Chidi Chike Achebe, MD, MPH
“Never Again?”
'In Germany,
they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Trade Unionists.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and no one was left to speak up.'
- Attributed to Pastor Martin Niemoeller, Dachau, Germany, 1941
Fifty years ago, following the genocidal murder of 6 million Jews (1.5 million children), the world joined Holocaust survivors in chanting this mantra: “Never Again…. Never again will we be hunted down and killed. Never again will we live in fear. Never again, never again.” [i] Since that time, the world community made a solemn promise to be vigilant and to prevent genocide from rearing its ugly head on the planet again.
Families that have had to bear the historical, emotional and psychological scars of genocide such as the Drissman family, provide this profound reminder to the world: “Never again is a wonderful mantra. It ranks right up there with ‘we won’t negotiate with terrorists.” Of course we know that words mean nothing. Only action counts.” [ii]
Several conventions have passed resolutions and ratifications to prevent and punish war crimes and genocidal killings. Two such documents include: The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This article was approved and proposed for signature and ratification or accession by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 260 A (III) of 9 December 1948. It saw it’s entry into force 12 January 1951, in accordance with article XIII. The other is The Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. It was adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by the UN General Assembly resolution 2391 (XXIII) of 26 November 1968 and later entered into force 11 November 1970, in accordance with article VIII. [iii]
The world’s dismal record of preventing genocide is proof enough of the failure to enforce the substance of these and other resolutions. Virtually every single continent on the planet has witnessed genocide, ethnic cleansing, or large scale political murders since the Holocaust. Europe has been plagued by the Russia –Chechnya conflict, a history of sporadic persecutions in Crimea, Dagestan and Ingushetia. Genocide and recurrent war in the Balkan and surrounding states: Croatia, Serbia, the former Yugoslavia- Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina has been particularly concerning. Georgia- Abkhazia; Northern Ireland, Macedonia, and Basque country have also been scenes of ethnic, religious or political murders.
In Asia, these murders have occurred in nations such as Cambodia, India –Gujarat, Kashmir; Nepal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Philippines, Uzbekistan - Fergana Valley, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Other nations affected by this activity include Tibet, East Timor, Laos, Burma (Myanmar), North Korea and the Peoples Republic of China. [iv] Latin America has witnessed racial, ethnic and political killings in Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Venezuela, Paraguay and Mexico.
The Early Explorers
Historians are quick to remind us that Genocide has been a ‘recurring nightmare’ for centuries. Ward Churchill, professor of Native American studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and author of the book A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present, sparked a great debate a few years ago with the assertion that the discoverer Columbus triggered large scale genocide of Native American peoples in the Americas. This view is shared by a number of other intellectuals and captured succinctly in the passage below:
"For his second voyage to the Americas, Columbus took the title Admiral of the Ocean Sea and proceeded to unleash a reign of terror unlike anything seen before or since. When he was finished, eight million Arawaks -- virtually the entire native population of Hispaniola -- had been exterminated by torture, murder, forced labor, starvation, disease and despair.” [v]
Columbus’ exploits pale in comparison to the human rights abuses and atrocities that were to begin a century later in the New World.
