I  want to reply to both Rosemary and Brooklyn:

I think the arguments brought up had fantastic points. The question we are all trying to answer, as I understand it is: can we use the word “genocide” to define events that differ from the holocaust?

The main arguments as I can tell, have roughly been:

1.     No:

-Using the term to define events (particularly ones on smaller scales) is not appropriate because it belittles the experience of those persecuted in the Holocaust.

-The term “genocide” refers only to events with “intent” and it is harder to prove intent in these modern examples (ex: violence against black and Latino populations and culture)

-The word has many implications, including legal ones. It should be used with extreme caution.

-It is not worth it to define something as genocide if it means harming modern relationships with another nation. (I don’t think anyone in the class has agreed with this perspective).

-(In response to Brooklyn) The “black experience” was not genocide because a lack of concern about a population is not the same as intentional extermination in the interest of creating a superior race. *(See below for further clarification).

2.     Yes and we should:

-We need to take seriously modern violence against populations/cultures. Use of the word genocide is important specifically because of its implications.

-Genocide on the scale of the Holocaust will not happen again, therefore we must accept that modern genocide looks different and label it genocide regardless.

I think ultimately the problem still rests in not having a uniform definition of genocide. We have been hoping back and forth between the definition from the U.N. (which Brooklyn quotes in his post) and the original definition by Lempkin. I propose that the problem is that both of these definitions are inadequate. The one from the U.N. is, as we have discussed, simultaneously vague and narrow. The definition from Lempkin feels a little too focused on culture (is burning a library genocide?) and I don’t like his perspectives on “weaker nations.” I think a modern definition would somehow also have to reflect that the world has changed since the end of WWII and will continue to do so.

I am still on the fence about whether I think the “black experience” and the treatment of Latinos in the United States should count as genocide, because while I think these populations are/were horrendously mistreated, I am not sure I see the intent of total destruction of culture/population. Before class on Tuesday I was leaning towards “not genocide,” but after class discussion (and particularly after Dumancic compared my argument to Turkey’s “lack of intent” argument) I am tempted to change my mind.

In reference to Rosemary’s post: I am actually not at all convinced that a holocaust will not happen again. Rosemary says that, “modern forms of technology and communication might, and hopefully will, prevent genocide from occurring in such a systematic manner.” I think if anything, this class has made me less confident in our global community and good nature of the common man/woman.

So for Brooklyn’s final question: “who benefits from withholding genocide terminology from the treatment of people of color in the U.S.?” If there are in the future, more holocausts like the one in Nazi Germany, it might be necessary to have a way to distinguish them from racism/slavery etc. Again this depends on how we choose to define genocide. If we really do not think the Holocaust was different from the "Black or Latino experience" than I have no argument for why we cannot use the term genocide for both. On a similar note, there might be some justification in wanting to use the term genocide just for the sake of getting more global attention paid to human rights violations. I just think we need to consider how using the term genocide will effect victims, current and future.

Clarification for my perspective on Brooklyn’s argument:

*I think one could make the argument that what occurred in the antebellum and post civil war South was not genocide. While treating the black population as inferior and not deserving of basic human rights, I don’t believe that there was conscious and systematic intent to get rid of the population entirely. That may have only been because there was value in the exploitation of the population, but regardless I am not entirely convinced the term genocide should be used. 

Also, totally unrelated, I really enjoyed Brooklyns use of hashtags, definitely laughed out loud when I first saw "#Turkey."

'The Black Experience' - Not Genocide?

   In class today, (as far as I understood,) someone characterized the oppression and abuse Latino people face as 'not genocide, but like the black experience in the U.S.' - or something to that effect. It seemed impossible to properly address the question without deviating from our conversation too much, but I think it may be worth unpacking. This may be self-evident, but this is not all a response to that one comment - I'm just using it as a jump-off point.

   To begin: without any textual grounding or personal experience, I object to the suggestion of a singular, universal black experience - particularly when asserted in refutation of contemporary/historic genocide in the U.S. Class, gender, region and countless other variables intersect in a multiplicity of individual and collective black experiences. That said, from legal slavery, to the convict-lease system (which some have argued is "worse than slavery,"), to state and vigilante jim crow terror, to the state-led flooding of heroin and crack into black neighborhoods, to the mass incarceration we face today, many African Americans lives have been -individually and collectively- damaged and destroyed.

