Category: US

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Our own history of genocide

While I was working with a client yesterday, I found myself in the middle of a discussion about the repetitive nature of genocide. How it continues to happen regardless of how much time and energy we spend educating people about the last atrocity.

In a sense, a large part of this pattern has to do with our own histories of genocide. It’s difficult to support international laws that would aggressively prosecute war criminals and genocidaires when our own government is guilty of the same. Even as Canada begins prosecuting the first war criminal under its new genocide laws, the Globe and Mail reports on a new documentary entitled Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada’s Genocide, detailing the country’s policies of dealing with native peoples.

As many as half of the aboriginal children who attended the early years of residential schools died of tuberculosis, despite repeated warnings to the federal government that overcrowding, poor sanitation and a lack of medical care were creating a toxic breeding ground for the rapid spread of the disease, documents show.

A Globe and Mail examination of documents in the National Archives reveals that children continued to die from tuberculosis at alarming rates for at least four decades after a senior official at the Department of Indian Affairs initially warned in 1907 that schools were making no effort to separate healthy children from those sick with the highly contagious disease.

Peter Bryce, the department’s chief medical officer, visited 15 Western Canadian residential schools and found at least 24 per cent of students had died from tuberculosis over a 14-year period. The report suggested the numbers could be higher, noting that in one school alone, the death toll reached 69 per cent.

With less than four months to go before Ottawa officially settles out of court with most former students, a group calling itself the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared Residential School Children is urging the government to acknowledge this period in the tragic residential-schools saga – and not just the better-known cases of physical and sexual abuse.

The same is true of the United States. Even as the Commonwealth of Virginia (my current home) prepared for the Jamestown Anniversary, Native American tribes decided to use it as an opportunity to protest the government’s policy of denying them tribal status.

Despite the well documented history of nearly 400 tribes in the Virginia area, not a single group has the luxury of sovereign status. The effect? It’s creating a “paper genocide” for members of Virginia’s tribes.

Which begs the question, where are the student protest groups lining DC to demand Native American rights? It’s difficult to claim that we’re outraged by our government’s lack of response to Darfur, while at the same time ignoring what’s been happening at home.

I suppose it’s the same reason that scandals sell newspapers. When genocide happens in a far off country it’s somehow viewed through the lens of a romanticized call-to-action, whereas the one that took place here, and continues to edge forward by small degrees, is rather dirty and unpleasant.

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Yom HaShoah sacrifice

As the country watched the massacre at Virginia Tech unfold yesterday, the Jewish world was observing a holiday — the Holocaust Martyrs’ Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah). It’s an occasion to remember those who died during the Holocaust. Ironically, a survivor was one of the victims:

As Jews worldwide honored on Monday the memory of those who were murdered in the Holocaust, a 75-year-old survivor sacrificed his life to save his students in Monday’s shooting at Virginia Tech College that left 32 dead and over two dozen wounded.

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter, who had attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, “but all the students lived – because of him,” Virginia Tech student Asael Arad – also an Israeli – told Army Radio.

Several of Librescu’s other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he blocked the gunman’s way and saved their lives, said the son, Joe.

“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”

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Genocide Accountability Act

Since the end of World War II, the United States Department of Justice has actively pursued the prosecution of Nazi war criminals living within our borders through the Office of Special Investigations (OSI). Because of existing laws, the Justice Department doesn’t have the authority to try fugitives for genocide crimes, and instead deports them to their home country for prosecution.

However, a new bill that’s about to move before the full Senate would undo the precedent that keeps non-citizens from being charged with genocide in the United States.

Under current law, genocide is only considered a crime if it is committed within the United States or by a U.S. national outside the United States. The Genocide Accountability Act would close the current loophole by amending the Genocide Convention Implementation Act to allow prosecution of non-U.S. citizens for genocide committed outside the United States.

The Justice Department has identified individuals who participated in the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides and who are living in the United States under false pretenses. Under current law, these individuals cannot be arrested or prosecuted for genocide, because they are not U.S. nationals and the acts in which they were involved did not take place in the United States. In contrast, the laws on torture, material support for terrorism, terrorism financing, hostage taking, and many other federal crimes are still considered crimes when committed outside the United States by non-U.S. nationals.

Salah Abdallah Gosh, the head of security in the Sudanese government, has reportedly played a key role in the government’s genocidal campaign in Darfur. In 2005, Gosh came to Washington to meet with senior Administration officials. Under current law, the FBI could not even interview Gosh about his involvement in the Darfur genocide, much less charge him with a crime.

This is the first bill to be introduced by the subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, which was officially established at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s first business meeting of the 110th Congress. The Human Rights subcommittee’s first hearing was held in February and focused on the genocide in Darfur and other parts of the world.

Even though the bill will likely aid in the prosecution of Sudanese and Rwandan ex-pats, there’s little doubt that cases like John Demjanjuk’s would have been better served if this loophole had been closed earlier. In fact, this will hopefully give the OSI the teeth it needs to pursue fugitive war criminals with greater effectiveness.

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Darfur divestment

As Elizabeth pointed out in the comments below, the State of Virginia is pushing the idea of divesting from companies that do business with the genocidal Sudanese government. The Times-Dispatch carried the following (unsigned) opinion piece on Jan 29.

The measure is limited in scope, and no one could question the worthiness of the goal. But it raises the obvious question: Why stop there? Why not apply the same principle to other atrocious regimes in Africa — and the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America?

While divestment might prod governments to do the right thing in some cases, in others it might merely exacerbate human-rights abuses. Isolation has done little to relieve the suffering of the people of North Korea, for example.

While I understand what the author of this piece is driving at, I feel compelled to point out that they’re thinking is utterly backwards (if not completely isolationist).

First, you could easily start with any of the regions mentioned, but the reason you start with Sudan is because it’s the obvious choice. The threat of violence is current, immediate, and on-going.

Second, your assertion that divestment might merely exacerbate human-rights abuses is erroneous at best. While it could cause a backlash, as the Sudan Divestment Task Force points out the Sudanese government has shown an historic responsiveness to economic pressure, while political pressure and diplomacy alone have largely failed to stop genocide in Darfur.

Finally, if you fall back to a position of “why do this and not that,” you’re essentially conceding that you shouldn’t do anything for anyone. This is the same reasoning that spawns this kind of global hot spot, and has left those of us in the US exhausted from our government’s lack of action towards a genocide they’ve already publicly acknowledged.

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Our history of genocide

Today, we stand in the middle of what history will record as the first genocide of the 21st Century. The African Union, who have been providing a tenuous string of peacekeeping forces to the border area of Darfur, are preparing to leave the country after the Sudanese government announced that they would not allow United Nations forces to replace their mission.

Even as President Bush addressed the nation about the memory of 9/11 and claimed that “we must put aside our differences, and work together to meet the test that history has given us,” he once again shows that his focus lies in ideological struggles and not humanitarian ones. Clearly, this administration like others before it, are blind to the implications that yet another genocide will have on the global community.

As Romeo Dallaire (Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda) wrote in a letter to the CBC:

This nation, without any hesitation nor doubt, is capable and even expected by the less fortunate of this globe to lead the developed countries beyond self-interest, strategic advantages, and isolationism, and raise their sights to the realm of the pre-eminence of humanism and freedom.

The nation he was referring to was his own – Canada – but his words are even more apropos for the United States. Not only do we have the strength and finances to intervene in times of crises, we have the humanitarian services to aid those who need it. The only thing we lack is a will of leadership.

Wilson — The Armenian Genocide (1.5 million)
Roosevelt — The Holocaust (11 million)
Nixon — The Burundi Genocide (150,000)
Ford/Carter — The Cambodian Genocide (1.7 million)
Reagan — The Kurdish Genocide (50,000)
Bush/Clinton — Bosnian Genocide (8000 +)
Clinton — Rwandan Genocide (937,000)

In a memo detailing Clinton’s lack of response to the genocide in Rwanda, President Bush wrote a (now famous) message in the margins that said: “NOT ON MY WATCH.” To which I feel compelled to reply, “Welcome to the club, Mr. President.”

Bush — Darfur (400,000 and climbing)