For its sheer scale, duration and brutality, the North American institution of Slavery and the antecedent Atlantic Slave trade, ranks very high on the all time list of man’s inhumane treatment of his fellow man. University of Virginia History professor Joseph C. Miller tells more:
“The Atlantic Slave Trade linked four continents in a tragic uprooting and subjugation of millions of Africans, the largest ‘forced migration’ in the history of the world that lasted more than four hundred years between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries.” [vi]
According to P. D. Curtin, distinguished Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, 8 million Africans were transported on 25,000 ship voyages across the Atlantic during this period. Several other experts such as Professor McCaughey of Columbia University’s Barnard College, and Hugh Thomas have revised this figure upwards into the double digit millions. All told, the total number of Africans that perished during this evil trade in human cargo- ‘the middle passage’ - and through the course of Slavery has been estimated to have totaled anywhere from 16-20 million. [vii]
Other early explorers, merchants and discovers were equally vicious, as the harrowing account of the plight of the Aboriginals on the Australian continent indicates. Beginning with the first foreign settlements in 1788, the population of the native inhabitants of that country declined through several means of ‘systematic annihilation’ from a high of 750,000 in the late 18th century to just 31,000 a century later. Most aboriginals succumbed to new diseases introduced by the settlers. Documents indicate that about 20,000 were murdered! [viii]
B.A. Robinson of Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance elucidates:
In those days, "The Sydney Herald claimed that blacks had bestowed no labor upon the land - their ownership, their right, was nothing more than that of the Emu or the Kangaroo. Courts rejected Aboriginal evidence, because non-Christians could not swear oaths, and the killers used 'the defense that Aboriginal morality did not exist.” [ix]
The aggression against Aboriginals persisted for more than 60 years into the 20th century in the form of government sanctioned assimilation policies that uprooted and then placed upwards of 30% of Aboriginal children in the care of white families. The goal of the government was to assimilate “these people into the general population.” A historical milestone that ‘added insult to injury’ came in the form of a government law that granted Aboriginals, original natives of the continent, citizenship of Australia in 1967.” [x]
Imperialism and World Conflicts
Expanding empires and world wars have long provided the milieu for human rights violations. The British (India - Jallianwallah Bagh massacre, etc), Belgian (Congo), French (Algeria), Spanish (conquistadors in the Americas), and Portuguese (Mozambique - Mueda’s massacre) are all guilty of human rights abuses and atrocities perpetrated against native populations that they conquered, colonized and subjugated through out the world. However, nothing that occurred in these empires is as glaring an example of outright genocide as what occurred during the second year of the First World War, in the Ottoman Empire. A horrifying pogrom against the Armenian minority there, orchestrated by the “Young Turk” government, led to the murder of about 1.5 million Armenians in the space of twelve months (1915-1916)” [xi]
Not to be outdone, on December 9, 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army launched an attack on the former Chinese capital city of Nanking. Over the next 6 weeks, through “an orgy of looting and mass execution,” they murdered upwards of 300,000 civilians and raped about 20,000 women. This atrocity has left a bitter “legacy of distrust, which even today tarnishes relations between Japan and the other countries of East Asia." [xii]
World War II saw the resurgence of unspeakable war offenses. Armed with racial and religious bigotry, disseminated by a highly organized ideological and political propaganda apparatus, the Nazis succeeded in keeping the majority German population in a state of “mental and physical paralysis” from 1940-45. During this time, they wiped out a third of the world’s Jewish population, 3 million Poles (10% of the population), as well as one third of the Catholic priests in Poland .Other targeted groups included homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses and the physically and mentally disabled. Slavs, Russians, socialists and other dissenters were also murdered in large numbers. All told, the Nazis massacred a grand total of about 12 million men, women and children. [xiii]
Borrowing a leaf from the Nazis, a segment of the minority population settled in South Africa set up the racist system of Apartheid after World War II. Revelations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission indicate that over the course of the next half century, millions of black South Africans were forcibly deported and transported to ‘designated homelands.’ Tens of thousands died from murder (Sharpesville, Soweto massacres), torture, disappearances and detention in prisons.