   I argue that the state violence perpetrated in the era of each regime just listed, fulfills every criteria of genocide outlined the U.N. Before we go any further, if you think i'm being hyperbolic or dramatic, consider the following:

if what I'm saying is true, the corporate-state would do everything in its power to keep this information hidden from its domestic subjects, that's why this might be hard for us to take. (#Turkey)

Each permutation of genocide criteria versus mode of oppression deserves its own exploration, but I will attempt contextualize "the black experience" by discussing the convict-lease system, the idea of fact versus truth, and how each relates to genocidal interpretations of African American history.

                        "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."

    Both proponents and reformers of the convict-lease system understood that most captives would die within a decade of their "sentences".  Mostly males of all ages were being sent to work to death for "crimes" such as vagrancy or theft of a small item. Keep in mind, reparations were not paid to slaves. The black codes were a series of laws which essentially criminalized black people for being off the plantation. It was an economic model through which capitalists and the state collaborated to rebuild the post-bellum south with free black labor. However, these people were no longer literal property, and so their was no vested interest in keeping them healthy or alive. As Oshinksky describes in Worse than Slavery, not only were they worked to death for the material luxury of others, but they were forced into the most deplorable conditions imaginable - conditions that a slave-owner would not risk damaging property in, "When the Greenville Railroad needed workers to lay track in the scorching heat of the Yazoo Delta, it subleased convicts. When the Mississippi Central needed men to dynamite a tunnel near Kosciusko, it subleased convicts. When the New Orleans and Northeastern needed labor to clear a malarial swamp south of hattiesburg, it subleased convicts at a premium daily rate of $1.75 a head. According to witnesses, the men were chained for days in knee-deep pools of muck, 'their thirst driving them to drink the water in which they were compelled to deposit their excrement,'" (p.45) They worked full-day shifts of 16+ hours with physical abuse instead of food and water. At night, convicts often slept in a single, overcrowded cage. Oshinsky describes a physician outrage by, "'the filthy conditions of the convict cage': blood-stained dirt flow, overflowing waste buckets, and vermin-covered walls…In the 1880s, the annual mortality rate for Mississippi's convict population ranged from 9 to 16 percent…Not a single leased convict ever lived long enough to serve a sentence of ten years or more," (p.46) It's important to keep in mind what's happening to African American's fortunate enough to avoid these state-corporate death camps. In Mississippi, which national press began to refer to as the "lynching state," a lawyer observed that, "dead men [are] literally hanging from the boughs of trees by every roadside," (p.4)

   Why is this history relevant to conversations about Genocide in the U.S.? As the title of Oshinsky's book suggests, life for black people in America did not unilaterally improve in the wake of nominal freedom; it requires more than time for conditions to improve. The civil rights movement did not end because racial equality was achieved - it was forcibly stopped when lawmen at all levels infiltrated, murdered, and imprisoned the most powerful and influential black leaders (#killing members of the group;causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group); It is but one chapter of the modern black freedom struggle.

   Let's consider the parallels between nominal genocide (#Tracey's G-word), and nominal freedom/democracy.

Both are words controlled by people with power (politicians/military contractors/corporate media)- People with vested economic and political interest in maintaing genocidal tactics and keeping the truth invisible. In his piece From Slavery to Mass Incarceration Wacquant identifies, "the blatant contradiction between human bondage and democracy," (p.45) As We've discussed the topic of 'modern genocide' at great length - should we not think about post-modern genocide? Wacquant continues, "unlike slavery, Jim Crow, and the ghetto of mid-century, it [the current racial system] does not carry out a positive economic mission of recruitment and disciplining of the workforce: it serves only to warehouse the precarious and deproletarianized fractions of the black working class, be it that they cannot find employment owing to a combination of skills deficit employer discrimination and competition from immigrants, or that they refuse to submit to the indignity of substandard work in the peripheral sectors of the service economy  - what ghetto residents label 'slave jobs.'" (p.54) What does this look like to people in other countries, whether or not they're oppressed by American policies?

   The night following a prison justice conference, a few peers and I went to a bar. As we were leaving, a man bummed a cigarette and asked what brought us to the city. After hearing that we, rich-looking, white kids were there on work for 'prison justice', he told us a few things that we 'had to know'.

