MetaFilter posts tagged with Genocide

Strange Medicine

reenum — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:04:54 -0800

Radovan Karadzic was a war criminal who was able to escape prosecution for his war crimes during the genocide in Bosnia. In a particularly strange twist, Karadzic assumed the name Dragan Dabic and rose in the ranks of the alternative healing community in Belgrade. “Across from Dabic’s apartment in New Belgrade, there lived a woman who worked at Interpol,” Vekaric of the I.C.T.Y. told me. “Every morning this woman switched on her computer and there was a picture of Radovan Karadzic and Osama bin Laden. And each morning she would say good morning to Dragan Dabic.” She never suspected who her neighbor was."

"You know, probably no one will ever know the answer here."

Kattullus — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:57:20 -0800

Doubt [print version] is an article by Andrew Rice about Leopold Munyakazi, a professor of French at Goucher College, who has been accused by the Rwandan government of being a genocidaire. His defenders, including the late Alison Des Forges, claim that the Hutu Munyakazi, who's married to a Tutsi, is being targeted by Paul Kagame's administration because he's a dissenter who's challenged the official account of the genocide. Into this complicated affair steps documentarian Charlie Ebersol who wants to profile Munyakazi for his NBC primetime news show Wanted, which has been received with considerable opprobrium and which may already have been canceled.

Forgiveness

homunculus — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:39:30 -0800

Forgive and Forget? "Rwanda's warring population has a lot to account for, and a lot to reconcile. Can science point the way to understanding?"

Intended Consequences: Rwanda's Children of Rape

itchylick — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:28:59 -0800

Intended Consequences. It is estimated that 20,000 children were born as the result of rape during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide that claimed the lives of over 800,000 Tutsis. Many of these women also contracted HIV/AIDS as a result. Not only do the mothers have to live with memories of this incredibly horrible event, but they along with their children are shunned by other Tutsi survivors. Photographer Jonathan Torgovnik photographed and documented the stories of several of these women and their children in his new book Intended Consequences. He has also created Foundation Rwanda to help these families pay the $150 annual fee for their children's educations. Disclaimer: The title of this post and some of the content is based on an article in the current issue of American Photo which is currently only in print and not yet online.

On This Ground

Miko — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:48:32 -0800

The International Coalition of Sites of Conscience is a directory of historic sites that interpret themes related to ethical, political, and social issues worldwide.

atrocity archives

kliuless — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 08:28:57 -0800

BABIES’ skulls dashed against rocks; attempts to twist off the heads of toddlers. Girls, their mothers and grandmothers (and sometimes male relatives too) raped at knife- or gunpoint, the weapons then used to inflict mutilation. Women hauled off to camps or just tied to trees and gang-raped. Thousands of children, some as young as nine, snatched or recruited by armed gangs (or regular forces) and made into drug-crazed killers, the girls among them often serially abused or taken by commanders as “wives”. Such are the horrors reported from some recent conflict zones... Alison Des Forges (previously) helped tell their stories. Carla Del Ponte prosecuted war crimes.

Scorched huts and crushed skulls

IvoShandor — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:46:50 -0800

"The Lord’s Resistance Army is now on the loose, moving from village to village, seemingly unhindered, leaving a wake of scorched huts and crushed skulls. Witnesses say the fighters have kidnapped hundreds of children and marched them off into the bush, the latest conscripts in their slave army." Apparently, Ugandan and Congolese forces failed to seal off rebel escape routes and heavy fog took away the element of surprise in what was to be the death blow for rebel resistance in the ongoing violence in Uganda. The result was that the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group led by accused war criminal Joseph Kony, adhered to their standard operating procedure and began slaughtering civilians, many of which had no knowledge of who their attackers were. No U.S. troops were involved in on the ground fighting, at least according to the Times article, but by all accounts this operation was botched. These massacres are nothing new. And there are those who aim to stop it .

Human Rights Blogger Killed by Russian Police

Chinese Jet Pilot — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:04:07 -0800

Magomed Yevloyev, who blogged human rights abuses committed by police in Russia's volatile Ingushetia region, was shot in the temple while in police custody today. The site, ingushetiya.ru (English version), reported the brutal anti-insurgent "Dirty War" tacticts committed by police against Ingushetia's civilian population.

Women and the Holocaust

Kattullus — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:06:39 -0800

Women and the Holocaust is a site about women's experiences in the Holocaust. It has poetry, testimonials, personal reflections, tributes, essays and more.

China Colonizing Africa With Dire Consequences for Africans

MetaMan — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:03:01 -0800

China is making a concerted effort to colonize Africa with dire consequences for Africans. In protest to China's involvement in Darfur's genocide, Steven Spielberg has resigned as Artistic Director of the Beijing Olympics.

Killing The Indian In The Child

chuckdarwin — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:39:51 -0800

Canada has apologised for forcing more than 100,000 aboriginal children to attend state-funded Christian boarding schools aimed at assimilating them. Controversial former Minister Kevin Annett has written two books on the subject of residential school abuse in Canada [Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust and Love and Death in the Valley]. Unrepentant - Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide reveals Canada’s darkest secret - that the Canadian residential school system, the Christian churches along with state authorities implemented a policy of genocide against Canada's native population. Related: Deliver Us From Evil

A work in progress...

elgilito — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:19:04 -0800

The Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence is a scholarly database of case studies focusing on massacres and genocides of the 20th century, both transnational and national. It also includes theoretical papers. Unfortunately the site doesn't provide the full list of papers (clicking on the case studies links can be frustrating as many papers are not yet available and marked as "work in progress"), but the search function can be used to find available topics.

