Advancing Genocide Studies: Personal Accounts and Insights from Scholars in the Field 9781412862455, 9781412862004, 9781315083001

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Advancing Genocide Studies

Genocide Studies Series Samuel Totten, editor The Genocide Studies Series addresses all aspects of the phenomena of genocide: theories of genocide, its antecedents, how particular ­genocides are carried out, prevention strategies, international ­reactions to genocide, and the rebuilding of post-genocide societies. It draws from a wide range of disciplines and from international contributors, ­including academics, attorneys with international criminal ­tribunals, field-based personnel of nongovernmental organizations, and ­independent researchers. Titles in this series include: Advancing Genocide Studies Genocide by Attrition Pioneers of Genocide Studies

Advancing Genocide Studies Personal Accounts and Insights from Scholars in the Field

Samuel Totten editor

~~ ~~~;)~~Jl~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2015 by Transaction Publishers Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2015 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2015016594 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Advancing genocide studies: personal accounts and insights from s­ cholars in the field / Samuel Totten, editor.    pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-1-4128-6245-5 (alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4128-6200-4 (alk. paper) 1. Genocide--Study and teaching. 2. Genocide--Prevention. I. Totten, Samuel. HV6322.7.A38 2015 304.6’63072--dc23 2015016594 ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-6245-5 (hbk)

Contents Introduction Samuel Totten Part I  Historians and Sociologists 1 To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey: Caught between a Conspiracy of Silence and Murderous Hatred Taner Akçam

vii 1

3

2 The Destruction of the Other as the Validation of the Self Uğur Ümit Üngör

35

Part II  Political Scientists

55

3

57

Seized of Sorrow Adam Jones

4 From Political Scientist to Genocide Studies Scholar and Back Again Maureen S. Hiebert

79

Part III  Criminology and International Human Rights Law

97

5

99

Understanding the Unthinkable Kjell Anderson

Part IV  Criminologist

117

6

119

A Scholar of Genocide and Violence Alex Alvarez

Part V  Philosopher

135

7

137

Out of the Shadow of War and Genocide Henry C. Theriault

Part VI  Educator

169

8 My Personal Story as It Relates to Being a Scholar of Genocide Studies Yair Auron

171

Part VII  Independent Researchers

195

9

A Quest for Genocide Justice in Cambodia Craig Etcheson

197

10

A Belated Cause Gerald Caplan

217

11

A Matter of Conscience: Part II Samuel Totten

229

Selected Bibliography: Works by Contributors

267

Index

277

Introduction Samuel Totten

Advancing Genocide Studies: Personal Accounts and Insights From Scholars in the Field is essentially a companion volume to Pioneers of Genocide Studies (Transaction Publishers, 2002). In the latter, scholars from across the globe, representing different disciplines (including history, political science, psychology, and sociology), shared their personal stories and insights concerning their pioneering efforts vis-à-vis the study of genocide, among a host of other issues. The individuals included in Pioneers had been in the field for a minimum of fifteen years (going back to 1987 or so), and a vast number of them had been engaged in work related to genocide much longer than that. This new book includes at least one individual who should have been included in Pioneers, and that is Craig Etcheson. Readers will understand why that is so upon reading his chapter and learning about his remarkable career thus far, including his pioneering efforts to bring to justice those (the Khmer Rouge) responsible for the genocide of their fellow Cambodians (1975–1979). Most of the contributors in the current volume are considered members of the second and third generations of genocide scholars. The vast majority began their work on genocide between the mid-1990s and early 2000s. Just as the contributors to Pioneers of Genocide Studies constituted an eclectic group, representing a wide range of disciplines and residing and working in various locales across the globe, so does the current volume. The contributors herein include Kjell Anderson from Canada but who resides and works in the Netherlands (criminology), Yair Auron from Israel (history), Taner Akçam originally from Turkey but now in the United States (history and sociology), Alexander Alvarez from the United States (criminology), Gerry Caplan from Canada (history), Craig Etcheson from the United States (international relations), Maureen vii

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Hiebert from Canada (political science), Adam Jones from Canada (political science), Henry Theriault from the United States (philosophy), Samuel Totten from the United States (independent scholar), and Uğur Üngör from the Netherlands (history and sociology). All of the contributors are all well known in the field of genocide studies, and they’ve all made important contributions. In doing so, they have variously written and published journal articles, chapters, books, and reports on a wide variety of issues germane to genocide. They have cofounded journals on genocide, served as editors of journals on genocide studies, and conducted field research both where genocide had been perpetrated and, in at least one case, where ongoing violent conflicts continue to be perpetrated. One coauthored an official report on a specific genocide, and another served as an investigator into major human rights infractions in which the data collected was used to ascertain whether genocide had been perpetrated or not. Yet another helped to establish and implement major tribunals trying alleged genocidaires. The list of accomplishments goes on and on. Just as those who contributed to Pioneers of Genocide Studies, the contributors to this book were asked to address the genesis and evolution of their work in the field of genocide studies. In order to ensure some semblance of consistency, each author was asked to consider and address thirteen questions: (1) What led you to initially begin thinking, writing, and speaking about genocide? (2) What were the fundamental problems and issues that made the issue of genocide imperative for you to study/address? (3) How do you define genocide, and why? (4) What is your primary aim as a scholar in this field? (5) What individuals and/or scholarly works have most influenced your work, and how? (6) Has there been a consistent and/or persistent focus in your thinking and writing about genocide? (7) Has your thinking evolved over time, and if so, how? (8) What are your perceptions of the newly emerging field of “genocide studies,” where it has been, where it is, and where it appears to be heading? (9) Has your work changed in practical terms as your thinking has evolved? If so, how? (10) What are the major obstacles you have come up against in your work? (11) What are your major contributions to the field? (12) What projects are you currently working on and what are some future projects you plan to carry out? and (13) What, in your mind, remains to be done? Contributors were asked to approach the questions in a personal way, thus crafting an essay that reveals an individual’s voice, passions, viii

Introduction

scholarly interests, and perspective. The rationale behind the inclusion of personal stories is to help illuminate the author’s thinking, experiences, and work. Finally, each author was asked to provide a list of his or her ten most important publications on the issue of genocide. In the years following the publication of Pioneers of Genocide Studies, a tiny number of individuals, most of them second or third generation scholars in the field, some quite notable, mocked the focus of Pioneers, essentially calling into question the value of the publication as a whole. While some may have been irritated by the fact that they had not been included in the book, others may have simply believed that it was presumptuous for some of those who were in the book to consider, let alone refer to, themselves as pioneers in the field of genocide studies. In light of the latter, it is worth reiterating what the two editors (Samuel Totten and Steven Leonard Jacobs) of Pioneers of Genocide Studies saw as the purpose of that book: The field is now approximately twenty years old, growing at a tremendous rate, and certain major scholars are either dead (Leo Kuper), tapering off in their work as they reach retirement age (and this includes such individuals as Israel Charny, Curt Jonassohn, and R. J. Rummel) and/or are unable to continue their work for personal reasons (Norman Cohn)1, and thus we believe it is an appropriate time for a review of the field by many of its major scholars. Over and above that, the fact that the field is interdisciplinary (with major scholars representing such diverse fields as history, political science, psychology, sociology, religious studies, and education) and so many individuals are working on so many different fronts and on so many different issues, a book of this nature will allow those new to the field to assess the major focus of the field, the various strands of the field, the types of barriers faced by scholars in the field, successes and failures in the field, efforts to develop the ways and means to intervene and prevent genocide (and the efficacy of such ideas/measures), and the gaps in the field (Totten and Jacobs, 2001, p. 2).

Over the past decade or so, certain new and up and coming scholars have also questioned the value of the work of earlier scholars of genocide studies—some to the point of even dismissing the earlier work as simplistic and/or naïve. Seemingly, such hubris emanates from a sense of their own importance and a sense that their own work is so significant that they cannot and will not acknowledge that the pioneers literally created the field from scratch and that much of the foundational work is just that, foundational. These same critics don’t seem to understand or ix

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appreciate that their own work has been built upon such a foundation. It needs to be duly noted that none of the contributors to this volume make such arguments in their contributions herein. Over the years I have pondered whether Pioneers of Genocide Studies served any other notable purposes—that is, beyond those noted in the above quote from the introduction. I’ve come to believe it has (and, by association, so will this new book). Perhaps the most significant purpose is that Pioneers now serves as a foundational history of the field. As difficult as it may be for scholars of genocide in the field today to believe, the number of works available on genocide back in the 1980s, when the field was being formed, was scant. For example, in 1987, the year I accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, the flagship institution of higher learning in Arkansas, there was a grand total of eight books in the university library on genocide theory. Those books were by Israel Charny, Helen Fein, Irving Louis Horowitz, Raphael Lemkin, and Leo Kuper. The books available on individual genocides (other than the Holocaust) were more numerous but still scant. Tellingly, there was not yet a single journal dedicated solely to the topic of genocide (again, other than the Holocaust). On a different note, while there are, of course, many similarities between the stories found in Pioneers and this latest book (after all, both sets of authors addressed exactly the same set of questions in structuring their essays), there are numerous differences as well, and they are worth commenting on here. While many have built on the foundation established by those whose work preceded them, various authors in this book have explored and probed new topics and lines of thought: critical genocide theory; genocide and gender issues; a reconsideration of the value of the concept and term genocide; the value of the concept of the Responsibility to Protect; the efficacy and value of the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the International Tribunal Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and the International Criminal Court (ICC); the controversy surrounding the issue of the value of issuing arrest warrants for alleged genocidaires, versus trying to reel them in to help bring violence and mass human rights violations (including crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide) to an end, which is implicitly tied to the issue of impunity; constructive critiques of the work of earlier scholars; critiques of organizations whose purported purpose is the prevention and intervention of genocide; and the so-called scholar/activism divide. x

Introduction

Significantly, many up and coming scholars of genocide studies (a good number of them newly minted PhDs) have, both in their doctoral dissertations and subsequent research, contributed to the field in numerous and notable ways. Some have, for example, introduced new methods of conducting research into cases of genocide. Some have radically revised the findings of research into past cases, such as the German genocide of the Hereros, the Armenian genocide, the Cambodian genocide, and even the 1994 genocide in Rwanda of the Tutsi and moderate Hutu by extremist Hutus. Some have engaged in work on both new cases of genocide (i.e., the Darfur genocide) and/or cases that have previously been overlooked or outright ignored. As noted earlier, over the past decade or so, numerous scholars of genocide studies have begun to write and speak about what they refer to as critical genocide theory. Essentially, they argue that it is essential to begin to examine the root causes that lead to conflict between groups of people. They aim to examine and analyze the systemic issues that lead people to clash, and why some assume the role of perpetrator while others face the wrath of the latter. Not a few of the contributors have commented on, in writing and in speeches, the concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). As might be imagined, while some praise it, others look askance at it. Those who question the value and/or feasibility of R2P cite the international community’s failure to operationalize it over the past decade or so, particularly in relation to deadly conflicts such as those in Syria (initially in regard to the civil war), Iraq and Syria (especially since the advent of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)), Burma, the Central African Republic, Darfur, the Nuba Mountains, the Blue Nile State, The Republic of South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As various critics point out, despite the best intentions of the proponents of R2P, state sovereignty and realpolitik continue to reign in the world today. Some even assert that the proponents of R2P were incredibly naïve to think it would have a positive impact in stanching atrocity crimes. Proponents, however, assert that R2P is a step in the right direction, and should enough nations buy into the concept and then act upon it, there is a possibility that it could move the international community into a much more positive and proactive direction toward the prevention and intervention of atrocity crimes, be they crimes against humanity or genocide. Furthermore, some proponents of R2P counter criticism of the concept by noting that while the thorny issues surrounding the prevention and intervention of genocide are xi

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neither going to be solved easily nor anytime soon, the development of new concepts, approaches, and innovations may contribute to other more nuanced (if not totally new) approaches that could save lives. As previously mentioned, a number of contributors—and not solely those whose expertise is international law or criminal justice—address the efforts, complexities, successes, failures, and limitations of the work of the ICTR, the ICTY, and the ICC. Some argue that the ICTR, ICTY, and ICC are not likely to make much of an impact in preventing future genocides, asserting that those who are intent on perpetrating genocide are not going to be swayed from carrying it out due to the fear of possibly being tried in a tribunal or court of law. The other side of the coin, others argue, is that not charging alleged genocidaires and attempting to bring them to justice will be interpreted by some future perpetrators to mean that they can literally get away with mass murder. Another issue discussed in these pages deals with the ongoing, and sometimes heated, debate among scholars of genocide studies over what is commonly referred to as “the scholar-activist” divide in the field. Some scholars, particularly those from the third and fourth generations, have lambasted those in the first and second generations, or at least some of them, for being activist-oriented, i.e., focused on the prevention of current and future genocides. Because of this, critics call into question the value of their entire research agenda, both their efforts and findings. On a different note, even though many scholars, both the pioneers in the field as well as more recent scholars, have understandably bemoaned the prolonged and prolix debate over definitions of genocide, various scholars continue to raise critical issues in regard to definitional concerns. For example, an issue that has gained increasing prominence as of late is not over the nuances of the definition of genocide itself, per se, but rather over whether there might not be a more useful term, particularly as it applies to the prevention and intervention of genocide. Some of the contributors to this book broach and discuss this issue; and in doing so, discuss such concepts as “atrocity crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” No one, of course, knows what the future holds. But if the conflicts that plague the world today are any indication of what humanity is going to continue to deal with, those who conduct research into atrocity crimes—be they crimes against humanity, genocide or some other ­version of atrocity crimes—have their work cut out for them. ­Furthermore, as many have duly pointed out, other crises facing xii

Introduction

humanity today, such as climate change, are bound to have a profoundly adverse impact on societies across the globe if not brought under control, and soon. Indeed, as more and more people scramble for less and less farmland, water, and other resources, the possibility that deadly conflict could become a common occurrence across the human landscape is frightening. In that regard, I firmly believe that it behooves those in what appear to be distinct, if not vastly different fields, to begin to talk to one another, read one another’s work, and collaborate with an eye to working together to solve the earth-shaking problems plaguing humanity today. To fail to do so is not only myopic, but it may well result in a world in which few will want to reside. In that regard, it is absolutely imperative that those working on one or more of the many issues confronting humanity today that have the potential to lead to violent, if not cataclysmic, conflict need to engage in dialogue, cooperation, and collaboration—and sooner than later. In closing, I wish to sincerely and heartily thank each of the contributors to this new book, not only for their fine contributions, but for the dedication, passion, thought, and hard work they’ve put into the field of genocide studies. In their own unique ways, I believe, they stand as positive and hopeful beacons of humanity. 1.

Note

Since 2002, when Pioneers of Genocide Studies was published, both Curt Jonassohn and Norman Cohn passed away. And sadly, so have Irving Louis Horowitz, James Mace, and Eric Markusen, all three of whom contributed to Pioneers of Genocide Studies.

xiii

I Historians and Sociologists

1 To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey: Caught between a Conspiracy of Silence and Murderous Hatred Taner Akçam Introduction

In her fascinating essay on the early nineteenth-century German historian-archivist Hans von Aufsess, Susan Crane asks, “How does history become ‘personal’—only when it is survived, or only when private lives become public knowledge? What constitutes an ‘experience’ of history—‘being there,’ being told about it (telling it), being taught it (teaching it), reading about it, writing it? Or does history become ‘personal’ when an individual cares about it?” (p. 64). Following Susan Crane, but in a slightly different context, I want to ask not only “When is the personal historical?” but also “When is the historical personal?” That is, what happens to historical narrative when the writer of history, like Saul Friedlander, is one whose very life was shaped by the events whose history he tells? Or, what might a historian’s narrative look like after it has been received by someone like me, born after a particular event but indelibly shaped by survivors’ stories?1 I began to work on the Armenian genocide in 1990. My book Turkish National Identity and the Armenian Question was published by İletişim Publishers in 1992. Be that as it may, the “turning point” for me was in April 1995, when I participated in an international conference on the subject in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. At that gathering I gave

3

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a talk during which I publicly declared, “1915 was a genocide.” A German newspaper covered my speech in a full-page report: The man almost disappears behind the lectern. Only his head [can be seen] next to the microphones as Taner Akçam speaks the crucial last sentences [of his presentation]. In the hall, where some three hundred to four hundred people are gathered, it became dramatically quiet. Not a single noise interrupts Akçam as he hastily but abundantly clearly says in TURKISH: “We are guilty! The Turkish nation is guilty. While I’m not personally responsible for the genocide, my responsibility is to accept the consequences [of this historical fact] and to fight to ensure the establishment of democratic conditions in Turkey.”2

I followed up two months later with my first visit to Armenia, bringing with me a delegation of journalists, led by my friend Gürbüz Çapan, Mayor of Esenyurt (a neighborhood in Istanbul). My participation at the Yerevan conference and public acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide were both “firsts” for a Turkish academic, and were met with a significant response both in the Armenian world and in Germany. Additionally, a subsequent visit to Armenia with Gürbüz Çapan became the most discussed topic in Turkey for several days. Just as the 1878 Berlin Conference was seen as a turning point in the appearance of the Armenian Question, the dates mentioned above represent the “official” beginning of my encounter and grappling with the Armenian Genocide. From that time until now, I have found myself living within a triangular world whose three points are represented by one group of people offering me their love and support, another group distancing themselves from me as if I were the plague—sharing an unspoken agreement of silence, so to speak—and a third group directing at me an endless stream of hatred, including frequent comments about their desire to eliminate me. The first corner, consisting of the belief and acceptance of the Armenian world, did not come into being overnight. It took a long time before I “earned my credentials,” so to speak. My Armenian friends and colleagues—and special mention should be given here to Professor Vahakn Dadrian—were long obliged to vouch for me within the Armenian community, assuring them that I was a “good, normal Turk” and not some agent of the Turkish state assigned to infiltrate their ranks. The second corner is the one that I characterize as the “conspiracy of silence.” This was the general approach of those circles that both think of and refer to themselves as “progressive,” “leftist,” and “democratic.” 4

To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey

Nearly all of these persons refrain from dealing with the “Armenian Question,” and in one way or another have displayed their displeasure at my decision to grapple with it. The shared attitude of these circles was to keep their distance and not deal with the issue at all. I wouldn’t be exaggerating here if I were to say that, with few exceptions, everyone in this sector approached the matter with the attitude of “Where do you get off dumping all this on us? Don’t you have anything better to do?” I will never forget that back in 1995, when I gave my first talk on the Armenian Genocide in Istanbul, only about fifteen people showed up, among them Hrant Dink.3 What’s more, the gathering had been widely publicized among all the left-progressive circles in Istanbul. From about that time until the 2005 conference in Yerevan, or possibly up until Hrant’s murder in 2007, I was made to feel like a leper within these sectors. The third corner of the triangle was (and remains) murderous hatred. Beginning in 1996, I was the target of various threats, attacks, and smear campaigns up until the Ergenekon arrests and investigations.4 A couple months after Hrant’s assassination, the Turkish daily ­Hürriyet claimed that there was something of a “contract” on my head, if you will, similar to that which targeted Hrant. An article (“Holdwater: The Mysterious American Who Drives the Armenians Mad, Part I,” May 18, 2007) that I published in the Turkish-Armenian daily Agos became the subject of another article in Hürriyet several weeks later (“Holdwater: The ­Mysterious American Who Drives the Armenians Mad, Part II,” May 25, 2007), exactly in the same manner that Sabiha Gökçen’s article on Hrant’s death would become the subject of a banner headline several weeks after that. Basically, I revealed the identity of a person who is running a website under the pseudonym of Holdwater. He was one of the organizers of the hate campaign against me. (This is addressed in more detail below.) Repeated criminal complaints were submitted against me in Istanbul. Only one week before the Hürriyet campaign, I received an email message containing a death threat that chilled me to the bone. I had received death threats before, but this one was different. You could just feel the difference. I have no doubt that the threat’s timing, coming as it did so close to the Hürriyet campaign, was no coincidence. The letter began by directly addressing me by my name. It was not a simple letter full of curses or the usual hate letter; rather, it was clear that it was written by an educated person, not a thug on the street. It included a direct reference to the Holdwater case. (Holdwater, by the way, I believe to 5

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be a member of the Turkish Secret Service. I don’t know this for sure, but it is my strong assumption.) Futhermore, the letter came directly from Turkey. The cold threat caused me cold sweats. In part the letter read as follows: Taner . . . do you think there won’t be an end to the lies you tell and the stories you weave . . . Today we have started fighting you and those creatures you call your friends, within the boundaries of the law. But if we don’t get the result we’re looking for, we’ll start trying other alternative ways. It would be better for world peace and truth if sewer germs like you were taken off the planet. In reality, you aren’t even worth sending an email to. . . . You will die on the streets moaning . . . Don’t forget! No lie has ever gone on forever. . . . Pray that the devil takes you away soon because otherwise you’ll be living a hell on earth. Finally, you think you’ve discovered who “Holdwater” is and racist-fascist Armenians have been publishing endless photographs of someone on their web site. You’ve got it all wrong. Right now the world is full of millions of Holdwaters. I’m one of them . . . If you’ve read as far as this, good for you Taner. I never would guess that a low-life like you would read this far. The truth hurts Taner, it really does. One day you are going to feel the pain so badly that when you read these lines, you’ll remember how you were. . . . We’re going to show what kind of devil you all are. Who am I? You’ll find out Taner, you’ll find out

The second and third corners of the triangle—namely, the “conspiracy of silence” and the “murderous hatred”—are actually reflections of Turkish society’s two dominant approaches to the question of the Armenian Genocide. They are like the two horns of a dilemma upon which the question has hung ever since the debate broke out in Turkey, particularly post-1990s. My central argument is that despite the apparently opposite character of these reactions, they were but different aspects of what is essentially a common response of the Turkish national identity toward a “threat” felt to be coming upon them from the “outside.” Both of these poles tended to look upon the topic of the Armenian Genocide as an alien intrusion upon their very existence, and different parts of the Turkish collective (and its shared Turkish identity) were simply reacting differently to the same perceived threat. Nevertheless, the common denominator and source of both responses remains that of Turkish national identity. Initially, the response of most of Turkish society was to remain silent and simply ignore the topic. But since 2004, the response has grown more vocal and aggressive. Hence, the murderous hatred. This seething 6

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hostility reached its zenith with the Hrant Dink assassination. Since 2008—and in particular as the result of the Ergenekon investigations— the wave of hatred appears, at least publicly, to have broken for now. Doubtless, the strong nationalist reaction and wave of hatred toward those publicly dealing with the Armenian Genocide will continue to exist. But, in my opinion, so long as they are not channeled by the state apparatus or any of its institutions into a systematic framework, they will never again reach the murderous level of the past. Likewise, I can also say that the first of these reactions—silence and avoidance—have (and will continue to have) their effect in different ways. I firmly believe that the debate on whether or not to let bygones be bygones and to achieve some sort of closure between the Armenian and Turkish people through mutual recognition and forgiveness or Helalleşme, (the theme of a new discussion in Turkey by a group of our Turkish progressive and democratic intellectuals initiated on April 24, 2013) is little more than a public manifestation of the aforementioned “conspiracy of silence” in a new form.5 What is clear at this point is that those responsible for beginning this debate viewed the effort to face up to Turkey’s recent history in the wake of the assassination of Hrant Dink as having sufficiently advanced to the stage of forgiveness and reconciliation between Turks and Armenians. Personally, I believe that much more can be said in regard to this conciliatory mindset, but for now, I would like conclude by stating that I find it quite troubling that some of our Turkish intellectuals have adopted an attitude of, to use an Anatolian expression, “We’ve carried [so many] stones that we’ve hurt our backs!” Essentially, they are saying: How much more can we do? My response is simply: The process of facing history has only just started and is still in its fledgling stage. I believe that the debate around forgiveness and reconciliation shows that the prevailing silence and disinterest among Turkey’s democratic or leftist-progressive circles is not simply the result of some personal calculation of what was “too risky”—even dangerous—to take up publicly. Indeed, it was people in these same circles who, in the 1990s, had grappled with and published on subjects that could be considered far riskier, such as the Kurdish problem. Despite the great number of articles in the Turkish Penal Code that discourage discussion of the Kurdish problem, Kurdish culture, or the history of Turkey’s Kurdish policies, these groups nevertheless spoke openly and weighed in on the issue without hesitation. In this context, it is important to note that before the 2004 inclusion of Article 301 making it a crime to 7

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write or speak openly on the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish Penal Code contained nothing that would prohibit discussion of the Armenian question. Thus, trying to explain away the deafening silence of Turkey’s democratic, progressive circles on the Armenian question as result of intimidation or self-preservation is not viable. Indeed, the shift toward a more active response came about perhaps because of the aforementioned changes in the Turkish Penal Code and the various illicit activities of the Ergenekon organization. Outside of Turkey, I occasionally meet people who are not very familiar with the country and who tend to judge the country through the prism of “murderous hatred” I have mentioned. They express their admiration for what they see as my great heroism and courage in doing what I do. For my part, I try to explain that a far greater problem than this “murderous hatred” is the “wall of silence” that I have encountered from the democratic and progressive sectors, along with these groups’ utter lack of interest and concern for this important question. For this reason, during my first years of studying the Armenian Genocide, my greatest troubles were not so much the seething hatred that I faced or even the reasons behind it, but instead this general equanimity and disinterest. In those years there was a prevailing culture among the people of Turkey that went, “What happened in the past belongs in the past. Dealing with or dredging up the past is a pointless enterprise at best; what’s done is done, and it remains for us to live in the present and cast our gaze toward the future.” “If that’s the case,” I thought to myself, “I’ll just have to show people that it is only by thinking about their history and facing it honestly that they can effectively deal with their present.” I thus tried something along the lines of “Facing up to the past is the only way to solve the problems of today.” It was with this intent that I discussed the Kurdish question in the forward to my first book. I felt that if I could show some connection between the Armenian Question and the Kurdish Questions, I could perhaps get people to understand that they needed to deal with the former issue. And this turned out to be not so far from the truth. Even so, looking at it from where I stand today, I think it was insufficient. I’d like to again stress one point in order to complete the picture. It’s true that since I began to wrestle with the subject of the Armenian Genocide, I’ve been obliged to suffer a great deal of loneliness, experience a great deal of hardship and adversity, and overcome or avoid various dangers. Nevertheless, throughout this period I have also been privileged to meet a great number of wonderful people and form last8

To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey

ing friendships. I can honestly state that the support and assistance of these beautiful, wonderful friends—who gave voluntarily and without receiving anything in exchange—have been crucial to my overall welfare. I owe them all an immense debt of gratitude. Why and How I Began to Work on the Armenian Genocide

The question that I’m most frequently asked is how and why I began to research the Armenian Genocide. To be honest, I actually began my study of the topic purely as the result of a coincidence. But every time I tell people this, I’m reminded of Engels’ comment in Anti-Dühring that there is a causal relationship between unavoidable necessities and apparent “coincidences.” So perhaps the subject was an unavoidable necessity that has forced itself upon me. I’ll tell the story, and readers can decide for themselves. I had a long and painful life in politics that was ultimately brought to an end by two key events. On February 25, 1986, my dear friend Kürşat Timuroğlu was murdered upon the direct order of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. This was followed by the death of a childhood friend, Yavuz Aydın Erol, from a stray bullet on October 24, 1987. At the time he was attending a birthday celebration for me at a restaurant that was attacked by members of Dev-Sol, a leftist revolutionary organization. As a result of these events, I decided to withdraw from political life and look for ways to restart my academic career. During my university years, it had been my greatest dream to be an academic. When I was arrested in 1976, I began to look for British or American schools to apply to for a doctoral degree. I now saw the end of my political career as an opportunity to restart my academic life and career. With that purpose in mind, after twelve years of intermission, I began my study at Hamburg’s Institute for Social Research in August 1988. The topic that I initially chose was that of torture in the late Ottoman Empire and Turkey, but during my reading I came across information about a great number of large-scale massacres that had been perpetrated over the course of Turkish history. For the first time in my life I read and learned about the Hamidian period and the massacres, as well as the government actions of 1915 carried out against the Ottoman Armenian population. But, at this time, the thought of actually researching and writing about genocide didn’t even cross my mind. There was a woman working at the institute library at the time. She told me that her mother was a Lebanese Armenian, but apart from her dark black eyes, she had no connection to Armenian-ness. She 9

Advancing Genocide Studies

continually told me, “You simply have to work on the subject of the Armenians; it’s an incredibly important topic. And the fact that you are a Turk working on the subject would make it all the more meaningful.” I kept saying that I viewed both Turkey and the world as a whole through the lens of your average Turkish leftist. As such, I had serious doubts and concerns about the subject. Over time I learned that these doubts and concerns weren’t in fact connected with my being a leftist, but with being a Turk. And herein lies the explanation for the general unwillingness to deal with the subject in Turkey: the subject is of direct relevance to the question of Turkish national identity and the self-image that we ourselves, as members of this nation, have created. Our very being was created upon the denial of this subject’s existence. Today I explain this doubt and concern as the dilemma of “Existence/Nonexistence.” As currently constructed, our existence as the Turkish nation, as well as the Turkish national identity, necessitates the nonexistence of the Armenians—their conceptual annihilation, so to speak. The other’s nonexistence cannot be removed without bringing the parameters of our own existence into question. To put it another way, for Armenians to again be able to “exist,” and for us to actually face our history and accept the reality of Armenian Genocide, requires that we wrestle with our very identity as Turks. The essence of the matter is that, despite all our remaining differences, with the establishment of the Turkish Republic we also created a certain unity and a style of collective communication for all members of society—left and right leaning, secular and religious, Alevi and Sunni—even Turk and Kurd. This “collective communication style” has in turn delineated the borders of our “thought world,” and has determined the parameters of our existence. It has also created a collective bond among its members based on solidarity and the feeling of belonging, something that I would define as our “communicative reality.” This “reality” is our very identity, which lies like a light veil over all sectors of society, defining and delineating the limits of our feelings and our belief system—the very network of our sociocultural relations. It includes the boundaries of this solidarity, and a feeling of belonging. In short, all the things that make us what we are. Within this reality, there is no room for the Armenian Genocide. In order to open up a space for it we would first need to question our entire system of thought and the very things that have made us who we are. It would necessitate a complete overhaul, if you will. We would have to begin with a type of self-denial. This would be very difficult, indeed, because 10

To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey

it has the potential to pose a serious threat to our existing identity. That said, when all is said and done, dealing with the Armenian Genocide is the first step in the process of reconstructing our own national identity. When my friend at the institute insisted on the matter, I simply continued to mouth the things that most Turkish intellectuals—on both the left and right—learn and tend to repeat uncritically: “At the beginning of the 20th century, the Great Powers wanted to carve up and partition the Ottoman Empire and, later, the Turkish state. Turkey was fighting a ‘war of survival’ against the ‘imperialists’ who were attempting to eliminate it; the Republic of Turkey rose like a phoenix out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. While we were fighting our War of Independence against foreign occupation, the non-Muslims— namely, the Armenians and Greeks—collaborated with the imperialist occupiers. Certainly, there were mutual atrocities and killings during this war, but Turks suffered and were killed just as much as the Armenians. In the final analysis, we, the Turks, fought a just war, struggling against a colonialist occupier for the sake of our national honor and independence, while the Armenians collaborated with the occupation forces, etc., etc.” With a worldview such as this, there was simply no possibility to make space for the Armenian Genocide. During this period, an important development took place. In 1990, the institute launched a large-scale project to develop an overarching macrotheory of violence. The project sought to answer the question of whether it would be possible to place the three great massacres of the twentieth century, Auschwitz, the Soviet Gulag, and Hiroshima, within a common theoretical framework. One of the intellectual and theoretical underpinnings of the project was the Nuremberg Trials of former Nazi leaders. The topic was very simple: Should the Nuremberg Trials, which placed the political leaders of a country on trial for mass murder, constitute an exception, an anomaly in human history, or should we view them as the harbinger of what will someday be the norm? I learned over the course of my reading that there was a connection between the Nuremberg Trials and a set of earlier war crime trials in Ottoman Turkey after the First World War. At the time, I was just about through with my project on the history of torture in Turkey, and thus, upon the persistent urging of my librarian friend, who had helped me overcome my fears and concerns on the subject, I began to work on the trials of the Young Turk leaders held in Istanbul and elsewhere in Anatolia between 1919 and 1921. 11

Advancing Genocide Studies

When I look back on those years, I laugh at my own naiveté, at my greenness and ignorance. But if not for my ignorance, I would never have started to work on the topic. Briefly put, my decision to begin work on the topic did not derive from any moving life story related to Armenians or even a previous knowledge of the subject. Unbelievable as it may sound, until the year 1988, I didn’t even know that there were any Armenians living in Turkey. Ultimately, it was several different, seemingly unrelated factors, such as my work at the Hamburg Institute on the Holocaust, the urgings of a Lebanese Armenian girl, and the interest that the institute’s new project aroused in me that helped to foster my interest in the subject at hand. I would later learn the truth of my mother’s oft-repeated words, “Dertten yeni çıkmış başımı yeniden derde sokmaktan,” the American equivalent of which, I believe, is “Out of the frying pan, into the fire.” She was right. Today, I should note, my mom “praises” me for my career choice: “Son,” she says, “after all the pain, sorrow, and danger that you’ve experienced, what possessed you to go looking for more trouble?” She doesn’t actually discuss these things with me because she’s got her own private opinion on the subject of genocide. Like every mother, she worries about her son, and after years of constantly fearing that she might at any moment receive bad news about me, all she wants is for her son to live a peaceful, uneventful life. Truth be told, I have to admit that the things that have happened to me since I began to study the Armenian Genocide have not made my life any less difficult than those that I underwent during my years in politics. In particular, the experience of being lambasted and rejected— excommunicated, almost—from the group to which you thought you belonged, has in some sense been even more difficult to experience than what I underwent during my time in politics. Put another way, what I’ve experienced are not simply the sort of obstacles faced by your average academic. It was so difficult, in fact, that were it not for the experience afforded by a life in politics, I might have long since left the field and given up. Here I might give the example of my dear friend Elçin Kürşat Ahlers. During the past decade, while she was at Germany’s Hannover University, Elçin became the target of a massive smear campaign by the Turkish mainstream daily Hürriyet for having had the temerity to grapple with the Armenian Genocide. Unable to deal with the stream of threats she received, she eventually felt obliged to abandon academic life entirely. Today Elçin has a farm in Muğla, where she grows organic vegetables. 12

To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey

Returning to Turkey: Loneliness or Being a Pariah in One’s Own Country

Looking back at things, I think it might be advantageous to discuss my return to Turkey in order to talk about the obstacles I faced for having embarked upon this path. After sixteen years of exile, I finally returned to Turkey in 1993. My aim was to establish a documentation center concerning the years 1876–1925, one that would produce a general overview of the relationships of the various Ottoman ethnic and religious communities during the transition from the religious pluralism and multicultural social order of the Ottoman Empire to that of the various nation-states that have succeeded it. For the project, the Director of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, Jan Philipp Reemtma, provided me with 200,000 Deutschmarks—that works out to roughly the same amount in today’s Euros—and a guarantee of three years’ salary. For all my efforts, the initiative would ultimately meet with complete disappointment. Behind this failure lay the fact that I was dealing with the Armenian Question. One after another, all the doors I approached were shut in my face. I first brought my proposal to the Tarih Vakfı, Turkey’s so-called “History Foundation.” The director at that time, Orhan Silier, enthusiastically welcomed the idea, and said to me, “The blind man longs for one eye, but God gives [him] two”—which is the American equivalent of “Sometimes you get more than you asked for.” He gave me an office in their building in Istanbul’s Eminönü district and introduced me to my future colleagues. But it was still necessary for the foundation’s board of directors to render a decision to allow me to begin to work. For his part, Orhan assured me that this was a mere formality. But it turned out not to be. In the end, the foundation’s board rejected the project. Orhan was completely taken aback. Indeed, he hadn’t expected such a decision and was very distressed at the way matters had turned out. He summed it up with, “The foundation isn’t prepared for projects of this type.” Later, I was to hear first hand from the person most responsible for the History Foundation’s rejection of the project. Essentially, he provided me with the real reason for the rejection: Ethnicity is a fashionable concept that Europe has discovered in recent years. There is an important connection between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the spread of ethnicity-based explanations of history, but this type of fashionable ‘historical engagement’ isn’t 13

Advancing Genocide Studies

particularly serious or scientific: it is entirely the product of political calculations. I would assume that a great deal of money might flow here from Europe for ethnicity-based research in Turkey, but [at the time when the proposal was submitted] I knew what the ultimate intention was behind such projects, and I was going to [do my best] to prevent them.

Later on, I attempted to establish an independent foundation and assembled a group of young academicians for this purpose. To extend our efforts and include more people, we held a large gathering in October 1995. Some sixty social scientists from Istanbul’s various universities, including a number of department heads, participated in the gathering. The project was discussed at great length. One of the most frequently asked questions was, “Why would the History Foundation reject such a project?” Members of the History Foundation’s board of directors—including the member central to the efforts to block my project—participated in the meeting, but not a single one of them was willing to provide an answer. In the end, a list of names was collected of those interested in assisting in the establishment of a foundation. Of all those present, less than a dozen scholars—most of them young—signed the list. The academics that had been present asserted (perhaps half-heartedly) that the project was both important and necessary, but most did not want to be directly connected to it. Even among those who were openly, and ostensibly, willing to lend their support to the project never came through. As a result, the Armenian Question hung in the air, unspoken but ever present. The London School of Economics’ representative at Bilgi University (a private university in Istanbul) had been informed about the meeting and of my ongoing efforts, and asked me whether I would perhaps like to carry out the project with Bilgi University. I stated that I was enthusiastic about the prospect, and was put in contact with two of the main founders of the university. The two men were very enthusiastic and looked quite favorably on the project. In fact, they said that they would like to get started as soon as the government accepted the university’s status. At that point, we had an “agreement in principle.” I was to begin my activity as a small research unit attached to the university’s department of sociology. The project was not simply going to result in the development of a center for historical research; rather, the intent was for the university library to marshal the primary sources on culture, identity, ethnicity, and violence as related to Ottoman history. 14

To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey

In October 1996 my office was ready, and I was to begin to work. All that was left was for the board of trustees to make the decision official. According to the founder of Bilgi, this would be a mere a formality. This “mere formality” of a decision—just like that of the History Foundation before it—turned out to be a formal “no.” The two founders told me that for the first time ever, the board of trustees had rejected a proposal that their fellow trustees had put forward. In the end, it turned out that it been the members of the academic faculty who had been most opposed to the project. The two founders told me that the university was still at the early stages of its existence, and that, in the end, the board of trustees didn’t want any problems with faculty at this point. And with that, they announced that they had conceded and abandoned the project. This decision came as a complete shock to me because I had spoken individually with almost every one of the permanent members of the board and all had told me that they supported the project. However, years later I learned the bitter truth that it was those very same academics that blocked my project. The university’s founders were purportedly quite disturbed by this development, even embarrassed. They urged me to begin the project on my own, and promised to obtain support for me through private channels. They said that meetings and discussions would be held about how the university could collaborate with the project in the future. But I rejected the idea. I had learned something from my experience with both Bilgi and the History Foundation. The academic world in Istanbul, which liked to characterize itself as “progressive, leftist, and democratic,” wanted no part of me or my project—and the sole reason for this was the Armenian Genocide. A colleague of mine from Bilgi University succinctly summed up the problem for me: “The Turkish academic world views any endeavor associated with the Armenian question as a risky proposition. There’s no place in Turkish academia for a person who wants to take up this question in an objective manner. That is the essence of the matter.” What Was the Role of the State?

One question that is difficult to answer is whether or not any Turkish state institution was involved in the decision to block my project. At the end of February 1996, I received a phone call from my friend, mayor of Esenyurt at that time, Gürbüz Çapan. With a funny accent and slightly mocking tone he began to read a letter to me titled “Who is Taner Akçam?” Among other things, the letter claimed that I was 15

Advancing Genocide Studies

“the lackey of Armenians” and that I had committed “hostility toward the Turks.” To support such claims, the author of the letter mentioned my visit to Armenia with Gürbüz Çapan and my participation in the ceremony at the genocide memorial there. The letter also contained a warning to those who maintained relations with “traitors to the homeland” like me. Gürbüz said that he wasn’t inclined to take the matter too seriously. And, in fact, I didn’t put too much stock into the threats either and soon forgot about the whole episode. During one of our later discussions, Gürbüz said that, according to the research he had done, the letter had most likely been distributed by a group of police officers at the Istanbul Security Directorate who were affiliated with the ultranationalist Nationalist Action Party, or MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi). I believe it was in August 1996 that I was again speaking with a Bilgi University professor about the project. While we were walking along and chatting, he said to me half-jokingly, half-seriously, “For the love of God, Taner, what possessed you to get yourself mixed up in this Armenian Question? Couldn’t you find anything else to occupy you?” He then mentioned a letter that he had received.6 I asked him why he hadn’t told me about it earlier, and he replied, “We receive this type of threatening letter so frequently that I didn’t even bother. Over time I just forgot about it.” I was shocked and I called everyone I knew and discovered that a great number of letters had been sent to other people as well. I was able to locate one example of such a letter myself in November 1996. In truth, it wasn’t so much a letter as a “case file.” It opened with a letter that was two pages long and signed by “a group of Turkish intellectuals.” The file included a whole-page article about me from the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung; an article from the Baseler Zeitung (a Swiss-German language regional daily newspaper published in Basel) about a talk I gave at a conference; the translation of an entire chapter (“Turks and Armenians: Toward a Discussion of the Armenian Massacres”) that I had written for Tessa Hofmann’s book, Armenians and The Republic of Armenia: Homeland and Exile; and an article that I had written on ethnic and cultural identity for the Turkish journal Birikim, as well as clippings and excerpts. Significantly, this was something much heavier than the letter from the MHP-affiliated police officers; indeed, this package resembled the work of an “Armenian Desk” in some government or research institution that followed the Armenian Question extremely closely and assiduously monitored foreign publications on the issue. 16

To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey

According to this letter, I was a person who was “an enemy of the Turks, purchased with Armenian money,” and was spitting out “enmity against Turkey and its founder Atatürk.” The truth of the matter, the letter went on, was that I was actually a convert to Islam (dönme) “who was descended from an Armenian orphan who had been brought into [my] grandfather’s harem.” As someone who “collaborated with the Armenians against the Turks,” the letter continued, I had planned “along with a number of degenerate (soysuz) individuals like [me] who live in Turkey” to “open a Documentation Center of Recent Turkish History in Istanbul with money received from the Armenians.” The letter writer stated that the intended purpose of the letter was the removal of masks from converts like me, “who were not ashamed to exhibit treasonous behavior in Turkey.” I wondered if this letter, which was sent to people at Bilgi University who had some connection to me and my project, was the reason for the rejection of project. I will most likely never know. During that period when I received the letter an infamous car accident near the town of Susurluk occurred. Known today in Turkey as the “Susurluk Incident,” it was one of those rare, fortuitous events in Turkish history that pulled back the curtain on the illicit ties between the country’s politics, its security apparatus, and organized crime—relations that had long been suspected but never before revealed in such stark terms. The events surrounding Susurluk also had a component connected to the Armenian Genocide. Turkey’s veteran ultranationalist activists, or ülkücüs, have revealed how they were directed by the state to carry out attacks against the leaders of the Armenian revolutionary organization ASALA and various Armenian targets abroad. For the first time, I began to fear for my life. Every morning I would check the undercarriage of my car and check under the hood before getting in and starting it up. Even after these inspections, I would only let my wife and daughter get in after I’d started the car and let it run for 20 seconds. I proceeded for months like that. I was out of options at that point. I saw that my previous belief that I might find some small space of my own within the academic world in which every subject could be calmly but freely discussed and debated was simply an illusion. There was nothing left to do but return to Germany. When I look back on those years, among all the difficulties I faced, the one experience I found most bitter was the abject feeling of loneliness. I will never forget those looks from nearly every person to whom I broached the topic of the Armenian Genocide—looks that said, 17

Advancing Genocide Studies

“Why are you troubling us with this?” The way I was treated, I might as well have been a leper. Upon my return to Germany, I wrote a lengthy piece that I never published: “To Wander Like a Leper in One’s Own Country: A Story of Loneliness.” The concluding sentences essentially summarized my Turkish odyssey, and are significant for the way that they reflect my general frame of mind at the time: There is a bitterness burning inside me. Yes, it’s true: the academic world isn’t yet prepared to accept within its ranks people like me who deal with taboo subjects. The presence of people of my generation in important positions at universities, including those who have founded their own universities, hasn’t really changed this situation. I have been shocked and grieved by the attitudes and positions of these groups of persons—some of whom are my friends—and who do not think of themselves as different than me in regard to the need for an open, calm, and rational debate on our history. But I don’t see myself as having the right to say a single thing to them. In other words, we’re still not ready to broach certain subjects, not as long as the discussion of “history” is still considered “risky.” I am now in Germany, without a sense of clarity and a feeling of inchoateness.

