, and an appeal to the UK Supreme Court was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/nov/25/relatives-lose-fight-for-inquiry-into-1948-batang-kali-massacre">unsuccessful</a>. In desperation the families turned to the European Court of Human Rights, which has now ruled that the European Convention on Human Rights <a href="https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2018/10/04/european-court-rejects-call-for-probe-into-batang-kali-massacre/">cannot help them</a>.</p>
<p>The backdrop to this case is a 21st-century revision of how we view events of the past. Wrongdoing that was once swept under the carpet is now being reexamined, with people <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-a-nation-apologise-for-the-crimes-of-its-past-66525">asking important questions</a> about the UK’s reliance on slavery and colonialism.</p>
<p>The official line just after the Batang Kali massacre was that a number of “bandits” had been shot while making an attempt to escape custody. In 1969 The People newspaper reported that the victims were killed in cold blood, and several of the alleged perpetrators appeared on TV to confirm this new version of the events. The Labour government at the time said it was taking the matter very seriously, but after the Conservatives won the 1970 general election the investigation was cancelled. </p>
<h2>The right to truth</h2>
<p>In the wake of awful events, finding out exactly what happened, and why, takes on a special significance. After the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the country embarked upon a process of “truth and reconciliation”. A <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">commission</a> was established, with the power to grant amnesties in return for information. Getting to the truth was so important that South Africa was willing to sacrifice the ability to prosecute people who had done terrible things.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241628/original/file-20181022-105754-1itokg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241628/original/file-20181022-105754-1itokg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241628/original/file-20181022-105754-1itokg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241628/original/file-20181022-105754-1itokg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241628/original/file-20181022-105754-1itokg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241628/original/file-20181022-105754-1itokg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241628/original/file-20181022-105754-1itokg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241628/original/file-20181022-105754-1itokg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Apartheid-era police colonel, torturer and murderer Eugene de Kock at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission headquarters, 1997.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jann_Turner_with_Eugene_de_Kock,_TRC_Headquarters_in1997.jpg">George Hallett</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The UN General Assembly has gone so far as to promote the idea of <a href="http://undocs.org/A/RES/68/165">a “right” to the truth</a> in respect of the most serious human rights violations. It also <a href="http://undocs.org/A/RES/65/196">proclaimed</a> March 24 as an annual “day for the right to the truth”. These efforts are designed to encourage states, but that is as much as the UN can do here – encourage. Since the General Assembly is not a parliament and does not make international law, there is a problem when states refuse to be “encouraged”.</p>
<p>This is what faced the families of the victims of the Batang Kali massacre. Spurred on by changing attitudes to colonialism, families’ leader Chong thought the time was right to request a new public enquiry. The UK government refused, so Chong tried, in effect, to use UK and European human rights law to enforce a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020589317000586">right to the truth</a>. </p>
<h2>A disappointing outcome</h2>
<p>International human rights law has long recognised that some past violations have effects that continue into the present day: these are called “<a href="http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/10.1163/ej.9789004158832.i-273.16">continuing violations</a>”. The clearest example is <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/ced/pages/conventionced.aspx">enforced disappearance</a>, where it is accepted that the uncertainty and anguish felt by relatives continues until the fate of the missing person is known. The events at Batang Kali cannot be characterised as enforced disappearances so the law as it stands, disappointingly, does not recognise that they give rise to a “continuing violation”. </p>
<p>Sometimes when new information about events even in the distant past (including cover ups) comes to light, it can trigger a present-day obligation to investigate. This is because the right to life contains not only a duty not to deprive people of their life arbitrarily, but also a duty to investigate suspicious deaths. The European Court found that there were not enough new developments in relation to Batang Kali.</p>
<p>The European Court <a href="http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-127684">has said</a> that it might look into the failure to investigate historical events that go against the very foundations of the European Convention, such as war crimes or crimes against humanity. This would be to protect the underlying values of the convention. However in the Batang Kali case, the European Court said that such “convention values” cannot help where the events took place before the European Convention on Human Rights even existed.</p>
<p>The European Court of Human Rights is a great institution that has real power to promote justice. And it has in the past recognised that proper investigations promote the right to truth. In the Batang Kali case it could have found that refusing to investigate the alleged events and cover up gave rise to a “continuing violation”. It could have found that new materials supplied by Chong were a significant new development. Finally it could have found that a present-day “convention value” is to investigate credible allegations about the worst excesses of colonialism. The European Court invented the “convention values” test <a href="http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-92142">only recently</a>, and it is in its power to put events to that test. Given this historic opportunity, it is profoundly disappointing that the court declined to put itself on the frontline in the quest for a right to the truth.</p>
<p>It was, and indeed still is, possible for the UK government to instigate a public inquiry into the events of 1948. With concerted political pressure it might still happen – and while at least some of the people who were there as children are still alive and able to find out why their parents were killed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Sweeney receives funding from The British Academy, the British Council, and the European Union.</span></em></p>
British troops allegedly killed 24 unarmed villagers in Batang Kali in 1948, but the government still refuses a public inquiry.
James Sweeney, Professor, Lancaster Law School, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/105415
2018-10-22T13:34:41Z
2018-10-22T13:34:41Z
Mike Leigh’s Peterloo: a worthy film that’s long on detail and short on drama
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241607/original/file-20181022-105767-oyf2bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sill from Peterloo.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cornerstone Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labour MP Chris Williamson certainly seems to have enjoyed Mike Leigh’s new film Peterloo, which recreates the 1819 massacre in St Peter’s Field in Manchester. Williamson, the <a href="https://www.totalpolitics.com/articles/diary/chris-williamson-gets-talked-future-labour-leader-nec-results-land">Corbynite member for Derby North</a> quoted in his enthusiastic tweet the Shelley poem, <a href="https://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Shelley/the_mask_of_anarchy.htm">The Mask of Anarchy</a>. Shelley wrote it to commemorate the massacre during which 15 people were killed and an estimated 700 injured when armed yeomanry attacked 60,000 peaceful pro-democracy and anti-poverty protesters.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1053042347343265793"}"></div></p>
<p>Williamson is a keen supporter of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party – one that celebrates proletarian struggle and solidarity, even when it has sometimes led to conflict. The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, infamously described the violent student protests of 2010 as “<a href="https://www.lbc.co.uk/politics/parties/labour/uncovered-john-mcdonnell-praises-2010-riots/">the best of our movement</a>”. So it was always likely that Peterloo, a film about the bloody suppression of a popular demonstration would find favour on the left.</p>
<p>But when Leigh announced in April 2015 he was making a film about Peterloo, Corbyn was an obscure backbench MP fighting to retain his seat in that year’s general election campaign. The 2015 contest saw voters elect the first majority Conservative government in more than 20 years, with a mandate to continue to implement austerity measures. Leigh’s film has been released in a transformed context – having come <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/general-election-2017-38466">close to winning the 2017 election</a> with his promise to end austerity, Corbyn is widely believed to have reset the political agenda. And his mantra, “the many not the few” is clearly inspired by Shelley’s poem.</p>
<p>Leigh himself is reserved about what message should be derived from his film – at the Manchester premiere <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-manchester-45897596/peterloo-massacre-movie-s-manchester-premiere">on October 17</a> he confined himself to vaguely noting that the film is: “Relevant to so much that is going on.”</p>
<h2>Forgotten massacre?</h2>
<p>It is striking how marginal a place Peterloo plays in popular accounts of Britain’s democratisation. The film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/17/the-peterloo-massacre-and-history-lessons-that-echo-through-the-ages">sparked a debate</a> about whether – and how – the massacre should be included in school history curricula. Meanwhile there is little evidence, beyond a small red plaque, to remind visitors to St Peter’s Square that they are on the site of the massacre.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241611/original/file-20181022-105779-ip91mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241611/original/file-20181022-105779-ip91mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241611/original/file-20181022-105779-ip91mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241611/original/file-20181022-105779-ip91mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241611/original/file-20181022-105779-ip91mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241611/original/file-20181022-105779-ip91mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241611/original/file-20181022-105779-ip91mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241611/original/file-20181022-105779-ip91mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A new red plaque replaced the old blue memorial in 2007 and is more explicit about events of August 1819.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Before its release some critics on the right of the political spectrum expressed fears that Leigh’s Peterloo would be a left-wing “<a href="https://unherd.com/2018/09/peterloo-disgrace-little-democracy/">fake history</a>”. But few historians could criticise the film for inaccuracy: as a period drama its attention to surface detail is scrupulous. And substantively it presents a sober version of the past – Leigh reproduces (at some length) some of the key speeches of the time. This unfortunately makes the film feel longer that even its 154 minutes. Explanation of background issues such as <em>Habeas Corpus</em> and the Corn Laws is especially laboured. There are also too many characters – as Leigh squeezes as much historical detail as possible into the film. It feels hard to care too much about any of them. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the almost complete absence of a soundtrack is presumably meant to contribute to the film’s seriousness – but unfortunately it only further undermines the film’s its impact as a drama.</p>
<h2>Political subtext</h2>
<p>Leigh does use his film to express a point of view but it is hardly controversial. He depicts an unfair society, one in which the Duke of Wellington receives government largesse for winning the Battle of Waterloo – while a soldier who fought under his command is shown as being rewarded with PTSD, unemployment and finally a yeoman’s sword in the belly for protesting about his fate. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241601/original/file-20181022-105751-hsme8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241601/original/file-20181022-105751-hsme8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241601/original/file-20181022-105751-hsme8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241601/original/file-20181022-105751-hsme8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241601/original/file-20181022-105751-hsme8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241601/original/file-20181022-105751-hsme8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241601/original/file-20181022-105751-hsme8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241601/original/file-20181022-105751-hsme8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Massacre of Peterloo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Cruickshank</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Leigh makes it hard not to feel contempt for those Manchester magistrates and government ministers whose careless and callous disregard for the humanity of people calling for reform led to the Massacre. But few historians would say he got that call wrong – society in the years after Waterloo was hardly an egalitarian Utopia. </p>
<p>Even so, Leigh’s film shows the massacre as a cock up rather than a conscious act. The crowd did not hear the reading of the Riot Act which meant they did not know they had to disperse. But, that said, he certainly doesn’t spare the audience the full horror of the cavalry charge which concludes the film.</p>
<p>If Leigh treats the past with perhaps too much respect to make a compelling drama, others have been less scrupulous. Fearing Corbynites would use the film to further their attack on capitalism, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6092853/DOMINIC-SANDBROOK-says-attempts-blame-Peterloo-Massacre-capitalism-twisted-history.html">Dominic Sandbrook</a>, the Daily Mail’s favourite historian, even doubted Peterloo could be described as a “massacre”. </p>
<p>Meanwhile <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/read-jeremy-corbyn-speech-full-13311639">Corbyn’s speech</a> at the Labour Party conference in September made great play on the associations of his movement with the legacy of the event, noting that it was an uncaring Tory government that sent in the troops. </p>
<p>Perhaps some Corbynites really do imagine Theresa May as a modern-day Lord Liverpool and her government as uncaring and oppressive as his. But someone should tell <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/06/13/how-britain-voted-2017-general-election/">the 44% of working-class voters</a> who backed the Conservatives in 2017 despite Corbyn’s call to end austerity. Such voters will decide whether Labour will win the next election or not, and they appear not to be much moved by the romance of proletarian struggle be it in the past or present.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105415/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Fielding is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>
As a left-wing rallying cry, this account of the 1819 massacre in Manchester fails to rouse the inner revolutionary.
