Search

The Nagorno Karabakh conflict remains a perplexing challenge for the regional security of the South Caucasus. In spite of decades of negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group, the final resolution of the conflict remains a distant goal. Against this background, since 2012 several US and Australian states as well as the Basque Parliament started to support the right of the people Nagorno Karabakh to self-determination. The resolutions passed by these states were not only unprecedented but were also inconsistent with the foreign policies of their federal governments. The present paper examines the underlying reasons for nine US states (California, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Louisiana, and Colorado), and the most populous state of Australia, New South Wales, to have recognized the right of the people of Nagorno Karabakh to self-determination. The paper also looks at the legal and political implications deriving from these resolutions as well as possible prospects for this pattern of recognitions. The paper argues that recognition of de facto states by federal sub-states is a new, albeit isolated, phenomenon. It may potentially enhance visibility of de facto states and help them to gain more support for their pursuit of international recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In September 2000 the Australian government declassified thousands of pages of documents concerning the Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor in 1975. Some 68,000 pages of documents were released. About 2,600 pages of diplomatic documents were withheld, along with Cabinet papers, intelligence materials, and Defence Department records. The documents cover only the period from early 1974 to mid-1976 and do not document the Indonesian war and its human costs. What they do document is the process whereby Australia acquiesced in the Indonesian annexation of East Timor. Above all, they show that secret briefings by the Indonesians kept the Australian government closely informed of Indonesian intentions and operations at every step. In the light of these secret briefings and related documents, it is clear that Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's claim that he wanted to see a "genuine act of self-determination" by the East Timorese is and always was hollow. This was a fig leaf covering his desire to see East Timor incorporated into Indonesia as West Papua had been in the 1960s. Its patina of moral responsibility and legal respectability were his alibi or, as Richard Woolcott put it in late 1974, "escape clause," if and when Indonesian actions led to accusations of Australian complicity with Jakarta. Mr. Whitlam was complicit. The record is clear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the formation of Catalanness within the parameters of the new surge of Catalan independentism in the 2010s. It specifically looks at the Casal Català of New South Wales in Sydney as an illustrative example, through which the visual symbols of Catalan independentism function synecdochically as part of the whole of what it is to be Catalan in Australia. This is what will be termed the visual politics of the Casal Català in Sydney. Having this in mind, the article lastly explores in what ways the symbols used by the Casal Català are effective markers of Catalan commonsense in an extremely fragile diasporic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous movements in Australia are at a crossroad in their efforts to protect their intrinsic relations with land, nature and culture on the one hand and engaging with the reconciliatory and developmental dynamics of the state on the other. This paper examines the process of articulation and rejuvenation of indigenous identities that negotiate across culture, environment, sustainable livelihood and the developmental needs of the community. Locating these movements within wider socio-historical contexts it focuses on the tensions between a pro-conservation and a pro-development approach in grass roots indigenous movements. Three case studies are presented — drawn from the Sydney region. One indigenous group's struggle against a housing development, defined as a threat to indigenous and environmental heritage, is contrasted with an indigenous group that is internally divided over an agreement with a mining developer, and a third group that has engaged in constructing housing and welfare projects, and in part has itself become a developer. The article thereby addresses the reformulation of indigenous identities in Australian society as indigenous peoples' movements have renegotiated the contending pressures of environment and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the late 1970s Australian governments (led in turn by Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke) expected New Caledonia to become independent. France responded with suspicion. From 1983, however, reformist governments in Australia and France took apparently converging views. But tensions rose because of unrest in New Caledonia and conflict over French nuclear testing. Australia’s limited capacity to influence developments waned further in 1986 when Jacques Chirac became French prime minister and countered the Kanak nationalist movement. Foreign Minister Bill Hayden favoured moderating Australia’s position, but the issue became moot in mid-1988 when the rival forces in New Caledonia agreed to the truce embodied in the Matignon Accords. The different approaches of the Fraser and Hawke governments reflected philosophical differences, the personal stance of key players, influences from their political movements, and the challenges of changing circumstances. Decades later, with a referendum due by November 2018, Australia’s approach is likely to be cautious. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By contrasting a selection of abduction cases that occurred in the penal era with those that captured the attention of the newspapers during the 1840s and 1850s, this article considers the role of abduction trials during a period in New South Wales when the colony recognised that the procurement of greater political and economic autonomy was dependent upon transforming its reputation from a degraded penal outpost to a respectable British society. Between 1848 and 1851, at the very moment when the political climate reached a definitive tipping point in favour of self-government, three abduction cases came before Sydney's criminal court that attracted unprecedented newspaper coverage and helped to define gender roles in a way that complemented these broader colonial ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]