Some Thoughts on the Reasons for the “Conspiracy of Silence”

The immense disappointment of my Turkish adventure forced me to ask myself, why? Why, after all my efforts and all the assurances of support, was I left all alone in my efforts? Why didn’t my closest friends and colleagues show any interest in the matter at all? Why was I made to feel like a pariah even among my dearest friends? When I returned to Germany I tried my best to find answers to these questions. The bigger question, however, was, why had we Turks made a taboo out of our own history and done our best not to face it? What were the reasons for this disinterest and avoidance? I began to write and publish various articles on the subject. I do not have the space here to comment on everything that I had to say then, but I at least wish to mention some of the most important points. First, there was the complete historical amnesia that the country suffered in relation to its social memory. In my opinion there are two reasons for this: First, Turks have a culture that views speaking about the past as good for little more than reopening old, painful wounds and provoking fights and disputes. Instead of speaking about these things and getting into disputes, we instead prefer to stay silent and gloss over it. Indeed, as a society, we consider it advantageous—even 18

To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey

virtuous—to forget. In Turkish there are dozens of sayings that note the pointlessness of discussing history. The reasons that this culture is characterized by its indifference toward history are their own subject for study. Second, the most important reason for this historical amnesia is Turkish national identity, which is still under construction. The French philosopher and writer Ernest Renan claimed that forgetfulness and the willful distortion of history were essential components in the construction of a nation, perhaps even their very cornerstone. The 1928 Law on Alphabet Reform, known as the “language revolution” in Turkey, detached the new country from its Ottoman past, irreparably “blowing the bridges” that led back to their own written sources. This and many other “reforms” like it laid the foundations of a new national identity. Among the other reasons for Turks’ aversion to facing up to their history are both the fear of blame and the fear of punishment, since, if we learn and acknowledge that certain crimes have occurred, they will be brought out into the open, made public, and we are likely to be held liable. In this sense, we have done the same as every other person who knows that he/she would be blamed for doing something wrong: remaining silent, refusing to speak about it, and, if necessary, denying it. Another reason at play was the fact that if Turks were to begin to speak about the Armenian Genocide, the truth would be revealed that a not insignificant number of Turkey’s founding fathers—the men we esteem, our leaders and role models—actually took part in the massacre of Armenians and/or enriched themselves in the process. It is not an easy thing to see one’s national heroes as murderers and thieves. Finally, once we start with the Armenian question, there’s no telling where it will lead us or where it will end. If we agree to begin uncovering the crimes committed throughout our history, it may prove to be something of a Pandora’s box of ugly truths, one which, once opened, cannot be closed. As I mentioned above, in my mind I believe it is necessary to examine this problem at a deeper level, one related to our very existence as a nation. In this regard, it seems to me that there is an ontological reason of which we dare not speak in regard to our history. Turkey, including its major ethnoreligious divides between Turks and Kurds, Alevis and Sunnis, was established through the elimination of nearly all of its Christian population. The needs of our existence as a society are what necessitated the Christians’ disappearance. Therefore, I do 19

Advancing Genocide Studies

not believe that we will ever be able to adequately discuss this question without first questioning the very existence of this national identity and redefining its parameters. The Campaign Continues in Germany

It was my wife who suffered the most from our experience in Turkey. She grew so ill that she had to be hospitalized. Her treatment and recovery lasted for a full year. The threats did not end when we returned to Germany. The most common method resorted to by those who harassed us were telephone calls: they’d call in the middle of the night and when I’d answer there was either no one on the line or they would play military marches. Perhaps the most significant example of the campaign of threats against me in Germany took place during a conference in Mühleim in 2001. The conference was convened by the Turkish-German Union for Social Science and Humanities Exchange (Die Deutsch-Türkische Vereinigung zum sozial- und geisteswissenschaftlichen Austausch), which was chaired by Elçin Kürşat Ahlers. As soon as the Hürriyet received news of the conference, the daily newspaper began a smear campaign against it. Before the conference was to begin, I spoke with the German police and asked them to provide security for the gathering, which they promised to do. As a result, we held the conference under heightened police security. The actual source of the campaign against the conference was Ankara. For its part, Hürriyet had begun its campaign by simply featuring a “headshot” photo of me. Later on, Elçin Kürşat Ahlers also began to receive her share of attacks. The newspaper was full of articles and editorial letters referring to us as “sick in the head,” “traitors to their country,” and “the head of the snake that needs to be crushed while it’s still young.” On the last day of the conference we were actually attacked by a group of ülkücüs—ultranationalist activists—under the leadership of the Ümit Bozdağ, the chairman of the Avrasya Center for Strategic Research (which was then operating in Ankara), and Ömer Engin Lütem, chairman of the ASAM-affiliated Armenian Research Institute (which had been established in 2000). The group overran the police barricades and entered the building, cursing my name as they sought me out. Only by hiding did I manage to escape. The police subsequently removed the attackers from the conference hall. 20

To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey

Hürriyet continued its attacks and smear campaign against Elçin Ahlers for nearly a month. Elçin brought a case against them—which she ultimately won—but she nevertheless left the university because of the emotional toll resulting from the attacks. My American Adventures

I returned to Germany toward the end of 1997. The monies I had received for the purpose of establishing a research center in Turkey I returned to the institute—minus 15,000 Deutsche Marks. I had used that amount to purchase German archival documents. These would subsequently form the initial material for the web page www.armenocide.net that was founded by my dear friend Wolfgang Gust, who placed a large number of the documents on the site in both German and in English translation. In any case, I was now back in Germany, but a question remained: What I was now going to do in Hamburg? The institute director Jan Philipp Reemtsma informed me that he had no intention of establishing anything like an Armenian research center, that he could not continue to support me and my research, and that it would be most appropriate if I were to find employment elsewhere. The academic alternatives were rather limited, and there was no possibility to work on the Armenian Genocide or any related topic so long as I was in Germany. In order to support my family, I had to find a job, and that meant seeking out possibilities in other academic fields where I had a better chance of finding employment. The question I had to ask myself was whether I was prepared to change the topic of my research. I realized that if I wished to continue to work on the Armenian Genocide, my only alternative was to move to the United States. But I would first have to learn English. I had completely forgotten the little English that I learned while at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University. Subsequently, I made a request to Professor Vahakn Dadrian. In the end, and with Professor Dadrian’s intervention, Dennis Papazian, the director of the Dearborn Armenian Research Center, obtained study visas for me: first for three months and then another for six more months. I immediately registered for an English course. During this period, Ayhan Aktar, a friend of mine and at that time a professor of sociology at Marmara University, introduced me to Müge Göçek, and she asked me if I wanted to take a one-year position as a guest lecturer and professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I will never forget her reply when I told her that my English 21

Advancing Genocide Studies

was still not “up to snuff ” and that I was still taking language courses. “This is America. It’s not important how perfect your language is; we look at how well you know your subject. If you know it well, there’s no problem.” God bless her; she even wrote my syllabus for me. I owe her a great debt of gratitude for the enormous support she afforded me during my first year in America. Nevertheless, the first years of my American adventure, when I began to work on the Armenian Genocide, were very bitter and melancholic. Until 2008, when I began my position at Clark University, I was living in a state of suspense and apprehension, not fully knowing what I was going to do in the future, what I was going to be. Uncertainty, and the anxiety that it brought, were my greatest companions. My employment at the University of Michigan came to a close in April 2002, and it was still unclear where I would go next, what I would do. The alternatives that presented themselves to me were to continue to live illegally in the United States after my visa ran out, return to Germany without work, or enter Turkey again for another unknown adventure. I awoke every morning with these concerns, and much of my waking life was spent in a funk of hopelessness and indecision. My wife, who after her experience in Turkey said that she was not willing to endure another “adventure,” was unwilling to join me in the United States. It was during these dark days that, by a great coincidence—and Professor Dadrian’s request—Dr. Stephen Feinstein and Dr. Eric Weitz of the University of Minnesota came to my aid. With their help, I was able to secure a position as a guest lecturer at the University of Minnesota between the years 2002 and 2008. Even so, every year I continued to live with the insecurity and anxiety of not knowing whether the position would be renewed for the coming year. Going to Minnesota and my first years there were also a bitter and unhappy period for me, and that is because my wife informed me that she’d had enough of the uncertainties and potential dangers that we’d experienced and that she would definitely not be coming to join me in the United States. She also informed me that she wanted me to take our daughter, Helin, who was ten years old at the time. I’ll never forget Helin’s first years here. She would wake up nights crying, “Mom! Mom! I want my mom!” It broke my heart. I didn’t know what to tell her. I would hug her, hold her tight, and comfort her, waiting for her to fall back to sleep. Even today, whenever I think about it, about those nights and her crying, my heart breaks. I still ask myself how I could put my child through such things. What right did I have to separate my daughter 22

To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey

from her mother, to “break up my home,” as they say, simply because I chose to work on the subject of genocide? Believe me when I tell you that I still do not have a suitable answer to this question. I can do no more than to hope that my wife and daughter will someday forgive me. The Campaigns against Me in America

From the moment I first set foot in the United States the smear campaign against me began. The Assembly of Turkish-American Organizations was the main organization behind the campaign. Eğemen Bağış, Secretary of European Affairs of Turkey, was one of the leaders of this organization in the late 1990s. Later on, Murat Gümen, who runs the website known as “TallArmenianTale” (www.tallarmeniantale.com) under the assumed name “Holdwater,” would also play an important role in the campaign. The essence of the campaign was to assert that I was a terrorist, had killed Americans in Turkey, had organized other killings, and that I had been arrested and jailed in Turkey in 1976 for terrorist activities. As a component of this smear campaign, my telephone number and home and work addresses were all posted on the Internet site, with readers of the site urged to “say ‘hello’ to the traitor.” Videos were also posted on “YouTube” that “explained” my terrorist activities. It was not long before I began to receive e-mail messages containing death threats. There were also efforts to prevent various university gatherings at which my book was being featured or publicized. Calls were made for me to be arrested by the FBI and thrown out of the country on the grounds that “terrorists” were not allowed to enter the United States. The campaign grew in intensity in October 2006 with the appearance of my book, A SHAMEFUL ACT: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006) in English. The times and dates of my talks, which were mischaracterized as “theater pieces” (“Tiyatro sahnesi”), were widely published and people were called upon to participate en masse in “Taner Akçam’s light comedy.” In November 2006, a large-scale attack was organized against a talk at The City University of New York. Before the talk a flyer was distributed, and afterward slogans were shouted to incite the crowd and disrupt the session. Later, I was personally attacked during the book signing. In the end, I had to be escorted out of the hall under police escort. Those who carried out these attacks and disruptions had close ties with the Turkish consulates in the United States. When reports were 23

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received that a similar attack was planned for a gathering at New York’s Cardozo Law School, I asked the university to get in contact with the city’s Turkish Consulate and inform them that they would be held responsible if the meetings were attacked. Although the consulate initially claimed that they had no connection with these events, they later called the university officials to provide guarantees that no attacks would be carried out against the gathering. They also informed the university that only two or three persons would be in attendance, for the purpose of monitoring the meeting. And that’s what actually happened. These attacks and smear campaigns reached their peak after the death of Hrant Dink. In February 2007, I was taken into custody at the United States–Canada border while trying to enter Canada in order to deliver a lecture at McGill University. I was held there for four or five hours, after which I was released upon the intervention and personal order of Canada’s Public Security Minister, Stockwell Day, and the State Minister responsible for Multi-Culturalism and Canadian Identity, Jason Kenney. The reason for my detainment had been a Wikipedia page on which a claim had been made that I was a terrorist and a report to this effect had been made to the Canadian Border Police. As I mentioned, Murad Gümen, a.k.a. Holdwater, and his website had played a central role in the entire campaign. On the site my purported “terrorist activities” are listed, including, for example, my arrest in 1976 as the copy editor of the Revolutionary Youth Journal (Devrimci Gençlik Dergisi), and my arrest at a number of student events. All of the events were from 1974–1975 and primarily concerned handing out flyers, putting up posters, and participating in marches. The fact that this website contains so much information that was never published anywhere else and contained thirty-five-year-old dates for arrests that I had myself long since forgotten—and all of which were now described as “terrorist activities”—can only mean one thing: Murad Gümen is receiving his information directly from Ankara. Likewise, as I will show below, this server is directly tied to Ergenekon the terrorist organization. Hürriyet and the Campaign of 2007

After being taken into custody during my visit to Canada, I revealed the true identity of “Holdwater” in two articles I wrote for inclusion in the Turkish-Armenian daily Agos, dated May 15 and 21, 2007. I duly noted that “Holdwater” had been coordinating the attacks against me. I did so with the sole intention of defending myself against the outrageous accusations. 24

To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey

What followed was a near carbon copy of the events surrounding the Hrant Dink assassination. On June 11, 2011, I received the chilling death threat that I mentioned earlier. After a number of insults and defamations against my person, the threat stated, “Today we begin the battle—within the confines of the law—against creatures like you and your friends. But if these prove unsuccessful, we will resort to other means.” The author then continued with the claim that “It would be better for world peace and for the truth to rid the world of lowly sewer germs (lağım mikrobu) like you,” and then promised that I “would die, moaning and howling in the street, like a lowly animal.” Continuing, it read, “Pray that the devil take you soon, if not, your life will soon be a living hell in this world.” The message concluded with the Holdwater issue: “You think you’ve revealed Holdwater’s identity and that the racist-fascist [A]rmenians are publishing the photograph [of Holdwater] on all of their websites. But you’re wrong, because at this very moment there are millions of Holdwaters in the world . . . One day, you and your beastly [A]rmenian brothers will drown in a sea of Holdwaters. You can be sure of it. . . . The truth is bitter, Taner, bitter indeed. One day you will feel this bitterness and you will remember having read these lines. . . . Who am I? You’ll see, Taner. One day, you’ll see.” Ten days after the latest threat, on June 21, 2011, Hürriyet began its campaign against me on its very first page. The newspaper, which used in its headline some of the same expressions found in the death threat letter, claimed that I had put my own life in danger by uncovering a lobbyist of the Turkish State. After publishing this, the paper made the strange claim that “I had disappeared.” Columnists such as Emin Çölaşan and Oktay Ekşi joined in the campaign, throwing out insults and verbal assaults against me. I was again “a traitor to the country” who “committed treachery” and was “raised and groomed by the Armenian lobbies.” Vatan columnist Ruhat Mengi, Akşam’s Şakir Süter, and others, then joined the chorus of condemnation, with the treacherous and false accusations soon resulting in a full-blown “press lynching.” I began to truly fear for my life. A number of other columnists, who were all too aware of Hürriyet’s press campaign against Hrant Dink and his subsequent assassination, began to come to my defense and draw parallels between the two campaigns. Some of the many among them were Ahmet Altan, İsmet ­Berkan, Perihan Maden, Fehmi Koru, Adnan Bostancı, and Melih Pekdemir. 25

Advancing Genocide Studies

A support group was also formed in Europe with the slogan “Don’t let Akçam become the next Hrant Dink.” The campaign was most effective in France, and it eventually succeeded in pushing then President Nicolas Sarkozy to make a direct appeal to the Turkish government. All of my attempts to get Hürriyet and its writers to restrain themselves came to naught. My legal complaints against the paper and its writers, which were filed in Istanbul, were rejected by the court. What’s more, the prosecutor who refused to take my complaints seriously declared me guilty in his decision to reject my complaint—even though I was the aggrieved party. The threatening e-mail appeared to have come via the Netherlands, but from the analysis that I ordered from technical experts we learned that it had actually been sent from Turkey. We opened a case in Turkey and provided the data from the computer analysis. The police actually located the person involved, but the decision was taken to drop the investigation and the charges were dismissed, all because the computer from which the threat was sent had not been located in the offender’s house. Here I should offer additional information that I would subsequently learn. The main actors in the trials opened against Hrant Dink for having violated TPK Article 301 (i.e., “insulting Turkishness”) by using the word “genocide” in reference to the events of 1915 were Kemal Kerinçsiz and Recep Akkuş. Recep Akkuş was also the person who had submitted the same complaint against me on October 12, 2006. A decision of “nonsuit” was made in this case after Hrant Dink’s murder on January 30, 2007. During the appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, I discovered this had not been the only complaint they filed against me. This same circle had, during the course of the Hürriyet campaign and thereafter, submitted a series of criminal complaints to the court in 2007, on July 6 and November 26 and 28. All of these complaints against me were rejected in connection with the January 30, 2007 decision not to pursue my case any further. The Hürriyet –Ergenekon-America Triangle

The Ergenekon investigations brought to light a number of small details that many people missed regarding the connection between Hürriyet and Ergenekon, the terrorist organization, in the campaign against me. If one reads carefully the thousand pages of materials published by the court on Ergenekon, it quickly becomes apparent that both the investigation opened against me within the framework of Turkish Penal Code 26

To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey

Article 301 and the smear campaigns against me in the United States lead back to Ergenekon. My name appears in at least nine to ten places in the Ergenekon indictment, in particular in the statements of Atilla Aksu and Kemal Kerinçiz. From their statements it can be understood that Kemal Kerinçsiz was the person behind the Article 301-based case against me as well as the initial complaints: he directed both the American smear campaign against me and assembled the evidence and documents connected with it. Proof of this lies in Kemal Kerinçsiz requesting information about my past, in particular, the files containing information on my activities from 1974 through 1975, from Atilla Aksu, who was then the court clerk in the Sultanahmet District Court. In his court testimony, Kerinçsiz claimed that he had requested this information about me because of the appeal that they had submitted in response to the January 30, 2007 decision by the Şişli District Attorney not to pursue the case against me for violation of TPC Article 301. However, another reason that has since become obvious was that the information had been gathered for the sake of the smear campaign against me in the United States. As I previously mentioned, Murad Gümen had, under his alias “Holdwater,” posted this information about my political activities during my student years (1974–1975) on his website, characterizing my arrests as a result of “terrorist activities.” My testimony and the explanations that I gave to the court put Murad Gümen in a difficult situation. Indeed, it was now clear that it had been for the sake of Murad Gümen’s lobbying/smear campaign that Ergenekon member Kemal Kerinçsiz was trying to find new information by investigating my activities from the years 1974 through 1975. And it was Murad Gümen whom Hürriyet had claimed was performing lobbying activities on behalf of the State of Turkey and whom they had also defended in this regard. In fact, there is nothing new in this, apart from another small example of how Hürriyet, the Turkish secret service, and Ergenekon were working together. Individual and Scholarly Work That Has Proved Influential to My Own Work in the Field of Genocide Studies

Norbert Elias and his book, Studies on the Germans, encouraged me to work on the Armenian Genocide. At the time that I first encountered his work, I was working as a research assistant at the Hamburg Social Research Institute. My research subject was “The History of Torture in Turkey.” In particular, I was studying the evolution of violence and 27

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torture in Turkish political culture. One of the things that I discovered was the significant role that violence had played in the formation of Turkish national identity. As a result, a question that came to mind was, “What manner of connection existed between the formation of Turkish national identity and German national identity?” This question was prompted by the fact that the Ottoman Empire and Germany had strong economic and military relations with each other, especially at the beginning of the second part of nineteenth century. Germany became the main power to modernize and train the Ottoman-Turkish Army, which became the most powerful institution in Turkey after the revolution of 1908. While I was pondering this topic, a colleague strongly encouraged me to read Elias’ aforementioned book. In one sense, I can honestly say that Elias’ book changed my life. Using the method that he used in his book, I attempted to apply it to Turkish national identity. I subsequently read Elias’ other works. In fact, my first book, which was on the Armenian genocide, published in 1992, was something of an attempt to apply Elias’ theories to the Turkish reality. I have subsequently returned to this subject and reworked it in a number of articles. A New Research Project

A new project that I hope to take on deals with secret Ottoman documents concerning the annihilation of the Armenian population. More specifically, in 1919 an Armenian intellectual by the name of Aram Andonian, who was himself a survivor of the deportations, received and/or purchased from an Ottoman bureaucrat named Naim Bey a number of secret Ottoman documents containing orders for the annihilation of the Armenian population and published them. A book published in 1986 by two Turkish researchers claimed that the documents published by Andonian were forgeries.7 From that time until the present, the scholars of our field have avoided use of these documents for historical argument. Worse still, we do not know where the original documents are now located. For my part, I actually believe the NaimAndonian documents to be authentic, although I will not share my views on the subject here. If I find the time, I would very much like to write and publish a work proving the authenticity of these documents. Perceptions of the Newly Emerging Field of Genocide Studies

When I look at some of the publications of recent years, I am filled with hope for the field of Genocide Studies. I’ve been observing the 28

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gradually expanding search in our field toward a grand theory, but it is not simply limited to the subject of genocide, which defines a particular form of violence, but violence in general. In such an understanding, genocide would no longer occupy a central position. Its place would be taken by mass atrocities or atrocity crimes. Regarding this search for a “grand theory,” it is possible to say that it attempts to explain the entirety of human history via the fact that, time and again, throughout human history, one group of people have been killed by another group of people for various reasons. I believe that, for the first time, as a result of key work in the field of Genocide Studies, violence will simply be seen as the fundamental category in explaining human history. Previous grand theories have examined a variety of categories as central elements in explaining this very same history. According to some such theories—in particular, religious ones—history is simply a divine odyssey, while others have suggested that it is more the journey of an “Absolute Spirit,” continually discovering itself (Hegel). According to Marx, the engine of human history has been the struggle between “productive forces” and forms of production (which, he at times, explained as a “class struggle”). All these theories have tended to view violence as at best secondary factors. Violence was perceived as being a result of the various motives, structures, and relations that brought it about. And accordingly, we can even speak of the “progressive character” of violence as an engine of history. Accordingly, scholars developed “critical-or-supportive” opinions of violence according to the “grand theory” to which they were most closely bound. For its part, those who study genocide no longer view violence as a product or end result, but seek to study the phenomenon as a fact itself. Because violence is examined as a factor in its own right, the perception/judgment of it is not defined or determined in accordance with the structures and ideas that produce it. The “killing of each other” has become a key concept in the process of explaining history without any justification. In other words, we have begun to study violence as an element in its own right, and not according to some moral or belief system that is believed to have produced it. I see this as a return to the tradition of “grand theories” of nineteenth century philosophers. That said, I believe it is important that our field take a farewell from such 19th century-like grand theories by perceiving the annihilation of one human group by another as a central category in explaining human history—that is, whereby the category of extermination itself becomes the central concept. 29

Advancing Genocide Studies

Perhaps all of this is a sign that humanity is now entering a new stage of development with regard to violence and our attitude toward it. In the current state of affairs—one in which a great number of massacres are constantly taking place—particularly in Africa and the Middle East, such a statement may come across as somewhat strange, but I would like to reiterate that what I am primarily speaking about here is the theoretical (scholarly/intellectual) perception of violence in the Western Hemisphere. But our field has already passed through a great many stages to get to where we are currently. The principal characteristic of the first of these stages can be termed “definitionalism.” Many of the academics and scholars who found the genocide definition of 1948 Convention inadequate created their own definitions. A debate ensued wherein historical massacres were compared in an attempt to determine whether, according to the criteria that they devised, they constituted a “genocide.” Another factor experienced in parallel was the reality that, for a long period, the field of genocide studies remained in the shadow of Holocaust studies. For many, the Holocaust was seemingly perceived and accepted as—pardon the expression—“the mother of all genocides”: an historical event so mind-boggling in its evil and broad in its scope that before it, all other mass murders and massacres tended to pale. As a result, the debate in this initial stage largely revolved around discussions of whether these other horrors could be compared to the Holocaust. In short, were they horrible enough to earn the appellation of “genocide.” A subsequent stage of this debate was one in which the leitmotif was more one of comparative studies—while nevertheless continuing to accord the Holocaust a certain historical uniqueness/unprecedentedness. Vastly different instances of mass murder and massacre were accepted as genocides and compared to one another without the development of an overarching understanding of genocide as a “global phenomenon.” This most recent stage of genocide studies seems to be the beginning of a new era, one in which the attempt is being made to construct a general macro model that would explain the phenomenon of genocide and/or mass atrocities as a whole. Major Contributions to the Field

My most important contribution the field of genocide studies thus far, in my opinion, is having employed Ottoman archival documents to show that Ottoman wartime policies toward the Armenians were actually genocidal in both intent and effect. Before I published my research, 30

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and just as with the Armenian Genocide itself, there were two factions that had formed around different assessments of the Ottoman materials in the Prime Ministerial Archive in Istanbul. Those who argue that the events of 1915 were not intentionally planned rely exclusively on the Ottoman documents in the Prime Ministerial Archive in order to support their claim. According to them, these materials are infallible. This faction distrusts and discounts not only the American, British, German, and Austrian documents, but perceives the materials documented by the Military Tribunal proceedings in Istanbul as constituting politically-motivated distortions of the events. On the other hand, some Western scholars who are equally critical maintain that only the Western archives are reliable, since they believe some documents from the Prime Ministerial archives were produced in order to color events, while certain other documents were purged early on, so the material from this archive is not a trustworthy source. The common logic underlying both of these positions is that both sets of documents are mutually contradictory. In my work I have demonstrated, for the first time, the falseness of this apparent contradiction. Far from conflicting with one another, the sources are in fact complementary: they tell the same story but from different points of view. Taken in their entirety, Ottoman and Western archives jointly confirm that the ruling party CUP did deliberately implement a policy of ethnoreligious homogenization of Anatolia that aimed to destroy the Armenian population. Conclusion

Through 2008 and 2009, it had been a risky, even life-threatening, business to openly discuss the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, and anyone who did so was largely forced to fight the fight on their own. It was almost unthinkable for the average scholar or academic to voluntarily place him/herself between the pincers of the “conspiracy of silence” on one hand and “murderous hatred” on the other. Looking back, I believe that there were two reasons that I was able to keep going, despite the threats and attacks that I constantly faced: one was my background in politics and the other—and possibly the more important reason—was the simple fact that I lived abroad and not in Turkey. If I hadn’t had the political experience, I would have been so worn down and full of anxiety I would have long since abandoned the field. Even during those days that I was feeling trapped and suffocated, as if the whole world was against me, I was able to think back to the conversations that I had had with 31

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other prisoners, all of whom happened to be university students, during my time in Ankara’s Central Penitentiary. We used to converse about what age we were likely to reach in our lives. (In Ankara, between 1974 and 1977, I was arrested several times as a student leader; later, I was sentenced to nine years in prison for articles that I wrote in a journal, Revolutionary Youth, about issues dealing with democracy and human rights and the Kurdish question.) At the time, my greatest dream was to see my twenty-seventh birthday. I’ve seen plenty more since. But should it sound like I’m bragging here, let me be clear: I’m not a hero. I’ll admit, I was very scared during this entire period, and I am still scared every time I return to Turkey. But I cannot say that I ever got to the point—despite the threats and attacks—of abandoning the work in which I had chosen to engage. And that’s because there was nothing new in any of this for me. I and my friends and colleagues had been the target of plenty of attacks when I was politically active, and I often lived under the threat of violence and even death. From 1974 to 1976, and even more so between 1984 and 1987, I can say that this was the normal state of affairs. Even so, when you begin to deal with the Armenian Genocide, you encounter something new, something that was not there before, something that brings the entire issue to a whole new level. That was the feeling of loneliness and exclusion. You are subjected to attacks from the part of society of which you thought you were a part. Try as you may, you find no support from the world that you thought was yours, not even from your close circles of colleagues and friends. You begin to feel as if these circles no longer view you as “one of theirs.” You sense that your presence is no longer desired, and that you’ve been ostracized; you get the feeling that you no longer belong anywhere, that you’re in some sort of vacuum. It is a terrible and frightening feeling. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, when I was subjected to many different attacks, I continually felt a sense of belonging. It was a feeling that never left me for a second. You knew what neighborhood you belonged to, what circles you ran in. There were those who considered me their enemy, to be sure, but I had friends as well. And what’s more, both your enemies and you were part of the same whole. Within this same wholeness, this complete entity, there were both friends and enemies. But when I began to contend with the question of the Armenian Genocide, I saw those bonds of connection suddenly disappear. I felt it happen. And, as I’ve said, that sense of exclusion and loneliness was the most painful part of the whole odyssey. 32

To Study the Armenian Genocide in Turkey

The fact that I have not yet been murdered like Hrant Dink and am still alive today is due, as I said, to two things. The first is that I live abroad, the second is the Ergenekon investigations and the subsequent collapse of the organization. If those investigations had begun not in the summer of 2007 but a year earlier, Hrant might still be with us today. I divide the study of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey into two periods: “Before Hrant” and “After Hrant.” Ever since his murder, the anger and sorrow that many have felt at Hrant’s murder and the esteem in which they hold him have pushed a great number of people to finally grapple with this subject. This is a wonderful thing to behold, to be sure, but Hrant shouldn’t have had to die for this to take place. The memories I have of the period before his death are full of bitterness and pain. I remember sitting in the back room of his house, waiting for the morning to arrive in order to go to the airport. I remember him nodding his head in agreement when I said, “We’re all alone Hrant. Utterly alone. No one understands. No one truly discerns just how much dealing with the Armenian Question and facing up to our history is of direct concern to our present and to our future.” I’ll always keep within me the memory of the loneliness and exclusion of those years. Putting aside these sad thoughts for a moment, let me end on a more optimistic note. Hrant’s death changed many things in Turkey. Those that killed him with the intent of silencing him ended up making it possible for thousands of others to end their silence, to finally find their voices. Also, look at where Turkey was ten years ago in regard to dealing with the Armenian Genocide, and see where it is at today. To be sure, the road ahead is long. The task of Turks is to continue with the process of facing their history and facing themselves—perhaps in order to work toward a new conception of that which constitutes “Turkishness,” one that manages to truly face the darker corners of history with dignity. Such an endeavor derives not only from the need to show accountability toward history and toward the people who were annihilated, but also from the necessity to provide a better life for our children today and to create a better world for tomorrow. 1. 2. 3.

Notes

James E. Young, “Toward a Received History of the Holocaust,” in History and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Dec., 1997): pp. 21–43. Tageszeitung, April 28, 1995 Hrant Dink (September 15, 1954–January 19, 2007) was a Turkish-Armenian journalist. He served as the editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos. He was also a noted member of the Armenian minority 33

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4.

5. 6. 7.

34

population in Turkey. He was a prominent advocate for the reconciliation of Turkey and Armenia as well as for the protection of human rights in Turkey. Not only was Dink prosecuted three times for denigrating Turkishness, but also the target of repeated death threats from Turkish nationalists. Ergenekon is the name of a semisecret terror organization, the members of which being mostly high-ranking civilian officials and military men. The organization had very strong ties to the Turkish military and security forces, such as the police and national intelligence organization (MİT). The aim of this extreme nationalist and racist organization was to organize and stage a military coup to overthrow the Islamist AKP government. For this purpose, they planned to create chaos and anarchy in the country by means of political assassinations, mass-killings, and bombings of Jewish and Christian religious sites in Turkey, some of which had been put into praxis, such as the assassination of Hrant Dink and other Christians and the bombing of Istanbul synagogues. The organization had chosen the Armenian Genocide as the principal focus of its political campaign. It launched campaigns to deny the Armenian Genocide, and organized demonstrations in Paris and Berlin honoring the memory of Talaat Pasha, one of the founders of the Committee for Union and Progress, who masterminded the Armenian Genocide. In 2008, the Turkish Government launched a series of investigations and arrests against this organization. Today, there are more than two hundred high-ranking generals and bureaucrats on trial in a number of different court cases for their membership in this organization and for their alleged responsibility vis-à-vis various terrorist activities. Some cases have already concluded with the defendants receiving lengthy prison sentences, while many more are still continuing. For more information on the affair, see www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?load=detay &link=150458. One example of the articles advocating for forgiveness (helalleşme) is Markar Esayan’s “1915 ve Helalleşme” in Taraf, April 22, 2013. As I discovered later, this was the same letter that my mayor friend, Gurbuz Capan, informed me about on the phone. Sinasi Orel, and Süreyya Yuca. The Talat Pasha Telegrams: Historical fact or Armenian fiction? (London: K. Rustem & Bro., 1986)

2 The Destruction of the Other as the Validation of the Self Uğur Ümit Üngör

Personal Background

In the summer of 2002, I was visiting my paternal grandmother in the western Turkish city of Bursa. On a hot and lazy afternoon, we were sitting around the living room with the television on, as she sat on the floor in her shalwar (loose-fitting trousers) and white headscarf cleaning vegetables for dinner, and I was slouched on the sofa zapping through the channels. In my family, most summer days were spent like that, hanging around joking, chatting, eating sunflower seeds. But on that day, a program on current affairs was featuring a pseudo-intellectual debate on the Armenian genocide between various denialist officials. I became interested, stopped flicking through channels, and watched the program for a few minutes as my grandma was snapping string beans. “Grandma,” I said, “were there any Armenians in our village?” She looked up and said, “Of course there were Armenians in our region, but the government killed them all in the first year of the war. You didn’t know? My mother was standing on the hill in front of our village [when it happened], she told me all about it. She saw how at Kemah they threw all the Armenians into the river. Into the Euphrates. Alas, screams and cries. Everyone, children and all, brides, old people, everyone, everyone. They robbed them of their golden bracelets, their shawls and silk belts, and threw them into the river.” Baffled at her answer, I asked her who threw the Armenians into the river. She answered, “The government of course. Gendarmes.” The room went silent. How was it possible that my eighty-year old Turkish grandmother had intimate, vivid knowledge of the Armenian genocide in our village (Gözeler, in Erzincan province), whereas the state (the Ottoman 35

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Empire/Turkey) vehemently denied it even happened? Despite my own family origins in the same region as the genocide, I had never heard about such an event, and it sparked my curiosity. This paradox puzzled me and drove me, a young Turkish-born and Dutch-raised sociology student at the University of Amsterdam, to begin reading about the 1915 genocide of the Armenians. As I learned more and more of the magnitude and destructiveness of the event, first I felt disorienting astonishment, then righteous indignation, and finally somber resignation. During my research in Eastern Turkey, I was always amazed by the sharp contrast between the denial of the state versus the memories of the population. My grandmother was not the only one who unreservedly acknowledged the mass murder of the Armenians. I traveled around Eastern Turkey and conducted many interviews with senior citizens, who openly spoke about the Armenians as having been massacred by the Ottoman government. The personal revelation of my grandmother developed into a professional commitment to studying the subject. As a result, I contacted the newly founded Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam and enrolled in its master’s degree program at the University of Amsterdam, where I happened to be that program’s first student. I also became their first alumnus and first PhD student, and after working in the United Kingdom and Ireland, I came back to direct and coordinate that same program. Many genocide scholars of the first generation (such as Saul Friedlander, Richard Hovannisian, René Lemarchand) have intimate experiences with violence, some as survivors, children of survivors, or eyewitnesses. Two major fundamental problems may explain my lasting interest in genocide: peace, and difference. First and foremost, my upbringing was entirely peaceful. I was a baby when my parents migrated in 1981 from an unstable, violent, and polarized Turkey to the stable and moderate Netherlands. I never learned to fire a gun, slaughter an animal, wield a knife, or even throw a punch. Yet I read mostly novels on World War II in Europe and the Holocaust. I could not imagine that war and genocide had taken place in such a peaceful country like the Netherlands or neighboring Germany. Then as a teenager, I was confronted with the war in Yugoslavia, the country we drove through every summer on our way to visiting family in Turkey. The levels of violence in my immediate experience were low, but my curiosity about it was high. 36

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Second, as Alex Hinton (2002) cogently reminded us, genocide is the process of annihilating difference, the abrogation of coexistence. I grew up in the Dutch-German border town of Enschede in a multi-ethnic neighborhood where Surinamese, Italians, Syriacs, Portuguese, Moroccans, Yugoslavs, Jews, Armenians, Colombians, Iranians, Cantonese, Pakistanis, and many others lived side by side. My family is mixed too (some relatives consider themselves Turks, others Kurds, and still others Zazas), and I attended schools with similar ethnic and class diversity among the student body. To me, difference was and is an essential quality of the Self. As committed Socialists, my parents had embraced “brotherhood and unity” and “fraternity of peoples,” and practiced their own form of cosmopolitan allophilia. But visiting Turkey every summer to see family confronted me with simmering ethno-religious conflicts in that society: between Turks and Kurds, and between Sunnis and Alawis. On several occasions, I witnessed relatives and friends expressing sectarian opinions and making hateful remarks against certain groups in the privacy of the family home. In other words, growing up in the Netherlands, I had no serious exposure to collective violence or assaults on difference. On the contrary, I arguably grew up in a most peaceful period and country, where difference was officially celebrated. The stronger the contrast with genocidal societies was, the more it sparked my interest and curiosity. I was fortunate to be inspired and supported in my studies. Inspiration I drew from world literature, in particular the works of Vassili Grossman, Imre Kertész, Harry Mulisch, Jan Terlouw, but also countless others. Many scholars were inspiring and helpful: Raul Hilberg, Yehuda Bauer, Vahakn Dadrian, Johan van der Dennen, Eric Markusen, Samuel Totten, Hamit Bozarslan, Erik van Ree, Donald Bloxham, Mark Levene, Abram de Swaan, Dominik Schaller, and many others were generous with their time and offered me vital encouragement when I was a young student. But two persons stand out in particular for their stimulating work: Jacques Sémelin and Ton Zwaan. Sémelin’s book Purify and Destroy was a profoundly intelligent analysis of genocide that helped structure my own thinking. It not only proposes a nuanced, state-of-the-art model of the dynamic of genocide, but also offers a handle to analyzing genocides. Last but not least, Zwaan generously shared with me his seemingly boundless knowledge of historical sociology. He has been an outstanding teacher, colleague, and friend, and few can match his impressive synthetic erudition. Our long evening discussions at Amsterdam’s brown cafés influenced my thinking on genocide in every way. 37

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Genocide

Genocide can be defined as a complex process of systematic persecution and annihilation of a group of people by a government. In the twentieth century, approximately forty to sixty million defenseless people have become victims of deliberate genocidal policies. The twenty-first century has not begun much better, with genocidal episodes flaring up in Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, and Syria. I understand genocide as the persecution and destruction of human beings on the basis of their presumed or imputed membership in a group, rather than on their individual properties or participation in certain acts. Although it makes little sense to quantify genocide, it is clear that a genocidal process always concerns a society at large, and that genocide often destroys a significant and often critical part of the affected communities. It also does not make much sense to discriminate between the types of groups being targeted: ethnic, religious, regional, political, sexual, etc. It can be argued that genocidal processes are particularly malicious and destructive because they are directed against all members of a group, mostly innocent and defenseless people who are persecuted and killed regardless of their behavior. Genocide always denotes a colossal and brutal collective criminality. For this reason, genocide is a phenomenon that is distinct from other forms of mass violence, such as war, civil war, or massacre. Genocide is a complex process through and through. First of all, it can be approached from at least three analytical perspectives: macro (international), meso (domestic), and micro (local/individual). The macro level refers to the external, international context: interstate structures and the context of geopolitical power relations that could lead to war. The meso level consists of all intrastate developments relevant to the genesis of the political crisis and, later, the genocide: the ideological self-hypnosis of political elites, complex decision-making processes, the necessity and logic of a division of labor, the emergence of paramilitary troops, and any mass mobilization for the segregation and destruction of the victim group. The micro level, then, is about the lowest level: how individuals become involved in the genocidal process, either as perpetrators, victims, or third parties. Viewed in its coherence, these three contextual layers are not simply piled on top of each other, but the largest contexts are often preconditions for the smallest ones. Without the macro context of interstate crisis, there cannot be an internal radicalization of the political elites; and without 38

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that radicalization, the violent measures against the victims would not have been taken and countless individual perpetrators would not have murdered innumerable individual victims in micro situations of killing. In other words, let alone the complexity of each level in itself, we must also bear in mind the relevant connections between the three levels. Second, the temporal complexity of genocide rightly is a major concern in genocide studies. How do genocidal processes begin, develop, and end? Mass violence of the scale that unfolds in genocidal societies generally develops through three fairly distinct phases: the previolent phase, the phase of mass political violence, and the postviolence phase. The previolent phase is often rooted in a broader economic, political, and cultural crisis that vexes the country internally and aggravates its external relations with neighboring states. Such a crisis between political groups and social movements can polarize into nonviolent confrontations such as mass protests, boycotts, or strikes. At the local level, it can be characterized by fragile, even hostile, but still nonviolent coexistence between political or ethnic groups. Occasionally, however, a local pogrom or a political assassination can occur, and often the state can gradually become engaged in a low-intensity conflict. The main precondition for extreme violence such as massacres or genocide is (civil) war. During wars, violence is exercised on a large scale, first exclusively between armies in legally sanctioned military hostilities, but later potentially also in illegal paramilitary operations against civilians. The transition from crisis to mass violence often is a point of no return where serious moral and political transgressions occur in a rapid process of violent polarization. Comparative research on mass political violence demonstrates that once unleashed, it can develop its own dynamic and become nearly unstoppable by internal forces— reaching “relative autonomy.” This dynamic consists of a routinization of the killing, and a moral shift in society due to mass impunity. Two other key variables are the political elite’s act of decision making and the organization of violence. The first is often conducted in secret sessions, develops in periodic eruptions, and becomes visible only retroactively, when the victims are killed. Indeed, violent conflict exposes the criminology of violent political elites, who often begin operating as an organized crime group with growing mutual complicity developing among them. Secondly, the organization of the violence is another major analytical category to be examined. The violence is often carried out according to clear and logical divisions of labor: between the civil 39

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and military wings of the state, but also crucially between the military and paramilitary groups. The killing process has the dual function of at once annihilating the victim group and constructing the perpetrator group. The destruction of the Other is the validation of the Self. Finally, the transition to a postgenocidal phase often overlaps with the collapse of the violent regime itself. The main perpetrator groups within the regime will attempt to deny their crimes, while traumatized survivor communities will mourn and demand justice or revenge. In this phase, these groups often struggle to propagate their own memory of the conflict by attempting to straitjacket the complexity of the conflict into a single, self-serving view. The term “transitional justice” often proves to be a wishful concept: sometimes a fragile democracy develops, and sometimes a different dictatorship takes over. In either case, impunity has proven to be the rule and punishment the exception in postviolence societies. This is a genuine dilemma because often an enormous number of people are involved in these crimes, and there are often no clear, premeditated, written, and circulated orders of particular massacres. The direct victims and often their offspring can continue to suffer for years, even decades, as I found out while traveling in Turkey in July 2004. A friend of mine had invited me to his family home in the southern town of Ereğli. Strolling through the breezy town, we came across one of my friend’s acquaintances, a certain “Uncle Fikri.” The old man looked sad, so we asked him what was wrong. He said, “My father has been on his deathbed for a few days now.” When we tried to console him, he answered, “I’m not sad because he will die, he has been sick for a while now. I’m sad because he refuses to recite the Shahadah before he passes on.”1 The man looked deep into our eyes. There was an awkward silence. We fully understood each other without exchanging a single word, and we parted. We couldn’t believe what we had just heard: uncle Fikri clearly confessed to us that his father had kept the lifelong secret that he was really an Armenian and refused to die as a Turkish Muslim. Together, the above approach generates a dynamic model that has three analytical dimensions and three temporal dimensions. It is primarily a political-sociological model: its focus is centered on the power relationships between groups of people, especially between perpetrators and victims, but also within the perpetrator group— between high-ranking architects and low-ranking killers. But this is also an explicitly historicizing approach in which genocides are seen, fundamentally, as processes with a beginning, development, and end. 40