Steven Fielding, Professor of Political History, University of Nottingham
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104806
2018-10-15T12:33:05Z
2018-10-15T12:33:05Z
General Pinochet arrest: 20 years on, here’s how it changed global justice
<p>It became an address to remember: 20 Devonshire Place, Marylebone. For it was here, behind the front door of The London Clinic, that former Chilean dictator <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/1998/oct/18/pinochet.chile">General Augusto Pinochet was arrested</a> on the night of October 16, 1998. Pinochet, who was 82, was in the UK recovering from back surgery at the time, but was woken up by police and informed that he was under arrest for crimes against humanity on the basis of an international warrant issued by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón. </p>
<p>The specific allegations concerned not only human rights abuses committed against Spanish citizens in Chile during the military regime established after the coup of September 11, 1973, but also the murder, torture, hostage-taking and genocide of Chileans and other nationals. </p>
<p>Overnight, the London Clinic arrest became a symbol of hope for justice and redress. For Pinochet – who died in 2006 – was, first and foremost, one of the most infamous dictators of the 1970s and 1980s. Pinochet’s 1973 military coup overthrew Chile’s democratically-elected president, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Salvador-Allende">Salvador Allende</a>, and installed a brutal and repressive mandate in his place. Indeed, the dictatorship’s abuses gave rise to one of the largest human rights campaigns in the world.</p>
<p>Following a <a href="https://www.tni.org/en/article/pinochet-on-trial-timeline">dramatic legal battle</a>, the British courts rejected Pinochet’s claim that he was entitled to immunity as a former head of state and ruled that he could be extradited to Spain to stand trial. Although this never occurred –
UK home secretary, Jack Straw, ultimately allowed Pinochet to return home after 503 days of arrest on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/mar/02/pinochet.chile2">the grounds of ill health</a> – Pinochet’s detention marked a turning point in the development of international law and international relations. </p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>It set <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/newlr35&div=21&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals">two important precedents</a>. First, it revitalised the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows states or international organisations to prosecute individuals regardless of the place where the crimes were committed and the nationality of the perpetrators and victims. Second, it withdrew the immunity of heads of state or ex heads of state for human rights violations. </p>
<p>Although the <a href="https://www.icrc.org/eng/war-and-law/treaties-customary-law/geneva-conventions/overview-geneva-conventions.htm">Geneva Conventions of 1949</a> requested that states establish and exercise universal jurisdiction for war crimes and crimes against humanity, this principle had not been widely invoked in national tribunals prior to Pinochet’s UK arrest. Apart from the trial of the German-Austrian Nazi <a href="https://trialinternational.org/latest-post/adolf-eichmann/">Adolf Eichmann in Israel</a> there were few examples of cases brought to courts on the basis of such a doctrine before 1998. </p>
<p>But as a result of the Pinochet case, the notion of sovereignty, traditionally understood as the right of a state to respect the independence of other states, <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14090.html">had to be redefined</a>. The idea that governments are unaccountable to courts located in foreign states for their domestic policies changed, so that all states now became subject to fundamental human rights norms. Never again could tyrants use immunity as a means to avoid criminal responsibility. </p>
<p>But 20 years on from that landmark event, what does it mean for global justice today? Has it really affected the prospects of holding political leaders to account for human rights abuses? </p>
<p>Undoubtedly, the Pinochet arrest in London offered an enormous window of opportunity to activists, lawyers, victims and non-governmental organisations to establish transnational networks to pursue human rights accountability. </p>
<p>Not only were Chilean courts persuaded to reexamine amnesties that protected many senior individuals in domestic legislation, but other Latin American countries, such as Argentina and Uruguay, also reopened human rights investigations into perpetrators of atrocities. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/world/americas/a-torture-report-compels-chile-to-reassess-its-past.html">decision of the UK’s House of Lords</a> to narrow the charges against Pinochet only to cases of torture, also gave particular visibility to Chile’s torture survivors, driving the creation of a <a href="http://www.comisiontortura.cl/">Chilean National Commission</a> to investigate those crimes. </p>
<h2>A fairer new world?</h2>
<p>In Europe, meanwhile, Spain turned its attentions to addressing <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7594670.stm">crimes committed during the Franco era</a>, while courts in Belgium, France and Germany extended the Pinochet precedents to human rights violations that had taken place beyond their territorial borders. The tireless efforts of human rights activists and victims that led to the 2016 <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jicj/article/13/2/209/896489">conviction of the former dictator of Chad</a>, Hissene Habré, for crimes against humanity, for example, was unquestionably inspired by the Pinochet arrest in London. Habré was arrested and tried in Senegal and sentenced to life imprisonment.</p>
<p>This rapid expansion of international and domestic trials to hold political leaders to account for human rights abuses forms part of a trend that political scientists have called the <a href="https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cjil/vol2/iss1/3/">“justice cascade”</a>. This does not mean perfect justice, but it has helped to legitimise the norm of individual criminal accountability for <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-393-07993-7/">human rights violations</a>. </p>
<p>The initial enthusiasm unleashed by the Pinochet case has been replaced, however, by growing scepticism in the last decade. States such as Belgium and Spain, once considered pioneers in embracing the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, have limited the power of their courts to pursue criminals outside their frontiers. In both cases, these limitations came in response to the demands of powerful states, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/11/spain-end-judges-trials-foreign-human-rights-abuses;%20https://www.hrw.org/news/2003/08/01/belgium-universal-jurisdiction-law-repealed">such as the US, Israel and China</a>, who are reluctant to see their own citizens stand trial overseas for such crimes.</p>
<p>The international community’s inability to end the massacre of civilians in Syria, for example, has also reinforced the pessimistic idea that human rights only prevail when the strategic interests of major state actors are not at stake. </p>
<p>But there is reason for hope. A report published in March 2018, <a href="https://trialinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/UJAR-Make-way-for-Justice-2018.pdf">by Trial International</a>, paints a more optimistic picture. Reviewing 58 cases involving 126 individuals, the study shows a sharp increase in the number of cases brought to court based on the principle of universal jurisdiction. Indeed, the significant limitations of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to pursue human rights prosecutions – Russian and Chinese UN Security Council vetoes <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/22/russia-china-veto-un-draft-resolution-refer-syria-international-criminal-court">prevented Syria being referred to the court</a>, for example – seems to have triggered a vigorous resurgence in the application of this doctrine via the national courts of third countries. </p>
<p>The promise of effective global justice that came with Pinochet’s detention in London hasn’t yet been realised. But the positive changes triggered since 1998 were made possible thanks to transnational networks of activists, lawyers, victims and human rights institutions who were able to exert pressure on states to <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100369430">change how they defined justice</a>. The lesson is that while moments such as the Pinochet arrest can open windows of opportunity, the world also needs individuals, organisations and governments that are willing to make the most of them – and change things for the better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Veronica Diaz-Cerda does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Two decades ago, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London, putting human rights abuses in the limelight.
Veronica Diaz-Cerda, Teaching Associate, Aston University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104196
2018-10-05T10:42:56Z
2018-10-05T10:42:56Z
Massacres, disappearances and 1968: Mexicans remember the victims of a ‘perfect dictatorship’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239378/original/file-20181004-52678-w5k47b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mexican soldiers killed up to 300 student protesters and arrested 1,000 more on Oct. 3, 1968, in an event that's come to be known as the Tlatelolco massacre.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://binaryapi.ap.org/254b842848e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/preview/AP681003095.jpg?wm=api&ver=0">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/masacres-desapariciones-y-1968-los-mexicanos-recuerdan-a-las-victimas-de-la-dictadura-perfecta-104479"><em>Leer en español</em></a>.</p>
<p>Ten days before the opening ceremony of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, <a href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Mexico-Tlatelolco-68-Massacre-Was-a-State-Crime-20180925-0020.html">uniformed soldiers and rooftop snipers</a> opened fire on student protesters in a plaza in the capital city’s Tlatelolco neighborhood.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/from-the-archive-blog/2015/nov/12/guardian-mexico-tlatelolco-massacre-1968-john-rodda">Hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators</a>, who were rallying against the country’s semi-authoritarian government, were gunned down.</p>
<p>Foreign correspondents reporting from Tlatelolco estimated that about 300 young people died, although the toll of the Oct. 2, 1968 massacre remains <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB201/index.htm">contested</a>. <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/De_Tlatelolco_a_Ayotzinapa.html?id=CqKZCgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">Over a thousand people</a> who survived the shooting were arrested.</p>
<p>Tlateloloco was not the first time Mexico’s government would send the army in to kill its own citizens. Nor, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-military-is-a-lethal-killing-force-should-it-really-be-deployed-as-police-75521">my research</a> on <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-story-of-a-kingpin-or-why-trumps-plan-to-defeat-mexican-cartels-is-doomed-to-fail-71781">crime</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-mexico-actually-the-worlds-second-most-murderous-nation-77897">security</a> in the country shows, was it the last.</p>
<h2>Mexico’s perfect dictatorship</h2>
<p>Technically speaking, Mexico was a democracy in 1968. But it was run by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, the same party that governs it today under President Enrique Peña Nieto. </p>
<p>Using press manipulation, electoral fraud and coercion, the PRI won <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WzY7DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT209&lpg#v=onepage&q&f=false">every presidential election</a> and most local elections from 1929 to 2000. In the words of the Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, it was a “<a href="https://elpais.com/diario/1990/09/01/cultura/652140001_850215.html">perfect dictatorship</a>” – an authoritarian regime that “camouflaged” its permanence in power with the superficial practice of democracy.</p>
<p>The PRI kept kept a <a href="https://theconversation.com/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-was-elected-to-transform-mexico-can-he-do-it-99176">tight rein</a> on Mexico during its 80-year rule. </p>
<p>In the 20th century, Mexico had none of the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-44434406">wild violence</a> that ravages the country today. It <a href="http://www.economia.unam.mx/publicaciones/econinforma/pdfs/364/09carlostello.pdf">prospered economically</a> and modernized rapidly. </p>
<p>But the PRI demanded acquiescence in exchange for this <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_politics_of_Mexican_development.html?id=YRy4AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">peace and stability</a>. </p>
