Why Genocides Occur - Case Study Example

Mankind can commit to greater atrocity than the act of genocide. It is the foremost example of man’s injustice to man. The term ‘genocide’ was popularized following the Holocaust which resulted in the deaths of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis. Much genocide has occurred since the Second World War. Instances in Cambodia, Darfur, Bosnia and Rwanda are well known and in all cases, the world was slow to acknowledge or intervene. Because genocide was defined by the events of the Holocaust, both succeeding and preceding instances are ultimately compared to the horrific events of WWII. The situation in Rwanda is no different. The atrocities that occurred during the 1990’s in that nation are similar in two major respects to the Holocaust. One, a group of people were massacred and two, it happened for years and the rest of the world stood either from lack of knowledge, as in the Holocaust or lack of compassion, as in Rwanda. Following a brief definition of the term ‘genocide,’ this discussion identifies the methodical means by which each atrocity was constructed which illuminates the similarities of the two genocides, the eradication of group of people for political gains following a long-standing conflict between groups. Documenting the issues and events leading up to both the Holocaust and Rwanda will also clearly identify the vast differences between the two. It then comments on the lack of support offered by the world in the form of the United Nations as well as this body’s stated intended plan to react more quickly in future instances of genocide. Ethnic cleansing is a form of genocide which is defined as intentionally murdering a specific faction of people. The word genocide is derived by combining geno, a Greek word meaning tribe or race and cide, Latin for ‘to kill.’ Generally, genocide occurs as a result of government officials and any group currently allied with them killing, mutilating, enslaving, torturing and humiliating a portion of the regions or country’s populace. Those responsible for committing genocide do not consider gender, age, occupation or financial status. All members of the targeted group are methodically killed unless they have already fled the region as a result of intimidating tactics. “Genocide is never spontaneous. It takes time to plan” (“Genocide” 2005). From 1990 to 1994, Rwanda was plagued by a civil war between Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups. Mass violence engulfed the region including rapes, assaults and murders beginning in 1990 and escalated to a peak in 1994. Neither the U.N. nor individual countries came to the aid of these desperate people. The world watched while, in just the span of 100 days, 600,000 Rwandan citizens were butchered and this is only a three month period during the four years of genocide in that country. (Shawcross, 2000: 129). An ironic twist involving the similarities between the Holocaust and Rwanda is that the German’s had occupied and colonized Rwanda from 1894 to 1916. It wasn’t until after the German’s were forced out by the Belgian army that the forces leading to the 1990’s genocide began its evolutionary process. Rwanda was under Belgian rule from 1916 until that nation became independent in 1962. When the Belgians took over, they utilized the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy by which to rule the country, ultimately pitting the people of the Tutsi tribes against the Hutu. Because the physical features of the minority Tutsi people appeared more European-like, they were given preferential treatment by the ruling Belgian government. The Tutsi people, who made up less than 15 percent of the Rwandan population had facial features more closely resembling the Belgians and were taller and slimmer than their shorter, stockier Hutu countrymen. The Belgians assumed that these two tribes were different ethnicities and, of course, the Tutsi more closely resembling Europeans were considered the ‘master race’ of the region, a term well identified with the Nazi’s justification for murdering the Jews. Prior to being divided among ethnic, social and economic lines, both tribes in Rwanda thought of themselves as essentially the same peoples, simply Rwandans. Until the tensions escalated to violence in the 1960’s, these idea of these two groups fighting each other was unthinkable. The Belgian governing body in Rwanda allocated government jobs including the police force exclusively to Tutsi’s while the majority Hutu faced economic hardships. The Hutu understandably hated the oppressive Belgians and by extension, hatred for the Tutsi grew stronger over the many decades. Sporadic bouts of violence perpetrated by the Hutu against the Tutsi occurred from about the 1930’s then more organized revolts that resulted in a great number of deaths per instance began in the 1960’s. Massive genocide tactics were employed by the early 1990’s. No accurate counts exist of the numbers of people killed in Rwanda because of, one, the blind-eye the nations of the world turned to the long-standing situation and two; the frenzied nature of genocide itself. However, most authorities assume the Tutsi killed in the 1990’s alone reached 750,000 which did not include approximately 50,000 politically moderate Hutus who did not endorse the mass killings. About 15 percent of the original Tutsi population survived the genocide. The United