Dictators, ideological and religious extremists
Stalin
Joseph Stalin, ruled the U.S.S.R. from 1929 to 1953 and into the early phase of the Cold War. His tyrannical, “iron fisted” dictatorship resulted in the death, disappearance and execution of upwards of 41[xiv]million soviet citizens. Between 1936 and 1939, during a period known as the Great Purge, “1.2 million Communist party members -- more than half the party -- were arrested, of which 600,000 died by torture, execution or perished in the Gulag.” [xv] His tactics are clearly highlighted in this passage from the United Human Rights Council:
“Joseph Stalin set in motion events designed to cause a famine in the Ukraine to destroy the people there seeking independence from his rule. As a result, an estimated 7,000,000 persons perished in this farming area, known as the breadbasket of Europe, with the people deprived of the food they had grown with their own hands” [xvi]
The second half of the 20th Century
The latter half of the 20th century witnessed several cases of genocide rivaling the Holocaust. In Cambodia, from the mid to late 1970s, approximately 2 million individuals or nearly a quarter of the entire country’s population was decimated by the repressive regimen of the Khmer Rouge led by the despot Pol Pot. This “government combined extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and a diabolical disregard for human life to produce repression, misery, and murder on a massive scale.” [xvii]
Religious, racial or political exterminations occurred in Africa under dictators – Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko, Said Mohamed Barre, Samuel Doe, Charles Taylor and every Nigerian dictator over the past 40 years. In Latin America they took place under the watch of dictators Pinochet, General Hugo Banzer Suarez, Major General Guillermo Rodriguez, and Major General Juan and several others. Europe has produced the genocide masterminds Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic in recent memory. In the Middle East, Saddam Hussein will be remembered amongst other things as the architect behind the Kurdish genocide. Genocide watchdog organizations continue to be concerned about the endless cycle of violence in the Middle East (Israeli/Palestinian conflict) and Africa and the resurgence of an old enemy – religious fundamentalism and intolerance
The African Tragedies
Some scholars believe that Africa joined the ignoble club of ‘genocide plagued continents’ late. However, it appears she is poised to outdo all the rest in the frequency of this form of senseless violence! Today, there are about 14 different battles, conflicts or wars on the African continent! From Biafra, Angola and Sierra Leone to Congo, Somalia and Ethiopia, Eritrea, Cote d’Ivoire Liberia, Morocco- Western Sahara, Egypt, Algeria, Madagascar, Mali, Chad, Guinea Bissau, Casamance- Senegal, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi and Ethiopia, Africa has born a heavy weight of political, racial, ethnic and religious instability.
Rwanda
“When I came out, there were no birds,” said one survivor who had hidden throughout the genocide. “There was sunshine and the stench of death.” [xviii]
A decade ago, ‘as the world slept,’ an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in a horrifyingly short span of 100 days. Early, simplistic analysis of the tragedy blamed the genocide on ancient animosities between the Tutsis and Hutus. In his landmark book published in 1998, called "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda,” Philip Gourevitch explores the Rwandan tragedy in depth. David Garrow of the Washington Monthly tells more:
“Gourevitch debunks the notion that the genocide was the inevitable result of "ancient" tribal enmities. The hatred was of a more recent vintage. For centuries Tutsis and Hutus were porous constructs - based on class as well as racial distinctions - until Rwanda's Belgian colonizers rigidly divided society along tribal lines. The Belgians granted Tutsis superior status and relegated the Hutus to virtual serfdom. Then, in 1959, the colonizers abruptly switched allegiances, backing the Hutus in an uprising that toppled the Tutsi overlords - and led to 35 years of increasingly brutal majority rule.” [xix]
Garrow goes further:
“Gourevitch issues a damning indictment of the United Nations, whose top bureaucrats received unequivocal evidence of an imminent Holocaust, but cut and ran after 10 Belgian peacekeepers were murdered and mutilated the first night of the massacres. The United States government behaved with equal cowardice. The Clinton administration went to absurd lengths to avoid using the word "genocide" - a qualification which would have obligated it to intervene as a signatory to the 1948 Genocide Convention. But for dastardly behavior, nobody matched the French. Driven by his friendship with Habyarimana and his distaste for the Anglophone rebels, the late French President Francois Mitterrand embraced the genocidaires. The French funneled arms to the Hutus, and in June 1994 they launched a last ditch pro-Hutu intervention dressed up as a humanitarian aid mission.” [xx]
Today, this south-central African nation is still struggling to come to terms with and to heal the psychological, emotional, social, economic and political wounds left behind by the genocide and its subsequent humanitarian upheaval.
Sadly, a decade after the horror of Rwanda, genocide has re-appeared on the African continent, fueled by an ancient human scourge – religious and racial intolerance.
