By Brendan Walsh
There have been many genocides in human history from Ukraine to Armenia, from Timor-Leste to Rwanda, from China to what is now the United States and of course Europe during the Holocaust. It’s deeply troubling how little coverage of any genocide gets, apart from the Holocaust of course. This is the worst crime imaginable but knowledge of the subject is scant at best. Does anybody even know what the United Nations Genocide Convention says or what the eight stages of genocide are?
There are five criteria under the genocide convention each of which constitutes genocide; a) killing members of a group, b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a group, c) inflicting conditions on a group in an attempt to bring about its destruction in whole or in part, d) imposing measures to curtail births in the group, e) forcibly transferring children yif one group to another. These acts only constitute genocide if one or more is inflicted upon a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. In a previous piece I’ve discussed why this isn’t sufficient criteria for a genocide and how the genocide convention should be widened. However, it is far superior to nothing and we must thank Raphael Lemkin for pushing the envelope at the United Nations for so long to have the convention adopted. He is the man who, inspired by the genocide of the Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans, coined the term genocide in 1943. His headstone reads ‘Father of the Genocide Convention’.
The eight stages of genocide are as follows; 1) classification of the ‘enemy’ or the victim. 2) symbolisation of the victim. This would be like the yellow stars for Jews in Germany or the Rwandan identity cards that said ethnicity in them. 3) dehumanisation through propaganda, hate speech, etc. 4) organisation such as the building of camps, formation of death squads, import of weapons. 5) polarisation such as propaganda and other methods creating an ‘us vs them’ scenario and doing away with moderates. 6) preparation which means death lists are drawn up, victims are found and rounded up, segregation may occur like ghettoes created by the Nazis. 7) genocide. This is when the pogroms and killings begin. 8) denial. The perpetrators will try to hide their crimes. This may happen around the time of the killing too. When their crimes are found they will try to deny it the way the Bosnian Serbs or the Turkish have done and continue to do.
I have often found it problematic the attention the Holocaust gets in comparison to other genocides, often at their expense. This is not to diminish what happened during the Holocaust, on the contrary in fact. The argument I wish to make is that other genocides are forgotten and that is an insult to the victims. The Holocaust should of course be remembered and commemorated as it is. I’d rather wish to argue that other genocides are given similar levels of attention. The Holocaust gets a huge amount of attention and rightly so, I’m arguing other genocides should get the same treatment.
The lack of knowledge of genocides other than the Holocaust is deeply troubling. The Holocaust was an awful event, no doubt. However, it is treated as though it were an isolated event. To do this is to ignore the context in which it existed and the fact that Hitler viewed the Armenian genocide, and how no one cared about them, as a loose template for genocide of the Jews, he felt no one would care about them. I have often feared that to focus on the Holocaust as a singular event exceptionalises it in a way that fails to view it in the context of genocide but rather a massive crime against humanity that stands alone. Of course, we should learn about the Holocaust, there is no doubt in that, I just fear that focusing so much on it takes some attention away from other victims, many of whom have still not gotten any semblance of justice, like the Armenians. In schools, in the media, in popular culture, there must be more discussion about Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Timor-Leste, Armenia, Holodomor, Nanjing, Sri Lanka, I could go on for ages naming genocides. I do not wish to diminish the Holocaust in any way, that is certainly not my intention.
Knowledge of this most heinous act is so limited it’s quite terrifying. We often hear that we must learn from history in order not to repeat it. It’s time to put our money where our mouths are. I once challenged a teacher of mine when discussing the Holocaust. I said that I was sick of hearing about it when I’d not been taught about other genocides. I was totally desensitised which I viewed as a bad thing. I had grown bored of it because it was learning about the same thing. I wasn’t seeking entertainment, it’s just hard to learn the same thing over and over. This was evinced by a trip I took to Auschwitz in 2013 when I felt absolutely nothing. I didn’t feel sad at all. I felt totally unaffected, unlike my recent trip to S21 prison in Phnom Penh and the Killing Fields not too far outside Phnom Penh. I was in a dreadful mood after those simply because I hadn’t been force fed it in school like I had been World War II and the Holocaust. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be taught the Holocaust but the overemphasis disempowers the message. If I were to visit the genocide memorial in Kigali or Srebrenica I can assure you I’d be in tears. I would have been in tears in Phnom Penh had the humidity not sapped my body of all its moisture. I wanted to be sad and troubled in Auschwitz and was worried when I wasn’t but I had heard so much about it that it was hard to be upset because it wasn’t as though it were the first time I’d heard about it. It’s the same reason I don’t get upset reading about the Potato Famine.
