Claims of Execution and Torture By Australian Army
According to Australian government records and PNG citizens who survived World War II, the Australian Army occasionally coerced and intimidated the local people into compliance.
A video report by the Australian Broadcasting Commission's Foreign Correspondent TV programme entitled "PNG Digger Hangings" claims execution and torture were used to control villages unsupportive of the Australian Army. The report claims the Army deceived the Australian Government inquiry that followed the executions, grossly understating the number of executions carried out by the Australian Army.
Backed by experts, such as Professor Hank Nelson (an eminent historian on the Second World War in PNG), reporter Trevor Bormann stated: "When Federal Cabinet was told of the hangings, it put a stop to them and directed that another fifty Papuans on death row should not face the noose.... Then in their explanation of what happened, field commanders fudged the figures on the number of men who had already been hanged."
According to historian Maclaren Hiari, the victims and families of victims do not want compensation. They only want "acknowledgement or any kind of apology to the people."
Read more about this topic: Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels
Famous quotes containing the words claims, execution, torture, australian and/or army:
“Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone believing it to be God. I plead not for the suppression of reason, but for a due recognition of that in us which sanctifies reason.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)
“I herewith commission you to carry out all preparations with regard to ... a total solution of the Jewish question in those territories of Europe which are under German influence.... I furthermore charge you to submit to me as soon as possible a draft showing the ... measures already taken for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question.”
—Hermann Goering (1893–1946)
“Television programming for children need not be saccharine or insipid in order to give to violence its proper balance in the scheme of things.... But as an endless diet for the sake of excitement and sensation in stories whose plots are vehicles for killing and torture and little more, it is not healthy for young children. Unfamiliar as yet with the full story of human response, they are being misled when they are offered perversion before they have fully learned what is sound.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“Each Australian is a Ulysses.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“An army is maintained for a thousand days all to be used on one morning.”
—Chinese proverb.