British colonisers committed “genocide” against the Aboriginal people in the Australian state of Victoria after arriving in the area in the early 1830s, a commission investigating injustices against the indigenous population has said.
The colonization of Victoria, Australia’s second smallest state, located in the southeast of the country, took place between 1834 and 1851.
During that period, its indigenous population suffered “near-complete physical destruction,” falling from around 60,000 to 15,000, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Yoorrook Justice Commission.
The crimes by the British in Victoria included “mass killings, disease, sexual violence, exclusion, linguicide [the death of languages], cultural erasure, environmental degradation, child removal, absorption and assimilation,” it said.
“This was genocide,” the commission ruled after holding more than two months of public hearings and listening to accounts by over 1,300 Aboriginals.
Hellbound and Down 