Israel & Australia Violate UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
IN FOCUS, 15 Dec 2014
Dr. Gideon Polya – TRANSCEND Media Service
Apartheid Israel and Apartheid Australia have appalling, continuing records of violating the human rights of their Indigenous Peoples through the Palestine Genocide and the Aboriginal Genocide, respectively, and must be held to account by the civilized world through Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) for their genocidal crimes and for currently violating all 46 Articles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The UN General Assembly’s 61st regular session overwhelmingly voted for the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) on 13 September 2007 [1].
In favor (144 countries):
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chile, China, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia (Federated States of), Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, the Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
Against (4 countries):
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United States (Australia formally endorsed UNDRIP in 2009 under the Rudd Labor Government).
Abstaining (11 countries):
Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burundi, Colombia, Georgia, Kenya, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Samoa and Ukraine (Colombia and Samoa have since endorsed UNDRIP).
Absent (34 countries):
Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Grenada, Guinea-Bissau, Israel, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Montenegro, Morocco, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Romania, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Tajikistan, Togo, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is a legally non-binding document but has the moral weight of representing a considered consensus of most nations about the rights of Indigenous Peoples, It has 46 articles [2] of which ALL are clearly violated by genocidally racist, race-based, democracy-by-genocide, neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel and by Apartheid Israel-backing Apartheid Australia in ways that variously also illegally violate binding International Conventions such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, the Rights of the Child Convention and the UN Genocide Convention.
Rather than going through the UNDRIP Article by Article and exhaustively defining the Israeli and Australian violations, it is more efficient to simply summarize the past and continuing violation of Indigenous human rights by Apartheid Israel and Apartheid Australia to allow the reader to go through the UNDRIP Articles 1-46 themselves and immediately recognize all the variously human rights violating, genocidal and ethnocidal violations of the past and which are continuing today.
Apartheid Israel
In about 1880, when the racist colonial enterprise of racist Zionism was just getting underway in Europe, the population of Ottoman Empire-ruled Palestine was about 0.5 million Indigenous Arab Palestinians with about 25,000 Jews (half of them immigrants); by 1922 this had increased substantially under the British Mandate, 5 years after the 1917 British Balfour Declaration was issued in an attempt to get Zionist support for continued Russian involvement in WW1. In 1922 there were 752,000 people in the Palestine Mandate of whom 84,000 (11%) were Jews; by 1945, 1 year after pro-Zionist and racist mass murderer and war criminal Winston Churchill got the UK War Cabinet to Partition Palestine, there were 1.8 million people in Palestine, of whom 0.6 million (33%) were Jews. In 1948 the racist Zionists ‘corrected” this demographic situation by expelling 0.8 million Indigenous Palestinians from their land, homes, villages, towns, and cities in one of the most appalling ethnic cleanings in human history. A further ethnic cleansing occurred in 1967 with the Israeli invasion and Occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Syrian Golan Heights [3]. About 2 million Palestinians have been killed by violence (0.1 million ) or violently–imposed deprivation (1.9 million) since 1936 (as compared to 3,700 Zionist deaths at the hands of Palestinians since 1920) and about 5,000 Occupied Palestinians are killed by violence or violently-imposed derivation every year by neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel. 90% of the land of Palestine has now been ethnically cleansed in a remorseless and continuing Palestinian Genocide [4].
Of 12 million Indigenous Palestinians (half of them children), 6 million are forbidden from stepping foot in their own country; 4.3 million live under Occupier guns in abject poverty and with zero human rights, with 2.5 million living in mini-Bantustan ghettoes on the West Bank and 1.8 million highly abusively confined to a savagely blockaded Gaza Concentration Camp subject to policing and horrendous periodic Israeli Gaza massacres by high explosive army, navy and air force bombardment; and a “lucky” 1.7 million live as impoverished Third Class Israeli citizens under racist, Nazi-style Apartheid laws and under threat of genocidal mass deportation. Of the 6 million Indigenous Palestinians actually living under Zionist guns in Palestine (together with 6 million Jewish Israelis and 0.3 million non-Jewish and non-Arab Israelis), 72% are excluded from voting for the government ruling all of Palestine, and of the total of 12 million Indigenous Palestinians 86% are excluded from voting for the government ruling their homeland. The Occupied Palestinians have essentially no human rights, are economically crippled (annual per capita GDP $3,870 as compared to Apartheid Israel’s $31,537 ), suffer brutal military occupation and violation of all of Palestine, suffer arbitrary arrest, torture and appalling differential mortality, and are denied the fundamental rights of unencumbered religious worship and of living free in their own country. Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel has recently cemented this monstrous injustice by passing legislation officially making Israel a “Jewish state”, thereby grossly violating the rights of 12 million Indigenous Palestinians and grossly defaming millions of anti-racist Jews world-wide who utterly reject Israeli racism, theft, human rights abuse and genocide. Apartheid Israel comprehensively violates all 46 Articles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Apartheid Australia
The 4 Anglo countries that opposed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United States) have appalling histories of genocide against their Indigenous Peoples and of participating in genocidal atrocities against other Indigenous Peoples in British or American imperial wars, variously violate articles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (especially in relation to national rights, respect for the environment and social equity), and are united in their slavish support for nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide, neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel. Australia belatedly signed up to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2009 but has arguably a record worse than that of Apartheid Israel in violating the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Unlike Canada, New Zealand and the US, Apartheid Australia is like Apartheid Israel in not signing Treaties with its conquered Indigenous subjects. By de jure or de facto practices of imposing race-based legislation, dispossession, ethnocide, Educational Apartheid, disempowerment, egregious poverty, horrendous differential imprisonment, and horrendous mortality and morbidity of Indigenous Australians, Apartheid Australia also comprehensively violates all 46 Articles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Before the British Invasion in 1788, Indigenous Australians had been living in Australia for about 60,000 years. There were 350-750 different tribes and a similar number of languages and dialects, of which only 150 survive today and of these all but about 20 are endangered. After the British Invasion, the Aboriginal population dropped from about 1 million in 1788 to about 0.1 million in the first century through introduced disease, deprivation and genocidal violence. The last massacres of Aborigines occurred in the 1920s but no Treaty has ever been signed. Indigenous Australians were only counted after a referendum in 1967 and were finally given some protection by the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act brought in by Labor PM Gough Whitlam before he was removed in a CIA-backed Coup on 11 November 1975. In the 20th century up to 1 in 10 Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their mothers, the so-called Stolen Generations.
In 2000 about 9,000 Aborigines out of an Aboriginal population of 500,000 died avoidably every year (an avoidable death rate of 1.8% pa, the highest in the world) but this had declined to about 2,000 annual avoidable deaths out of a population of about 670,000 by 2011 (0.4% pa, similar to that in impoverished South Asia but occurring in one of the world’s richest countries). Indigenous Australians are far worse off than White Australians in relation to housing, health, wealth, social conditions, employment, imprisonment, deaths in custody, infant mortality, avoidable death rate, and life expectancy. While Aborigines represent 3% of the Australian population, they represent about 30% of the Australian prison population [5-9].
In 2008 Labor PM Kevin Rudd made his famous official “Sorry” to the Aboriginal Stolen Generations who had been forcibly removed from their mothers. However in that speech PM Rudd made no mention of racism or genocide and failed to mention the massive, continuing removal of Aboriginal children from their mothers. Thus Paddy Gibson, University of Technology Sydney (2013): “For each of the last five years, approximately a thousand Aboriginal children have been coming into the ‘out-of-home care’ system long-term. This is a higher number than were removed during any time in the twentieth century. Half of the children have not been placed with kin or relatives. We are fast approaching the Stolen Generations removal rate cited by Rudd: between 10 and 30 per cent of all Indigenous children. A 2011 annual report from the Department of Family and Community Services found that 9.6 per cent of Aboriginal children in NSW were in out-of-home care. Across Australia , nearly 6 per cent of Indigenous children are in out-of-home care. If current trends continue, the figure will exceed 10 per cent by the end of the decade. While Kevin Rudd was apologising for the past Aboriginal children were being taken in numbers greater than at any time in the 20th Century” [10].
There is an ongoing Australian Aboriginal Genocide and Aboriginal Ethnocide, noting that “genocide” is defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention as “ any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” In the Northern Territory authorities have substantially removed education of Indigenous children in their native languages. The Western Australia Government has announced that it will force as many as 150 remote Aboriginal communities to close, this representing one of the major single acts of Aboriginal Ethnocide and Aboriginal Genocide ever. Proposed changes to unemployment relief arrangements may see a return to the “work for rations” slavery of Indigenous Australians in rural areas [11].