Religious intolerance: The bane of the 21st century
“O People,” the prophet had said, “just as you regard as sacred this month and this day [the day of Hajj] and this city [Mecca], so, too, regard the life and property of every Muslim. All mankind is [descended] from Adam and Eve; an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab or a non-Arab over an Arab. A white man has no superiority over black or a black over white….”
– The Last Sermon by the holy prophet Muhammad, From the Holy Koran
The colossal African American Intellectual W.E.B. Dubois defined the 20th century’s greatest challenge as the “... the problem of the colour line; of the relations between the lighter and darker races of man ...” At the turn of the 21st century, all indications point to religious intolerance and its corollaries as the greatest obstacle to world peace and stability! Conflicts in the Middle East, Cyprus, Chechnya, India/Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Mauritania, Macedonia, Germany’s neo-Nazism, the Basque region of France, and simmering undercurrent resentments in post war Balkans; all have the underpinnings of religious intolerance.
Perhaps no where on earth is this more glaring than in Sudan. There, a conglomeration of factors including religious bigotry, racial and ethnic hatred has combined with greed and foreign multinational oil interests to create the world’s greatest humanitarian emergency.
SUDAN
Today we are again silent spectators to a horrifying drama in the Darfur region of Sudan. A civil war has raged in Sudan for over 18 months, involving Black African farmers and the Arab militia – both predominantly Muslim. The farmers, represented by two groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement have been overwhelmed by the Sudanese government backed armed militias called the Janjaweed, who have with vicious impunity, terrorized, murdered and raped black African rebels in Darfur – a region that lies to the west of this, the largest country in Africa. The governments tactics have been typical- Sudanese military planes have bombed villages, after which Arab militias have been brought in, often on horses, to rape and kill survivors.
The humanitarian Crisis in SUDAN
A Mother in a Refugee Camp
No Madonna and Child could touch
Her tenderness for a son
She soon would have to forget. . . .
The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored steps
Behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there
Had long ceased to care, but not this one:
She held a ghost-smile between her teeth,
And in her eyes the memory
Of a mother's pride. . . . She had bathed him
And rubbed him down with bare palms.
She took from their bundle of possessions
A broken comb and combed
The rust-colored hair left on his skull
And then-humming in her eyes-began carefully to part it.
In their former life this was perhaps
A little daily act of no consequence
Before his breakfast and school; now she did it
Like putting flowers on a tiny grave.
---- By Chinua Achebe Collected Poems, Anchor Books, August 2004 [xxi]
The United States Secretary of State Colin Powell testified recently before the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, calling the disaster in Sudan Genocide and imploring the United States and the United Nations to act swiftly and effectively to put a halt to this humanitarian disaster.
Echoing Powell’s remarks have been sentiments by Mukesh Kapila, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, who in a BBC interview referred to the genocide in Darfur as "the world's greatest humanitarian crisis….. And I don't know why the world isn't doing more about it. . . . The only difference between Rwanda and Darfur now is the numbers involved.” [xxii]
At the last count, over 50,000 villagers had died, over 1.5 million refugees were homeless and scores of thousands more lived in great dread of imminent attack and murder. According to several international aid agencies, close to 500,000 more men, women and children are at risk of perishing from the ravages of disease and hunger in the months ahead if immediate steps are not taken by the world community to end the Darfur genocide.
A recent Editorial published in The St Petersburg Times succinctly captures this sense of urgency:
“The relief group Save the Children estimates that of the 1.2-million in so-called safe camps, at least 500,000 are under the age of 5. Children are the most vulnerable victims in a war, and meeting their needs is entirely dependent on a massive influx of peacekeepers and aid. Time is the enemy of this relief effort,” Save the Children's Charles MacCormack said recently. The world should heed his urgent appeal.” [xxiii]
The missing pieces of the puzzle
The present humanitarian disaster in Darfur, many experts insist, must be placed in the proper historical context to fully comprehend the problem at hand.
