stopgenocide-blog

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April 24th

Today is a day of mourning and remembrance that you might not be aware of. April 24th marks Yom Hashoah - a Jewish day of remembrance for the Holocaust - and it is also the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. In the 1910’s, almost 1.5 million Armenians (about 98% of them Christian) were rounded up and slaughtered by the hands of the Ottoman Empire in the name of Islam and for absolute control. Then, in the 1930’s-1940’s, the Nazi party (helmed by the infamous Adolf Hitler) in an attempt to exercise complete control over Germany and Europe through “National Socialism,” captured and imprisoned and murdered upwards of six million Jews.

Seven and a half million people, systematically killed at the hands of an oppressive government in the name of power, within the past 100 years.

Let us remember them all and never forget that evil truly does exist in the world, and that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” - Edmund Burke.

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Genocidewatch.org recognizes the fact that this cataclysmic phenomena is still very prevalent. They post countries that are on genocide watch, warning and emergency; and unfortunately there are a lot more than you would think. What happened to never again? Why are people STILL BEING PERSECUTED FOR SOMETHING THEY CANT EVEN CHANGE MOST OF THE TIME! Why isn't diversity being embraced but being killed off? Hate is still being spread, intolerance is still going around, the holocaust isn’t happening but genocide is. To the people in Syria, Sudan, DRC, etc to them this is their holocaust. WHY IS IT STILL HAPPENING AND WHY ARENT THEY BEING TALKED ABOUT? is it because they aren't white? Why do I see the media go in a frenzy when bombs are going off in Paris or here in the US killing civilians, but nothing is being said about the thousands of woman and children being killed, raped, sold, etc. I guess the government can’t hear non-white voices, they seem to mute out the screams and cries for help from other mouths of color.  

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There is something important to note with a country’s responsibility to spread a rhetoric of tolerance and simply being a good human. America has historically been a standard of racist based law making, 2nd class citizenship laws to be exact, in fact Hitler used America as an example of successfully putting laws up that ‘purified’ a population. Laws like not being able to be in an interracial marriage/ even relationship was not acceptable, Europe followed with banning marriages with jews and non-jews. Fast forward to now, we’re able to marry anyone we want, but there are laws on who is able to come into our country now, based on religion, unfortunately similar. The government uses a type of scare-tactic to get the people to think that other groups of people pose a threat to our “united country” so we push out those who need help. Syrian refugees need place to go, we have closed our doors, similar during WWII when closing our doors to jewish refugees. Laws a moral foundation, unfortunately for many people. Personally, I’ve been left disappointed by the governments actions when it comes to helping countries that don’t mean much economically or politically to us. So to prevent something as significant as the Holocaust to repeat there must be basic moral guidelines when it comes to law making. Initiating a mentality of “this is our land, no one else's” it allows for lingering hate rhetoric to be more accepted in a casual manner. In turn it leads to taxing other groups of people heavier than others (I.E Europe taxing Jews, to eventually drain them of their financial resources). Prevention has to involve the government putting in their part in initiating a societal basis of tolerance, acceptance, and over all being a good human being.  

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Prevention. What can be done to prevent such atrocities to repeat?

“What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again” - Anne Frank

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“persecution of any minority by any country is tolerated anywhere, the very moral and legal foundations of constitutional government may be shaken.” (Lemkin 42)  

We are allowing for other countries to treat their people like sh*t. Simply because it isn't our problem or in our ‘interest’ its something we leave alone. Theres a lack of constitutional government with our lack of intervention as well with prevention. 

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SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grYjrdbDHOc

Joseph Conrads a Heart of Darkness was based on this invasion. 

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The Holocaust is significant, but it does not mean the jewish population suffered anymore than the populations in Syria and Sudan. 

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SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g074zYIr410\

ITS NOT OVER!

