{"id":1070,"date":"2014-08-14T02:44:23","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T02:44:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pueblosencamino.org\/wp\/?p=1070"},"modified":"2014-08-14T02:44:23","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T02:44:23","slug":"small-genocides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pueblosencamino.org\/?p=1070","title":{"rendered":"Small Genocides"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tJustin Podur points at an obvious truth systematically denied or, worse still, repressed by those who suffer or witness it. He refers to genocide. Furthermore, to multiple \u201csmall\u201d genocides. One cannot, in fact, one dares not to use the term genocide as its use follows precise prescriptions and restrictions of use so that even when it occurs, it is impossible to call it that. In this piece, Justin points at how genocides have been occurring systematically and recurrently from the time of the initial (and ongoing) conquest of the Americas, against indigenous and impoverished peoples to Rwanda, Vietnam, Indonesia and, of course, Gaza. When the winner commits genocide, it simply does\u00b4t happen. Genocide is a tool of conquest and accumulation, but, it can\u00b4t be acknowledged, recognized nor resisted. In the context of a global war against the poor for resources and markets where Capital intends to overcome its crisis by controlling resources made scarce by Capital itself, expanding markets and capturing the reduced mass of consumers with enough buying capacity, reorganizing territories for speculative and extractivist accumulation and, most of all, to eliminate the population made redundant by technological advancement and excess production capacity. Capital needs \u201csmall\u201d and then major genocides to overcome its crisis. They are happening and expanding. They can and must be resisted but this means overcoming the lethargy and manipulation which subdues most of the population of the world to the complacency, exploitation and numbness required for us to go to our destruction convinced that it only affects others. Pueblos en Camino<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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\tSmall genocides<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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\tWhen the word genocide is invoked, many people might think of Rwanda 1994. In that genocide, the government of the country targeted a minority population for massacre during a civil war that had begun three years before, and killed hundreds of thousands of people, from both the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi populations. That government lost the civil war, and was replaced by the regime that still rules Rwanda today, the RPF government of Paul Kagame.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tOthers might think of the Nazi holocaust. In the holocaust, Germany invaded <\/span>many of the countries of Europe, captured and killed millions of people. The German Nazi government, like the Rwandan government of 1994, lost the war, and was occupied by the very country (Russia) that it had invaded.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tWe remember these genocides. We remember their victims. We remember their <\/span>perpetrators. There are museums dedicated to them, and academic scholarship, and media attention. We are taught the slogan, never again.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tBut these genocides are unique mainly because their perpetrators lost. In many cases, including recent cases, genocide has been a path to power, a way of achieving a goal. The perpetrators have power. No one is able, or willing, to stand up to them. This is frightening for the rest of us because the powerful can, in fact, get away with genocide.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tReturning to Rwanda: Kagame’s RPF, which defeated the Rwandan government in <\/span>1994 and took over the country, massacred tens of thousands of Hutus in Rwanda in ‘reprisal’, in highly organized massacres. Then, in 1996, Kagame’s RPF invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo, and, directly and indirectly over the next 15 years, occupied it. The violence of Rwanda’s occupation of the eastern DR Congo has led to excess mortality in the millions, hundreds of thousands of which were from direct violence not unlike the Rwandan genocide of 1994. But Kagame remains in power, his regime is a highly unequal police state, and wealth continues to flow from the eastern Congo, through Rwanda, to the West.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tIn the film \u00abThe Act of Killing\u00bb (http:\/\/theactofkilling.com\/<\/span><\/a>), documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer meets some of the men who organized and carried out the mass political murder of hundreds of thousands of Indonesian communists in the 1960s. Oppenheimer has these killers re-enact their killings as a horror film. At one point, he asks one of the killers, \u00abwhat you have done could be considered war crimes, couldn’t they?\u00bb The killer responds: \u00abWhat is and isn’t a war crime depends on who has won. I am a winner, and I get to decide what is a crime and what isn’t.\u00bb Elsewhere in the film, the killers go on television,laugh and joke about their killings with approving talk show hosts. The killings of the 1960s in Indonesia set the political context for decades to come – including the present.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tThe Americas are the most dramatic example. Hitler himself saw the expansion of the United States and the destruction of the indigenous populations of the Americas as a model. If the US could do it to the indigenous, Hitler reasoned,why could Germany not do it to the people of Eastern Europe? Even today, you can go to museums in the US that describe how indigenous people \u00ableft\u00bb their territories after \u00abraids and counter-raids\u00bb. As the Indonesian general said, the winners have decided what constitutes crimes and what doesn’t. The winners have decided how history is to be remembered.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tMassacres of indigenous people in the Americas didn’t stop in the 19th <\/span>century. The Guatemalan civil war in particular had a genocidal character, <\/span>with hundreds of thousands of indigenous people murdered by the state. The war was ended in 1996 through a UN peace process, but, like elsewhere, the victors remain in power. The president in 2012 denied that there had been a genocide. How could there be? he asked, if the armed forces were indigenous. A report from January 2014, \u00abGuatemala: El haz y el env\u00e9s de la impunidad y el miedo\u00bb,shows how the Guatemalan establishment defends the political and economic status quo established during the genocidal civil war, through political murder, through legislation about ‘terrorism’, and through propaganda campaigns.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tBut these are whole states, or, in Rwanda’s case, regimes, that came to power,and strengthened their power, using genocide. But genocide can also be a tool for individual political figures.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tConsider India’s current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. He arrived in the <\/span>Prime Minister’s palace from the state of Gujarat, where he had been Chief <\/span>Minister since October 2001. Just a few months after he became Chief Minister of Gujarat, in February 2002, a highly organized, state-sponsored massacre, mainly of Muslims, occurred in Gujarat. The massacre was documented by Human Rights Watch in a report titled \u00abWe Have No Orders to Save <\/span>You\u00bb (<\/span>http:\/\/www.hrw.org\/reports\/2002\/india\/<\/span><\/a>). Modi remained Chief Minister <\/span>for over a decade, then, this year, rode all the way to the Prime <\/span>Ministership. He has dodged all legal proceedings about his role in the deaths of 3,000 people, which helped re-shape the politics of Gujarat – and of India. And even though, as Nirmalangshu Mukherji has written<\/span>(<\/span>http:\/\/www.countercurrents.org\/mukherji070614.htm<\/span><\/a>), millions of people are <\/span>waiting for some key questions to be answered about the Chief Minister’s role in this well-organized slaughter, today Modi is moving forward with an agenda of re-making India in Gujarat’s image.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tOr take Sri Lanka’s President, Mahinda Rajapaksa. He is credited with ending the threat of the Tamil Tigers, or LTTE, defeating them militarily in 2009 in what is called Eelam War IV. Filmmaker Callum MacRae gathered footage by Sri Lanka soldiers, ‘trophy’ footage of crimes being committed, and by victims, that show a pattern of slaughter of a trapped civilian population, in his film, No Fire Zone (http:\/\/nofirezone.org\/<\/span><\/a>). Rajapaksa has gone from electoral strength to strength, and having terrorized the Tamils, his regime is now terrorizing Muslims and even Buddhist monks.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tViewing this whole global panorama, several examples of which Israel loaned a hand (Sri Lanka, Guatemala), should anyone be surprised that Israel does not understand why it should not be allowed its own genocide against the<\/span><\/p>\n

