In an interview with SBS Radio’s Armenian program, Professor Colin Tatz recalled the first edition of Genocide Perspective, “it was in 1997 and covered topics including East Timor, Armenian Genocide, Hellenic-Greek Genocide, the Holocaust” he said.
At the start, most writers were from overseas with few Australian scholars. However, in the new edition all the writers are Australian scholars and “that pleases me very much” says Professor Tatz, because “in the space of 20 years we moved virtually from no genocide scholars in Australia or less than a handful, to 30 or 40 major writers who are publishing worldwide and that’s a pleasing aspect.”
The fifth book of essays include articles from Justice Michael Kirby about his investigation of human rights abuses in North Korea and whether that amounts to genocide, essays on Nazi Germany about experiments on children and sterilization programs, an essay by Konrad Kwiet and George Weisz who discovered the archives of a doctor who conducted medical experiments on Australian POW’s, human rights abuses in Indonesia, Jennifer Balint’s essay on why Australia is so reluctant to pursue charges of genocide on the issue of aboriginal treatment, the Sydney Town Hall speech of Geoffrey Robertson QC on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Nikki Marczak’s essay on the experiences of Armenian women during the genocide.
Professor Tatz’s article relates to his thirty-year experience teaching genocide in Australia. He says the best way to tackle the issue of human rights in the world, is to use genocide as the best example of what happens when human rights are disregarded.
Colin Tatz Source: Courtesy Colin Tatz
To a question how he got interested in genocide studies, Prof. Tatz says it was personal. “I was teaching at the university of New England” he recalled “I use to teach courses on comparative race, politics and race relations and I was teaching about everybody else’s victimization except the Jews and I’m Jewish. When it came to Holocaust the material is so upsetting and so distressing that I just couldn’t face it. In 1986 I went to Jerusalem and I studied at Yad Vashem. I did a course there and it converted me instantly and I came back and started teaching courses called Holocaust and Genocide from 1997 onwards at Macquarie.’
Genocide Perspectives V: A Global Crime, Australian Voices is edited by Kirril Shields and Nikki Marczak, both members of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The book will be launched Thursday the 17th by Geoffrey Robertson QC who wrote the book An Inconvenient Genocide who remembers the Armenians and Mark Tedeschi QC who will talk about his book on the massacre of Aborigines at Myall Creek in Northern NSW in 1838.