I pushed this teacher for an answer. I wanted to know why the Jews were getting more coverage and sympathy than the Tutsis (and moderate Hutus), the Armenians, the Bosniaks, the Biafrans, or the Cambodians. Granted this sounds bigoted but I was 17 at the time and wasn’t as diplomatic in my phrasing as I could have been. I would say a huge part of that is because the Holocaust took place so close to home and because so many Jews made their way to the United States and were able to immortalise this event through film, television, books, etc. That makes perfect sense and is reasonable. They can only talk about their own experiences and why wouldn’t they? Not too many Rwandans made their way to the United States, not too many East Timorans made their way either. It’s only natural we’d hear more about the Holocaust and that makes sense.
Another oft cited reason for this extra attention in the Holocaust is the industrial nature of the extermination. This is a facile argument as at least 800,000 people were slaughtered in six weeks in Rwanda. Were this to have happened during just the years of World War II, as many as 40 million people would have been killed. I don’t understand why the method or industrial nature of such an atrocity makes any difference. Death is death, murder is murder. To cite the Nazis’ industrial methods is to allow them to dictate how we teach history, the last I checked the Nazis lost the war. All genocide should appall us in the way the Holocaust does but it regrettably doesn’t.
It’s our educator’s responsibility to teach us about other genocides. By treating the Holocaust as a special event as opposed to just another genocide and emphasising it so much, I mean that in the most respectful way possible, we exceptionalise it which ultimately leads to complacency with regards to other genocides. We don’t view the Holocaust and Rwanda as the same type of event yet they are similar if not the same. The banality of evil knows no bounds and these are no exceptions. To treat the Holocaust as a singular event is to make it seem as though it is a one-off, as though it is an exceptional event. It certainly isn’t. This is to be negligent leading to complacency and myopia regarding other atrocities.
If we truly wish to learn from history we must know it first. We must understand these political concepts. It’s time to sit down students, teach them what the genocide convention says. Show them the skulls, the severed limbs, the bloody machetes, show them the raped bodies of those poor women and men. Teach them who Roméo Dallaire is, who Mbaye Diagne was. These two men are personal heroes of mine. Teach them about Oskar Schindler too, bring them to his factory in Krakow or the concentration camp in nearby Plasow. Of course show them the gas chambers and skewer Adolf Hitler and his disgusting cronies. But don’t solely focus on them. Focus on people like Augustin Bizimana, the Young Turks, Joseph Stalin, Toujou Hideki, the current Burmese government, Muhammad Suharto, etc. as well as the Nazi death machine. To focus on the Holocaust so disproportionately mystifies the event as though it exists in a vacuum. Anti-semitism existed in Germany long before 1933 and certainly not in a vacuum. If we want to stop this in the future, proper and more balances and proportionate education of the subject is the best way. To focus on the Holocaust as a standalone event is to imply that it could never happen again. It has and it is.
How many people know what the Genocide Convention actually says? How many people know that rape is genocide? How many people know that kidnapping another group’s children is genocide? How many people know that inflicting inhuman conditions on a particular group is genocide? This would make what’s happening to the Rohingya in the Rakhine State at least genocidal acts if not actual genocide. This would make Daesh a genocidal group for what they are doing to the Yazidis. One could even argue what Turkey have done and are doing to the Kurds as genocide. A recent recommendation to the Irish government has come out imploring them to declare Daesh as such. This is long overdue and welcomed. Too many people think genocide is just killing. It’s not. Genocide is anything that could conceivably bring about the destruction of a group whether that be a big or a small act.
Genocide could happen anywhere and has done all too often. The problem I have with the intense focus the Holocaust gets is that it takes focus from people who are still victims of previous genocides. This is at best negligent, at worst downright pernicious. Again, this is not to diminish the Holocaust in any way. For the most part, the Nazis have been brought to justice. The Third Reich was toppled, the Nuremberg Trials happened, Germany is one of the freest and most just societies on earth at present. However, Turkey still denies a genocide took place against the Armenians in 1915. They like to blame it on anything they can that isn’t the Ottoman Empire. Some high-ranking Turkish officials have even blamed the Bedouins which would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. Armenians have been lobbying Washington D.C to declare what happened in 1915 as a genocide. They still haven’t though because Turkey is a vital cog in the geopolitical situation of the Middle East and they seem that rocking the Turkish boat would be unwise. Former president Barack Obama said before his election that a genocide occurred but failed to repeat this when he acceded to the premiership.
