Lecture Week 6 Flashcards
(22 cards)
Can the Atlantic Slavery be seen as genocide?
It is a contested case, because the purpose was to conserve the lives of the slaves for labor exploitation, eventhough it ticked all the other boxes of genocide.
Why is genocide an ambiguous concept?
It has no clear guidelines in use of the word.
- it has a multitude of definitions
- the concept is used in different terms:
Memory: how mass violence to be recognised as genocide
Humanitarian action: call for response to danger of genocide
Legal issue: prosecution of instigators and perpetrators
Weapon against one’s enemy
genocide’ employed as symbolic shield in order to construct the identity of the victim and thus against an enemy – social groups are identified ‘as an enemy in an essentially military sense… against whom it is justified to use violence in a comprehensive and systematic way’
There are two approaches in the use of the term genocide
Harder approach: fear of rendering genocide banal or meaningless when too largely implemented
Softer approach: excessively rigid framings rule out too many actions that should be included – need for dynamic and evolving genocide framework, rather than static and inflexible
What are the common grounds on these approaches?
group-selective, large-scale violence with aim of group destruction
What are the key ingredients of the definitions of genocide following Jones?
-Agents: focus on state and official authorities
-Victims: standardly identified as social minorities. They exhibit deep vulnerability and/or ‘essential defencelessness
-Goals: - the destruction/eradication of the victim group and/or its culture
- Scale: ranging from targeting a victim group in its totality to ‘in whole or in part’
- Strategies: include ‘coordinated plan of different actions’, ‘direct or indirect’ strategies, ‘killing of elites’, ‘elimination of national culture and religious life with the intend of ‘denationalization’’, ‘prevention of normal family life
What is the definition of Raphael Lemkin of genocide?
signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.
Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group . . . Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor
How is genocide defined by the UN genocide convention (1948)
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
KEY: INTENTION
What are the limits of genocide as a product of political bargaining between the great powers at the end of WWII?
non inclusion of groups defined according to political, economic, social, and gender criteria (whatever that means)
Cultural genocide (enslavement, the use of atomic weapons, apartheid and the targeting of political groups not covered by definition)
issues of enforcement
What is the definition of Crimes against humanity used as an alternative for genocide?
an act ‘committed as part of a widespread or systemic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack’
How is war and genocide related?
- strategies of mass violence are developed in response to real and perceived threats to the maintenance of political power;
- qualitative tradition: theoretical connection between war and genocide – genocide is form of war (Shaw) and logic of genocide closely associatied with logic of war
- in war, civilian groups more likely to be constructed as ‘enemies’, military means of destruction more likely to be deployed, military and political centers of power more likley to be closely allied
- War creates conditions of state insecurity and vulnerability, and loss in war triggers disproportionate responses
- war contributes to defining groups as internal enemies and increases uncertainty and vulnerability, which can lead to mass-scale violence (Sémelin).
What are the three causel mechanisms between war and genocide following straus?
- War created threat and insecurity, which increases the probability that violence will be used to counter the threat
- war increases the probability that perceived opponents will be classified as ‘‘enemies,’’ whom in war one seeks to destroy
- -war instigates the use of militarized forms of power which facilitate lethal violence against perceived enemies.
How do leader-level visions of utopia influence genocide?
leaders who commit genocide are revolutionary;
they are animated by visions of utopia; they harness the state to implement their future;
and they imagine a future with pure, homogenous populations.
How can ideology be seen as the binding agent of genocide?
that connects security fears, to identity, to quests for purity that involve destroying others to save one’s own community. Genocide is when actors ‘‘destroy ‘them’ to save ‘us
Which four specific ideological obsessions and preoccupations animate genocidal violence?
Racism
Territorial expansionism
Agrarianism
Desire to restore purity
the root of genocidal violence is imagining the nation as an organic whole, which in turn is based on an ethnic interpretation of democracy. The risk for genocide is greater when the ‘‘demos’’ is imagined as an ‘‘ethnos.’’
How are genocide and war very similar?
Armed conflict as the main macro environment in which genocide takes place;
Wars favor violence:
they legitimize killing as a tactic;
they increase fear and uncertainty;
they trigger militarized institutions that specialize in destruction, among other issues;
Ideological perspective that emphasizes the political imaginary critical for understanding patterns of civilian targeting - the political imaginary establishes social categories and political goals, which in turn helps to explain why certain civilian groups are targeted for destruction;
What is the problem of the study of genocide in isolation and disconnectedness from the study of civil war or political violence?
Issue of definition leads to lack of comparative research – eg alternative concepts such as ‘mass killing’ (Valentino), ‘murderous ethnic cleansing’ (Mann), ‘democide’ ((massive) killing by governments, see Rummel), ‘state-sponsored mass murder’ (Krain), ‘one-sided mass violence’ (Eck and Hultman), etc
What is the difference between political violence and genocide?
Difference from other forms of political violence: group selective and not individual nor indiscriminate, and group destructive and not group harmful or repressive – two major indicators of genocide as form of political violence
What are the structural roots of the genocide (Case Rwandan Genocide)
- Pre-colonial Rwanda had a complex hierarchy: a minority of Tutsi formed the monarchy and were in the elites and middle class, but the Hutu were in a lower social order. Twa at the bottom of society
- Rwanda got colonised and the Belgians confirmed the Tutsi dominance which led to hardening of ethnic identities and boundaries. This led to Hutu resentment, which led to a social revolution in which tutsi’s got killed and there started to appaer refugee flows
- Post-colonial: Authoritarian centralized state dominated by hutu elites
Triggers and sources of mobilization:
- social tensions increase economy declines from 1980s
- regime instability, division of political class and international pressure for inclusiveness
- Tutsi refugees in Uganda seen as threat to Hutu rule, formation of RPF and war with Rwanda.
How were Tutsi’s dehumanized?
- any Hutu is a traitor who acquires a Tutsi wife
-all Tutsi are dishonest in business - any Hutu is a traitor who forms a business alliance with a Tutsi
- Strategic positions such as politics, administration, economics, the military and security must be restricted to the Hutu
- The Rwandan Army must be exclusively Hutu
- Hutu must stand firm and vigilant against their common enemy: the Tutsi.
- Stand up so that we kill the Inkotanyi and exterminate them; look at the person’s height and his physical appearance. Just look at his small nose and then break it.
How did the killings develop from 6 april 1994?
6 april: plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi’s president shot down
6-7 april: killings began in kigali, carried out by soldier, police and Hutu militias
7 april: RPF resumes fighting against government in the north
April/May: high rate of killings across the country, UN reduces peacekeeping force
May/July: killings continue across the country, slowly halted by RPF advance and capture of territory
June: Operation turquoise
More then 800.000 people killed, over 1 million refugees.
How did the international community respond?
- Emphasis on ethnic tensions in press reports
- UN peacekeeping force: warned UNSC of genocide in january 1994, but SC denied request to intervene and size of mission reduced after withdrawal belgians
- mid may 1994: UN support granted but never materialised
- nov 1994: official international recognition of genocide by UN.
