A LOOK AT OTHER FORMAL APOLOGIES ISSUED BY GOVERNMENTS TO OPPRESSED POPULATIONS
International Herald Tribune
Feb 12 2008
France
_ 2008: Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd due on Wednesday to
introduce to Parliament a formal apology to the so-called Stolen
Generations ~W thousands of Aborigines who were forcibly taken from
their families as children under assimilation policies that lasted
from 1910 to 1970.
_ 1998: Canada apologizes to its native peoples for past acts of
oppression, including decades of abuse at federally funded boarding
schools whose goal was to sever Indian and Inuit youths from their
culture and assimilate them in white society.
_ 1992: South African President F.W. de Klerk apologizes for apartheid,
marking the first time a white leader in the country expressed regret
for the system of legalized segregation that allowed 5 million whites
to dominate 30 million blacks.
_ 1990: The Soviet Union apologizes for the murder of thousands of
imprisoned Polish officers shot during World War II and buried in
mass graves in the Katyn Forest.
Today in Asia – Pacific Australian prime minister asks Parliament
to approve apology to AboriginesAustralian troops rush to East
TimorJapan’s leader calls alleged rape by U.S. marine ‘unforgivable’
_ 1988: The U.S. Congress passes a law apologizing to
Japanese-Americans for their internment during World War II and
offering US$20,000 payments to survivors.
_ 1951: West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer acknowledges the
suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust and the following year,
Germany agrees to pay reparations to Israel. In 1990, the then East
German Parliament issues an apology to Israel and all Jews and others
who suffered.
NO APOLOGIES:
_ The U.S. has never issued a formal apology for the African slave
trade or paid reparations to slave descendants. In 2007, Virginia
became the first state to apologize for its involvement, followed by
Alabama, Maryland and North Carolina. No state has offered reparations.
_ The U.S. has never apologized to American Indians for past actions,
including forced relocation and broken treaties and promises.
American Indians have received compensation for their lands over the
years, but no formal apology.
_ Armenia has repeatedly requested an apology from Turkey for the
killings of what historians estimate was up to 1.5 million Armenians
by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I. Turkey maintains the
toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil
war and unrest.
_ China has accused Japan of not fully atoning for its invasions
and occupation of China in the 1930s and 1940s, including wartime
atrocities like the Rape of Nanjing, in which Japanese troops massacred
as many as 300,000 people while taking the Chinese city in 1937.
OTHER:
_ Although Japan issued a carefully worded apology in 1993 to the tens
of thousands of women from neighboring countries forced to serve as sex
slaves for its soldiers during World War II, the Japanese parliament
never formally approved it. Japan has rejected most compensation
claims, saying they were settled by postwar treaties. A fund created
in 1995 by the government but run independently has provided a way to
compensate former sex slaves without making it official. Many women,
however, have rejected the money.