Since 1983, in a conflict involving north and south Sudan, more than one million Black African Sudanese Christians have been killed. The United Nations Human Rights Commission’s special investigator Gaspar Biro, the Jubilee Campaign and Christian Solidarity International have all repeatedly sounded alarms highlighting the fact that The National Islamic Front had employed murder, rape, and torture in a an attempt to eradicate Christianity from Sudan. At that time, several human rights organizations documented Christian villages burned to the ground and raided, Christian men and women murdered, enslaved and raped, Priests tortured and imprisoned and children sold into slavery. [xxiv] Some believe that there lies a hidden, insidious agenda that links what has happened to Black Sudanese Christians to the present tragedy in Darfur.
The BBC illuminates:
“The Arab killers and rapists in Darfur are Muslims, and so are the victims—black African farmers. The Arabs are herdsmen, and have been competing for water, forage, and the land itself with the African farmers. Sudan's government is supporting the Arab Janjaweed militia's ferocious intent to make Darfur, in the west of Sudan, "Zurga-free." That term is the equivalent of "nigger" used by white racists. It also echoes the Nazis' mission to make Europe "judenfrei"—Jew-free.
The Sudanese government sanctions genocide in Darfur for several other reasons. Hassan Turabi, the leader of a major rebel group - the Justice and Equality Movement, and a powerful Muslim cleric, has been a scathing critic of the Khartoum government for years. The Sudanese government perceives Darfur – a strong political base for Turabi- "as a back-door way for Turabi" to wreak political havoc and topple the central government. [xxv]
John Penergast, an Africa expert at the International Crisis Group in Washington provides this additional perspective: He believes that the Sudanese government continues genocidal activities in Darfur because there's a risk that north- south peace talks could very well fail and that Darfur groups could then conceivably build alliances with southern and eastern rebels and generate “a solid military threat to Khartoum from five or six directions”. [xxvi]
The role of China and its oil industry in prolonging the Crisis
Driven by its insatiable need for oil to fuel its rapidly expanding economy, China has invested billions of dollars in several countries of ‘marginal stability and democracy’ according to Human Rights Watch. By far, China’s greatest foreign investment and success abroad has been in the Sudanese oil industry, where it has helped construct a 1,500-kilometer-long pipeline from Blocks 1 and 2 (oil reserves) to the Red Sea. China Petroleum Engineering & Construction Corporation (CPECC) – the construction arm of China’s National Petroleum Company (CNPC) - also spearheaded the construction of a refinery near Khartoum as well as oil rigs, processing plants and jetties in the region. [xxvii]
Over the past decade, China has also emerged as the principal supplier of heavy and light artillery and arms to Sudan. Weapon supplies have included ammunition, tanks, helicopters, antipersonnel and antitank mines and fighter aircraft- armaments that have been used in the genocide in Darfur. [xxviii]
Human Rights Watch concluded that “while China’s motivation for this arms trade appeared to be primarily economic, China made available easy financing for some of these arms purchases.” [xxix]
It is little wonder; therefore, given her deep economic interests in Sudan, that China has been at the forefront of nations precluding an international alliance to sanction the government of Sudan and prevent any further genocide. In a memorandum published recently, James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation concluded:
“The U.N. Security Council has been hamstrung by the pro-Khartoum policies of China, Russia, Pakistan, and Algeria. China, which has a huge financial stake in Sudan's oil industry and is a leading importer of Sudan's oil, has used the threat of a veto to dilute the resolutions on Darfur. UNSCR 1564, passed on September 18, timidly warned Khartoum that, unless it complies with demands to stop the killing, the Security Council will "consider taking additional measures...such as actions to affect Sudan's petroleum sector and the Government of Sudan.” [xxx]
Genocide -What Can Be Done?