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How that process has functioned in different genocides should be one of our top priorities. Considering this model, the meso level has most persistently occupied my thought (i.e., the perpetrating elites and agencies, the culture and practice of perpetrating mass murder). How do otherwise neutral and technocratic institutions, organizations, and agencies in a given state and society collaborate in genocide? How do otherwise apolitical families make decisions, conduct business, and comport themselves in a genocidal process? How do coexisting villages and neighborhoods turn on each other? How are city administrations taken over and steered towards genocidal destruction of some of their fellow citizens? And, of course, how can we better understand the changing sociological relationships between perpetrator group and victim group? Changing and New Approaches

My approach to genocide has changed somewhat over the years. I used to, and still, believe that detached academic analysis is the best and possibly only way to understand the phenomenon. As a young student frustrated by genocide, too often I used academic writing as an emotional outlet. Venting my righteous indignation by writing on genocide felt comforting and alleviating, but when I now read back through those loaded student papers, they disappoint in terms of analysis. Detached analysis is really the only way to move forward. However, this does not mean that I believe that all nonacademic input is useless. On the contrary, nonacademic approaches to genocide (such as literature and film) can function as an extension of academic inquiry, by beginning exactly there where scholarship cannot reach deeper. A good metaphor to explain this type of analysis can be found in the work of the Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–1593), best known for his imaginative portraiture of heads made entirely of fruits and vegetables. Arcimboldo arranged these objects on the canvas in such a way that the composite image formed a recognizable likeness of a human face. Studying genocide is like arranging a face from many different fruits. Considering genocide’s multifarious silences (the perpetrators’ tendency not to leave a paper trail, the victims’ tendency to hold their silence in fear or shame), we must develop an aggregate picture of genocide in which we take aspects of different genocides and place them together to yield new insights. The human imagination is strong enough to enter the darkness of genocide—although perhaps not exit it unscathed. Three examples 41

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of artistic approaches to genocide are Vassili Grossman, Edgar Hilsenrath, and Jonathan Littell. I omit here the memoir genre, which obviously consists of many excellent contributions as well. To my knowledge, the Russian-Soviet-Ukrainian-Jewish author Vassili Grossman, a veritable moral authority on genocide, is the only one who made a credible effort in describing how a gas chamber must have functioned from the inside. In chapter forty-six of his mammoth novel entitled Life and Fate (Жизнь и судьба), he describes a young boy’s death in the gas chamber. Grossman analyzed the Treblinka death camp in a shattering essay, but his writing skills in that suffocating chapter bring the reader eerily close to the experience of being gassed to death. Grossman’s other major accomplishment is his effortless maneuvering around the traps of moral equivalence or equivocation on Nazism and Stalinism. The Story of the Last Thought (Das Märchen vom letzten Gedanken) by Edgar Hilsenrath, an author known for grotesque and dark humor, is another novel that provides a macabre insight into genocide. Hilsenrath describes how the governor of Diyarbekir, in actual history the bloodthirsty Dr. Mehmed Reshid, sets up his torture chamber and subjects a young Armenian man to horrific tortures as the poor soul predictably fails to answer the governor’s ridiculous questions (e.g., where he keeps his bombs, when the Russian army recruited him, etc.). What is remarkable is that Hilsenrath’s authentic description of the tortures and the environment in which they were carried out provide lucid sketches of the mentality of the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide, of which no real records have surfaced so far. Finally, Jonathan Littell’s book The Kindly Ones (Les Bienveillantes) is a prize-winning novel, which revolves around the fictional Nazi perpetrator Dr. Max Aue, an SS officer who murders his way through the Soviet Union and after many adventures finally loses his mind. The book clearly demonstrates that Littell has carried out painstaking research on the subject and that he has understood genocide. (Not surprisingly, he moved on to report on the 2012 destruction of Homs by the Assad regime.) Anyone who is interested in reading an admittedly long and sometimes sensationalistic account of a perpetrator from a first person’s perspective is advised to read it. Littel does an admirable job in bringing to life the emotions, fears, and hopes of his main character, as well as interactions between perpetrators and victims. Unfortunately, not all forms of literature and art are helpful. Film is a powerful medium that has a duty in depicting genocide in an 42

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accessible and subtle way. Some films, however, are utterly unrealistic in their depiction of acts, emotions, or interactions in genocides. Representations of violence in Quentin Tarantino’s movies consist of much unexplained cruelty and sadism, Hotel Rwanda was a blatant misrepresentation of the historical record, and the cheap sentimentalism of Schindler’s List hardly compensates for elaborate screenwriting and casting. Much better movies, for example, are Grbavica (about a Bosnian girl born out of wartime rape), Katyn (which includes powerful images of the mass killings by the NKVD), El Secreto de Sus Ojos (which presents gripping scenes of Argentina’s dirty war), Anonyma (a bitter story about Soviet mass rape of women in Berlin), La Vita è Bella (a film that makes audacious and subtle use of humor in the Holocaust, bursting with zest for life), and Die Fälscher (a raw, misanthropic epos of a Jewish criminal who swindles his way through the Holocaust). Furthermore, two extremely worthwhile documentaries, for example, are Die Wannseekonferenz (an account so eerily true you come to hate the actors), and The Act of Killing (a brilliant portrait of Indonesian paramilitary murderers and the impunity they enjoy). Some genocides have so few visual images (like the distant Armenian genocide or even the recent genocides like Rwanda and Darfur), that we are forced to seek recourse to filmic reconstructions or fictional approximations. We could certainly do with a solid, high-quality movie on these genocides to supplement our limited image of the cultural and physical environment of that genocide. Core Issues in Genocide Research

After Lemkin died in 1959, the UN Genocide Convention seemed to become a dead letter, especially intellectually. Fortunately, historians and social scientists rediscovered the concept in the 1970s and published the first academic studies of genocide. Ever since, the number of publications about genocide has grown; nowadays, genocide studies is a respectable academic specialty, with its own journals and research institutes in North America, Europe, Australia, and South America. Whereas the first generation of genocide scholars established a solid foundation, a second, younger cohort of researchers has taken the concept further. They have broken taboos, charted new paths, and opened fresh vistas. Although no justice can be done to the rich field in this brief and necessarily incomplete overview, four issues seem to continue to provoke thoughts in our research field. 43

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The first is regime type. Is genocide a function of dictatorship, or democracy, or transitions from one to the other? Colleagues like Rudolph Rummel and Alex Alvarez have consistently and lucidly argued that the level of authoritarianism explains the onset of genocidal crimes. To them, the history of twentieth-century dictatorships has demonstrated that only in regimes that amassed an exceptional concentration of power did genocide become possible. A smaller, but no less vocal group of colleagues, among them Michael Mann and Alexander Downes, have claimed that democratic regimes are more prone to (veiled forms of ) mass violence. According to them, democracies target civilians more in inter-state wars for electoral-strategic reasons, and democratic competition fosters ethnic segmentation and thus conflict in mixed societies. A third group of colleagues, including but not exclusively Matthew Krain and John Keane, have suggested that transitions from one form of governance to another spark mass political violence (i.e., either bloody coup d’états or bumpy democratization processes). To them, it is changing political opportunity structures during these transitions rather than regime type that predict genocide. By focusing on twentieth-century genocides, I have mostly sided with the first group of colleagues in this debate. Surely the most genocidal regimes were those based on Stalinism, Nazism, and Maoism—all backed by the fist of enormously expansive violent apparatuses. I am still convinced that only the fatal embrace of extreme ideology and extreme power is potent enough for mass murder on a genocidal scale. But massacres in East Timor, Turkey, Russia, Kenya, India, and Mexico do point to the fact that we cannot dismiss these events so easily and must take seriously the occurrence of violence in fledgling democracies, or societies in transition. A second interesting debate in genocide studies is the issue of modernity. Whereas one school firmly believes that genocide is primarily a modern phenomenon (Eric Weitz, Omer Bartov), another set of scholars finds evidence that it has ancient roots dating back to Antiquity (Azar Gat, Ben Kiernan). Furthermore, some colleagues argue that mass political violence increased with modernization (Mark Levene, Donald Bloxham), but an equally interesting line of thought figures that mass violence overall decreased over the past centuries, even millennia (Steven Pinker). The sophistication and density of this debate is of such a level that I have not been able to make up my mind about it yet. The evidence and arguments marshaled by the various positions is overall convincing, nuanced, and perfectly valid. Few could 44

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contest that only the modern state has the technological, ideological, and communicative means to carry out mass murder. But did violence itself, or our sensitivity to violence, increase over the past centuries? Did the act change, or did its calibration change due to a creeping civilizing process? Or perhaps both developed in opposite directions and the developments are not mutually exclusive. The capacity of the modern state to commit genocide certainly increased, but most probably so did global human sensitivity to it. Yet none of this is set in stone, and these processes of stabilization and sensitivity can rapidly reverse into destabilization and desensitization. Another controversy that sparked some debate was a renewed take on the old sociological dispute between state- and society-oriented approaches. Whereas some colleagues believe genocides can be society-driven (Christian Gerlach, Nicholas Werth), others are firmly convinced that genocide is too often a state project for that claim to hold (Irving Horowitz, Alexander Hinton). This captivating debate (e.g., waged in the Journal of Genocide Research 8:4 (2006), 9:1 and 2 (2007)) has arguments going for both camps. Gerlach’s proposal (2010) to transcend unhelpful dichotomies between state and society, as well as between perpetrator and victim, is laudable. However, it is also somewhat obvious, as a close look at most work on genocide clearly identifies patterns of interaction between state and society (e.g., in the recruitment of perpetrators, civil society initiatives toward assisting the genocidal apparatus, and the manufacturing of broad-based indifference towards the plight of the victims). On the other hand, too great a focus on the perpetrating state may also blind us to persecution and destruction of multiple victim groups, disregard victim-perpetrators (such as child perpetrators), and potentially bracket off pre- and postgenocide reversals of roles—of which the best examples still are the Eastern European Germans before and after World War II. In other words, without too easily settling for a conciliatory middle position in this debate, it seems that neither have gained a convincing victory over the other, nor have their differences been fully reconciled. A fourth question concerns whether cultural genocide exists and whether it is a useful concept. This discussion can be traced to an apparent paradox in the study of genocide. Whereas one school of thought argues that the global decline of indigenous and minority languages attests to improvements in processes of global societal integration of speakers of those groups (Abram de Swaan, Joana Breidenbach, Pál Nyíri), another group of scholars sees this decline mainly in terms of 45

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deliberate linguistic destruction or system-produced cultural decline (Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Lawrence Davidson). The former group often argues that in order to increase their communicative efficacy, speakers of small indigenous languages will attempt to acquire central and supercentral language skills in an attempt to improve their socio-economic position in the global economy. This unplanned but directional process produces voluntary language abandonment and decline of peripheral languages. In contrast, scholars of the second school have advocated a model of hegemony and decline, invoking “minority protection” and ecological metaphors of “diversity” to sustain an ideal of maximum linguistic heterogeneity. They often interpret states’ language policies towards indigenous and minority languages as “subtractive education,” leading to the disappearance of linguistic and cultural diversity. Lemkin (1933) himself had a somewhat more subtle position: in his eyes, incremental change as a result of contact with other cultures was not genocidal, but deliberately destructive policies against a culture were. Dirk Moses (2010) criticized the essentialist bias in Lemkin’s work, arguing that as a child of his era he viewed cultures as immutable. The debate whether genocide merely consists of a process of physical annihilation or whether it has cultural dimensions is still to be determined as research is carried out on more modern cases. We need to keep these fruitful debates going. What we also need is a more equitable production and distribution of knowledge. If every human life has equal worth, then some genocides have received much less attention in academic life than they should have. If we take a simple arithmetic, the number of Nazi genocide victims divided by the global number of books and conferences on the Holocaust, then that figure is much higher than the same ratio for mass murder in the Soviet Union, let alone China. Undoubtedly, at work here are cultural bias, the level of development of the society, the availability of sources, and the continuity of perpetrator regimes. A more equitable arrangement is not only needed for moral fairness, but also for substantial grounds; comparative genocide research cannot disproportionately rely on well-documented and thoroughly studied genocides only. Violent episodes in Guatemala, Indonesia, the DRC, Iraq, and many other countries must be taken into account to control for cultural circumstances. This may well be a task for the next generation of genocide scholars. Unfortunately, genocide itself is catching up and continuously providing food for thought for its scholars. The Syrian uprising and the cruel repression and civil war that followed it are bitter reminders of this. 46

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Positionality: Genocide Studies between State and Society

My primary aim as a scholar in the field of genocide studies is to develop and disseminate both more and better knowledge. Most colleagues will concur with my optimistic attitude that these goals can be achieved in a piecemeal way through focused research and teaching. Tellingly, my work has changed in practical terms as my thinking has evolved. Within a decade of completing my PhD, I went from the solitary practice of research and writing to the much more social process of teaching in higher education. A colleague working on the First World War once boasted that he had no teaching obligations at all. I do not agree with this sense of triumphalism; for me, students are immensely important, not only because they become discussion partners, but also because inspiration for research often comes out of class discussions. Furthermore, the classroom is often a necessary outlet, as genocide is a topic so ugly that it risks isolating us (scholars) from mainstream society. The more one is absorbed into the material, the more one is drawn away from daily polite conversation. Many colleagues are likely to have experienced this at parties or social gatherings: they often avoid talking about the details of their work, and instead choose to talk about mundane topics or academic life in general. This process can lead to a certain cognitive and emotional solitude, and the feeling of not being truly understood by people. At the end of the spectrum we face professional deformations such as numbness to extreme and graphic violence, or the development of a hermetic sense of black humor. Surgeons and undertakers, too, for example, maintain their own brand of humor that is not accessible to outsiders. Indeed, this genre of humor may appear eccentric, disconcerting, and even offensive to the general public. This moral and cognitive isolation of genocide scholars can get ugly, as I experienced when working in the UK. I once cracked an inside joke about genocide in the presence of a layperson, who promptly accused me of ill will and put in a complaint about me. It taught me the harsh lesson that dark humor may seem acceptable among genocide scholars, but it can be perceived as inappropriate by mainstream society. Genocide studies can also affect interpersonal relations. A fundamental awareness of the “just world” myth, the destructiveness of genocide, and the fragility of human life can generate a fear of forging intimate emotional bonds. (Some of my ex-girlfriends might be 47

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nodding right now.) So in many ways, studying genocide is a risky business and one must find coping mechanisms to counterbalance its potential effects. I would like to hear more from colleagues how this research has affected their private life over the long run. Where I am not sure yet of the direction to take is whether this also entails combating bad knowledge and disinformation through public debate or activism. Quietism is frustrating and perhaps pusillanimous, but contributing to public debate is risky and unpredictable. Writing open letters to sitting heads of state, organizing demonstrations, or lobbying for intervention is an exercise in politics, not scholarship. I admire colleagues such as Sam Totten, who often petitions the UN and individual governments about the need to address current conflicts involving mass atrocity crimes and/or other types of humanitarian concerns, but at this point I have taken a purely academic position— and this might change. Furthermore, for me, far too many genocide books are moralistic, polemical, prosecutorial, and political in nature versus detached, dispassionate, analytical, and apolitical. If I may misquote General Clausewitz, politicized research exemplifies how scholarship too can be “a continuation of politics by other means.” Throwing to the wind Max Weber’s ontological distinction between “Politics as Vocation” and “Science as Vocation” not only blurs the boundaries between the two, but fuels the politicization of the topic. Unfortunately, these political digressions do not offer a better understanding of genocide. I experienced this firsthand in July 2013 when I sat on a panel discussion on Syria in an Amsterdam political debate center with the former Dutch ambassador to Syria, a journalist, in front of a mostly (social democratic) Labor Party audience intermixed with a small number of students and other interested people. At some point, the former ambassador made the remark that there was no way to tie Assad to the crimes on the ground because there was no “smoking gun” in the form of an explicit written order. If we leave aside the fact that in Syria there actually are such documents signed by Assad, my instinct as a genocide scholar was to immediately place this in perspective. I retorted that according to her definition, Hitler would not be guilty of the Holocaust because there was no explicit order (the Führerbefehl) for the genocide of Jews either. What happened next was bizarre but also served as a most instructive moment: the ambassador leaned forward abruptly and cried out, “Wannsee! Endlösung!” The crowd hissed at my remark. For me, the debate was over. I felt wrongly accused of Holocaust denial 48

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and was dumbstruck. Two of our Holocaust and Genocide graduate students in the audience were baffled too. Was it really so that a fairly well-educated middle-class Amsterdam audience did not know Hitler never wrote down an explicit order for the Holocaust? If so, either Dutch public education has failed them, or Holocaust scholars have failed to inform the public adequately. When I reflected on this incident later, I realized that it primarily symbolized the gap between academic and popular knowledge on genocide. In my humble opinion, there are four major obstacles in studying genocide: emotions, politics, law, and morals. I have dealt with these problems in a different essay (Üngör 2012), but it might be worthwhile to further reflect on the politicization of the subject. Scholarship on genocide is deeply politicized and only in recent decades has it steered away from partisanship and reached a modicum of normality. Politicization originates from all directions: lobbyists, identity politics, victim groups, and idealistic scholars taking on the interests of victim groups, activists, and advocacy groups. But it is especially so in states that use the concept not in a scholarly way but as political rhetoric. States are influential, they have a vested interest in misrepresenting the truth, and they operate with legal and moral agendas. Sometimes this can spark mildly productive debate. For the purpose of nation building, the Ukrainian government under Yushchenko and Tymoshenko declared the Holodomor a genocide and invested considerable resources and funds in propagating the message. Some conferences were borne out of this nationalist agenda, and some good research even came out of it. Yes, the Bosniak authorities and the Kagame regime in Rwanda facilitate research on the genocides perpetrated in their region/nation, establishing archives, holding conferences, and working with international partners. But these are states mostly inhabited by survivors that represent the victims’ interests. States that consider themselves heirs of perpetrator regimes, such as Turkey, Russia, Indonesia, China, or Serbia, play a different game. They are discontented with scholars searching for skeletons in the closet, deny them access to archival collections and libraries, intimidate and prohibit them from conducting field work, and manipulate research by funding politically useful research by pushing for the establishment of academic chairs at home or abroad or by offering scholarships. Overall, there are clear limitations under which states with vested interests are willing to operate, such as taboos, restrictions, and prescriptions. States for whom a genocide is part and parcel of their collective identity or 49

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national security doctrine often make a great effort to influence the scholarship in quite fundamental ways. Contributions and New Directions

In the period 2002–2012, I mostly worked on the Armenian Genocide and the Turkish-Armenian conflict surrounding the genocide. In The Making of Modern Turkey, I argued that the Armenian Genocide was part and parcel of a broader Young Turk policy of homogenizing the country. The book was recognized by various organizations and garnered a few awards: the Royal Holland Society of Sciences awarded it the Keetje Hodshon Award for best history book in 2011, and the Erasmus Foundation awarded it a major research prize in the same year. But it was also criticized for not discussing the economic dimensions of the genocide, either as a causal factor or as a societal domain underpinning and influencing the unfolding of the genocide. If only for this reason, I launched the book project Confiscation and Destruction, which dealt exclusively with the material facets of that genocide. I also published other spin-off projects before I branched out to comparative studies and other genocides, and in 2012 the Dutch Academy of Sciences bestowed on me the Young Scientist Award for my work in general. I made a lukewarm effort to learn Russian and studied Stalinist violence, as well as the post-Soviet wars in the Caucasus. My fascination with Yugoslavia and its collapse continued unabated, and I regularly attended International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) court sessions in my capacity as holder of the genocide studies portfolio at the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD). The Syrian cataclysm triggered my long-held desire to learn proper Arabic, and I closely followed the unfolding of the violence. As I argued above, this accumulation of knowledge is necessary for a proper comparative examination of stateorchestrated mass violence. In this vein, two comparative projects I am currently working on are regional variation and paramilitarism. Genocides are not undifferentiated campaigns in which simultaneous mass killing evolves the same everywhere in a country. Genocide scholars have examined the relationship between central decision-making processes and the implementation of mass murder at the local level. In-depth research on how genocidal processes evolve at the provincial, district, city, or even village level has proven most fruitful. It can teach us a great deal about how local power shifts influence the course and intensity of genocidal processes since we know that some genocides are more regionally varied than others. Local political or social elites can 50

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anticipate, expedite, intensify, or delay and resist processes of genocidal destruction directed from above. A micro focus can also follow the deterioration and ultimate disintegration of inter-communal relations in the face of external pressures, amidst drastically worsening security and life conditions for the victims. Possible explanations include the personal whims of the local power holders, the geographic conditions, the conduct of local elites, and structural factors such as proximity to the front, social stratification, settlement patterns, poverty and unemployment, population density of victim group, opportunity structures, etc. But which combination of factors accounts for what kind of variation in genocidal processes? For example, why did the eastern Drina valley (roughly along the line Bijeljina-Zvornik-Višegrad-Foča) see much higher levels of violence than the central-northern Tuzla region during the genocide in Bosnia? Why did the genocide in Rwanda’s southern and northern provinces develop at quite different speeds? Why did violence develop so quickly on Bali compared to Sumatra during the 1965–1966 Indonesian genocide? These questions must be addressed comparatively in order to aggregate theoretical debates. Genocide is almost exclusively carried out by well-equipped, specialized, often paramilitary forces. Paramilitarism refers to clandestine, irregular armed organizations that carry out illegal acts of violence against clearly defined civilian individuals or groups. It has immense importance for understanding the processes of violence that are played out during ethnic conflicts, which often see the formation of paramilitary units that conduct counter-insurgency operations, scorched earth campaigns, and violence against civilians, including genocide. Many studies of genocide have convincingly demonstrated the central role of paramilitaries in the perpetration of genocide. Whether in democratic or authoritarian states, throughout the twentieth century, paramilitaries have been responsible for widespread violations of human rights. States embroiled in (civil) war are thought to spawn paramilitary units as a covert augmentation of state power for special purposes, such as mass murder. The historiography on the civil wars of the post-Cold War era has argued that wars have since been fought not necessarily between states’ standing armies, but between paramilitaries and militias, and especially against civilians. This has arguably blurred the distinctions between war, organized crime, and large-scale violations of human rights. How and why were paramilitary forces organized and deployed? Why did they emerge, and which differences can we detect in democratic and dictatorial states’ use of paramilitaries? 51

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These are two sub-themes in the vast field of genocide research that still need to be mapped. First, some genocides are well studied in some aspects but not so in others. We know a lot about the Rwandan perpetrators, but much less about the Sudanese ones; we have lots of bureaucratic documentation on the Soviet Union, but much less on Rwanda; and compared to other genocides, we still know next to nothing about Saddam Hussein’s violence against Iraqi society. When perpetrating regimes stay in power, we have much less critical detail, such as in Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Sudan. The disparities should be addressed. Another gap in genocide studies is between specialist local knowledge and broader theoretical syntheses. Everywhere I have traveled, from Belgrade to Manila, and from Ankara to Kigali, I have met locally-based colleagues who have a familiarity with the society and close access to key sources, but often work without a sufficient analytical framework or are lacking when it comes to a solid conceptual grasp. As genocide scholars we must develop closer working relations with these colleagues. In other words, the gap between theoretical claims and empirical evidence has to be bridged. There is a long way to go. 1.

Note

Shahadah: The Islamic declaration of belief. “There is no God but Allah and Muhammed is his Prophet.”

References

Gerlach, Christian (2010). Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hinton, Alexander Laban (2002). Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lemkin, Raphael (1933). Akte der Barbarei und des Vandalismus als delicta juris gentium. Vienna: Internationales Anwaltsblatt. Moses, A. Dirk (2010). “Raphael Lemkin, Culture, and the Concept of Genocide,” in: Donald Bloxham & A. Dirk Moses (Eds.), Oxford Handbook on Genocide Studies Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19–41. Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2007). Vervolging, Onteigening en Vernietiging: De Deportatie van Ottomaanse Armeniërs tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Soesterberg: Aspekt. Üngör, Uğur Ümit, and Weiss-Wendt, Anton (2011). “Collaboration in Genocide: Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916; Nazi-Occupied Baltic States, 1941–1944; and Rwanda, 1994.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Winter, 25(3), 404–437. Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2011). Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property. London/New York: Continuum Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2011). “Fresh Understandings of the Armenian Genocide: Mapping New Terrain with Old Questions,” pp. 197–213. In: Adam Jones (Ed.) New Directions in Genocide Research. London: Routledge. 52

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Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2011). The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950. New York: Oxford University Press Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2012). “Paramilitary Violence in the Collapsing Ottoman Empire,” pp. 162–181. In Robert Gerwarth & John Horne (Eds.) War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence after the Great War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2012). “Rethinking the Violence of Pacification: State Formation and Bandits in the Young Turk Era, 1914–1937.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 54(4), 746–769. Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2012). “Studying Mass Violence: Pitfalls, Problems and Promises.” Genocide Studies and Prevention, 7(1), 68–80. Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2012). “Untying the Tongue-Tied: Cultural and Linguistic Genocide as Population Politics.” International Journal for the Sociology of Language,. Vol. 217, 127–150. Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2013). “Mass Violence in Syria: A Preliminary Analysis.” New Middle Eastern Studies, September. Available at http://www.brismes.ac. uk/nmes

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II Political Scientists

3 Seized of Sorrow Adam Jones A Stoning

When I was ten years old, an incident taught me much of what I needed to know about genocide—or the genocidal continuum—even if it would take me some decades to realize it. My parents, understandably seeking a break from the kids, sent my brother and me to a horse-riding camp near Vernon, a small city in British Columbia’s southern interior, where we settled after emigrating from England. The event remains hazy in my mind, but its essence is clear enough. A girl our age had somehow been designated the black sheep of the clique—a role I was already painfully familiar with as an undersized and socially awkward immigrant kid. I recall her as dark-haired, darkeyed, with a frozen and frightened expression. The other children had her cornered in a semi-circle. They were mocking her, and throwing pebbles in her direction—it wasn’t a serious stoning, but the intent to hurt and humiliate was perfectly clear. I believe I arrived late to the festivities—I certainly wasn’t a ringleader. Did I pick up a stone and hurl it, at least in a desultory fashion? Did I jeer along with the others? Again, the details escape me, perhaps conveniently. I am quite sure that whatever punishment was being meted out, the girl was not crying or protesting—she merely accepted her lot, and endured what was likely not the first such experience in her young life. What I do know is that I did not protest or intervene. I felt only an overwhelming desire to “fit in,” and at least ape enough of the cruel vibe to secure acceptance by my peers. I was, in other words, a classic bystander. The group and its minor madness must have dispersed quickly. I vaguely recall an adult intervening to separate the girl and sternly chastise her tormentors. But I may have added that memory retrospectively, in keeping with the stain of shame I felt upon later reflection and have 57

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borne ever since. Perhaps the incident resonated with me so strongly because my cowardly complicity ran so counter to the stances and convictions that I was otherwise nurturing. From an even earlier age, my gut-level politics had been shaped by a passionate empathy for suffering creatures, identification with the underdog/outsider, and an urge (sought? imposed? both?) to swim against the current in true contrarian fashion. Whatever I have done that is useful, as a genocide scholar and a human being, is the product of those intimately related impulses. An Upbringing

In cultivating such values, I was immeasurably aided—and continue to be influenced—by a remarkable pair of parents. Both were unusually worldly and cosmopolitan people, given the working-class English background they had struggled to transcend. My mother, Jo Carole Fraser, was a teenage beauty queen—Southendon-Sea’s Carnival Queen of 1956—and then the first in her family line to attend university. From undergraduate studies in French and Italian, she moved on to join that postwar generation of English women who flooded into the professions newly opened to them. Before settling on a career as a teacher and school librarian, she spent several years as a flight attendant with Pan Am, based in San Francisco and New York, flying to exotic destinations like Tehran and Calcutta. When, in 2011, I travelled overland to remote mountain regions of Iran, she scanned and emailed to me a set of photos she had taken of those same mountains in the 1950s, from thirty thousand feet. Perhaps the tale that most captivated me concerned the flight on which she was approached in the plane’s galley, and rather blatantly propositioned by none other than a young Marlon Brando. She thought him an obnoxious drunkard, and fended him off, though she concedes he was “as gorgeous as a Greek god.” It is interesting to speculate what course my life might have taken if I had been Brando’s love child. Instead, thank goodness, my newly worldly mother met and eventually married my father. My father David’s own father, Alfred, had served in the defining cataclysm of the twentieth century, the First World War, and in one of that conflict’s most dangerous jobs. He was a sapper with the Royal Engineers who found himself posted to the iconic Somme battlefield in 1916. I don’t know if he was there for the ghastly first day of the slaughter on July 1, the “Black Day of the British Army,” when sixty thousand troops lay killed or wounded by sundown. But at some point, 58

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the tunnel he was digging under enemy lines was caved in by shellfire. Only by the purest chance was Alfred discovered by a search party and dug out, then sent home to “recover” from shellshock. Only by that same chance did he go on to father my father, thereby granting me my own chance at life. But the experience triggered the return of childhood epileptic seizures that haunted him until his death—which came relatively young, leaving my father, his brother, and his mother as the family’s breadwinners. Like so many men of that generation, my grandfather was reticent about the horrors of war. I have sometimes wondered whether my own preoccupation with mass conflict, and my intense curiosity about the role of men and manhood in shaping it and suffering it, seeks to lend a voice to those like Alfred who were cruelly stripped of self-expression—or who survived, but failed to find the words for their trauma. While my mother was shattering the confines that had stunted and inhibited young women, my father was one of the last generations of young English men forced into the institution of National Service conscription. For him, though, it was a liberation. After earning a commission during two years in early-1950s Britain, he joined the regular Royal Air Force (RAF) and was sent to Germany. He remembers that it was impossible to find any native Germans who would acknowledge having had the slightest attraction to Hitler and Nazism. In all, he spent twenty years in the service. Remarkably, he spent part of that time as a member of the team that conducted the first British nuclear tests in the “empty” wastes of the Australian desert. (Only much later would these territories be recognized as part of the Aboriginal homeland.) My father actually took part in three atomic test explosions, and he led the team that decontaminated men and equipment after they were used to measure residual radiation levels. When the tests were over, he escorted the spare nuclear warhead home to England, by sea. Again, I don’t know if there is a connection with my first explicitly political involvement—as an antinuclear activist in the 1980s, when the world seemed on the cusp of nuclear omnicide. I do know that for my father, these early fission bombs were not the epochal and worldaltering technology they seemed to subsequent generations. He saw them, instead, as a logical extension of the destructive power of airborne bombardment, which he had experienced as a youngster during the London Blitz, cowering in shelters and stairwells as Nazi munitions rained down around him. Nonetheless, he was surely aware of the mortal threat posed by the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. 59

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He met my mother in Britain. They married on home leave, and he brought her out to his next posting in distant Southeast Asia. My mother vividly describes the sense she had that everything—all human life—could be vaporized in a thermonuclear flash. Calculating a few years ago, I realized I was conceived mere weeks after the mercifully peaceful conclusion to the Missile Crisis. It seems I was part of that great and life-affirming exhalation of relief that followed the retreat from the brink. My father went on to serve briefly in newly independent Zambia, during the upheaval of Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. But when a new conflict—the “troubles” in Northern Ireland—threatened to separate him from us, yet again, he decided his overriding responsibility was to his young family. After a two-year posting to Ottawa as an exchange officer, he decided to leave the RAF and build a new life in Canada. But he was deeply shaped not only by his own upbringing, but also by the particular military version of honor and self-discipline that he imbibed during those years. He took care to inculcate a civilian variant of those values in his children. I will never forget the expression on his face when we watched one of the videos I have most regularly shown to my classes on genocide and crimes against humanity—the Canadian National Film Board documentary Chronicle of a Genocide Foretold, about the Rwandan holocaust of 1994. In the episode aptly titled “We Were Cowards,” Belgian “peacekeepers” absconded from the Ndera Psychiatric Hospital in Kigali prefecture, where thousands of terrified Tutsis had gathered for protection from the genocidal militias whooping and swaggering outside the gates. “You cannot do that,” said my father, or words to that effect. “You must disobey such an order if civilian lives are at stake.” I haven’t any doubt that, in such a situation, he would have chosen the honorable path, even at the cost of his life. I am much less certain—but I do pray—that I would have the courage to do likewise. An Education

We lived in Singapore for only a few months after I came into the world there. But it was to Singapore—the United World College of South-East Asia (UWCSEA)—that I returned in 1979 as a sixteenyear-old. That was parental influence at work as well—notably my mother’s. She learned of the scholarship program that funded young people from around the world to attend the unique institution of the UWC. There were three of them at the time: in Singapore, Wales, and 60

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on ­Vancouver Island. (Today there are a couple of dozen. The latest in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, provided the first postwar environment there in which Muslim and Croatian children studied a common curriculum.) Following the application and interview process, I was offered not my first choice of safe and comfortable British Columbia, but my third choice of Singapore. My parents helped me overcome my fear of the unknown, thus providing me with the grit to dive into what would become the transformative experience of my life. Back on that tiny island hugging the equator, I was thrust into a multicultural ferment—not just the eclectic mix of Chinese, Malay, Indian, and expatriate that is Singapore, but students from some fifty different nationalities at the UWCSEA itself. As at all UWCs, we studied the International Baccalaureate curriculum. It still stands as the most diverse, rigorous, and terrifying course of study I’ve ever encountered— the PhD I later earned was a cakewalk by comparison. World history, politics, and geography were opened up to me in ways that small-town Canada could never have matched, with an emphasis on the peoples and societies of the surrounding Asian region. On academic fieldtrips or vacation breaks, I traipsed around Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. Gradually, and with plenty of cultural confusion and perplexity, I developed the addiction to travel that has never left me. I am back in Southeast Asia as I write this essay—Myanmar/Burma, to be precise. Another of my pursuits at UWCSEA was to edit the student newspaper. In this, I was following a course that had begun in elementary school, when I printed off issues of my first self-published rag on a Gestetner machine and hawked them to my peers at five cents a copy. I long assumed that my career would revolve around journalism and the mass media, and I’m forever grateful for the years I spent learning the craft. It supplied me, I think, with a consuming desire to deeply probe the human interest component at the heart of a narrative, and to depict it in straightforward and engaging prose, without pointless jargon or prolixity. In the end, though—probably fortuitously, given that the profession seems to be a dying one—I chose not to practice journalism, but to study it. In particular, I focused on its relationship to the wider society and polity at times of transformation. After spending eight years meandering through a bachelor’s degree at four different schools, with plenty of travel tossed in, I entered a Master’s program in Political Science at McGill University in Montreal. During the 1990s, at McGill and in subsequent PhD studies at the University of British Columbia (UBC), I explored the phenomenon of 61

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the media in politically transitional societies, studying up close postSandinista Nicaragua, Jordan’s “managed liberalization,” South Africa following the advent of majority rule, and Russia during the turbulent postcommunist period. However, a different academic agenda—one centering on human rights and ethnic conflict—was percolating beneath the surface. And as I completed my dissertation, The Press in Transition, the former moved to the forefront. An Activist

I said at the outset that my politics were instinctively shaped by an identification with the underdog, and an abiding contrarian spirit. Both drew me toward a youthful solidarity with progressive struggles and revolutions worldwide—one that I’ve never jettisoned. While living for a time in China and Australia, my activist impetus, which first found expression in the antinuclear movement, shifted to the arena of Central and South America. There, some of the world’s most murderously reactionary regimes—in El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti—were slaughtering defenseless civilians by the tens and hundreds of thousands. While my Canadian government mostly sat on the fence, the neighboring Reagan administration in the United States was doing all it could to arm, train, and succor the génocidaires, with crucial and still under-recognized assistance of Israel. It was at that point, in the Guatemalan context, that I first began to deploy the term “genocide” in my writing and public speaking. I can’t say I thought much about the implications of the concept. I had read extensively about the Jewish Holocaust as a child, and in my adolescence picked up a second-hand copy of Leo Kuper’s seminal study Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century. But I think I was drawn more by the gory paperback cover of a flyblown corpse than by the subject of the book—which sat on my shelf unread until much later. In 1986, I joined a delegation to Nicaragua from the Canadian solidarity project Tools for Peace, which dispatched millions of dollars in grassroots aid to the Sandinista revolution throughout the 1980s. The two-and-a-half weeks in Nicaragua, and the opportunity to experience firsthand a society in revolutionary ferment, were a profound revelation. I still think of the Sandinistas as a model of grace under immense pressure—in this case, pressure exerted by the Reaganites, who mobilized Contra forces to rampage and slaughter and rape with the impunity that only superpower sponsorship can provide. My first published book (Beyond the Barricades: Nicaragua and the Struggle for the Sandinista 62

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Press, 1979–1998) grew from that experience, as did my determination to pursue a staunchly anti-imperialist agenda for the rest of my life. I am glad, in retrospect, that despite my socialist convictions, I was never duped by the aberration of state socialism and its attendant imperialisms. In part, that came from observing “communist” societies up close. I lived in post-Mao China for a year (1983–1984) as an exchange student, which pretty much put me off becoming a China specialist; and I traveled extensively enough in the Eastern Bloc (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Berlin) to see how drab and repressive the existence was there. But I must also credit my two great and clear-eyed leftist intellectual influences, who have also done much to shape my political activism. A couple of weeks ago, I was strolling the streets of Mawlamyine here in Myanmar. It was known as Moulmein under the British Raj, when a young police officer named Eric Blair arrived to “keep the natives in line.” Under his pen name of George Orwell, Blair would go on to write not only a classic critique of colonialism in Asia (Burmese Days); not only the immortal denunciations of Soviet-style totalitarianism in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four; but also a wealth of superb essays and works of reportage, none greater than his firsthand account of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia. Orwell’s was a complex, difficult, and in some ways distasteful personality. But he was also (in a dual sense) the writer of the twentieth century. His ability to be both politically engaged, and ever the outsider and iconoclast, was and is endlessly inspiring to me. As for his prose, Keith Gessen writes in his All Art is Propaganda: “Far from being a relaxed prose (which is how it seems), Orwell’s is a supremely vigilant one. . . . The lesson of these essays is clear: Look around you. Describe what you see as an ordinary observer—for you are one, you know—would see them. Take things seriously. And tell the truth. Tell the truth.”1 Noam Chomsky came into my life during that dreary year in China when a fellow exchange student lent me a copy of his collection of essays titled Radical Priorities. At first, I found Chomsky’s style unnerving and disconcerting. But when I moved to Australia and gained access to a decent library, I delved into the remainder of his political ­writings—most significantly the great book he published on US policy in Latin America, Turning the Tide (1985). On a whim, I wrote him a fan letter. To my shock and delight, a response was in my mailbox within a couple of weeks. There began a two-decade correspondence punctuated by personal encounters at his M.I.T. office and his home 63

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in Lexington, Massachusetts. Chomsky taught me to be fearless, or as near as I could manage, in denouncing the crimes and horrors of the age: “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.”2 He trained me in the methodology of substituting analytical variables to cast hypocrisies into sharper relief. Like Orwell, he also had an acute understanding of how hegemonic discourses buttressed and reproduced power—especially through what was left unsaid and unexamined. (This bolstered an instinctive methodological disposition and entrepreneurial strategy of my own: to seek gaps, niches, and lacunae that were unaddressed or under-addressed in the discourse.) My admiration for Chomsky, and his influence on my work, endures despite what I consider his disastrously misguided endorsement of a book coauthored by his long-time colleague and collaborator, Edward S. Herman, which blatantly denied the reality of the 1994 genocide of Rwandan Tutsis—for which I have taken him and others on the left to task in some detail.3 A final key influence should be cited, arising from an event that resonates with nearly all Canadians who were alive and conscious on December 6, 1989. On that dreadful day, only a couple of miles up the road from where I was living in the McGill student ghetto, a young man armed with a semi-automatic rifle and fuelled by a hatred of “feminists” marched through hallways and into classrooms at the École Polytechnique. He systematically separated female students from males and massacred fourteen women in what still stands as the largest mass murder in Canadian history. He killed himself with his final shot. (The 2009 film Polytechnique depicts the events in such a gut-wrenchingly vérité manner that I, who have stood among the physical remains of genocide victims and kept my composure, find it almost impossible to watch.) The slaughter traumatized all Canadians, and especially all Montrealers, who lined up in the hundreds of thousands on a frigid winter’s day to file past the closed caskets of the victims at the National Cathedral. I was one of them, and the experience was the foundation of my investigation into gender and mass violence—the work for which I am probably best known in genocide studies. True to my contrarian instincts, however, my investigation rapidly diverged from the discourse that dominated in the wake of the Polytechnique massacre, and that resurges in Canada each December 6. It occurred to me that the killer’s modus operandi was horrifying in part because it was so unusual. Surely, when murderers separated the genders, it was almost never to slaughter the 64

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women and leave the men alive—quite the reverse. More generally, if men were overwhelmingly the perpetrators of murders and mass killings, other men were disproportionately their victims—as my study of the Central American genocides of the 1980s, among other atrocities, made perfectly plain. Where was the attention to that phenomenon? And where the moral concern for the victims? A Gendering

Such questions drew me to the work of a scholar I’m quite sure most have never heard of: Ferrel Christensen at the University of Alberta, who together with a small group of allies built the Gender Issues Education Foundation (GIEF), based in Edmonton. It was Christensen’s profoundly humane and liberal orientation, and his call for a genuinely empathetic engagement with the gendered victimization of men as well as women, that moved me and guided my subsequent research on gender. In constant communication and coordination with him, and with Chomsky’s and Orwell’s influence also evident, I embarked on a detailed study of the coverage of gender and violence in “Canada’s National Newspaper,” the Toronto Globe and Mail. When published by GIEF, my essay, “The Globe and Males,” attracted a minor flurry of media attention. Throughout the 1990s, while concentrating on my media-in-transition graduate research, I found time to develop the investigation further. In 1995, war was still raging in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I had traveled in the region while it was part of Yugoslavia, during my first backpacking adventures in Europe in 1982. I recall sitting on a hillside high above the fabled city of Sarajevo, which was then a model of cosmopolitan ethnic coexistence. Around me, the infrastructure of the 1984 Winter Olympics was being built; I picnicked near the ski jump. A decade later, those same hills would be ringed with Serb mortar and artillery batteries, and Sarajevo would be under mortal siege. I followed the news reports as best I could, and it was clear that while most media attention was focused on the rape of Bosnian women, an even more severe pattern of atrocity was pervasive: the gender-selective slaughter of Bosnian Muslim men “of battle age,” mostly unarmed combatants. The phenomenon was noted cursorily, but there seemed to be no particular outrage about it—at least nothing comparable to the frenzy surrounding the reports of rape. Feeling there was more to the story, I prepared an essay called “Gender and Ethnic Conflict in Ex-Yugoslavia” for a 1994 seminar course 65

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taught by Diane Mauzy, a professor of political science at UBC. Mauzy kindly and importantly granted me access to her own file of news clippings on the Bosnian conflict. She thought the result significant enough to merit publication, and she urged me to submit it to Ethnic and Racial Studies—which accepted it with an alacrity I have never encountered since. The article proposed an inclusive approach to the study of gender and mass violence in Bosnia and other conflicts, exploring gender-specific atrocities directed against women and men alike. Among other matters, it voiced concern for the Bosnian Muslim men trapped in the UN-designated “safe area” of Srebrenica. A year or so after the article appeared in the journal in 1995, thousands of those men experienced a fate that has become iconic for all students of genocide perpetration and prevention. I followed the Ethnic and Racial Studies piece with a sympathetic but critical evaluation of the growing feminist literature on international relations, an essay that I wrote for the graduate course of another mentor, Kalevi Holsti, in political science at UBC. Published in the leading journal Review of International Studies in 1996, it provoked a small firestorm in the subfield of gender and international relations, prompting an unrestrained shellacking from some feminist scholars. But, dated though it now is, it remains one of my most widely cited publications, and it contributed to a welcome broadening of the inquiry into gender and violence. If you had told me in the mid-1990s that by the late 2000s I would regularly be invited to contribute articles and chapters to feminist journals and book projects, I would have responded with a guffaw. But from my earliest engagement with the subject I recognized the essential validity of the feminist critique—my identification with the underdog fuelling an empathy with history’s perennial underdogs. I never wished to trample or ridicule feminists’ vital insights. My growing activism around gender issues climaxed in 1999 with the twin conflicts in Kosovo and East Timor. As I followed the litany of news reports pointing to the same phenomenon of separating men from women, and either killing the men or incarcerating them under atrocious conditions, my very English predilection for wordplay brought a term to mind: gendercide. By this point, the early Internet search engines were at hand and a quick consultation made it clear that I could claim no credit for the neologism. It had been coined in 1985 by the American feminist Mary Anne Warren in her book Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection. Moreover, when I tracked down Warren’s book I found that though she focused on reproductive technologies 66