With temperature increases expected to reach circa plus 5 degrees this century in the absence of effective climate change action, Indigenous Australians in remote, hot areas without reliable air-conditioning are at risk. Emma Murphy writing in the Green Left Weekly: “As far back as 2001, the IPCC noted that “the effects of climate change on health will be most severe in populations that already are marginal” and specifically identified the incredible disadvantage experienced by Indigenous Australians as an area of concern. The latest report goes into more detail. It says “Australia is set to experience a 6°C rise in average temperatures on its hottest days,” the Guardian reported on October 14. As the climate warms, fragile ecosystems in northern Australia will disappear, such as the wetlands in Kakadu National Park. Reptile, mammal and bird species will also disappear. But climate change also poses serious threats to human health and survival, and — as is too often the case — Indigenous people will suffer disproportionately” [12]. With Australian flora, fauna and ecosystems having been decimated by rapacious Anglo colonists for over 2 centuries, a near-terminal coup de grace will be delivered by man-made climate change this century, noting that climate criminal Australia is a world leader in annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution and in climate change inaction.
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The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is reproduced below and from the succinct accounts given above readers can determine for themselves that Apartheid Israel and Apartheid Australia violate every Article.
Article 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the full enjoyment, as a collective or as individuals, of all human rights and fundamental freedoms as recognized in the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law.
Article 2. Indigenous peoples and individuals are free and equal to all other peoples and individuals and have the right to be free from any kind of discrimination, in the exercise of their rights, in particular that based on their indigenous origin or identity.
Article 3. Indigenous peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
Article 4. Indigenous peoples, in exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions.
Article 5. Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions, while retaining their rights to participate fully, if they so choose, in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the State.
Article 6. Every indigenous individual has the right to a nationality.
Article 7. 1. Indigenous individuals have the rights to life, physical and mental integrity, liberty and security of person. 2. Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to another group.
Article 8. 1. Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.2. States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for: a. Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities; b. Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources; c. Any form of forced population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights; d. Any form of forced assimilation or integration; e. Any form of propaganda designed to promote or incite racial or ethnic discrimination directed against them.
Article 9. Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right to belong to an indigenous community or nation, in accordance with the traditions and customs of the community or nation concerned. No discrimination of any kind may arise from the exercise of such a right.
Article 10. Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option of return.
Article 11. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to practice and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artefacts, designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and literature. 2. States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution, developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples, with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs.
Article 12. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to manifest, practice, develop and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies; the right to maintain, protect, and have access in privacy to their religious and cultural sites; the right to the use and control of their ceremonial objects; and the right to the repatriation of their human remains.2. States shall seek to enable the access and/or repatriation of ceremonial objects and human remains in their possession through fair, transparent and effective mechanisms developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples concerned.
Article 13. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons. 2. States shall take effective measures to ensure this right is protected and also to ensure that indigenous peoples can understand and be understood in political, legal and administrative proceedings, where necessary through the provision of interpretation or by other appropriate means.
Article 14. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning. 2. Indigenous individuals, particularly children, have the right to all levels and forms of education of the State without discrimination. 3. States shall, in conjunction with indigenous peoples, take effective measures, in order for indigenous individuals, particularly children, including those living outside their communities, to have access, when possible, to an education in their own culture and provided in their own language.
Article 15. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the dignity and diversity of their cultures, traditions, histories and aspirations which shall be appropriately reflected in education and public information.2. States shall take effective measures, in consultation and cooperation with the indigenous peoples concerned, to combat prejudice and eliminate discrimination and to promote tolerance, understanding and good relations among indigenous peoples and all other segments of society.
Article 16. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to establish their own media in their own languages and to have access to all forms of non-indigenous media without discrimination. 2. States shall take effective measures to ensure that State-owned media duly reflect indigenous cultural diversity. States, without prejudice to ensuring full freedom of expression, should encourage privately-owned media to adequately reflect indigenous cultural diversity.
Article 17. 1. Indigenous individuals and peoples have the right to enjoy fully all rights established under applicable international and domestic labour law. 2. States shall in consultation and cooperation with indigenous peoples take specific measures to protect indigenous children from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development, taking into account their special vulnerability and the importance of education for their empowerment. 3. Indigenous individuals have the right not to be subjected to any discriminatory conditions of labour and, inter alia, employment or salary.
Article 18. Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures, as well as to maintain and develop their own indigenous decision-making institutions.
Article 19. States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.
