King Charles Could Soon, Like Israel, Battle Charges of Genocide at the Hague

Is the British Crown guilty of genocide? That is the question being weighed by an Australian appellate court that could soon rule on whether His Royal Highness King Charles III can be prosecuted for such a grave crime. The plaintiff, Uncle Robbie Thorpe, is an indigenous activist. Two lower courts have already rebuffed his bid, and the question of putting His Majesty in the docket now rests with the Supreme Court of Appeal at Victoria.If there ever were a case for sovereign immunity, this would appear to be it. The attempt to convict Charles appears to be another instance of the use of international courts to pursue a radical agenda. If the Supreme Court of Appeal is unconvinced, Mr. Thorpe’s next step would be Australia’s Supreme Court, and then the Hague, where the International Criminal Court is pondering a genocide case against Israel for battling Hamas after October 7. Mr. Thorpe strode into court in a “traditional possum-skin coat” and “carried a feather from an Australian wedge-tailed eagle, an Indigenous totem,” according to the Associated Press. The wires explain that Mr. Thorpe is “attempting to charge the king under Indigenous law that has existed for more than 65,000 years, state common law and federal criminal law.” There is though, no crime of genocide known to the common law. That antiquity makes the codes of Hammurabi and Sinai — and Magna Carta, for that matter, look recent. The British monarchy, which stretches back some 1,000 years to the fog of Anglo-Saxon warlords, appears newfangled in comparison. The king was named in court documents as Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor, though his title Down Under is in relevant part “Charles the Third, by the Grace of God King of Australia.”In 1770 James Cook claimed Australia for King George III. In 1867, following a visit by Prince Alfred, a son of Queen Victoria, the Melbourne Argus wrote that the colony had “not known in her thirty years’ life a brighter day than yesterday. A Royal Prince, son of the greatest and noblest Queen that ever sat on the Throne of the British Empire, has landed on our shores, enjoyed our hospitality, and we are proud to know that we have done him honour.”There can be no doubt that British rule of Australia, which began in 1788, has been brutal. The Empire claimed the territory under the theory of terra nullius, claiming it was land that belonged to no one. The continent was used as a penal colony, and indigenous people were forcibly converted and assimilated. Disease took a toll as well. Today, indigenous people are four percent of the population. Mr. Thorpe told the court that “The Crown is responsible for all this mess. Australia’s got away with genocide of Aboriginal people since they arrived here.” This appears less a convincing legal argument than a recitation of the doctrine of “settler-colonialiam.” The critic Adam Kirsch, who has written a book on the subject, told the Sun that the ideology offers “a simple explanation for everything that is wrong in the world.”Would the International Criminal Court really consider a case against the Crown? The proceedings against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant involve warrants issued against individuals rather than, in the case of the Crown, an institution. Both Britain and Australia are, though, unlike Israel, signatories to the Rome Statute that created that court. Would the Hague dare to take on the House of Windsor?

King Charles Could Soon, Like Israel, Battle Charges of Genocide at the Hague

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