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and the phenomenon of sex-selective abortion of females, her opening chapter made a point of arguing that the term “gendercide” was preferable to alternatives like “femicide” and “gynocide,” because “‘gendercide’ is a sex-neutral term in that the victims may be either male or female. There is a need for such a sex-neutral term, since sexually discriminatory killing is just as wrong when the victims happen to be male.”4 My self-appointed task was to explore this framing’s potential, and to do justice to all forms of gender-selective atrocity—against females, against males, and against the transgendered. But my special focus was the gender-selective massacre of men and boys. It seemed to me, and still seems, extraordinary that although this phenomenon has been noted in accounts dating to the dawn of recorded history (the Old Testament, The Iliad, Thucydides), it had never been the subject of systematic and global-historical inquiry—at any time, in any language. I realized that in order to conduct such an inquiry, I would have to delve into the output of a field I had never before encountered: comparative genocide studies. It is a truism, and something of a cliché, that some subjects choose you rather than you choosing them. As soon as I dug into the early flowerings of the genocide-studies field (now I grabbed that Kuper book from my shelf, and devoured Chalk & Jonassohn, Totten et al., Charny, Staub, Fein, Dadrian, and many others5) my life’s project began to take shape. I set to work on a book manuscript titled Gendercide in Kosovo. It was never published, but the first chapter would appear in 2000 as “Gendercide and Genocide,” thanks to the support of Henry Huttenbach and his Journal of Genocide Research. After the East Timor events of August–September 1999, I began work on a web-based educational initiative called Gendercide Watch. Launched on a shoestring budget in 2000, with the collaboration of my friend and co-conspirator Carla Bergman, the site was built around a wide range of case studies of gender-selective atrocities against men and women worldwide. Crucially, from my point of view, it was not only gender-inclusive, but it was attentive to the institutional aspect of gendered mass killing. In other words, I was determined to move beyond a strictly political-military framing of genocide and gendercide to encompass structural forms of gender-selective destruction, such as female infanticide, “honor” killings and blood feuds, forced/corvee labor, and military conscription. The website was an instant “hit,” racking up many millions of visits and receiving a number of Internet awards and citations. But if I sensed 67

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viscerally that I was on a correct and important track, it was a conviction my employers were far from sharing. A Controversy

As a new millennium dawned, with the Gendercide Watch project on the verge of launching, I moved to Mexico City to take up my first academic post at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE). It was a small but prestigious institution that straddled the line between university and think tank. My five years at CIDE were a boon in many ways. My teaching load was light, and in addition to spinning off articles from my PhD research on transitional media, I was able to advance my work on genocide. I edited a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research that, in expanded form, became the book Gendercide and Genocide (2004). It included my essay “Gender and Genocide in Rwanda,” which I still feel stands as the best example of the nuanced gender-inclusive analysis that genocide studies needs. The research involved immersing myself in thousands of pages of scholarship and human rights reportage about the Rwandan genocide. The arm’s-length encounter with that holocaust crystallized my conviction that this was my calling, in part by demonstrating that I had transcended the element of morbid curiosity. I remember in particular working through the Africa Rights report, Death, Despair and Defiance, a massive compilation of the grimmest firsthand testimony imaginable, in which a three-hundred-page chapter on “A Policy of Massacres” is followed by another three-hundred-page chapter titled “Genocidal Frenzy.”6 Low moans issued from me every few pages. By the end, if I may be permitted another cliché, I knew that I had gazed into the heart of darkness; all sensationalism had been stripped away. But I also knew that on an emotional and psychological level, I could manage the encounter. My travels had shown me the best of humanity. Now I knew the worst. Paradoxically, I found it liberating. My bosses at CIDE, though, found it perplexing. I considered myself a scholar of international relations, but I soon discovered that from CIDE’s viewpoint that meant the international relations of . . . Mexico. The institution was funded by the Mexican government, and not unreasonably, it sought to return something to its paymasters in the form of “policy-relevant” research. Here was Jones, however, rattling on about Rwanda and East Timor and god knows what else. With each renewal of my contract, a fresh caution was issued that I 68

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needed to get my agenda properly on track. Each time, I made the partly sincere noises that would secure another year’s employment. Then I submerged myself anew in my genocide-studies agenda. The bosses’ frustrations mounted. Nor was I finding a smooth path to acceptance in the genocidestudies field. On a typically sunny morning in September 2001, I was sitting down to breakfast in my apartment, watching BBC World on the television. At 8:49 am, Mexico time, the coverage suddenly shifted to a shot of smoke billowing from one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Twenty minutes or so later, the second plane hit, and it became clear to everyone what was underway. I didn’t go to work that day. Like millions around the world, I sat mesmerized as the catastrophe unfolded. In the weeks that followed, I watched with mounting skepticism as the drive mounted for war against Afghanistan. When it was launched with a massive aerial bombing campaign, I was convinced it was a crime. There was no justification, I felt, for indiscriminately pulverizing a country and its population just because its government had hosted the man alleged to have approved the terrorist assault of September 11. News reports outside the United States began to speak of a vast humanitarian crisis as the bombing impeded aid deliveries across Afghanistan. Informed observers spoke of the possibility of hundreds of thousands of deaths. So I sought to raise a question on the H-Genocide academic mailing list, edited by one Alan Jacobs, that if the bombing was pursued in full knowledge of a potential humanitarian catastrophe, and if megadeaths indeed resulted, could the campaign be considered genocidal? My query never made it to the list. It was flat-out censored by the editorial board, as the list editor confirmed: “The overwhelming opinion was that we were not going to publish a message that escalated the human tragedy that is developing to the status of genocide. This was seen by them [board members] [as] a rather large error.” (You can read the full correspondence at http://adamjones.freeservers.com/ h-genocide.html.) As the crisis spiraled, I submitted follow-up posts; all were likewise suppressed. Eventually, a decision was taken by the H-Genocide editorial board to ban me from the list. As I learned when a source forwarded me the internal correspondence, all but one of the board members—prominent genocide scholars all (including prominent genocide scholars like Helen Fein, Craig Etcheson, R. J. Rummel, and Dennis Papazian)—approved the verdict. 69

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As narrow-minded acts of retribution go, these were fairly insignificant. I was denied access to what was then the leading mailing list for genocide scholars; but I continued to publish, and my position at CIDE was not threatened (if anything, my colleagues and superiors found the whole affair amusing). I was not targeted for the kind of smear campaign and witch-hunt that Ward Churchill, the admirable American scholar-activist, experienced in the wake of September 11, leading to his peremptory dismissal from a tenured post at the University of Colorado. But it served as a reminder that even genocide scholars are far from immune to the kind of nationalism and nativism that underpins so many atrocities of the past and present. I responded in my usual fashion, by editing a book of which I am proud, Genocide, War Crimes & the West: History and Complicity, and in which my chapter on Afghanistan included an account of the H-Genocide controversy. More recently, I perceived the same nationalist blindness in the proclamations of key Israel-based scholars, notably Israel Charny, and did battle with them in a series of exchanges on the mailing list of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS). The scholars of what I called “the Jerusalem contingent” devoted their energies increasingly passionately, and to my mind hypocritically, to the nuclear “threat” that Iran posed to Israel—never mind that Israel possessed hundreds of unacknowledged nuclear weapons to Iran’s none. They also, Charny in particular, seemed afflicted by a romantic Zionism that outdid even the purblind American patriotism of Alan Jacobs and his ilk. No far-reaching criticism of “the Jewish state” could be essayed without spawning accusations of anti-Semitism, and no attention could be countenanced to widespread Israeli crimes against humanity directed against the Palestinians and others. (I do not personally use the term “genocide.”)7 It is for others to judge how well I acquitted myself in the debate. But I would not, and will not, be silent when I perceive that mass crimes are being ignored or even defended by various éminences grises of the genocide studies profession. A Textbook

In 2002, I returned to South Africa for the first time since I had conducted research into transitional media there following the first democratic elections of 1994. In Durban for a conference of the International Political Science Association, I found the atmosphere much changed from that heady earlier period. The euphoria of the “Rainbow Nation” 70

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was now decidedly muted, and crime, always a destabilizing element, was now a full-scale crisis. After half a dozen delegates were mugged outside the conference hall on the very first day, organizers arranged for us to be bussed from our hotels to the site, a distance of a few blocks. It was a convivial gathering nonetheless, and one night at dinner I found myself seated next to Craig Fowlie, a commissioning editor for Routledge in the United Kingdom. En route to picking up the tab for the meal, Craig inquired about my line of research. When I described to him the burgeoning field of genocide studies, he asked, “Is there a good textbook on that subject?” Well, yes and no, I told him. There was Chalk and Jonassohn’s early (1991) effort; there was Totten et al.’s excellent Century of Genocide; but both lacked a unifying authorial voice. Moreover, neither they nor other offerings in the field did justice to the extraordinary interdisciplinarity of genocide studies. Historians, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, legal theorists, and gender scholars—all were now weighing in, but in a diffuse and barely coordinated fashion. By the time Craig and I concluded our chat, I had promised to prepare a proposal for a broad and interdisciplinary overview of comparative genocide studies. Fired up, I sat down that night in Durban and typed up a draft, presenting it the next morning to a pleasantly surprised commissioning editor at the Routledge literature table. Craig looked it over, made some insightful suggestions, and later circulated it to peer reviewers. After a few weeks, I had my contract for what became the first edition of my best known and most widely used volume, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. I wrote much of Genocide on contract during my farewell year at CIDE—an arrangement worked out when my stubborn refusal (or congenital inability) to adapt to their desired agenda led them to sever our ties. By good fortune, soon after I was basically fired I was awarded a two-year postdoctoral fellowship to the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, headed by the eminent Cambodia historian and genocide theorist, Ben Kiernan. The terms of my severance at CIDE did not require me to teach, or indeed be on campus at all. So I packed up my belongings, stuck a laptop in my bag, and headed to Argentina. There, in a kind of frenzy, I wrote nearly half the draft manuscript in about six weeks. I awoke early each morning in whatever town I found myself in; smoked a tiny cigarette mixed with a few grains of the cannabis that a friend had found for me in Buenos Aires; wrote furiously for four hours or so; and devoted the rest of the day, travel 71

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plans permitting, to plowing through the sacksful of genocide-related books and photocopies I’d brought with me. I was in a fever not only of inspiration, but also of desperation. I vividly recall walking down Argentine streets and mumbling inchoate prayers that I would not be hit by a car or otherwise annihilated until I had finished my magnum opus and seen it through to print. I had felt something similar when preparing the materials for the Gendercide Watch website—especially after a near-death experience in a Mexico City café, when a verbal tiff with a young and probably coked-up Mexican man produced his exit, and fifteen minutes later the surreal sight of him and two of his comrades marching back down the street with machine guns strapped across their chests. Only the quick thinking of the restaurateur, who barred the doors and called the police, likely saved me. After my would-be assassins departed the scene and I returned trembling to my apartment, I remember thinking what a waste it would have been to be slaughtered before I could really do anything (i.e., Gendercide Watch) that might make a difference in the world. That sense returned during the writing of Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. Although it made me edgy, it also filled me with a marvelous sense of purpose, even destiny. I have described in detail the challenges of writing the textbook, and how I sought to address them in the essay “Encompassing Genocide” for my collection The Scourge of Genocide (2012). I wanted the book to bear the stamp of the author’s views and interpretations—in other words, not to be a mushy catchall. But I also wanted to avoid an Olympian perspective that suggested I had all the answers. It is no accident that the text begins and ends with questions, and, in both writing and teaching those materials, I have urged students to draw their own conclusions—about what is and is not “genocide”; about its root causes; and about the possibilities of preventing it. With Orwell peering over my shoulder, I tried to write in as clear, forthright, and conversational a fashion as possible. When I lapsed, I had a range of early readers and reviewers to set me straight: my parents (who have proofread almost everything I have ever written, including this essay); Ben Kiernan, who gave several of the chapters a valuable going-over at Yale; and, most importantly, a Yale doctoral student who is now a brilliant genocide scholar in his own right, Benjamin Madley. It was the latter Ben who most insightfully and mercilessly vetted my full draft, over endless lunches at one or another cheap restaurant in New Haven. Our conversations remain the most valuable and inspiring intellectual repartee 72

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I have ever had. They notably improved the book, which Routledge published in mid-2006 to a warm reception and widespread adoption by educators. Another bout of mingled inspiration and desperation produced a second edition in 2010; a third is scheduled for 2016. The combination of Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction and the postdoc at Yale solidified my standing in genocide studies, banishing the sour taste of my ostracism from the H-Genocide list and my broader sense of being a perennial outsider. As my Ivy League stint wound up, I was gratified to be offered a tenured position at the first branch campus of the University of British Columbia (UBC), opened in the city of Kelowna, south of Vernon, in the same beautiful Okanagan Valley where I had done much of my growing up. Not only were my colleagues in the small Political Science program at UBC Okanagan warmly supportive of my genocide-studies agenda, but they also extended me an invitation that is the dream of many pedagogues: “Tell us what you want to teach and we’ll put it in the calendar.” Since starting at UBC in 2007, I have developed and taught courses on genocide and crimes against humanity, but also on the politics of Africa and the Global South more generally, gender and international relations, norms and “prohibition regimes,” and international politics on film. When I conclude my present year of sabbatical travels and research, I will have prepared a new course on “Conflict and PostConflict in South Asia” to add to the curriculum. A dedicated globalist like myself could hardly hope for a more fertile arrangement. Rather than being strapped into a genocide-studies straitjacket, with uncertain implications for my academic vitality and emotional well being, I have been able to roam widely and freely. I seem to function best when I can engage in something like intellectual crop rotation, blending intense periods of immersion in genocide studies and activism with a range of other (sometimes related) interests and pursuits. My written output, however, has remained heavily concentrated on genocide and crimes against humanity. In the second year of my Yale stint, I edited, with Nicholas Robins, a collection called Genocides by the Oppressed, which explored what we called “subaltern genocide”—campaigns of mass atrocity inflicted by the oppressed against their oppressors (for example, during slave uprisings and anticolonial rebellions). The project was an attempt to challenge and destabilize some of my most precious allegiances and solidarities, and in so doing extend the understanding of genocide beyond the typical framing of the all-powerful state (or other hegemon) versus the powerless and 73

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dispossessed. In two collections, Gender Inclusive (2008) and more recently The Scourge of Genocide, I sampled a range of my articles, book chapters, reviews, and previously-unpublished essays that further expanded my analysis of gender and genocide; applied the genocide framing to complex cases like the European witch-hunts and the partition of India; revisited my interest in mass media and communication; and considered genocide in its structural and institutional (rather than time bound political/military) forms. Perhaps my deepest labor of love in recent years was the edited collection Evoking Genocide: Scholars and Activists Describe the Works That Shaped Their Lives, released by a small Toronto publisher, The Key, in 2009. This compiled some sixty mini-essays, all but a couple of them original to the volume, in which genocide scholars and students, and antigenocide advocates, paid tribute to the books, films, museums/memorials, images, songs, and documents that had inspired them to grapple with this darkest side of human nature and experience. (My own contribution was a paean to a tumultuous antinuclear anthem, “Hercules,” by the Australian rock group Midnight Oil.) What seemed exquisite to me about this initiative was it showed how the most ghastly human suffering could evoke both art and action in others, including direct survivors of genocide, and how those creative works could, in turn, spur ordinary people to take up the antigenocide cause. I invested much time and effort, as I have in most of my books, to the visual dimension of Evoking Genocide. The Key was even kind enough to grant me an insert of color plates to display some of the most striking images pertaining to the individual essays. This reflects another route I have found to engage with themes of genocide and mass atrocity. Photography

During the past few years, I have roamed the world photographing sites of genocide and mass atrocity and the memorials to which they gave rise: from Auschwitz to Srebrenica to My Lai, and even to the preserved ruin of the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, where inmates were kept in isolation for twenty-three hours a day. Many went insane. It has become a profound calling, and one I hope to pursue for the remainder of my creative life. I often wonder what is involved in representing mass crimes aesthetically. Never was this challenge brought home to me more clearly than in Rwanda, which I finally visited in 2011 after years of study, and again 74

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in 2012. On that first occasion, I fought hard to secure the necessary permission of The National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG), Rwanda’s “genocide ministry,” which now must approve all attempts to photograph the numerous genocide sites scattered around the country. Permit in hand, I approached the site of Murambi, not far from the intellectual capital of Butare, itself home to a powerful genocide memorial. Murambi seems to me the worst place in the world. Displayed there in former schoolrooms are the desiccated and lime-shrouded corpses of hundreds of victims of the 1994 genocide. Normally one tours the site in the company of a guide (generally a survivor of the genocide). But because I had the CNLG’s imprimatur, I was allowed to roam freely. You need to understand that this involves negotiating your way around corpses piled so close to your passage that you have to take care not to knock off a stray arm or foot. I did my best. Only later in my hotel in Butare, viewing the results, did I begin to absorb what I had seen. And when I returned to the site the following year, this time without the desire or permission to re-photograph the site, I realized how much of a defense the photography had been against the raw horror of what I was witnessing. This visit was shorter, more superficial, guided, but I felt helpless—utterly unable to process the visuals in a way that might inspire or educate others. It makes me wonder to what extent our antigenocide efforts, distanced as they necessarily are, serve to insulate us from the human catastrophes they seek to confront. A Conclusion

Today, I find myself at something of a crossroads in comparative genocide studies. After the outpouring of the past decade or so, how much do I have left to say and write and “capture” in images? I suspect that rather than pushing conceptual boundaries in coming years, I will devote myself to deepening existing investigations, and responding as an activist to the tragically inevitable new outbreaks of our field’s bête noire. My studies of international norms have brought home to me that none of the destructive institutions humans have devised—think of slavery, apartheid, and the unchallenged oppression of women—is immune to challenge and successful intervention. But I know that the scourge of genocide will not be banished in my lifetime. I hope I will have the opportunity to do more in the way of academic program-building, and to continue the consulting and public-education 75

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work I have undertaken with the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. The chance to contribute in a meaningful way to policy formation and evaluation would be enormously gratifying. As befits a crossroads, I also find myself meditating on my impulses and motivations. I stated earlier that I’m quite sure my preoccupation with genocide is not (or is no longer) underpinned by morbid interests. I have now smelled exhumed mass graves, and toured the site of Murambi in Rwanda. I think I maintained an appropriate respect and sobriety throughout, and thereafter. But perhaps there is more to say on this count. From an early age, I was seized by a powerful sense and fear of mortality, of my fragility and impermanence and cosmic inconsequence. I have found salves in religions and philosophies and friends and drugs. But I have never been convinced that any spiritual or material regimen offers an escape from the fundamental paradox and dilemma. Thus, I have sometimes wondered whether my immersion in the phenomenon of systematic mass killing represents, to some degree, a defense against the reality of my impending obliteration. And I wonder whether it serves something of the same function for other genocide scholars and activists. In my own case, the sense of mystery and unknowability is deepened by the fact that, for all my studies of genocide and related atrocities, I mercifully have yet to experience the reality of a deeply loved one’s death—at least an untimely passing. I have friends who have suffered such losses early on, sometimes so frequently that I wondered if they were cursed. Would I have had the energy and acumen to pursue this course of study if I had been similarly afflicted? I don’t want to end on a grim note. Life can be marvelous, as I have had the good fortune to witness. By the end of my own existence, I will have seen much of this tiny globe, suspended in the infinite reaches of the universe, and I will have come to know many of its peoples, at least in a glancing way. All those who have loved me and guided me remind me how important—how human—it is to make something of this flickering moment, and to invest it with meaning. I hope, when my time comes, I will die with gratitude in my heart. But it is worth keeping in mind the perspective that our finitude, and the encompassing void, grant to us. May they preserve our humility, our empathy for finite others, and our yearning to ease and relieve their passage through this brief life. 76

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1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

6. 7.

Notes

Keith Gessen, “Introduction,” in George Orwell, All Art is Propaganda (Boston, MA: Mariner Books, 2008), pp. xxvi, xxxii. Noam Chomsky, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” in Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays, 2nd ed. (New York: The New Press, 2002), p. 325. Adam Jones, “Denying Rwanda: A Response to Herman & Peterson,” in Jones, The Scourge of Genocide: Essays and Reflections (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 346–59; available online at http://jonestream.blogspot.com/2010/11/ denying-rwanda-response-to-herman.html. Mary Anne Warren, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985), p. 22 (emphasis added). Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons. A Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, 3rd edn. (New York: Routledge, 2008); Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Helen Fein, Genocide: A Sociological Perspective (London: Sage, 1993); Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995). African Rights, Death, Despair & Defiance (revised ed.) (London: African Rights, 1995). See Adam Jones, “Genocide in Gaza? Notes toward an Answer,” originally published on the IAGS maillist on January 26, 2009; available at http://www. genocidetext.net/israel_palestine01.htm.

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4 From Political Scientist to Genocide Studies Scholar and Back Again Maureen S. Hiebert My “Origin Story”

“Why do you study such a depressing topic?” This is the question that I frequently get from other academics, family members, friends, and pretty much anybody else who asks about my research and teaching. Every time I’m asked this question, I always feel like a bit of a freak and secretly worry that the questioner thinks that I have some kind of morbid or voyeuristic fascination with death or, worse, that I harbor murderous tendencies of my own. As a result, my usually ham-fisted answer sometimes includes a hastily interjected reassurance that I’m not writing a “how to” manual. Leaving aside what such questioners may or may not be thinking about my focus of research or soundness of mind, my interest in genocide studies is really driven by my ongoing incredulity that throughout history and all across the globe the actual or attempted destruction of groups of people solely because of who they are has been, and continues to be, a reality. The fact that genocide happens, and happens repeatedly, simply blows my mind. This doesn’t mean I think genocide is, as George Steiner once said of the Holocaust, “extra-territorial to analytic debate.” It does mean that although the social scientist in me knows that there all sorts of political and social phenomena, including genocide, that are explicable, the emotive side of my brain just cannot seem to grasp the magnitude of not just so much destruction, pain, and suffering, but that it is intended to happen, that human agency brings it all about. 79

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As a political scientist with an interest in elite decision making and politics, I was initially drawn to genocide studies by the question, “Why do they do it”? Why, of all the possible policy options available, do decision makers in certain instances choose to try to destroy directly or indirectly—sometimes violently, sometimes not—a part of, if not entire, groups of people? This incredulity and question, though, was not always at the top of my mind. I don’t come from a family or group that has been directly affected by genocide as either victims or direct perpetrators. On this score, my connection to genocide as a Western Canadian from the province of Manitoba now living in the province of Alberta is that of beneficiary. Before and after Confederation in 1867, when Canada became an independent Dominion within the British Empire, the British Crown, and then the Canadian federal government, signed a series of (largely unfair) treaties with several First Nations throughout the country. The post-Confederation “Numbered Treaties” (Treaties 1–11) covered much of western and northern Canada and transferred vast tracks of land to the federal government in exchange for the creation of reserved lands and various—rather meager—forms of compensation. I grew up on Treaty 1 land in Manitoba and now live on Treaty 7 land that once belonged to the Blackfoot Nation. Thus, like other descendants of European settlers on the Canadian Prairies, I, as a sweatshirt worn recently to school by a young Aboriginal girl in Saskatchewan correctly proclaimed, “have land” for which I should “thank an Indian.” This inconvenient truth, however, is not what led me to think, care, or even know about genocide. Instead, I found my way to genocide studies as the result of two, at first unrelated, events. These events are at the heart of my “origin story.” The first event was the Rwandan genocide of April–July 1994. My story has nothing to do with what I saw on television, heard on the radio, or read in the newspaper during the first several weeks of the genocide; rather, my story rests with what I didn’t see and how I found out about the extermination of 800,000 souls. In early April 1994, my then partner, now husband, Josh, and I decided that we should do what all twenty-somethings of sufficient means do: take a European vacation. Because we were young and traveling on a limited budget, we stayed in hostels, which, more often than not, had no television. And because we were busy sightseeing, we weren’t reading the newspaper. And so, through mid-June we happily toured parts of France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, and then a bit more of France completely 80

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unaware of what was going on anywhere in the world. We had a great time and particularly enjoyed, upon our return to France, on the exact day of the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the D-Day landing, the heartfelt gratitude of a wonderful elderly hotel clerk in Lyon who, upon seeing our Canadian passports, thanked us profusely “for saving” her and France. Being typical Canadians, we thanked her, repeatedly, for thanking us. On our last full day in Paris, we bought breakfast to go and then headed to the Jardin des Plantes. On the way, I picked up a newspaper, the cover of which I didn’t look at before tucking it into my bag. After a short walk we arrived at the park, which was lush and green and full of flowers. It was a lovely warm spring day. I remember thinking that everything was perfect. We sat down in a couple of ornamental green metal chairs, and with great anticipation I grabbed my baguette and unfolded the newspaper. And there it was, the Rwandan genocide in big bold letters in the form of the “latest” body count (Latest body count! How many body counts have their been? How could it be so incredibly high?), and a graphic picture of a pile of bodies in the middle of a village. My exact words upon seeing the story cannot be repeated here, but they very clearly expressed my state of utter astonishment and despair. Having just been to Germany, where Josh and I decided after some discussion not to visit Dachau during our stay in Munich because we judged ourselves, as the British army used to say, “as lack[ing] moral fibre” (i.e., we were cowardly), I wondered aloud, “how could this be happening again?” but in a different time and completely different place. Suddenly everything was the complete opposite of perfect. Despite my shock, it didn’t occur to me at the time that I might want to answer my own questions. It just so happened that I was about to start a PhD program at the University of Toronto in the fall, and I already knew what I was going to study: the political integration of North and South Vietnam following the victory of communist North Vietnam over the South. And, thus, as time passed, the Rwandan genocide and the camp at Dachau I was too afraid to visit faded into the background. The second event in my origin story picked up where the first left off. After I completed my course work and qualifying exams in the political science department at the University of Toronto, it was time for me to craft my dissertation proposal. The only problem was that I had no interest in writing on communist Vietnam’s political integration. “What do I do now,” I mused, “go ahead and write a dissertation on a topic I have no interest in? Or, do I drop out?” Josh, always the 81

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voice of reason, suggested another possibility: “Why don’t you find a topic that you are interested in?” After much fretting, I happened to recall something one of my international relations professors, Janice Gross Stein, had told me when I first started at the University of Toronto. It was her view that for scholars in the social sciences, the only research questions worth asking are the ones for which there are no immediately obvious answers. The Rwandan genocide, the Dachau camp, and the Holocaust sprang immediately to mind. “Why do they do it?” and “How could this happen again?” certainly seemed to fit the bill of questions without obvious answers. I also turned to the explicitly multidisciplinary area of genocide studies because of my irritation with what had become of North American political science, generally, and my subfield of comparative politics, specifically. The behavioral revolution of the 1960s and the importation of rational choice approaches into political science had produced, by the 1990s, a fetishism with methodology, particularly quantitative methodology. This seemed to me to have turned comparative politics from a question-driven area of research to a method-driven field of scholarship. I was always more interested in answering questions and rejected the notion that the only good scholarship and way of doing comparison was through formulas and numbers. The opportunity to embrace an area of research that is explicitly question-driven and goaloriented (i.e., genocide prevention) was very attractive. Driven as it is by fundamental questions about the most terrible of human behaviors and the quest for how to make genocide a thing of the past, I was also drawn to genocide studies because it is a field of inquiry that really matters, or more precisely, it matters to me as a scholar and a human being. As a scholar, my imperative to study genocide has remained constant, but it has evolved as I have learned from other and newer areas of scholarship within the field and thus have become a bit more realistic and humble about the impact of my own research and the field generally. When I first started out as a PhD student writing my dissertation on the evolution of the process of identity construction that I then claimed caused elite perpetrators to choose to commit mass violence genocides, I was certain that I had discovered the explanation for why these kinds of genocides happen. Steeped in the positivism of the department in which I was pursuing my degree, I fashioned the full-blown explanatory and predictive theory complete with a dependent variable and causal 82

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independent and intervening variables that was expected of me. In my mind at the time, this theory (which I later substantially revised for my forthcoming book and properly came to characterize as an “approach,” rather than a “theory,” that constitutes an account of the process of identity construction that ideationally underpins genocidal policies, not a set of causal factors that always and only produce genocidal policies) was a novel way of identifying early warning signs and thus contributed substantively to the project of genocide prevention. I had thus successfully fulfilled what I thought was the prime directive of all genocide scholarship based on positivist social scientific theorizing, methodology, and research: to identify the causes of genocide, construct out of this analysis a set of warning signs, and suggest a set of policies to prevent genocide. Mission accomplished. Or so I thought! My rather hubristic assessment of my own intellectual awesomeness, however, turned out to be just a tad misplaced. As a human being, my imperative to study genocide has not changed much over time. I’m still trying desperately to understand this thing that continues to blow my mind, to fit into my brain something that doesn’t fit because it seems too big, too complex, too over determined, and just too awful. As a member of the human species, I would like to say that it is my humanity that drives me to find the key to ending genocide. But having become, as time goes on, a Woody Allen-esque “glass half full of poison” kind of person, I can’t honestly make this claim. I’d like to, but I can’t. My Scholarship

I’d like to turn now to my scholarship, or as the New Left scholar Leszek Kolakowski once jokingly said of himself, “my correct views on everything.” As a genocide scholar, my aim is to try to get at the logic of genocidal destruction from the perspective of those who conceive of and then oversee the implementation of such policies. As a political scientist, I essentially see mass violence (including genocide) in the contemporary era as public policy made by different actors and institutions within the modern state apparatus. I’ve attempted to answer my question, “why do they do it?” by trying to understand more fully how it can come to pass that elite perpetrators construct for themselves an alternate and perverted universe in which genocidal policies directed at specific groups are considered to be rational, necessary, and morally right. My more recent research on genocide prevention is directed at understanding what implications elites’ perceptions of their own actions 83

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and reasons for them have on the workability of genocide prevention by external actors. At a more general level, the motivation behind my scholarship has changed over time, from a sincere exercise in finding the cause of genocide and the key to successful genocide prevention to finding satisfaction in academic research for its own sake and the education of my students and the wider community. This does not mean that I think genocide scholars should not be active in trying to advocate for, or to continue to work to devise preventive measures or, when necessary, press publicly for humanitarian intervention once processes of genocidal destruction have already begun. This is academically and practically important work, and I fully support colleagues engaged in these activities, not the least of whom is the editor of this volume. For me, though, the results of my own research on elite actors and the lack of deterrent effect of international trials—along with a current project on the shortcomings of seeing and selling genocide as an issue of national security—has left me deeply pessimistic about the prospects for genocide prevention. Further, I think it is worthwhile to embrace scholarship in the humanities and social sciences as a good in itself. I firmly believe that the trend toward seeing universities as skill or knowledge factories in which our students must be taught and our scholarship designed to support the demands of industry, corporate donors, and the economy generally should be resisted. My turn towards producing genocide studies scholarship for the purpose of more fully understanding genocide as a phenomenon is part of my resistance to this project, as is my approach to educating and supervising undergraduate and graduate students. In my role of professor of political science and socio-legal studies, teaching courses not just in genocide studies but law and politics, law and society, and comparative politics, my primary responsibility is to the students themselves, to teach them how to be curious, to think, to question, and to communicate their ideas effectively. I am not in the business of producing worker bees or a virtuous army of human rights activists whom I will unleash to save the world. Just as scholarship is for me a worthwhile endeavor in its own right, so is education. During my transformation from confident young graduate student to slightly confused and often harried professor/mother of two teenaged girls who find my research “nerdy” but secretly fascinating, how I define “genocide” as a concept has changed from narrow and definite to more expansive and open-ended. After initially hewing quite closely to the 84

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definition of genocide in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), I have come to define genocide as an intentional act that includes cultural destruction aimed at groups that are, as Chalk and Jonassohn (1990) have suggested, “defined by the perpetrator” (p. 23). I retain “intentionality” because, as a crime, genocide must have, as all crimes do, a mental element. It is the singularly malevolent purpose of deliberately bringing about the destruction of specific groups that, in my view, gives genocide its horrible uniqueness as a concept and as a crime. In my definition, I now include methods of destruction that involve the deliberate suppression of culture (language, religion, cultural practices, etc.) such that the members of targeted groups cannot live as members of their group, thus bringing about the de facto destruction of the group as such. I have come to embrace the notion and reality of cultural genocide in part because I not only find the scholarship that takes this position to be persuasive both analytically and empirically, but also because of my move “back West” to take up my faculty position at the University of Calgary. Coming back to Western Canada meant reentering a milieu in which Aboriginal people and communities make up a large percentage of the local population. This led me to think seriously for the first time about Canada’s own experience of colonialism at the expense of its many indigenous peoples. The pernicious and destructive effects of the treaty-making (and now treaty-breaking) process, of the concentration of indigenous nations on often remote and underresourced reserves, pretty much everything about successive versions of the federal Indian Act, and the appalling experience and fallout of the violence, abuse, and cultural assimilation of the residential school system, became plain to me. How could I, as a genocide scholar and white Canadian, ignore these facts? These facts became even clearer to me in an unexpectedly personal way about a year ago as I read an excellent book by the historian John S. Milloy (1999) titled A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System in Canada 1879–1986. In the section of the book that details the decommissioning of the residential schools and the initial attempts to integrate Aboriginal students from reserves into local public school systems by the 1960s, the author tells the story of the very first place in western Canada this happened. To my surprise it happened in the very small town of Dauphin, Manitoba, where I was born and lived until I was almost nine years old. Milloy’s book uncritically recounts a federal Department of Indian Affairs report 85

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following a visit by federal officials to the schools in Dauphin which stated, in glowing terms, that the integration of Aboriginal students at all grade levels had been a complete success. This included how the teachers and the non-Aboriginal students from the town treated their new peers. As I read this account, I immediately thought to myself, “Wow, that is not how I remember it at all!” My sister Shannon and I didn’t begin school until almost a decade after the integration program started, but we both agree that there was a wide gulf between the Aboriginal kids bused in from the Dauphin River First Nation reserve and the majority white kids from the town, complete with racist taunts in the school yard and barely disguised contempt by some of the teachers. I also remember an early antiracism lesson I learned compliments of my mom, who volunteered at the school. After witnessing some of my white classmates making racist comments during recess, my mom looked down at me with her giant pale blue eyes and without saying anything made it crystal clear that I would be in the hugest trouble in the history of ever if she caught me saying anything like that. Thanks, Mom. My willingness to expand my understanding of what constitutes genocide does not, however, include an embrace of multiple “cides.” The tendency of some scholars to append the suffix “cide” to other words adds an unnecessary extra layer of conceptual complexity, as well as possible disagreement, to a term that is already the subject of much debate. Such is the case with the concept “gendercide,” as coined by Mary Ann Warren (1985) to define the genocidal targeting of women and girls and developed further in interesting ways by Adam Jones (2004) in his edited work Gendercide and Genocide to include battleaged men. In my review of Jones’ book, I agreed with Jones that bringing gender into the study of genocide is incredibly important since it lays bare the motivations behind gender specific victimization, the different ways in which women/girls and men/boys are victimized, and the gendered consequences of this victimization. I was convinced then—and remain so to this day—however, that the victims of “gendercide” are not the targets of group destruction primarily because of their identity as women/girls or men/boys but based on other collective identities such as ethnicity, race, or socioeconomic class. Thus, while Tutsi women and men were each targeted in highly gendered ways during the Rwandan genocide, as Jones rightly points out, these men and women were victims of genocide first and foremost because they were Tutsis, 86

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not because the genocidal project was to exterminate groups of men or women as such. As I noted in my review, we would only need the separate concept gendercide if we were talking about a phenomenon that is qualitatively different from genocide. My view is that gendercide is not a different phenomenon from genocide. The concept genocide captures the intentional destruction of groups while a gendered analysis of genocide gets at the gendered nature of many genocidal programs of group destruction and their aftermath. So, while I agree with Warren and Jones that a gendered analysis of the differential victimization and effects of this victimization on women/girls, and in Jones’ case also men/boys, is very important, I disagree with both of them that we should call this differential genderbased victimization “gendercide.” Finally, on the definition front, I unexpectedly had a chance to work with my colleague Pablo Policzer from the University of Calgary political science department on a book chapter that considered whether the violence and disappearances during the “dirty war” in Chile can be considered genocide (Hiebert and Policzer, 2009). Pablo was initially contacted by the editors of the book to write the chapter, but he didn’t really know much about what constituted genocide. When he popped his head into my office one day to ask me whether I thought the Chilean case was genocide, I honestly had to say that I didn’t know enough about the case to say one way or the other. Plus, it would depend on how he defined genocide. Thus began a very rewarding collaboration as we worked together to answer a question to which, at the beginning, we really did not know the answer. The question was particularly apt, I thought, given that Pablo’s father was a child Holocaust survivor and that Pablo had come to Canada as a refugee at age twelve after his father had run afoul of the Pinochet dictatorship. In the chapter, Pablo and I conclude that although the Chilean case is a less obvious case of genocide in Latin American compared to, say, Guatemala, there is certainly evidence that demonstrates that the targeting of political opponents was intentional and that it was designed to eliminate a specific group of political opponents deemed a national security threat. Further, while we thought it would be an exaggeration to suggest that the United States was directly complicit in the crimes of the Chilean dictatorship, there is evidence to suggest that the United States actively encouraged but did not direct the actions of the Pinochet regime and that the American administration knew of the killings but did nothing to discourage or challenge the actions of the Pinochet regime. 87

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I have traced the process by which elite perpetrators come to construct their victims as mortal threats whose mere physical existence, and not the possession of actual power capabilities, is considered to imperil the survival of the political community (e.g., the “race,” nation, revolution and the like), thus making genocide the only rational and moral policy option available from the perspective of elite decision makers. This process of identity construction and reconstruction is underpinned by what I call a “permissive” socio-political environment characterized by exclusionary social practices and relationships in society, an exclusionary conception of genuine membership in the political community, and an elite political culture of zero-sum, sometimes violent, politics. The other consistent theme in my work has been genocide prevention from a couple of different angles: the operationalization of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) (2001, 2005) doctrine and the role that criminal trials play (or rather don’t play) in deterring genocide. I came to the study of R2P partly as a result from an invitation to present an analysis of the proposed Mass Atrocity Response Operations Handbook (2010) for the United States military but also because of a sincere belief on my part at the time that R2P articulated a set of principles that really could lead to effective genocide prevention. The way in which the R2P doctrine reconceptualized sovereignty as contingent on whether a state can or does uphold human rights and the identification of a residual right of the international community to uphold human rights when states cannot or will not do so seemed to overcome the main sticking point to what up to that point had been called “humanitarian intervention.” In retrospect, I think that a couple of other factors were probably also at play when I issued my first largely positive response to R2P. First, it fit with my favored theoretical approach to understanding international relations, liberal internationalism, which argues that international peace and cooperation in an anarchic international system is possible through the creation of international institutions grounded in shared international norms. R2P, which firmly harnessed intervention (when necessary) to the UN system, grew directly out of liberal internationalist principles. Second, the “liberal” foundations of R2P appealed to me in a political way. In Canada, at the federal level, the two main political parties have been—for almost all of the country’s history—the Conservatives (in various forms with slightly different names) and the Liberals. For much of the twentieth century the Liberal Party was considered the “natural” governing party of 88

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Canada. My politically aware parents are dyed-in-the-wool Liberal supporters. The Liberal Party and its leader from 1968 to 1984, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, were the only government and Prime Minister I knew as a child. It was the Liberal foreign minister Lester B. Pearson (later Prime Minister Pearson) who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1956 for proposing the first UN peacekeeping mission to end the Suez Crisis, and it was Canada that hosted the UN secretariat that produced the R2P doctrine in the early 2000s during Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s Liberal government. Michael Ignatieff, who, in 2011, would lead the Liberal Party to its worst electoral showing ever, was one of the main authors of R2P. The Responsibility to Protect doctrine thus not only fit my intellectual orientation, it fit my family’s political heritage and appealed to my sense of national pride. Over time, however, I have become deeply skeptical about the possibility of transforming R2P from a principle to a reality. The first moment of doubt occurred when I wrote my article on MARO: Mass Atrocity Response Operations; A Military Planning Hand (2010), which I saw, despite what the authors of the handbook argued, as an attempt to formulate the military operationalization of R2P. I identified in the handbook a lack of acknowledgment that the military culture within the armed forces may not see such missions as important or even appropriate. This possibly negative orientation toward MAROs by the military could undermine military education, training, and performance on the ground. Currently I am in the process of completing an article that challenges the political operationalization of R2P as a matter of national security. To my great surprise, a version of this new project (“R2P as National Security Thesis: Atrocity Prevention and the ‘Goldilocks’ Problem”) that I recently presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Conference in Chicago was nominated for Best Paper in International Relations. My exploration of the relationship between international criminal trials and genocide prevention in a chapter titled “Do Criminal Trials Prevent Genocide? A Critical Analysis” (Hiebert, 2013a) in Samuel Totten’s book Impediments to Prevention and Intervention of Genocide (Volume 9) contributed further to my doubts about whether genocide can really be prevented. That I would write a piece on international law was in itself a bit of a surprise to me given that I am not a lawyer or a legal scholar. As with so many things in life, opportunities present themselves in unexpected ways. Although my doctorate is in political science, and my dissertation had nothing to do with law, I applied for 89

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and was hired into the Law and Society Program at the University of Calgary. For reasons that are still a mystery to me to this day, I got the job. When Sam was asking for suggestions for topics and authors for his Impediments book, I, in a fit of enthusiasm, volunteered myself and the question of whether criminal trials deterred genocide. When I made this suggestion I had no idea what his response would be. In the end I suggested in the chapter that international law and trials for international crimes (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity) are unlikely to deter future atrocity crimes elsewhere, in part because of the lack of enforcement mechanisms internationally to serve arrest warrants and because empirical studies have shown that trials and punishment at the domestic level play little to no role in deterring criminal activity. (The recent (June 15, 2015) refusal by the South African government to execute the ICC’s arrest warrant for Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir during a meeting of the African Union in South Africa, despite being ordered to do so by Pretoria’s High Court, frustratingly proves this point.) But what, I argued, is probably most decisive in rendering trials unlikely to prevent genocide is the alternate strategic and moral universe within which elite perpetrators operate. This altered reality flows directly from the way in which elite perpetrators construct the identities of their victims. Once the victim(s) are constructed by elite decision makers as mortal threats whose continued physical existence is perceived to be a genuine existential threat to the very survival of the political community, the threat posed by the victim group is likely calculated to vastly outweigh any punishment that might follow the victim group’s extermination. There is one more area that I have focused on but which lies outside of the themes explored in my other works. I have published two pieces in which I looked in slightly different ways at the evolution and current state of the field. Given the explosion of genocide studies over the years I found these to be some of the most challenging pieces I have written. In these works—an article “Theorizing Destruction: Reflection on the State of Comparative Genocide Theory” in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal (Hiebert, 2008) and a chapter in a book titled “Questioning Boundaries: What’s Old and What’s New in Comparative Genocide Theory?” (Hiebert, 2013b)—I variously divided the field into agency, structural, and process theories as well as by different levels of analysis (individual, group/state, and system). In my most recent effort, I also examined the proliferation of epistemological and methodological approaches, identifying within genocide studies 90

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three approaches, two branches of positivism, and a poststructuralist/ postmodern approach. This growing diversity is, I have argued, not a sign of intellectual confusion or fragmentation, as some genocide scholars have lamented, it is a sign of maturity and diversity, although it has fragmented genocide studies into what could become different intellectual silos. The article version of my analysis of the state of the field was incorporated into the curriculum of the Command and Staff Program at the Canada War College in 2012. What, then, has been my contribution to genocide studies? This is a question I cannot answer. I must leave it up to my colleagues to decide what, if any, of my scholarship has left a lasting impression for good or ill on the field. My hope is that my efforts to more thoroughly theorize key concepts and to use in a more overt way a constructivist framework will contribute to our understanding of the genocidal process, or more accurately, one part of the genocidal process in the contemporary era. Balancing the Study of Death with Living My Life

Like every other genocide studies scholar I have had to figure out how to study such a grizzly and often upsetting subject without letting it control my life. What I try to do is to insulate myself psychologically and emotionally by compartmentalizing. Simply put, I just don’t think about genocide when I’m not working on it. I compartmentalize by setting relatively strict limits on what time of day I think, read, and write about genocide. For me, genocide studies is a daytime activity best done before dinner and never later in the evening before bed, otherwise my head and my dreams are full of all sorts of terrible things. I do not, however, strive to entirely separate my emotions from the study of genocide. Indeed, I have resolved that the day I am no longer genuinely horrified by acts of genocidal destruction will be the day I move on to research something else. I still need to feel genocide to know that I continue to have a human reaction to it and not the reaction of a cold and detached researcher peering into a petri dish. My efforts to both compartmentalize and emotionally experience genocide when I’m working on it is part of a larger work-life balancing act that all working parents, and mothers specifically, face. While end-of-term crunch times, research, writing, and just plain thinking don’t always easily fit in time-wise with my home life as spouse and mother, I nonetheless have found having a family at a relatively young age (by today’s standards at least) has been a godsend when it comes to retaining my sanity and perspective as a genocide studies scholar. 91

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I summed this up in the dedication I wrote for my PhD dissertation when my daughters were still quite young. I referred to them as “the little lives that came along amid the study of so much darkness.” In my efforts at compartmentalization, I often think of going to the office to work on my research as “going to the dark place” while coming home is like stepping back into the light. Initially, I shielded my girls from my work since it is, to say the least, inappropriate for very young children. But as half-Jewish kids raised in a secular Jewish home, they, like all other Jewish kids at some point, have to know about the Holocaust. This lesson has unfolded over a number of years now and has taken place not just in the home. When my oldest daughter was in Grade Five, I gave a talk to her class on the Holocaust. (This was bar none the most nerve-wracking experience I have ever had as a scholar/instructor given the subject matter and the age of the children in the classroom.) Now that the girls are teenagers, they have become somewhat interested in my research, asking what genocide is (my youngest recently asked for a concise definition for her to give to a friend so she could explain to this friend what it is I do for a living), inquiring about the specifics of different cases and, again, in the case of my oldest, looking for more detail on the Rwandan genocide than the three sentences in her Grade Ten social studies textbook. My daughters’ exposure in the last few years to genocide studies through me doesn’t seem to have done any psychological damage to them—or at least I don’t think it has. Indeed, they have become’ almost by osmosis, despite exhibiting the usual self-absorption of the typical teenager, genuinely concerned for the welfare and feelings of other people around them as well as marginalized peoples in their own community, country, and around the world. My youngest daughter is currently growing her long blond hair even longer so that she can have it cut to the shoulder and donated for human hair wigs for cancer patients. My oldest daughter raised several hundred dollars last year for children’s cancer research by joining thirty other kids (she was one of only five girls) and a few teachers at her junior high school in having her head shaved in front of the entire school. It was no small sacrifice for her as a teenage girl to part with her hair. For the first little while she looked like a giant version of herself as a baby. Part of this happy outcome in the girls’ personal development may be a result of how studying genocide has affected me as a parent. The lesson I’ve learned as a genocide scholar-parent is that children must be taught to respect others no matter who they are, what they look like, how much money 92

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their families have, or where they come from. Unlike a “Tiger Mom,” I can live with a bad grade on their math test, but I will not accept any sort of behavior on the playground, the classroom, or anywhere else that rides roughshod over the feelings, identity, and experiences of others. And yes, this means, contrary to what Beyoncé and Sheryl Sandberg say, that girls can and should be confident and capable without ever being “bossy.” Where to Now?