Article 20. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and develop their political, economic and social systems or institutions, to be secure in the enjoyment of their own means of subsistence and development, and to engage freely in all their traditional and other economic activities. 2. Indigenous peoples deprived of their means of subsistence and development are entitled to just and fair redress.
Article 21. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right, without discrimination, to the improvement of their economic and social conditions, including, inter alia, in the areas of education, employment, vocational training and retraining, housing, sanitation, health and social security. 2. States shall take effective measures and, where appropriate, special measures to ensure continuing improvement of their economic and social conditions. Particular attention shall be paid to the rights and special needs of indigenous elders, women, youth, children and persons with disabilities.
Article 22. 1. Particular attention shall be paid to the rights and special needs of indigenous elders, women, youth, children and persons with disabilities in the implementation of this Declaration. 2. States shall take measures, in conjunction with indigenous peoples, to ensure that indigenous women and children enjoy the full protection and guarantees against all forms of violence and discrimination.
Article 23. Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for exercising their right to development. In particular, indigenous peoples have the right to be actively involved in developing and determining health, housing and other economic and social programmes affecting them and, as far as possible, to administer such programmes through their own institutions.
Article 24. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to their traditional medicines and to maintain their health practices, including the conservation of their vital medicinal plants, animals and minerals. Indigenous individuals also have the right to access, without any discrimination, to all social and health services. 2. Indigenous individuals have an equal right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. States shall take the necessary steps with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of this right.
Article 25. Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard.
Article 26. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired. 2. Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason of traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which they have otherwise acquired. 3. States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories and resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with due respect to the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned.
Article 27. States shall establish and implement, in conjunction with indigenous peoples concerned, a fair, independent, impartial, open and transparent process, giving due recognition to indigenous peoples’ laws, traditions, customs and land tenure systems, to recognize and adjudicate the rights of indigenous peoples pertaining to their lands, territories and resources, including those which were traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used. Indigenous peoples shall have the right to participate in this process.
Article 28. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to redress, by means that can include restitution or, when this is not possible, of a just, fair and equitable compensation, for the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used, and which have been confiscated, taken, occupied, used or damaged without their free, prior and informed consent. 2. Unless otherwise freely agreed upon by the peoples concerned, compensation shall take the form of lands, territories and resources equal in quality, size and legal status or of monetary compensation or other appropriate redress.
Article 29. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the conservation and protection of the environment and the productive capacity of their lands or territories and resources. States shall establish and implement assistance programmes for indigenous peoples for such conservation and protection, without discrimination. 2. States shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent. 3. States shall also take effective measures to ensure, as needed, that programmes for monitoring, maintaining and restoring the health of indigenous peoples, as developed and implemented by the peoples affected by such materials, are duly implemented.
Article 30. 1. Military activities shall not take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples, unless justified by a relevant public interest or otherwise freely agreed with or requested by the indigenous peoples concerned. 2. States shall undertake effective consultations with the indigenous peoples concerned, through appropriate procedures and in particular through their representative institutions, prior to using their lands or territories for military activities.
Article 31. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions. 2. In conjunction with indigenous peoples, States shall take effective measures to recognize and protect the exercise of these rights.
Article 32. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and other resources. 2. States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources. 3. States shall provide effective mechanisms for just and fair redress for any such activities, and appropriate measures shall be taken to mitigate adverse environmental, economic, social, cultural or spiritual impact.
Article 33. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to determine their own identity or membership in accordance with their customs and traditions. This does not impair the right of indigenous individuals to obtain citizenship of the States in which they live.2. Indigenous peoples have the right to determine the structures and to select the membership of their institutions in accordance with their own procedures.
Article 34. Indigenous peoples have the right to promote, develop and maintain their institutional structures and their distinctive customs, spirituality, traditions, procedures, practices and, in the cases where they exist, juridical systems or customs, in accordance with international human rights standards.
Article 35. Indigenous peoples have the right to determine the responsibilities of individuals to their communities.
Article 36. 1. Indigenous peoples, in particular those divided by international borders, have the right to maintain and develop contacts, relations and cooperation, including activities for spiritual, cultural, political, economic and social purposes, with their own members as well as other peoples across borders.2. States, in consultation and cooperation with indigenous peoples, shall take effective measures to facilitate the exercise and ensure the implementation of this right.
