Racist White Australian Child Abuse & Passive Mass Murder

AUSTRALIA has been rocked by the decision of the Federal Government to send Police (fine), welfare personnel (fine)  and the ARMY IN BATTLE DRESS (WHY?) into remote Aboriginal (Indigenous Australian) communities in the Northern Territory. This politically astute move by Prime Minister John Howard has demanded bipartisan support and will probably lead to a big increase in electoral support for the Bush-ite Coalition Government. It follows the recent release of the Report “Little Children are Sacred” that details horrendous Aboriginal living conditions, appalling community violence and sexual abuse of Aboriginal Children in Australia’s Northern Territory.

In 2001 Howard used the issue of Asian Muslim refugees picked up by the Norwegian ship the Tampa in the Indian Ocean, and the LIE of refugees throwing their children overboard to win an election. History repeats itself - a few days ago the top Melbourne newspaper The Age had the page one headline: “The Government is using these children to win the election … This is our black children overboard”.

The appalling conditions of Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal Australians, Australian aborigines) derive from Government neglect compounded by the burden of historical and continuing bad  treatment, often remotely-located communities and the  consequences of such problems (alcoholism, petrol sniffing, drug abuse, violence). The Report makes it clear that QUALITATIVELY things are very bad in remote Aboriginal communities and demand urgent and sensible Government action.

The bottom-line is that Indigenous Australians deserve the SAME social conditions and social services as provided for ALL Non-Indigenous  Australians e.g. Police to ensure NO public drunkenness, NO violence and mandatory reporting of violence (including sexual abuse) impacting children;  100% school attendance that is compulsory for Non-Indigenous Australian children but which has been irresponsibly allowed to lapse for Aboriginal communities; basic primary health care, child welfare and child nutrition; decent public housing (crowded housing leads to disease and other problems); and employment prospects (employment is extremely high in Indigenous communities but only 4% for Australia as a whole).

The racism and neglect of GOVERNMENTS have created these appalling conditions.

However to illustrate the sheer HYPOCRISY and DISHONESTY of the racist, Bush-ite Australian Government it is useful to examine the Northern Territory Child Sexual Abuse REALITY in a QUANTITATIVE way. There is no doubt from the shocking anecdotal accounts in the Report that from a QUALITATIVE perspective Aboriginal Child Sexual Abuse is occurring and must be urgently stopped.  However the Report (p57) states that “it is not possible to accurately estimate the extent of child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory” and the only QUANTITATIVE estimate offered in the Report is that “70% of all female Aboriginal prisoners in New South Wales jails had suffered sexual abuse as Children” (Report, p5).

Importantly, the Report refers to studies in AMERICA indicating that 25% of females and 10% of males experience childhood sexual abuse (Finkelhor, D.  (1994), Current information on the scope and nature of child sexual abuse”, Future of Children, 4(2), pp31-53) and in AUSTRALIA indicating that 34% of females and 16% of males experienced non-penetrative abuse with 12% females and 4% of males reporting penetrative child sexual abuse (Dunne, M.P., Purdie, D.M., Cook, M.D., Boyle, F.M. & Najman, J.M.(2003), Is child sexual abuse declining? Evidence from a population-based survey of men and women in Australia, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 27 (2), pp141-152).

However the Bush-ite Australian Government – while it deserves qualified praise for some action in this present instance – has given NO indication that it will address the underlying problems by delivering basic services on a non-racist basis to ALL Australians. Further, while Indigenous communities have been stigmatized, humiliated and frightened, the Federal Government will NOT generalize its action against child abuse to include ALL Australians. A recent book indicates that 40,000 Australian children are sexually abused each year (see Sexual Abuse, ed. Healy, J., Volume 179, Issues in Society, The Spinney Press, 2003: http://www.spinneypress.com.au/179_book_desc.html ).

CRITICALLY,  the Bush-ite Coalition Government AND the holocaust-ignoring Mainstream Australian media utterly IGNORE the complicity of the Coalition Federal Government in horrendous Passive Child Abuse (1,600 AVOIDABLE under-5 year old Indigenous Australian infant deaths under the Coalition Government) and Passive Mass Murder (90,000 AVOIDABLE Indigenous Australian deaths in total over the last 11 years of the Coalition Federal Government) (see “The Awful Truth”, National Indigenous Times, 14 June 2007: http://www.nit.com.au/news/story.aspx?id=11555 ).