Little is known about more recent acts of genocide such as that of Darfur or that of Sri Lankan forces against Tamil civilians in the 26 year civil war that ended in 2009. Sri Lankan soldiers killed Tamil civilians by shelling villages outside exclusion zones. This is not technically genocide but rather war crimes. Sri Lankan soldiers also filmed themselves shooting civilians and raping Tamil women. These acts are certainly within the realm of genocide. Channel 4’s documentary ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ is an excellent piece of journalism that explains this better than I ever could. I would highly recommend it but do be warned, its distressing nature may cause you to pause multiple times, as it did me, and compose yourself.
What of the Rape of Nanjing of 1937 in which Japanese soldiers had competitions to see how many civilians they could kill? Some Japanese politicians still deny this ever occurred including the former mayor of Nagoya, Kawamura Takashi. The recent scandal of the Apa Hotels in Sapporo highlighted this issue. Books were placed in hotel rooms that denied this atrocity ever occurred as well as denying comfort women were taken by the Japanese imperial forces. As a result Chinese and Korean athletes declined to stay at the hotel during the Asian Winter Games and voiced their displeasure repeatedly. Apa Hotel was one of two designated hotels for athletes during the games. This event in Nanjing as well as other instances of atrocities conducted by the Japanese are not publicised at all yet they occurred around the same time as the Holocaust.
One may argue the scale of death was different. 300,000 people died in Nanjing, 11 million died during the Holocaust. However, 6 million were Jews. The rest were Poles, homosexuals, disabled people, Gypsies, amongst others. We tend to only hear about the Jews though. Again I must stress that I’m not diminishing the Jews’ suffering but rather hoping that other victims get the same recognition. Regardless of this, when did a hierarchy of death become a thing? 300,000, 6 million, 11 million, however many is too much.
If I were to ask how many films you could name based on the Holocaust, you would be able to name at least five or more. Schindler’s List, Jakob the Liar, the Pianist, Sophie’s Choice, the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas are a few I could name. Hotel Rwanda starring Don Cheadle is a well-known film about the Rwandan genocide. It was, however, decried by UNAMIR General Roméo Dallaire as being Hollywood guff but at least it was keeping the story alive. The Killing Fields starring Sam Waterstone is another well-known film about the Cambodian Genocide. Try name a film about Darfur, Armenia, or Ukraine. It’s a struggle is it not? Popular culture is a crucial driver in education of these events. Fictional and dramatised accounts can really tell us a lot and convey the story. There is no shame in being entertained by them. However, there is very little in popular culture about these events.
There are however plenty of documentaries on these events which is very important and certainly welcomed. ‘Aghet’ documents the Armenian genocide prodigiously. PBS’s ‘Ghosts of Rwanda’ elucidates the fine details of Rwanda’s genocide. The previously mentioned ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ by Channel 4 is a magnificent documentation of events towards the end of the civil war in 2009. BBC’s ‘The Fall of Yugoslavia’ which is a six part documentary is another excellent source of information. There are plenty of books too. People like Ed Vuillamy, Roméo Dallaire, Samantha Power, Linda Melvern, among many others have documented these events tremendously with their skillful and beautiful words. World without Genocide is another fantastic source with a wealth of information, you can find them at worldwithoutgenocide.org.
The main point I am trying to argue is that while the Holocaust was an atrocious event, worthy of all the condemnation and compassion we can muster, it cannot stand alone. To do so would be to relegate other genocides to history books if even that. I don’t remember reading about Biafra in school. Other people who have suffered miss out on genuine and competent support because we’ve heard so much about the Holocaust. To learn from the history of the Holocaust we must learn about all the other holocausts that occurred. There is little left to learn about the real event until we look at it through the lens of the genocide convention, or the eight stages of genocide, and alongside other similar atrocities. The Holocaust was atrocious but we know enough about it. It’s time to listen to the Rwandans, the Biafrans, the Chinese, the Ukrainians, the Armenians, the Rohingya, need I go on?
Why is it still acceptable for Japan to retain its imperial flag that they fought and massacred civilians under but Germany can’t keep its Nazi flag? Germany shouldn’t keep that flag, let’s be very clear about that. I’m just pondering why Japan hasn’t been fully relieved of its genocidal past. Japan has scarcely been condemned for its deplorable treatment of the native Ainu people from Hokkaido and northern Honshu. Germany is still associated with the Holocaust but Japan is associated with robots and animated pornography despite carrying out genocide at the same time as the Nazis. Turkey is associated with kebabs and Turkish Delight. Indonesia is associated with lovely beaches. Ukraine is associated with beautiful blonde women. Armenia is associated with Henrikh Mkhitaryan. Genocide wouldn’t come to mind too readily for most when mentioning these places. It’s time to look at history again and give these genocides, these victims of these genocides the coverage, the compassion, the empathy they deserve if we are to truly learn from the past and never repeat or let such atrocities be repeated.
Straight Down The Centre 