It’s quite strange, if not intriguing, to note that slavery, apartheid, Jim Crow, native Indians, and Australian aborigines suppression and massacres, etc., happened with the tacit approval of the church in these nations. In His numerous parables, Jesus spoke about the need to love one another. He rebuked the Pharisees for feeling superior to others and the Jews for looking down on the Samaritans in the story of “the good Samaritan.”
Yet, some of the most heinous crimes have been committed by religionists. Christ Himself was killed by the State Jewish religion. Millions perished from Catholic and later, Anglican persecution, during the medieval and dark ages. Numerous souls have died from Islamic Jihads; Muslims and Sikhs feel persecuted in Hindu-dominated India: in the name of God.
“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” George Orwell. Animal Farm.
While African Americans were perishing mercilessly under Jim Crow, the Aborigines (black people who lived there before the British arrived) in Australia were also being hunted down like animals. Between 1883-the 1980s, the Aborigines in Australia were chased away from their lands into reserves deep in the Australian deserts. They were forced to work for almost nothing and their kids were forcefully taken away from them. These kids were sent to farms or homes to work or to schools where they were trained as orphans. It was said, that their parents could not take care of them and they had to be “re-educated.”
Almost all of these children who were taken away were never allowed to return to see their families again and they lost their roots. Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were not seen as citizens in Australia. Hence, they had no protection. The British settlers in Australia formed bands that occasionally went into aboriginal lands to kill them, rape their girls and women, and steal their lands for animal and crop farming. At times, the police or military would also join in this massacre of innocent civilians.
Gradually, the population of these defenseless people dwindled as their kids and lands were stolen from them. The police dealt more brutally and mercilessly with them for the least crimes. All these atrocities were justified with eugenics. For they were seen as less evolved and non-humans.
During “a public meeting a colonial officer declared, ‘the best thing that could be done would be to shoot all the blacks and manure the ground with their carcasses.’ Cox or others recommended likewise that the women and children should specially be shot as the most certain method of getting rid of the race.” (quoted in Kiernan, 2007, p. 262)
“One English juror called indigenous Australians ‘a set of [monkeys] and the earlier they are exterminated from the face of the earth better’ (Kiernan, 2007, p. 286).”
Is it not interesting, that the so-called civilized people were rather stealing, raping, killing, kidnapping, and abusing the so-called uncivilized barbarians?
I tremble terribly, as I describe these scenes committed by men against men and wonder that these evils happened but a few years ago! Yet, we are still not anywhere close to how eugenics has been used to destroy the lives of millions. The story will be continued in the next article in this series.