He framed African American history through a series of close analogies to the decimation of indigenous peoples on this continent. He drew parallels between reservations and housing projects (forced dependency/confinement), crack&heroin versus alcohol&disease (addiction, submission, disorganization, death, justification of criminality), and cops, cowboys, and lynch mobs. This man survived the guns, drugs, and incarceration our corporate-state designed to placate and kill him. He recognizes his experiences, in the broader context of his people's experiences, in terms of a concept that can be difficult to grapple with; he calls it genocide.Who are we to say that he is wrong?

   This is a good example of the limitations of constructing a history composed of documented, and "objective fact". Declassified, official documents state that the free breakfast programs operated the Black Panthers were the greatest domestic threat (#deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part) ; another fact, found in Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement cites civil-rights-era veteran Fannie Lou Hamer, in testifying that "60 percent of black women who passed through Sunflower City Hosiptal in her hometown in Mississippi were sterilized, many without their Knowledge (# imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group)- Fannie Lou Hamer was one such victim; fact: mothers lose full custody of their children for non-violent drug offenses, and even less (#forcibly transferring children of the group to another group)

Lemkin coined the term in order for people to recognize unthinkable and vastly disproportionate violence between any two groups of oppressed and oppressor, not to provoke exercises in theoretical taxonomy. My final question is, with all that we know, who benefits from withholding genocide terminology from the treatment of people of color in the U.S.?

As Fox Moulder from X-files says, the truth is out there.

Corporations Love Genocide, and my iPod

I understand that people have a hard time attributing genocide to the acts of American or multinational corporations, especially since, as upper middle class white kids, we have been brought up to respect the Corporation, and to trust that simply "making a profit" is a neutral and worthy goal. Obviously, there is a huge difference between me purchasing a shirt that was made with forced labor and a footsoldier who kills people- no one would disagree with that. When Brooklyn made the point in his blog post about what happens every time we buy an iPod, he was suggesting that we need to wake up and take a closer look at the global consumer forces that are moving around us.

Let's take the iPod for one example: smartphones, laptops, tablets, and other electronics all require a mineral called coltan, which is available in heavy abundance in parts of Africa, including the resource-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Multinational companies like Apple outsource their manufacturing which outsources its material sourcing which enlists a mining company to gather the coltan. There are no safety standards and no labor regulations, children mine with their bare hands and are subject to terrible illness and sickness.  Different armed groups control the coltan mines, and sell the mineral to corporations. These armed groups are making hundreds of millions of dollars off of international corporations, and use that money to fund the horrific, genocidal resource scramble that has been ravaging the Congo for the past fifteen years.

At least seven million people have died due to ongoing violence in the Congo. For too long we have been told that we cannot "understand" this deadly "war" because it had a lot to do with tribal tensions, ethnic hatreds, etc. But we all know, since being in this class, that "ancient ethnic hatred" is used by the powerful as a shroud to cover what is really going on. My argument is this: if we can think about European colonialism- the stealing of land, the subjugation of peoples to sub-standard living conditions, the rape and deaths of thousands or millions of innocent people- as genocide, then we need to apply the same framework to multinational corporations in looking at their actions all around the world, but especially in the global south. The violence in the Congo is supported by, fueled by, and exists BECAUSE of multinational corporations. In the most resource-rich nation in the world, corporations steal land from those who it belongs to, cause incredible damage to the environment, effectively making cultivation of any kind impossible in large swathes of Africa, create or align with armed groups who systematically rape and murder innocent civilians, and then fuel the "instable war" because corporations like the distraction of war to hide behind.

"The tragedy of the Congo conflict has been instituted by invested corporations, their proxy armies, and the supra-governmental bodies that support them.

The process is tied to major multinational corporations at all levels. These include U.S.-based Cabot Corp. and OM Group; HC Starck of Germany; and Nigncxia of China—corporations that have been linked by a United Nations Panel of Experts to the atrocities in DRC. Extortion, rape, massacres, and bribery are all part of the criminal networks set up and maintained by huge multinational companies." (Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski, Project Censored: Media Democracy in Action)

The "situation" in the Congo is made possible and supported by the international community, or the “supra-governmental bodies” the quote was referring to. Through the policies of theIMF and the World Bank, the governments and economies of the global south, especially in Africa, have been forced to accept the unchecked activity of multinational corporations in return for aid or debt relief. Coming directly from the US government, these neoliberal economic policies not only allow corporations to operate without conscience or oversight but they cause economic deprivation, stagnation, and corruption in affected countries. International governments who could step in to combat these multinational corporations don't because they are also directly profiting from the seven million death toll and the deadly resource scramble.

