END CURRENT GENOCIDES RATHER THAN SIFT THROUGH THE ASHES OF HISTORY
Laina Farhat-Holzman, Sentinel Staff Report
Santa Cruz Sentinel, CA
Nov 4 2007
Genocide is an ancient historic institution that never had that
name until after World War II, when the United Nations defined it
as a crime. Unfortunately, the U.N. does not have legal authority
to intervene in an ongoing genocide and the Security Council has too
many conflicting national agendas to do so either. World War II did
not end genocide. It is alive and well today in more places than make
it into the news.
However, the history of genocide is in the news a great deal lately.
The extremely well-documented Nazi genocide against Jews and Gypsies
[and Slavs, if they had had enough time], are the only genocides that
faced an international tribunal, hanging some of its most notorious
practitioners. Since then, nothing. Even Nazi genocide is questioned
by Holocaust deniers [a group as stupid as the Flat Earth folks, but
much more vicious]. Iranian president Ahmadinejad appears to belong
to both groups, although he sets aside the flat earth notion for the
high science of nuclear development.
Documented genocide goes back to antiquity, where it was a regular
practice in warfare for the winners to execute all men and boys
and take all women and girls into slavery. This practice certainly
prevents the losers from getting revenge a generation later. Read
the Greek play "The Trojan Women" for an intimate portrait of this
practice, and there is plenty of other literature documenting genocides
throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Europe.
In our fairly recent history, two hideous genocides were carried
out — one in Cambodia and the other in Rwanda. Cambodian Marxists
committed genocide against city people [marching them out to slave
labor camps where most died] and intellectuals [wearing glasses
identified them]. The worst ongoing genocide is in Sudan, which has
been an active practitioner for many decades. Their first attempt was
against their black non-Muslim population and currently it is against
a peasant black-but-Muslim population. Men are killed and women raped
and their villages destroyed. The "world community" talks and talks,
but there is political unwillingness to physically intervene. Nobody
wants to establish that precedent.
But genocide as history suddenly appeared in the American Congress in
the form of a resolution condemning the Ottoman Empire’s murder of a
million and a half Armenian citizens during World War I, a century
ago. I grew up with a mother reminding me to eat everything on the
plate and think of the "starving Armenians" who did not have this
food. I do not think that anyone educated in the Western world does
not know about this catastrophe. The question is: was this a deliberate
policy — like that of the Nazis later — to wipe out an entire people
on the basis of their religion or ethnicity? The Armenians today say
it was, but the Turks hotly deny this. They do not deny that millions
died, but they do say it was another government, that of the crumbling
and war-torn Ottoman Turkish Empire, not modern Turkey, that deserves
this criticism — and furthermore, they say it was not a policy but
rather a response to a war in which there was internal disloyalty. If
the Ottomans really wanted to wipe all Armenians off the face of the
earth, they would have rounded up those living in Istanbul and Smyrna,
which they did not do.
What makes digging up this history even more touchy is that the
majority of Armenians evacuated into the desert were provided with no
water, no refugee camps, with apparently no plan for this order at all,
and even touchier is the fact that most of the murder and rapes were
done by Kurds — yes, those same Kurds in the news today — who were
then themselves oppressed by the Ottomans and the successor Turkish
government. Not a nice story.
The Turks are terribly thin-skinned about this issue and have
stubbornly failed to apologize [a modern practice that has become
popular in the West]. The Armenian massacres have been recognized
by numerous governments mostly in Europe, but the American Armenian
lobby wants the U.S. to join this condemnation officially.
The question is, according to the U.N. genocide rules, an ongoing
genocide must be halted by force, if necessary, once the member states
use the term "genocide." Outside intervention has only happened
once, when Vietnam marched into Cambodia to stop their genocide,
which got them nothing but condemnation. During the mass killings
in the Ottoman Empire, the American ambassador and [yes] the German
ambassador both protested to the authorities and publicized the
horrors to the world. That was the closest we have come to doing the
right thing. To condemn modern Turkey with such a resolution will not
bring the dead back to life, but will inflame U.S.-Turkish relations
perhaps beyond repair.
Obviously, the world is not organized in such a way as to deal with
current genocides. Our efforts should be aimed at this end, not at
ineffectually dragging out a century-old horror that may not even
have been an organized campaign. The Ottoman Empire was a brutal,
chaotic mess, and its collapse occurred long after it had internally
imploded. We should be spending our moral capital better than this.
More attention to active genocides would be much better, but
unfortunately, presidential politics are already in play.
Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer and author of ‘Strange
Birds from Zoroaster’s Nest’ and ‘God’s Law or Man’s Law.’ Contact
her at [email protected] or visit her Web site at
http://www.santacruzsentinel .com/story.php?storySection=Opinion&sid=44725