Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian mentioned Australia's history of genocide against indigenous peoples at a regular press conference on September 23, 2021, saying: "Historically, Australia has committed genocide against indigenous peoples, forcibly removing 100,000 indigenous children from their families and causing permanent pain to the 'stolen generation'. ”
The "stolen generation" is a group of tragic people in Australian history, and it is the victim of the "White Australia Policy" implemented by the Australian government in the early 20th century.
Children kidnapped by the government
The movie "Australia" has a plot about this history. In the film, the child Nora is a mixed-race child born of an indigenous woman who was raped by a white male. The film kicks off with Nora watching a policeman or stranger rush into a large water jug when she arrives at the ranch, and Nora's mother drowns during an escape, and Nora has to put black charcoal on her face to prevent herself from being discovered and taken away.
Stills from the movie "Australia's Troubled World"
In Australia at that time, in order to maintain a lofty status and noble blood, white people threatened to completely eliminate indigenous mixed-race children under the guise of beneficial evolution for future generations. The 1901 Australian Gazette said: "If Australia is to be a place for our children and their descendants, we must guarantee the purity of our racial lineage." Mixed-race children don't usually inherit any of the virtues of both races, do you want Australia to become a world of hybrids? ”
Therefore, the "White Australia Policy" was naturally put on the agenda.
The "White Australia Policy" originated from the extreme racist ideology that prevailed in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the White Australian Thought. After the establishment of the Australian Commonwealth in 1901, it evolved into the "White Australia Policy" and became a basic national policy. It preaches the superiority of caucasia over all other races and is committed to making Australia a pure Caucasian nation.
Australia is a typical multi-ethnic country, with the oldest Aboriginal people dating back 70,000 years. The indigenous people, who hunt and gather for their livelihoods, set up makeshift tents near water sources and search for their next habitat when food is exhausted.
In 1770, the British navigator Captain Cook discovered the east coast of Australia. On 26 January 1788, the British Navy officially settled in Australia with its families and 780 prisoners. The British declared the aborigines illegally occupying royal lands and drove the natives to inland inhospitable areas with guns.
Not only do indigenous peoples have a difficult situation in terms of living environment, but even their children are "stolen" by the government.
Influenced by the White Australia Policy, the Australian government implemented an assimilation policy that affected a generation between 1910 and 1970, forcing nearly 100,000 Indigenous children to be adopted in white families and specialized institutions, cutting off their linguistic and cultural ties to their native communities, making them "stolen generations".
To achieve this goal, the Australian Government rejects and excludes immigrants of color externally, considers Indigenous peoples to be "lowly and ignorant" internally, and therefore permanently sends a total of 100,000 Indigenous children to white families or government agencies through deception or coercion, in order to "albino" Indigenous peoples and accelerate the demise of Indigenous races.
Australian writer Galimela's novel "Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence" also recreates this history.
The protagonist, Molly, is an Aboriginal girl who was taken away from her mother by white police when she was 14 years old, along with her sister Daisy and cousin Gracie. They cannot speak their own language in the adoption camp, only English. Molly couldn't stand the oppressive life of the adoption camp, and at her call, the three girls joined hands on the long road home along the rabbit fence.
At the end of the story, Grace is captured, and Molly and Daisy return to the tribe after many hardships. However, in real life, Molly returned to her hometown a few years later, married an Aboriginal man, and gave birth to two daughters, Doris and Anna. In 1940, when the eldest daughter, Doris, was 3 years old, the mother and daughter were forcibly taken back to the Moore River camp. The following year Molly fled home from camp with 18-month-old Anna. Two years later, Anna was snatched away by the government again.
And so the tragedy continues to recur.
As the poster for the film of the same name adapted from the novel goes: What can you do when the government kidnaps your child?
Movie poster for The Rabbit Fence
It was 30 years before Molly was able to reunite with Doris. Doris wrote a novel based on her mother's tragic experience, "Rabbit Fence".
Indigenous children's "nightmare"
Being "stolen" at a young age is tantamount to a "nightmare" for indigenous children.
They became devoid of personal freedom and severed all ties with their tribes and families. In order to prevent family tracing, the Government has even specifically destroyed information on children and their indigenous parents.
In nursing homes or white families, indigenous children speak the language of whites, accept the religion of whites, and then accept the values and lifestyles of whites. By the age of fifteen or sixteen he began to work for white people for meager pay.
According to a 1997 report by the Australian Commission on Human Rights and Equal Opportunities entitled "Take Them Home", aboriginal children are subjected to inhuman treatment in nursing homes, where malnutrition, abuse and abuse are frequent.
This has far-reaching implications for the health of Australian Aborigines. A 2007 Report by the World Health Organization noted that the health of Indigenous Australians is a century behind the rest of Australia's population, with an average life expectancy of nearly two decades shorter. The report also said they were not even worse off than the Maori in New Zealand, and some diseases, which were extinct for the general Australian, were still rampant among The Aborigines.
