Are Political Killings Genocide? That's the topic to be discussed at a free University of Queensland public lecture on October 12 at Mayne Hall foyer, St Lucia at 5.30pm.
The lecture has been organised by the University's Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies as part of a program of public lectures by researchers from the Faculty of Arts.
Reader in History at UQ Dr Robert Cribb said when the United Nations decreed in 1944 that genocide was a crime against humanity, it used a definition that included mass killings for political reasons.
"For several reasons, the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide dropped political killings, but the events of the second half of the twentieth century suggest we should put them back," he said.
"A sharp distinction between ethnic and political killings once made sense, but a close study of the mass killings in China, Indonesia, Cambodia and Rwanda in the second half of the 20th century shows that political and ethnic killings can be almost impossible to distinguish.
"Accepting this change of definition, however, has some challenging and perhaps unpleasant implications. Not only do we have to pay more careful attention to counting the number of dead, but we need to consider whether the victims share complicity in the events that consumed them."
Dr Cribb has worked extensively on the history of violence in Indonesia and is author of Gangsters and Revolutionaries and editor of The Indonesian Killings of 1965-1966. His Historical Atlas of Indonesia will be published in October.
The lecture will be chaired by Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies director Professor Graeme Turner. The lecture series is supported by the UQ Alumni Association.
Enquiries to Ms Andrea Mitchell, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, telephone: 07 3365 7182, Fax: 07 3365 7184.
Media: For further information, contact Ms Andrea Mitchell, telephone 3365 7182 or Dr Robert Cribb, telephone 07 3365 6386 or Jan King at UQ Communications 0413 601 248 or email: communications@mailbox.uq.edu.au.