Brutal colonialism is still being perpetrated by (mostly) white people even today in the global south. If we still want to argue that corporations don't commit genocide because they do not target groups based on their nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion, I would encourage us to 1) think bigger and 2) acknowledge that corporations every day knowingly fund genocide and ethnic cleansing, and in that they are complicit in genocide, making them guilty of genocide under the UN Genocide Convention.

Lastly, I would like to directly challenge some of my fellow classmates’ justifications about why corporate capitalism can’t be genocide. The effects of our current system of corporate capitalist dominance isn’t just an “unfortunate situation”, isn’t just “low wages”, and it certainly isn’t a “spread of culture” as Lemkin suggests. The effects are millions of deaths, millions of rapes, the destruction of culture and tradition, and the forced mass movement and displacement of peoples.   

Beyond the Holocaust

Like many of my colleagues, I would like to touch on some points that we briefly discussed in class today but that I feel were not fully addressed. The primary question that remains unanswered, for me, is the question of applying the term genocide to circumstances much different than that of the Holocaust. It is unlikely that there will ever again be such a paradigmatic example of a genocide. I say this not because I believe humanity's morality has evolved to preclude acts as atrocious as the Holocaust, but because modern forms of technology and communication might, and hopefully will, prevent genocide from occurring in such a systematic manner.

That said, phenomena and humanity evolve to suit shifting circumstances. Though genocide in the form of the Holocaust might never recur, there will almost undoubtedly be other instances of genocide. These instances will be experienced, perpetrated and interpreted in a manner distinct from the Holocaust and any other genocides before it. Because of this, in conjunction with the shifting nature of global relations and identity relations in the modern epoch, I think it is imperative that historians and political scientists decode genocide's constitutive features from outside the framework of the previous genocides. Many of the historians we have read thus far, including Naimark, have posited the question of understanding genocide without the Holocaust, and specifically, if it can be done. Though the Holocaust provides a valuable case study for humanity's potential for depravity in the form of genocide, I think it's essential that we understand genocide as a phenomena without relying on allusions to the Holocaust or other historical instances of genocide.

If we are to be able to identify genocide when we witness or experience it, despite its obscuration by globalism, capitalism, borders or any other complicating feature of modernity, then we need to look past the Holocaust and understand genocide in its own terms. As we discussed in class today, mass murder and cultural genocide can occur through the negligence of some and the intentional actions of others. The actors in these instances of genocide include governments, citizens, NGOs and corporations who rely on one another to fail to address genocidal acts (or, at the least, acts that share many characteristics acts of genocide) and hold those responsible accountable for their actions. Because of modernity's complicated web of interrelatedness, it is easier to lose track of who it is that is ethically responsible for preventing and addressing genocidal actions. If we do not even give ourselves a better understanding of genocide, so that we are able to transpose and reinterpret new occurrences of genocide in different circumstances, I do not believe we will stand a chance to identify, prevent or address genocides that will inevitably occur in our lifetime and after.

Ethnic versus Economic Discrimination

I'd like to address some of what was discussed in class today. We crossed over into the economic/political realm while discussing genocide and ethnic cleansing, and after having given these connections some thought I wanted to share a hypothesis about where the line can be drawn.

Often in the past sorting individuals by ethnic groups was done for means of manipulation and control (as was the purpose of the British in colonial Africa, where people were grouped into different "tribes" in order to pit them against each other and maintain the political dominance of the overlords). People can identify with multiple groups and ethnic identity is subject to change. But manipulation of these ethnic groups by more advantaged and able powers is distinctly different from their attempted destruction. In accordance with the U.N.'s definition of genocide, the important things to remember, when determining if actions are generally violent/show a lack of human compassion or if they are actually genocidal, are: 1. If members of a group that identify similarly are targeted, and 2. there is violence or an attempt to destroy their culture or their people. The exploitation of third-world countries as a result of capitalism is not ethnic discrimination--it is economic discrimination. The people are not targeted with violence; they end up on the wrong side of an unfortunate system due to their location on the globe.