Identify, confront and eliminate the roots of Genocide: Numerous studies indicate that war, ignorance, religious intolerance, hatred, racism, tyranny, and ‘orchestrated dehumanizing public discourse that denies whole groups of people their dignity and their rights’ [xxxi] (The Nazis, Milosevic, Rwanda) lie at the foundation of factors that create the milieu for genocide to surface. Identifying these root causes is the simple step. Actually putting meaningful measures in place to confront these pathologies at their early stage and thus eliminating them is the challenge. Here are some suggestions:
Prevent armed conflict, protect civilians
Genocide almost always occurs during war. Battle strategy often employs dehumanizing propaganda and “coded language – collateral damage, casualties, the enemy etc” against the adversary. This strategy, psychologically ‘suspends the taboo that forbids the deliberate taking of human life’ in the minds of soldiers, and helps to propel and sustain assaults, which can often result in genocide. When religious, economic, ethnic, or racial hatred is mixed into this murky milieu, murderous activity is often increased exponentially. Where conflict is inevitable, the world community through the United Nations should do everything at its disposal to protect civilians from harm. [xxxii]
A role for regional bodies such as the African Union
The world’s and the African Union’s anemic response to the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet is embarrassing and unconscionable. It is the hope that the current Chairman of the AU President Obasanjo, will call for an international coalition of forces including the AU, peace keepers from the United Nations, NATO and other bodies to halt the murderous madness and stop what international observers have described as a world lackadaisically witnessing an evil purge “in slow motion without intervening.” [xxxiii]
Strengthen Early Warning Systems and Structures:
Funding and strengthening the work of human rights watch dog organizations (Human Rights Watch); other human rights anti genocide groups (United Human Rights Council, Amnesty International etc) will be particularly novel in alerting the world about human rights abuses early for swift action against impending genocidal activity. To this end, a world depository of data about abuses of human rights abuses akin to the structure employed by Interpol (the international police outfit) is crucial in this fight against tyranny.
Confront and temper religious fundamentalism, hatred, racism and Intolerance
Fundamentalism has taken root and grown in many of the world's major religions, such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism so points out Karen Armstrong in her book “The Battle for God.” This explosion in numbers she believes has been fueled by technological changes and modernity, and the pervasive nature of western liberal values and popular culture that fundamentalists find threatening.
Several other experts believe that fundamentalism can be tempered by promoting and exercising democratic freedoms, accomplishing the full emancipation of women, and celebrating pluralism. Other strategies would include encouraging ideological and cultural diversity, promoting openness and the acceptance of differences as well as enhancing social and economic well-being. This multi-pronged approach should start in the homes, schools and religious centers. Similar strategies could also be used to reduce other forms of hatred, racism and intolerance. [xxxiv]
Spread Democracy and improve educational systems
The 3rd president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson held that: “Ignorance and sound self-government could not exist together: the one destroyed the other. A despotic government could restrain its citizens and deprive the people of their liberties only while they were ignorant… Only popular government can safeguard democracy. … Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. And to render them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree...” [xxxv]
Democratic societies that have the most educated populations also have the least repression of their citizenry. Freedom, by its very nature protects organized societies from tyrannical leadership. To maintain democratic principles across the globe, however, the educational systems of countries must be improved. The target for foreign aid for wealthy nations of 0.7% GNP that the UN set about two decades ago is not only attainable, but more than ever, imperative. These ‘monies’ should be utilized among other things, to shore up the educational sectors of at risk countries. Land mark research now points to the fact that one of the most salient avenues for lifting entire populations out of poverty and ignorance, is to improve the quality and amount of education of women. [xxxvi] Herein, perhaps, lays a novel strategy for combating the underpinnings of genocide.
Strengthen the International Court of Justice at The Hague and the International Criminal Court
International Law regards Genocide as a crime against humanity. A treaty setting up a permanent International Criminal Court was signed and ratified by several countries in July 2002. However, a number of important nations such as China, the United States and Israel have not ratified it, rendering the court rather ineffective. Clearly, without a court able to enforce its judgments, the law cannot be upheld.
