extrajudicial killings, torture and displacement’. 72 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and there is evidence of their displacement, and many testimonials given by the Stolen Generations have proven this. If the accounts of the indigenous victims are accurate then there is evidence that the European colonisers of Australia did indeed commit conscious acts of genocide, that fall under Lemkin’s cate gory of cultural genocide. These testimonials however have been scrutinised and their validity has been questioned, notably by conservative critics Ron Brunton and Paddy McGuiness whom have characterised Stolen Generations testimonies as exemplifying ‘false memory syndrome’, suggesting that victims have created memories of removal that are being accepted in a sympathetic political and cultural climate. 73 Keith Windschuttle also rejects the idea of Stolen Generations claiming that ‘in the… 20th century, there was no… statement by anyone in genuine authority that child removal was intended to end Aboriginality. The only support for that proposition has come from… selected statements taken out of context by politically motivated historians’, claiming instead th at the removal of indigenous children from their parents in the 20 th century was ‘almost all based on traditional grounds of child welfare.’ 74 This can perhaps be true as ‘false memory syndrome’ can affect early memories and since many indigenous children were removed at a very young age it could be that 72 UN, “ Office of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide (Osapg)”, 1st edn (UN, 2016), p. 3 <http://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/pdf/osapg_analysis_framew ork.pdf> [accessed 29 April 2016]. 73 Ann Curthoys et al, Aboriginal History , 1st edn (Canberra: ANU Printing, 2001), p. 116 <http://press- files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p72971/pdf/book.pdf?referer=1063> [accessed 29 April 2016]. 74 Keith Windschuttle, "There Were No Stolen Generations", The Spectator, 2009 <http://www.spectator.co.uk/2009/12/there-were-no-stolen- generations/> [accessed 30 April 2016].
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