MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Three Australian appeals court judges reserved their decision Wednesday on whether an activist can prosecute Britain’s King Charles III for alleged genocide of Australia’s Indigenous people.
Uncle Robbie Thorpe, 68, turned to the Supreme Court of Appeal in Victoria state after two lower courts rejected his bid to launch a private prosecution against the king in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court. Indigenous Australians use the titles uncle and aunt as marks of respect for community elders.
His case alleges the monarch, who is also Australia’s head of state, the Australian government and its institutions were perpetuating a genocide of Indigenous people by maintaining systemic disadvantages on multiple socioeconomic levels, making them the most underprivileged minority in the country.
Indigenous Australians account for 4% of the population. They die younger than other Australians, suffer worse health problems, and are more likely to be imprisoned and unemployed than other groups, according to official statistics.
Thorpe told The Associated Press if he exhausts his legal options in Australia, he would take the offense under the Genocide Convention to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands.
“It’s clear that they’re unwilling, unable, reluctant to deal with these international legal issues like genocide,” Thorpe told the AP before the hearing, referring to the Australian judiciary.
He later told the judges Indigenous people were dying because their disadvantage in Australia was compounding.
“The Crown is responsible for all this mess,” Thorpe said. “Australia’s got away with genocide of Aboriginal people since they arrived here."
The British colonized Australia in 1788 and violently seized Indigenous people’s land without a treaty.
“They totally failed to prevent (genocide). That’s the crime here. They failed to prevent genocide knowingly and they failed to punish anyone for it,” he added.
Source: WPLG