I now find myself at a crossroads, having wrapped up the projects to which I referred earlier. Uncharacteristically, I am currently collaborating with my political theorist and nongenocide studies husband Joshua D. Goldstein. Josh is a Hegel scholar, and it is through Hegel’s understanding of the “fury of destruction” present in the founding moment of modernity in the Terror of the French Revolution that we are trying to get at the different underlying logics of what we call chronologically and ontologically modern forms of violence. We will be working on what we hope will be a book manuscript with one of our other colleagues in the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary, Gavin Cameron, who is a terrorism specialist. I am also in the preliminary stages of a project in which I hope to develop a socio-legal theory of the nature of laws that are used by different kinds of political regimes to set the stage for, and in some cases perpetrate, the crime of genocide. Here I seek to understand how the law legitimates group destruction by rendering such practices “lawful” and by classifying, and thus delegitimizing, targeted groups as “deviant.” This is particularly the case with cultural genocide in settler societies (e.g., the residential school system in Canada) where we can see that law, without being bent or broken, has played a leading role in the entire process of destruction as democratic governments wedded to the rule of law turned to the law itself to craft and enforce programs of forced assimilation legitimated as “lawful” against groups defined under these same laws as “deviant.” Now that my kids are older, I’ve got a bit more time to pursue activities beyond work and home. This has mostly taken the form of greater community involvement in human rights and Holocaust/ genocide education. Interestingly, these opportunities have revolved around the visual and performing arts. In 2011, I was a commentator at the Marda Loop Justice Film Festival in Calgary, Alberta, and in September of 2013, I was part of a two-day event for Alberta Culture 93

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Days, also in Calgary, put on by the Vocal Arts Institute of Alberta. This was a real treat for me because I got to work along side my sister, Shannon Hiebert, who is a well-known piano accompanist and opera coach. For some time Shannon and her creative partners at the Vocal Arts Institute of Alberta (VAIA), Heather Meyers and Cory Miller, had been keen to stage a recital of Jewish music banned during the Nazi period and a production of the children’s opera Brundibar by the Jewish Czech composer Hans Krasa and librettist Adolf Hoffmeister. The opera, which tells the story of a brother and sister, as well as a cat and a dog, working to thwart the evil organ grinder, Brundibar, a character overtly based on Hitler, was written in Prague in 1938, and performed many times in Terezin—including for the Nazi propaganda film, “The Fuhrer Presents the Jews With a City.” Tragically, almost all of the children who performed Brundibar in the film were later deported and gassed at Auschwitz. Since the mandate for the annual Alberta Culture Days is both culturally diverse and educational, the VAIA asked me to offer a public lecture on the history of the Holocaust in the afternoon prior to each of the musical performances in the evening. I jumped at this rather unusual opportunity because although I do not share the prodigious musical talents of my sister, I am a relatively musical person. I happily spent my childhood and teenage years taking music and later classical voice lessons, playing in the school band, performing in various school musicals in lead roles, and training relatively seriously as a ballet dancer. On many occasions my sister and I performed together. And so it was with much enthusiasm that I agreed to work with the VAIA to put on an event that for the first time in decades had me working with musicians and singers rather than academics. This included the Cantilon Children’s Choir of Edmonton, Alberta, for whom my sister is the accompanist and my nephew, Max Fingerote, is one of the singers. The entire experience was excellent. The young adult singers who performed what we called the “Forbidden Music of the Holocaust” on the first night were amazing, and the teenagers in the Cantilon Choir did a stellar job of performing the opera (they also asked some very sophisticated questions during the Q&A sessions of my lectures). And Shannon, who accompanied everyone both nights in a marathon of physical and artistic prowess, was, as usual, superb. For me, this was no surprise, but what caught her by surprise was seeing me do my thing as an academic. At about the halfway point of the lecture on the first day I noticed that she was getting a bit misty-eyed in the audience. 94

From Political Scientist to Genocide Studies Scholar and Back Again

I thought it was because of the subject matter, but she told me right after that she was taken aback by my expertise and facility with the audience. It was an interesting weekend that way: adult siblings in very different professions—the musician and the scholar—brought together again in a familiar place, on stage, as we often had been as children, but this time as part of a multifaceted exploration of a genocide. The Brundibar event was also illuminating for me because it offered me a window into how performing artists confront genocide. For Heather and Cory, especially, their encounter with the Holocaust was almost completely visceral. Everything came from the spine or the heart; as almost pure emotion physically articulated through the sweeping gestures of the opera singers that they are. Their orientation toward genocide was so different from mine as a scholar that I felt a bit like a brain on a stick. But the combination of their heart and my brain worked, I think, pretty well together. What Heather and Cory wanted the audience to know was that music and artistic expression was not only possible but necessary for Jewish musicians in the ghettoes as a way to assert their humanity and identity as artists and not just Jews even in the face of their own individual and collective extermination. For me, what I wanted the audience to know was that the Holocaust and other genocides do have an underlying logic and that such destruction is not the product of crazy leaders or fanatical unthinking populations. Now, in terms of what we might as a community of scholars turn our attention to next, I think we need to start thinking about something that will affect us all. Certainly, it is something that will negatively affect the poorer, equatorial parts of the world the most: human induced climate change. As genocide scholars, we have already seen what human beings will do to certain groups in order to clear the land to make way for colonization. Likewise, we have seen what some will do in the name of such concepts as “race,” “nation,” the “revolution,” and/or ideas based on purely constructed identities of targeted groups that label them as “enemies” and “threats.” Or, as a Canadian government official once said, “to beat the Indian out of the child.” One can scarcely imagine what human groups will do to each other when the most basic and fundamental necessities of existence, such as water and arable land, become scarce due to chronic flooding, desertification, or other permanent changes to the natural environment. Conflicts will literally become life-and-death struggles over access to the basic resources that make the difference between which groups of people get to live and which will die. 95

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This scenario of a self-inflicted wound on our planet—our one and only home—is what we face as scholars and as human beings. It is this very real threat to living, breathing human groups around the world that truly frightens me. What will become of humanity under these conditions? Just the thought of it blows my mind. References

Chalk, Frank, and Jonassohn, Curt (1990). The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hiebert, Maureen S. (2008). “Theorizing Destruction: Reflections on the State of Comparative Genocide Theory.” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Winter, 3(3), 309–39. Hiebert, Maureen S. (2013a). “Do Criminal Trials Prevent Genocide? A Critical Analysis,” pp. 223–245. In Samuel Totten (Ed.) Impediments to The Prevention and Intervention of Genocide, Volume 9. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Hiebert, Maureen S. (2013b). “Questioning Boundaries: What’s Old and What’s New in Comparative Genocide Theory,” pp. 16–41. In Joyce Apsole and Ernesto Verdeja (Eds.) Genocide Matters: Ongoing Issues and Emerging Perspectives. New York: Routledge. Hiebert, Maureen S., and Policzer, Pablo (2009). “Genocide in Chile?: An Assessment,” pp. 64–80. In Marcia Esparza, Henry R. Huttenbach, and Daniel Feierstein (Eds.) State, Violence, and Genocide in Latin America: The Cold War Years. New York: Routledge. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2001). The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Ottawa, Ontario: International Development Research Centre. Jones, Adam (Ed.) (2004). Gendercide and Genocide. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Milloy, John S. (1999). A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System in Canada 1879–1986. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Sewall, Sarah; Raymond, Dwight; and Chin, Sally (2010). MARO: Mass Atrocity Response Operations: A Military Planning Handbook. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Kennedy School/Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. UN General Assembly (2005). Resolution adopted by the General Assembly; 60/1. 2005 World Summit Outcome. Sixtieth Session. Agenda Items 46 and 120. A/ Res/60/1. October 24. New York: Author. Accessed at http://www.un.org/ womenwatch/ods/A-RES-60-1-E.pdf. Warren, Mary Ann (1985). Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection. Totowa, N.J: Rowan & Allanheld.

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III Criminology and International Human Rights Law

5 Understanding the Unthinkable Kjell Anderson

Kigali, Rwanda, 2007

Prologue: The Sound

It was a sound I’ll never forget. A few days after moving to Rwanda in April 2007, I attended a memorial service at the Amahoro National Statudum in Kigali for the victims of the Rwandan genocide. My desire to learn more about the Rwandan genocide, and perhaps even human evil more broadly, brought me to that crowded stadium on a warm spring evening. A Rwandan friend of mine, Frank, a colleague from my student days in Utrecht, was my reluctant guide. We sat through several dry government speeches before testimonies from the survivors of the genocide began. Frank sheepishly whispered his interpretation of the speeches for me as they became increasingly horrific—women speaking of being raped, of being tormented, forced to drink urine, on and on, darker and darker. It was profoundly shocking. As the testimonies continued, I felt the mood in the crowd darken. People became increasingly restive, crying out. I realized that the stories of the survivors were connecting to their own very real, very personal experiences of suffering. Frank explained to me that there were ambulances and counselors waiting outside of the stadium to support those who needed help. At first I didn’t recognize the sound. The wail grew in intensity until it became a continuous, animalistic scream of agony. Like a dog’s howl. But it was no animal—it was a woman in her forties, her face clenched so tight it was as if all light had been wrung out. As she grew increasingly distraught, she was passed from shoulder to shoulder from the 99

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stands and then carried out, presumably, to a waiting ambulance. It was, quite simply, the worst sound I have ever heard. The Breadth of the World

I still sometimes think of that sound. Scientific detachment is, of course, a useful tool, but it is only a tool; the victims of genocide are not abstractions but real people, real human lives cut short. Such abstraction is, ironically, also a tool used by perpetrators to distance themselves from the human consequences of their acts. I am often asked how I became involved in studying genocide. At social functions the questions are often more direct: why would you want to study that? I feel that people are expecting a personal connection or maybe even a morbid fascination—they are hoping to hear a story—a revelatory narrative. Yet I was interested in genocide, and mass atrocities, long before I ever set foot in Rwanda. I am embarking on this autobiographical essay cautiously. I know that I am reconstructing a narrative of the past through the pull of the logical present. When we look back we want it all to have meant something, and the truth is, it does; yet neither this meaning, nor the path that brought us here, are fixed or inevitable. In a sense, this is my remembering of the past from my present position as an emerging scholar in genocide studies. I grew up in the Canadian prairies—Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to be exact. Saskatoon in the 1980s and 1990s did not have much of an international outlook, and yet I had a fairly cosmopolitan upbringing, thanks in large part to the local university. My father was a professor of sociology at the University of Saskatchewan, and he had an overriding interest in international affairs, particularly ethnic relations (both within Canada and in far-away places like Sri Lanka and Suriname). My paternal grandfather, whom I never had the opportunity to meet, was a UN and foreign correspondent for The New York Times. My other grandfather was a Norwegian immigrant. I am sure that their international outlook influenced me greatly—I was awake to the possibility of the world beyond our borders. My elementary school was also a “little United Nations,” with students from Rwanda, Lesotho, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania among other places. This internationalism was a product of the school’s geographical proximity to the university—mature students from foreign countries lived in the neighborhood and enrolled their children in the closest school. The father of one of my classmates was a Rwandan 100

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refugee who went on to become a leading figure in the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF). I also traveled extensively with my parents in North America and Europe and lived in Bermuda when I was fifteen years old. Ever since those early days, my focus was internationally oriented. I completed BA and MA degrees in International Studies and International Affairs at the University of Saskatchewan and Carleton University, respectively, before going on to study international human rights law at Utrecht University in The Netherlands and at the National University of Ireland. Utrecht University, where I earned my LLM, and the Irish Centre for Human Rights, where I completed my doctorate, were particularly international milieus. Over the years, I have been fortunate enough to live in several countries: Canada, Bermuda, the United States, Fiji, The Netherlands, Rwanda, India, and Ireland. This experience has unquestionably broadened my perspective and led me to organically adopt a broadly comparative framework for the analysis of collective violence, including genocide. Understanding the Unthinkable

My commitment to the field of genocide studies stems less from any personal experience and more from a desire to understand the causes of human cruelty (which undoubtedly intensified after working with victims of sexual violence in the African Great Lakes region in 2007), as well as a profound sense of moral outrage. Genocide is shocking to the conscience. This is but one aspect of the generational shift taking place in genocide studies as second (and even third) generation scholars emerge. Many of us lack the personal connection to genocide—especially to The Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide—that many earlier genocide scholars had. The exceptions, of course, are scholars in countries that have recently experienced genocide, such as in Rwanda and Bosnia. Unfortunately, relatively few of these scholars, particularly in the case of Rwanda, have published full-length academic monographs. Consequently, we must recognize, and appreciate, new forms of commitment grounded in the desire to understand. Such intellectual curiosity is also rooted in the idealism of human rights—that “all human beings are born free and equal and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood,” as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights sets out in Article 1. Such objective idealism can help to move genocide studies forward—to move beyond notions of 101

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c­ ompetitive victimization and definitionalism (our fixation on defining and ­re-defining genocide) in order to locate the sources of genocide in human behavior and socialization. This grounding of genocide makes comparative approaches inevitable. Such universalism does not mean that we lose all contextuality and specificity, but rather that we recognize that genocide flows more from human relations than from metaphysical constructions such as “inhuman evil.” Our preoccupation with evil is revealed in the bookshelf each genocide scholar has with the word “evil” in the title. While “evil” might be a satisfying adjective to describe the terrible acts of genocide, it also contains a misleading patina of permanence and divine malevolence. Paradoxically, such constructions of genocidal perpetration do not embody accountability but rather function as mechanisms of denial. “The perpetrators are nothing like you or I,” we tell ourselves. How could they be? To recognize our sameness with the perpetrators is to question our very essence as moral beings. Genocide scholarship is still sometimes mired in notions of evil, often in the form of ideological or historical determinism—that genocide is caused by bad ideologies or histories of violence. Such distant, tautological constructions of genocide remove any sense of human agency or instrumentality. Yet, genocide studies as a field, as an interdisciplinary approach, has substantially contributed to our understanding of collective violence by identifying common threads. This broadly comparative interdisciplinary approach is now widely accepted among second and third generation genocide scholars. The synergizing and collation of perspectives from the social sciences, humanities, and law has the potential to provide new insights into genocide, as well as the core disciplines themselves. Reconciling the “Two Solitudes” of the Social Sciences and the Law

Although the field of genocide studies increasingly traverses disciplinary debates, old battles about the definitional boundaries of genocide persist. Much of the tension arises from social scientists’ and historians’ attempt to analyze complex, sprawling social phenomena within the constrictive, legal constructions of genocide enshrined in the UN Genocide Convention. This debate is missing the point. Indeed, the definition of genocide found in the 1948 Convention is more elastic than most scholars realize. In fact, even with the growing legal clarity around aspects of the Convention such as protected groups, there remains substantial disagreement and ambiguity over notions such 102

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as “killing in part,” motive requirements for genocide, and contextual elements. While previous iterations of genocide (i.e. those found in the statutes of the the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) implicitly encompassed situations of genocide committed by one individual acting in isolation, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) appears to have moved beyond such conceptualizations to include a contextual element (i.e., that genocide can only be committed as part of a “pattern of similar attacks”). Nonetheless, definitionalism, which seems to be rife in genocide studies, tends to create de facto hierarchies of suffering and illogical comparative frameworks. When doing social science research, we should move beyond genocide, as legally defined, to compare similar social phenomena. Genocide, as defined in the Genocide Convention, is fundamentally a criminal law concept, and the purpose of criminal law is to determine the guilt or innocence of specific individuals for criminal acts. Indeed, the principle of nullem crimen sine lege articulates that individuals can only be punished for acts that are clearly defined crimes. Such relatively strict definitions are essential in order to ensure the rights of the accused. Moreover, the selectivity of international criminal tribunals such as the ICC must be borne in mind when we look to such courts as authors of history. Genocide scholarship also often contains an activist aspect, and as activists, we should not focus our efforts solely on the recognition and prevention of genocide. Rather, we must consider mass atrocities more broadly in order to ensure the protection of individuals and the recognition of humanitarian principles. The international community must respond effectively whether the violence in Darfur or Bosnia constitutes genocide or “simply” crimes against humanity. Unfortunately, social scientists and jurists still seem to be speaking mutually unintelligible languages. Many social scientists criticize lawyers and jurists for their apparent myopia in understanding and addressing mass atrocities while some lawyers look upon the social sciences as lacking in definitional clarity and precision. Nonetheless, genocide remains both a social and a legal phenomenon and there remains a greater need than ever for approaches that bridge this divide. The social sciences can provide new understandings of the causes of international crimes, as well as the context and impact of international courts. In turn, legal knowledge is important for social scientists wishing to move beyond intellectual endeavors into activism. I see no value 103

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in challenging hard-won legal definitions of genocide. Rather, social scientists must at times move beyond genocide to consider terminology and approaches that encompass similar forms of violence. I first became aware of the possibilities of law while studying for my master’s degree at Carleton University. I learned that genocide and torture were more than just moral wrongs, they were crimes. I was introduced to International Humanitarian Law, a body of a law with a long historical pedigree, which seeks to make armed conflict more humane by prohibiting atrocities. I was not completely new to human rights—having already done an internship at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights at the Organization of American States. At Utrecht University I undertook a master’s degree program in law focusing on international criminal law. It was exciting to meet people who investigated and prosecuted crimes like genocide. I began to engage in this work myself, completing a law clinic working on a crimes-againsthumanity case before the Special Court for Sierra Leone. I was excited by the practicality of it all—although I also realized the limitations of the law as a tool for resolving social problems. It was in Utrecht that I really began to form my theoretical approach—bringing together the social sciences and law to carry out socio-legal, criminological analyses of mass violence. I wanted to work on both sides of the equation—to understand the causes of genocide and international crimes and to have these insights inform the functioning of international criminal law. International criminal courts and tribunals need to be contextualized within broader transitional justice and peace building policy frameworks. International courts are inevitably political institutions, at least at the policy level, and in order to improve the efficacy of these courts, they must engage with broader socio-political actors and forces while still preserving fairness in the courtroom. This need to provide contextualization has only been reinforced through my work for a think tank in The Hague. At Utrecht I was also first exposed to to the experiments and work of Milgram and Zimbardo, respectively, and Christopher Browning’s masterwork Ordinary Men while taking a course taught by Fred Grunfeld on the “Causes of Gross Human Rights Violations.”1 Encounters with Perpetrators

After finishing my LLM degree in 2005 I still had no intention of pursuing a doctorate (2011). In my experience, life paths are rarely (if ever) linear. During the intervening two years I continued to work on 104

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the issues mentioned above, constructing a website (www.sharedhumanity.org) to educate the public about genocide and mass atrocities and to advocate for meaningful responses. I also began to work in Rwanda for FACT-Rwanda (Forum des Activistes Contre la Torture), a Rwandan nongovernmental organization focused on assisting victims of violence (much of which was related to the Rwandan genocide and other conflicts in the African Great Lakes region). My work in Rwanda in 2007 only intensified my interest in the subject of genocide. Essentially, I realized that I really wanted to engage with the causes of genocide in a much deeper way and saw a doctorate as a solution: I could spend several years conducting research and writing a book, all the while earning a degree. Ultimately, I worked under the supervision of William Schabas at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, with Frank Chalk acting as an informal advisor, and Alex Hinton as an external examiner. I also began my involvement with the International Association of Genocide Scholars during this period. I began an ambitious program of research—interviewing numerous perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Bangladesh. For my doctorate, I had the intention of focusing on the identification of common structural precursors to genocide and mass atrocities. In the process of my interviews, I quickly came to realize that my research was better suited to something else, something that was, in my mind, far more material to the problem. The heart of the matter, I decided, was not in macro level structures, although these are crucial for coordination and mobilization, but rather in individual, human frailty, namely our tremendous fear of going against widely held norms and respected institutions. Thus, I shifted from the macro level to the micro, or, more precisely, from examining structures as being causal to examining individual adaptation to structural influences. I decided to adopt what I would term an integrated, grounded criminological approach to my research. I have always seen the value in moving beyond archival research to more immersive and direct experiences. I simply cannot imagine writing about the perpetration of genocide without conducting research on the ground, speaking to actual perpetrators and victims. I psychologically braced myself for this research, believing that it would be emotionally draining, and possibly even traumatic, listening repeatedly to stories of killing and rape. My interactions with 105

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­ onspecialists led me to believe that such a reaction would be expected, n reasonable, and humane. Yet, for the most part, the interviews were not as difficult as I anticipated. I feared in some way that I had become immunized against any emotional connection to human suffering. I remember when I first began work in Rwanda, sitting in on a debriefing session for our counselors, who would discuss their cases with each other (without using the clients’ identities) in order to relieve themselves of some psychological tension and perhaps to gain some insight. I brought two American interns into the debriefing session. I was the only (roughly) bilingual person, so I was called upon to translate the counselor’s narrative from French to English. I translated her case story of a woman who contracted AIDS as a result of being gang raped during the Rwandan Genocide to these two young American interns, and when I looked up, they were both in tears. I felt oddly unmoved and that made me wonder if mere exposure to the suffering of others had in some way desensitized me. The loss of empathy seems to me to be a terrible price to pay, although working with victims of such atrocities must bear similarities to anyone who works with trauma victims, such as psychologists, doctors, or humanitarian aid workers. Of course, my exposure has been relatively superficial compared with people whose professions require that they work day-in and day-out in such contexts. I’m not sure if I would be strong enough to do such work years on end. Nonetheless, I believe that my adaptation to hearing such stories was less a product of familiarity and more of intellectual abstraction and the emotional detachment of many of the perpetrators that I spoke with. As I previously argued, the scientific method contains an inherent element of abstraction. In my case, I was positing a whole series of questions to my subjects, usually through an interpreter, in order to gather specific information relevant to answering my own research question. Paradoxically, this may have the effect of distancing researchers from the reality of their own research— it certainly did in my case. Another factor was undoubtedly the detachment of many perpetrators. This detachment is a function of psychological coping ­mechanisms. Nobody plays the villain in the stories that they tell. Indeed, to do so is psychologically abnormal. Rather, most perpetrators, like most people, seek to recontextualize their own actions in order to minimize their moral responsibility. This detachment and rationalization has the effect of limiting cognitive dissonance and reducing empathetic distress. Thus, perpetrators, for the most part, remained unmoved as they told me their stories of killing. 106

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With victims, it was a different story. Genocide is something that was done to them, to their family, to their people. Many victims were, obviously, visibly traumatized. I remember interviewing one woman who had been raped and tortured in a country church near Kigali. She left the scene of the interview in tears. Although I had followed all the appropriate interview protocols, in that moment I felt like the worst person in the world. It made me wonder whether there was something fundamentally exploitative about such research. I suppose the answer is yes, if there is no benefit to the victims. These differential responses between victims and perpetrators are what Roy Baumeister calls the “magnitude gap”—crimes are often much more important to victims than to perpetrators.2 Indeed, when I asked perpetrators to tell me about the first time they killed, they often professed to being very hazy on the details (sometimes even forgetting the month), whereas victims would often remember the day with agonizing clarity.3 When I asked one of the survivors of Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia what his views were on the (documented) testimony of one of the perpetrators, he drew a long ragged breath before responding, “We are both men, but we live in two different worlds.” My research sought to visit this perpetrator world, and it brought me to the conclusion that it was not an exotic place, but rather an everyday, interior universe. The ubiquity of genocide in places like Rwanda and Cambodia, where perpetration occurred on such a massive scale, leads to the inescapable conclusion that perpetrators are not extraordinary people. Yet in meeting the victims and hearing their stories of extreme brutalization, genocide also seems to be an extraordinary act, far removed from conventional morality. How are such acts possible? The results that I obtained from these interviews startled me. The perpetrators gave me the impression that although the genocide had happened, they appeared bizarrely removed from it. I had expected that some perpetrators would minimize their guilt, but not that this abrogation of responsibility would be so universal or so total. In short, the perpetrators came to believe their own lies—that they were not the authors of their own misdeeds. Apparently this was a human evil of staggering magnitude without any authors. It was a manifestation of Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil, but it was not limited to bureaucracies of murder, such as the Nazi extermination camps; rather, it was ubiquitous, mundane, and rooted in human weakness. The normalcy of the perpetrators was grounded not only in 107

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their biographies, but also their psychological imperative to avoid all responsibility for harmful acts. Although politicized ethnic hatred was an underlying factor, perpetrators were primarily motivated by other considerations. They were just as content to abide the objectification of the victims as they were to self-objectify, as nebulous moral actors, responsive only to the expectations of authority and peers. I interviewed a former Tuol Sleng prison guard who was implicated in the deaths of as many as two thousand people. I listened to him recounting his role in the Cambodian genocide while he bounced a baby on his lap. There was no glimmer of evil in those eyes—he seemed to me a kindly, even timid man. And yet there was something important there behind his rationalizations and justifications; that is, I came to the conclusion that there was more substance to those evasive strategies than to the facts and falsehoods I was collecting on my digital recorder. If evil was present in that room, it was more a cruelty of cowardice than of ambition. During my field research in Rwanda, I also taught a course at the National University of Rwanda (NUR) on theories of genocide and mass violence. This was part of the masters degree program in Genocide Studies and Prevention designed by Samuel Totten, both during and following his period as a Fulbright Scholar with the Centre of Conflict Management at NUR—the first program of its type in Africa. Teaching about genocide to Rwandans was a daunting prospect. I had to listen in equal measure to teaching. Indeed, my central contribution was introducing my students to a broader, comparative perspective (for example, we watched Triumph of the Will). When teaching about genocide my goal is always to make it relatable to the students. Given that genocide is derived from relatively universal human personality traits, I seek to explore these tendencies and encourage self-reflection about things like conformity, “othering,” and obedience to authority. Genocide is not something that happens on the other side of the world—it happens in the human heart. Individuals are personally responsible to work to prevent prejudice and violence at the simple, everyday level as well as the international level. Constructing a Criminology of the Perpetration of Mass Atrocities

Focusing on the relationship between the micro level of perpetrator motivation and the macro level of state and organizational structures, my book manuscript, based partly on my thesis, offers an in-depth explanation for the perpetration of genocide. It is the first comparative 108

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criminological treatment of genocide drawn from substantial original field research. It is only very recently that genocide and international crimes are receiving any attention from the discipline of criminology, yet they still remain marginal to the field. Indeed, there is a paucity of criminological literature on genocide. In spite of its obvious applicability to the crime of genocide, there has been very little research done in this area. Although there have been studies of mass or collective violence in the United States, mass criminality on the international level has received virtually no attention.4 There is also a lack of sociolegal perspectives, which seek to integrate social scientific and legal analyses of international crimes. The application of criminology to genocide studies presents great possibilities for innovation and insight. My field research provides new perspectives to the problem of genocide and also to existing criminological and genocide literature. The raw data gathered through this research and presented in the book may also be used by future researchers.5 Most theories of genocide causation focus either on the political context of genocide or on the pathology of individual perpetrators. There are few theories that adequately address the link between individual acts and social conditions. My thesis, currently being converted into a book entitled Killing Without Consequence, offers a criminological theory of genocide, which focuses on this missing link in genocide scholarship by addressing the moral context of genocide as a cause for individual participation. It argues that perpetrators, like other people, are largely risk-averse and conformist. In other words, their perpetration is motivated less by hatred and more by a fear of breaching social norms and obligations. Genocidal states are criminogenic, thus the crime of genocide is supported by the state. In other words, genocide can only be understood within the enabling moral context created by state power. Perpetrators of genocide are both criminals and good citizens. Killing Without Consequence draws from my extensive primary research interviewing perpetrators of genocide. The semistructured interviews sought to ascertain how perpetrators contextualize and frame their behavior—how they reconcile their transgressive actions with universal moral rules. It makes use of an original theoretical approach integrating situational action theory with neutralization-drift theory (criminology), as well as other theoretical perspectives drawn from sociology, psychology, and law. Situational Action Theory argues that crimes occur as a function of propensity (derived from individual moral rules and moral habits, 109

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mediated by self-control) and exposure (the moral context). In normal circumstances, the moral context prohibits crime, but in genocide, the state is itself crime-producing (criminogenic). While this theory normally holds that “individuals who have moral rules and moral habits that correspond to what is stated in the law will tend to have a low crime propensity” (Wikstrom, 2004, pp. 1–37; Wikstrom and Svensson, 2010, p. 396), the opposite is true in genocide, where closer orientation to legitimate authority results in criminal behavior being perceived as a favored action alternative. The conflict between previously held moral beliefs and the evolved moral context is resolved through perpetrator rationalizations (vocabularies of motive). These techniques of neutralization allow perpetrators to revise and reframe previously held moral rules so they are consistent with their own actions in the evolved moral context. This moral context emerges and is implemented through state power. Moreover, bystanders also use techniques of neutralization to resolve their inner conflict between pre-existing moral rules and habits and the new context. My own research builds on Neutralization-Drift Theory, as elucidated by Gresham Sykes and David Matza (1957), to identify ten techniques of neutralization relevant to genocide:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Appeal to Higher Loyalties Denial of the Victim Denial of Humanity Denial of Responsibility Denial of Injury Claim of Normality Claim of Inevitability Claim of Relative Acceptability Claim of Inner Opposition The Denial of Autonomy (pp. 664–670).

The individual will adjust their moral rules in response to changed conditions, as dictated by coercive and persuasive forms of power. Individual action is structured and shaped by the state, yet the farreaching power of the genocidal state is itself only possible with the transfer of autonomy from individuals to the state. The genocidal state, characterized by the extreme exercise of power, is a product of both instrumental and prejudicial political forces. The elimination of the targeted group can never be purely instrumental, for even if a group is deemed to be an obstacle to certain strategic objectives, its subjugation would be sufficient, rather than the resources and sustained campaign required for complete destruction. Moreover, the complete destruction 110

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of a group on the basis of stigmatized identity is only possible with an enabling ideology of prejudice. In a sense, then, genocide uses instrumental means to realize prejudicial motives. Some genocides may be more instrumental than others, but there is always a core of prejudice that enables or necessitates genocidal destruction. The genocidal state draws its power from the surrender and subjugation of individual autonomy. The state comes to erode individual liberties and autonomy and occupy more spaces of everyday life. This comes with a restructuring of moral rules whereby certain groups are effectively criminalized—they are subject to systematic discrimination and even death at the hands of state agents (or with the acquiescence of the state). A surrender of individual autonomy on the part of perpetrators occurs concomitantly with the removal of autonomy from the victims. Thus, genocide entails an attack on selfhood, with extreme de-individuation and dehumanization. In addition to state power, the perpetration of genocide requires the revision and reframing of moral rules prohibiting normally unlawful acts such as killing (the moral context). These processes are facilitated by the perpetrators’ need to frame their actions in such a way that it remains consistent with their notions of moral selfhood. The techniques of neutralization also allow the perpetrator to separate the perpetrator self from the normal self (as per Lifton’s theory of doubling).6 In other words, the same person commits the acts of both the normal self and the perpetrator self, but the perpetrator self does not reflect the true (normal) self because the perpetrator self is only acting for the reasons outlined in the techniques of neutralization: “I am not doing these bad things out of personal desire—this is not who I am.” This prevents the development of a deviant self-image. The separation between perpetrator self and normal self is not static, but rather it waivers and fluctuates. In speaking with the perpetrators, I heard the same accounts over and over again: “The person who did something really wrong was the person who told us to kill the Tutsi,” and “Who was I to stop the killing?” The point is, the perpetrators displayed a profound lack of personal accountability. One interviewee in Rwanda reported shooting the leg of someone who was fleeing from a mob, causing the injured person to fall and subsequently be killed by the mob; yet, he remained adamant that he was not responsible for the victim’s death. Another perpetrator, a politician (a Bourgmestre in Rwanda during the genocide), argued 111

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that even as he issued orders to kill (commit genocide), he remained internally opposed to it: “I had to show them I was together with them but I didn’t necessarily support them.” Sitting in prisons, fields, and sometimes the perpetrators’ homes, I was left with the absurd impression of an authorless genocide. Genocide was something that had simply happened. In some ways, the perpetrators argued that the genocide was something that happened to them as well—the deaths of the victims was an unfortunate consequence of the wrong done to the perpetrators at the hands of the real culprits, “the state.” Of course, the perspective of the victims was radically different. Their suffering was immediate and true. I remember asking a survivor of a Khmer Rouge prison what he thought of his tormentor, a guard I also interviewed. The survivor drew a long, ragged breath, paused, and more exhaled than said, “We are both men, but we live on two different planets.” This perpetrator’s world was nothing exotic, but rather it was an everyday, interior universe. Most of the perpetrators I interviewed were more pathetic than intimidating. I suspect that the only truly sadistic person that I interviewed was a Bosnian who calmly wrung his hands as he explained to me his decision to strangle prisoners rather than take them to the Red Cross. The more eager perpetrators are the more they self-eclipse the normal self (the “perpetrator self ” may become normal self ). Moreover, there is a sadistic shift in genocide whereby perpetrators who are not sadists may come to exhibit sadistic tendencies over time. This is partly a product of the context of the genocidal state in which perpetrators exercise near omnipotence over completely devalued and disempowered victims. The decision-making of perpetrators is based on perceived action alternatives shaped by state power and moral neutralization. In the case of genocide, increased individual self-control (in terms of adherence to moral rules) results in a decreased crime propensity (i.e., a greater likelihood of resisting the new moral context and engaging in rescuing behavior). Moreover, external controls (deterrence) are weak in genocide as a result of the weak international rule enforcement system. Perpetrators themselves can be disaggregated on the basis of motive or on the basis of the strength of the will to commit genocide. Most perpetrators are self-motivating (or “vanguard perpetrators” as I have 112

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dubbed them) and play an important role killing first, killing the most, and providing an example for other conforming perpetrators. Given these divergent categories of perpetrators, generalized notions of “­perpetrator” must be disaggregated in order to achieve any explanatory force, beyond a description of criminal acts. In responding to perpetration, transitional justice mechanisms tend to be very narrow in scope—they do little to directly address the complex underlying causes of genocide and the complexity of perpetration. The potential for deterrence is also not critically assessed, but rather it is presented as a given. Bystanders, both individual and state, also suffer from a conflict of moral rule guidance and utilize their own techniques of neutralization to justify their nonintervention in the aid of others. Individuals with stronger internal controls may resist becoming perpetrators and actually act as rescuers, but this is risky in the case of genocide, where evil is institutionalized and normalized. This human tendency for riskaversion is a push factor for individual participation in genocide and an impediment to rescuing behavior. It also governs target selection as perpetrators seek out vulnerable victims. My research also concludes that the prevention of genocide is not possible without the restoration of the self. Only strong selves that challenge authority can stop genocide. Yet, fear is an important mediating factor in all aspects of genocide. Perpetrators participate out of fear; nearby bystanders are passive out of fear. This fear is both the fear of standing alone and the fear of negative consequences. In many cases, the fear of standing alone is enough to make individuals passive or acquiescent. Such en masse acquiescence makes genocide possible. Genocide is ultimately driven by power and domination. Reluctant perpetrators are facing a whole system built on domination, a system where even good people will probably behave badly, a system of killing without consequence. Future Research Agenda

My research agenda going forward will continue to focus on the criminology of international crimes and socio-legal approaches to transitional justice and peace building. It is expected that Killing Without Consequence will be the first in a series of two or three volumes focusing on the criminology of genocide. The second volume will involve similar field research to the first, but it will focus on the motivations of bystanders and rescuers. The third will focus on the victimology of genocide. I 113

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also want to engage further with transitional justice and peace building in societies recovering from mass atrocities. This was a focus of much of my work in the past year. I engaged with transitional justice from several angles, including teaching a portion of the Transitional Justice Fellowship Program at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, South Africa. There I offered a workshop on transitional justice in Johanesburg for Zimbabwean human rights practitioners, and provided training on the International Criminal Court for the Coalition for the International Criminal Court in Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. Additionally, I am planning to create a clearinghouse for information on the prevention of international crimes called the Forum for the Prevention of International Crimes (www.preventinternationalcrimes.org). Closing Thoughts: Scholars and the Prevention of Genocide

I would like to conclude with a few words on the engagement of genocide scholars vis-à-vis efforts to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities. First of all, we must continually deglamorize “evil.” The phenomenon of “dark tourism” shows that the trappings of genocide and extreme violence can be superficially appealing to some. Studying genocide is not an act of voyeurism—we must seek understanding with a commitment to prevention. There is also a need for new structures of international mobilization. I am not speaking here of international treaties or courts. I am speaking rather of efforts to mobilize grassroots support for mass atrocities prevention. We must create political constituencies for humanitarian assistance and transform activism into action. Of course, there are efforts already underway in this regard, such as the Will To Intervene project at the Montréal Institute for Genocide Studies. We must also seek new understandings of genocide. While we stand on the shoulders of others, we must not be afraid to forge ahead with new ideas and challenge even canonical sources. Finally, I believe that we must appreciate that scientific understanding and personal commitment are not incompatible. Cynicism is a refuge for the apathetic—we must continue to strive to make a difference. It is easy, and perhaps even satisfying, to stand on the sidelines mocking earnestness. There are many truly dedicated scholars and activists who have made the prevention of mass atrocities their life’s work. While recognizing the powers of moral opprobrium, we must also be wary of its dangers. The righteous anger of moral condemnation may even serve as a justification for future acts of oppression and violence. 114

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We must also strive to avoid the development of savior complexes—we can embark on moral crusades without self-identifying as moral crusaders. This may seem ironic, coming at the end of an autobiographical essay, but we must avoid putting ourselves at the center of the story. Ultimately, it is not really about us. 1.

Notes

The book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman was also very influential in my work. It contributed to my understanding that acts of systematic violence are still committed by individuals, although they act within broader social systems and norms. 2. Roy F Baumeister, Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1997), p. 19. 3. Of course this is not always the case—there are victims who experience memory loss as a result of trauma and perpetrators who themselves experience post-traumatic stress disorder. 4. George S. Yacoubian Jr., “Genocide, Terrorism, and the Conceptualisation of Catastrophic Criminology,” War Crimes, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity, Vol 2 (2006), p. 68. There are only five books that treat genocide from a criminological perspective. Firstly, there is Governments, Citizens, and Genocide (Routledge 2001) by Alex Alvarez, a short volume that applies existing criminological theory to the crime of genocide without any original research. Alvarez also authored Genocidal Crimes (2010) for Routledge’s “Key Ideas in ­Criminology” series. Darfur and the Crime of Genocide (Cambridge 2009) by Hagan, Rymond-Richmond, and Parker adopts a criminological perspective in examining the Darfur genocide by making use of data collected by the US Government’s Atrocities Documentation Project in its interviews with survivors from the region. The edited volume by Smeulers and Haveman entitled Supranational Criminology: Towards a Criminology of International Crimes (Intersentia 2008) offers an innovative survey of how criminological theory can be applied to international crimes. Similarly, Victimological Approaches to International Crimes: Africa edited by Letschert, Haveman, de Brouwer, and Pemberton is a collection of chapters addressing the victimology of international crimes from a criminological perspective. 5. The Rwanda portion of my research, for example, involved interviews with sixty-eight perpetrators and twelve victims of genocide. The perpetrator interviews occurred in five prisons and eight prison camps. 6. Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2000).

References

Sykes, Gresham M., and Matza, David (1957). “Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency.” American Sociological Review, December, 22(6), 664–70. Wikstrom, Per-Olof (2004). “Crime as Alternative: Towards a Cross-level Situational Action Theory of Crime Causation.” In Joan McCord (Ed.) Beyond 115

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Empiricism: Institutions and Intentions in the Study of Crime. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, pp. 1–37. Wikstrom, Per-Olof, and Svensson, Robert (2010). “When Does Self-control ­Matter? The Interaction between Morality and Self-control in Crime ­Causation.” European Journal of Criminology, September, 7(5), 396.

