Events Calendar

Product Description

Wednesday 17th of May
1.00pm

FREE

One of the targeted groups under the genocide definition is religious groups. Many groups are targeted for genocide because of their religion, subject to many horrendous violations of their human rights. However, even if a religious group destruction of religion, as occurred under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. This presentation examines the specific targeting of religion and how genocidal regimes breach the human right of freedom of religion. A comparison will be made between the Holocaust, the Armenian and Cambodian genocides. This comparison will analyse similarities and differences between how the Nazis, the Young Turks and the Khmer Rouge specifically targeted freedom of religion and discuss whether the regimes used law to expressly target freedom of religion. The presentation will then assess what we can appropriate from these examples in terms of broadening the definition of genocide.

The lecture is by Dr Melanie O’Brien who is a TC Beirne Law School Postdoctoral Research Fellow and researcher at the Asia Pacific Centre for Responsibility to Protect, University of Queensland. She is on the Editorial Boards of Human Rights Review and Genocide Studies and Prevention, the International Association of Genocide Scholars’ (IAGS) Advisory Board and the QLD International Humanitarian Law Committee of the Australian Red Cross. Melanie is the co-convenor of the 2017 IAGS Conference at the University of Queensland.

Booking not required.