That's why there is a difference between the oblivious consumer of goods that are mass-produced for pennies on the other side of the world by a suffering populace, and a footsoldier who carries out someone else's orders in executing members of a race. Both people can claim the absence of responsibility, as there is a disconnect between them and the reality of what they are doing, but one person is killing someone, and the other is partaking in the economic system. I am not advocating the exploitation, but merely maintaining that there is a line between economic and systemic problems and genocide and ethnic cleansing. The difference is shown by the examples of the British colonialists in Africa who sought to manipulate and control groups, versus the Nazis and Young Turks who sought to destroy and eradicate groups.

Why I Remain Unconvinced that Corporate Capitalism Leads to Genocide

In my opinion, the claim that corporations and their Western parent nations are perpetrating a massive genocide against the global south does not hold water for two reasons.  First, it requires an expansion of the definition of “genocide” to something that is so broad as to have very little in common with other events commonly accepted as genocide.  Second, the claim ignores significant portions of Western history and the work of Lemkin himself, both of which suggest that the uneven distribution of resources will resolve itself as it has in the past, lending credence to Lemkin’s theory of the “slow progression” of dominant cultures over others. 

When we remove the trappings of intent, race theory, history, etc. from our understanding of the genocides we have studied we are left with many cases of a powerful group acting on a powerless one.  The Nazis rounded up the Jews and gassed them, the Ittihadists marched the Armenians through the desert until they starved to death, and the US Army massacred technologically inferior Indian tribes.  The genocide against the global south, however, rests on the premise that corporations, the West, or other large bodies of affluent white people impose an uneven distribution of resources on the rest of the world.  Governments do this via trade agreements; corporations do this by providing what some consider to be sub-standard wages that afford individuals a low standard of living, and rich white people are guilty because they continue to purchase goods provided by the corporations paying low wages. 

This model entirely lacks the intent to destroy which is present in every other event which is commonly considered to be genocide.  Corporations exist simply to make money, and so market pressures, not personal prejudices, will determine the actions of a corporation.  For example, it is a central tenet of economics that when there is a surplus of a good, the price of that good will go down.  In the case of corporations, that good is labor.  If there is a larger number of workers in the global south than there are jobs available, the wages for those jobs will remain low, especially in the presence of government policies that encourage corporate investment.  In this case, the race of the workers is a non-issue, as are their religion, national origin, sexuality, ethnicity, or any other group identity.  Any degradation of culture that takes place is not intentional, as the only intent of the corporation is profit. 

In addition, workers take low paying jobs because those are the jobs that are offered.  As Tracey mentioned in class today, there was a time when American corporations provided only low paying jobs under a decidedly laissez-faire government to immigrant and working class laborers.  When events such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and materials like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle began to spread awareness of immigrant and working class conditions, the workers, among others, began to agitate for protections in the government.  This resulted in governments passing labor laws and the rise of strong unions to counter the immense power of corporations.

The fact that similar efforts have taken place and been successful in every developed Western state leads me to two conclusions.  First, it strikes me as being just another facet of the process of stratification, with the state acting as a mediator between the interests of the worker (high wages, to ensure a high standard of living) and the interests of corporations (low wages, to ensure high profits).  Second, as I mentioned before, Lemkin himself made room in his definition of genocide for the spread of culture.  He was speaking with colonies and empires in mind, in terms of dominance and submissiveness and advancement, but this example may just be a variation on that theme.  If, for example, the political/economic model described above is more efficient than a present economic situation (communism, or perhaps subsistence farming) and ultimately leads to a higher standard of living for all members of a state, why should we stop it?  Labeling it genocide jumps the gun and irresponsibly attaches a term with violent connotations and history to something that is just not so.  Are low wages and a low standard of living unfortunate?  Certainly, but history, and the fact that the economy of Mexico is expected to double in size in the next eight years would lead us to believe that they will not be victims for long.