Article 37. 1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the recognition, observance and enforcement of Treaties, Agreements and Other Constructive Arrangements concluded with States or their successors and to have States honour and respect such Treaties, Agreements and other Constructive Arrangements. 2. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as to diminish or eliminate the rights of Indigenous Peoples contained in Treaties, Agreements and Constructive Arrangements.
Article 38. States in consultation and cooperation with indigenous peoples, shall take the appropriate measures, including legislative measures, to achieve the ends of this Declaration.
Article 39. Indigenous peoples have the right to have access to financial and technical assistance from States and through international cooperation, for the enjoyment of the rights contained in this Declaration.
Article 40. Indigenous peoples have the right to have access to and prompt decision through just and fair procedures for the resolution of conflicts and disputes with States or other parties, as well as to effective remedies for all infringements of their individual and collective rights. Such a decision shall give due consideration to the customs, traditions, rules and legal systems of the indigenous peoples concerned and international human rights.
Article 41. The organs and specialized agencies of the United Nations system and other intergovernmental organizations shall contribute to the full realization of the provisions of this Declaration through the mobilization, inter alia, of financial cooperation and technical assistance. Ways and means of ensuring participation of indigenous peoples on issues affecting them shall be established.
Article 42. The United Nations, its bodies, including the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and specialized agencies, including at the country level, and States, shall promote respect for and full application of the provisions of this Declaration and follow up the effectiveness of this Declaration.
Article 43. The rights recognized herein constitute the minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples of the world.
Article 44. All the rights and freedoms recognized herein are equally guaranteed to male and female indigenous individuals.
Article 45. Nothing in this Declaration may be construed as diminishing or extinguishing the rights indigenous peoples have now or may acquire in the future.
Article 46. 1. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, people, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act contrary to the Charter of the United Nations or construed as authorizing or encouraging any action which would dismember or impair totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States. 2. In the exercise of the rights enunciated in the present Declaration, human rights and fundamental freedoms of all shall be respected. The exercise of the rights set forth in this Declaration shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law, and in accordance with international human rights obligations. Any such limitations shall be non-discriminatory and strictly necessary solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and for meeting the just and most compelling requirements of a democratic society. 3. The provisions set forth in this Declaration shall be interpreted in accordance with the principles of justice, democracy, respect for human rights, equality, non-discrimination, good governance and good faith.
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Conclusions
The patterns of genocide of the Indigenous Peoples in Palestine and Australia have been quantitatively differently. Thus Apartheid Israel forcibly expelled about half the Indigenous population in 1948 under threat of more mass murder but today nearly 50% of the population of geographical Palestine are Indigenous Palestinians. Apartheid Israel is a democracy-by-genocide in which 86% of Indigenous Palestinians are excluded from voting for the government ruling all of the former mandated Palestine and 50% are prevented from even stepping foot in a country that has been continuously inhabited by their Indigenous Palestinian forebears for thousands of years back to the very dawn of agrarian civilization. Intermarriage is essentially prevented by Zionist racism and utterly sick, Nazi-style racist laws that even prevent Indigenous Palestinian Israeli Third Class citizens from marrying fellow Indigenous Palestinians living a few kilometres away as Non-persons in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The racist Zionists have made the fraud of the hypothetical “2-state solution” an impossibility by ethnically cleansing 90% of the land of Palestine. Indigenous Palestinians face life as refugees or as powerless subjects of a vile Apartheid system with the very real prospect of complete ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the Apartheid America- and Apartheid Australia-backed neo-Nazi racist Zionists.
In Australia in the first century after Invasion there was a massive extermination of 90% of the Indigenous population through violence, dispossession, deprivation and introduced disease. Aborigines were Non-persons until the 1967 Referendum that changed the Australian Constitution by (a) permitting the Federal Government to make laws about Indigenous Australians living in any State or Federal Territory and (b) removed the racist prohibition “Aborigines not to be counted in reckoning population” [13]. The Aboriginal Genocide and Aboriginal Ethnocide continues through removal of children from their mothers, egregious deprivation, education largely in English and horrendous avoidable mortality. Despite continuing racism there has been considerable inter-marriage and the Indigenous Australian population is now about 3% of the whole population. Land rights that commenced under the reformist Whitlam Labor Government have granted “native title “ to large swathes of desert and marginal land in the “outback” but Native Title does not preclude mining exploitation, Indigenous Peoples being somewhat better protected in this respect in North America [14]. By withholding services taken for granted by White Australians, racist Governments at the Federal and State level are variously trying to force Indigenous Australians off sacred traditional lands that their forebears as 350-750 distinct groups had occupied for about 60,000 years. The racist White Australian dream of “assimilation” of Indigenous Australian may mean perhaps no more than 20 of these languages and cultures surviving in the near future under present racist, genocidal and ethnocidal White Australian policies.
