Tuesday, June 17
SECOND DAY
We started focusing more on content today. The bulk of the morning we focused on the complexity of the definition of Genocide.
Raphael Lemkin
Any Discussion of genocide begins with Raphael Lemkin and the 1947 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In Article II is the legal definition of Genocide:
Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
http://www.un.org/law/AVLpilotproject/cppcg.html
Of all the definitions we discussed I personally like Ervin Staub’s Definition of Genocide:
“An attempt to exterminate a racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, or political group, either directly through murder or indirectly by creating the conditions that lead to the group’s destruction.”
Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, 1989.
This resonates with me because it is based in action (the attempt) versus the result (total extermination) and includes both elitocide and politicide as part of its scope.
We also explored the 8 Stages of Genocide developed by Gregory H. Stanton, President, Genocide Watch. This link will lead you to a full explanation
http://www.genocidewatch.org/aboutgenocide/8stagesofgenocide.html
When you tie these steps into the comments made by Ambassador David Scheffer last night about not getting lost in defining a situation as genocide but rather ACT on the atrocities being committed we start to have a plan for preventative intervention. According to the discussions, Genocide is inevitable at level 4 – Organization.
We then began discussions of justice and the differences between various efforts at justice in South Africa, Rwanda, and Cambodia
• South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission- no penalty for admission of guilt
• Rwanda – ICTR, RNG, and the gacaca (courts on the grass)
• Cambodia / Khmer Rouge Trials – ICT/UN Sponsored
The afternoon was spent focused exploring literature as part of a study on Human Rights and Genocide. T his discussion was aimed at the grades between 5 to 7 but I can see application to Voices.
Key points about good literature on Genocide includes that it:
• Is developmentally appropriate, historically accurate, and is not traumatizing
• Is respectful to the people being portrayed and accurately reflects time place and mod of event
o Is rooted in historical context and reflects historic reality
o Memoirs, biographies, auto
o Historical Fiction that depicts authenticity
• Personalizes the statics, fosters empathy and compassion and enables reader identification with victims and survivors
• Has a focus on the daily lives and previous culture of the victims. They focus on the people as they lived rather than as they died
• Brings readers from the historical events to the present and in so doing gives the reader hope
• Has the potential to motivate the reader to examine their own lives and behaviors and promotes exploration of universal issues and themes
In the evening we began discussion in depth into the historical context of Genocide beginning with Antiquity.
Genocides is Antiquity included
• Melos
• Classical Sparta
• Roman destruction of Carthage
• The Mongols
• The Crusades
We then moved into Colonial Genocide. Much of this discussion was based on the research of Ben Kiernan in his book Blood and Soil.
These genocides include:
• Native Americans and Indians in the Americas
• The Christians in Japan
• Tasmanians
• Australian Aboriginals
• Zulu under Shaka
• Congo
• The Herero
Key idea is that these actions were based agrarianism and land acquisition.
It is Leopold’s conquest of the Congo and the German subjugation of the Herero laid the foundation of genocide in the 20th century.
• Berlin Congress of 1885 – Divides Africa
• King Leopold – Belgium – Carved out private colony in Congo: 1885 – 1908
• 10 Million killed
• 1904 – 1907 German genocide of the Herero
• 65,000 Herero (80% of population) and 10,000 Nama (50% of populations) perished.
Surviving Herero, emaciated, after their escape through the Omaheke desert.
The lessons learned in these two genocides were applied to the Armenian Genocide, which in turn were applied to the Jewish Holocaust.
On a related note – the division of the African population into Tutsi and Hutu are still being felt today with the ongoing African genocides in Rwanda and the Congo.
The Armenian Genocide: Claimed 1.5 Million out of 2 Million Armenian lives between 1915 and 1923.
• April 24, 1915 (Martyr’s Day) round up 200 Armenian Intellectuals and leaders
• Military Conscription of young men (Gendercide)
• Special Organizations 1911 – Convicts
• Deportations/ Caravans/ Death Marches
• Ottomans who refused to participate eliminated
• Use of Turkish, Circassian and Kurdish ex-convicts, who were freed from prison and assigned for the massacre.
We also had extensive discussion of the denial of the genocide.
SO I end with this quote attributed to Hitler:
Thus, for the time being, I have sent to the east only my Einsatzgruppen with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language. Only thus will we win the vital lebensraum that we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?
Adolf Hitler: August 22, 1939
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