Sudan’s suffering resembles similar to the Holocaust because they’re both acts of genocide. Darfur was the 21st centuries first genocide. The killings in Sudan began in 2003, and are still happening. In February 2003, two rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), rose up against the Khartoum government claiming years of inequitable treatment and economic marginalization, among other grievances. The rebellion, led mainly by non-Arab Muslim sedentary tribes, including the Fur and Zaghawa, was orchestrated against the mainly Arab government. Instead of directly attacking the rebel forces, the government launched a widespread campaign to “get at the fish by draining the sea”, and targeted non-Arab tribes in the region, regardless of whether they were civilians or rebel forces.The government unleashed Arab militias known as the Janjaweed (“evil men on horseback”) to carry out attacks on villages and destroy communities. Janjaweed attacks were notoriously brutal and invoked a slash a burn policy that included killing and severely injuring the people, burning homes, stealing or burning food and livestock, and poisoning water wells. While these attacks would happen from the ground, the government would also attack civilians from the sky with indiscriminate aerial bombings wreaking havoc on villages.In September 2004, President George Bush declared what was happening in Darfur to be genocide.

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SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anX_f0GqpgY

‘’In one of the worst campaigns of mass slaughter since World War II, more than 2.5 million civilians have been killed in Sudan over decades of brutal conflict between north and south, in Darfur in the west, and in other regions.

Since the 1950s, the Arab-dominated government of Sudan, centered in the capital Khartoum, has tried to impose its control on the country’s African minorities living along the nation’s periphery. The result has been a deadly mix of ethnic, religious, and politically motivated conflicts.’’

https://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/cases/sudan

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SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Wo0WYEQVI

Joseph Conrad wasn’t the last evil the country of DRC would encounter. 

Since 1996, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC; Congo) has been embroiled in violence that has killed as many as 6 million people. The conflict has been the world’s bloodiest since World War II. The First and Second Congo Wars, which sparked the violence, involved multiple foreign armies and investors from Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Chad, Libya, and Sudan, among others, and has been so devastating that it is sometimes called the “African World War.”

Fighting continues in the eastern parts of the country, destroying infrastructure, causing physical and psychological damage to civilians, and creating human rights violations on a mass scale. Rape is being used as a weapon of war, and large-scale plunder and murder are also occurring as part of efforts to displace people on resource-rich land.

Today, most of the fighting is taking place in North and South Kivu, on the DRC/Rwanda border. Some fighting is political, resulting from unrest caused by Hutu refugees from the Rwandan genocide now living in DRC, while other fighting results from an international demand for natural resources. DRC has large quantities of gold, copper, diamonds, and coltan (a mineral used in cell phones), which many parties desire to control for monetary reasons. However, money from the sales of these resources has not reached average citizens. Currently the education, healthcare, legal, and road systems are in shambles.

SOURCE: http://worldwithoutgenocide.org/genocides-and-conflicts/congo

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SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIw7uI_gVyM

This segment on CNN tries to tackle the subject of Genocide and the Holocaust. Russian Jew Rafael Lemkin dedicated mot of his life to prevent the act he named himself; GENOCIDE.

Lemkin coined the term in 1944. Defining it as:

G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

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Amal Clooney’s speech sheds light on genocide prevalence and shows that prevention is still lagging. 

Assembly Declaration, Dec. 11, 1946: “Genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world. Recognizing that at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity; and being convinced that, in order to liberate mankind from such an odious scourge, international cooperation is required.” -Lemkin

OUR COOPERATION IS REQUIRED

International human rights lawyer Amal Clooney spoke at the UN this week about ISIS. Clooney has previously represented ISIS victims of rape and kidnappings in court.

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Never again is the anti- holocaust/genocide 'slogan’ to prevent such horrific actions to happen again. But lets be realistic here, we are letting them happen, not in our backyard but in the world. We are also closing our gates from being a safe haven to being the country that wants nothing to do with them, other than broadcast on the news day and night whats going on without any type of actual intervention on our part.

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The silencing of experience or perspective also instigates a way for hate to be acceptable, especially if its your teacher. Stuff like this makes me realize that the likelihood of something as significant as the Holocaust to happen again is very possible. We are inching our way towards intolerance while yes the atrocities aren't happening to us they are happening to other people. Just because its not happening to you personally, its happening to the kids in Syria and Sudan. 

that awkward moment when you’re discussing the holocaust in class, and you, the only jewish person in the classroom, raise your hand to speak, and the teacher literally says “i don’t want to hear the jewish perspective.”

and then, in the same breath, asks, “what causes such rampant antisemitism?”