<p>The party <a href="https://theconversation.com/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-was-elected-to-transform-mexico-can-he-do-it-99176">bought off potential political opponents</a> and ostracized members who wanted to reform the party. It gave <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/12/world/la-fg-mexico-pri-comeback-20120612">rabble-rousing union leaders</a> positions of power. It <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/21/AR2006112101740.html?noredirect=on">killed, jailed, tortured and disappeared</a> leftists, dissidents, peasants or Marxists who challenged its authority.</p>
<p>But it did so in secret. When soldiers sent by President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz killed scores of students exercising their <a href="https://www.juridicas.unam.mx/legislacion/ordenamiento/constitucion-politica-de-los-estados-unidos-mexicanos">constitutional right to peaceful protest</a> in broad daylight and cold blood, something the Mexico’s national consciousness shifted and snapped.</p>
<p>It would take Mexicans another four decades to unseat the PRI, electing in 2000 Vicente Fox of the National Action Party – the <a href="http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/28756.html">first non-PRI president to run modern Mexico</a>.</p>
<p>But most <a href="https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=6899">thinkers</a> and historians <a href="https://www.letraslibres.com/mexico/politica/sueno-en-libertad">agree</a> that Tlatelolco was when democracy’s first seeds were planted. After the massacre, a “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VjvpAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">tradition of resistance</a>” took root in Mexico.</p>
<h2>1968’s summer of revolution</h2>
<p>The Tlatelolco massacre came after a tense summer of student demonstrations. </p>
<p>Triggered by an <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/07/1968-granaderos-voca-5/">aggressive police intervention</a> in a gang fight in downtown Mexico City in July 1968, young Mexicans – like their counterparts in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/podcasts/heat-and-light-1968">United States and worldwide</a> – engaged in various acts of <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ndGsBwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">civil disobedience</a>. </p>
<p>Throughout late summer, Mexico City saw peaceful marches, demonstrations and rallies. The students <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/08/1968-estudiantes-destituir-a-jefes-policiacos-consejo-nacional-de-huelga/">demanding</a> free speech, accountability for police and military abuses, the release of political prisoners and dialogue with their government.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239408/original/file-20181004-52669-x39ku9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239408/original/file-20181004-52669-x39ku9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239408/original/file-20181004-52669-x39ku9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239408/original/file-20181004-52669-x39ku9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239408/original/file-20181004-52669-x39ku9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1352&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239408/original/file-20181004-52669-x39ku9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239408/original/file-20181004-52669-x39ku9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1352&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Gustavo Díaz Ordez before the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-F1023-0037-001,_Mexiko-Stadt,_III._Internationale_Sportwettk%C3%A4mpfe.jpg">German Federal Archive/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The uprising brought bad publicity at an inconvenient time. Mexico was about to host the 1968 Olympics. President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz wanted to <a href="https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mexico-68/">showcase a modern nation</a> at the forefront of emerging economies – not unruly leftists decrying an authoritarian government.</p>
<p>Díaz Ordaz said the protesters were Communist agents sent by the Cubans and Soviets to infiltrate his regime – a claim the Central Intelligence Agency debunked in a now-declassified <a href="https://t.co/wfKUmgCdNb">Sept. 1968 report</a>.</p>
<p>By early October, with the Olympics rapidly approaching, the government had decided to put an end to the unrest. So when students planned an Oct. 2 rally at the Plaza of the Three Cultures in Tlatelolco, Díaz Ordaz sent undercover agents and soldiers in. </p>
<p>Their mission, as some of the raid’s organizers later <a href="http://www.milenio.com/opinion/hector-aguilar-camin/dia-con-dia/2-de-octubre-aquella-tarde-en-tlatelolco">admitted</a>, was to delegitimize Mexico’s pro-democracy movement by inciting violence. Plainclothed soldiers from Mexico’s “Batallón Olimpia,” created to maintain order during the Olympics, <a href="https://noticieros.televisa.com/ultimas-noticias/matanza-tlatelolco-1968-batallon-olimpia-asesino-guante-blanco/">opened fire</a> on the crowded plaza.</p>
<p>Díaz Ordaz <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aDFKSwiz-A">claimed</a> that he had saved Mexico from a communist coup. </p>
<p>But even Lyndon B. Johnson administration’s – which had no sympathy for communism – <a href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v31/d364">described</a> the crackdown as a “gross over-reaction by the security forces.”</p>
<p>No one was ever punished for the murders.</p>
<h2>50 years to freedom</h2>
<p>Each year, Mexicans commemorate the Tlatelolco massacre with marches and rallies.</p>
<p>For the past four years, these events have coincided with <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/estados/marchan-en-estados-4-anos-de-la-desaparicion-de-los-43">nationwide demonstrations</a> over the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-29406630">unexplained disappearance</a> of 43 student activists from Ayotzinapa Teachers’ College, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, on Sept. 26, 2014.</p>
<p>The students were traveling via bus to Mexico City to attend a <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2014/10/entramos-iguala-para-llevarnos-dos-autobuses-normalista-sobreviviente/">commemorative rally</a> for the victims of Tlatelolco and engage in civil acts of disobedience along the way – an annual <a href="https://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-01-04/mexico-the-disappeared-en">tradition at the college</a>. </p>
<p>According to the government’s <a href="http://intoleranciadiario.com/detalle_noticia/127119/nacional/discurso-integro-de-la-pgr-por-caso-ayotzinapa">official investigation</a>, police in the town of Iguala <a href="https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=23809#_ftnref1">confronted</a> the caravan under <a href="https://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-01-04/mexico-the-disappeared-en">instructions</a> from the town’s mayor. His wife had a party that day, the report says, and he didn’t want any disturbances.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239379/original/file-20181004-52663-10x81x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239379/original/file-20181004-52663-10x81x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239379/original/file-20181004-52663-10x81x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239379/original/file-20181004-52663-10x81x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239379/original/file-20181004-52663-10x81x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239379/original/file-20181004-52663-10x81x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239379/original/file-20181004-52663-10x81x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mexicans march to demand the return of the 43 teachers college students who disappeared in 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://binaryapi.ap.org/9298dcd7a7a54689a889c09efdfb4542/preview/AP638350409083.jpg?wm=api&ver=0">AP Photo/Marco Ugarte</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The officers opened fire, killing six students on the bus. The remaining 43 passengers were then allegedly taken to a police station, where they were handed over to a local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, which is <a href="https://www.semana.com/mundo/articulo/asi-desaparecieron-43-estudiantes-en-mexico/406782-3">alleged to have ties to the mayor</a>. Gang members say they took the 43 students to a local dump, killed them and burned their bodies.</p>
<p>That horrifying tale is the official story <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD19R4I3tM8">endorsed by President Enrique Peña Nieto</a>, whose six-year term ends in December. Iguala’s <a href="https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view/145802-mexico-estudiantes-desaparecidos-iguala-alcalde">mayor</a>, his wife and at least 74 other people were <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2015/09/quienes-son-los-111-detenidos-del-caso-ayotzinapa/">arrested</a> for the disappearance and murder of the Ayotzinapa students.</p>
<p>But an international team of forensic investigators <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/seguridad/no-hay-elementos-que-sustenten-verdad-historica-dicen-forenses-argentinos-sobre">could not corroborate this story</a>. They found no evidence of the students’ remains at the dump. In fact, they determined, it was <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2015/09/10/actualidad/1441909371_736636.html">scientifically impossible to burn 43 corpses</a> at that site. </p>
<p>They believe it is more likely that the Mexican army – and therefore the federal government – was <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ChdondilaHNzFHaEs3azQ4Tm8/view">involved in the disappearances</a>.</p>
<p>In June 2018, a federal court <a href="https://www.wola.org/2018/06/historic-ruling-ayotzinapa-case/">re-opened</a> the Ayotzinapa case and ordered the creation of an Investigative Commission for Justice and Truth to clarify what really happened to the 43 students.</p>
<p>“They were taken alive,” their parents <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/blogueros-verdad-justicia-reparacion/2016/09/26/vivos-se-los-llevaron-vivos-los-queremos/">insist</a>. “We want them back alive.”</p>
<h2>Transforming Mexico, again</h2>
<p>Forty-six years after the Tlatelolco massacre, almost to the day, this brutal abuse of power by President Peña Nieto and his PRI party – which had retaken power in 2012 – rekindled something of the <a href="https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=39571">revolutionary spirit of 1968</a>. </p>
<p>In July, Mexican voters once again rejected the PRI, handing a landslide presidential victory to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftist outsider who <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexico-elects-a-leftist-president-who-welcomes-migrants-99204">promised</a> to “transform” the country. </p>
<p>López Obrador, who takes office in December, <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/sociedad/lopez-obrador-va-por-decreto-por-caso-ayotzinapa">supports launching a new investigation into the 43 missing students</a>. </p>
<p>But he also <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com/internacional/18684/lopez-obrador-mantendra-el-ejercito-en-las-calles-para-garantizar-seguridad">plans</a> to continue using Mexico’s military – the same <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-military-is-a-lethal-killing-force-should-it-really-be-deployed-as-police-75521">efficient killing force</a> that fired on students at Tlatelolco and allegedly <a href="https://www.proceso.com.mx/390560/iguala-la-historia-no-oficial">disappeared them</a> in Ayotzinapa – in law enforcement duties. </p>
<p>This, in my assessment, is a dangerous mistake. </p>
<p>According to an <a href="https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=25468">analysis</a> done by Mexico’s CIDE university, between 2007 and 2014, in armed confrontations the army killed eight suspected criminals for each one it wounded and arrested. In most countries, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/world/americas/mexican-militarys-high-kill-rate-raises-human-rights-fears.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&referer=https%3A%2Ft.co%2Fc0xEU4vlvo&ref=nyt-es&mcid=nyt-es&subid=article&_r=1">ratio goes the other way</a>.</p>
<p>As CIDE legal scholar Catalina Pérez Correa <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/catalina-perez-correa/nacion/que-no-se-olvide">has written</a>, using Mexico’s army as police carries the same risks today it did in 1968 – and in 2014, for that matter.</p>
<p>President-elect López Obrador has <a href="https://www.reforma.com/aplicaciones/articulo/default.aspx?id=1485375&v=5">declared</a> that under his government Mexico’s military will be not an “instrument of war” but an “army of peace.”</p>
<p>The ghosts of Tlatelolco and Ayotzinapa are a reminder that all Mexicans should have their doubts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104196/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Fifty years ago, soldiers gunned down hundreds of student protesters in a Mexico City plaza. It was neither the first nor the last time Mexico’s army would be deployed against its own citizens.
Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/103565
2018-10-02T13:32:47Z
2018-10-02T13:32:47Z
How Russia’s UN vetoes have enabled mass murder in Syria
<p>Since the start of Syria’s uprising in March 2011, Russia has vetoed <a href="https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2018/0411/953637-russia-syria-un-veto/">12 UN Security Council resolutions</a> concerning the conflict. Among other things, these resolutions covered human rights violations, indiscriminate aerial bombing, the use of force against civilians, toxic chemical weapons, and calls for a meaningful ceasefire.</p>
<p>Russia’s behaviour at the Security Council is not motivated by humanitarian concerns. Its vetoes have provided political cover for the Assad regime, protected Moscow’s strategic interests and arms deals with the Syrian state, and obstructed UN peacekeeping. They’ve helped shift the locus of peace talks from a <a href="https://www.unog.ch/Syria">UN-backed process in Geneva</a> to a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-talks/russia-to-host-syria-peace-talks-in-july-idUSKCN1IG26P">Russian-led one in Astana</a>. And they’ve had real and dire consequences for the people of Syria.</p>
<p>The Syrian conflict has claimed more than 500,000 lives, turned millions of people into refugees, and all but destroyed the country. While all sides have contributed to this catastrophe, the Assad regime in particular has made repression, brutality, and destruction its signature tactics – and Russia has chosen to protect it.</p>
<p>Some seem resigned to dismiss this behaviour as everyday international politicking. Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary of the UK’s opposition Labour Party, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/assad-syria-emily-thornberry-support-underestimated-jeremy-corbyn-russia-a8355241.html">recently offered an excuse</a>: “People will always block resolutions. If you look at the number of resolutions America has blocked, I mean that’s the way of politics.”</p>
<p>This is nothing more than idle whataboutism. Yes, it’s right to note what the US has done in defiance of the UN over the years, not least over Iraq and with <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/42-times-us-has-used-its-veto-power-against-un-resolutions-israel-942194703">its 44 Israel-related vetoes</a> in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/world/middleeast/gaza-israel-palestinians-.html">the Security Council</a>. But Russia has <a href="https://research.un.org/en/docs/sc/quick">taken vetoes to another level</a> on Syria, covering for and enabling atrocities while working to make sure the UN cannot do what it needs to do to stop the carnage.</p>
<h2>Regime maintenance</h2>
<p>Moscow first intervened militarily to prop up Assad’s deadly authoritarian rule in September 2015; had it not entered the fray, Assad’s reign would have almost certainly given way to a successor. But Russian backing for Assad began well before 2015.</p>
<p>For a start, his government has long been a major Russian arms client. While public data is incomplete because many transactions are highly opaque, the <a href="https://www.sipri.org/databases/armstransfers">Stockholm International Peace Research Institute</a> has tracked the build up of Syrian weapons purchases in the years leading up to the 2011 uprising. Russian military resources to Syria increased from 9m in 2000 to 272m in 2011.</p>
<p>Consider the Russian (and Chinese) veto of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-un/u-n-council-to-vote-on-syria-resolution-saturday-idUSTRE8121K920120203">February 4 2012</a>, which blocked a draft resolution calling on Assad to relinquish power. At the time, there was uncertainty about whether Russia would abstain or vote no. Facing defeat amid mass protests and now armed resistance, the Assad regime accelerated its brutality through bombing. On the eve of the scheduled Security Council meeting, Assad’s forces bombarded the city of Homs, murdering <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/05/syria-homs-hundreds-dead-barrage">scores of civilians</a>.</p>
<p>Was this massacre designed to signal to Russia that Assad was prepared to go all out, <a href="https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745337821/burning-country/">burn the country</a>, and win at any cost, meaning Moscow might as well back him? Or was Assad informed in advance that Russia would cast the veto, so he could slaughter with impunity? Does a veto clear the way for more brutality, or do acts of brutality force Russia to veto UN reprisals?</p>
<p>The most likely answer is both. The pattern is now firmly established: Assad kills civilians and political opponents, the Security Council considers a resolution, Russia vetoes it and puts outs propaganda to provide cover for Assad’s abuses, and the cycle of mass killings goes on. As Russian vetoes have become routine, they have emboldened Assad. As an <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/bp-failing-syria-unsc-resolution-120315-en1.pdf">Oxfam report</a> said, even UN resolutions which were not blocked “have been ignored or undermined by the parties to the conflict, other UN member states, and even by members of the UNSC itself”.</p>
<p>The vetoes flaunt Moscow’s power to the world and reassure Russians at home. They are also helping Russia maintain a permanent military and political presence in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean. In exchange for intervention, the Kremlin has gained <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/fikraforum/view/russias-energy-goals-in-syria">access to Syria’s energy infrastructure</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/world/middleeast/russia-turkey-syria-deal.html">secured the future of its major Syrian bases</a> on the Mediterranean.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/armed-by-the-kremlin-gazprom-could-be-the-new-force-in-syria-when-the-troops-leave-101492">Armed by the Kremlin, Gazprom could be the new force in Syria when the troops leave</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The wrong path</h2>
<p>But Russia still has a choice: it can be a force for peace, liberty, and inclusion, or it can continue to shelter and defend tyrants. Given the Kremlin’s general hostility towards equality, liberalism, and democracy, it has chosen another path: to thwart the Security Council, <a href="https://eaworldview.com/2018/02/syria-daily-400-killed-in-east-ghouta-in-5-days/">violate its own ceasefire agreements</a>, and overlook the consequences for civilians. This implicates it in the <a href="http://www.vdc-sy.info/index.php/en/martyrs/1/c29ydGJ5PWEua2lsbGVkX2RhdGV8c29ydGRpcj1ERVNDfGFwcHJvdmVkPXZpc2libGV8ZXh0cmFkaXNwbGF5PTB8c3RhdHVzPTF8">deaths of thousands of Syrians</a> – more than the so-called Islamic State and the rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra <a href="http://sn4hr.org/blog/category/casualties/victims-death-toll-victims/">combined</a>.</p>
<p>To be sure, not all Security Council resolutions are worthy of support, and Russia cannot be held responsible for all of Assad’s crimes and human rights abuses. Western nations are certainly not unbiased; their decisions and interventions have had long-lasting pernicious effects on civilian populations in the Middle East, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-was-a-post-invasion-plan-for-iraq-but-the-west-has-learned-nothing-from-its-failure-62004">they too have failed civilians</a> in Syria and elsewhere.</p>
<p>The US intervened in Iraq to oust a dictator, Russia intervened in Syria to preserve one in power. Both moves have turned out to be disasters. But to document that Russia has killed civilians via its military and political interventions is not Russophobic. The death of each Syrian matters, regardless of who fired the shot, dropped the bomb, or maintained the siege.</p>
<p>Providing political cover for one tyrant will embolden others everywhere, as they learn how far they can push the boundaries of oppression. And all along, steps could have been taken to prevent or at least limit the carnage. Russia’s failure to do so in Syria and elsewhere will be to its eternal shame.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103565/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
By standing in the way of the UN, Russia has chosen a shameful path.
Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, University of Birmingham
Chris Doucouliagos, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Deakin Business School and Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104112
2018-10-01T20:10:01Z
2018-10-01T20:10:01Z
Ten photos that changed how we see human rights
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238593/original/file-20181001-18997-808w5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This 1904 photograph showing the massacre of villagers by Dutch KNIL forces in the Indonesian village of Koetö Réh was used by the Dutch to argue for the paternalistic colonial state as protector. We now see it as evidence of imperial atrocity.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly 70 years ago, in December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a>.
At this time, the UN’s cultural arm, UNESCO, sought to harness the “universal language” of photography to communicate the new system of human rights globally, across barriers of race and language.</p>
<p>UNESCO curated the ground-breaking <a href="http://www.exhibithumanrights.org">“Human Rights Exhibition”</a> in 1949, seeking to create a sense of a universal humanity through photographs. It sent portable photo albums around the world, so that the exhibition could be recreated by anyone, anywhere.</p>
<p>In the decades since, visual images have played an important role in defining, contesting, and arguing on behalf of human rights. Photographs are a crucial way of disseminating ideas, and creating a sense of a shared humanity – but they can also justify arguments for conquest and oppression. Here are ten photos that show how we have seen human rights.</p>
<hr>
<h2>A human ‘family’</h2>
<p>Many of UNESCO’s 1949 photographs could be accused of picturing a falsely harmonious human “family” – literally, in this instance, by showing a collage of four families from different cultures, all seemingly alike.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238580/original/file-20181001-18997-krd72t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238580/original/file-20181001-18997-krd72t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238580/original/file-20181001-18997-krd72t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238580/original/file-20181001-18997-krd72t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238580/original/file-20181001-18997-krd72t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238580/original/file-20181001-18997-krd72t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238580/original/file-20181001-18997-krd72t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238580/original/file-20181001-18997-krd72t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Families. UNESCO, Human Rights: Exhibition Album (1949).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Scenes of war</h2>
<p>However a counter-narrative of atrocity and what it termed “struggle” was introduced through scenes of war. There were images of soldiers washed ashore on a beach and a heap of corpses at Buchenwald in a discourse centred upon the violation of human rights. Some visual theorists argue that such images are crucial in proving the existence of distant suffering and injustice. Others have criticised them for exploiting the victims further, or anaesthetising suffering.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238583/original/file-20181001-19006-jxwo2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238583/original/file-20181001-19006-jxwo2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238583/original/file-20181001-19006-jxwo2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238583/original/file-20181001-19006-jxwo2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238583/original/file-20181001-19006-jxwo2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238583/original/file-20181001-19006-jxwo2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238583/original/file-20181001-19006-jxwo2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238583/original/file-20181001-19006-jxwo2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">War dead. UNESCO, Human Rights: Exhibition Album (1949).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dignity and humanity</h2>
<p>Often, the power of seeing someone very different from ourselves can create a sense of proximity, and the recognition of another’s full humanity. For example, after Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in Maryland in 1838, he became a leading campaigner in the abolitionist movement in the United States. He believed in the power of his dignified and serious photographic portrait to counter racist caricatures, and became the most-photographed man of the 19th century.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238584/original/file-20181001-18994-11frsj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238584/original/file-20181001-18994-11frsj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238584/original/file-20181001-18994-11frsj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238584/original/file-20181001-18994-11frsj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238584/original/file-20181001-18994-11frsj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238584/original/file-20181001-18994-11frsj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238584/original/file-20181001-18994-11frsj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238584/original/file-20181001-18994-11frsj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unknown photographer, Frederick Douglass (c.1841-1845), Full-plate daguerreotype.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Onondaga Historical Association.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A changed context</h2>
<p>Sometimes, photographs taken for one purpose can come to have a very different meaning, as the social context for viewing them is transformed. In 1904, during the final throes of the Aceh War, the military doctor H.M. Neeb took a series of now infamous images that showed the massacre of villagers by Dutch KNIL forces in Koetö Réh, where more than 500 people died, 130 of them children. Dutch rulers subsequently used these photographs to argue for the paternalistic colonial state as protector. We now see them as shocking evidence of imperial atrocity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238585/original/file-20181001-18994-s9h6sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238585/original/file-20181001-18994-s9h6sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238585/original/file-20181001-18994-s9h6sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238585/original/file-20181001-18994-s9h6sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238585/original/file-20181001-18994-s9h6sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238585/original/file-20181001-18994-s9h6sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238585/original/file-20181001-18994-s9h6sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238585/original/file-20181001-18994-s9h6sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">H.M.Neeb, Koetö Réh, 14 June 1904.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Collection Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Biscuits in a revolution</h2>
<p>Fifty years later, during the revolution in Indonesia in 1945-50, it became taboo to show the massacre of civilians. Instead, showing soldiers as humanitarians – for instance, distributing biscuits to local children – was the preferred image.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238588/original/file-20181001-19000-12h9f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238588/original/file-20181001-19000-12h9f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238588/original/file-20181001-19000-12h9f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238588/original/file-20181001-19000-12h9f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238588/original/file-20181001-19000-12h9f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238588/original/file-20181001-19000-12h9f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238588/original/file-20181001-19000-12h9f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238588/original/file-20181001-19000-12h9f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Collection Bob van Dijk, Soldier distributing biscuits to Indonesian children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BC010, Image bank WW2- NIOD, Amsterdam</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Transforming colonial classification</h2>
