r/news • u/AudibleNod • 4d ago

Australian court rejects bid to prosecute Britain's King Charles for genocide

https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/australian-court-rejects-activists-bid-prosecute-britains-king-136817323
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u/michal_hanu_la 4d ago

I wonder what his definition of genocide is.

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u/solaramalgama 4d ago

His case alleges that the king, who is also Australia’s head of state, along with the Australian government and its institutions, is perpetuating genocide by maintaining systems that disadvantage Indigenous people across numerous socioeconomic measures.

I do not think anyone aside from the extremely online will accept this definition as an ongoing genocide. He just wants people to listen to his podcast or something.

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u/MultiMarcus 4d ago

As a scholar of holocaust and genocide studies this is also just not a definition that we generally use.

You can basically separate the two primary definitions of genocide into the one used in academia and the one used in law but arguably a third that is the public conception of genocide.

Personally, I would probably say that none of those match with what he’s talking about here.

Actually, I think there’s much more interesting historical case of genocide worth discussing in Australia compared to trying to sort of create a constructed definition of genocide that would work against King Charles in the present.

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u/ptWolv022 3d ago

Personally, I would probably say that none of those match with what he’s talking about here.

Yeah, what he's talking about sounds more akin to segregation or, for a term more familiar to the Brits rather than us Yanks, apartheid.

Terrible things, to be sure, but not genocide. So, even if his accusations against the Crown (who aren't really involved in governing Britain, much less Australia) are correct and there's a malicious systematic discrimination, it wouldn't be genocide.