Nations took no direct action to quell the genocide in Rwanda but did establish the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1998. In September of that year, the UN Tribunal began issuing convictions for those charged with committing genocide. The first was against a former mayor of Taba, a Rwandan city. This was the first time in history that a person was convicted of causing genocide by an international court but it certainly was not the last. “In Rwanda itself, some 120,000 people were jailed on allegations of participation in the genocide” (Kuperman, 2000). Many of these persons later convicted and sentenced to a variety of punishments. The trials, though historic and an important world acknowledgement of the genocide, the damage to the psyche of Rwandans will continue likely for many generations. Subsequently, animosities between the Hutu and Tutsi will endure causing violence in smaller contexts which may lead to genocide again in the near or far future. The horrific actions of the Third Reich are well documented. The end result of the Nazi’s evil ideologies included the occupation of most European nations and the ‘final solution,’ the annihilation of over six million Jews (Dawidowicz, 1986: 3). Throughout history, many nations have conquered others for various reasons while oppressing its people but why was a particular race of people systematically killed? How could such a fervent hatred of Jews infect an entire national conscience causing such unconscionable acts to be perpetrated? In spite of popular opinion, it didn’t happen because the people of Germany fell into a hypnotic trance and all of a sudden felt compelled to murder innocents simply from hearing Hitler’s speeches. Many citizens of Germany were unaware of the Concentration Camps, including the residents of the towns where the camps were located. The executions were carried out by the German army with SS troops in charge of the operations. The unknowing German people and the most fervent of Nazi’s did have a nationalistic idealism in common, however, which was the underlying reason for the extermination of the Jewish race. This common idealism was developed from the culmination of centuries of German cultural bonding through the ideas of Volkism, with roots that had begun the century before. It was widely held that the true German spirit was rooted in nature. The people perceived the rural culture as genuinely German. In late 19th century Germany, Jews were not allowed to own land by mandate of law and Christians were not allowed to lend money by religious decree. Not surprisingly, many Jews made their living by lending money to Christians. Anti-Semitism grew exponentially from a tolerated race to one of disdain following each poor harvest season. A farmer who had to borrow money either before or after a no-yield harvest was forced to forfeit his land if the debt could not be paid. As Jews were the lone lenders and were already viewed as encroaching on Volk lands, the fact that they increasingly owned German soil made for them becoming an easy target of racial scorn. Jews were perceived as gaining German heritage and identity itself by the loathsome act of foreclosures in rural areas, the heart of the volkish ideal. These socially inflammatory factors, a strong sense of volkism and the perception of an invading race stealing coveted land made all Jews an adversary of Germany. In addition, Germans blamed Jews for attempting to sabotage (modernize) the social and political structures by proliferating liberalism and communism (Burleigh & Wippermann, 1991: p. 36). The influence of the ideology of the Volk was motivating in the 1920’s and 30’s to Germany. It supported regaining a sense of nation broken in their WWI defeat. Widespread confusion and discontent ruled Germany immediately after the WWI surrender. Volkish groups of that time frequently held Jews responsible for the loss of World War I. They maintained that Jews joined forces with socialists and communists to defeat Germany. The anti-semitic ideas of the right wing volkish faction opposed the democratic principles of the leftwing liberal parties. The volkish groups showed contempt for the Weimar Republic, condemning its willingness to sign the Treaty of Versailles. “From the perspective of extreme rightwing groups, the Weimar Republic was equated with the ‘Jew’ Republic. One of the many volkish groups that existed in 1919 was the German Workers’ Party, precursor to The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (The organization that launched Hitler’s accent to power). The party was based in Bavaria, where there were pitted battles between rightwing nationalist groups and the radical leftwing groups sympathetic to Communist ideas” (Florida Holocaust Museum, 2003). What Volkish thinking and the Nazi movement both shared was a sense of cultural superiority along with intolerance for people or cultures within their borders that did not fit their cultural ideal. This sense of commonality of the people fit the objectives for Hitler and the Third Reich. For the Nazis, the Volk could only be described as the Aryan race, thus the concept of excluding the Jews. The concept of the Volk for the ‘German Race’ to remain pure was loudly voiced by the Third Reich. The two identities were in conflict, the German nationalistic influence of the Volk and the Jewish 2000 year persona as the Chosen People. Conflicts of the two strong