<p>In Australia, many photographs of Aboriginal people were taken for official purposes, to classify them on racial grounds, or document the “progress” children were making in state homes. However, Aboriginal families now use these photos very differently. Photo-artist Brenda L. Croft uses photography to tell the story of her father Joseph, removed in the 1920s as a child from his Gurindji/Malgnin/Mudburra people of the Victoria River region in the Northern Territory. When he was physically reunited with his mother Bessie in 1974 their reunion was tragically short-lived. She died just seven months later.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238587/original/file-20181001-18991-13nf5e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238587/original/file-20181001-18991-13nf5e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238587/original/file-20181001-18991-13nf5e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238587/original/file-20181001-18991-13nf5e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238587/original/file-20181001-18991-13nf5e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238587/original/file-20181001-18991-13nf5e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238587/original/file-20181001-18991-13nf5e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238587/original/file-20181001-18991-13nf5e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brenda L. Croft, ‘shut/mouth/scream’, diptych, 2016, from the series ‘blood/type’. Pigment print, 91 x 89.5cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image copyright and courtesy of Brenda L. Croft</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Croft uses photography to explore her journey home, re-asserting her connection with places and kin fragmented by the ongoing impact of colonialism. Her “shut/mouth/scream” shows Bessie’s face, cropped from an official mug-shot that classified her on racial grounds. Croft has transformed it into a confronting and emotional portrait.</p>
<h2>Documenting protest</h2>
<p>Other troubled histories are kept alive in the present through photographs that document protest. Vera Mackie’s images act as a witness to demonstrations staged at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul against the militarised sexual abuse perpetrated by the Japanese in the Asia Pacific War. They focus upon an “icon of peace”: a commemorative statue on the site of the protests.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238592/original/file-20181001-19018-1f6pokr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238592/original/file-20181001-19018-1f6pokr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238592/original/file-20181001-19018-1f6pokr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238592/original/file-20181001-19018-1f6pokr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238592/original/file-20181001-19018-1f6pokr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238592/original/file-20181001-19018-1f6pokr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238592/original/file-20181001-19018-1f6pokr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238592/original/file-20181001-19018-1f6pokr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vera Mackie: The Peace Monument, Seoul.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vera Mackie</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Evading sterotypes</h2>
<p>Australia is a party to international legal treaties such as the UN Refugee Convention, so is obliged to ensure that asylum seekers found to be refugees are not sent back to a country where their life or freedom would be threatened. Yet many find it hard to engage with the plight of refugees currently incarcerated in sites of offshore detention such as Manus Island and Nauru. The Australian government has increasingly restricted media and public access to such places so <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-worth-a-thousand-words-how-photos-shape-attitudes-to-refugees-62705">we have difficulty seeing and understanding</a> what is happening there. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-worth-a-thousand-words-how-photos-shape-attitudes-to-refugees-62705">Friday essay: worth a thousand words – how photos shape attitudes to refugees</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Australian photojournalists such as Fairfax’s Kate Geraghty have sought to document the refugee experience in ways that evade stereotypes either of victimhood or threat. Geraghty’s photograph of Iranian asylum-seeker <a href="https://www.theherald.com.au/story/1681315/video-photos-asylum-seekers-arrive-on-manus-island/">Pezhma Gorbani holding his ID card</a> against a bus window after his arrival on Manus Island in 2013 shows his despair and defiance, but also highlights the issue of press access.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238600/original/file-20181001-18997-1chtrk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238600/original/file-20181001-18997-1chtrk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238600/original/file-20181001-18997-1chtrk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238600/original/file-20181001-18997-1chtrk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238600/original/file-20181001-18997-1chtrk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238600/original/file-20181001-18997-1chtrk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238600/original/file-20181001-18997-1chtrk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238600/original/file-20181001-18997-1chtrk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kate Geraghty, Pezhma Gorbani 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kate Geraghty, Sydney Morning Herald, Fairfax Media.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘I was a refugee’</h2>
<p>Some refugees have taken matters into their own hands, using social media as an act of protest and political solidarity with others around the globe. Using the hashtag #iwasarefugee, Alisha Fernando showed herself as a baby, asleep aboard a ship after her Vietnamese family was rescued at sea.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238589/original/file-20181001-19000-19gr6gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238589/original/file-20181001-19000-19gr6gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238589/original/file-20181001-19000-19gr6gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238589/original/file-20181001-19000-19gr6gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238589/original/file-20181001-19000-19gr6gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238589/original/file-20181001-19000-19gr6gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238589/original/file-20181001-19000-19gr6gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238589/original/file-20181001-19000-19gr6gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alisha Fernando in 1982, Instagram post, February 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Instagram</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Asserting control</h2>
<p>Fernando contrasted this with a photo of herself and the captain of the boat that had rescued her, taken 21 years later, after she had become an Australian citizen. In this way refugees are asserting some control over their own image and eloquently demonstrating their humanity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238591/original/file-20181001-19003-1765r8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238591/original/file-20181001-19003-1765r8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238591/original/file-20181001-19003-1765r8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238591/original/file-20181001-19003-1765r8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238591/original/file-20181001-19003-1765r8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238591/original/file-20181001-19003-1765r8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238591/original/file-20181001-19003-1765r8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238591/original/file-20181001-19003-1765r8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alisha Fernando and Willem Christ in 2013, Instagram post, July 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Instagram</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While visual theorists are often wary of <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/photography-at-the-dock">the power of images to manipulate viewers</a> or exploit their subjects, we must not assume that images are fixed in their meaning and effects. We cannot do without images that reveal atrocity, evoke fellow-feeling, and construct a shared humanity.</p>
<p><em>The book <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/visualising-human-rights">Visualising Human Rights</a> has just been published by UWA Publishing and includes contributions from Sharon Sliwinski, Susie Protschky, Brenda L.Croft, Vera Mackie, Mary Tomsic, Fay Anderson, Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104112/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Lydon receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>
From depictions of slavery to colonial massacres to contemporary portraits of refugees, photography is a powerful tool in evoking ideas of shared humanity.
Jane Lydon, Wesfarmers Chair of Australian History, The University of Western Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104098
2018-10-01T10:37:37Z
2018-10-01T10:37:37Z
We provided psychological first aid after the Las Vegas shooting – here’s what we learned
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238505/original/file-20180928-48631-1uj3rr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Evacuees arrive at the UNLV Thomas & Mack Center after a gunman opened fire Oct. 1, 2017 in Las Vegas.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Las-Vegas-Shooting/5a1657648bdc48d3a5ffe6a8f939f72f/2/0">Al Powers/AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editors’ note: In the aftermath of the Oct. 1, 2017 <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/10/06/here-all-victims-las-vegas-shooting/733236001/">shooting massacre</a> that claimed the lives of 58 people, several psychology and counseling scholars at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas sprang into action to offer trauma counseling to victims and witnesses of the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/16/us/20-deadliest-mass-shootings-in-u-s-history-fast-facts/index.html">deadliest mass shooting</a> in recent U.S. history. The UNLV scholars helped provide aid and comfort to <a href="https://www.unlv.edu/news/article/hundreds-gather-campus-candlelight-vigil">hundreds of evacuees</a>, mostly noninjured, who were driven by bus from the strip to the UNLV Thomas & Mack Center soon after the shooting. The Conversation recently connected with those scholars to hear what they learned from the experience.</em></p>
<p><strong>What is “psychological first aid”? How do mental health experts like you work side by side with traditional first responders?</strong></p>
<p>The goal of <a href="https://www.nctsn.org/resources/psychological-first-aid-pfa-field-operations-guide-2nd-edition">psychological first aid</a> is to sooth, assist and help people function and cope in a healthy way in the wake of a traumatic event. </p>
<p>It’s employed in the hours and days following the event, when people’s immediate needs, including medical care, as well as basic needs like food, shelter and water, must be met, along with their psychological and physical safety needs.</p>
<p>The point is not to push people to express emotion or describe in detail what they experienced. Rather, mental health professionals can help first responders by offering survivors practical assistance, comfort, safety, good compassionate company and emotional support.</p>
<p>For example, in the hours following the Oct. 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas, nonwounded victims and evacuees from the Strip needed basic things: blankets to cut the chill of the evening hours and psychological shock, cellphone chargers so they could stay in touch with loved ones, rides home and reliable news updates to reduce chaos and control rumors. By helping provide these simple needs, our team of mental health professionals was able to free up first responders and law enforcement to do their jobs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238504/original/file-20180928-48647-1yishn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238504/original/file-20180928-48647-1yishn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238504/original/file-20180928-48647-1yishn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238504/original/file-20180928-48647-1yishn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238504/original/file-20180928-48647-1yishn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238504/original/file-20180928-48647-1yishn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238504/original/file-20180928-48647-1yishn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police run toward the scene of the Oct. 1, 2017 shooting near the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Las-Vegas-Shooting/712f54b9ef2548d1aaf427b517783224/46/0">John Locher/AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>What tools and treatments can mental health clinicians offer in the wake of this kind of almost unimaginable tragedy?</strong></p>
<p>In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, people needed to know how this stressful event would affect them. For example, potential effects may have included trouble sleeping, increased nervousness or feeling easily upset or agitated.</p>
<p>People also needed guidance to pursue healthy coping strategies. They needed to know where to find support services then and in the future, as well as information regarding the signs that someone might need a higher level of professional care. Such signs include persistent anxiety.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, we heard from victims who were initially given ill-informed treatment by poorly trained providers. Some were “debriefed” in a group setting for hours, encouraged to share their stories and describe the trauma in detail. As psychology and counseling researchers, we know this <a href="https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/trauma/disaster-terrorism/debriefing-after-disasters.asp">outdated treatment approach</a> is harmful and can retraumatize people who are already vulnerable and hypersensitive.</p>
<p>In the days, weeks and months after an event like this shooting, people are often hyperaroused – that is, in a ramped-up jittery state – and hypervigilant – that is, overly aware and reactive to everything in their environment. They’re expecting danger and feeling unsafe, fearful, angry or distressed. Others may keep thinking about the traumatic event. Memories of the event can intrude on their day. They may have difficulty sleeping because the memories keep running through their mind. Or they may have nightmares. Others may experience emotional numbing or avoidance.</p>
<p>We helped victims build resilience skills such as problem-solving and engaging in positive activities, like spending quality time with loved ones and participating in activities that they enjoy. We educated people on how to manage emotional and physical reactions through things such as breathing exercises or identifying and planning for triggers. Mental health professionals also promote helpful thinking and identify opportunities for establishing a sense of community and belonging. Perhaps more importantly, professionals trained in psychological first aid are prepared to identify and assist those who won’t recover on their own.</p>
<p>When the skills-building approach isn’t enough, mental health professionals know how to identify those who will need a higher level of care.</p>
<p><strong>What did you learn in the heat of disaster response that’s applicable now a year later and on into the future in terms of mental health?</strong></p>
<p>Different people need different things. Some of the people we worked with following the Oct. 1 shooting needed to talk. Some needed to sit quietly. Some needed to get busy and find something to do to feel helpful. Some needed to take a day to themselves. There are typical human stress responses to an abnormal event, but there is no one prescribed journey toward healing.</p>
<p>We also know that people are naturally wired to <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-the-name-love/201403/why-we-all-need-belong-someone">need a sense of belonging and human connection</a>. And, in this sense, personal and community healing go hand in hand. One cannot exist without the other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104098/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Paul is the Director of The PRACTICE: A UNLV Community Mental Health Training Clinic, housed on and sponsored by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather Dahl, John A. Nixon, and Noelle Lefforge do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
One year after the Oct. 1 shooting massacre in Las Vegas, a team of scholars from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas offers insights into how to best help those affected by the violence.
