GENOCIDE FORUM OMITS U.S. VIOLATIONS
University Wire
February 11, 2008 Monday
The three-day human rights forum kicking off today at Cal State Long
Beach is welcomed, needed and long overdue. While the event will
inform and address atrocities perpetuated on a global level, a focus
on U.S. human rights violations should be built into the program.
Certainly, California’s own history of allowing and condoning genocide
and human dignity violations should be offered as visible components.
With no doubt in mind, the Holocaust in 1930s and 40s Germany is a
crucial topic that will always be locked in human memory. Genocides
in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East will surely be repeated
if knowledge of their existences is not continuously shared.
Existing evidence of humanity’s inhumanity to other humans on an
international scale is more than enough to have presentations on
Darfur, Rwanda, Armenia and practically every corner of the globe where
one group attempts – and often succeeds – in eradicating another group.
The reasons one race, ethnicity, class regime, political power,
religion or other symbolic brute-of-the-month employ to justify
wiping other humans out of existence might seem inconsequential to
the average college student, but genocide is learned behavior.
Human rights horrors are not just phenomena that happen someplace
else; it’s not only "others" who are victimized, raped, tortured and
murdered, who are stripped of family, language, culture, identity
and property. It happens on a cyclical basis on our own turf.
Enslaving blacks who were dragged here on ships was an act of
genocide. The European "discovery" of the "Land of the Free," and
consequential planned extermination and decimation of Native American
populations, was genocide.
The U.S. genocides wer recognized by the United Nations in the 2007
Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a document the U.S.,
Australia, New Zealand and Canada blatantly refused to accept.
Our historically male-dominated country incorporated women’s rights
violations into its social doctrine and continues the practice.
California’s mistreatment of Latinas/os, Native Americans, Chinese
and many others seems as if it’s on a generational rotation. Yet
we continue to marginalize by depriving fellow humans of access to
education and critical economic resources.
People who come to our country seeking a better way of life are met
with hostility and violence.
In California, we’ve seen a constant and continuous trend of wanting
people from Mexico to do our grunt work, only to be criminalized and
deported when deemed a burden on the economy.
We as a nation are equally to blame on an international level for
practicing patterns of racism, hegemony and ethnocentricity toward
any human group unlucky enough to be in a minor capacity.
Many of these issues are either overlooked, underrepresented or
absent in the planned presentations during the President’s Forum on
International Human Rights.
When a society refuses to acknowledge its complicity in perpetuating
assaults on human life and dignity, it essentially condones the
actions.
The current events at CSULB are vital in keeping the social conscience
alert. Finger-pointing needs also to be directed inward to include
the U.S. and our own state’s responsibility and complicity.
Too many wounds are still open to infection.
Hopefully, this forum is merely the beginning.