GENOCIDE IS NOT JUST A WORD
by Brian Brivati
The Guardian, UK
Oct 12 2006
While the French and Turkish governments rake over the past, mass
murder and mass rape continues in Darfur.
The French parliament votes today on a bill which will make it an
offence to deny that genocide took place in Armenia.
In response the Turkish parliament is drafting a bill to make it
illegal to deny that the French committed genocide in Algeria.
Another committee is proposing to make May 8 Algeria genocide memorial
day in Turkey. If universal jurisdiction is to be rejuvenated as
a concept after the Belgian laws on genocide were reversed then of
course anyone can get in on the act. The Turkish response is natural
enough. What is interesting is that many Turkish dissenters, including
people arrested for telling the truth about the Armenia genocide,
have come out strongly against the bill. The French government has also
opposed the passage of the legislation. The Algerians, enjoying French
discomfort, have welcomed the proposed Turkish legislation. There
are many issues wrapped up in this storm.
The positive aspect is that the Armenian genocide, often the forgotten
genocide of the 20th century, is being debated across Europe. If
that was the intention of the bill’s sponsors then they have achieved
their objective. In turn the Turkish response forced the French onto
the defensive about their colonial past.
The negative aspect of all this is the ever greater politicisation
of the word "genocide" and its reduction in impact. Genocide is only
a word, of course, and whether or not we use it to describe crimes
against humanity should not really matter in terms of our response
to events. However, because of the genocide convention, it does
matter if we call something by this term rather another term. The
case of Darfur shows this. When the UN report on the first phase of
the Sudanese government’s campaign against its African population in
Darfur was published it concluded that terrible violations of human
rights, including mass murder, has taken place, but that the events
fell short of the definition in the convention.
This has happened in every case of genocide since the convention
was passed. Remember the linguistic games during Rwanda, the lengths
to which officials would go not to use the word. So we live in this
strange world in which politicians and activists rush to label things
genocide so that they can wrap their particular suffering in the most
extreme form of human suffering – the US and UK are committing genocide
in Iraq, apparently – while the UN contorts itself in order to avoid
calling Darfur or Rwanda genocide. The author of that UN report has
recently said that it does not matter what word you use to describe
what happened in Darfur, but something had to be done about it. As it
happens again in Darfur the debate is reopened about how to describe
what is taking place. It is a looking glass world in which scale and
intent do not matter as much as the political case to be made at any
one time.
As a historian, I welcome all debate about the past and it is important
that we analyse Turkish guilt in Armenia and French guilt in Algeria,
but perhaps, just at the moment, the French and Turkish parliaments
should be spending their time a little more usefully by debating
how to stop the mass murder and mass rape which is currently being
perpetrated by the Sudanese government in Darfur.