A continuing series on How to Think About Darfur, by James North
I first looked into the definition of genocide in the early 1980s, when I was writing Freedom Rising, my book about southern Africa. One chapter described the apartheid regime’s Bantustan policy, which entailed the forced removal of several million black South Africans into already overcrowded, segregated, and terribly poor rural reservations. Infant mortality and disease levels shot up.
I pointed out that genocide, according to the 1951 United Nations Convention, was "the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." In addition to mass killing, the Convention states, genocide is also "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
I concluded: "The regime’s policy already constitutes murder of some degree. As government leaders push the scheme relentlessly forward, they will certainly raise the amount of suffering, disease and death, if they have not already, to a level that can only be defined as genocide."
Today, I’m not sure I agree with those passages. One of my reviewers, Joseph Lelyveld, politely questioned my use of "genocide." He did not disagree with my harsh description of the Bantustan policy; he later eloquently indicted it himself in his own book, Move Your Shadow. But he wondered if I had not applied the word improperly.
One big problem with "genocide" is that you have to show intent. The General kills 250,000 small farmers as part of his campaign to crush a rebel movement and he is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But let the General identify the same small farmers as part of a religious or ethnic group; let him say, even privately, that he wants to exterminate them as a group, and he can be tried for genocide.
In that sense, genocide is like "hate crime," another category that I have trouble with. If a man attacks another man, common law definitions of assault or attempted murder should be enough; I don’t see why there should be additional changes, or a greater penalty, if he shouts "kill the xxxxxx" during his crime.
Genocide is more than just semantics. International lawyers used to contend that a determination of genocide required the international community to intervene. Samantha Power’s important article about the Clinton administration’s failure to act over Rwanda in 1994 showed how high U.S. officials went through contortions to avoid saying the g-word; at one stage, a State Department spokesperson would acknowledge "acts of genocide," but she had been ordered to stop there.
(The mass killings in Rwanda certainly do qualify as "genocide." But, as we will see in upcoming posts, some of the wrong lessons were drawn from the Rwanda experience.)
As for Darfur, in 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell did describe the reality in Darfur as "genocide"– but he did not trigger an armed intervention. International law turns out to be more flexible than people thought.
My biggest objection to "genocide" is that the word is used to lift an actual historical episode out of the here and now and put it on a cosmic plane of good and evil, right and wrong, madmen and innocents, killers and victims. Sometimes, as in the Nazi effort to destroy the Jews of Europe, that cosmic plane is accurate.
But in many other instances, it confuses. "Genocide" should require armed intervention, however international law is interpreted, because you cannot negotiate with crazed killers; historians agree that the Nazis actually weakened their war effort on the eastern front by diverting railway cars and other resources to murdering Jews.
But what about a regime, like Sudan today, that does use criminal violence against civilians – not because it irrationally hates them, but as a calculated tool to hang onto power? Let us leave aside the practical question of sending Western troops into yet another nation in the Middle East, (advocates of intervention seem not to have been following the news from Iraq over the past 5 years). Is there another way to change the Sudanese government’s behavior?
None of this is meant to imply that the Sudanese regime is not as bad as if it would be if we used the word "genocidal." I actually find people like Omar al-Bashir quite as terrifying in their own way as full-fledged genocidal leaders; he is capable of turning horrible violence on and off, not mainly out of passion, but out of pure, cold, inhuman self-interest.
A little truth about Putin's continuing genocide in Abhasia:
http://www.abchaseti.de/video.html
Can we greet Putin in the Milosevic cell one day?
Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
* Pay attention to this part of Article III
"INTENT is different from MOTIVE. Whatever may be the MOTIVE for the crime… (land expropriation, national security, territorrial integrity, etc.),… IF the perpetrators COMMIT acts INTENDED to destroy a group, even part of a group, it is genocide."
Article II describes two elements of the crime of genocide:
1) the mental element, meaning the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", and
2) the physical element which includes five acts described in sections a, b, c, d and e. A crime must include both elements to be called "genocide."
Your MOTIVE can be stealing land. You can INTEND to destroy a group for that purpose. When that INTENT becomes ACTS. You have committed genocide.
Article II: In the present Convention, genocide 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.
Examples:
(1)
Nazis killing Jews was genocide because they were targeted for their religion and/or ethnic identity. The Nazis MOTIVE was the Germanic nation(s) purity of race/culture. They INTENDED to and did kill Jews for that purpose.
