Gideon Polya, “Commonwealth Games. Aboriginal Genocide, QEII & British War Crimes”, MWC News, 16 March 2006.
Commonwealth Games. Aboriginal Genocide, QEII & British War Crimes
MELBOURNE, Australia is currently hosting the Commonwealth Games, the poor cousin of the Olympic Games. The participants come from the one third of humanity that used to be part of the British Empire, the empire on which the sun never set. The competition will be dominated by the rich “white” members of the Commonwealth, namely Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the various parts of the United Kingdom. Some Third World countries will be highly competitive in particular areas e.g. Fiji (Rugby Sevens), Jamaica (athletics), India (hockey) and Kenya (long-distance running). Indeed the next Games will be held in India.
Normally utterly ignored at these events is the huge disparity in wealth and life expectancy between the fabulously wealthy “white” countries and the generally impoverished non-European countries, Surprisingly it has been Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Herself who has raised such issues e.g. the fact that half of the worlds’ HIV/AIDS sufferers are in British Commonwealth countries. Queen Elizabeth II has also commented on the need for the wealth of extremely prosperous Australia to filter down somehow to its Aboriginal population, many of whom live in Third World conditions and have life expectancies about 20 years lower than for White Australians. The Queen has also mentioned Anglo-American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and praised the asserted defence of “freedom and democracy” in Iraq by Australian and other by Coalition forces.
Taking our cue from Her Majesty, it is useful to explore these matters a little more deeply. The bottom-line in any sensible discussion about humanity is life or death and the concept of avoidable mortality (excess mortality) is particularly useful. Avoidable mortality (excess mortality) is the difference between the ACTUAL deaths in a country and the deaths EXPECTED for a peaceful, decently-run country. Using UN data from 1950 and conservative estimates of expected base-line mortality it has been possible to calculate the avoidable mortality for every country in the world since 1950. The results are surprising. Thus the post-1950 avoidable mortality has totalled 1.3 billion for the whole world and 1.2 billion for the non-European world and these estimates are consonant with independently calculated estimates of the post-1950 under-5 infant mortality that totals 0.88 billion for the world and 0.85 billion for the non-European world. Thus for impoverished non-European countries the post-1950 under-5 infant mortality is about 70% of the post-1950 avoidable mortality.
How have the various areas of the world fared which are of present concern to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on this great occasion?
The British Commonwealth. The post-1950 avoidable mortality in countries partially or completely occupied by Britain in the post-WW2 era totals a shocking 727 million; the post-1950 under-5 infant mortality has totalled about 0.5 billion. Of course not all countries occupied by Britain remained in the British Commonwealth e.g. Pakistan (post-1950 avoidable mortality 49.7 million) was effectively expelled in 1999 after the latest military coup. For most of the post-1950 era (indeed, to be precise, from 1953 onwards) the present Queen has been the Head of the British Commonwealth and has presided over a roughly 0.7 billion British Commonwealth Holocaust that has gone utterly unreported by servile, dishonest and racist mainstream media. Emperor Hirohito was spared arraignment over Japan’s war-time atrocities although about 40 million people had died in the Eastern theatre of WW2, mostly in China (35 million); 4 million died in the “forgotten”, man-made Bengal Famine in British-ruled India (that may well have occurred through a deliberate British strategic “scorched earth” policy; 2008 update: 6-7 million Indians perished in Bengal and the adjoining provinces of Bihar, Assam and Orissa under the merciless British in 1943-1945; see 2008 BBC broadcast invomimg Dr Polya, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and other scholars:
http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/bengalfamine_programme.html ); and a further 40 million died in the European theatre. However Queen Elizabeth II has presided over a post-1950 British Commonwealth Holocaust about 8 times greater in magnitude than the death toll in WW2 in all theatres (84 million) – and which has been utterly UNREPORTED.
HIV/AIDS epidemic. The Queen pointed out that about half those suffering from HIV/AIDS are in British Commonwealth countries. However the shocking reality is that the highest degree of HIV infection in the world is to be found former British colonies in Southern and East Africa and neighbouring countries. Thus for the world’s worst countries the percentage of the population that was HIV positive in 2003 (in descending order) is: 20.6% (Swaziland), 19.9% (Botswana), 17.9% (Lesotho), 14.1% (Zimbabwe), 11.9% (South Africa), 10.7% (Namibia), 8.6% (Zambia), 7.0% (formerly Portuguese Mozambique), 7.5% (Malawi), 6.8% (the formerly French Central African Republic), 4.4% (Tanzania) and 3.8% (Kenya). Variously in the 19th and 20th centuries under British rule, indigenous Africans in Southern and East Africa were brutally pushed off lands that were suitable for European agriculture (as indeed were indigenous people in the temperate lands of Argentina, Uruguay, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa reflects that social dislocation and consequent vulnerability in circumstances of utterly incompetent post-colonial governance. The appalling HIV incidence in Southern Africa reflects the consequences of policies under Queen Elizabeth’s forebears from Queen Victoria onwards and indeed during her own era, the much-vaunted New Elizabethan Age during much of which Anglo-American interests dominated a Southern Africa governed by racist White minority r�gimes.
