Download his PowerPoint presentation

WHY ARE THE RESCUERS
ALWAYS TOO LATE?
THE FAILURE TO HALT
GENOCIDE AND OTHER CRIMES
AGAINST HUMANITY
ANALYZED
GENOCIDE IN CRIMINAL LAW:
THE UN DEFINTION, 1948
ARTICLE II of the U. N. Genocide 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 . . .
U.N. DEFINTION OF GENOCIDE
(continued)
(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.”
ELEMENTS OF THE CRIME OF
GENOCIDE
ARTICLE III of the U. N. Genocide Convention
“The following acts shall be punishable:
a) Genocide
b) Conspiracy to commit genocide
c) Direct and public incitement to commit
genocide
d) Attempt to commit genocide
e) Complicity in genocide.”
FOUR MOTIVES FOR GENOCIDE
FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE
PRESENT
• TO ELIMINATE A REAL OR POTENTIAL
THREAT
• TO SPREAD TERROR AMONG ENEMIES
• TO ACQUIRE ECONOMIC WEALTH
• TO IMPLEMENT A BELIEF, A THEORY, OR
AN IDEOLOGY
SOME EXAMPLES OF GENOCIDES
IN HISTORY
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
THE ISLAND STATE OF MELOS, 416 B.C.
THE CATHARS, EARLY 13TH CENTURY
THE CHRISTIANS OF JAPAN, 1637
THE YUKI INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA, 1859
THE HEREROS OF GERMAN SW AFRICA, 1904
THE ARMENIANS, 1915
UKRAINIANS, EARLY 1930S
THE HOLOCAUST (SHOAH), 1939-1945
EAST PAKISTAN, CAMBODIA, EAST TIMOR,
BURUNDI, RWANDA, BOSNIA, 1971-1995
The Chalk-Jonassohn Research
Definition of Genocide
“Genocide is a form of one-sided
mass killing in which a state or other
authority intends to destroy a group,
as that group and membership in it
are defined by the perpetrator.”
What are crimes against humanity?
In 1945, the United States and other Allies
developed the Agreement for the Prosecution
and Punishment of the Major War Criminals of
the European Axis and Charter of the
International Military Tribunal (IMT), sitting at
Nuremberg, which contained the following
definition of crimes against humanity in Article
6(c):
“Crimes against humanity: murder,
extermination, enslavement, deportation, and
other inhumane acts committed against
civilian populations, before or during the war;
or persecutions on political, racial or religious
grounds in execution of or in connection with
CANADA’S CRIMES AGAINST
HUMANITY AND WAR CRIMES ACT,
2000, and the new Intl. Criminal Court, 2003
“Crime Against Humanity" means murder, extermination,
enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, sexual
violence, persecution or any other inhumane act or
omission that is committed against any civilian population
or any identifiable group and that, at the time and in the
place of its commission, constitutes a crime against
humanity according to customary international law or
conventional international law or by virtue of its being
criminal according to the general principles of law
recognized by the community of nations, whether or not it
constitutes a contravention of the law in force at the time
and in the place of its commission.”
The Armenian Genocide, 1915
• Perpetrators: Extreme nationalist leaders of
the Committee for Union and Progress
• Victims: Some 800,000 to 1,200,000
Armenian citizens of the Turkish Republic
• Methods: Shooting of Armenian men of
military age, massacres and death caravans
of deported women, children and the elderly
on forced marches through the desert with
no provision of food and water
25 April 1915 : Anzac soldiers landing at Gallipoli during World War One
Turkish machine gunners
Turkish soldiers in a trench, Gallipoli, 1915
Australian troops charging near a Turkish trench, Gallipoli, 1915
Photos of Armenian Deportees to the Syrian Desert,
Armin Wegner, German Army medical orderly, 1915
U.S. State Department Telegram, Sec. State Wm. J. Bryan, 29 May 1915
The Guardian (London)
“Exterminating the Armenians”
11/09/1915
A Literary Response to the
Armenian Genocide
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is a
historical novel depicting the battle of Musa
Dagh which took place in 1915. The novel
was written in 1933 by the Austrian Jewish
writer Franz Werfel (1890-1945).
The Aftermath of the Armenian
Genocide
• The Allied forces reached the Armenians too late to save
most of them
• Armenian survivors, including many orphans, found refuge
in the Middle East, Western Europe, the United States and
Canada
• The promised trials of the genocide’s perpetrators were
indefinitely suspended by the British as the price of Kemal
Ataturk’s cooperation in their anti-Bolshevik intervention
• Denial that the deaths of the Armenian victims were part of
an intentional, planned annihilation of the Armenians in
Turkey continues as a staple of Turkey’s curriculum and
diplomatic activities, although progress is being made with
the help of some Turkish and other specialist scholars
The Holocaust, 1939 to 1945, and
the Failure of Rescue
• The Great Depression, 1929-1939, and rising
antisemitism in Europe and America barred the
gates of immigration in many countries
• Many Jewish refugees were murdered after
Germany occupied most of Western Europe and a
large part of Eastern and Southern Europe during
the war
• The Allies top priority was to win the war and they
regarded the rescue of Jews as endangering that
aim
The Conflict between Military
Victory and Rescue in WW II
• The Allies ignored evidence that the Germans
would murder Europe’s Jews and Gypsies before
they won the war and refused to undertake special
efforts on their behalf
• The Allies viewed the rescue of Jews as
undermining suppport for the Allied cause among
their own peoples and citizens of the lands they
intended to liberate in eastern Europe
• The Allies feared a Middle East and North African
revolt if they rescued large numbers of Jews and
moved them to Palestine or North Africa
BANGLADESH, 1971
• West Pakistan invaded East Pakistan to
implement a reign of terror aimed at
demands for a better share of Pakistan’s
wealth
• The army of West Pakistan and its militias
in East Pakistan murdered about one million
Bengalis and others, while some ten million
refugees fled to nearby India
U. S. Policy in 1971
• Despite the largest protest ever mounted by
members of the U.S. Foreign Service,
Secretary of State Kissinger and President
Nixon refused to halt U.S. military aid to
Pakistan during the genocide
• Kissinger argued that since Pakistan was
China’s close ally and he was rebuilding
Sino-American diplomatic and strategic
cooperation, he could not offend China by
intervening in East Pakistan
Aftermath of the Bangladesh
Genocide
• India invaded Pakistan in 1971/72 to end
the genocide
• The United Nations condemned the Indian
invasion as a violation of Pakistan’s
territorial sovereignty
• The United States cut off economic
assistance to India
Rwanda, 1994
• Some 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsis, as well
as Hutu human rights advocates were
murdered
• Fearing a political backlash against his
presidency after the 1993 disaster in Somalia
which saw the killing of American soldiers,
Clinton refused to acknowledge that a
genocide was underway in Rwanda
• Dallaire was prohibited from seizing arms
intended for use in the genocide
The U.N. and the Rwanda
Genocide
• At the U.N., the Great Powers called for the
withdrawal of the U.N. peacekeeping force
led by Canadian General Romeo Dallaire
• The U.S., France, etc. refused to heed calls
from Belgium for the rapid deployment of
troops to stop the genocide
• The Great Powers denied that they had any
vital interests in the Great Lakes struggle
LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE
• Until very recently, the Great Powers defined
their self-interest narrowly in terms of their
own military, economic, and political security
• Isolationism and unilateralism were the order
of the day
• It will take a revolution in the mentality of
their citizens for the Great Powers to
acknowledge the link between security and
human rights