“We have little hope of preventing genocide, or reassuring those who live in fear of its recurrence, if people who have committed this most heinous of crimes are left at large, and not held accountable for their offenses. It is the hope that the world’s sole super power the United States, in particular, will join the world wide ratification of the Rome Statute, so that the new International Criminal Court can deal effectively with crimes against humanity, whenever national courts are unable or unwilling to do so.” [xxxvii]
Dr. Chidi Chike Achebe is the Medical Director of Whittier Street Health Center in Boston
Contact: Bobofine6@hotmail.com
[i] www.drissman.com/blog/archives/2004/04/20/never_again.html
[ii] Ibid
[iii] Information from © Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Geneva, Switzerland, 2004
[iv] Genocides, Politicides, and Other Mass Murder Since 1945, With Stages in 2004, ©2004 Gregory H. Stanton, Genocide Watch
[v] http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide2.htmAlso "#671 - Columbus Day, 1999," at: http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/bulletin.cfm?Issue_ID=1591
[vi] http://www.virginia.edu/history/faculty/miller.html
[vii]Alderman, Clifford L., "Rum, Slaves, and Molasses: The Story of New England's Triangular Trade", Crowell-Collier Press, New York, New York, 1972.
Curtin, Phillip D., "The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census", University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, 1969.
Dow, George Francis, "Slave Ships and Slaving", Dover Publications, New York, New York, 1970.
Howard, Thomas, "Black Voyage", Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1971.
Hoyt, Edwin P., "African Slavery", Abelard-Schuman Limited Company, London, 1973.
Kay, F. George, "The Shameful Trade", Frederick Muller Ltd., London, 1967
Klein, Herbert S., "The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade", Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1978.
Meltzer, Milton, "Slavery: From the Renaissance to Today", Cowles Book Company Inc., Chicago, Illinois, 1972.
Plimmer, Charlotte and Denis, "Slavery: The Anglo-American Involvement", Harper and Row Publishers Inc., New York, New York, 1973.
Rawley, James A., "The Transatlantic Slave Trade", W. W. Norton and Company, New York, New York, 1981.
Thomas, Hugh, "The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870", Simon and Schuster Inc., New York, New York, 1997.
[viii] http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide2.htm
[ix] B.A. Robinson. Copyright © 2001 to 2004 incl. Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. Originally written: 2001-JAN-1. Latest update: 2004-AUG-15.See http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide2.htm
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Information from the Fact Sheet: Armenian Genocide. Knights of Vartan Armenian Research Center. The University of Michigan- Dearborn, Dearborn, MI.
Also "The Armenian Genocide," at: http://www.hr-action.org/armenia/
[xii] B.A. Robinson. Copyright © 2001 to 2004 incl. Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. Originally written: 2001-JAN-1. Latest update: 2004-AUG-15.See http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide2.htm
Also: "Nanking, 1937," at: http://www.princeton.edu/~nanking/html/main.html "Nanjing Massacre: 300,000 Chinese people killed; 20,000 women raped," at: http://www.cnd.org/njmassacre/index.html Includes descriptions of biological warfare, treatment of POWs, and other atrocities.
[xiii] B.A. Robinson. Copyright © 2001 to 2004 incl. Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. Originally written: 2001-JAN-1. Latest update: 2004-AUG-15.See http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide2.htm
Also: Y. F. Edeiken, "Non-Jewish survivors and victims," The Holocaust History Project, at: http://www.holocaust-history.org/questions/
Richard C. Lucas, "Forgotten Holocaust: How could 5,000,000 be killed and forgotten?," at: http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/
"Excerpts from Vera Laska," at: http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/laska.html
"Genocide history brief," at: http://www.maxpages.com/genocide/Genocide_History
Eugen Kogon, "The Theory and Practice of Hell," Ferrar, Straus, New York, (1950), Page 38.
Frank Rector, "The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals," Stein and Day, New York, (1981), Page 116.
"Jehovah's Witnesses and Nazi Germany Index," at: http://jehovah.to/general/nazi/
[xiv] Historians disagree over the total number of Soviet citizens that died under Stalin. This is a moderate number cited in the literature.