Genocide and Globalization

Much of the discussion in class today was centered on the concept of genocide within a modern context.  The conclusion was that in today's globalized world there seems to be a new kind of genocide that leaves most of us, in one way or another, complicit.  This notion raises many complexities about the relationship between globalization and genocide, as well as the issue of individual, national, and international responsibility and agency.
On the one hand, the contemporary globalized nature of the economy has left many individuals unaware of the genocidal circumstances from which their consumer products may have risen.  To use an example from the class discussion, I must admit that I honestly have no idea where or how my iPhone was manufactured.  Thus, I found it difficult to formulate any kind of stance on the genocidal nature of its production.  However, what I can conclude is that I do lack this knowledge.  I am sure that to some degree I am just uninformed, however I also believe this lack to come from circumstances of globalization.  Geography has a profound effect on the extent to which an individual can understand and interpret events.  In this sense, I am reminded of the Road to Treblinka film, particularly the scene showing Berliners relaxing on the beach having heard "only good news of the 'war' in the east."  In contemporary times, economic globalization has only increased an individual's ability to distance themselves from human atrocities committed abroad.  If we so choose, we, as individuals, only ever have to see the final result. 
In complete opposition to this effect, globalization, specifically in terms of information and communication, enables us to prevent or stop genocide.  The transference of photographs and videos has proliferated and rapidly increased its speed.  Every morning, for example, I receive top news email updates from Foreign Policy magazine.  I am thus constantly aware of every new act of violence occurring in places like Syria.  If individuals are aware of these moment by moment events, so too are national governments and international institutions.  In contrast to the way in which economic globalization enables the continuation of genocide, this aspect of globalization enables us to stop it.  Of course, it would be ludicrous for President Obama to turn a blind eye to the violence in Syria, in large because it is no longer possible to ignore.
To reconcile these two examples, individuals must continue to share information, utilizing the media resources globalization has provided for us.  Although this sentiment may be overly optimistic, I do believe that if more individuals were aware of genocidal modes of production, there would be greater pressure on governments and corporations to rectify injustices committed abroad.

Learning about the Holocaust in Israel

Throughout this class it has been really interesting for me to compare what we learn about genocide to the way I was exposed to and learned about the Holocaust while growing up in Israel. 

My learning about the holocaust through the secular public elementary school system can be split into two categories: the Shoah as a part of national mythology, and the Shoah as a part of personal identity (this binary can also be applied to most historical events/ themes we learned about.) 

Learning about the Shoah as a part of national mythology, we talked to many survivors who later moved to Israel, and heard many testimonials. Participating in productions of Memorial Day ceremonies is especially memorable to me (reading texts, performing songs, dancing.) We would often be asked to draw pictures or write poems, relating to atrocities of the past to the present in Israel. We would talk about what it meant to be a Jew then, and what it means now, the turning point being the creating of Israel, not the holocaust. 

Learning about the Shoah as a part of personal identity was a more sensitive subject because each family has a different way of discussing the Holocaust. I can't remember when or how my parents told me about our own family history, but I always knew my parents were "second generation," which in Israel usually means children of survivors. 

The way in which personal identity is connected to national identity, and the significant role that personal and collective trauma plays in constructing this identity made me wonder about the Sephardic (of Middle Eastern origin) population in Israel, who were not personally affected by the holocaust, yet must construct their national identity according to a collective (Jewish) trauma they did not personally experience. 

Rwanda and "the 'g word'"

The discussion in class today on how to define a genocide reminded me of an article I'd read recently, titled "Bystanders to Genocide." The article, written by Samantha Power, the controversial journalist who has written extensively on genocides, focuses exclusively on the Rwandan Genocide. However, many of the points she makes about the genocide relate directly to the larger debate on how to define genocide. In her article, Power notes that one of the main impediments for intervening in the genocide was American officials unwillingness to define what was happening as a "genocide." If what was going on in Rwanda wasn't a genocide, then the United States had no legal or moral obligation to get involved in a country that had no economic or strategic importance for it. 

Often when we discuss genocide, we ask whether there was an intention to destroy a people. The interesting thing in the case of Rwanda was that the Hutus clearly intended to decimate the Tutsi population, which was reported time and time again by American and U.N. officials on the ground, but there still remained a hesitation to label the massacres a "genocide." To this point, Power writes, 

A discussion paper on Rwanda, prepared by an official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense  and dated May 1, testifies to the nature of official thinking. Regarding issues that might be brought up at the next interagency working group, it stated,

1. Genocide Investigation: Language that calls for an international investigation of human rights abuses and possible violations of the genocide convention. Be Careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday—Genocide finding could commit [the U.S. government] to actually "do something." [Emphasis added.]
 
As the death toll mounted in Rwanda, American officials came under increasing pressure by the international community and American media alike to acknowledge what was going on in Rwanda. According to Power's research,  "State Department officials were authorized to state publicly only that acts of genocide had occurred." Of course in this case, the term, as we discussed in class, was only being used as a euphemism for the horrors of the genocide. Mimicking our debate in class, at one point during the genocide, a journalist questioned State Department spokesperson Christine Shelly, asking her, "How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide ?" Shelly was unable to answer. 