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IV Criminologist

6 A Scholar of Genocide and Violence Alex Alvarez

In many ways, my work as a genocide scholar is a somewhat accidental outcome of my education as both a criminologist and sociologist intersecting with my personal biography in rather unexpected ways. I was a graduate student in the sociology department at the University of New Hampshire when I first began studying violence. As a new student, I was assigned to a faculty member who was studying homicide patterns in the United States, and I ended up working on this project for the next two years. Essentially, we were looking at the social and structural conditions that help determine variances in homicide rates across communities, states, and regions. In other words, this project examined why some places are more violent than others. This initial work in the area of lethal violence helped spark an interest in me that continues to this very day. For many years, all of my work focused largely on statistical analysis of various forms of interpersonal violence, such as murder, justifiable homicide, and school violence, especially as they relate to different minority populations. Around the mid 1990’s, however, that exclusive focus began to change and a lot has to do with the fact of my having been raised largely in Europe. Growing up, my family and I lived on military bases all over the United States and Europe. My father was in the US Air Force, and my mother was German, so we spent many years living in various European countries, especially Germany. Being raised in various German communities, traveling throughout the country, and growing up with my German relatives meant that I was often confronted with the reality of the past, specifically World War II. Family trips to Berlin, Munich, Nuremberg, Berchtesgaden, and Dachau, for example, exposed me to 119

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the actual locations where recent German history had been created. On my mother’s side, family photo albums showed relatives in German uniform. For obvious reasons, I found this history fascinating. At that time, however, I never really pursued my interest in it in any kind of systematic or organized manner beyond asking questions, traveling to historic sites, and reading whatever I could get my hands on. I also never grappled with any of the deeper and more uncomfortable questions about Nazism, German society, and my own family history. Much later as a graduate student, I took a course on the Holocaust, but still didn’t consider it as a potential research topic; rather it was simply a subject I studied out of personal interest. It wasn’t until the mid-1990’s that these two parts of my life—my personal biography and my training as a criminologist—came together in any kind of meaningful way. It has only been fairly recently that, as an adult, I have come to dig a little into the history of my mother’s family. I have interviewed my mother, an aunt, and an uncle about their memories growing up during the Nazi era, and I have even acquired the military records of my grandfather who served in an air force construction battalion, as well as the records of two great uncles who served in the army and were killed near Leningrad. While I have thankfully never uncovered any bombshells, so to speak, this rather personal window into the past has helped provide insight into the ways in which ordinary German families experienced and understood the war years. I do not remember what the specific trigger was, but at some point I realized that the criminological theories being used to make sense of and explain the behavior of ordinary criminals might be used to fruitfully garner insight into how and why genocides occur. Because of my training as a criminologist and as someone who had studied various forms of individual criminal violence, it struck me that there was an extensive criminological literature that had been developed to explicate a variety of deviant behavior, and yet none of that insight had been applied toward helping make sense of the Holocaust or of genocide more generally. Looking back now, I realize that I began writing on this topic late in 1995, in the same year as the massacre at Srebrenica in Bosnia, and less than two years after the Rwandan genocide. I’m sure that these events played a part in my belated intellectual awakening. Most of the work I was familiar with regarding genocide tended to be largely journalistic, such as much of the early work on Bosnia, purely historical as exemplified by a large portion of the scholarship on the 120

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Holocaust, or autobiographical in nature, such as found in the memoirs of many survivors. Nowhere, however, had I come across anyone who studied genocide from a specifically criminological standpoint. There were a few pioneering social science based attempts to grapple with genocide, but these were either sociological, such as those by Irving Louis Horowitz (1997), Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn (1990), and Helen Fein (1993), or political science in orientation, such as that done by Herbert Hirsch (1995) and Robert Melson (1992). While these works were enormously influential for me, they were not criminological. Consequently, I thought to accomplish several things. First, I wanted to tap into the rich theoretical literature that had been successfully used to explain a variety of criminal behaviors at the individual, organizational, and structural levels and apply it to help make sense of genocide. Over the years, for example, criminologists have made great strides in explaining the nature and dynamics of violent criminality, the structural and bureaucratic context of corporate and political deviancy, and the varieties of state crime. I felt that the insights and explanations offered by this work could be used to help make sense of the crime of genocide. Even though genocide is at the extreme end of destructive and collective human behavior, it nonetheless relies upon the same kinds of mechanisms and processes that other forms of violence and criminality also depend upon, some of which have been explored at length within the criminological literature. We know, for example, that corporate criminality is strongly influenced by organizational size, work subcultures, organizational coercion and rewards, and the compartmentalization of work in which individuals and units are only tasked with small and discrete steps within a much larger process of production. Given that perpetrators also typically operate within larger political, military, law enforcement, and/or business structures, I understood that the same kinds of institutional facilitators that have explained other kinds of wrongdoing could be applied to genocide. Second, I wanted to expand criminology into an area that it had not previously addressed. Historically, criminology as a discipline has largely focused on domestic predatory street crimes, such as a robberies, assaults, and burglaries. There has also been a small but growing body of work dealing with state and corporate crimes. However, no one had yet focused on genocide and other atrocity crimes, and I wanted to broaden the attention of criminology and criminal justice to include these neglected forms of collective political violence. I found such neglect ironic since criminology as a discipline has, as a primary goal, 121

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the study of crime and criminals, and yet had never turned its attention to the study of what has sometimes been described as “the crime of all crimes,” the supreme crime, and the ultimate crime (Campbell, 2001). In the period since I began this work, a number of other criminologists have begun looking at genocide, such as John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond (2009), Alette Smeulers (2008), and Dawn Rothe and Christopher Mullins (2011), among others. But when I began my work, criminological attention on genocide was nonexistent. Unfortunately, notwithstanding the increased attention in recent years, this approach to genocide remains not only marginal to the field of criminology, but also to genocide studies itself. In 2010, for example, The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, which was edited by Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses, included chapters on law, ­sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and philosophy, among ­others, but did not include a chapter taking a criminological approach. This kind of omission is, unfortunately, more the norm than the exception. Most scholars tend to approach the study of genocide from disciplines more traditionally associated with genocide studies, and consequently tend to ignore approaches outside of that mainstream. I do, however, want to stress that I am not suggesting that I or other scholars should rely solely on a criminological approach to explaining genocide. I believe strongly that only an interdisciplinary approach to something as varied, complicated, multicausal, and multilevel as genocide can have any hope of offering meaningful insight into the etiology and operation of this phenomenon. The world does not operate according to disciplinary boundaries, nor are human and/or organizational behavior easily explained with reference to one-dimensional approaches. I believe criminology as a discipline should be included in the mix as a discipline because it can aid in providing meaningful answers and allows for a richer and deeper understanding of how genocides are planned, organized, and carried out. My first work in this area involved applying a perspective known as the Techniques of Neutralization to describing how perpetrators of genocide come to justify their participation. This perspective first arose out of research on juvenile crime conducted by Gresham Sykes and David Matza (1957). Their research found that juvenile delinquents tended to rely on a very similar set of justifications to validate and defend their actions to themselves and others. In order to neutralize any cognitive dissonance between their self-image and their behavior, Sykes and Matza found that young offenders create narratives that 122

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served to justify and legitimate their criminality to themselves and, potentially, to others. Keep in mind that these techniques are not after-the-fact rationalizations. These techniques are utilized before and during behaviors to make those acts more acceptable. Subsequent to Sykes and Matza’s initial work, others applied neutralization theory to embezzlement (Cressey, 1953), occupational crime (Horning, 1979; Mars 1974), violent crime (Agnew, 1994), and domestic violence (Ferraro and Johnson 1983), but no one had yet applied this perspective to genocide. My years of studying various forms of violence taught me that people who engage in violence, regardless of the specific context, tend to rely on the same processes and mechanisms to facilitate engagement in violent actions. This reality has sometimes been referred to as the unity of human aggression (Goldstein 1986) because even though the context and individual dynamics of acts of violence may vary, many of the fundamental qualities tend to remain the same. Accordingly, it seemed to me that the Techniques of Neutralization could help make sense of how ordinary people come to participate in something as horrific as genocide. Out of this recognition arose my first article on genocide in 1997 (“Adjusting to Genocide: The Techniques of Neutralization and the Holocaust”), and the start of my journey as a genocide scholar. I worked to expand this initial effort to include a wider variety of theoretical perspectives that addressed the issue of genocide from multiple levels. In 2001, I published my first book, Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspective, in which I examined the crime of genocide through a distinctly social science lens with an emphasis on criminological perspectives. More specifically, at the macro level, I examined the role of the state in planning and carrying out genocides, the power and usefulness of law as a tool of persecution, and the connection between genocide and war. Therein, I also analyzed the organizational and bureaucratic contexts within which most perpetrators operate, and was able to illustrate a number of ways in which institutions enable participation through, for example, organizational coercion and reward, routinization, and compartmentalization. Lastly, I examined how individual perpetrators rely on a variety of social psychological mechanisms that make individual perpetration possible. By examining genocide from a macro, meso, and micro level, I believe that Governments, Citizens, and Genocide offered an integrated and multilayered approach from a number of perspectives not previously seen in genocide studies. 123

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From that time until the present, I have continued to research, write, and present on genocide. In 2009, for example, I published Genocidal Crimes, which was in some ways a follow up and expansion of my first book on genocide. I was able to address a number of developments in the ever-growing and evolving field of genocide studies and expand on other topics not covered in my first volume. Along the way, I have also served as the founding Director of the Martin-Springer Institute for Teaching the Holocaust, Tolerance, and Humanitarian Values at Northern Arizona University. With Herb Hirsch, Eric Markusen, and Samuel Totten, I served as a founding coeditor of the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention (2005–2010). My most recent book, Native America and the Question of Genocide, reviews the experiences of the Natives of North America through the lens of genocide (Alvarez, 2014). In recent years, it has become quite common to suggest that American Indians were the victims of genocide, but this assertion is often overly broad and all-encompassing and tends to sometimes ignore the very real complexities of not only genocide, which itself is subject to a variety of definitional debates, but also of Native America, which is infinitely more diverse and less passive than these assertions often seem to imply. The book examines various theoretical and conceptual difficulties inherent in the notion of genocide, especially as they relate to the varied experiences of Native American populations. The history of the Americas after contact is not the simple story we often assume it to be, and this book is designed to help clarify the issue of genocide in the Americas and reveal some of the dimensions present in the interactions between Natives and Europeans that are all too often ignored or glossed over. Even though I initially approached the topic of genocide as an intellectual and theoretical exercise, I quickly realized that it exacts an incredible toll in death, destruction, and suffering, and poses one of the most significant threats to human and social well-being. It is hard not to be deeply moved and affected when you travel to locations where genocides have taken place, when you speak with survivors, and when you continuously study and explore the reality of what genocide means in terms of human suffering and death. Speaking with individuals who still carry the marks of machetes on their bodies or walking in communities that bear the recent pockmarks and scars of gunfire and mortar rounds can have a powerful impact on you. I remember, too, traveling to Sarajevo in 1998 and walking across an airport runway that only a few short years earlier had been the scene 124

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of so much bloodshed. From my hotel window in Sarajevo, I could see many buildings that were still gutted and wrecked from artillery fire during the siege of the city. It was a particularly powerful experience to walk along a city street and see bullet holes on the wall next to you and realize that someone had been running while under fire on the very spot that I was now so casually strolling. Speaking with ordinary Sarajevans and hearing about their lives and the pain and suffering they experienced also reinforced the lesson for me that these issues where not just abstract issues of research, but they were instead all too real and intensely personal. Years later, when I became Director of the Martin Springer Institute, I began attending a Holocaust survivors association in Phoenix, Arizona, and was amazed to hear the same pain expressed, even though many years had passed since the Holocaust took place. These were potent experiences for me, and I completely agree with Samuel Totten’s assessment that when you expose yourself to atrocity crimes, “It changes one forever, as it should” (Totten, 2011), and my research has changed me. My work on genocide has therefore become much, much more than a simple topic of research. While it may sound trite and clichéd, I study and write about genocide because I hope that, in some small way, my work helps to make a difference in understanding this crime so that we can better prevent and punish. I do believe that the more we learn about violence in its many forms, the better we as individuals, communities, and societies, are able to work more effectively to ameliorate the violence that continues to plague our world. This orientation informs all my work, whether it is on genocide or on violence more generally. Over the years, I have particularly valued the opportunity to speak in a variety of venues both in the United States and internationally to various political and government officials and others working to prevent outbreaks of genocide and to punish offenders. I value these opportunities because they allow me to share my work with individuals and groups that can potentially influence policy. In 2004, for example, I was one of a number of genocide scholars invited to speak at the Stockholm International Forum on preventing genocide, hosted by the Swedish government. In attendance were such luminaries as Kofi Annan, then Secretary General of the United Nations, as well as Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel and Paul Kagame, the postgenocide leader of Rwanda, among many other heads of state and political officials. Even though we scholars were relegated to a minor role in the proceedings, it 125

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nonetheless represented an opportunity to present our work to people who had the ability to make policy decisions. In the United States, I have similarly had the opportunity to present to diplomats, State Department Officials, intelligence analysts, and others involved in US government policy. While I don’t fool myself that my voice has made a big impact, I value these opportunities nonetheless. For me, the ability to combine theory with praxis is an important part of my work. Regarding genocide, I find the question of definition particularly problematic. As a criminologist, the definition I naturally gravitate toward is the United Nations Genocide Convention definition (UNGC). I tend to rely on it because it is the definition that has the authority of international law backing it up. It has been successfully incorporated into the tribunals that were established to try those who allegedly committed atrocity crimes in both Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and in the International Law Commission’s Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind, as well as the International Criminal Court (Schabas, 2006). Given that people who study genocide often define themselves not only as scholars, but also as activists dedicated to genocide prevention, this is no small matter since international law is the arena in which we arguably see the greatest strides being made toward punishing violators and deterring potential offenders. This isn’t to suggest that international law is particularly effective or doesn’t suffer from a number of significant shortcomings, but rather that it is one of the few avenues in which tangible progress has been made against genocide. As a social scientist, however, I am nevertheless troubled by undue reliance on the UN definition for a number of reasons. My primary hesitation with the UNGC is that it is a legal definition that was created in a political process, and it is important to ask if this is the appropriate tool to operationalize genocide for comparative social science purposes. It is the nature of the phenomenon being studied that should dictate the conceptualization and operationalization of a concept rather than a politicized procedure intended for specific legal purposes. Legal definitions assume or imply that there are easily identifiable, static, and concrete characteristics of behavior because they are necessary for juridical proceedings. In truth, however, genocide is no one single thing. I agree with Helen Fein’s assessment that genocide is fundamentally a “fuzzy” topic with indistinct and unclear borders (Fein 1994). This isn’t meant to be flippant, but rather to acknowledge that genocide refers 126

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to a phenomenon that isn’t very easily defined and understood. Not only is it conceptually difficult to wrap one’s mind around the nature of the crime itself, but we also have to acknowledge that genocide is a very complicated and difficult subject to analyze. Strictly speaking, our definitions should emerge from the body of research that continuously identifies, compares, and distinguishes attributes and qualities of the phenomenon being studied. A second major hesitation I have with the UNGC is that as a legal definition it defines this phenomenon in, not surprisingly, a legalistic fashion. Yet genocide is so varied, complicated, and dynamic that only a truly interdisciplinary approach can hope to bring us closer to the reality of this destructive form of collective violence. This is the stance taken, for example, by Jacques Semelin (2007) in his excellent book Purify and Destroy. If I were a lawyer building a case against a perpetrator, the UNGC would suffice, but for comparative and analytical purposes, it does not always work very well. This is precisely the reason why various scholars such as Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonasohn (1990), Vahakn Dadrian (1975), Robert Melson (1992), Helen Fein (1993), Israel Charny (1994), and Irving Louis Horowitz (1997), among many others, have proposed a great variety of alternative definitions to genocide and why others have abandoned the term completely in favor of concepts such as democide (Rummel, 1994), politicide (Harff and Gurr, 1988), atrocity crimes (Scheffer, 2006), and extremely violent societies (Gerlach, 2010). While I find many of these definitions quite appealing and sometimes useful, they also suffer from some problems. First, one weakness is that most of these substitute definitions delineate genocide through distinctly disciplinarian lenses. This shouldn’t necessarily be a surprise given the ways in which we, as academics, tend to be trained, but unfortunately it does reinforce approaches to genocide studies that are largely one-sided in orientation. This is unfortunate since, as I have indicated above, I believe that genocide studies needs to be much more interdisciplinary in orientation and approach. Second, these definitions range across the spectrum, from ones that include almost all mass killing (Charny, 1994) to those that are much more exclusionary (Katz 1992), with many shades in between. Some of these definitions are so broad and inclusive that almost every outrage or atrocity can be referred to as genocide. Yet, if genocide is applied to everything, then it explains nothing. Some of the aforementioned definitions focus more on the outcome of behavior rather than on the intent. For the authors 127

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of such, it is more about the end result, regardless of whether it was consciously planned and intended. In recent years, other scholars, especially those who focus on colonialism, have argued that genocide should not be solely perceived as intentional destructive action, but instead as a type of relationship that is fundamentally or inherently genocidal (see, for example, Moses, 2008). According to this argument, because of the political, economic, and social power imbalances present in colonial structures and arrangements, colonialism is by its very nature genocidal. These new approaches, as interesting and provocative as they may be, fundamentally reshape the way in which genocide is generally defined and understood, and I’m not sure if they always move us forward in ways that are productive and useful. As a tool of historical analysis and comparison, this approach can certainly provide valuable insight, but its usefulness in terms of conceptualizing genocide to better prevent and intervene in contemporary outbreaks of genocide is less clear to me. In short, within the emerging field of genocide studies, there is no general agreement as to what constitutes genocide. This is why, in assessing the emerging field of genocide studies, I must admit that I agree with Jacques Semelin, who recently wrote, “If we look at the field of genocide research as a whole, what a mess!” (Semelin, 2012). Because of the lack of consensus on even the most fundamental of issues, it sometimes appears as if genocide scholars spend far more time engaged in academic debates over the relative merits of various definitions than on actually studying this particular form of mass violence itself. Unfortunately, this is not unique to genocide studies. This new field of study seems all too prone to many of the problems associated with academia in general, where there is simply too much academic infighting that seems very divorced from the issues being studied. Not only do I see this as counterproductive, but it also contributes to the seeming marginality of genocide studies to actually impacting policy changes. In recent years, a number of influential publications and initiatives have appeared that were intended to produce real changes in government policy toward genocide and encourage a greater willingness to intervene when outbreaks occur. These include the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) (Evans 2001), the Albright/Cohen Report on preventing genocide (2008), and the Mass Atrocity Response Operations (MARO) Handbook (2010). While their collective impact has been somewhat underwhelming, they nonetheless represent concrete steps toward creating effective strategies in order to prevent genocide. Yet, 128

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when these documents are examined, it is clear that genocide scholars and their insights were only marginally involved. If genocide is to be useful as a tool that assists in shaping policy, it must move beyond the endless debates and disagreements concerning definitional or technical matters that seem to characterize too much of this field. At some point, it seems to me that genocide studies needs to decide what it is. Is it simply about studying past history and cases? If so, what does that mean for the ability of genocide studies to impact policy? Is genocide simply a legal concept intended to punish perpetrators? If that is the case, we need to remember that law is largely a reactive tool that is applied after the harm is done. Given the nature of genocide, the ability of international human rights law to deter future offenders seems minimal. Deterrence depends upon a number of conditions that must be met for it to work, and given the research on deterrence in the US criminal justice system, it is probably safe to say that legal mechanisms alone cannot deter potential outbreaks. In my opinion, genocide studies needs to work more arduously to better explain the deeper underlying dynamics and forces that contribute to how and why genocide and similar kinds of atrocity crimes come to be contemplated and carried out. I believe that this kind of work is crucial given the changes that are starting to affect our world. In recent years, I have become very much interested in trying to understand the possible consequences of global climate change and how these transformations may impact potential conflict and genocides in the future. As the earth warms, predictions strongly suggest that weather patterns will alter, with some regions seeing increased rainfall and moisture, while other areas will experience increased and prolonged droughts. Significant or extreme weather events, such as storms, tornados, and hurricanes, will become more common and more powerful (Peterson, Stottand, and Herring, 2012). In fact, many suggest that global weather patterns already reflect this new reality with once unusual weather events, such as droughts and wildfires, becoming much more common. Given that this process is expected to continue and even accelerate, many nations will likely see their ability to grow crops and feed their populations diminished as traditional rain patterns change, rivers, lakes, and aquifers diminish or run dry, and crops succumb to the combined effects of less precipitation and higher average temperatures. Many crops have a very limited temperature range, and more than a few are already being subjected to conditions beyond their ideal range (Dyer, 2010). In coastal areas, rising sea levels from the 129

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melting of polar and glacial ice combined with thermal expansion of seawater will mean that many coastal regions will be inundated or at the very least subjected to higher tides and storm surges. Importantly, in these seaside areas, supplies of potable water will be diminished because of the increasing salinity of rivers, bays, and coastal groundwater sources, while loss of coastal fisheries due to warmer water will negatively impact those who depend on fishing for their livelihoods (Nicholls, Wong, Burkett, Codignotto, Hay, McLean, Ragoonaden, and Woodroffe, C., 2007). I believe that, in combination, these kinds of climate-induced changes will challenge the ability of many societies to cope and adapt, and it is quite possible that some of the weaker states will fail and descend into internal conflict, civil war, and widespread criminal violence as resources become scarcer and/or are distributed unequally within a society. We know that law and order often break down when states lose the ability to maintain and enforce social order. One has only to look at recent history in places such as the Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Haiti to see the ways in which failed states can descend into anarchy and violence (Lee, 2009). It is also possible that nations may turn to their geographic neighbors who appear vulnerable and who have greater resources and attempt to wrest those resources from them militarily. This option may appeal in situations where borders are close and appear to be weakly defended, and where historical conflicts and preexisting prejudices may serve to provide pretexts for aggression. We see both outcomes in the example of the Democratic Republic of the Congo where state failure in the mid-1990s led directly into anarchy and violence that was exploited by neighboring states who saw, in the situation, an opportunity to gain access to the Congo’s natural resources (Prunier, 2011). Let us not forget that diminishing resources have often sparked conflict and wars in the past and climate change will only serve to make that more common (Dyer, 2010; Klare, 2001; Lee, 2009; Mazo, 2010; Parenti, 2011). As a scholar of genocide and violence, I’m concerned that the modern era may well see similar patterns emerge as governments struggle to cope with the challenges of resource loss in the face of climate change. Some scholars have specifically argued that the loss of arable land and potable water, species extinction, deforestation, and the decline of fisheries can all help bring about intergroup conflict and violence, especially in the developing world (Conteh-Morgan, 2004; HomerDixon, 1994). Depending on the level of structural inequality, amount 130

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of authoritarianism, and excess populations, these impacts will most likely result in more internal and interstate conflict (Myers, 1993). We know that resources, such as water, have already become potent sources of contention and flash points for armed confrontation around the world (Pearce, 2006; Solomon, 2010. Water: De Villiers, 2000). To see this reality in action, one has only to look at the Darfur region of the Sudan, which since 2003 has been the scene of the twenty-first century’s first example of genocide. While most analyses of this genocide have focused on the role of racism within Sudanese society and the extremism of the government, we shouldn’t ignore the geographic and climate related factors that have played an important role in facilitating this genocide. Specifically, the Darfur region of the Sudan has long been suffering the effects of overgrazing and drought (Prunier, 2008), and this reality led to violence in the region during the 1980s and then reappeared as genocide in 2003 (Fowler, 2005). While political and military calculations, ethnic stereotypes, and long-standing antagonisms were crucial to creating this genocide, we cannot ignore the role that drought, desertification, and overgrazing played in facilitating a situation in which the genocidal impulse could take hold. Furthermore, researchers have found that populations tend to develop much more reactive and punitive attitudes during uncertain economic times, periods of high crime rates, and eras of social and cultural change (Costelloe, Chiricos, Buriánek, Gertz, and MaierKatkin, 2002; Costelloe, Chiricos, and Gertz, 2007). In this kind of social and political climate, harsh measures and attitudes become more popular, and the state often becomes much more repressive against those individuals and groups defined as dangerous, threatening, or different. During times of crisis, states also tend to become more authoritarian and intolerant of dissent, which also contributes to a higher risk of persecution (Mann, 2005). An analogous situation concerns the backlash against immigrants in both the United States and in many European countries. It is no accident that much of the rhetoric has been fueled by economic uncertainty and hardship experienced since the downturn in 2008. Nativist movements, anti-immigrant legislation, and popular demagogues have all coalesced around immigration issues in recent years. In an era when the number of refugees may well increase dramatically, this hostility can become more common and in some cases lead to repression and violence. 131

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This above discussion is not meant to suggest that conflict, war, and genocide are inevitable outcomes of climate change, but rather that the coming years may well see conditions develop that have been shown to lead to conflict and violence in other times and places. It is my sincere hope that the growing and emergent field of genocide studies will focus more attention on these kinds of concerns so that we increase our ability to identify, prevent, and intervene in locations where genocides or similar kinds of atrocity crimes appear to be developing or have already broken out. References

Agnew, Robert (1994). “The Techniques of Neutralization and Violence.” Criminology, 32, 555–80. Albright, Madeleine, and Cohen, William S. (2008). Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers, Washington, D.C.: Genocide Prevention Task Force. Alvarez, Alex (2014). Native America and the Question of Genocide. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Alvarez, Alex (1997). Adjusting to Genocide: The Techniques of Neutralization and the Holocaust. Social Science History, 21, 139–78. Alvarez, Alex (2001). Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approach. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Alvarez, Alex (2009). Genocidal Crimes. New York: Routledge. Alvarez, Alex, and Bachman, Ronet (2002). Murder American Style. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. Alvarez, Alex, and Bachman, Ronet (2013.) Violence: The Enduring Problem, 2nd Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Campbell, Kenneth J. (2001) Genocide and the Global Village. New York: Palgrave. Chalk, Frank, and Jonassohn, Kurt. (1990). The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analysis and Case Studies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Charny, Israel W. (1994). “Toward a Generic Definition of Genocide.” In George J. Andreopoulos (Ed.) Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Costelloe, Michael T.; Chiricos, Ted; Buriánek, Jiří; Gertz, Marc; and MaierKatkin, Daniel (2002). “The Social Correlates of Punitiveness toward Criminals: A Comparison of the Czech Republic and Florida.” The Justice System Journal, 23(2), 191–220. Costelloe, Michael T.; Chiricos, Ted; and Gertz, Marc (2007). “Punitive Attitudes toward Criminals: Exploring the Relevance of Crime Salience and Economic Insecurity.” Punishment and Society, 11(1), 25–29. Conteh-Morgan, Earl (2004). Collective Political Violence: An Introduction to the Theories and Cases of Violent Conflicts. New York: Routledge. Cressey, Donald (1953). Other People’s Money: A Study in the Social Psychology of Embezzlement. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Dadrian, Vahakn. (1975). “A Typology of Genocide.” International Review of Modern Sociology, 5, 204. De Villiers, Marq (2000). Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin. 132

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Dyer, Gwynne (2010). Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats. Oxford: One World. Evans, Gareth, and Sahnoun, Mohamed. (2001). Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty: The Responsibility to Protect. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre. Fein, Helen (1994). “Genocide, Terror, Life Integrity, and War Crimes: The Case for Discrimination.” In J. George Andreopoulos (Ed.) Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 95–108. Ferraro, Kathleen J., and Johnson, John M. (1983). “How Women Experience ­Battering: The Process of Victimization.” Social Problems, 30, 325–39. Fowler, Jerry (2005). “Evolution of Conflict and Genocide in Sudan: A Historical Survey.” In Apsel, Joyce (Ed.) Darfur: Genocide Before Our Eyes. New York: Institute for the Study of Genocide. Gerlach, Christian (2010). Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World. New York: Cambridge University Press. Goldstein, Jeffrey H. (1986). Aggression and Crimes of Violence. New York: Oxford University Press. Hagan, John, and Rymond-Richmond, Wenona (2009). Darfur and the Crime of Genocide. New York: Cambridge University Press. Harff, Barbara, and Gurr, Ted R. (1988). “Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945.” International Studies Quarterly, 32, 269–81. Haveman, Rolf, and Smeulers, Alette (Eds.), (2008). Towards a Criminology of International Crimes. Antwerp: Intersentia. Hirsch, Herbert (1995). Genocide and the Politics of Memory: Studying Death To Preserve Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Homer-Dixon, Thomas. (1994). “Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases.” International Security, 19, 146–71. Horning, Donald M. (1979). “Blue Collar Theft: Conceptions of Property Attitudes Toward Pilfering and Workgroup Norms in a Modern Industrial Plant,” pp. 63–80. In Erwin Smigel and H. Lawrence Ross (Eds.) Crime Against Bureaucracy. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Horowitz, Irving Louis (1997). Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power. 4th Edition. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Katz, Steven (1992). The Holocaust in Historical Context: Volume 1. The ­Holocaust and Mass Death before the Modern Age. New York: Oxford University Press. Klare, Michael T. (2001). Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Lee, James R. (2009). Climate Change and Armed Conflict: Hot and Cold Wars. New York: Routledge. Mann, Michael (2005). The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mars, Gerald (1974). “Dock Pilferage: A Case Study in Occupational Theft,” pp. 89–101. In Paul Rock and Mary McIntosh (Eds.) Deviance and Social Control. London: Tavistock. Mazo, Jeffrey (2010). Climate Conflict: How Global Warming Threatens Security and What to Do About It. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies. 133

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Melson, Robert (1992). Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Moses, A. Dirk (Ed.). (2008). Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History. New York: Berghahn Books. Myers, Norman (1993). Ultimate Security: The Environmental Basis of Political Stability. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Nicholls, R.; Wong, P.; Burkett, J.; Codignotto, V.; Hay, J.; McLean, R.; Ragoonaden, S.; and Woodroffe, C. (2007). “Coastal Systems and Low-Lying Areas,” pp. 315–356. In M. Parry, O. Canziani, J. Palutikof, P. van der Linden, and C. Hanson (Eds.) Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parenti, Christian (2011). Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. New York: Nation Books. Pearce, Fred (2006). When the Rivers Run Dry: Water—The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Peterson, Thomas C.; Stottand, Peter A.; and Herring, Stephanie (Eds.) (2012). “Explaining Extreme Events of 2011 from a Climate Perspective.” American Meteorological Society, July, 1041–1067. Prunier, Gerard (2008). Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide, 3rd edition. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Prunier, Gerard (2011). Africa’s World War: Congo, The Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. New York: Oxford University Press. Rothe, Dawn L., and Mullins, Christopher W. (2011). State Crime: Current Perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Rummel, Rudy (1994). Death by Government. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Schabas, William A. (2006). “The ‘Odious Scourge’: Evolving Interpretations of the Crime of Genocide.” Genocide Studies and Prevention, September, 1(2), 93–106. Scheffer, David (2006). “Genocide and Atrocity Crimes.” Genocide Studies and Prevention. 1(3), 229–50. Semelin, Jacques. (2007). Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacres and Genocide. New York: Columbia University Press. Semelin, Jacques. (2012). “Around the “G” Word: From Raphael Lemkin’s Definition to Current Memorial and Academic Controversies.” Genocide Studies and Prevention, 7(1), 24–29. Sewall, Sarah; Raymond, Dwight; and Chin, Sally. (2010). Mass Atrocity Response Operations: A Military Planning Handbook. Cambridge, MA: Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. Solomon, Steven (2010). Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization. New York: Harper. Sykes, Gresham, and David Matza (1957). “Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency.” American Sociological Review, 22, 664–70. Totten, Samuel (2011). “The State and Future of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An Overview and Analysis of Some Key Issues.” Genocide Studies and Prevention, 6(3), 211–30.

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7 Out of the Shadow of War and Genocide Henry C.Theriault

While I am deeply honored to be included in this volume, I write with a certain misgiving about turning the attention to myself and others who study genocide. Is this a moment of self-absorption that displaces those who should be our focus—the victims of mass violence? For every name appearing as the author of a publication in our field, there are tens of thousands of unnamed victims in recent centuries. Do we presume to be important because our subject is? While I admire many individuals devoted to an activist intellectual engagement of genocide, it is easy for scholars of genocide to appear virtuous relative to the horrific destroyers that populate our works. For some who study of genocide, the status it affords them as being “good people” committed to defending of human rights seems to trump everything else. Perhaps this is stretching things a bit too far. Whatever the benefits, studying genocide is a painful process. For numerous years and despite its popularity, I avoided teaching my “Mass Violence Against Women” because I just could not bear immersing myself in the material one more time. Teaching it again took realizing the selfish triviality of my feelings relative to the great suffering of victims and acknowledging my overriding obligation to them. I have to admit, I sometimes wonder what it would be like spending my time doing close readings of the Phenomenology of Spirit as I try to disentangle the nuances of Hegelian dialectics, rather than trying to understand the “dialectics of perpetration” that lead some human beings to relish inflicting on others virtually every physical and psychological injury imaginable. I am not sure there is an easy resolution to such reservations, and perhaps that is good. Choosing to work on genocide requires an ongoing reappraisal of one’s motives and relationship to the subject. 137

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Or maybe studying genocide requires the opposite, no reflection at all, in the sense of a commitment that drives one to study regardless of the secondary issues. Such issues are bound to be raised more and more, or at least they should be, for the field of “genocide studies” has become quite fashionable these days Perhaps the positive way to characterize what I am about to do is this: employing a personal narrative to try to gain for myself and to offer to others greater insight into the dynamics of mass violence, through understanding how it shapes the social world and individual lives within it.1 Despite an illusory sense of the self, the “I” who is writing is ultimately the result of the play of social forces in a particular context (see Foucault 1984), and analysis of that “I” and its relationship to genocide is one possible route to transforming social forces away from the destructive forms that predominate today. At the very least, this narrative will present my core insights into and concerns about mass violence in what is hopefully a more compelling and contextualized way than is possible in standard academic writing. Probably the most interesting role of social forces in construction of engagement with genocide happens with scholars who do not have a familial or experiential connection to a particular case, and yet who choose anyway to engage. Less so are cases like my own. I spent my first eight years living in the home of a genocide survivor. My grandmother, Servart Ayanian Sielian, survived the Armenian Genocide with some members of her family in what one might call a typical story from that case. By “typical” I mean that it involved the death of family members as well as violence, starvation, and complicated maneuvers to survive. My grandmother never spoke of her experiences to me. What I know of her story comes from my mother, Rose Sielian Theriault, who pieced it together from what little my grandmother would tell her and what she learned from other family members, despite the fact that my grandmother almost never spoke to anyone about what happened to her.2 I know that my grandmother’s father, a local leader and business owner in Evkere,3 was taken by Turkish soldiers. He was tortured and killed, and then the soldiers stole everything in the family’s warehouse. I know one of her brothers died because of the hardships of the genocide, though I don’t know the particulars. I know that eventually her other brother, as a teenager, led her across Turkey to Greece and, ultimately, Ellis Island. I know that my mother’s father brought the rest of her family over later. 138

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My maternal grandfather, Hampartsoum Sielian, was not a 1915 genocide survivor, because when he was a boy, his family had fled the bad treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire some years before the genocide, possibly soon after the 1894–1896 Hamidian massacres of about 200,000 Armenians. They made their way to Alexandria, Egypt, where my great-grandfather died when my grandfather was a young teen, leaving him responsible for his mother and younger sister. He was eventually able to get them to the United States. He also originally had an older sister of whom he never spoke. Whenever my mother would ask him what happened to her, he would break down, unable to say anything more than, “She’s dead, she’s just dead”–the facts of her fate yet another piece of my family history lost in the destructive force of mass violence. From a young age, my mother was clear about my identity as an Armenian, and the fact that I lived in the United States because of the genocide of my people. I learned that we were not alone—Jews and others had suffered genocide as well. I first learned about anti-Semitism from my mother’s stories about how my half-Jewish elementary schoolaged father and his sister (at the time with the surname Silver) had to stand back to back defending themselves from anti-Semitic attacks by neighborhood kids in the early 1940s.4 Another step in the development of my nascent concern vis-à-vis universal human rights occurred around 1976 when I happened to see, on television, a film about Native American genocide, I Will Fight No More Forever.5 I was profoundly affected by that film’s presentation of the utter injustice of what happened to Native Americans and the sense of doom it conveyed—to be a people experiencing the process of destruction as it plays out and realize that there is nothing one can do and nothing those causing the destruction will do to change the course of genocidal history. I surely did not understand this consciously at the time, but the experience called up feelings about my Armenian past, deep and powerful feelings that, as hard as they were to experience, became my guides as I grew older. It was the sense of futility, however much accompanied by the quiet dignity of Chief Joseph, that hit me so hard. This was the sense of the meaning of being Armenian I was raised with. The world was utterly indifferent to what had happened to us. The Turkish state denied it. I realized via an article on the Turks’ repression of Kurds published in 1978 or 1979 that I brought in for a current events assignment in seventh grade that the world could keep doing the same thing to other groups as much as it pleased. 139

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Growing up in a redneck town with an immigrant grandmother speaking heavily accented English mixed with Armenian, I lived with at once the arrogance of being the only Armenian family with a harrowing history far beyond the understanding of the locals around me and at the same time as a dismissed outsider in a neighborhood of kids for whom my grandmother was just a funny old lady who banged on the window by her chair in the living room when they broke branches by ripping down berries from her beloved Mountain Ash tree. Armenian identity was something I held on to but could not affect or help in the least. It was my secret, with absolutely no role in the public sphere, however much I might have proudly declared my heritage to the point of annoying those around me. And the genocide was something simply to be accepted, to be borne, settled history we could do nothing about. Indeed, it was made clear that Armenians should never make trouble regarding the genocide, because many in Turkey still felt the same way about Armenians—which might seem a family prejudice but has, unfortunately, been proven true again and again in the present time through denial, anti-Armenian violence, and repression. To speak of the genocide publicly, and especially to challenge its denial, was dangerous and never to be done. Our fate was to mourn silently and to speak in private spaces, only to Armenians and the few others who knew and cared. As a result of the Great Depression driving my previously prosperous family north from the Boston area to a small New Hampshire city, I lived isolated from Armenians outside my extended family, seeing other Armenians only on occasions such as Easter or an annual picnic, living indeed the life of postgenocide identity dissolution. Not only did I never go to a genocide commemoration, I did not even know such events existed until I was in college. I credit my sister, Kim Servart Theriault, for first opening for me the door to public engagement with the Armenian Genocide when she did an extra-credit report on it in sixth or seventh grade. Though I did not fully understand the impact of this at the time, it was the first and, until my twenties, only time I saw someone push scholarship on this or any other genocide besides the Holocaust into a world that appeared indifferent to it. Even the Holocaust I learned about only in fragmented and spotty ways (i.e., from lectures given by my exceptional sixth grade teacher, Stan Moulton, and from staring at a chilling photo of Jews killed in a concentration camp that I discovered late in my fascination with World War II, which to that time had consisted of naïve enthrallment 140

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with F4U Corsairs, B-17 Flying Fortresses, and other air, land, and sea machines of war). What I have said so far represents only part of my story. I have always been identified as a white North American, that is, the perpetrator group of the genocide of indigenous peoples on this continent on which I live. This is despite the fact that my family, at least on my mother’s side (I know no details of the history of my father’s side) had arrived decades after Wounded Knee and had no direct role in the destruction of Native Americans or the twentieth century continuation of it through forced assimilation, land-theft, and targeted killings. In a much more immediate way, I was implicated in US mass violence and aggression beyond the shores of our nation. My father, Samuel Silver Theriault, served four-and-a-half tours in Vietnam, in addition to an illegal mission training Montagnards in Laos and a spy mission on a small island off the coast of Communist China. He was not a draftee, but a nearly original and highly decorated member of the US Special Forces. In fact, the Saigon chapter of the Special Forces Association was named in his honor,6 and he even makes a brief appearance in Robin Moore’s bestseller, The Green Berets (1966).7 My birth occurred when he was oversees on a six-month assignment helping form the Jordanian Special Forces.8 But things are less simple than this. My father was killed in action in South Vietnam on November 27, 1967, when I was still a toddler. I have no direct memory of his presence in my life, and I probably could barely identify a picture of him today. But the specter of his memory in my home growing up was palpable, his absence a profound presence and a determining force for my family. Though I did not understand how, it shaped our lives even in the decision to remain where we lived in New Hampshire. It had economic and personal impacts. In my childhood, my goal was to follow my father by joining the Special Forces. I was fascinated by war as some kind of glorious activity. His story of being wounded multiple times and ultimately killed staying behind to hold off “the enemy” while the rest of his team escaped was certainly heroic by traditional standards. World War II, not Vietnam, however, became my obsession, particularly its aircraft. And then came science fiction. These interests and academic aptitude pushed me to recast my desire for military service into a different form, as a flyer or astronaut. I had no questions or doubts about this path, even as I grew older—the benefit of living in the libertarian, chauvinistic New Hampshire of the 1980s. In ninth grade, for instance, I wrote a book report 141

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on The Green Berets. In it, I characterized the violations of Laotian sovereignty recounted in the book as, beyond question, morally right. I could not conceive at that time this was not justified, even when my “liberal” English teacher questioned my view. I was already in Air Force Junior ROTC and would be accepted to both the Naval and Air Force Academies my senior year. Reinforced from all sides by the rightwing context, I became entrenched in militarism, with no qualms regarding the United States invading Grenada in 1983. I was perhaps saved by my father’s death, an unintended and indirect sacrifice I appreciated only later. In April of my senior year, with the admissions to the service academies as well as regular universities compelling a decision, my English teacher pulled me aside for a minute one day, asking me what I planned to do. When I said I would probably go the Air Force Academy, she looked patiently at me and replied, “Just make sure to think about what that would mean for your mother.” My future to that point had been about me, but that seed of concern, once planted, made me realize my decisions would impact others as well. Though I am sure the prospect of her son going into the military after what happened to her husband weighed heavily on my mother, she never hinted at any such concern, instead stressing that which college I would attend and the subsequent path of my life were completely my decisions.9 But my English teacher’s words affected me.10 I might have felt a bit of relief about not pursuing a military career as I made my decision to attend a civilian university. I’m not sure. But that decision now seems one of the truly fortuitous moments of my life. I am convinced that it saved me from becoming a different person, and possibly the kind of person I struggle against now. For what would I have become, an eighteen-year-old molded into a fully military mindset? Would I have been flying bombing missions over Iraq in 1991 or 2003? Would I have been one of the countless US soldiers inculcated into a culture of normalized and even celebrated sexual harassment and violence? This was an important stride toward a focus on human rights. A third aspect of my childhood linked in all too concrete ways the violence of my family’s past, previously known to me only through abstract narratives, to my everyday life. Being bullied was a central part of my life growing up, unprotected as I was by a “masculine” presence. It started in first grade with teasing and then beatings. In seventh grade it became “gay bashing” (it did not matter whether I was straight or gay, of course). The way things worked in my town and schools was that the lines between “unmasculine” and “gay” were quite blurry. So, in one sense, I expect the 142

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bullies thought I was gay just as they did all the others they bullied. In another sense, “gay bashing” was a means of bullying in the sense that it called the target’s sexuality into question. So, I guess the point would be, there is no way to answer the question of what these kids thought—the key is that they attacked the sexuality and masculinity of their targets. The more I read and sought intellectual development, the more I set myself up for abuse. Two episodes among many stick out for their contrast. When I was probably in eighth grade, I was walking home via some side streets. A kid who had been in my elementary school and who I got along with OK was with another kid I didn’t know. I said “Hi” to the boy from my elementary school, but before I knew it the other kid had “turned on me” and was threatening and then punching me. I remember being completely surprised by this turn of events, which made no sense to me, and pleading to the kid I knew to stop what was happening. This was a lesson in completely random, unanticipatable violence. For many genocide victims, the violence often seems to have come out of nowhere and without reason. The second case contrasts sharply. Probably the summer after sixth grade, a neighborhood kid, also from my elementary school, decided he really hated me. He cornered me one afternoon when I was out riding my bike and “laid down the law” that the only safe transit I had anywhere in town outside my yard was going to and from school, and if he found me on any other route or at any other time, he’d beat me, a threat he tried to make good on at least once, using a long, sharpened, spear-like stick. There was a psychological component, as this boy emphasized that he knew how I thought and what I would do, even providing examples that made him for a time seem omniscient and thus transcendently powerful in my eyes, but now show him to be a consummate abuser. This was systematic and sinister bullying by someone focusing his intelligence entirely on persecuting and restricting his target. While I refused to give into that restriction, and in that case and others lived my life willing to risk and accept being subject to violence for some measure of freedom, that resistance meant learning to accept continual intense fear and intimidation, not unlike the lot of my Armenian forebears. My experiences being bullied taught me in an intimate way what it is to be helpless in the face of violence against another, and it likely played a role in my later commitment to stopping abuse of the vulnerable. Possibly my experiences had further value in giving me insights into power and violence, by teaching me three key things about ­bullies, 143