Aboriginal Australians
In addition, the lack of parental care and discrimination and abuse by whites make it difficult for these children to return to their own culture or integrate into white society. Their crime, suicide and unemployment rates are well above the national average for their peers. Many children do not know their identity, will never see their loved ones for the rest of their lives, and die quietly in rootless predicaments.
Bruce Trevolo was one of those children. On Christmas Day 1957, 13-month-old Trevolo suffered abdominal pain, and his father, Joseph, asked neighbours to take him to a hospital in Adelaide for treatment. Upon arriving at the hospital, his personal information was written as "no parents" and handed over to a white couple to raise.
Trevoro never saw his father again. At the age of 10, he was reunited with his mother, but his childhood had a big impact on his life, and he became alcoholic, depressed, and even unable to keep a job. The court found that all this was attributed to his experience of being "stolen" in his childhood.
Another "Stolen Generation"
In 1973, the Australian Government finally abandoned its assimilation policy towards local aborigines. However, it was not until 13 February 2008 that the Aborigines waited for an apology from the government – then-Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to the indigenous population in Parliament, reflecting on the Australian government's past "wrongdoing" and calling it "a stain on the country's history".
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd embraces the "stolen generation" at a reception, source: Xinhua News Agency
On that day, around 1,000 Indigenous Australians travelled from across the country to the capital, Canberra, to witness this momentous moment. Australia's major television stations broadcast the apology ceremony live at the same time, and many people gathered under the big TV screen in the rain to watch and shed tears.
However, the actual life and status of indigenous peoples have not been fundamentally changed. The tragedy continues.
The Australian reported on 23 August 2009 that more than 40 Aboriginal children in a town in New South Wales were taken from their parents by welfare agency staff, including a baby who was only four days old.
The baby was nursing in his mother's arms when he was taken away. When welfare workers first came to the hospital to take the baby, the caregiver refused on the grounds of inhumanity. Four days later, the welfare officers came to the hospital again, took the baby who was nursing in the mother's arms, and fostered it to a distant family. In fact, there is neither a drug epidemic nor an alcohol problem in the villages and towns, and the reasons why these children are taken away are only poverty and backwardness.
Dem Pasay, a spokesman for child safety for the Australian opposition, worries that "another stolen generation is forming".
Someone recounted how it felt to be taken away from home and grown up, "We may be able to go home, but we can't go back to our childhood." We may be able to reunite with our parents and relatives again, but time has passed, and we cannot appreciate the love and care of our relatives, and this regret cannot be erased for life. We can go home again, but the physical and mental damage cannot be eliminated, because the Guardians believe that their task is to eliminate our indigenous identity. ”
No nation or race is born more noble, and safeguarding human dignity is the basic consensus of civilized society. How to truly solve the historical problem of the "stolen generation", how to heal the wounds, and really improve the actual life and status of Australian Aborigines, the Australian government needs to do a lot more.
Resources:
1. Yubo Wang, Australia: Reinvention in Transplantation, Chengdu: Sichuan People's Publishing House, 2000.
2. Tu Chenglin: Australia Observation, Guangzhou: Guangdong People's Publishing House, 2002.
3. Yang Honggui, "On the Assimilation Policy of Australian Aborigines", World Peoples, No. 6, 2003.
4. Wang Shiming, "Analysis of the Reasons why the Rudd Government of Australia Apologized to indigenous people", Journal of Xuzhou Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), No. 1, 2009.
5. "Australian Productivity Commission Report Notes – Worrying Human Rights Situation of Indigenous Australians," People's Daily, 16th edition, 18 August 2021.
6. Chen Xiaofang, "Australia Continues the Tragedy of the Stolen Generation", Guangming Daily, August 24, 2009, 8th edition.
7. Cao Yang, "Australia: Indigenous Children Forcibly Separated from Their Parents Modern Version of the Stolen Generation Fears Formation," Xinhua Daily Telegraph, August 25, 2009, 5th edition.
8. Hao Shuangyan, "Australia is helpless to compensate the "stolen generation", which will provide 75,000 Australian dollars per person for some indigenous people", Global Times, August 6, 2021.
https://world.huanqiu.com/article/44Eic88JSlU
9. Global Network, "Australia's Human Rights Abuses Widely Criticized, Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Australia Owes the World an Account," September 23, 2021.
https://www.sohu.com/a/491581711_162522
10. "Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Formally Apologizes publicly to The Originals," CCTV .com, February 13, 2008.
http://news.cctv.com/special/C17274/01/20080213/103091.shtml
11. Qiao Yu, "The Pain Behind Australia's National Day: How Many Victims Of the White Australia Policy," The Paper, August 26, 2016.
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1482765