Another part of the problem when it came to using the term "genocide" was officials' willingness to be blinded by the civil war aspect of the Rwandan Genocide. As we've discussed in class and read in the works of scholars like Stanley Milgram and Jay Winter, war can often mobilize a population against an internal enemy, making it easier to commit acts of genocide. However, war can also hide a genocide. In the case of Rwanda, Tutsi rebel forces were fighting the Hutu-dominated government while at the same time, government-sponsored killing units attacked Tutsi and moderate Hutus. For American government officials, Rwanda looked more like a case of civil war than a genocide—and civil wars were something they had no desire to get entangled in. However, it was also easier for officials to declare the massacres of civilians to be unfortunate "collateral damage." If the deaths could fall under the label of "civil war," there was no reason for American intervention, which was costly not only in terms of dollars, but also in soldiers lives and—more importantly—politicians' ratings. 

Because the American government was not willing to "use the 'g word,'" as Ronald Suny so aptly wrote, it did not intervene in a genocide that led to the deaths of almost a million people. The genocide debate doesn't only occur among historians and students of history years after the fact, but is in fact ongoing during the genocide itself. This is something we must consider as we continue to discuss the meaning of genocide and the importance of applying the term. 

---

Terezin and "Through Children's Eyes"

    The Holocaust is one of the better know genocides worldwide.  Every school, especially in the United States, teaches its students about Hitler’s prosecution of the Jews.  Perhaps the Holocaust is one of the better known genocides because of the extraordinary amount of administrative records of the death squads, the concentration camps, the deportations etc.  Yet this documentation extends far beyond the perpetrators.  Stories of the victims exist in mass and are widely read; for example the The Diary of Anne Frank.  Likewise, the production “Through Children’s Eyes” combines children’s writings from the concentration camp Terezin with music to bring outsiders into the world of the Holocaust from the perspective of a child in order to make the Holocaust feel real for future generations.
    Originally, Terezin was a city built in Czechoslovakia the late 18th century.  However, Hitler turned the city into a so-called “haven” for the Jews.  Some called it a concentration camp, others a ghetto; in reality, it was a way-station in the Jews’ journey to the death camps of Auschwitz or Treblinka.  Terezin was also where Hitler sent Jewish artists and musicians to show the world that he treated the Jews fairly.  Indeed, the Red Cross visited Terezin once to assess the treatment of Jews.  The Nazi regime spruced up the camp so the Red Cross found it to be acceptable living conditions.  The artists and musicians of the camp would steal paper and pencils to record their life and even gave some supplies to the Jewish children.  It is these writings and drawings of the children that inspired the musical “Through Children’s Eyes.”
    The pieces of “Through Children’s Eyes” vary in content.  One discusses an old man chewing on a piece of bread and eating lentils, another tells of not wanting to sleep on the floor for fear of getting dirty, while still another tells a nonsense story about a mouse and a flea.  The short writings seen ordinary, yet the music and songs written by David Shukiar place them in the context of a ghetto.  Some pieces reflect this context, a young child writes “I’d like to go away alone where there are other nicer people...where no one kills another.”  The combination of the introspective music with the sad-innocence of children’s writings draws the reader into the life of a child in the ghetto.  The use of children’s writings challenges the viewer to differentiate between ourselves and those children; when we find more similarities than differences we are struck by the horror of the Holocaust anew, making the Holocaust seem all the more real.

   

Is a Closed-Door Emigration Policy Complicity with Genocide?

Today's Washington Post included an article detailing the struggles of an Indonesian man seeking sanctuary in a New Jersey Church as he faces deportation by ICE officials [1]. Saul Timisela, who arrived in New Jersey fourteen years ago, had fled Indonesia due to religious persecution. Timisela was a Christian in a country that is predominantly Muslim (roughly 7% Christian to 87% Muslim) [2]. The state is largely viewed as democratic, but local governments have passed laws based on Islamic principles that threaten the rights of Christians [3]. Christianity, specifically Evangelical, has risen in recent years among the Indonesian population, which has caused clashes between Christians and Muslims and led to a rise in sectarian violence.