national identities in Germany in the 1920’s and 30’s developed over time (Wegner, 2002: 1). The need for bloodline purity and the treacherous influence of the Jews was formed from the Volkish ideology regarding racial soul transmittal through bloodlines. “Julius Langbehn espoused the notion that the Aryans possessed the ‘life-force’ in a ‘life-fluid’ which flowed from the cosmos to the Volk. Jews did not possess this ‘life fluid’ because they had ‘long ago forfeited their souls” (Mosse, 1985: 97-99). Anti-Semitism propaganda under the Third Reich fulfilled its objective to represent the combination of older, culturally stereotyped perceptions of the Jewish people with the racialism in the Nazi curriculum (Iggers, 2000). Germans were constantly encouraged by the Reich to view the Aryan people of Germany as part of the Volk and to envision themselves as a superior and eternal collection of people. Nationalism and patriotism are generally regarded as honorable feelings that tie a land’s people together. It has been said that this mind-set blinds people to the truth about their society and government. The Holocaust is an example of this blindness and how these feelings can be exploited by propaganda. Examples, though not this extreme, are present in many nations. Following the mass murder, torture and displacement of many thousands in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo in the 1990’s and continuing throughout the current crises in Darfur, Sudan, world leaders have debated the issue of ‘humanitarian intervention.’ Members of the United Nations, governments, charity organizations, intellectuals, church officials and the public alike have been compelled to consider the many moral and legal aspects of humanitarian and military intervention into a sovereign state. The debate centers around what means and under what circumstances can countries force their will on another nation. In many instances of ‘ethnic cleansing,’ government officials themselves have committed these atrocities on its citizens but U.N. regulations prohibit external interventions into the internal dealings of a nation. Therefore, the power of the international community has proved impotent while thousands suffer. In September of 2005, the world leaders assembled at the U.N. The largest such gathering of heads of state in history produced the ‘responsibility to protect’ document in which 150 signatures were attached. The nations of the world agreed “to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the UN Charter … on a case by case basis and in cooperation with relevant organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate” (Rasul, 2005). Since the end of World War II and the Nazi’s implementation of the ‘final solution,’ the phrase, ‘never again’ has echoed throughout the world, but genocide has occurred over and over again. The responsibility to protect is an agreement late in coming. The genocide that occurred during the Holocaust and in Rwanda centered on ethnic hatred but evolved by an entirely different manner. The Holocaust developed from internal dynamics within an extremely nationalistic circumstance while the crisis in Rwanda developed from external forces that pitted one group against another. In each case, stresses between groups built-up over many decades prior to the mass murders that are now regarded by most as simply historic footnotes. The question many ask regarding both the genocide in Germany and Rwanda is why did the world not collectively rise-up and stop these catastrophic events? During the Holocaust, most Germans had no knowledge of the horrific human suffering taking place just outside their cities and neither did the rest of the world. All the world’s collective conscience could do to honor those who died during the Holocaust was to ensure that, through, for example, the United Nations, this tragedy was not allowed to happen again. The People of the world did not act when it had the chance, time after time throughout the genocides that occurred after WWII. The biggest difference between the two genocides is that the world knew of Rwanda yet allowed history to repeat itself. References Burleigh, Michael & Wippermann, Wolfgang. (1991). The Racial State. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press. Dawidowicz, Lucy S. (1986). The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945. New York: Bantam Books. Florida Holocaust Museum Foundation of the Nazi Party. (2003). Retrieved 15 January, 2008 from Iggers, George G. (2000). “The Uses and Misuses of History.” Apollon. Retrieved 15 January, 2008 from Mosse, George L. (1985). Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Wegner, Gregory Paul. (2002). Anti-Semitism and Schooling under the Third Reich. New York: Routledge Palmer Press. Rasul, Fatema Abdul. (22 September, 2005). “Responsibility to Protect.” Global Solutions Fact Sheet. Citizens for Global Solutions. Retrieved 15 January, 2008 from from Shawcross, William. (2000). Deliver Us From Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords, And A World Of Endless Conflict. New York: Simon & Schuster. Alan J. Kuperman. (2000). “Genocide in Rwanda and the Limits of Humanitarian Military Intervention” also found in Kuperman, “Rwanda in Retrospect” (January/February 2000). Foreign Affairs. “Genocide” (2005). Aegis Trust, The Holocaust Centre, Laxton, Newark, Nottinghamshire Retrieved 15 January, 2008 from Read More