Apartheid Israel and Apartheid Australia have so far had a very good press from the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-subverted and perverted Mainstream media in the Western Murdochracies, Lobbyocracies and Corporatocracies. However the Internet has enabled the Awful Truth to emerge through the Mainstream media Wall of Silence. History ignored yields history repeated and the carte blanche given to Apartheid Israel by the US has allowed this nuclear terrorist rogue state to attack a dozen other countries and involve itself in other genocidal atrocities (notably the genocide of the Indigenous Mayans of Guatemala and the Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka). Similarly, White Australia has an appalling secret genocide history involving participation in 30 genocidal atrocities that, in addition to the ongoing Aboriginal Genocide, notably include the 1942-1945 Bengali Holocaust (in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons [15, 16]), participation in all post-1950 US Asian wars (40 million Asian deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation), the post-1990 Muslim Holocaust (12 million Muslim deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan [17-19]), and the worsening Climate Genocide (that is set to kill 10 billion people this century if man-made climate change is not requisitely addressed) [20, 21].
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[3]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Australia Backs Racist Zionist Run Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 29 June, 2009: http://www.countercurrents.org/poly… .
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[5]. Gideon Polya, “ Ongoing Aboriginal Genocide And Aboriginal Ethnocide By Politically Correct Racist Apartheid Australia ”, Countercurrents, 16 February 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/poly… .
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[8]. MacRae A, Thomson N, Anomie, Burns J, Catto M, Gray C, Levitan L, McLoughlin N, Potter C, Ride K, Stumpers S, Trzesinski A, Urquhart B (2013). Overview of Australian Indigenous health status, 2012: http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au… .
[9]. Gideon Polya, “Film Review: “Utopia” by John Pilger exposes genocidal maltreatment of Indigenous Australians by Apartheid Australia”, Countercurrents, 14 March, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/poly… .
[10]. Paddy Gibson, “Stolen futures”, Overland , Spring 2013: http://overland.org.au/previous-iss… .
[11]. Amy McQuire, “Black Australia would be :essentially free labour under “wrok-for-the-dole” changes”, New Matilda, 9 December 2014: https://newmatilda.com/2014/12/09/b… .
[12]. Emma Murphy, “Indigenous people most affected by climate change”, Green Left Weekly, 24 October 2013: https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/55190 .
[13]. “Australian referendum, 1967 (Aboriginals)”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austra… .
[14]. Gideon Polya, “This Changes Everything. Capitalism vs. the Climate” by Naomi Klein – Green Socialist Revolution ASAP”, Countercurrents, 11 December 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/poly… ).
[15]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, now available for free perusal on the Web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com.au/ .
[16]. Gideon Polya, “Australia and Britain killed 6-7 million Indians in WW2 Bengal Famine”, Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/poly… .
[17]. “Iraqi Holocaust Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqi… .
[18]. “Afghan Holocaust Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afgha… .
[19]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/musli… .
[20]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “The Cambridge History of Australia” ignores Australian involvement in 30 genocides” , Countercurrents, 14 October 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/poly… .
[21]. “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/clima… .
[22]. “Boycott Apartheid Israel ”: https://sites.google.com/site/boyco… .
What can decent people do to stop the ongoing Palestinian Genocide and the ongoing Australian Aboriginal Genocide and Aboriginal Ethnocide? Indigenous Australians, other Indigenous Peoples and indeed all decent, anti-racist people everywhere must (a) inform everyone they can about these ongoing genocidal atrocities, and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) [22] – as were successfully applied against Apartheid Israel- and Apartheid Australia-backed Apartheid South Africa – against Apartheid Israel, Apartheid Australia and all people, politicians, parties, countries, companies and corporations complicit in these crimes against Humanity. Outstanding anti-racist Jewish American scholar Professor Jared Diamond in his best-selling book “Collapse” (Prologue, p10, Penguin edition) enunciated the “moral principle, namely that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate, or exterminate another people” – an injunction grossly violated by racist Zionist (RZ)-run Apartheid Israel and its racist, genocide-committing and genocide-ignoring US Alliance backers, including Apartheid Australia. Would you buy soap made in Auschwitz?
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