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A Genocidal Legacy

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  • A Genocidal Legacy

    Accuracy In Media, DC
    Jan 4 2007


    A Genocidal Legacy

    By Bethany Stotts | January 4, 2008

    Those human-rights activists combatting genocide in Darfur and
    lobbying for the Armenian Genocide Resolution would likely be
    displeased to hear that important massacres and purges may never make
    the history books as genocide - or be prosecuted - because the 1948
    United Nations Genocide Convention does not include social and
    political groups as possible victims of genocide.

    The 1948 Genocide Convention defined genocide as "any of the
    following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
    a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Punishable
    genocidal actions which can referred to an international tribunal
    include killing the aforementioned groups, inflicting serious bodily
    or mental harm, "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of
    life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or
    in part," preventing births by this group, and "forcibly transferring
    children of the group to another group." Arguably, many of the
    Communist purges contained these conditions, with a key difference
    that they were perpetrated against socioeconomic groups, such as the
    Gulags or the bourgeoisie.

    Nicholas Eberstadt, American Enterprise Institute Chair in Political
    Economy, estimated at the AEI conference, "Understanding Political
    Repression in our Times," that both Mao and the Soviets reduced their
    population between 5% and 6% during their respective communist
    transitions. But these crimes won't be labeled genocide any time
    soon, largely because Soviet lawyers helped form the definition of
    genocide, argues Norman Naimark, a Professor of East European Studies
    at Stanford University. "...most of what we're talking about here in
    terms of the evolution of thinking about genocide was heavily
    influenced by the Soviets, yet subsequently when we think about
    genocide we exclude the Soviets - most scholars do - because of what is
    apparently, or supposedly an intellectual argument based on the
    Genocide Convention, which [the Soviets] themselves formed," said
    Naimark. "So the final Genocide Convention then is a concession...
    and the State Department understood this too. It was a concession to
    the Soviets, in order to get a unanimous General Assembly resolution
    on the Genocide Convention of December 1948." he said.

    Paul Hollander, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of
    Massachusetts, Amherst, strongly disagreed with Naimark at the
    conference, because he believes that Soviet actions, while
    lamentable, should not be termed genocide because they were not
    systematically focused on a particular group and lacked the
    systematic death camp machinery of the Holocaust. A Harvard
    University Davis Center Associate, Hollander argues that the
    categories the Soviets used to target victims were more "flexible"
    than those used by the Nazis, and that these categories were
    constantly redesigned according to political expedience.

    A. Dirk Moses, author of Genocide and Settler Society, notes that
    "Despite clear guidelines from Lemkin and the UN, scholars have
    wrangled with one another over the meaning of genocide or suggested
    alternative definitions. Part of the reason for this is that Lemkin's
    writings are open to rival interpretations." Raphael Lemkin, the man
    who coined the term genocide, originally labeled the mass murder of a
    particular group as 'barbarism' in his 1933 German essay, "Akte der
    Barbarei und des Vandalismus als delicta juris gentium," roughly
    translated as "Documentation of Barbarism and Vandalism under the Law
    of Nations." In the German article, Lemkin defined barbarism as the
    "Ausrottung," or extermination of, "ethnischer, nationaler,
    konfessioneller, sozialer Menschheitsgruppen gerichteten
    Vergewaltigungen, mögen dieselben politischen, religiösen oder
    sonstigen Beweggründen entspringen..." In other words, he included
    the extermination of ethnic, national, creed, and social groups for
    political or religious reasons as part of his early conception of
    genocide.

    However, a Polish Jew himself who had relocated to America, Lemkin's
    own heritage caused him to refocus his efforts against the horrors of
    the Holocaust and crimes against his fellow Poles. America was
    aligned with the Soviets during World War II, and Naimark argues that
    "In 1944 [the War Department is] very anxious for the Soviets to
    fight on our side. They weren't anxious to offend the Soviets in any
    way by one of their publications."

    http://www.aim.org/briefing/6 018_0_5_0_C/
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