British India. The next Commonwealth Games will be hosted by India but the present Games are being held in the state of Victoria, one of 2 states in Australia named after Queen Victoria (the other being Queensland). Queen Victoria headed the British Empire from 1837-1901. That period in British-ruled India coincided with horrendous famines that swept away tens of millions, rapacious taxation, destruction of Indian institutions, the British mercantile spread of cholera (with an associated 25 million deaths) and the 1857 Indian Mutiny that was put down with extreme brutality (a recent estimate by Amaresh Misra puts the number of Indians killed in British reprisals at 10 million:
http://warofcivilisations.blogspot.com/
). The “annual mortality rate” in India before 1920 was about 4.8% (US Library of Congress (1998), Country Studies/Area Handbook Series: India; , with this rate falling to about 3.5% at the time of Independence in 1947 and thence to a current figure of about 0.9%. Assuming an average population of about 200 million (Singh & Singh, 1997 ) and an “excess annual mortality rate” of 3.8%, the avoidable mortality of Indians during Queen Victoria’s rule totalled 486 million i.e. about 0.5 billion. The next 46 years of British rule until independence was associated with 425 million excess deaths. The avoidable mortality in British-ruled India under Queen Victoria and her successors totalled about 0.9 billion, over 10 times greater than the death toll in WW2. It is estimated that avoidable deaths under the British (1757-1947) totalled 1.5 billion (or 1.8 billion if the native States are included).
Australian Aboriginal Genocide. The Commonwealth Games opening ceremony made the now obligatory, politically correct – and utterly insincere - reference to the original Melbourne-region Aboriginal Wurrundjeri people who were dispossessed and largely exterminated by genocidal European invaders in the mid-19th century. In the century following the invasion of Australia in 1788 the indigenous population plummeted from about 1 million to 0.1 million, mainly through disease in a process that was exacerbated by dispossession and accompanied by egregious violence. An indigenous decimation of similar magnitude occurred due to British and Australian activities in the Pacific and New Zealand in the 19th century (thus in 1875 about 40,000 Fijians out of a total population of 150,000 died of measles introduced from Sydney). After 2 centuries of dispossession, violence, genocide, forced removal of children, egregious discrimination and effective slavery, Aboriginal Australians have life expectancies about 20 years lower than for White Australians and many live in Third World conditions. The Aboriginal “annual excess mortality rate” is 1.7% and their “annual mortality rate” is 2.2% as compared to an “annual mortality rate” for Australian sheep in paddocks of about 2.5% i.e. racist White Australia is treating Australian Aboriginals like animals. The “annual avoidable mortality” of Australian Aboriginals is about 7,800 i.e. equivalent to over 2 World Trade Centre atrocities each year inflicted on a population of only about 0.5 million rather than 300 million..
Iraq and Afghanistan. While in Australia Her Majesty praised those defending “freedom and democracy” in Occupied Iraq. However “freedom” hardly equates with “violent occupation by foreign powers” and, as for “democracy”, repeated polls have overwhelmingly shown that Iraqis want the foreign occupiers to leave. The post-invasion avoidable mortality (excess mortality) in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories now (2006) totals about 0.5 and 1.6 million, respectively, while the corresponding post-invasion under-5 infant mortality now totals 0.3 and 1.4 million, respectively (see Senate Inquiry submission #112:). According to the latest UNICEF report (2006), in 2004 the under-5 infant mortality was 122,000 in Occupied Iraq, 359,000 in Occupied Afghanistan and 1,000 in the occupying country Australia (noting that in 2004 the populations of these countries were 28.1 million, 28.6 million and 19.9 million, respectively)(UNICEF). About 1,300 under-5 year old infants die in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan each day (90% avoidably) , 0.5 million will die in the coming year and 1.7 million have died post-invasion due to non-provision by the US-led Coalition of life-preserving requisites demanded by the Geneva Conventions . A detailed, formal complaint has been sent to the International Criminal Court charging the Coalition with war crimes in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan (see Countercurrents, 21 December 2005).
In relation to man-made holocaust, the acronym CAAAA (C4A) stands for Cessation, Acknowledgement of the crime, Apology, Amends and Assertion of non-repetition i.e. of “Never Again”. Thus post-WW2 the Germans fully applied C4A to the Jewish Holocaust. In 1997 Tony Blair Acknowledged and Apologized for the 1845-1850 Irish Famine (1 million dead, 1.5 million exiled). However in 1997 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Acknowledged but did not Apologize for the British Amritsar Massacre in the Punjab (1919; over 1,000 dead). No Acknowledgement let alone Apology or Amends has been offered for the horrendous carnage in 2 centuries of British-ruled India that amounted to a giant concentration camp. In relation to the ongoing carnage in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan there is ABSOLUTELY NO C4A – NO Cessation, Acknowledgment, Apology. Amends or Assertion of non-repetition.
Aboriginal Australians have the right idea – they have prepared a writ to the International Criminal Court (ICC) charging Queen Elizabeth II with complicity in the genocide of the Australian Aborigines (see: HERE). How should other decent people respond to such gross inhumanity? Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent people should (a) INFORM others and (b) ACT ETHICALLY in all their dealings with Australian, US and UK people, corporations and officials complicit in on-going gross abuses of humanity. Purchase of ANY Australian goods or services – whether study in Australian universities or Australian wool, wheat or wine – makes the consumer COMPLICIT in the Black Crimes of White Australia; and, of course, the same argument applies to UK or US goods and services. “Consumer choice” is the core of global capitalism – what irony if “market choice” were to save the Third World from Anglo-American democratic imperialism.