In the Washington Post article, Timisela is said to have fled overseas, "after his pastor and brother-in-law were dismembered and burned in a church in an anti-Christian attack in Indonesia [4]. A Times article covering this surge of Christianity in Indonesia reported that Christian theological students were forced to leave their campus after being harassed by Muslim mobs (three students also had acid thrown into their faces) [5]. Although most attacks are against Christians, the victims are not completely free from blame: mosques have also been burned during religious violence. Although the president of Indonesia has deliberately appointed Christians to his cabinet, his silence and the lack of punitive measures taken against perpetrators has, according to the Harvard International Review, created an environment of impunity for religious violence [6].

According to the Washington Post article, Timisela is one of 80 Indonesian Christians living in New Jersey as a result of religious persecution in Indonesia [7].  The Pastor harboring Timisela and other Indonesian Christians argues that, "These are not threatening people […] They're not terrorists. They're not people who have done anything wrong other than escaping persecution from their country during a very scary time," [8]. Yet the ICE are still after these illegal immigrants. Timisela has overstayed his visa and has already evaded deportation in an incident prior to this current case. Although it is unlikely that the ICE will raid the church, this incident raises important questions regarding what should and can be done for refugees fleeing persecution and violence.

This past summer I interned with a refugee resettlement agency. During my time there, I not only learned of the horrors our clients had undergone, but I also learned of the limitations of resettlement as a viable long-term solution to the refugee issue. What brought this issue to mind was the Naimark reading (Chapter 2, "The Nazi Attack on the Jews") and the issue of Jewish emigration during the initial phases of Nazi ethnic cleansing. Despite the horribly apparent life-threatening and degrading conditions that Jews were being subjected to, Western states refused to allow the flood of Jewish refugees to pass their borders, enforcing strict emigration quotas (68). Does this closed-door policy make Western states complicit with the Holocaust? Could these countries have handled the influx of refugees? Would a flood of eastern foreigners have lead to further racial conflict and violence, now within the Western states? Although the obvious long-term solution to the refugee question is to bring peace to their home states, the intermediary solution still seems to evade us, as Saul Timisela illustrates.

I affirm I have adhered to the Honor Code in this assignment.
Lauren Muscott

Serbia, Turkey, and the European Union

Previously in class we discussed how the Turkey's refusal to use the term "genocide" to describe the mass murders of Armenians post-WWI was detrimentally affecting their chances of entering the EU.  It seems hard for us to understand why a country would continue to argue over nomenclature.  I do realize, however, that psychologically speaking, this is a very difficult thing to do.  After being taught a certain thing for years and years, and especially in the context of such a politically charged situation (i.e., this is not a genocide because Turks were killed too, it was a civil war, the death marches were not death marches, and there is no document saying that the Armenians should be exterminated; we are right and everyone else is wrong), there isn't much we can do to change Turkey's mind.  I have also noticed that there isn't a clear public opinion in terms of what people believe, based on what we have seen and read.  It varies on education, age, and probably exposure to the West and proximity to the Turkish government. 

I bring this up because of an article I read recently on the potential inclusion of Serbia into the EU.  This matter was only officially brought up a couple days ago, beginning a process that may take years.  Why now, after so many years of conflict and controversy in the 1990s, as well as in 2008 following the independence of Kosovo.  These recent events, most notably the targeting and persecution of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo that lead to the NATO bombing of Serbia, have prevented until now its inclusion into the EU.  Additionally, Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian-Serb military commander, was finally indicted on genocide charges after many years, an event that many say finally cleared the way for Serbia's bid for membership.   Last month, Serbia signed an agreement to improve relations with Kosovo.  These steps forward (acknowledging the past and moving towards a more peaceful future) have lead to Serbia's EU candidacy.  The EU is not asking Serbia to recognize Kosovo as an independent country as opposed to province, because not all bloc members agree on that subject.  Because this probably wouldn't happen, in the same vein as Turkey's distaste of the term "genocide", Serbia will have no problem over the next couple years. 

So what does this mean for Turkey?  According to this article, no country that has begun negotiations to become a part of the EU has ever been rejected.  However,  due to the refusal of Turkey to recognize Cyprus (a member of the EU) as independent, negotiations have stalled.  What is interesting to me is that this seems to be the primary concern, not the Armenian controversy as I had been lead to believe.  So to answer the question of whether or not Turkey will be able to continue negotiations with the EU, it depends on Cyprus, not the Armenians, and that is not comparable to the recognition of Serbian history by the Serbian government.