Michelle Paul, Associate Faculty-in-Residence in Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Heather Dahl, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Counselor Education, School Psychology, and Human Services, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
John A. Nixon, Assistant Professor-in-Residence of Counselor Education and Assistant Director of Clinical Services, The PRACTICE, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Noelle Lefforge, Assistant Professor-in-Residence in Psychology and Assistant Director of Clinical Services and Research at The PRACTICE, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/101743
2018-08-22T13:18:05Z
2018-08-22T13:18:05Z
Unpacking the request for early release by three Rwanda genocide prisoners
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232450/original/file-20180817-165934-volzhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Names of victims of the Rwandan Genocide in Kigali.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/karenfoleyphotography</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Three Rwandan prisoners convicted of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/betraying-justice-for-rwandas-genocide-survivors">have requested</a> early release from the United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals. This has drawn widespread anger in Rwanda – from citizens and the government. We spoke to Jennifer Trahan about how this process might unfold.</em></p>
<p><strong>What is the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals and how does it work?</strong></p>
<p>It has taken over the remaining work of the two international criminal tribunals set-up to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.</p>
<p>Article 26 of the UN statute governing the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunal allows those convicted by either the Yugoslav or Rwanda Tribunal to apply for early release. Given that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda finished its work three years ago, the issue of whether any persons convicted by that tribunal should receive early release goes to the UN Mechanism. </p>
<p><strong>How many genocide convicts have had early releases and why are they granted?</strong></p>
<p>Early release often allows the convicted person to serve two-thirds of the sentence. Since the UN Mechanism was established in 2012, it has <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/ea/Rwanda-furious-UN-Court-leniency-genocide/4552908-4605838-10a3uo5z/index.html">granted</a> early release to more than 10 of those convicted by the Rwanda Tribunal.</p>
<p>The issue of whether or not a person should be released early is influenced by the confinement practices of the country where the person is serving his or her sentence. Meaning, if local laws are more favourable towards early release, this can have influence on the decision. Two of those who have applied for early release are serving their time in Mali, and one is serving time in Benin.</p>
<p><strong>What were the three Rwandan prisoners, pushing for early release, jailed for?</strong></p>
<p>The three people who have sought early release are Aloys Simba, Dominique Ntawukulilyayo and Hassan Ngeze. They were all jailed for their various roles in the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26875506">Rwandan genocide</a> in which an estimated one million Rwandans – mostly Tutsis from the country’s minority ethnic group – were killed in the space of 100 days.</p>
<p>Simba was tried for his role in five massacres committed between 14-20 April 1994 in the regions of Gikongoro and Butare. He was <a href="http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/ICTR/SIMBA_ICTR-01-76/SIMBA_ICTR-01-76-A.pdf">convicted</a> of genocide, and extermination as a crime against humanity, and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. He is <a href="http://www.irmct.org/en/about/functions/enforcement-of-sentences">serving</a> his sentence in Benin.</p>
<p>Ntawukulilyayo was tried for his involvement in the <a href="https://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/72906">massacre on Kabuye hill</a> where Tutsis were rounded up, assured of their safety but brutally killed. An estimated 50,000 Tutsis died there. He was <a href="http://www.internationalcrimesdatabase.org/Case/140/Ntawukulilyayo/">convicted</a> of aiding and abetting genocide by instructing the refugees who had gathered at Gisaraga market to move to Kabuye hill, and for transporting soldiers who participated in the attack. He was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, which he is <a href="http://www.irmct.org/en/about/functions/enforcement-of-sentences">serving</a> in Mali.</p>
<p>Ngeze was the Editor-in-Chief of Kangura Newspaper, which published inflammatory anti-Tutsi rhetoric. He was <a href="http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/ICTR/NGEZE_ICTR-97-27/NGEZE_ICTR-99-52-A_Summary.pdf">convicted,</a> as part of the “media case,” of individual criminal responsibility for</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(1) aiding and abetting the commission of genocide in Gisenyi préfecture; (2) direct and public incitement to commit genocide through the publication of articles in his Kangura newspaper in 1994; and (3) aiding and abetting crimes against humanity (extermination) in Gisenyi prefecture.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment, which he is also <a href="http://www.irmct.org/en/about/functions/enforcement-of-sentences">serving</a> in Mali.</p>
<p><strong>Why are people so angry and what might happen next?</strong></p>
<p>Victims are dismayed by the idea of early release. For example, victims in the former Yugoslavia generally found many of the Yugoslav Tribunal’s sentences too lenient. They were even more upset when early releases further shortened the sentences. </p>
<p>Many victims in Rwanda would no doubt feel the same.</p>
<p>The ideas behind sentencing – and whether there should be early release – raises profound philosophical, moral and legal issues as to how long someone should be sentenced, and the purposes of sentencing. Does one believe a person can be rehabilitated? Has a person really shown remorse? Does it matter that the person showed “good behaviour” in prison? What if the person is now old and/or sick?</p>
<p>It’s also important to keep in mind that those convicted by the Rwanda Tribunal were convicted of indescribably horrific crimes. So, compared to US practices, for instance, where the murder of one person could get someone a sentence of life in prison – or in some US states, a death sentence – the original sentences, without early release, were not ones that appeared to warrant shortening. Most of the accused were convicted of genocide, with victims at some crime scenes in the thousands if not tens of thousands. For crimes of such magnitude, no sentence would seem sufficient.</p>
<p>The other consideration is that when the Rwandan Tribunal judges sentenced a person to a term of years, they probably meant the entire length and were not thinking that it would be reduced by a third.</p>
<p>Having said that, those serving time are legally entitled to apply for early release.</p>
<p><strong>If a person receives early release, where will they go?</strong></p>
<p>They are unlikely to return to Rwanda, and many countries would not let them in. This means that release from serving an International Criminal Tribunal sentence has sometimes left individuals in legal “limbo” with no country willing to allow them in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101743/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Trahan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Rwanda Tribunal convicted people for indescribably horrific crimes and some are asking for early release.
Jennifer Trahan, Clinical Associate, Professor, New York University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/100737
2018-08-02T20:24:54Z
2018-08-02T20:24:54Z
Friday essay: the ‘great Australian silence’ 50 years on
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230337/original/file-20180802-136652-ozcrpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail from Julie Shiels' 1954 poster White on black: The annihilation of Aboriginal people and their culture cannot be separated from the destruction of nature.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do;jsessionid=FAB4E763C4774179D87C1E946AE8F017?tabs=detailsTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=SLV_VOYAGER1786541&indx=16&recIds=SLV_VOYAGER1786541&recIdxs=15&elementId=15&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&query=any%2Ccontains%2Caboriginal+people&search_scope=Pictures&dscnt=0&vl(1UIStartWith0)=contains&scp.scps=scope%3A%28PICS%29&onCampus=false&vl(10247183UI0)=any&vid=MAIN&institution=SLVPRIMO&bulkSize=20&tab=default_tab&vl(freeText0)=aboriginal%20people&fromLogin=true&group=ALL&dstmp=1533170792328">State Library of Victoria</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s 50 years since the anthropologist <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stanner-william-edward-bill-15541">W.E.H. Stanner</a> gave the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/past-boyer-lectures/4998888">1968 Boyer Lectures</a> — a watershed moment for Australian history. Stanner argued that Australia’s sense of its past, its very collective memory, had been built on a state of forgetting, which couldn’t “be explained by absent-mindedness”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is a structural matter, a view from a window which has been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the landscape. What may well have begun as a simple forgetting of other possible views turned under habit and over time into something like a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His lectures profoundly influenced historians partly because of the image he captured: for a practice based on documentation, archiving and storytelling, silence is a compelling idea. And a whole-scale silence — a “cult of forgetfulness”, no less — indicated a bold re-imagining of a national historiography on Stanner’s part.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230190/original/file-20180801-118933-ufnifr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The print version of Stanner’s lectures.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Stanner insisted, this sort of silence was no “absent-mindedness”: the occlusion of Aboriginal people from Australian history wasn’t inevitable.</p>
<p>In the wake of his lectures, influential Australian historians conceived of their own historical awakening in these same terms. In an autobiographical essay, historian <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/how-empire-shaped-us-9781474222983/">Marilyn Lake</a> described the prevailing historical view in her small rural town: “Growing up in the former colony of Tasmania we did our fair share of forgetting too.” And in his evocative memoir, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/why-werent-we-told-9780140278422">Why Weren’t We Told?</a>, Henry Reynolds famously pondered that shift away from silence as people endeavoured to write in Indigenous perspectives from the 1970s onwards. </p>
<p>It’s a common refrain. I remember my dad describing how he also “hadn’t been told” about Australia’s Aboriginal history when Reynolds’s book came out. And a colleague and friend recently recounted visiting Myall Creek as part of a Sunday school picnic in the 1980s: no-one mentioned its dark history as the site of an infamous Aboriginal massacre in 1838.</p>
<p>Yet the move from “great Australian silence” to historical “truth-telling” isn’t quite as clear-cut as Stanner’s description might suggest. “Too often it is taken to imply a kind of historiographical periodisation where there was no Aboriginal history before Stanner’s own lecture and an end to the silence after it,” writes <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/publications/products/appreciation-difference-weh-stanner-and-aboriginal-australia/paperback">Ann Curthoys</a>. Yet that doesn’t capture the whole picture: “there is neither complete silence before 1968, nor was it completely ended afterwards”.</p>
<p>While we now have important interventions into Aboriginal history that amplify Australia’s uncomfortable past, such as Lyndall Ryan’s <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php">massacre map</a> and the <a href="https://www.referendumcouncil.org.au/sites/default/files/2017-05/Uluru_Statement_From_The_Heart_0.PDF">Uluru Statement from the Heart</a>, those reverberations continue to cause anxiety. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230181/original/file-20180801-136679-1euf6u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dancers from Mutitjulu at the opening ceremony for the National Indigenous Constitutional Convention near Uluru on May 23, 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lucy Hughes Jones/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Statement from the Heart called for a “truth-telling about our history” but still <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/26/a-year-on-the-key-goal-of-uluru-statement-remains-elusive">awaits bipartisan support</a>. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/frontier-massacres-map-lists-250-sites/news-story/3ee10c7017a859584690bcbd45279e36#story-comments">online commentary</a> in response to the release of Ryan’s massacre database shows the persistence of historical refusal in Australia. </p>
<h2>‘Black crows’</h2>
<p>The “great Australian silence” is also historically a little more complex. I’m writing a history of history-making in Australia and have been struck by the detailed interest in Aboriginal life as well as the often graphic accounts of frontier violence in works from the early and mid-19th century. For want of colonial history “texts”, I’ve also been reading travelogues and emigrant’s guides. While these books and pamphlets are largely observational, they also frequently present historical narratives and interpretation.</p>
<p>Many of them didn’t hold back in their tales from the colonial frontier, cataloguing extensive episodes of violent conflict between Aboriginal people and colonialists.</p>
<p>Have a look at this description of the 1838 Myall Creek massacre from Godfrey Charles Mundy in his travelogue, <a href="http://purl.library.usyd.edu.au/setis/id/munoura">Our Australian Antipodes</a>, published in 1852:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… they captured
the whole of them, with the exception of a child or two; and having bound them together with thongs, fired into the mass until the entire tribe, 27 in number, were killed or mortally wounded. The white savages then chopped in pieces their victims, and threw them, some yet living, on a large fire; a detachment of the stockmen remaining for several days on the spot to complete the destruction of the bodies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is graphic historical writing.</p>