\tPalestinians? And, like Modi or Rajapaksa or Kagame, Israel is being given a pass. At the end of a month-long war specifically against the children of <\/span>Gaza, celebrating murders in demonstrations, in the parliament, and on social media, Israel is working hard to ensure that the Palestinians return to starvation and imprisonment, and that they have fewer means to resist the next massacre.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tAmerican writer Barbara Coloroso wrote a book, \u00abExtraordinary Evil\u00bb,<\/span>(http:\/\/www.kidsareworthit.com\/Extraordinary_Evil.html<\/span><\/a>) linking the logic of <\/span>bullying to the logic of genocide. Genocide, like bullying, is a crime of <\/span>power, and a crime of contempt. Like bullying, genocide is an act that depends <\/span>on a bully, and on a bystander. If the bully can demonize his victim, then he <\/span>can demobilize bystanders who might otherwise intervene and protect the <\/span>bullied.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tCan anything be learned from these genocides? Yes, but the lessons are not the ones that we are usually taught. The truth will not necessarily come out. The perpetrators will not necessarily be brought to justice. People’s consciences will not automatically be activated after some horrible threshold is reached. There is nothing so terrible that it won’t find apologists, as anyone who has had to watch one of these massacres unfold in North America, having to listen to the vilest talking points, knows. Those who commit genocide have power, and they hope to silence, or even attract, bystanders with their power. They want to use their power to get the bystander to suspend reason, fact, moral sense,and compassion. And they very often succeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tSo what can stop them? In each case, genocide occurred after resistance was <\/span>broken. Whether armed or civil, it is resistance by the victim that provides the greatest chance of survival. Even if unsuccessful, resistance can help enough survive for a community to persist after a genocide. Look at the current Israel Gaza massacre, the so-called \u00abProtective Edge\u00bb. Compared to Israel’s 2008-9 massacre in Gaza (\u00abCast Lead\u00bb), the Palestinians were more effective in their military resistance. Israel responded by going for mass civilian casualties and avoiding any close-quarters battles where they might lose soldiers, engaging in domestic and international campaigns to try to desensitize Westerners to Palestinian civilian deaths.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tThis Gaza genocide, a Western genocide, paid for and armed and covered by the West, is a test for Western bystanders. Many Westerners have sided with the bully, adopted the bully’s contempt for the victim, and in the process are helping speed up the genocide. On the other hand, for bystanders, genocide prevention is simple to understand, if difficult to enact: it means standing up to the bully, standing with the victim who is resisting, sheltering the victim and isolating the bully. Specifically, in the so-called ‘ceasefire negotiations’ and after, it means insisting that:<\/span><\/p>\n

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\t* The side that targets children and celebrates their deaths, killing<\/span><\/p>\n

\toverwhelmingly civilians (80%) does not get to proscribe as ‘terrorist’ the<\/span><\/p>\n

\tside that attacks overwhelmingly military targets (95%).<\/span><\/p>\n

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\t* The side that kills civilians must be disarmed before the side that focuses on military targets. We cannot arm the bully and insist on the disarmament of the victim. Security is for both sides. Freedom is for both sides. Full rights are for both sides.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\t* The blockade must be lifted, the siege must end, people and goods must be<\/span><\/p>\n

\table to come and go freely from Gaza.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tWe have a long and arduous path to travel to make genocide no longer a<\/span><\/p>\n

\trational choice for the powerful. In the West, it begins with taking a stand, even if it means risking something.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\tJustin Podur<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\tfor TeleSur English<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\tAugust 12, 2014<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\thttp:\/\/www.telesurtv.net\/english\/opinion\/Small-Genocides-20140812-0048.html<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\t <\/p>\n

\tJustin Podur is a Toronto-based writer. His blog is at podur.org and his<\/p>\n

\ttwitter feed is @justinpodur<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin Podur points at an obvious truth systematically denied or, worse still, repressed by those who suffer or witness it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c48-lectura-de-contexto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblosencamino.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblosencamino.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblosencamino.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblosencamino.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblosencamino.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pueblosencamino.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblosencamino.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblosencamino.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblosencamino.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}