[xv] http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/stalin/
[xvi] http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/stalin_famine.htm
[xvii] The Yale University Cambodian Genocide Program http://www.yale.edu/cgp/index.html
[xviii] http://www.africaaction.org/docs99/rwan9904.htm
[xix] Review of the book “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda” by Philip Gourevitch., New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. Reviewer: David J. Garrow
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/books/1998/9811.hammer.darkness.html
[xx] Ibid.
[xxi] Chinua Achebe Collected Poems, Anchor Books, New York, August 2004, p.16
[xxii] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3549325.stm
[xxiii] http://www.sptimes.com/2004/09/21/Opinion/Time_is_the_enemy_in_.shtml
[xxiv] Christian Solidarity International Backgrounder: Mission to Sudan
[xxv] Various reports by Abraham McLaughlin of the Christian Science Monitor www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2004
[xxvi] Ibid.
[xxvii] Human Rights Watch, “Sudan: Global Trade, Local Impact, Arms Transfers to all Sides in the Civil War in Sudan,” Vol. 10, No. 4 (a) (New York: Human Rights Watch, August 1998), pp. 28-29.
Ibid. p. 20.
The government of China did not respond to a letter from Human Rights Watch soliciting its comments on these allegations. Ibid. p. 29.
[xxviii] Ibid.
[xxix] Ibid.
[xxx] James Phillips “Pressure Sudan to Halt Oppression in Darfur”, Executive Memorandum #943, October 4, 2004
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Africa/em943.cfm
[xxxi] UN Secretary General website: (www...un.org/ossg/sg/ ) For this press release, see Press Release SG/SM/9245
International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda (link to special UN website in 6 languages)
Resolution designating April 7, 2004 an International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda: On December 23, 2003 the UN General Assembly approved a resolution recognizing the tenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda and designating April 7, 2004 as an International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the U.N. General Assembly on 9 December 1948. Entry into force: 12 January 1951.
Create a United Nations Genocide Prevention Focal Point and Genocide Prevention Center By Prof. Gregory Stanton, Ph.D., President, Genocide Watch
"Revised and updated report on the question of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide" (July 2, 1985) "The Whitaker Report" prepared by Special Rapporteur Benjamin Whitaker and presented on July 2, 1985 to the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. In Paragraph 85 Whitaker proposed the establishment of an impartial international body concerned with preventing genocide (paragraph 85) has been ignored. The UN Human Rights system included multiple treaty monitoring bodies for the prevention of Torture and other violations, but still has no body specifically responsible for the prevention of genocide.
[xxxii] Ibid.
[xxxiii] Independent research
[xxxiv] http://waf.gn.apc.org/
[xxxv] http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0600.htm
[xxxvi] Also see Fact Sheet, Office of the Senior Coordinator for International Women's Issues, Washington, DC, April 15, 2002. http://www.state.gov/g/wi/rls/9382.htm
Also UN Secretary General website: (www...un.org/ossg/sg/ ) For this press release, see Press Release SG/SM/9245
International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda (link to special UN website in 6 languages)
Resolution designating April 7, 2004 an International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda: On December 23, 2003 the UN General Assembly approved a resolution recognizing the tenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda and designating April 7, 2004 as an International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the U.N. General Assembly on 9 December 1948. Entry into force: 12 January 1951.
Create a United Nations Genocide Prevention Focal Point and Genocide Prevention Center By Prof. Gregory Stanton, Ph.D., President, Genocide Watch
"Revised and updated report on the question of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide" (July 2, 1985) "The Whitaker Report" prepared by Special Rapporteur Benjamin Whitaker and presented on July 2, 1985 to the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. In Paragraph 85 Whitaker proposed the establishment of an impartial international body concerned with preventing genocide (paragraph 85) has been ignored. The UN Human Rights system included multiple treaty monitoring bodies for the prevention of Torture and other violations, but still has no body specifically responsible for the prevention of genocide.
[xxxvii] Ibid.
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