Below is a letter detailing these matters and which I have recently sent to nearly all non-Government members of the Australian Federal Parliament and in an abridged form to Mainstream Australian media. THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING.

Dear Senator, Mr, Mrs, Ms, Dr etc,

I applaud the bipartisan support for more police and welfare personnel being sent to Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory but am nervous about the authoritarian flavour of the exercise, the use of uniformed military personnel and Coalition motives, the more so because of the complicity of the Coalition Federal Government in 1,600 AVOIDABLE under-5 year old Indigenous Australian infant deaths and 90,000 AVOIDABLE Indigenous Australian deaths in total over the last 11 years. 

My recent book “Body Count, Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007; complimentary copies sent to the ANU, National and Parliamentary Libraries and to some concerned non-Government Parliamentarians) estimates that the “annual death rate” (2003 figures) is 2.2% (for Aboriginal Australians) and 2.4% (for Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory) – as compared to 0.4% (what it should be for a comparable high birth rate society), 2.5% (for pre-drought sheep in paddocks of Australian sheep farms), 0.7% (for White Australians) and 1.7% (non-Arab Africa).

This is happening in one of the richest countries of the world because of deliberate and sustained neglect – Australian Aboriginal health services are funded at 50% of what they should be; many Australian Aborigines live in Third World conditions; the “annual under-5 infant death rate” is over 3 times higher for Aborigines than that for White Australians; 1 in 5 Australian Aborigines have diabetes (mostly type 2 diabetes) which has huge attendant problems such as cardiovascular complications, kidney problems and blindness;  and the Australian Aboriginal life expectancy is 17 years less than that for White Australians.

The “annual AVOIDABLE death rate” (annual excess death rate) of Indigenous Australians is 2.2-0.4 = 1.8% as compared to 0% for New Zealand and for White Australia, 0.4% (South Asia), 0.5% (Occupied Iraq), 1.0% (non-Arab Africa) and 1.8% (Occupied Afghanistan).

1.8% per year of 460,000 times 11 years = about 90,000 Indigenous Australians have died avoidably under the Coalition Government.

The Indigenous infant death rate is over 3 times that of Australia as whole. The difference translates to 146 AVOIDABLE under-5 Indigenous infant deaths annually or 146 x 11 = about 1,600 AVOIDABLE under-5 year old Indigenous infant deaths under the Coalition Government.

The ultimate Child Abuse is the active and passive murder of Children. As the World’s (and Australia’s) top bioethicist Professor Peter Singer (Princeton University) has stated in another context: “[those] who deliberately leave a baby to die when they have the awareness, the ability, and the opportunity to save the baby’s life, are just as morally responsible for the death as they would be if they had brought it about by a deliberate, positive action.” (see: Kuhse, H. & Singer, P. (1985), Should the Baby Live? The Problem of Handicapped Infants, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp84-85).

Since nearly half the Indigenous Australian population is under the age of 18 years (i.e. are “children”), a particularly relevant International Agreement is the 1989 Convention of the Rights of the Child. The Coalition Government can be seen to have grossly violated this International Convention in relation to Indigenous Australian children, most notably  Article 6, which states: “1. States Parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life. 2. States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the Child.”

Consider (A) Indigenous Australian avoidable deaths under the Coalition Government (about 90,000 avoidable deaths over 11 years out of a population of about 460,000; passive murder) as compared to (B) Jewish deaths in Nazi German-occupied Hungary in 1944/45 (0.2 million deaths out of a Jewish population of 0.7 million; mostly active murder) (see: Gilbert, M. (1969), Jewish History Atlas, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London and Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust , Michael Joseph, London). Anyone denying (B) faces 10 years in prison in Austria and lengthy imprisonment in other Western European countries – yet rightist Australian media and the Coalition IGNORE (A).

Decent Australians should NOT vote for passive mass murder – but will unwittingly continue to do so as long as this carnage goes UNREPORTED.

Yours sincerely,
Dr Gideon Polya
Melbourne

PS. For further details see (1) “The Awful Truth”, National Indigenous Times, 14 June 2007: http://www.nit.com.au/news/story.aspx?id=11555  ; (2) “Sydney Madonna & Aboriginal Genocide” on MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10865/26/  ; (3) “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ; (4) the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/pdf/crc.pdf ; and (5) Thomson, N., Burns, J., Burrow, S & Kirov, E. (2004), Overview of indigenous health 2004. Australian Indigenous Health Bulletin; 4(4): Reviews: .

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