STUDENTS CONFRONT REALITY OF GENOCIDE
Rich Hitchens
Canada Western Catholic Reporter
March 4 2010
Holocaust historian labels 20th century the century of genocide
EDMONTON – The act of genocide, targeting a group of people for
deliberate and systematic destruction, was so prevalent in the 20th
century that it has been dubbed the century of genocide.
>From the Armenian Massacres after the First World War and the Holocaust
of the Second World War to the killing fields of Cambodia during the
1970s and the 1994 mass killings in Rwanda, the 21st century was the
bloodiest time in human history.
Rich Hitchens, founder and president of the Canadian Centre for
Genocide Education, told students that 250 million people were killed
in cold blood last century. The number does not reflect soldiers
killed in war. It signifies how many unarmed men, women and children
were killed.
So far, a decade in, the new millennium has been no different. Given
the current events in the Darfur region of Sudan, it seems as though
nothing has been learned from the atrocities of the past.
Hitchens is a Holocaust historian trained in the United States, who
realized that Canada has no Holocaust-themed institutions. Compelled
to do something, he founded the Canadian Centre for Genocide Education.
GENOCIDE EDUCATION "Virtually every state has a Holocaust museum
of some sort. They have summer courses for teachers to take on
the Holocaust. When I came back to Canada I learned that there is
no actual summer course on the Holocaust, let alone on genocide,"
said Hitchens, who lives in London, Ont.
He was the keynote speaker at a March 2 genocide conference, held at
Annunciation Church. At the conference were Grade 9 students from five
of Edmonton Catholic’s international baccalaureate schools: Archbishop
MacDonald, Holy Trinity, St. Joseph, St. Clement and St. Thomas More.
"It’s all about getting these students here to live their lives but
be a little less concerned about their shoes and Saturday night and
their hair, and to recognize that people around the world are living
on less than a dollar a day," said Hitchens, promoting the concept
of global citizenship.
SOCIAL JUSTICE An organizer of the event was Sandi Young, a teacher
from St. Thomas More School, active in social justice for several
years. Young was a part of a 30-teacher contingent that went to Rwanda
in 2009, visiting genocide sites, talking with students and teachers,
and conversing with government officials.
"Social justice has been a focus of ours for three years, and this
definitely fits in," Young said of the genocide conference, which is
aimed at encouraging students to focus less on "I and me" and more on
"we and us."
"We are trying to set a plan of action. What can our students do to
make a difference?" she said.
Hitchens told the students that short of the potentially apocalyptic
consequences of global warming, mass murder by governments eclipses
all other problems facing the world.
"Darfur has been front and centre. That has been unfolding since 2003,
and the response has been identical to the past, some words and not
much else in terms of action from the Western world.
OPEN SORE "Congo remains an open sore in Africa. Chechnya festers
as well. The 20th century was a century of genocide, and it isn’t
looking much better for the 21st century," said Hitchens.
The students watched a one-hour video, The Last Just Man, a documentary
about Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire’s ill-fated peacekeeping mission in
Rwanda. Witnessing genocide in action firsthand, Dallaire pleaded for
reinforcements of 2,000 soldiers to put an end to the killings. The
UN Security Council refused. The result was about a million Tutsi
deaths in 100 days.
"Students are stunned by the international community. The world just
callously looked away. It would be like if you saw a burning building,
with people leaping out and screaming in pain, and all you’re doing
is standing there on the sidewalk watching them. The world was so
grossly negligent," he said.
The faint glimmer of hope in preventing another century of 250 million
genocide victims is the student-driven, anti-genocide movement. Those
young people acknowledge the common bonds that tie humans together.
They possess the attitude that the same sympathy, compassion and
worldwide assistance shown for victims of natural disasters should
be given for victims of human conflict as well.
"We really have to change our priorities. Look at the earthquake in
Haiti, and there was a great outpouring of grief and support from
all over the world, and that was remarkable. It showed the best of
humanity. People should have cared and they did. But we can’t seem
to muster the same response for man-made catastrophes," said Hitchens.
FOSTERING AWARENESS He would like to see the students recognize that
they live in Edmonton, but can still care about the Muslim Africans
in Darfur.
Rwandan genocide survivor Dr. Tharisse Seminega and an anti-genocide
student panel, Stand Calgary, also spoke to the students about their
experiences in fostering awareness and opposing genocide.
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From: Baghdasarian