<p>The horror of Mundy’s Myall Creek account is paradoxically eclipsed by the chilling official silence he observes after most attacks: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Reprisals [against Aboriginal people] are undertaken on a large scale – a scale that either never reaches the ears of the Government, which is bound to protect alike the white and the black subject; or, if it reaches them at all, finds them conveniently deaf.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230174/original/file-20180801-136646-eydriw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Godfrey Charles Mundy (1840): Encounter. Mounted police and blacks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National LIbrary of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>James Demark’s <a href="https://archive.org/stream/adventuresinaus01demagoog#page/n5">Adventures in Australia Fifty Years Ago</a>, from 1893, similarly reports a structural and deliberate deafness in response to the violent, eerie echoes across the frontier: “The settlers retaliated in their own way”, he writes, and “there were no Government regulations to check these irregular proceedings”.</p>
<p>Even self-described histories, such as those by James Bonwick and John West, explicitly link frontier violence with Australia’s colonisation. West’s <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/n00012.html">History of Tasmania</a>, first published in 1852, even uses the terms “black hunts” and “black war” to describe the first 50 years of Van Diemen’s Land. West was an abolitionist, and a tone of historical injustice inflects his writing about the Tasmanian Aborigines in <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00115.html">volume 2</a>.</p>
<p>Take this excerpt, where he relates the perverse logic of colonial expansion: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was better that the blacks should die, than that they should stain the settler’s heath with the blood of his children.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And this one, where he mourns the destruction of Tasmanian Aboriginal society in only two generations: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>At length the secret comes out: the tribe which welcomed the first settler with shouts and dancing, or at worst looked on with indifference, has ceased to live.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bonwick’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Last_of_the_Tasmanians.html?id=nVX67wKoHHkC">1870 history of Tasmania</a> is similarly full of sentiment. In a tone curiously analogous to Paul Keating’s <a href="https://antar.org.au/sites/default/files/paul_keating_speech_transcript.pdf">Redfern Park speech 120 years later</a>, Bonwick offers this lament on the effects of colonisation on Tasmania’s Aboriginal people:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We came upon them as evil genii, and blasted them with the breath of our presence. We broke up their home circles. We arrested their laughing corrobory. We turned their song into weeping, and their mirth to sadness.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hhqAFLud228?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Bonwick also reveals the ease with which colonial discourse accounted for murder. During his time in Tasmania, <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Last_of_the_Tasmanians/Chapter_3">Bonwick writes</a>, he had heard several people explain that “they thought no more of shooting a Black than bringing down a bird”. He went on: “Indeed, in those distant times, it was common enough to hear men talk of the number of black crows they had destroyed.”</p>
<p>Those recollections of euphemistic colonial vernacular hint at some of Bonwick’s method as a historian. In the introduction to his history and in an 1895 talk to the Royal Colonial Institute in London, he gives a more detailed explanation of that approach. </p>
<p>It was not a hunt through blue books [government records], that provided the source material for his research, he explains. Rather, it was conversation and hearsay, from sly-grog sellers, ex-bushrangers and colonial gentry alike, that furnish his historical narrative. </p>
<p>How else could you write about <em>hunting crows</em>?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=222&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230182/original/file-20180801-136661-1k2pb9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thomas John Domville Taylor: Squatters attack on an Aboriginal camp, One Tree Hill, Queensland, 1843.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Alongside those histories was a humanitarian public discourse that anguished over frontier violence. Media commentary, public debates and lectures, as well as letters to the editor from the frontier that related specific episodes of violence, are explored in detail by Henry Reynolds in <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/black-arm-band/">This Whispering in Our Hearts</a>. </p>
<p>Likewise, poetry such as <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/36861275">The Aboriginal Mother</a> (1838) by Eliza Hamilton Dunlop reveals a form of popular and creative history-making in response to colonisation that can be seen in the work of writers such as Judith Wright and Eleanor Dark a century later.</p>
<p>So why was that reverberation replaced with euphemism and omission? Partly the silence was a fear of punishment, as <a href="https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/hwj/dbx029/3960239?redirectedFrom=PDF">Bain Attwood</a> argues in a recent essay on historical denial. </p>
<p>Especially after the successful prosecution of the Myall Creek massacre perpetrators, colonial front lines and allegiances became a little murkier. “There were good reasons to be silent,” historian Tom Griffiths has similarly insisted.</p>
<p>Mundy’s 1852 account of his “ramble” through the Antipodes confirms Attwood’s and Griffiths’ explanation, and reveals how stories quietly murmured along the frontier provided a catalogue of violence. He writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dreadful tales of cold-blooded carnage have found their way into print, or are whispered about in the provinces. And although there be Crown land commissioners, police magistrates, and settlers of mark, who deny, qualify, or ignore these wholesale massacres of the black population, there can be no real doubt their extirpation from the land is rapidly going on.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>‘Historia nullius’</h2>
<p>It wasn’t simply a case of an uncomfortable frontier that came to characterise the silence Stanner identified in his Boyer Lectures, however. </p>
<p>The historians Stanner named in his lectures (such as M. Barnard Eldershaw, Hartley Grattan, Max Crawford and Brian Fitzpatrick) were largely silent on Aboriginal policy and history in their mid-20th-century histories — despite being written after the 1930s, a decade that Stanner notes for its influence in shapeshifting on Aboriginal policy. </p>
<p>Yet this form of history writing had begun in the late 19th century. At a time when Australian nationhood and national identity were being formed around Federation, the historical discipline was moving into a particular form of narrative writing oriented towards (non-Indigenous) Australian exceptionalism based on democratic and economic progress.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230188/original/file-20180801-136667-xp5o1t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A decorative flag used in Sydney, 1901, as part of Australian Federation celebrations. Australian nationhood and national identity were formed around Federation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Australia’s national consciousness emerged, it required a historical consciousness of its own origin. Education departments commissioned history texts and universities appointed history professors. As history became increasingly professionalised, “blue books” and official archives were in; hearsay and poetry out.</p>
<p>So what did disciplinary “silence” look like in Australia? It saw History (with a capital “H”) arriving with colonisation: “She alone of all the continents has no history,” <a href="https://archive.org/stream/no3journalofroyalco25royauoft/no3journalofroyalco25royauoft_djvu.txt">proclaimed journalist Flora Shaw</a> in a presentation about Australia to the Royal Colonial Institute in London in 1894. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>She offers the introductory chapter of a new history and bases her claim to the attention of the world upon the future which she is shaping for herself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13688790701488155">Lorenzo Veracini </a> has described that settler-colonial vision of the Australian continent as a sort of <em>historia nullius</em>, where “Australian history” only existed thanks to the selective creation and curation by colonial historians.</p>
<p>For Australian historians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the silence of pre- and post-contact Indigenous experience occurred because it existed outside the Whiggish historical narrative of imperial progress. “The federation of (white) Australia and the birth of ‘national’ historical consciousness thus represent … a moment of disciplinary origin,” historian <a href="https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/5848/1/Frontmatter_Creating-White-Australia.pdf">Leigh Boucher</a> asserts. </p>
<p>In his 1916 <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=rMh3-35M44oC&q=vast+tracts+of+land#v=snippet&q=vast%20tracts%20of%20land&f=false">Short History of Australia</a>, Ernest Scott described “vast tracts of fertile country which had never rung under the hoof of a horse and where the bleat of a sheep had never been heard”. In these texts, silence is counterposed against the ringing of axes and “industry”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230187/original/file-20180801-118933-1q8szli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tom Roberts Wood Splitters, 1886.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scott writes that Australia “begins with a blank space on the map, and ends with the record of a new name on the map, that of Anzac”. It’s worth dissecting this quote here, to unpack that form of history writing: the inevitability of historical progress and national formation is telling. </p>
<p>We shouldn’t assume that this early national history writing was completely silent on Indigenous matters: Coghlan and Ewing’s 1902 <a href="https://archive.org/details/progressaustral00ewingoog">Progress of Australasia in the Nineteenth Century</a> described the “invasion” of parts of southern Australia by the colonists, and related in some detail the colonial massacre of Aboriginal people at Risden Cove in Tasmania; and Scott’s 1916 short history included ghastly and violent accounts of murder on the colonial frontier, as well as the deliberate planting of arsenic in flour destined for Aboriginal people.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Stanner gave voice to an emergent idea about silence that understands history as a method that changes over time and place, rather than an objective interpretation of the past. It reminds me of what narrative psychologist Jerome Bruner explains as the “coherence” we “impose” on the past, to “make it into history”.</p>
<p>In other words, the 1930s histories that Stanner identified in his Boyer Lectures exist in a historical structure where Indigenous perspectives have been locked out. As Stanner himself articulated,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have been able for so long to disremember the Aborigines that we are now hard put to keep them in mind even when we most want to do so.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Still a work-in-progress</h2>
<p>Stanner’s point raises an important question: if “History” itself is tied to the process of colonisation, can it accommodate perspectives outside its colonial apparatus? Stanner sensed that history would overcome its own silences, but doing so would require major methodological shifts, such as the incorporation of Aboriginal Studies and oral history:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In Aboriginal Australia there is an oral history which is providing these people with a coherent principle of explanation … It has a directness and a candour which cut like a knife through most of what we say and write.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230175/original/file-20180801-136667-1walqr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His predictions played out, and such approaches, applied by Indigenous and non-Indigenous historians such as Hobbles Danyari, Heather Goodall, Peter Read, <a href="http://www.goolarabooloo.org.au/paddys_story.html">Paddy Roe</a> and Deborah Bird Rose, overturned Aboriginal historiography in Australia.</p>
<p>The murmurings have since turned into a groundswell: Indigenous histories have become increasingly prominent and Indigenous perspectives are now mandated across school curricula. Conspicuous public and political debates over Australian history are further indication of how this counter narrative has become a significant historical lens.</p>
<p>“I hardly think that what I have called ‘the great Australian silence’ will survive the research that is now in course,” <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=IJsPBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA351&lpg=PA351&dq=%22I+hardly+think+that+what+I+have+called+%27the+great+Australian+silence%27+will+survive+the+research+that+is+now+in+course%22&source=bl&ots=P3N1q9E238&sig=wZybwiibWrkSDA7asrT2NYz0YmE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiimMO7vpPdAhWJBIgKHZzQDR0Q6AEwBXoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22I%20hardly%20think%20that%20what%20I%20have%20called%20'the%20great%20Australian%20silence'%20will%20survive%20the%20research%20that%20is%20now%20in%20course%22&f=false">Stanner anticipated</a>. And, to a large degree, he was right — a substantial historical revision has taken place in Australia. </p>
<p>If anything, that change has accelerated since Stanner’s death in 1981. Yet in university history departments, Indigenous historians still remain vastly underrepresented. </p>
<p>Indigenous perspectives have increasingly informed, critiqued and revised historical approaches. But Indigenous histories are often relegated to “memoir”, “story”, “family history”, “narratives of place” or “political protest”, rather than acknowledged as part of a disciplinary practice. </p>
<p>And with the possible exception of oral history and pre-history/deep time, there is still a marked absence of Indigenous historiography in Australia’s historical “canon”. </p>
<p>We may have developed new critical approaches and a growing understanding of the genealogy of historical “silence”. Yet the meaning and the consequences of that understanding are still a work in progress.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100737/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Clark receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>
It is 50 years since anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner gave the Boyer Lectures in which he coined the phrase ‘the great Australian silence’. How far have we come since?
Anna Clark, Australian Research Council Future Fellow in Public History, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/99924
2018-07-20T10:36:37Z
2018-07-20T10:36:37Z
Bloody uprising in Nicaragua could trigger the next Central American refugee crisis
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228297/original/file-20180718-142411-15qe06i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Militias guard a barricade after police and pro-government militias stormed a rebel-held neighborhood in Masaya, Nicaragua, on July 17, 2018. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Nicaragua-Unrest/35156768a79c41da9cdf81cb1e827da6/4/0">AP Photo/Cristibal Venegas</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Central American migrants have long been at the center of what consecutive U.S. administrations have called the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/crisis-border-numbers/">immigration “crisis.”</a></p>
<p>Each year, thousands of Central Americans are caught attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border unlawfully. According to the <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/crisis-border-not-numbers">Migration Policy Institute</a>, the vast majority are asylum-seekers from <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/ofo-sw-border-inadmissibles-fy2017">Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador</a>, <a href="https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/understanding-central-american-refugee-crisis">fleeing</a> the region’s brutal gang violence and <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-central-america-gangs-like-ms-13-are-bad-but-corrupt-politicians-may-be-worse-86113">societal chaos</a>.</p>
<p>Typically, only a tiny fraction of migrants come to the U.S. from the neighboring Central American nation of Nicaragua. Their numbers are so small that Nicaraguans are rarely even mentioned in <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/usbp-sw-border-apprehensions">Customs and Border Protection</a> reports. </p>
<p>But Nicaragua has been in turmoil for months, as an uprising against the authoritarian regime of Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista party grows ever bloodier. Last weekend, three college students were killed during a 15-hour <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/ortega-ataco-con-sana-la-unan-pese-a-%E2%80%A8negociacion-de-estudiantes/">clash at a church on the campus of the National University of Nicaragua</a>, in Managua, which had been occupied by anti-government protesters since April. </p>
<p>At least 350 people have been killed so far, <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/07/19/nacionales/2450465-los-numeros-rojos-de-la-crisis-en-nicaragua">most at the hands of pro-government forces</a>.</p>
<p>This violence may prompt many Nicaraguans to start fleeing their country soon, too.</p>
<h2>Central America’s ‘safest country’</h2>
<p>Nicaragua, home to approximately 6.2 million people, is one of the <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/LAC/chronic_poverty_overview.pdf">poorest</a> countries in the Western Hemisphere. </p>
<p>But it has largely avoided the widespread crime and instability that for decades has dogged this corner of the world. Nicaragua’s 2017 homicide rate of <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/2017-homicide-round-up/">seven killings per 100,000</a> was the lowest in Central America. </p>
<p>Neighboring El Salvador’s murder rate was <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/11/latin-americas-homicide-epidemic">60 per 100,000 in 2017</a>, and Honduras’s was 43 per 100,000. </p>
<p>When Nicaraguans migrate, typically they are seeking better-paying jobs. </p>
<p>Rather than travel all the way to the United States, economic migrants from Nicaragua mostly head to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-nicaragua-no-migrants-20140830-story.html">neighboring Costa Rica</a>, the stablest and most prosperous country in Central America. An estimated 500,000 Nicaraguans currently live and work in Costa Rica. </p>
<h2>Nicaragua in flames</h2>
<p>This migration pattern may soon change. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.currenthistory.com/Article.php?ID=1215">My research on violence in Central America</a> reveals that the destabilizing conditions that have historically prompted many Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Hondurans to flee are now taking root in Nicaragua.</p>
<p>Since April, the government of Daniel Ortega has been trying to crush a nationwide protest movement that <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaragua-protests-threaten-an-authoritarian-regime-that-looked-like-it-might-never-fall-95776">demands his resignation</a>. </p>
<p>Demonstrations <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/violence-protests-nicaragua-leave-dead-55126320">first erupted</a> in Nicaragua on April 16, 2018, after the government announced social security reforms that would raise costs for retirees and workers. Police soon <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/world/americas/nicaragua-uprising-protesters.html">cracked down on protesters</a>. Students took to the streets. </p>
<p>Within days, <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1A6-4s-QqWSNKKm3vXDkqrdxM38Plyxnq&usp=sharing">tens of thousands of Nicaraguans</a> were protesting in cities and towns nationwide.</p>
<p>In response, the regime dispatched <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/nicaragua-violence-soars-doubts-responsible-dwindle/">police clad in riot gear, hired henchmen and state-sponsored paramilitary groups</a> to put down the protests. So far, these pro-Ortega forces have killed hundreds of people and wounded more than 2,100, according to the nonprofit <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/07/10/nicaragua-senior-officials-responsible-abuse">Human Rights Watch</a>.</p>
<h2>Outsourcing violence</h2>
<p>In its attempt to suppress the uprising, Ortega’s government has supplemented its police forces with groups of armed partisans, vigilantes and death squads.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/media_center/PReleases/2018/113.asp">Inter-American Commission on Human Rights</a>, which visited the country in May, the regime outsourced protest-repression duties to informal armed groups associated with the state. These so-called “para-police” – formed by citizens allied with Ortega’s Sandinista Party – work in <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/los-escuadrones-de-la-muerte-de-ortega/">coordination with the police</a>.</p>
<p>Outsourcing state violence is not a novel tactic. In <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/nicaragua-parapolice-groups-turn-criminal/">Venezuela</a>, the authoritarian government of Nicolás Maduro has also armed militant supporters and supported criminal gangs willing to “defend” the regime. </p>
<p>During Central America’s civil war period, in the 1980s, the governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador also <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2011.00132.x">used paramilitaries, vigilantes and groups of sympathizers</a> to suppress protests and punish dissidence. </p>
<p>In Guatemala, the army mobilized hundreds of thousands of people in civilian “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/18/world/guatemala-mobilizes-700000-civilians-in-local-patrols.html">self-defense</a>” patrols to fight guerrillas who opposed the country’s military dictatorship. El Salvador’s government built <a href="http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/hemisphereinitiatives/warpeace.pdf">wartime death squads</a> responsible for bloody massacres against civilians, or anyone assumed to support the anti-regime insurgency.</p>
<p>As the post-war <a href="http://www.odhag.org.gt/html/Default.htm">truth and justice commissions</a> in both countries would later <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Report_of_the_Joint_Group_for_the_Invest.html?id=cb4qHAAACAAJ">document</a>, many of these armed factions survived the end of the conflicts. </p>
<p>By the late 1990s, death squads and paramilitaries were using their government connections and expertise to prey on the Central American population and <a href="http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/hemisphereinitiatives/warpeace.pdf">infiltrate these countries’</a> new criminal justice institutions. </p>
<p>People often associated crime in Central America with gangs like MS-13. But my <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10611-016-9631-9">research</a> shows that the foundations for the region’s current criminal violence were laid decades ago, when Central American governments armed thugs and deployed them against their own people. </p>
<p>Outsourcing state violence may temporarily quash popular dissent. But it creates the conditions for more violence – not just political violence but criminal violence, too.</p>
<h2>Creating the conditions for rampant crime</h2>
<p>Nicaragua managed to avoid such post-war chaos in large part because of <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/01/12/what-explains-nicaragua-surprisingly-low-murder-rate/GTL3T5Ps1KwbbOdUMgB26I/story.html">institutional reforms</a> undertaken in the 1990s after the Sandinista revolution. </p>
<p>The Sandinista rebels <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=15&ved=0ahUKEwj61d6I7qvcAhWIAHwKHcj3BJAQFgiAATAO&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Farchive%2Fpolitics%2F1978%2F10%2F15%2Frebels-train-to-overthrow-somoza%2Fb2a78bc4-1a64-465a-83cd-82876f955606%2F&usg=AOvVaw3c9ZSNjaWrtZ5W6JBeWXs5">overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979</a> and dismantled the country’s infamously brutal National Guard. However, they emerged from the revolution with firm control over the new police and army.</p>
<p>After the Sandinistas <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/27/world/turnover-in-nicaragua-sandinistas-loss-to-be-felt-by-other-leftist-movements.html">lost</a> power in the 1990 presidential election, the new government of Violeta Chamorro undertook a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2011.00132.x">complex set of reforms</a> that, among other changes, established clear boundaries between law enforcement, the army and political parties in Nicaragua. </p>
<p>Those reforms strengthened the Nicaraguan state such that non-state forces could no longer violently confront – or substitute – government institutions.</p>
<p>The separation between politics and security forces began to erode when Daniel Ortega – who had previously ruled the country during the revolutionary 1980s – was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/08/1">re-elected</a> in 2006.</p>
<p>As he <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/2017/11/16/unchecked-demise-of-nicaraguan-democracy-pub-74761">accumulated power</a>, ultimately abolishing term limits to run for a third term, Ortega and his Sandinista party systematically undermined Nicaragua’s independent <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/maltrato-corrupcion-la-pn/">law enforcement</a> institutions. </p>
<h2>Dismantling Nicaragua’s strong state</h2>
<p>Those institutions had kept Nicaraguans relatively safe for over a decade. </p>
<p>Even as criminal organizations, death squads and, increasingly, street gangs were fueling <a href="https://www.unodc.org/gsh/">record levels of violence elsewhere in Central America</a>, Nicaragua’s murder rate in the early 2010s was similar to Costa Rica’s. </p>
<p>Evidence suggests that organized crime groups and drug cartels are now <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/nicaragua-claims-no-cartel-presence-but-past-cases-tell-a-different-story/">operating in Nicaragua</a>, too, taking advantage of the ongoing chaos there to deepen and expand their networks. </p>
<p>This also follows a pattern I’ve seen before in the region. After Honduras’ 2009 coup, <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/echoes-2009-honduras-again-approaches-chaos/">political unrest</a> laid the groundwork for collusion between the state and organized crime groups. </p>
<p>Already, many Nicaraguan youths have begun <a href="https://www.univision.com/noticias/america-latina/en-medio-de-la-represion-jovenes-huyen-de-nicaragua-a-costa-rica-por-veredas-para-salvar-el-pellejo">flocking to the Costa Rican border</a>, fleeing the paramilitary onslaught. </p>
<p>But Costa Rica has long wanted to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-anti-immigrant-attitudes-violence-and-nationalism-in-costa-rica-73899">close</a> its borders to Nicaraguan economic migrants. As Nicaragua’s crisis deepens, it will surely tighten border security. </p>
<p>Soon enough, it is likely that many more Nicaraguans will join other Central Americans on their long northward trek, seeking refuge over the U.S. border from unrelenting violence in their home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99924/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>José Miguel Cruz receives funding from the Open Society Foundations.</span></em></p>
Nicaragua has exploded in violence since mass protests began against President Daniel Ortega in April, with hundreds dead and thousands wounded. Amid such chaos, criminal violence is likely to follow.
Jose Miguel Cruz, Director of Research, Florida International University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.