(2)..flash forward to today
Georgians killing Ossetians, the majority "Iranic" population of Ossestia, because that Iranic "ethnic group" wanted to (and did) seperate from Georgia could also be considered genocide because while the MOTIVE for Georgia was to retain the land of Ossetia as part of Georgia, to accomplish that Georgia INTENDED to destroy the "ethnic group of Iranics" that stood in the way of retaining Ossestia as part of Georgia. If they committed any of the above five crimes which obviously they did.
Being found guilty of genocide as with all other crimes depends first on someone being charged with the crime. Second whether the court accepts the legal grounds for the charge and third what the jury says.
Today no one wants to charge anyone with genocide because everyone is doing it.
No To Tyrants, picks up Bill/SOG's line of thought.
Georgia on my mind
On the contrary, Rice's comparison of Russia's move into Ossetia to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 is so wrong that it almost gave me a heart attack. It certainly made me (once again) extremely cynical about the rhetoric of American foreign policy which, at least under this administration, is setting a world record for combining moral arrogance with complete ignorance of history; for a disregard for the complexity of reality, especially in an ethnically diverse region like the Caucasus.
One of my net friends get's even closer to the issue at the center:
True: Sic Semper Tyrannis
James North: But in many other instances, it confuses. "Genocide" should require armed intervention, however international law is interpreted, because you cannot negotiate with crazed killers; historians agree that the Nazis actually weakened their war effort on the eastern front by diverting railway cars and other resources to murdering Jews.
Hmmm? I had to read this passage a couple of times.
As a nitwit in politics I encountered a variation of the negotiation theme the first time during the Kosovo war. Milocevic was both condemned as a pan-Serbian racist and as someone needed for the final negociation.
And strictly its feels that the expansive craziness (pan-Aryanism/"the intrinsic right to rule the world") of the Nazis is deeply interwoven with its scapegoat politics, I doubt they could have succeeded without "misallotted" resources. …
Sorry, that's not what I meant:
Milosevics: was both condemned as a pan-Serbian racist and considered a necessary partner in post war negotiations.
James North responds: Thanks to "American" and "LeaNder" for taking the time to comment.
First, to "American": That language about "in whole or in part" illustrates just how slippery "genocide" is. How many is "in part"? If General X kills, say, 10 Slobovians while shouting "death to Slobovians," is that enough to prove genocide? 20? 200? 200,000? Why not just indict him for murder and war crimes, and leave "genocide" out of it?
LeaNder: I don't know a lot about Serbia, although I did pass through there briefly in 1996. But I think Milosevic is similar to al-Bashir in the Sudan; the Serbian leader, a lifelong Communist apparatchik, got in front of a xenophobic movement that was already forming so he could hang on to power. He was a cold cynic, not an insane ideologue, and therefore pressure — some of it armed — did eventually force him to negotiate.
To James..you asked:
"That language about "in whole or in part" illustrates just how slippery "genocide" is. How many is "in part"? If General X kills, say, 10 Slobovians while shouting "death to Slobovians," is that enough to prove genocide? 20? 200? 200,000? Why not just indict him for murder and war crimes, and leave "genocide" out of it?
It's complicated…but the law says several things. It can be killng the "leaders" of the group, it could be targeting young men in the group to prevent them fathering children for the group, it could be killing their religious leaders and so on. The "numbers" aren't critical to the law.
What the law and a court would look at most closely is the "pattern" of the acts..systemic patterns or repeated patterns and repeated targets of the acts commited, any of the five acts listed under genocide, against a certain group of "like" people…regardless of motive.
"War crimes' are a different set of laws. They apply to everyone, not certain "like" groups. If hostile forces went into a land during war or conflict and deliberately killed (starved, etc) "civilians" regardless of their race, religion, etc., it's a war crime. If those hostile forces "singled out" a certain ethnic, religious, etc, group from the population for killing or starvation, then it meets the genocide definition.
Genocide is difficult because it occurs in war and conflict. It's dificult because no one ever says/admits they are going to go kill all members of the X groups just because they are X's. That might happen in localized blood feuds, but for nations or non state actors there is 999 times out a thousand, a MOTIVE to destroy a group other than just ethnic differences. With the exception of Hitler and the nazi regime, nations rarely announce their 'Motives to destroy a group.
Motives however can sometimes be proven by the same systemic pattern used to establish Intent to genocide. If you kill Indians in Indian villages and then your group settles the land after you destroy the Indian group, that "result", your confiscation of the land, can be evidence of Motive.
You are right though it is easier to bring charges of war crimes than genocide. BUT, as we see that is even rarely done because usually both sides to a conflict can be said to have commited war crimes.
The MAIN requirement in genocide is, did one group INTEND to DESTROY another group, "UNLIKE' themselves for 'whatever" purpose.