British committed ‘genocide’ against Aboriginal Australians – inquiry

British colonisers committed “genocide” against the Aboriginal people in the Australian state of Victoria after arriving in the area in the early 1830s, a commission investigating injustices against the indigenous population has said.

The colonization of Victoria, Australia’s second smallest state, located in the southeast of the country, took place between 1834 and 1851.

During that period, its indigenous population suffered “near-complete physical destruction,” falling from around 60,000 to 15,000, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Yoorrook Justice Commission.

The crimes by the British in Victoria included “mass killings, disease, sexual violence, exclusion, linguicide [the death of languages], cultural erasure, environmental degradation, child removal, absorption and assimilation,” it said.

“This was genocide,” the commission ruled after holding more than two months of public hearings and listening to accounts by over 1,300 Aboriginals.

The report suggested some 100 recommendations in order to “redress” harm caused to the Aboriginals by “invasion and occupation,” including paying reparations and granting Victoria’s First Peoples’ Assembly decision-making powers.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said in a statement that she welcomed the report and that her government would consider its findings.

“Victoria’s truth-telling process is a historic opportunity to hear the stories of our past that have been buried – these are stories that all Victorians need to hear,” Allan stated.

The head of the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organization (VACCHO), Jill Gallagher, told ABC that “we do not blame anyone alive today for these atrocities,” but stressed “it is the responsibility of those of us alive today to accept that truth.”

The Yoorrook Justice Commission was established in 2021, becoming the first of its kind in Australia. Similar formal “truth-telling” inquiries are currently taking place in other states.

The Australian Museum said previously there were at least 270 massacres carried out by colonists against Aboriginal Australians between the late 18th and early 20th century “as part of a state-sanctioned and organized attempts to eradicate First Nations people.”

Due to those actions, the indigenous population in Australia declined from an estimated 1-1.5 million to less than 100,000 by the early 1900s, according to the museum.

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