Genocide Olympics

homunculus — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:30:29 -0800

The Genocide Olympics. The human rights group Dream for Darfur is trying to use the Olympics to pressure China to change its policies on Sudan and the genocide in Darfur. Here's Mia Farrow's original editorial.

Commemorating the Holodomor

sien — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:57:01 -0800

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor. The Holodomor was the starvation of millions of Ukranians at the hands of the Soviets. The Ukranian government is using this year to push for greater recognition for the genocide. Ukranian communities in Australia, Canada and all over the globe are holding events all year in the lead up to this years Holodomor day on November 25.

Genocide Chick or Genocide Chic?

anotherpanacea — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:52:40 -0800

Harvard Professor Samantha Power's book A Problem from Hell is on syllabi across the country, and is the bible of humanitarian hawks who decry our failure to intervene in the Rwandan or Sudanese genocides. As one of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisors, she's getting a lot of press for her positions: pro-intervention, obviously, critical of Israel, pro-UN, pro-internationalism, and, perhaps unsurprisingly given her husband's role in ignoring the Rwandan genocide, anti-Clinton.

Who Makes the Nazis?

nasreddin — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 10:08:52 -0800

"By the time I cut his balls off," one settler boasted, "he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket." The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked "provided they were black".

Armenian genocide

homunculus — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:55:11 -0800

Genocide: An inconvenient truth "The Armenian genocide bill has been attacked by both the right and the left -- and it may make matters worse. But it's necessary." [Cookie.]

1,220,580 - None Dare Call It Genocide

y2karl — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:20:40 -0800

...These findings come from a poll released today by ORB, the British polling agency that has been tracking public opinion in Iraq since 2005. In conjunction with their Iraqi fieldwork agency a representative sample of 1,499 adults aged 18+ answered the following question: How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)?

Answer: 1,220,580
Tables pdf
FinalDeadNumbersWEIGHTED.xls
See also Poll: Civilian toll in Iraq may top 1M
See also None Dare Call It Genocide

“I study dead Jews”

elgilito — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 06:59:59 -0800

"So much for “never again.” So the problem has obviously not disappeared."
Raul Hilberg (1926-2007, NYT obit) explains why he added a chapter on Rwanda to the last edition of The destruction of the European Jews, a work that took him a lifetime and 3 editions to complete, meeting with indifference, then with criticism from those who didn't share his (at the beginning) functionalist view of the Holocaust. Hilberg became involved in other controversies about the Holocaust, but "The Destruction..." remains the "the closest of any work in print to being the Summa of Holocaust studies" (Christopher Browning). Also: Hilberg intervied by Claude Lanzmann in "Shoah" (YT) (previously).

The Man of the Hole

stbalbach — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:49:28 -0800

The Man of the Hole

Love in a time of reconcilliation

meta_eli — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 20:36:45 -0800

Musekeweya ("new dawn") is a phenomenally popular radio drama broadcast out of Kigali, Rwanda. The soap, funded by Dutch NGO La Benevolencija, follows the story of two star-crossed lovers who come from opposing villages involved in an increasingly violent struggle. Thought Rwandan law makes it difficult to discuss the genocide in the media, the show aims to open a dialog using the fictional villages of Bumanzi and Muhumuro as a proxy for Hutus and Tutsis. A soap opera may seem like an unlikely vehicle to tackle a topic of such national importance, but it's actually not uncommon. And, certainly, Rwanda is a country that knows all too well about the power of radio

The Number

y2karl — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:32:53 -0800

Whatever one's opinion of its possible limitations, the 2006 Iraq mortality survey produced epidemiological evidence that coalition forces have failed to protect Iraqi civilians... If, for the sake of argument, the study is wrong and the number of Iraqi deaths is less than half the infamous figure, is it acceptable that "only" 300,000 have died? Last November, with no explanation, the Iraqi Ministry of Health suddenly began citing 150,000 dead, five times its previous estimate. Is that amount of death acceptable? In January, the United Nations reported that more than 34,000 Iraqis were killed violently in the last year alone. Is that acceptable?

Regarding The Number, the result of what one of the study's authors calls an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide... [more within]

Hrant Dink Murdered in Istanbul

k8t — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 10:29:43 -0800

Hrant Dink, Armenian Newspaper Editor, Murdered in Istanbul an ethnic Armenian newspaper editor that was sentenced to 6 months in jail for "insulting Turkishness" by discussing the Armenian Genocide in Turkey was shot dead while leaving his newspaper office today.

Christmas in Darfur

notsnot — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 04:53:23 -0800

What can two nerds from Chicago do about the crisis in Darfur? Donor fatigue means the marginal value of each life has effectively dropped to zero. Kill 5 people, kill 500, kill 500,000 - it makes no difference - each added fatality has absolutely no policy impact and won’t change the situation one iota. It’s not that as many as 500,000 (essentially an entire Seattle) have died in Darfur. The horrific thing is that they could kill another 500,000 and nobody will bat an eyelash.

The Forgotten Holocaust

jonson — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 07:41:05 -0800

The largely forgotten holocaust of the Ukrainian people began when Stalin imposed collectivism upon the farms, sealing state borders & refusing any seed grain until ficticious and unattainable production goals were met. The Ukrainian upper class were executed, the peasantry left to starve to death. In all, seven million people died, one out of every four citizens. At this Ukranian art site, a collection of stamps commemorating the event & a gallery of "genocide art" continue to speak for the dead.