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which I believe apply well to genocide perpetrators at every level. First, when targets challenge bullies, they do not run scared. Instead, because they believe they are entitled to be dominant, they become yet more aggressive and dangerous. I once had a bully who beat me up and then attacked me a second time on the pretext that the first time I had taken a punch at him during the fight. He saw my meager attempt at self-defense as me inciting him. This was my first lesson in the “provocation theses” denial method as well as a chance to understand why powerful groups commit genocide against weaker groups when these weaker groups simply try to act like equal human beings, and why the perpetrators misperceive this assertion of basic humanity as an attack or threat. Second, bullies are tough—they are usually bigger, faster, and devious, or willing to be more brutal than their victims. They do not bully out of fear, but out of a sense of their own supremacy. In the same way, genocide perpetrators attack because they have the power to destroy those weaker than they are. Applying limited measures against them, such as the US response to Sudan’s murderous actions in Darfur, has no effect for they have a keen sense of their own power and a love of discharging that power against others. Lastly and most controversially, those who have bullied repeatedly are bad human beings. They might not always have been so, but by the time they have reached an age where they can make their bullying count, it has become part of their identity and nature. They are the kind of boys (or, less frequently, girls) who become wife or child abusers and commit atrocities when serving in the military, etc. Incorrigible bullies are only stopped when a stronger external force keeps them from hurting others. This is why we now deal with bullying through antibullying laws and law enforcement intervention instead of inane encouragements to stand up to bullies. In the same way, no amount of human rights education or promotion will stop a perpetrator once he/ she has started down the path to genocide; they must be prevented by taking away their power or stopping the discharge of that power. This might seem a combative or militarist view, but it is quite the opposite: there is nothing in the concept of “a force more powerful” that requires it to be violent. One other influence regarding the development of my commitment to human rights scholarship and advocacy should also be mentioned, and that is the model set by my mother, who spent many of my formative years as a member of my hometown’s school board. She would return 144

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from meetings to tell me of her and her one ally’s battles against the vindictive long-term mayor, beloved by many, who starved the schools of basic funding, ultimately relegating the school to one of the lowest statuses in a state of low-status school systems. I learned from her that no matter the personal price, in the face of abusive, harmful, or corrupt power, a human being must stand up. Much of my time as an undergraduate contained negative engagements and nonengagements with human rights issues that I regret to this day. I remember being extremely excited to have just turned eighteen in time to vote in the 1984 general election so that I could show my support for Ronald Reagan. I recall as well my shameful indifference to the plight of South Africans under Apartheid, an obvious function of my rightwing mentality, and a similar disregard for a “Take Back the Night March.” For three years, at least in explicit terms, my unfortunate mindset remained in place. But, underneath, things were beginning to change. I was attending Princeton, an “elite” private university. While I met some interesting and quite decent people there, I was also exposed to the core of wealth and power in the United States and around the world. When applying to universities I perceived my matriculation at such as an escape from the difficult environment of my hometown and neighborhood, filled as they were with violence and economic depression and decay. While there were some really decent families in my neighborhood, there were also drugs and dangerous people. Though apparently not meant as a real threat, a neighborhood teen pulled a pocketknife on me when I was six or seven years old. It is no mystery as to why I saw my future at a university as an entry into a relative paradise. What I found instead was an insider’s world of normalized unearned privilege and power combined with a replication of the class and, in retrospect, the race, gender, and sexuality hierarchies of the broader society.11 I started to reflect on my father’s life, who grew up dirt poor, even spending time with his sister eating Spam in an orphanage during elementary school because his mother was too poor to feed them after their father skipped out. My father worked nights full-time in a factory for at least a year while in high school. He was by all accounts a smart guy who never had a chance. The military was his only route out of poverty. Whatever he did with his military career, he served and died first and foremost because he grew up poor, the same as so many soldiers today. I looked around me at Princeton and realized, by what 145

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they said and how they acted, that many of the wealthy, entitled people looked at those like my father as essentially worthless, their lives and deaths of no importance or value. Perhaps it was self-absorbed to think this way, but it became clear to me that all the pain and suffering of families like mine was nothing to the people dominant in our society. I was struck for the first time by the profundity of inequality in our social, economic, and political structures, which turned the masses into mere tools to be used by elites. I now had an answer that I would understand a few years later: genocide happens because some people consider themselves more valuable, legitimate, justified, etc., than other people, and they believe themselves entitled to use and abuse these others according to their own purposes and desires. Certain experiences reinforced my insight, extending it from personal revelation to political analysis. My senior year, in the university bookstore, I happened on a set of books by authors I had vaguely heard of but thought I should read—Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. I signed up for the course in which these books were assigned, and in short order my understanding of my father’s individual situation became a critique of class through Marx. Further, Nietzsche exposed the malleability of our minds in the face of social and cultural forces. Avoiding my studies one afternoon later that spring, I happened to sit down in front of a television in the basement of the university club I ate at. Oliver Stone’s Salvador woke me from my dogmatic slumber. My lack of real knowledge about the United States and its role in the world played the straight man to the shock caused by that film, as it revealed the violence created by my country. Suddenly, all of the times critical thinking peers had confronted me about my political views—and there were some really thoughtful people in my environment, which shows just how culpable my refusal, my denial, of political facts had been—suddenly got through to me. My very framework of perception of the world changed. I spent the better part of two years after graduating working a government job from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Washington, DC. I was reading new kinds of literature, political theory, philosophy, and expanding on my recent revelations when I realized that I had to do something about the problems I was learning about. With many naïve ideas about it, to be sure, I became committed to political philosophy as a way to think through key issues and make critiques that could change the world. Genocide was not central at all to me then, as I was still focused on 146

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domestic inequality and my growing understanding of gender, racial, and other oppression. I learned by lived experience, too. For instance, my best friend at work, Michael Copeland, an African American, and I spent our breaks and lunchtimes, which included walks around the super-inside-thebeltway world, discussing his deep insights into US political life and about racism and the complexities of intra-black political life in DC (these were the days of Marion Barry, who, Michael explained, cut down a younger generation of black leaders in his quest to hold on to power). I even learned from something as ostensibly simple as walking into businesses with Michael—I noticed that, when I went to restaurants or stores with him, I was treated one way, and when I went with my white university friends, I was treated another. Though I do not mean to suggest I experienced racism, the racist segregation in DC was so thick that even by virtue of being with a black man, the differential treatment washed off on to me. It became clear that all of the complaints about everyday racism, sexism, etc., that are routinely (and this holds true even more today) dismissed and even mocked are, in fact, true. The final collapse of the ideological edifice set in motion by Marx, Nietzsche, and Salvador occurred early in my time in DC. Realizing that the truth of US foreign policy in the 1980s was quite different from the Reagan version made it inevitable that I would question the version of Vietnam that I had grown up with. I started reading, and all too soon the deception was clear. For some reason I cannot explain, I had never had animosity toward anyone regarding my father’s death; it was just the way things were. But when I started understanding how the US government manipulated our public through false claims of provocation (the Gulf of Tonkin), cover-ups of our mass brutality against civilians, and general political and media misinformation, my understanding of my father’s death changed completely. The question was no longer what kind of a soldier he was or whether I was proud of him, but what kind of a government sacrifices human beings out of cynical and misguided political goals and a love of military aggression. But I also realized it wasn’t about my father or my family’s loss—it was about what my country’s military did to destroy a society, to kill children and adults, to spray deadly chemicals that continue to cause harm to this very day, and on and on. I had become a perpetrator. When my government invaded Panama in 1989 on the thinnest of pretexts—pretexts a year or two before, as an undergraduate, I still had not seen through—I was outraged. The indignation and disillusionment 147

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that came with the realization of the true waste of my father’s death became a much more generalized rejection of military aggression, which I would later understand to be neo-imperial expansionism. My personal had become political. Perhaps as a residual of the idealism that led me to think of university as the positive inversion of my hometown, I decided philosophy held the key to engaging the issues I cared about. I was quite naïve about what graduate school would be, and would again be disappointed by at least some of what I found there. But, with some luck, I chose my destination well. The Philosophy Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst boasted a unique “Alternative Track” in social and political philosophy based on a pioneering combination of continental (including Marxist), feminist, and critical race theory. Though the track was formally dissolved the year before I began graduate studies (by the small-minded ill-will of the majority of the department who had no interest in transformative philosophy of this kind),the track’s professors—Bob Ackermann, Ann Ferguson, Bob Wolff, John Brentlinger, and Leonard Ehrlich—and their courses remained. Combined with some classes in the dominant analytic philosophy, I was able to study everything from formal logic to human sexuality. It was in the vibrant community that brought together a fascinating set of graduate students who pushed the envelope in all sorts of research and activist directions that my political and intellectual development progressed in crucial ways.12 The first step in this capstone phase of my political education was challenging, along with five other graduate students, what we recognized as my department’s sexist hiring practices for graduate teaching positions. If we were confrontational in our written remarks to the department chair, this was an important moment for me, for it was the first time I challenged authority from a position of vulnerability. What courage I found in this early instance was due mostly to a kind of positive peer pressure—I knew my peers were right to be concerned about the discriminatory practices, and I traded comfort at conforming to authority for solidarity with those who were in the right. Looking back, through this I developed a pattern—an Aristotelian moral habit—of overcoming hesitation about challenging those in authority. I became more and more used to standing as an unprotected outsider and withstanding the pressure of prevailing attitudes and ideologies. Part of this habit consisted of learning to push myself beyond a point of no return, so that I gave myself no alternative but to 148

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do what was right regardless of fears and discomfort that came later in the process. This first experience of political protest and activism allowed me to subsequently participate in the fall of my second year in our graduate student strike. I had learned to “cross the line” (not the picket line) in a just cause, and became a picket captain as we pushed the university to provide healthcare and other basic benefits to graduate teachers, who were doing sixty percent of the teaching at UMass for a fraction of the wages of professors. The process continued in my second fall in graduate school, in Bob Wolff ’s “Ideological Critique” course. About a third of the way into the course, a discussion, I believe, of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1979), became a debate between those with well-grounded feminist views and a group of postmodernists who advanced the claim that “acquaintance rape” came into existence with the creation of the term, so that it was completely inaccurate to characterize any event before development of the term in the 1980s in this way, and thus no such rapes occurred in, say, the 1950s. The claim relied on the view that language determined what people perceived themselves as experiencing, but its proponents pushed this to ontology—“date rape” for them was a conceptual construct, not material reality. I was deeply troubled by how easy some interlocutors seemingly dismissed the real suffering of actual victims because it was not consistent with an intellectual framework developed in a university setting. What is more, I recognized that the debate connected directly to genocide denial.13 After class, I dashed out a five-page memo to the class arguing that the dismissal of date rape had followed the same logic as is typical in genocide denials. On the one hand, this was meant to provide evidence against the dismissal of date rape. But on the other, I recognized that the debate opened up a challenging epistemological issue that required a theoretical response—and thus I realized that there was academic work to be done on genocide far beyond the historical recording of it. If I recall correctly, I attempted to deal with the fact that individuals perceive reality through a framework that determines in a sense what reality is for them, and yet there is a brute reality of actual violence and suffering that needs to be engaged as well. How to resolve these two elements? My initial response to that question was: by recognizing that “reality” is a construct of objective features filtered through frameworks, and there are better and worse frameworks. While not yet the fully developed epistemological response to denial I arrived at later (see, for instance, Theriault 2001, Theriault 2003, and 149

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Theriault 2004), it was a credible challenge to denial. I like to think it advanced the subsequent discussions in the course. Still, it is telling that my first foray into genocide studies was not a formal paper, but a supplemental document not officially integrated into my coursework or research. Though I would discuss genocide in my dissertation, it would not be until my first year as a professor that I would write an actual academic paper on the topic. As Columbus Day 1992 approached, I joined with a small group of graduate and undergraduate students who refused to sit idly by on the five-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the destruction of indigenous peoples across two continents. Despite sit-ins and the like being decades out of fashion, we reconnected with UMass’ roots as a center of dissent in the 1960s and occupied the fundraising center of the university the week of Columbus Day. We had two simple demands: the renaming of “Columbus Day” as “Indigenous People’s Day,” and the funding of forty scholarships for low-income women of color from the Western Massachusetts communities around the university. While others later claimed credit and our action was not acknowledged, subsequently the name change was made and the scholarships granted. In this process, I learned two valuable lessons. First, the “Alternative Track” professors from my department were true to the political commitments they claimed and were stalwart supporters, with one even doing a multistory rope-climb to bring us food. But many people we expected to lend support to this effort were absent. Perhaps this is an unfair characterization, but such individuals’ oft-repeated calls for strong action toward social change and decrying of oppression and injustice amount to very little when the chance to support social change presents itself to them in actions such as ours.14 Second, while I have wondered since about the tactics we used and the failure to get broad-based support, I remain convinced that it was important to do something. When one puts oneself out in protest, it does not feel good, there’s no cheering, and there’s a good likelihood of failure. But it has to be done if injustice is going to be addressed. Around this time, I heard a lecture by Richard Frye, Armenian Studies professor at Harvard (Frye 1992). In it, he excoriated “nationalism” as deeply irrational and harmful. While his intent might have been to express concern about its negative aspects, including the many times nationalism caused genocide, his target was nationalism as a whole, regardless of specific context and content. When I considered Armenians and other genocide victim groups, his position seemed 150

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fundamentally problematic. While chauvinism and other bad forms of nationalism certainly should be condemned, is the nationalism of a victim group the same social object as that of a perpetrator group? As much as nationalism can produce genocide, a victim group’s ­nationalism—if thoughtfully developed—can function to preserve the group in the aftermath of genocide. Indeed, “antinational-ism,” as I termed it, of the sort promoted by Frye, could be a force in the further dissolution of a genocide victim group. This reaction provided me the topic of my dissertation, which attempted to look at national groups as distinct from state or territorial structures, with a particular eye toward diasporan national identity as a brake against the forces of social and political dissolution. The person who had agreed to be my advisor, Bob Ackermann,15 had just taught a great course on Race, Nation, and Class and was excited to see me extend my work in it. He did his due diligence by emphasizing that a nice, safe dissertation in a recognized area, such as Hegel, whose work I had proven to have a certain facility in engaging, would make much more sense than an uncertain, interdisciplinary topic such as I was considering. But neither of us wanted something nice and safe. The decision to shift from a traditional area of philosophy to one that allowed me to discuss genocide in an academic context was my first formal move into the field. My political education, however, was far from complete, and it would include two more complex experiences. Due to the fact that the first, chronologically speaking, experience had complicated implications all the way into my post-PhD period, I will discuss the second experience first. By 1994, I had been educating myself on various cases of genocide, inspired by Chalk and Jonassohn’s History and Sociology of Genocide (1990). Within Armenian circles, I had come to see my role as educating community members about the suffering of others and the importance of taking up their struggles as much as Armenians ask others to take up ours. At an April 24 commemoration in Springfield, Massachusetts, I delivered a speech devoted almost entirely to other groups. It culminated in asking the audience to see the connection between the denial that met accusations of police brutality against Rodney King—despite direct video evidence of his brutal beating— and denial of the Armenian Genocide. I was proud of the remarks I constructed and the reaction of the audience, many of whom took up the challenge of considering the suffering of others to extend to racism in our own society. Looking back later, however, I became ashamed of the speech, not because the sentiments behind it were bad or even 151

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that perhaps my pride was in part personal egotism, but, much more importantly, because for all my words about Native Americans and the Hereros and the Roma and the Plain of Jars, I had omitted the group that should have been at the center of my remarks. April 24, 1994, was the height of the Rwandan Genocide, at a point when my words could have at the very least spurred some people to put pressure on elected representatives to call for intervention. Despite my growing understanding of genocide and denial, including what I saw clearly as genocide in the former Yugoslavia, I took the press reports about Rwanda at face value and did not even consider raising the issue in my remarks. This has become my own personal “never again” moment. A few months after the Columbus Day 1992 episode, there was an unfortunate incident in which three Turkish people in Germany were killed as the result of anti-immigrant violence. German students sent an open letter to Turkish students on our campus expressing solidarity and condemning the violence, and the Turkish students offered an open reply stressing their great commitment against racism. I reacted negatively to the exchange, given the level of denial of the Armenian Genocide by Turkish students on the UMass campus. I wrote and published as an editorial in the graduate monthly a criticism of what I considered serious hypocrisy. I realized soon after that the outraged tone of my editorial was not justified. While it would have been appropriate to point out the contradiction between, on the one hand, claiming victimization by racism and, on the other hand, denying a genocide, I turned that point into a condemnation of Turkish students speaking out about what happened in Germany. Instead of showing insensitivity to the violence against the Turkish minority in Germany, I should have shown the connection of their experiences to those of the Armenian minority in Ottoman Turkey as well as contemporary Turkey. Criticism of my editorial was broad, and to ensure that I in no way unjustly benefited from my own position of relative power as editor, I made a point of publishing all of the disapproving letters to the editor, even the one that condemned me for the contradiction of not being concerned about Native American genocide, whose author was clearly unaware of my public action in this regard or the October issue of the paper in which I included numerous articles on genocide and oppression of indigenous peoples in the Americas. A group of Turkish students raised a formal complaint to the Graduate Student Senate, my employer, which made the main event of their 152

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next meeting a series of denunciations by senator after senator, though some appeared motivated by dislike of other political positions presented in the graduate paper and by me in other contexts and were merely using the Turkish students’ complaint as a pretext. Some friends scorned me and almost none provided public support, convinced that my indignation over this case of genocide denial was irrational and evidence of great oversensitivity, especially given the “complexity” of the Armenian case. As a noteworthy exception, Bob Ackermann sat next to me in solidarity for the entire meeting. As I had predicted to dismissive senators, friends, and others involved, the situation soon mushroomed far beyond legitimate disapprobation of my excess, as various Turkish students began organizing against me in exaggerated and extreme ways. They complained to the international students office that my presence on campus was a threat to them, and they asked the civil rights office on campus to pursue action against me. They sought my dismissal from the editorship of the graduate paper—or, short of that, my silence on the “Armenian issue”—thereby capitalizing on what had happened to advance what became clear was a denialist agenda. In the spirit of free speech and open debate, I proposed that the Graduate Senate address the obvious controversy by sponsoring a conference on the Armenian Genocide at which the Turkish students could have their views presented. The Turkish students vehemently refused, demanding instead that the graduate paper publish nothing further on the issue. Over the next year, I received apologies from senators and friends for their failure to understand the full implications of the situation. In their apologies, they readily acknowledged their own excessive censures and dismissals of my concerns about denial that they now understood as legitimate. There were three key lessons for me. First, as indicated above, I learned that it is never acceptable to be insensitive to any injustice or oppression, regardless of whose and the context. This was the seed of personal transformation that has helped me develop meaningful connections with a number of Turkish activists and scholars. Second, I learned the importance of developing a model of human rights promotion that can accommodate a full range of issues together, rather than emphasizing this or that particular concern, especially when it is personal to me. Even as I have focused my work on genocide and, more recently, mass violence against women and girls, I understand these problems as part of an overarching set of oppressions and violences that need to be understood and confronted in their entirety. Finally, 153

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I came to understand in a small way the force of genocidal ideology. I felt vehement denial on my skin, so to speak. It became clear that this was not merely an academic issue or a conflict over words, but that it involved deep hatreds related to those that produced genocide itself. Hounded by Armenian Genocide deniers at events and in writing, I would experience this hatred again and again. Even when one resists denial and can answer the false claims and manipulations of accomplished deniers, denial takes its psychological toll. It is an attack, a humiliation, and a denigration, and it gives deniers an opportunity to vent their prejudicial anger and hatred on “fair game” public targets (see Charny 1992). Indeed, as good friend and antigenocide activist George Aghayan and I discovered, denial actually molds its targets to accept inequality. In 1999, we co-organized a panel with Clark University’s then-Holocaust Studies Center to discuss the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, and Nanjing Massacre. We put flyers up around the campus, and they were almost immediately ripped down. For us as Armenians, this was no big deal—our response was to say we needed to put up new flyers and hope they would not get ripped down too. But the people at the Holocaust Center were stunned. They could not believe that posters had been ripped down—or that we were so resigned to it. They wanted to call for a formal investigation and, as I recall, even suggested calling in the FBI. This highlighted for George and me just how much denial had damaged us. After less than a decade of dealing with denial of the Armenian Genocide, it had become normalized for us to accept such treatment as our lot. Despite our struggle to retain dignity by responding to deniers, the very effort of doing so robbed us of our sense of our own equal human status. For its difficulty, facing denial confirmed my commitment not just to the struggle for Armenian Genocide recognition, but against denial of all genocides. As targeted as I felt regarding the Armenian Genocide, I could only imagine how difficult it is for a Native American in the United States to have to face denial, denigration, and the whole legacy of genocide as an everyday, inescapable lived experience. How is it for a contemporary Herero, Guatemalan, Aborigine, or member of any of the host of other groups facing routine genocide denial? The denial experience was an important step toward broadening my engagement of genocide. Academic writing on denial became my therapy. When, in the Heath Lowry era, Princeton Professor Norman Itzkowitz made his infamous remarks belittling “Armenian grandmothers” who had filled 154

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their grandchildren with false claims about a supposed Armenian Genocide, I called him to discuss his remarks (see Theriault 2001). We ended up in a lively debate in which he insisted I did not understand his “sophisticated” theoretical position and dismissed my criticisms as naïve and misguided. Our phone conversation ended when I gave a quite accurate account of the theoretical underpinnings of his position (which was based on a kind of vulgar postmodernism), and then, after he admitted I understood him perfectly—as a philosopher well trained in legitimate postmodern theory—I proceeded to explain what was wrong with this theoretical framework. Yet, I felt utterly impotent against the problem of denial that this instance was an example of, because even though I could explain to the denier exactly what was wrong with his position, the denier was unfazed and continued denying. Who cared what I had to say? It turns out at least some people did. Shortly after this phone call, I came across the call for papers for a conference sponsored by a group called the “International Association of Genocide Scholars.” I had attended a day-long seminar given by Roger Smith and Vahakn Dadrian at the National Association of Armenian Studies and Research back in 1994, in the first phase of my education in genocide studies, and contacted Smith about the conference and my idea of doing a paper on Itzkowitz’ version of denial. He was warm and encouraging, so I sent a proposal in and gave the paper (Theriault 1999), which later appeared in the Journal of Genocide Research (Theriault 2001). Attending this conference connected me to a whole set of senior scholars whom I had come to admire from afar, and it gave me the chance to share a panel with Kurt Jonassohn himself. Through this and later conferences, I developed productive relationships with the likes of Bob Melson, Colin Tatz, and others—most notably Israel Charny, whose work on denial opened up a whole new intellectual terrain for me. For the first time I felt part of a true academic community of the sort I had expected to experience at Princeton and then in the field of philosophy. From there, my work expanded in various directions and was continually enriched by the various genocide scholars I connected with. Richard Hovannisian, who had included me back in 1994 as a participant in an Armenian Studies conference, encouraged my work and subsequently published two of my papers in collections on the Armenian Genocide (Theriault 2003, Theriault 2007a). 155

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Later still, I was invited by Samuel Totten and Herb Hirsch to join them as a coeditor of Genocide Studies and Prevention. Working with them and others associated with the journal, such as the Zoryan Institute’s George Shirinian, was a tremendously enriching experience and provided many opportunities to push the issue of genocide prevention in academic, policy, and popular circles. In various other connections I have benefited from work with Debórah Dwork and, more recently, Sara Elise Brown and Khatchig Mouradian of Clark University, as well as Dikran Kaligian, Uğur Üngör, and Melanie O’Brien. A deep influence on my work on gender and genocide is Elisa von Joeden-Forgey. I have also had the incredible good fortune that my sister, Kim Theriault, continued to keep the issue of genocide in mind as she entered academia as an art historian and conducted groundbreaking research on Armenian Genocide survivor and major American artist Arshile Gorky (Theriault 2009). My work in genocide studies since 1999—when I received my PhD and gave my first academic paper on genocide—has moved through various areas of concern. While a number of publications have focused on the Armenian Genocide, my push has always been toward the universal. Through Clark University’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies Center, I was able to teach courses devoted to the Armenian Genocide, but most of my teaching on genocide has been through two courses I developed at Worcester State: “Genocide and Human Rights” and “Mass Violence Against Women.” I’ve also developed a course titled “Mass Violence and Long-Term Justice” that is in line with my emerging interest in reparations. The first half-decade of my career, my research focused on genocide denial. Following Israel Charny’s inspired insights, I left behind earlier efforts to counter specific denial arguments, which leads to a perpetual back-and-forth with deniers and gives them credibility, and recognized that defeating denial depended on treating it as a phenomenon to be exposed and studied. While Charny focused on the psychology of deniers (see, for instance, Charny 1992), I looked at the argument methods they use, especially through comparison across genocides. Building on the crucial work of Terrence Des Pres (1986), I exposed the common conceptual roots of apparently disparate denials, for instance, the manipulations of otherwise sound critical thinking tools. Itzkowitz focuses on the Armenian Genocide, but also discusses other cases, even the Holocaust. My paper on Itzkowitz looked at the way that a single, problematic model of ethnic relations can foster an 156

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i­ ntellectual climate in which every assertion of genocide automatically collapses into mutual ethnic conflict based on groundless animosities and prejudice in which both groups are equally culpable. Indeed, as “perpetrator” group members typically want to avoid discussion of the past, it becomes “victims” who purportedly create problems, by “choosing” to feel “trauma” because of their obsession with the past. In another article on denial, I entered US hate speech debates. My work was intended to shift the ground from questions about whether people in target groups should be protected from “merely” psychological harm to demonstrating the materiality of the harm done by denial. My two main arguments were that denial does material harm by helping the perpetrator group keep—even generations later—the material gains (money, land, artwork, and even people,) while retroactively extending and expanding the impact of the original physical violence of a genocide because the impact of physical violence is in its psychological registry If denial increases that psychological impact for victims (and even later generations), then in effect it retroactively makes the original violence more powerful. As I became more forward looking, I took up the issue of reparations as a means to address genocide’s long-term material, social, and psychological harms. This shift was in part due to the influence of South African poet and human rights activist Dennis Brutus, who spent two semesters as “Poet-in-Residence” at Worcester State and with whom I worked closely in my position as Coordinator of the WSU Center for the Study of Human Rights from 1999 to 2007. Among many other activities, with Merrill Goldwyn, the emeritus professor who founded the WSU HRC in 1982 in the midst of Dennis’ struggle to get political asylum in the United States against the Reagan Administration’s opposition, Dennis and I organized the ground-breaking December 2005 “Whose Debt? Whose Responsibility?” Global Symposium on Reparations at WSU. The symposium advanced the concept of a global reparations movement across an array of groups and human rights violations, including international debt, and resulted in The New Global Reparations Movement special issue of the Armenian Review that I edited (Theriault 2012c). Another important part of my reparations work, evident especially in my contributions to the jointly authored report of the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group (Theriault et al. 2015), is to respond to viewpoints taken as decisive against the very possibility of substantial reparations; for instance, that the status quo of territorial 157

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arrangements giving land to perpetrator groups the world over is less ideologically driven and more legitimate than a rearrangement giving land back to victim groups. Out of this work on reparations emerged a concern about the muddled, inaccurate, and harmful way that victim-perpetrator relations are conceptualized in the vast majority of conflict resolution scholarship. Against the pervasive assumption that, after a genocide, perpetrator and victim groups are equal partners in a mutual relationship, I have argued that a clear power differential structures their relationship as an asymmetrical domination relation, which, when systematically ignored, pushes victims to make extensive concessions in relations with perpetrators that further the impact and goals of the genocide they suffered. If I have any claim to a contribution to the field, it is that my approach has resonated with not just many Armenians, but also Kurds and Turks who recognize the problem of dialogue on the relativist model above. (See Theriault 2007b, Theriault 2012b, and Theriault 2013a.) Interestingly, this work on dialogue became a chance for growth for me as well. I had always been strongly committed to taking responsibility for the past as a member of perpetrator groups (US citizens, white people, etc.), regardless of my particular family history. I have embraced the call for returning lands to Native Americans, even though most people in the United States go into apoplectic shock at the very thought that Native Americans have true title to much or even all of the land our country sits on. I have also advocated major reparations for US slavery and Jim Crow. I have criticized my government for its military aggression and repeated mass human rights violations and have no hesitation about calls for war crimes trials of “American icons” such as Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld. Even as my father was killed in Vietnam and that caused great suffering for my family, I have no difficulty recognizing that the Vietnamese were the victims and that the actions involving my father were absolutely wrong, or that reparations should be made to Vietnam. Because of this, I have had no hesitation expecting other people in the United States,16 as well as members of other perpetrator groups, to do the same—including Turkish people. Why should a Turkish person believe that major land reparations to the Armenian (and Assyrian and Greek) people are utterly inconceivable and even that the very mention of this possibility is an act of aggression and “anti-Turkism”? If a typical American like me can find my way out of deep indoctrination in our warped dominant ideology—a process that included reworking my sense of national identity at its most basic, 158

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emotional level, and going from an extreme supporter of US global domination to what I am now—then others can too. I have stressed the need for those in perpetrator groups to make good on sentiments they might have toward “healing” by accepting substantive, real sacrifices through material reparations. Despite what might appear to be their hardline approach to dialogue, I have become friends with a number of Turks and Kurds whose intentions and efforts to engage their past are nothing short of admirable, and who in their personal interactions carry nothing of a postimperial attitude toward Armenians. Years of attacks by aggressive deniers made it difficult at first to recognize the uniqueness of such people, but in recent years I have. This has taken the additional step of recognizing my own fallibility on issues of mutual concern—however genuine and well grounded my views are, they are not the final word on a just resolution of the Armenian Genocide—and the value of learning from these new colleagues and friends. What has emerged is not a contrived, artificial process of “dialogue,” such as the ill-conceived mess of the “TurkishArmenian Reconciliation Commission,” but an organic process of scholarly, political, and personal interconnection. I am indebted to Uğur Üngör, Ragip Zarakolu, and others for the opportunity to develop these relations. The exceptional scholar Bilgin Ayata holds a special place, having initiated with me Kurdish-Armenian dialogue as part of a broader “trialogue” among Turks, Kurds, and Armenians. Tremendously principled activist intellectual Sait Çetinoğlu even translated and published in Turkey (Theriault, 2013b) a paper I gave at a landmark conference in Ankara17 on Armenian-Turkish relations and genocide reparations, enabling me to connect with more like-minded Turks seeking to transform their society. In the past few years, I have followed my somewhat contrarian mentality into new areas. I published an argument against the notion that “dehumanization” is the key to perpetration (Theriault 2007b). Dehumanization theory assumes human beings do not commit mass violence knowingly, but only do so when they fail to see victims as human beings. Genocide thus results from a cognitive error. While dehumanization does have a role in genocide, the relish of killers and rapists and the clear-headedness of leaders suggest that they are fully aware of the humanity of their victims, and it is precisely this that makes genocide so attractive. As pioneering works such as Stiglmayer (1994) and Miller and Miller (1993) (especially pp. 94–105) have taught and inspired me, sexualized 159

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violence has become more and more of a focus in my research and teaching. In that work, I have argued that the emphasis on “rape as a tool of genocide” misses the fact that genocide is also often a tool of rape; that is, some perpetrators participate in genocide not to commit genocide but because of the opportunity it provides to act on preexisting misogynist attitudes that are widespread in most societies. It is my contention that many genocides (of those against indigenous Americans, and those perpetrated in Tasmania, Armenia, Bangladesh, East Timor, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, etc.) would not have been possible at least on the scale they were perpetrated without gender violence being a driving force and even an ultimate goal. (Theriault 2012a, 134–38.) On a different but related note, I have also expressed concern (Theriault 2012a, 135–38) about the notion of “gendercide” as used in genocide studies (see, for example, Jones 2002). An apparent stride forward in recognizing the importance of gender in genocide, the term’s concrete application, has functioned as an antifeminist backlash that remarginalizes the suffering of women and girls. When, finally, the specific targeting of women and girls for sexual violence, enslavement, and femicide that has pervaded human existence gets political and legal attention, the “gendercide” movement insists that in the majority of cases men are the predominant victims of genocide (in terms of direct killing, an inaccurate concept of genocide). While my work has always been decidedly influenced by philosophical concepts and thinkers—for instance, my concerns about dehumanization theory arise out of a critique of the Socratic/Platonic view that people do wrong out of ignorance (in, for instance, Plato 1981, pp. 77–78 [standard reference 87d–89a]) and draw on key insights into power, violence, and domination by Nietzsche (especially in Nietzsche 1967)—I had long done virtually no work in the field of philosophy specifically. Four years ago, however, I did make a return to the discipline. Reading Thucydides’ narrative of the destruction of Melos (Thucydides 1998, pp. 227–31), I was struck by how closely the Athenian argument paralleled Plato’s accounts of the “might makes right” ethical viewpoint, in the Republic (Plato 1974, pp. 11–27 [standard reference 336b–354c]) and Gorgias (Plato 1961, pp. 264–307 [standard reference 481b–527e]). Supported by historically grounded speculation and clues in the texts, I advanced the possibility that Plato had the Melos Genocide in mind when critiquing this ethical viewpoint. If this was the case, then despite all the ways that the Western philosophical tradition has been implicated in genocide, an antigenocide commitment lies at the very 160

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beginning and center of the Western intellectual tradition, ready to be tapped by contemporary thinkers who share Plato’s commitment to human rights. (Theriault 2010b) Originally because of the problem of “definitionalist” denial, I have also been concerned about the definition of “genocide.” Initially much taken with Charny’s expansive approach (Charny 1999), I have continued to include often-disregarded cases such as the Irish Famine and the Nanjing Massacre as cases of genocide. Perhaps as a function of my postmodernist tendencies, as I reflected on the definition of the term, I came to realize that, unlike the apparent goal of most that has been written on the subject, the point is not to find a perfect fixed definition. This Aristotelian approach treats genocide as natural, a set of events in the world that share some single feature or set of features as their essence. Ward Churchill (1997, pp. 399–444) and Charny had gone the furthest in challenging this kind of limited logic, by rejecting the exclusionary nature of such categorization and stretching the categorical boundaries as far as possible. But I took a different tack, rejecting this kind of categorization itself, after realizing that genocide is an evolving social construction that is routinely reconceptualized in the practices of perpetrators. Settling on a fixed, timeless, universal definition serves to exclude precisely those present and future innovations that allow perpetrators to adapt to new situations and avoid culpability under present laws against genocide. What is needed is a flexible approach to definition that can accommodate the shifts and developments in the forms of genocide. Although I maintain the great value of the concept of genocide, definitional issues are not so important to me now. While for a time I wanted to apply the concept of genocide to a range of mass violences and oppressions, but whether one calls something “genocide” or “apartheid,” it is still a mass human rights violation that needs to be addressed. Why do we need to say that all colonialism is genocide or the reverse when we can say that both are distinct parts of the same (bad) historical process that has shaped our world? Whatever the precise boundaries (or rather zones of overlap) among genocide, slavery, apartheid, mass rape, colonialism, military aggression, economic extraction and exploitation, and so on, these forces together, in their interlocking totality, have determined to a large extent the reality we live in. No society on earth, as victim, perpetrator, or both, has been untouched at its deepest level by these forces. Indeed, as Renan (2008) suggested more than a century ago, both the very identity of present states and form of the present global order is the result of centuries of 161

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genocide, slavery, military aggression, etc. Too many genocide scholars—this was always an undercurrent of “Holocaust uniqueness”—see or want to see genocide as an aberration, something that happens when things break down or go bad, when states fail, when the normally good leaders are replaced by evil ones. But genocide and these other forces of destruction and oppression are not exceptions; they are central to modern human history. Addressing genocide is not simply a matter of stopping the latest instance but of transforming the world order so that it is not based on genocide and these other processes. Unfortunately, the field of genocide studies seems to be going the way of women’s studies and other such originally dynamic areas of teaching and research that grew out of activist commitments to making academia accountable for its powerful role in society. While in genocide studies (as women’s studies), there is still some great work being done by tremendously dedicated people, I believe the trend is toward comfortable institutionalization focused on academic status and career-path creation. Genocide has been an academic vogue for a decade, and indications are that this will continue for some time more, long enough for the “gains” in academia to be made permanent, so that we will have genocide studies programs and scholars on into the future. This is a great thing, surely far beyond the dreams of those creating this field in the 1980s. Unquestionably, people will still do important work on genocide, even within these institutional constraints. But as the telos of research and teaching on genocide more and more becomes self-replication and status production, the field undermines its own relevance. Other trends in the field reinforce this problem, foremost the rejection of “activist scholarship” in favor of a vague and long-discredited fantasy of academics as “objective” and “disinterested” intellectuals. It is not that attempting to be objective in one’s work is not a worthy goal; indeed, I am not advocating the driving of scholarship by political agendas. However, the notion that a scholar can or should be completely “disinterested” would be a stretch even for Kant (1964),18 and ignores the important concept of “engagement” advocated by Sartre (1949). We need an academy that is engaged, not an intensification of elite distancing from the lived suffering pervading our world. There is no need for a false dichotomy here, where one is either objective or an interested and engaged scholar; the challenge is to figure out how to be objective and engaged. Indeed, the choice is not between interest and disinterest, but about which interests will drive a scholar’s work. 162

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Avoiding an ethical commitment to positive change in the world through teaching, research that increases knowledge and understanding, and impacts public policy merely leaves unhindered the narrower, traditional interests of “disinterested” professors—petty careerism and status enhancement. Given the pressure toward the institutionalization of the field, what is needed is a reassertion of ethical obligation to universal human well being. Let us hope that these negative trends will engender their own backlashes that will revitalize the field. 1.

Notes

For an epitomic example of this type of narrative, which is at once a fiction and an autobiographical biography of the author’s father, see Nizan 1973 and the analysis of it in Elman 1973, pp. 6–11. 2. As a child, my mother frequently asked her mother about what had happened to her and other Armenians, but my grandmother could not talk about it. Finally, she told my mother to read the novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (Werfel 2012), which my mother started doing. Soon after, my grandmother came upon her as she cried about what she was reading. “You don’t need to cry. I’ve cried enough for all of us,” she said to my mother. 3. A village in the Gesaria (now Kayseri) area, located in the central region of today’s Turkey. 4. My father was one-half Jewish, one-quarter Irish, and the last quarter some mix of Scottish, English, and Native American, making me, with my Armenian half, a mongrel conglomeration of various genocide victim groups. 5. I haven’t seen the film in almost forty years, and saw it only as a child, so it is likely a problematic portrayal of Native Americans, but it did have a positive effect on my young self. 6. Which, after the US withdrawal from Vietnam, was combined with the Ft. Bragg chapter. As a child, I was at the 1976 ceremony installing my father’s portrait in the club at Ft. Bragg. 7. Though Moore switched the nicknames in the anecdotes he included about my father and about one of his friends. 8. My father was, by all accounts, a very likeable guy with a playful sense of humor. He got on exceptionally well with his Jordanian counterparts—so much so that, when he got rather tipsy at the party celebrating the end of his time in Jordan, he was tempted to tell them that it was a “Jew-boy” (his term) they were getting along with so well and who had helped them so much. 9. My mother’s strong commitment to fostering independent thinking included never having my sister or me baptized as Armenians because she did not believe in parents deciding the religion of their children, especially given our multi-religion background. This emphasis on autonomy surely provided a robust foundation for my later resistance to the manipulations of US ideology. 10. While a number of my high school teachers took a special interest in me and supported me, the biggest impact was by yet a third English teacher, though one I never had for a class. Ralph Montgomery became an intellectual 163

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11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

164

­ entor and later friend, as he spent hours upon hours in conversations with m me about the broader intellectual world beyond the limits of my hometown, and was especially important in opening my eyes to cinema, as well as art and politics. It is not without significance that Princeton was also the foremost US center of academic denial of the Armenian Genocide, culminating in the 1993 hiring of arch-denier Heath Lowry as Ataturk Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies. See Honan 1996 and Smith, Markusen, and Lifton 1995. Two brilliant and creative UMass undergraduates also deserve special mention for their profound impacts on my broader intellectual and political development while I was in graduate school and to the present day: Bernie Zirnheld and Nafees Khatak. Only years later would I recognize just how closely this denial of date rape corresponded to complex forms of denial based on the assertion that the Armenian Genocide could not be called a “genocide” because the word was coined only in 1943—a truly misguided argument, given that the term was coined precisely to label events that its coiner recognized did not have a name and under which its coiner specifically included the Armenian case. This rhetoric/reality split, even hypocrisy, is evident in the endless celebration of the sacrifices and courage of historical figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., by people who do nothing in the midst of our own era’s injustices. Self-satisfied in extolling the virtues of such figures, they substitute celebration of these others’ past deeds for present action. It does not seem to dawn on them that, were such figures around today, they would be struggling against the present inequities and oppressions that their celebrators are all too comfortable accepting. Bob Ackermann died in 2011. It is impossible to express fully my great esteem for him as a thinker, mentor, inspiration, and friend and the gratitude I owe him for his determining role in my intellectual, political, and personal development. He was an exceptional thinker, who made significant contributions in four quite divergent areas of philosophy—logic, philosophy of science, continental philosophy, and social and political philosophy—but he was just as much at home fighting racism and sexism on admissions committees, advocating in Amherst (MA) town meetings for homeless rights, giving free piano lessons to kids that his wife, Inge, had as ESL students (Bob was an accomplished ragtime pianist), or heading down to the local police station to intervene when local minority teens were wrongly accused of a crime. Among many other insights he passed on to me was one that remains true and central in genocide studies and all serious political work: against Enlightenment naïveté, those in power are immune to the pointing out of the logical flaws and incorrect facts in their thinking. They simply demonize those who do the pointing. For a penetrating treatment of social categorization marked by sharp political insight that has deeply influenced my thinking about genocide, see Ackermann 1996. Particularly irksome is the mentality in the United States in recent years that any questioning of US imperialism and military aggression is somehow equivalent to a callous disregard for the lives of US soldiers. This reveals two deep flaws in US thinking. First, it is entirely consistent to be against war and not want to see soldiers harmed, while, second, the obsessive focus on

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US soldiers is a convenient way to prevent recognition of the much greater numbers of entirely innocent, unarmed human beings who have been and are being killed or otherwise harmed by our military actions, and to stop any questioning about human rights violations by the US military. Surely many soldiers suffer from the trauma of war, but that trauma is as much about a climate of normalized infliction of violence on others as anything else. When I stand against US imperialism and military aggression, I do so as part of a very small percentage of US individuals who have paid a direct and fundamental, life-altering price because of them (a price I paid with no moment of choice in the matter and that affected me not when I was already an adult with developed coping skills, but from my earliest formative years), and yet I do not use this as an excuse to avoid a rational, fact-based, un-ideological understanding of US actions within and outside its borders. If, with my family history, I can do this, I have no patience for those who cower from confronting reality as it actually is, in the United States or in other countries with similar histories. 17. I was privileged to participate in reportedly the first public conference on the Armenian Genocide in Ankara that was not denialist and the first to discuss the issue of reparations (Theriault 2010c). The significance of the conference is confirmed by the fact that various pressures caused it to be temporarily cancelled three days before it was scheduled, and it was only allowed after bad press for Turkey in Europe and heroic efforts by organizers. 18. Although Kant’s ethical theory excludes any decision or action from selfinterest, including indirect (such as compassion allowing one to feel good), for him any person’s most fundamental interest is thinking and trying to act ethically (including, presumably, as a scholar), which means promoting the full personhood of all people.

