[fit2rule]

A couple of million people lost their lives, and a civilisation that had been around for tens of thousands of years was wiped out in a hundred.

Australia got away with its genocide while the worlds attention was elsewhere. Don't even try to defend this.

[ericmay]

If you want to talk about Australia's treatment of Aboriginals, then that's fine. But that's not what we started discussing. So don't try and say that I'm defending something we haven't even discussed. If there is something I've missed, please tell me, but my understanding is we're talking about the original articles and Australian detention centers for intercepted unauthorized migrants.

To re-center the discussion I think it's bad in just about every conceivable way to refer to the facilities we first discussed as concentration camps. While they could potentially fit a technical definition of "concentration camp", they are a far, far cry from what we mean when we say concentration camps.

In colloquial use, concentration camp refers to what the Nazis did to Jews and others in the 1940s, and now also refers to the current genocide that is occurring against Muslims in China (which I also find disturbing that Muslim majority countries are largely silent on the issue). It does not refer to a country intercepting potential unauthorized migrants and then giving them food, water, shelter, safety, and giving them the opportunity to apply for asylum in the intercepting country or in others. To equate these two, totally different things (for lack of a better word) is irresponsible and unhelpful. If these were concentration camps, the Australians would just sink the boats and kill them before rounding them up, wouldn't provide food and medicine, or allow people to apply for asylum - they would just force them into forced labor, or murder them (like the Chinese and Nazis).

This self-hatred that people in Western countries have is bewildering, and I don't understand why people lie to themselves. Maybe people have a pathological need to be outraged? Maybe we're bored?

-edit-

I'd also like to add, while the treatment of Aboriginals is certainly regretful (to understate the hell out of it) - let's not try and put the Australians in a unique category. There is not a single country or people that doesn't have blood on its hands. Ideally in the West, we now know better, but that doesn't make us perfect, and that doesn't mean we don't also criticize and condemn other countries or peoples for their mistreatment of others. Throughout most of history, most of the time there was no afterthought once you wiped out a people.

-edit2-

Since I can't reply to your last comment - why did you change the subject?

[fit2rule]

Just because someone did something, worse than you have done it, doesn't mean you get away with doing it also.

If your family was First Nation, probably you'd not have as hard a time seeing the similarity that some make in comparing Australia's genocide with those that occurred elsewhere in the world. In fact, systematic eradication of what was considered a 'lesser people' did happen in Australia's past - it was an official government policy for far too long, and in many places in Australia, is still happening. Children are still being taken from their families, never to return.

Its not just the offshore concentration camps.

Your idea that crimes against humanity are only done by those who manifest their violence in an overt manner, is precisely the issue with Australia today. It is getting away with its crimes against humanity, precisely because peoples expectations, as you demonstrate, require a much more violent, overt act before they will respond.

Australia is getting away with it. It has systematised oppression at scale, behind the scenes, with industrial efficiency.

In the meantime, the ADF's support of Saudi Arabia's forces in the campaign in Yemen, against innocent people, remains unreported and out of our focus.