The Toronto Star
Aug. 12, 2005. 01:00 AM
Trying to understand genocide
CAROL GOAR
There could scarcely be a grimmer way to spend a summer vacation than to
study the worst atrocities of which humanity is capable.
Yet every August, top students from around the world come to the University
of Toronto for a two-week course called Genocide and Human Rights. Its aim
is to equip young scholars to do what no generation has yet achieved: turn
the words “Never Again” into a reality.
Since the world made that solemn vow in 1948, it has failed to prevent
ethnically motivated slaughters in Cambodia, Burundi, Bosnia, Iraq and
Rwanda. It is now watching impotently as thousands of Darfuris are murdered
in western Sudan.
This year’s class, which holds its final session today, is a fascinating
group. There are three Rwandans, two of whom lost parents in the genocide of
1994. There is a Tanzanian lawyer who has set up a voluntary organization to
train human rights monitors. There is an Iranian expatriate, struggling to
understand how people can turn on their neighbours. There are grandchildren
of Holocaust survivors and great-grandchildren of Armenians whose families
were almost wiped out in the massacre of 1915. And there are Canadian and
American students, searching for a way to reconcile what they’ve learned
with the butchery they see in the world.
What they share is a willingness to look squarely into the face of evil and
an impatience with stock answers.
Let me take you into their classroom earlier this week.
Maj. Brent Beardsley, who served as personal staff officer to Maj.-Gen.
Roméo Dallaire in Rwanda, has just delivered a harrowing account of the
near-extermination of the nation’s Tutsi minority. Eric Markusen, an
American sociologist who served on a human rights panel interviewing Darfuri
refugees, is comparing the two African tragedies.
But the students are restless, troubled, tired of listening.
Markusen points out that the West has paid more attention, devoted more
resources and learned more about the atrocities occurring in Darfur than in
any previous genocide. “The U.S. and U.N. have gone in and done
investigations during the time of killing,” he says.
A hand shoots up. “What good is an investigation if there’s no action?” asks
Simon Maghakyan of Colorado.
Markusen politely acknowledges the importance of the query and presses on,
talking about the role Rwanda played in alerting the world to the crisis now
unfolding in Sudan.
But he is interrupted again. Lisa Ndejura, a Montrealer born in Rwanda,
wants practical guidance. “When we talk among the youth, we feel terrible
that we’re not doing more,” she said. “I want to know how we can do things
at the community level.”
Markusen’s presentation soon turns into a free-for-all, with students asking
tough, unanswerable questions: Is a black life worth less than a white life
in the eyes of the international community? Is it worse to ignore a genocide
or to study it and not stop it? Is the use of deadly force justified in
protecting innocent people?
No one minces words. The debate is stimulating, unflinching and ultimately
inconclusive.
The lack of tidy solutions does not bother Greg Sarkissian, president of the
International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, which
launched the program in 2002.
“It is designed primarily to raise awareness of the most gross violations of
human rights,” he says. “People thought there would never be another
Holocaust, but the same thing keeps happening and the world is barely aware
of it. More than 69 million people have been killed in various genocides.
“It shouldn’t just be the responsibility of the victims and their
descendants to stop these heinous crimes,” says Sarkissian, who lost many
relatives in the Armenian genocide. “We want to produce a generation of
scholars that will understand the warning signals of genocide, talk about
the issue and convince governments that it is in our national interest to
intervene before genocides take place.”
The students live together in a U of T dormitory. They form friendships
across racial and geopolitical lines, talk about traumas most outsiders
could barely imagine. “One of our goals is to turn that emotional energy
into an intellectual force,” Sarkissian says.
Although Ndejura finds it draining to talk about death from 9 a.m. to 5
p.m., she is glad she came. “These are questions that have haunted me for a
long time,” the Rwandan immigrant says. “It’s a relief to talk about them.”
As the segment on Rwanda and Darfur ends, Roger Smith, director of the
program, leaves the students with one last thought: “A genocide is not an
accident. It is a choice. It occurs because human beings make it happen and
let it happen.”
(Further information is available at )
Carol Goar’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress