Genocide

Genocide

by Marco M. Pardi

“The ruin of a nation begins in the home of its people”

Ashanti saying.

All comments are welcome and will receive a reply. All previous posts are open for comment.

The term genocide is once again being raised, this time in the actions of the Chinese government against the minority Uighur population, a Muslim population. I have written previously about the linguistic issue of Usage, and how a term varies in meaning over time, often greatly. We generally accept this in common parlance, though we may not like it and we prefer to remain true to the meanings we learned as children. But variation, or meaning drift, is a far more serious matter in the arena of international law and the consequences which may flow from violation of those laws. And, as is so often the case but which usually goes unchallenged, the presumably consensual meaning drift becomes so tenuous as to raise the question of whether we are now to accept an entirely new meaning. And how does that affect the application of the law?

The meaning of Genocide I grew up with derives from the Greek: Genos – race or tribe; Latin: cide – a suffix meaning killing. The term was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer, in 1944. It refers to a larger class than homicide, the killing of a human and sui (Latin: self) cide – the killing of. I was given to understand that “people” meant all members of a designated group, be it religious, ethnic, tribal or otherwise. And I grew up with the understanding that the book the Christians call the Bible, and especially the part called the Old Testament, is filled with stories of “God commanded” Hebrew slaughters of every man, woman, child, and all living things among any populations standing between them and “the Promised Land”. Of course, the Christian Crusades were heralded as great achievements of eradication of Muslims, though little was said of the murder, rape, and plunder of everyone along the way to the Holy Land. But, a cursory trip through history provides seemingly endless examples of one group trying to eliminate another group “root and branch”.

Hyperbole is sometimes taken as meaning drift but it is not generally codified in legal terms. The excerpt below is from the United Nations Convention on Genocide.

“The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide. The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:

1. A mental element: the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such”; and
2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts:
   • Killing members of the group
   • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
   • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
   • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
   • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”

Reading these must certainly bring to mind memories of events within our lifetimes. Let’s consider a few, including only one involving armed conflict. When AIDS was first identified in the Western Hemisphere it was quickly labeled a “gay disease”. But it did not take long to discover it was spreading quickly through minority populations, particularly the Black population. A few years into the progression I was asked to move to Atlanta to work in a federally funded institution, specifically in AIDS epidemiology. What struck me immediately on arrival was the prohibition of any educational and/or outreach programs. But then, the institution was titled The Centers for Disease Control; it was only later, when a different political party took the White House, that the terms and Prevention were added. For six of Reagan’s eight years and four of G. H. W. Bush’s four years we were told to “do more research”. The deaths spiraled beyond imagination and there was a strongly growing sentiment that the government, as held by that political party, was engaged in a hands-off genocide against gays and minorities. Street jokes included such witty questions as, What does gay stand for? Answer: Got AIDS yet?

Shortly after I arrived I detected a flaw in a study protocol I had been asked to join. It addressed four major American cities. I added a common sex tourism city in Southeast Asia and then was asked to join a task force to address cholera in Latin America.

The El Tor biotype of cholera was killing thousands, particularly along the western side of Central and South America and I spent the next five years traveling through that area, but also including the Caribbean and Mexico.

On arrival in a South American country I briefed the Minister of Health and his staff on the morbidity and mortality data we had and outlined a proposal for addressing the thousands of cases and deaths. He thanked me for coming, hoped my stay would be comfortable, and said he would be in touch if anything serious happened. Later, driving up into the Andes to spend a few days in Army tents erected for treating critically ill patients I asked the local physician with me why the official attitude was so dismissive of the problem. His answer: “Only the Indians are dying from it.” Oh.

Not long after, the Balkans exploded in war. The Christian Serbs attacked the Muslim Bosnians and slaughtered men, women, and children by the thousands while the world stood by. Finally, the U.S. stepped in with a bombing campaign. Rwanda erupted into a murderous civil war between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Again the world stood by until finally U.N. pressure was brought to bear. We stood by again as the terrorist group ISIS attempted to extinguish the Yezidis in Iraq and the Myanmar military attacked the minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, killing thousands of men, women, and children. And, for the past six years the U.S. has supported Saudi Arabia as it wages a war of starvation against a much smaller Yemen. Where does the vast bulk of Saudi weapons come from? American companies, glad to enrich their stockholders. Companies supported by a taxpayer funded Pentagon budget which exceeds the military spending of all the other industrialized nations combined. Of course, we could enumerate more. But I think the point is made.

So is it any wonder that, as thousands fled the violence and scarcities in Central America largely brought on by climate change and the struggle to seize control of diminishing resources Americans turned a jaded eye toward the last administration’s policies of taking children, even infants, from their families as they crossed into the United States? The families were often told the children were being taken to give them baths. (Do we dare entertain the memory of German soldiers separating families, loading some members onto trains and gassing others who were told they were getting “showers”?)

Many of the Latino older family members were locked up or deported while the children were dispersed throughout the United States. The latest figures I’ve seen are 524 children unaccounted for and 628 parents not yet found to come for their children.

As the now pandemic of Covid-19 took hold in the United States the administration at the time, the same political party as Reagan and Bush, dismissed it as a hoax. As was the case during the Reagan/Bush years they threw themselves into “research” while stifling any attempts to meaningfully address the virus. HIV/AIDS strategy redux. When it did force its way into our consciousness as a reality the administration applied the xenophobic labels “Chinese virus” and “Kung-fu virus”.

It then quickly became apparent that the populations experiencing the worst outcomes from infection were the minority populations, specifically the African-Americans and the Latinos. Yes, the “Warp Speed” vaccine program poured huge amounts of taxpayer money into drug companies, and a large stockpile of a particularly ineffective malaria drug was purchased. But, cui bono? Who benefited from that huge infusion of standing and promised cash? Could it be certain stockholders? We can all be happy with the three highly efficacious vaccines we now have. But I would like to see the small group of individuals who are now even happier with their highly efficacious stock portfolios.

I’m sure some would draw back at the suggestion that limiting or outright banning of contraception and/or abortion is genocide. But the figures are amazingly clear: those options are overwhelmingly sought by people who recognize that having a child, or another child, would doom them to hard poverty or worse. Yet, every time a particular political party comes to power in the United States a “gag order” descends on foreign service officers stationed throughout the world, particularly in the most desperate nations and regions. Speak of either option and your career is over. Put up so much as one table and chair dedicated to family planning counseling in a general health clinic and the funding for the entire clinic is withdrawn. The result? You can see for yourselves if you care to look. Poor and desperate people are controllable people. Until someone comes along and empowers them to fight back. Someone like a wannabe demagogue descended from a New York slum lord. Able to focus and direct the fears and frustrations of the masses.

Perhaps it’s time to revisit that U.N. definition of genocide and to ask ourselves if we have let the meaning drift away from us. If we have fallen into always applying it to “the other guy”.