Genocide: The Word is New, the Concept is Ancient

1. Genocide: The Word is New, the Concept is Ancient • Often we learn little about the people who have dreamed big and made a difference • These are not larger-than-life-figures… • The case of Raphael Lemkin: a “totally unofficial man” is both uplifting and dispiriting. The limits of individual influence and the “fragility of goodness.” (TzvetanTodorov) • Because of him we have a word to describe the intentional and brutal destruction of ethnic, religious or cultural groups • His work not complete upon his death… and remains unfinished

2. The nature and scale of genocide has changed • The invention of Nationalism • The emergence of nation-states: states that defined themselves as the political expression of a certain nation. • A growing interest in the “origins of man.” • Rapid expansion in military and industrial technology • Modern Genocide: not only more efficient and claims more lives but presents mass murder as a necessary and legitimate undertaking with wide-ranging support • Wide-ranging support

3. What are the main constraints on implementing the Genocide Convention adopted by the U.N. in 1948 (Omer Bartov) • State Sovereignty: the intervention in the domestic affairs of other states. “Sovereignty cannot be conceived as the right to kill millions.” (Lemkin) • Obeying the orders of their government and the laws of their state, may be committing crimes against humanity. Conventional criminals vs. genocidal perpetrators. Blood on their hands? Can we answer genocide with its equivalent? • Universal jurisdiction: without it, perpetrators go free, which is one of the main causes for the recurrence of genocide

4. Constraints continue • The call for intervention can contradict national interests • Why did President Clinton’s administration refuse to call the mass murder in Rwanda genocide? • Cambodia? • Citizens most likely to identify and condemn genocide are those most suspicious of military intervention in the affairs of state. • Casualties among innocent bystanders yet genocide must sometimes be stopped by force of arms. • Genocidal regimes rarely respond to negotiations and often must be physically destroyed

5. “We are in the presence of a crime without a name.” (Churchill) • The transformation of the multiethnic and multireligious Ottoman empire into a nation-state based on the notion of Turkish identity culminated in the genocide of the Armenian population during WW I • Crimes against humanity? Imprecise and narrow • Association with warfare • Did not capture the systematic nature and brutality of the crimes against the Jews and the Armenians

6. Genocide • From the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing) • Lemkin believed the next step should be formal outlawing of genocide. • A legal framework was needed • International law should be an instrument for human progress and justice.

7. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, New York, 9 December 1948 • Objectives    It condemns genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, and provides a definition of this crime. The Convention defines genocide as any of a number of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

8. Alternate definitions • Chalk and Jonassohn • Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator. • Yehuda Bauer • [Genocide is] the planned destruction, since the mi-nineteenth century, of a racial, national, or ethnic group. • [Holocaust is] the planned physical annihilation, for ideological or pseudo-religious reasons, of all members of a national, ethnic, or racial group

9. Why was the United States the last country to sign the Genocide convention? • Senator Proxmire gave 3,211 speeches about the Genocide Convention until the U.S. ratified it. • Might segregation laws be considered genocidal? Inflame the civil rights debate? • Might soldiers, politicians and diplomats become subject to prosecution for genocidal acts? • Elements of antisemitism crept into the debate

10. Patterns/Features of Genocide • There is a calculus to genocide. • Genocide usually takes place during upheavals • vulnerability • The targeted population has often been the object of previous policies of exclusion, discrimination and oppression • Ideologies of hate and creating distinctive identities of difference contribute to defining groups “outside one’s universe of moral obligations.”

11. Patterns continue • While government elites and military plan and participate in carrying out destruction, proxy groups are often used to carry out government policies. • Interehamwe • Janjaweed • Local collaborators • A variety of direct and indirect methods are used to terrorize and destroy the group, including its members way of life. • Genocides often spillover into neighboring regions and contribute to regional instability. • The stain of Genocide continues

12. Lastly… • The perpetrator elite use a variety of techniques to counter resistance • Fragmenting the opposition • The continuing struggles of people/s to stay alive is an act of resistance against genocide. • The question is not why was there so little resistance… • Rather, isn’t it amazing as to how much resistance there actually was!

13. To teach about human rights we must teach about human wrongs