This article relates to historical and current separatist movements within Australia. Separatism conventionally refers to full political separation, including secessionism; groups simply seeking greater autonomy are not separatist as such. [1]
This article relates to historical and current separatist movements within Australia. Separatism conventionally refers to full political separation, including secessionism; groups simply seeking greater autonomy are not separatist as such. [1]
Various attempts for secession have occurred in Western Australia, including the 1933 Western Australian secession referendum, and a number of more recent movements have continued proposing and pushing for independence, including the Western Australia Secessionist Movement [2]
Murrawarri Republic is a micronation in Australia created by an ethnic/racial Indigenous group that has been pushing for independence of Indigenous Australians. [3] [4]
The Euahlayi Peoples Republic is an Aborginal micronation that declared independence from Australia in 2013. [4]
The Republic of Mbarbaram is an Aborginal micronation that declared independence from Australia in 2013. [4]
The Wiradjuri Central West Republic is an Aborginal micronation that declared independence from Australia in 2014. [4]
The Sovereign Yidinji government is an Aborginal micronation that declared independence from Australia in 2014. [4]
The Yuggera Ugarapul Tribal People's declared their independence from Australia in 2016. [4]
In 2017 The Mirrabooka Sovereign United Nations formed. [4]
Various proposals have been created to grant Indigenous Australians their own ethnostate, and have also proposed additional autonomous for aboriginal groups that hold native title land over various areas of Australia. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy has demanded that the government give Aboriginals control of the Northern Territory as a state, mining rights to all aboriginal reserve lands and settlements, compensation money for lands not returnable to take the form of a down-payment of A$6 Billion and an annual percentage of the gross national income.
Tasmania, historically an independent colony which joined the Commonwealth of Australia which has had various support groups that have proposed secessionism in Tasmania, with Labor Premier Doug Lowe and Liberal Premier Robin Gray seriously considered secession. [5] In the 1990s the First Party of Tasmania was formed, which aimed for Tasmanian secession.
The first Victorian independence movement arose in 2021. [6] Calls for independence began in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, which had significantly disrupted normal interstate relations through border closures and health restrictions. The mascot of the Victorian Independence Movement is a navy blue Fairy penguin with a white 'v' on its chest. No polling has yet been undertaken to assess the popularity of the independence movement in Victoria.
The right of a people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law, binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter's norms. In human rights discourse external self determination is a people's right to form its own political entity and internal self-determination is the right to representative government with full suffrage. As a principle of international law the right of self-determination recognized in the 1960s concerns the colonial context of territories right to independence or another outcome of decolonization. The principle does not state how the decision is to be made, nor what the outcome should be, whether it be independence, federation, protection, some form of autonomy or full assimilation. The internationally recognized right of self-determination does not include a right to an independent state for every ethnic group within a former colonial territory. While there is ongoing discussion about the rights of minorities and indigenous people who are denied political participation in representative governments and consequently suffer systematic violations of human rights as a group, no right to secession is recognized under international law.
Secession is the formal withdrawal of a group from a political entity. The process begins once a group proclaims an act of secession. A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal is the creation of a new state or entity independent of the group or territory from which it seceded. Threats of secession can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.
Separatism is the advocacy of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, governmental, or gender separation from the larger group. As with secession, separatism conventionally refers to full political separation. Groups simply seeking greater autonomy are usually not considered separatists. Some discourse settings equate separatism with religious segregation, racial segregation, or sex segregation, while other discourse settings take the broader view that separation by choice may serve useful purposes and is not the same as government-enforced segregation. There is some academic debate about this definition, and in particular how it relates to secessionism, as has been discussed online.
Australian Indigenous sovereignty, also recently termed Blak sovereignty, encompasses the various rights claimed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples within Australia. Such rights are said to derive from Indigenous peoples' occupation and ownership of Australia prior to colonisation and through their continuing spiritual connection to land. Indigenous sovereignty is not recognised in the Australian Constitution or under Australian law.
Regionalism is a political ideology that seeks to increase the political power, influence and self-determination of the people of one or more subnational regions. It focuses on the "development of a political or social system based on one or more" regions and/or the national, normative or economic interests of a specific region, group of regions or another subnational entity, gaining strength from or aiming to strengthen the "consciousness of and loyalty to a distinct region with a homogeneous population", similarly to nationalism. More specifically, "regionalism refers to three distinct elements: movements demanding territorial autonomy within unitary states; the organization of the central state on a regional basis for the delivery of its policies including regional development policies; political decentralization and regional autonomy".
There have been various movements within Canada for secession.
In the context of the United States, secession primarily refers to the voluntary withdrawal of one or more states from the Union that constitutes the United States; but may loosely refer to leaving a state or territory to form a separate territory or new state, or to the severing of an area from a city or county within a state. Advocates for secession are called disunionists by their contemporaries in various historical documents.
The Murrawarri Republic is a micronation that declared its independence from Australia in 2013, that claims territory and sovereignty over an area straddling the border of the states of New South Wales and Queensland within Australia. The territory is the traditional homeland of the Murrawarri people, an Aboriginal people, but the population of the territory claimed now comprises mostly non-Indigenous Australians. The Government of Australia has not acknowledged the declaration of independence, and their independence has been wholly unrecognised.
Western Togoland is a self-proclaimed state which is considered by the international community to be part of Ghana. It claims five of the Volta and Oti Regions. On 25 September 2020 separatists in Western Togoland declared independence from the Republic of Ghana. Western Togoland has been a member state of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) since 2017.
Separatist movements of Nigeria want to achieve state secession, which is the withdrawal of one or more of the states of Nigeria from the multinational state of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The only act of secession in Nigeria occurred from 1967 to 1970 during the Nigerian Civil War, when the breakaway republic of Biafra declared its independence from Nigeria and was eventually defeated. Ever since then, Nigeria has experienced the emergence of separatist movements seeking the independence of Biafra as well as other proposed states.
Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty is a 2021 book by Australian constitutional law specialists Harry Hobbs and George Williams about micronations and their legal status. Written from an academic perspective, it is one of few works on micronational movements and the earliest-published book to focus largely on the legal aspect of micronations. The book concerns the definition of statehood, the place of micronations within international law, people's motivations for declaring them, the micronational community and the ways by which such entities mimic sovereign states. In 2022 Hobbs and Williams published a book for a broader audience, How to Rule Your Own Country: The Weird and Wonderful World of Micronations.
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