References

Ackermann, Robert John (1996) Heterogeneities: Race, Gender, Class, Nation, and State. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Chalk, Frank, and Kurt Jonassohn (1990). The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Charny, Israel W. (1992). “A Contribution to the Psychology of Denial of Genocide.” Special Issue (Genocide & Human Rights: Lessons from the Armenian Experience) of Journal of Armenian Studies 4(1–2): 289–306. Charny, Israel W. (1999). “Classification of Genocide in Multiple Categories,” pp. 3–9. In Israel Charny (Ed.) The Encyclopedia of Genocide. Volume 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Churchill, Ward (1997). A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present. San Francisco, CA: City Lights. Des Pres, Terrence (1986). “On Governing Narratives: The Turkish-Armenian Case.” Yale Review 75(4): 517–31. Elman, Richard (1973). “Introduction.” pp. 5–11. In Paul Nizan and Antoine Bloyé. New York: Monthly Review Press. Foucault, Michel (1984). “What Is an Author?” pp. 101–120. In Paul Rabinow (Ed.) The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books. 165

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Frye, Richard N. (1992). “The Importance of the Institute for Armenian Studies and Research.” Lecture given at 38th Annual Assembly of Members, National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, Belmont, MA, USA, November 21. Honan, William H. (1996). “Princeton Is Accused of Fronting for the Turkish Government.” The New York Times. May 22, 1996. Pp. B1, B8. Jones, Adam (Guest Editor) (2002). Journal of Genocide Research, March, 4(1). Kant, Immanuel (1964). Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. H.J. Patton (trans.). New York: Harper & Row. Miller, Donald E., and Lorna Touryan Miller (1993). Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide. Berkeley: University of California Press. Moore, Robin (1966). The Green Berets. New York: Avon. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1967). On the Genealogy of Morals. In Walter Kaufmann (Ed.) On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo. New York: Vintage. Nizan, Paul (1973). Antoine Bloyé. New York: Monthly Review Press. Plato (1961). Gorgias, pp. 230–307. In Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Eds.) The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters. Bollinggen Series LXXI. Corrected 1963. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Plato (1974). Plato’s Republic. G.M.A. Grube (trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Plato (1981). Meno, pp. 59–88. Plato—Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Renan, Ernest (1990). “What Is a Nation?” pp. 8–22. Martin Thom (trans.). In Homi K. Bhabha (Ed.) Nation and Narration. New York: Routledge. Said, Edward W. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Sartre, Jean-Paul (1949). Literature and Existentialism. Bernard Frechtman (trans.). Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press. Smith, Roger W., Markusen, Eric, and Lifton, Robert Jay (1995). “Professional Ethics and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Spring 9(1): 1–22. Stiglmayer, Alexandra (Ed.) (1994). Mass Rape: The War against Women in BosniaHerzegovina. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Theriault, Henry C. (1999). “Universal Social Theory and Genocide Denial.” Paper given at the Third International Conference of the Association of Genocide Scholars, University of Wisconsin, June 14. Theriault, Hank (2001). “Universal Social Theory and the Denial of Genocide: Norman Itzkowitz Revisited.” Journal of Genocide Research 3(2): 241–56. Theriault, Henry C. (2003). “Free Speech and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide,” pp. 231–261. In Richard G. Hovannisian (Ed.) Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Confronting the Armenian. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press. Theriault, Henry C. (2004). “An Analytical Typology of Arguments Denying Genocides and Related Mass Human Rights Violations.” Comparative Genocide Studies 1:78-101. Theriault, Henry C. (2007a). “Post-Genocide Imperial Domination.” Special issue (Controversy and Debate) of The Armenian Weekly, April 24, pp. 6–8, 26. Theriault, Henry C. (2007b). “Rethinking Dehumanization in Genocide.” In Richard G. Hovannisian (Ed.) The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, pp. 27–40. Theriault, Henry C. (2010a). Genocidal Mutation and the Challenge of Definition.” Special Issue (Symposium Human Rights: Origins, Violations, and Rectifications) of Metaphilosophy 41(4): 481–524. 166

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Theriault, Henry C. (2010b). “Rousseau, Plato, and Western Philosophy’s ­Anti-Genocidal Strain,” pp. 193–210. In James R. Watson (Ed.) Metacide: In the Pursuit of Excellence. Volume 216. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Theriault, Henry C. (2010c). “The Challenge of the Armenian Genocide for 21st Century Turkey: Responsibility and Reparation Toward Resolution.” Paper given at the “Öncesi ve Sonrasıyla 1915 Inkar ve Yüzleşme” symposium, Ankara, April 25, 2010. Theriault, Henry C. (2012a). “Against the Grain: Critical Reflections on the State and Future of Genocide Scholarship.” Special issue (60 Years after the Ratification of the Genocide Convention: The State and Future of Genocide Studies) of Genocide Studies and Prevention 7(1): 123–144. Theriault, Henry C. (2012b). “From Dialogue to Repair: Resolving the ‘Armenian Question.’” Special Issue (The Global Reparations Movement) of the Armenian Review 53(1–4): 121–166. Theriault, Henry C. (Guest Editor) (2012c). Special Issue (The New Global Reparations Movement) of the Armenian Review, Spring-Winter, 53(1–4). Theriault, Henry C. (2013a). “Shared Burdens and Perpetrator-Victim Group Conciliation,” pp. 98–107. In Bert Ingelaere, Stephen Parmentier, Jacques Haere, and Barbara Segaert (Eds.) Genocide, Risk and Resilience: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan Theriault, Henry C. (2013b). “Yüzyl Türkiye’si İçin Ermeni Soykırımı Sorunu: Sorumluluk ve Çözüme Yönelik Tazmin” (“The Challenge of the Armenian Genocide for 21st Century Turkey: Responsibility and Reparation Toward Resolution”), pp. 243–260. In Sait Çetinoğlu and Mahmut Konuk (Eds.), Öncesi ve Sonrası Ile 1915: Inkâr ve Yüzleşme: Inkâr ve Yüzleşme Sempozyumu 24–25 Nisan 2010. Ankara: Ütopya Yayınevi. Theriault, Henery C.; de Zayas, Alfred; McCalpin, Jermaine O.; and Papian, Ara (2015). Resolution With Justice: Reparations for the Armenian Genocide—The Report of the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group. Yerevan: Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group. Theriault, Kim S. (2009). Rethinking Arshile Gorky. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Thucydides (1998). The Peloponnesian War. Norton Critical Edition. Walter Blanco (Trans.). Walter Blanco and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts (Eds.). New York: W.W. Norton. Werfel, Franz (2012). The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Boston, MA: Verba Mundi/ David R. Godine.

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8 My Personal Story as It Relates to Being a Scholar of Genocide Studies Yair Auron

Introduction

I was born in 1945 at the end of World War II. It was also, of course, the end of the Holocaust. The Holocaust has been a very significant issue in my life. My parents, not married then, traveled to Palestine from Poland in the mid-1930s, before the war. My mother arrived in Palestine with her parents and a few brothers and sisters; my father came alone, with no family members, as part of the Ha’apala (illegal immigration). He was twenty-three years old, and he came with friends from his Zionist-Socialist youth movement, Ha’shomer hatzair. They spent six months at sea, only to get arrested by the British mandate forces and sent back to Europe. Ultimately, he sought and got permission to come to Israel. The fact of the Holocaust was always present in our lives: both my family’s life and the life of Israeli society at that time. It was present in our lives without our speaking of it, as if it was an issue that we were not to speak of, especially not with my father. I knew, though, that my mother had lost brothers and sisters in Poland. The fact that my father lost practically all of his family in the Holocaust was not a secret, but we did not really know details about his family, and we did not know—at that time—that he lost his mother in the Holocaust. His father died before the war, and all the brothers and sisters, eight persons who were born to two different mothers, perished in the Holocaust. 171

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Only little by little did I and the rest of my family learn about my parents’ story. As my son, Yuval, wrote at age thirteen, “It all began during Passover vacation when I had to write the introduction to my school project, ‘Roots,’ about the history of my family”: My father dedicated his first book, Jewish-Israeli Identity, to the memory of his parents (i.e., my grandfather and grandmother). Right now, he is finishing his fifth book, one that deals with the attitudes of the state of Israel to the Armenian Genocide. He had thought to dedicate it to the memory of his grandmother (i.e., to my great grandmother) who was murdered, as he had heard from his father, in the Holocaust, and to the memory of the anonymous victims of all genocides. Since my father was not sure about the name of his grandmother, he checked with his sister, Sarale. She says that grandmother Sima (the mother of their father) died in Poland in 1938; so far as she remembers our grandfather, Mordechai (or “Motek”) Yarlicht, told her. This does not fit, though, with my father’s memory of what our grandfather had told him. The fact that what my father remembers contradicts this troubles him. Finally, he telephoned the only cousin of his father who lives in the United States, Malka, and checked with her. Malka, who was in her early twenties during the Holocaust, has a very sharp memory. She gave my father a very unequivocal answer that his grandmother, Sima, was murdered in the Holocaust, together with her mother and sister. She also told my father that my grandfather had fourteen sisters, stepbrothers and stepsisters, and that all of them were murdered in the Holocaust—a fact that my father and his brother and sister never knew. We still have no answer to why my grandfather did not tell these facts to his children. Also we have no answer why my father and his brother and sister never really asked him to tell them the story of the family during the Holocaust even when they were adults. I will try to answer these questions in my “Roots.”

The above was written by my thirteen-year-old son, Yuval, in March 2002 in the preface of his “Roots” project, a research project that is a traditional part of the Bar Mitzvah (the Jewish celebration marking a child’s entrance into adulthood at the age of thirteen) program in the Israeli school system for the last two decades. Since then, we have continued our quest to discover the exact details about the history of my father’s family during the Holocaust, which is not yet finished. But now we are sure that my father lost all his family in the Holocaust. This personal family story is mainly about unawareness or suppression of relevant aspects of the history I have inherited. As one can 172

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ascertain, it involves both direct and indirect denial by my father and us, his children, to the history of our family. It seems that different behaviors of denial are present in our lives, as individuals and as collectives, to a much greater extent than we are ready to admit. Apart from political and other interests, the tendency to deny uneasy facts is rooted in every one of us as human beings. Be that as it may, it is extremely important for an understanding of personal behavior—as well as societies—to wrestle with it and examine it. My father was a pioneer who came to Palestine in 1935 and lived in a kibbutz, but he practically behaved in the same manner as most Holocaust’s survivors who made their way to Palestine: He did not speak about his past nor about the fate of his loved ones, our relatives. I know now, after many years, that I am what is commonly referred to as the “second generation” (i.e., the children of Holocaust survivors). Many aspects of the psychological impact of the Holocaust have been passed on to the second generation, and now we know that they have also been passed on to the third generation.1 So, as I have noted, for many years I was unaware of, or at least unable to grasp and internalize, the fact that my closest relatives, my aunts and uncles (whose number I still do not know), and my grandmother were killed in the Holocaust. Even when I was in my thirties and working at Yad Vashem,2 I used to say that my interest in the Holocaust had nothing to do with my personal history or the history of my family, which did not appear to have been directly affected by the Holocaust. Later, I came to realize that as an Israeli I was raised and educated to believe in Zionist ideals and the (primarily socialist) social approach associated with them—that is to say, the greater respect accorded to, if not a sense of superiority by, Israelis over “exilic Jews.” It was then that I realized that consciously—and perhaps, more importantly, subconsciously—the Holocaust played a decisive role in my upbringing and the upbringing of my entire generation. I was raised on information about the miraculous bravery of the active Jewish resistance in the ghettos of Europe. The Holocaust was always linked with bravery, and bravery was always highlighted. Tellingly, the official name of Yad Vashem is Yad Vashem: The Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Authority. I also came to realize that I knew nothing about the atrocities suffered by non-Jewish groups at the hands of the Nazis or about other acts of genocide perpetrated before and after the Holocaust. In those days, when I was growing up, my formative years, the Holocaust was 173

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perceived as something that happened “to them” (the “exilic” Jews), “there” (in Europe). And that is all we heard about. The Six Days War (June 5–10, 1967) marked a turning point and, in many ways, a rupture for me, as it did for many other Israelis. That war, in which I took part, raised in me fundamental questions regarding our very existence here in Israel; our attitude toward “the other,” Arabs and Palestinians in particular, but also other non-Jewish groups; and, of course, our attitude toward the Holocaust, which since then has come to be understood as something that befell us “here.” Only then did I begin to recognize the suffering of the Palestinians and understand that the physical ruins and remains I had seen in many parts of the country were actually the remains of Palestinian villages (in those days, we tended to refer to them as “Arab”). Since then, I have sought to clarify—for myself, with other Jews, and with the Palestinians—our attitudes toward, and our conflict with, the Palestinians. For the past six years, my family and I have lived in the Jewish-Arab locality of Neve Shalom (Hebrew) or Wahat al-Salam (Arabic), attempting to live a life of coexistence and struggle against injustice. The future of—and the relationship between—the different models of Jewish-Israeli identity appears to be largely, and perhaps entirely, dependent on the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The same is true for Arab-Israeli (or Palestinian-Israeli) identity, and its relationship with the different models of Jewish-Israeli identity. In my view, the continuation of Israeli occupation and rule over another people means the gradual but unavoidable end of the state of Israel as conceived by the original Zionist visionaries, not to mention the movement’s founding principles. In one way or another, Israel will become a variation of an apartheid state—if it has not reached that state already—at least in the occupied territories. We will increasingly come to be consumed by racism, a sense of absolute rule, and paralyzing fear, and we will almost certainly refuse to acknowledge how racist we have become. This continuing reality will undoubtedly strengthen religious identities in Israel, as well as the nationalist tendencies among religious and nonreligious Jews, alike. At one and the same time, it will weaken the nonreligious identities even further, and the humanist and liberal voices struggling against injustice and moral destruction will grow increasingly faint. Although this prospect in and of itself is sufficiently depressing, we must also consider the likely deterioration in Israel’s relations with 174

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the Diaspora and the international community. The intensification and radicalization of orthodox religious tendencies in Israeli society will undoubtedly lead to a rupture with a large portion of world Jewry and most Jews in the United States, who believe strongly in the legitimacy of numerous religious models, such as reform, conservative, and re-constructionist Judaism. The move in such a direction is unacceptable from a moral and humanitarian perspective; and from the perspective of Jewish heritage and the Holocaust, it is shocking. However, most young people in Israel do not identify with the notion that the Holocaust should “never happen again” but rather with the Zionist lesson of the Holocaust: “This should never happen to us again.” (For a moving and thought-provoking discussion of this matter, see Yehuda Elkana’s “The Need to Forget,” Haaretz, March 2, 1988.) In contrast, a compromise solution between Israel and the Palestinians will, if it is pulled off, undoubtedly open up new horizons and lead to new developments. Still, neither bleeding people (meaning neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians) appear to have the strength, the ability, or the moral urgency to reach a compromise or a peaceful solution on their own. For this reason, external intervention, with all its drawbacks, may be the only thing that can save Israel and the Palestinians from suicide and mutual destruction. A solution of compromise and withdrawal from most of the occupied territories will almost certainly involve a violent struggle led by Jews with extreme nationalist-religious identities. Even if the state emerges victorious, such a struggle will result in serious identity crises among some of the settlers and supporters of Jewish messianic ideas. Undoubtedly, determining the future of the occupied territories is the most significant political decision to be made since the establishment of the state of Israel. It is, however, a decision that cannot be made as a result of mental and emotional exhaustion, fear, lack of leadership, or the inability to adopt decisive policies on the matter. In the meantime, and without intentionally doing so, we, Israeli Jews, have chosen to continue living out the seventh day of the Six Days War for the past forty-seven years. Speaking of the Six Days War, let me share my story of being in the 1967 war. I know now that I was traumatized because of the war, and I practically had all the characteristics of a post-trauma process, of which I was not aware for many years. During that period, the notion of post-traumatic stress was not as developed as it is today. The issue 175

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of the post-traumatic stress process was only spoken of after the Yom Kippur War (October 6–25, 1973), when so many Israeli citizens were killed, and others imprisoned in Egypt and Syria. Those who had been imprisoned did not return home for several months to several years. Quite a lot of them suffered from post-trauma. I was wounded in the battle in Jerusalem, which was considered a very difficult, significant, and heroic battle. Right next to me, one of my best friends was killed. I had known him since the age of three. We were together in kindergarten, we were friends in the same neighborhood, we studied in the same elementary school and in the same high school, and we were in the same group in the youth movement, we were together in the army, and then resided in the same kibbutz. A bomb killed six people. Several others were wounded, including me. From our entire group of about eighteen soldiers only six soldiers were not wounded or killed. Upon the impact of the bomb, I temporarily lost consciousness. It was only for a few seconds. When I opened my eyes I saw my friend lying by my side, his face was intact, but I was under the impression that he had been killed. I called the medic and he covered him with a blanket. I was taken to the hospital and went through an operation, but the fact that he got killed and I remained alive did not leave me for many years. Why am I alive and he got killed? All the characteristics of post-trauma, guilt and fear, followed me, even when I went to Paris to earn my PhD. When I met with a psychoanalyst after many years, I discovered that it was the root of great trauma in my life. Moving into Genocide Studies

In the late 1980s, I read a newspaper article in Haaretz that Israel was somehow entangled in the efforts of the Turkish government to avoid remembrance of the Armenian genocide in the United States. I was astonished to learn that my country supported a policy of denial by another country that had committed a genocide—a genocide that had been committed more than sixty-five years ago. I felt compelled to learn more about that in an attempt to understand it. I honestly thought it would be a short diversion from my main interest: Jewish and Israeli identities. But once I began digging into the matter, I found I could not tamp down my desire to reach the truth. Ultimately what I found, and continue to find, has made me quite sad. Eventually, this led to a situation in which I became more and more convinced that it was imperative that we, Israeli-Jews, became much 176

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more conversant and well-informed about other genocides—and not only that, but more prone to identifying with the sufferings of other people. Our almost exclusionary care solely about the Holocaust and not the suffering of other people is a stain on our humanity, really. In recent years, I have invested an enormous amount of time and effort in researching and teaching about genocide. I have devoted my time and energy primarily to teaching and educating students at the Open University about genocide. I have also devoted my time to writing four of twelve books in the series “Genocide” that we use for the courses we teach on genocide at the Open University. And I have also devoted a great amount of thought, effort, and time in editing eight of the twelve books in the same series that the university has published in English. All the while, I worked on my other books and wrote articles about genocide (and genocide education) for various newspapers, especially focusing on my severe criticism of the attitude of denial by the state of Israel about the Armenian genocide. I am proud to be the director of a unique Open University project that enrolls more than 2,400 students each year. Each student is required to take two main courses: “Genocide” and “The Pain of Knowledge: Holocaust and Genocide Issues in Education.” As for my research, I began by conducting research into the tension between the particular and universal human components of Jewish and Israeli identity and the tension between the particular and the universal in general—these are the tensions that divide Israeli society. I gradually moved into conducting research into the causes for our (the Israeli government’s) position with respect to the Armenian genocide, and I have now been engaged in the subject of genocide for approximately two decades. I had great difficulty understanding and accepting the Israeli government’s long-term policy of denying the Armenian genocide carried out by Turkey. As I became increasingly troubled by the evasive behavior (behavior that verged on denial) of the various governments of Israel regarding the memory of the Armenian Genocide, I decided to examine both the overt factors and the less overt (deeper and more complex) factors leading to such behavior, which to me was morally unacceptable, particularly since we Jews were victims of the Holocaust. As I dug deeper into the issues, I came to the realization that if I really wanted to understand the situation, I’d have to reach back to the past and study the attitude of Jews and the attitude of the Zionist movement in Palestine towards the Armenian genocide, itself, which 177

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erupted in 1915, but whose antecedents reached back much further than that. And so, I also studied the Armenian genocide itself and the antecedents, which stretched back to the latter part of the nineteenth century. More specifically, I ended up analyzing the attitudes of the Jews towards the Armenian situation beginning as far back as the period between 1894 and 1896, when a significant massacre was carried out against the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. My analysis continued up and through the genocide and on to the foundation of the state of Israel. Only in that way, I decided, could I properly ground the study. And thus, I spent several years writing The Banality of Indifference, which turned out to be the first book published on this subject—that is, the Jewish reaction to the Armenian Genocide. I worked on it, on and off, from 1995 through 2003. Ultimately, the study revealed to me, I must confess, a reality that I did not expect. I had hoped to find a greater degree of identification with the suffering of the Armenians by the Jewish, and especially the Zionist, population in Palestine, but also the Jews and Jewish organizations across the globe—more empathy, and more attempts to help, within the scope of the very limited possibilities of the Jewish people. Instead, I found great indifference and an attitude that stressed the particular rather than the universal. The results of the first part of the project were published in my book, The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide. My conclusion was that the majority of the people, political parties, and Jewish institutions of Palestine of that time were essentially indifferent to the tragedy of the Armenians. But I had also discovered, and wrote, that much earlier there had been quite different reactions, such as those by the Zionist pro-British underground group, Nili. Members of Nili had identified with the suffering of the Armenians and wrote, in real time, about the atrocities committed against the Armenians that they had personally witnessed. And not only that, but they attempted to help the Armenians, often at great risk to themselves. Members of the group also reported the atrocities they had witnessed as officers in the Ottoman army. Their leader, Aaron Aaronsohn, collaborated with the Armenian Delegation in Europe in the early 1920s. Furthermore, Chaim Weizman and Nachum Sokolow, the leaders of the Zionist movement at that time, identified publicly with the Armenian suffering. They also supported the Armenians in their political activities in the aftermath of the genocide. For example, I discovered something called The Arab-Jewish Armenian Alliance, a plan by Mark Sykes that 178

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included these prophetic words: “If there is no such alliance then there will be 50 years of bloodshed in the Middle East.” If one wants to fully understand individual acts of genocide, then one has to probe the attitudes of third parties. The majority of the world is neither the victim nor the perpetrator. The majority is indifferent. A minority, always a minority, supports the victims. This minority provides support either from within or from far away by calling on the international community to intervene and halt the killings or by providing refugees and/or survivors with shelter, food, water, protection, etc. But most do not. Also in my book, I write about the huge impact Musa Dagh, the novel about the Armenian genocide by Franz Werfel, had on Jews. It was read by Jews in Palestine and was widely read in the ghettos in Poland during the Holocaust (“the book passed from hand to hand”). Tellingly, during the course of a secret debate by the Jewish Underground in Bialystok, Musa Dagh was mentioned several times. One of the members, Herschel Rosenthal, who was the main advocate to fight back against the Nazis and thus remain in the ghetto, said, “Our fate is sealed. We are therefore left with only one possibility: organizing collective resistance in the ghetto at any price; to view the ghetto as our Musa Dagh, and to add a chapter of honor to the history of the Jewish Bialystok and of our movement” (quoted in Auron, 2001, p. 302). It seems to me that every society—as well as every human being— should explore its personal and collective history and identity. Knowing and facing our own history is part of our behavior and consciousness in the present and in the future. In my opinion, we cannot afford to avoid this self-examination, including looking through the difficult and black pages of our individual—as well as our collective—past. My next book along this line was The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide (2004), which was an extremely complicated intellectual undertaking. Indeed, in many respects, it has been my most complicated task thus far. Therein, I analyzed the attitude of the state of Israel, the political arena, the educational arena, the academic arena and the communicational arena regarding the Armenian genocide after the foundation of the state of Israel. Looking inward into my own consciousness and subconscious, and that of the society in which I live, was, indeed, a difficult and painful process. In many respects it is not a book about the Armenian Genocide, but rather it is about what is sometimes considered, rightly or wrongly, “Jewish values” and their fulfillment or lack thereof; it is a book about the character and nature 179

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of the State of Israel. I sometimes regret that I began this process so late, but on the other hand, I feel quite satisfied to have completed this study. It was for me a fulfillment of responsibility and obligation toward myself as a human being, toward my people, my society, and toward every member of the Armenian people. I believe that when we deny genocide perpetrated against another people, we are actually defiling the legacy of our own Holocaust. Basically, Israel behaves like this due to two reasons: First, there is the issue of the political, military, and economic relations with Turkey, all of which oblige Israel not to anger Turkey over the Armenian issue. Second, Israel thinks, and I believe wrongly, that recognition of the Armenian genocide could damage the ideology of the uniqueness of the Holocaust, an ideology that is very dominant, unfortunately, to this very day in Israel. Genocide and Academic Life

I now to wish to address how I sacrificed my academic life, and maybe much more than my academic life, for the issue of genocide. As I said, the main subject of my academic work early on was Jewish identity and Israeli identity, which also meant focusing on the identity of the Palestinians in Israel—not to mention the problem of identity in diasporas. On this subject I published several books, the first of which was Jewish Israeli Identity in 1993. Then, in 1998, I published a book on the Jews and the extreme left, We Are All German Jews, where I attempted to analyze aspects of the Jewish identity of radical Jews in the 1960’s and the beginning of the 1970’s. The third book (Israeli Identities: Jews and Arabs Facing the Mirror and the Other) on this subject dealt with Israelis’ identity, which also meant the identity of the Israeli Palestinians. As I also mentioned earlier, in the late 1980s I read a newspaper article about how Israel got involved in attempting to avoid the remembrance of the Armenian genocide. That sparked my interest in the case of the Armenian genocide and how various nations have acquiesced to Turkey’s demand that they not acknowledge the fact of the Armenian genocide. That, in turn, led me to writing about the matter and, essentially, entering the field of genocide studies. Now, moving on, many may not realize that the Jewish Memorial Day is an official day of observance in the United States and usually takes place on Kaf Zain in Nisan, which is the Hebrew date of the Memorial Day in Israel. The US president, or vice president, usually makes an official statement about the meaning of the Holocaust to the Jewish 180

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people and to humanity. This is exactly what the Armenians have been trying to achieve for years on end—that is, basically the same recognition of the Armenian genocide (as is done in France) that has been accorded the Holocaust. Despite numerous attempts by Armenians in the United States to have the Armenian genocide recognized by the US government, they have come to naught. Tellingly, each and every time there is a new election in the United States, most presidential candidates state, often emphatically, that they will prod the US government to recognize the Armenian genocide. But then once they are elected, they fail to come through on their promise—and, pure and simple, that is due to shrewd political calculations. For example, in his first campaign for president, Barack Obama asserted on television, for the public record, “If you want to have a president that will recognize the Armenian genocide, I am the president. If you want to have a president that will stop the terrible situation [referring to the lack of recognition of the Armenian genocide], I am the president.” In practice, he broke both promises. What bothered me most was this: Why do the United States and Israel, through their officials and leaders, support Turkey in not officially recognizing the Armenian genocide? I pondered this matter long and hard. We Jews, both in the United States and Israel, as well as elsewhere, suffered the Holocaust. For years, we used to say it was “the most terrible crime in human history” (which is, actually, a problematic assertion). But we couldn’t—in fact, didn’t—support other people who had suffered horrific mass murder, as well as other atrocities and injustices. This bothered me, immensely. And this, I began to study on my own, without any support, without any official program. And as I did, it began to dawn on me what a complicated issue it was. As I discovered, not only does Israel not recognize the Armenian genocide, it, in fact and unfortunately, denies the Armenian genocide. If an entity—in this case a nation, my nation, Israel—fails to speak up and recognize the Armenian genocide when another state, in this case Turkey, not only refuses to recognize the genocide (and, indeed, practically denies the genocide) and demands that other nations follow suit, then it, Israel, is basically denying the genocide. There were some acts where the official authorities in Israel—once even foreign minister Shimon Peres, who was also prime minister and is now the president of Israel—officially said that the Armenians suffered tragically but it was neither a holocaust nor genocide. That is a 181

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terrible statement, and it is not correct historically—not to mention how morally corrupt it is. I do not know of any other leader in a democratic society who has said anything that even approximates Peres’ words. Many leaders do not formally recognize the Armenian massacres as a genocide, but they do not say it did not happen, that it was not genocide. Peres, unfortunately, said it, and he never officially said he was in error. Essentially, this was the last official statement of a responsible personality in Israel about the Armenian genocide, and it is now the official attitude of the state of Israel toward the Armenian Genocide. A Change of Focus: Both Professionally and Personally

With my entrance into the field of genocide studies, both my academic and my personal life radically changed. Genocide has been a very essential part of my life in the last twenty-five years. It is not only a field of study, it is not only the focus of my academic work, it is my life—my emotional life, my intellectual life, and my public life. I have struggled, and continue to struggle, to get Israel to officially recognize the Armenian genocide. I want to change the attitude of the Israeli leadership, the state of Israel, the Israeli society, and our educational system, which is controlled by the Ministry of Education. I also want to change the attitude of the Israeli academy, which is independent, but unfortunately, rarely posits questions about the behavior of our state. In 1994, I created an experimental program about genocide. Initially, I carried it out at Seminar Hakibbutim, a teacher training college where I worked at the time. Later, the Israeli Minister of Education at that time, the late Mrs. Shulamit Aloni, asked me to prepare a program for high school students in their last years of study and also for the colleges of education in order to prepare the next generation of teachers in Israel. I was pleased to do so. At the beginning, high officials in the Ministry of Education praised the curriculum, but then the ministry of education officially rejected it. The history committee of the Minister of Education criticized me, claiming that I was not objective in that I supported “the Armenian cause,” and that academic work needs to present the narratives of both sides. Ultimately, it was clear to everybody that there were political pressures from Turkey on the Israeli government to reject the curriculum. And entangled with that were a host of political issues: our relations with Turkey; Turkey’s attitude towards the Palestinians, which is opposite to the attitude of the state of Israel; and the affair of Marmara. 182

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From that point forward, I began a struggle that continues until this day. I criticized the decision of the Ministry of Education, and in doing so helped to craft and publish an open letter about the issue. Several professors from the university signed the letter. We also organized a demonstration with the Armenian community, protesting the Education Ministry’s decision. These were the first demonstrations that the Armenians dared to carry out outside of their quarter (the Armenian Quarter) in the Old City in Jerusalem. Later on we fought the decision of the municipality of Tel Aviv to present honorary citizenship to Bernard Lewis, a high-profile individual who denied the fact of the Armenian genocide, and we were successful in that the decision was rescinded. The debate over Bernard Lewis was the first open and public debate about Israel’s refusal to acknowledge the fact of the Armenian genocide. Every Friday for eight weeks, Haaretz (a newspaper) published articles on either side of the debate surrounding the reality of the Armenian genocide, the issue of denial regarding a genocide other than the Holocaust, the role of an intellectual in society, and the Israeli denial of the Armenian genocide. Following that, I inaugurated the aforementioned Genocide Studies program at the Open University. Initially, it was quite a difficult situation for me as a new scholar in the university. (In fact, there were some important professors at Tel Aviv University that advised the Open University not to offer me a position, as they believed that I would cause problems in regard to the Armenian genocide. I have to say, the Open University was very supportive of me. They put their trust in me and gave me full freedom. I am sure that I could not do what I’ve done—that is, raise the host of issues I have in regard to the Knesset and the Armenian genocide, engage in the debate over recognizing the Armenian genocide, etc.—at any other university in Israel. The university really was open. I was more and more convinced that I had to continue the struggle. I knew that there was almost no one else who would do it. I felt and believed that it was my moral duty to undertake the effort to try to bring about change inside my society mainly through education because, practically, it is the only weapon with which to engage in a moral struggle. Because it was a moral decision, there was a sense that I had to carry out the struggle. I sensed that I might end up, publicly, almost all alone; I also realized that there were people who supported me but chose, for 183

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­ hatever reason, not to speak out. There were, of course, also those w who were indifferent. Of course, indifference is a main factor in cases of genocide. As I mentioned earlier, I want to change the educational system in Israel in regard to how it teaches students about the Holocaust, and I ardently wish to introduce genocide studies into the curricular program of the Israeli educational system. The program that I initially prepared was titled “Sensitivity to the Suffering in the World: Genocide in the 20th Century.” My goals were to approach the subject matter from a humanistic perspective, and focus on our responsibilities as human beings and as a society toward acts of genocide in our time. As one can readily ascertain, inherent in the approach were key ethical and moral concerns. The aforementioned approach was one of the official reasons why the powers that be rejected the program. They asserted that in the study of history, one should not deal with values but solely with facts. I could not accept such a position or such criticism. In part, as noted earlier, Israel does not recognize the Armenian genocide because of political and practical calculations regarding the relations between Israel and Turkey, which have had their ups and downs—all of which have had significant ramifications for Israel in the realm of international relations. Many people, however, do not know that another reason why Israel does not recognize the Armenian genocide is that the Israeli government is intent on maintaining the idea of the singularity, the uniqueness, of the Holocaust, which controls the Israeli political arena, but also, unfortunately, at least in my opinion, the academic arena in Israel, as well. This attitude is manifestly and openly expressed by Yad Vashem, which objected to my program a priori, even without knowing exactly what my approach was. I must duly note that in no way whatsoever do I minimize the significance of the Holocaust as a unique event in the history of the Jewish people or in the history of humanity. Furthermore, we have to study and educate about the Holocaust because it happened to us, Jews. But I also firmly believe that we have to teach the genocides of other people, not in competition with the Holocaust, but as a complementary educational endeavor. My opinion is that the Holocaust is a unique event within the framework of genocide—and not something outside such a framework. As far as I am concerned, both Yad Vashem and the State of Israel utilize the Holocaust in a very unacceptable way. 184

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Of course, there are unique aspects of the Holocaust, but there are also unique aspects of the Armenian genocide—for example, the long and constant denial by the perpetrators’ heirs. We, all of us who study genocide, want our students, and everyone else in the world, to look at genocide as the most terrible event in the history of humanity. Naturally, or at least it should be considered natural and something that is understood and adhered to, we cannot calculate and compare the suffering experienced by the victims of different genocides. Suffering is suffering is suffering is suffering. Killing and murdering are crimes, atrocities, horrors that can be carried out via gas chambers, but they can also be committed via the use of machetes. What is so difficult to understand about that? Fortunately, I have not struggled against the attitude of the Israeli society in total isolation. While I have largely done it alone, there have been times, fortunately, when I have had the support of certain, colleagues, intellectuals, political personalities, and organizations. For example, that which constitutes the civil rights movement in Israel, the “Meretz” Party, has been extremely supportive about the need for the State of Israel to officially, formally, recognize the Armenian genocide. It has raised the issue in the Knesset every year since 2006. Positive Changes

Over the years, there have been significant changes in Israel regarding the Armenian genocide. First, twenty years ago, many Israelis, knew very little, if anything at all, about the Armenian genocide. Now they know quite a lot, even though surely not enough. Second, today, most Israelis support the Armenian cause. Third, we’re also beginning to see more openness in regard to addressing the issue in the academy today. I am proud that the process began in the Open University in Israel. Since 2006–2007, we, the Open University, have been teaching about genocide. The course is only taught at the Open University. It is an undergraduate course. We began the course with seven students, and in the last four years we have had more than 2,400 students per year. This is the largest course on genocide in the world. And I must say, I am very proud of that. In the course, “Genocide,” all the instructors are exceedingly careful to make sure what they teach is factually accurate, and we always emphasize that we are dealing with very sensitive and significant moral dilemmas. 185

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We have written and published twelve books as part and parcel of the course—a series for which I have overall responsibility, each of which forms part of the whole but can also be read independently of the others. Some are theoretical in nature and some comprise case studies of various genocides, such as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the Armenian genocide, the genocide of the Gypsies during the period of the Holocaust, the Holocaust, and so on. It is a rather unique series of books on genocide—not only in Israel but beyond. Not only do the books address theoretical aspects of genocide and present case studies, but they also probe moral issues and address the significance of moral values. The students have to think about moral issues and wrestle with what it means to be moral in such situations. Eight of our twelve books on genocide were published in English in 2013 and 2014 by the Open University Press and Contento Publishing House, respectively. They serve as texts for the students. They have to read some of them during the course, but not all twelve. Each book is part of the series, but also stand on their own. While I wrote the first book (Genocide—Reflections on the Inconceivable: Theoretical Aspects in Genocide Studies) in the series, I was also responsible for writing the introductions to each of the books, explaining key terminology about the subject and briefly discussing genocide theory. Students enrolled in the course insisted that they receive copies of each book for themselves, and the university agreed to provide them with the books. Some, but not many, high schools also use the books with their students. Few high schools make use of them because the course is not required by the Ministry of Education. It is also worth noting that our course, “Genocide,” is now being taught in MOOK, a system offered by the European Union in Hebrew and in English. It is estimated that thousands of student from all over the world will take the course in English. In a survey conducted in 2014 by the research department of the Open University, students who completed the course were asked if they were likely to recommend the course to their friends: 98.5 percent answered yes and 47 percent of the students responded that they thought that the course should be mandatory for all 45,000 students of the university. Some have even argued that the course should be mandatory for every student at every university in Israel. And not a few students have even argued that it should be a mandatory course all across the globe. 186

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As for the course being mandatory, I am against it. I really want each student to choose whether he or she wishes to enroll in the course. I firmly believe that the power to choose is one of the most significant aspects of our life as human beings. Thus, if a student is not interested in the course or would rather take a different course or set of courses, then that should be up to him or her. I should note that we also have a master’s seminar that we offer: “The Pain of Knowledge: Issues on Teaching Holocaust and Genocide in Israel and the World.” Many students have written us that the course is the most significant course they’ve taken during their course of study, and that it changed their lives. Some have said, for example, they are, as a result of taking the course, volunteering to work with refugees from Africa (such as those from Darfur) now living in Israel. Here is a brief sampling of the comments about the course we’ve received: “I just wanted to thank you for making me change my conception about genocide and about our place in the history. I’ve never in my life thought about the magnitude of genocide in world history. Anyway, from all courses I took, there is no doubt that this course left the biggest impression on me. Thanks!”—Eden “[Last] semester I completed the fascinating genocide course. It was my last semester for the MA studies and I’m happy for my decision to take it. Two months after the exam the content of the course still echoes strong in the head . . . After reading an article about the use of chemical weapons in Syria I had to write you an email. To thank you and the course team for [offering] a course that has a great importance, that makes you reflect and look at the world differently. It is important to note that these aren’t things that I didn’t know about, but I feel that in this course you invoked in us a different way of looking at things—and this is what has changed. All the different aspects and the things we should take into consideration. I feel that [because] you teach and voice this issue, you contribute a lot to the struggle against the insanity in this world. It’s important for me to note it because I know that a large part of your objective in giving this course is to invoke [sic] us, these thoughts and to contribute our part, and not just to help us get better grades. So, you’ve succeeded, at least with me”—Liron “I want to thank you, and all of the genocide course team for exposing me to this subject. In my opinion this is a very important issue that 187

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doesn’t [get] respected and exposed in [this] country and the world, and ignorance celebrates. “Thank you and the course team for a fascinating, interesting and sweeping course, which often left me open-mouthed in face of events and [sometimes tearful]. Please continue this sacred work, let us never forget again. thank you, thank you, thank you, Best regards”—Alma “I want to thank you. I’ve been studying five years at the Open University, but I never had such an interesting and important course. The books are so interesting and well written. I realized many things about people and the world in general. I think it is a course that every student, any person [actually,] needs to learn. Thank you again for this experience”—Yoram As for me, personally, in my research today, I largely focus on the special position of the third parties during acts of genocide. Third parties are those who lie between the perpetrators of genocide and their victims, a small proportion of whom support the victims, some of whom either indirectly or directly support the perpetrators, and the large majority of whom remain indifferent. I firmly believe that the third party, as it were, shares in the responsibility, and possibly in the blame, for such events. Another key interest of mine today is the interdisciplinary study of genocide: its historical, social, and cultural contexts, as well as in relation to personal and collective memory and identity. I continue to develop university syllabi for the Open University (and a program for high school pupils) on various facets of genocide, which contributes to the teaching of the subject, perhaps for the first time in Israel. An Ongoing Issue

From 2010 to 2014, the majority of the Israeli parliament voiced an interest in conducting a debate on the Armenian genocide, but the subject has to be dealt with first in a committee of the Knesset, and only afterwards will it be brought back to the podium for an open discussion. Twice the government decided to send the issue to the Committee of Foreign Affairs and Security, which is a closed and secret committee—so secret, in fact, that we do not even know if the committee even considered the matter. 188

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In the last two years, the debate took place in the Education Committee, which is an open committee. In the last debate held by the Education Committee on this matter, the majority of the participants supported the proposal to debate the issues surrounding Israel’s attitude towards the Armenian genocide, but then the head of the committee from the coalition declared the debate had to be halted and returned to the committee. The head of the committee did not spell out why the debate had to be halted, but surely it was due to the fact that the majority of the committee was in favor of debating the issues as to whether Israel should recognize the Armenian genocide or not and the government wanted to prevent that from happening. It was simply a ploy to avoid any debate on the issue. And thus, the debate on the Armenian genocide never took place within the committees, and as a result, there was no open debate. And that is where the situation remains to this day. What Is Needed in the Way of Research

In my opinion, the field of genocide studies is in need of large-scale studies regarding the attitudes/approaches of specific nation’s governments toward genocide, both in general and in regard to specific genocides. Acts of genocides and their recognition and memories of genocide need to be examined. Such studies could provide valuable insights into the nature of humanity, individual governments, and nations; that which is most efficacious in preventing genocide; and, to use a phrase that Samuel Totten used in one of his recent books, the impediments to the prevention and intervention of genocide. In Conclusion and the Future

For me, all of this brings to mind Primo Levi’s magnificent last book, The Drowned and The Saved (1986), in which he wrote the following about the SS: “They were made of the same cloth as we; they were average human beings, averagely intelligent, averagely wicked: save the exceptions, they were not monsters, they had our faces, but they had been reared badly” (emphasis added) (p. 199). Levi’s claim is quite clear and very frightening: “This event happened so it can happen again. . . . It can happen, and it can happen everywhere” (p. 199). For me, this is the central moral observation to be derived from the Holocaust and other acts of genocide: Human beings committed horrific atrocities against other human beings, and therefore it can be done again, elsewhere, anywhere, and everywhere. Therefore, following Levi and others, we 189

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have to ask ourselves, “What can each of us do to prevent—or at least minimize—this threat?” Less than a decade after this visionary statement by Levi, genocide exploded again—this time in Rwanda in 1994 and in the former Yugoslavia (and in particular, Srebrenica in 1995), where all sorts of crimes against humanity were also perpetrated. Both of the tragedies could have been prevented, but they weren’t, yet again. Sadly, we can clearly say that we, humanity, seemingly did not learn anything from the lessons of the Holocaust. Learning from the past is our duty as scholars and intellectuals, and even more so, as educators. Education is a necessary, but by no means sufficient, condition for preventing or at least reducing genocides. Still, I am convinced that the efforts of specialists in the field of education are crucial in the struggle against future occurrences of genocide. Accordingly, this is a field in which I am currently investing a major part of my academic work. ­Currently, for example, I am developing an additional course for master’s candidates at the Open University that deals with racism in education. The relevant bodies at the Open University have already ratified the course and accompanying book. Racism, of course, is often a critical stage in the development of genocide and other human rights violations. I firmly believe that those who, in anyway whatsoever, deny any genocide that has been perpetrated at anytime by anyone—or supports, directly or indirectly, the denial of such (be it the Armenian Genocide, the genocide of the Gypsies, et al) is not only factually wrong but committing a sin, morally, and sometimes a crime, legally. In my opinion, it also betrays the legacy of the Holocaust, at least as I understand it. Unfortunately, my country is committing such a sin. Some Final Thoughts

In 1947, Albert Camus published The Plague (La Peste), a novel, which is in many respects an allegory of inhumanity during World War II perpetrated by the Nazis and fascism. The hero of the novel, Dr. Rieux, resolved to compile his chronicle so that . . . he should not be one of those who hold their peace, instead choosing to bear witness in favor of the “plague-stricken” people, so that some memorial of the injustice done them might endure. Nonetheless, he knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory. It could be only the record of what had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again and again 190

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and again in the never-ending fight against the relentless onslaught of evil and inhumanity. As he listened to the cries of joy rising from the town at the riddance of the plague, Rieux remembered that such joy is always imperiled. He knew what the jubilant crowd did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, to the bane of all, it rouses up its rats again and sends them forth to die in a happy city. (Camus, 1960, pp. 251–52);

And thus, we have to remember, as Camus tells us, that the fight against evil, terror, and genocide is a “never-ending fight,” and that we have to be consistent in this ongoing struggle. Some fifty years later, in 1995, José Saramago published his unforgettable book—also a metaphor of our civilization in the twentieth century—Blindness. It is the story of a society whose members have been blinded mysteriously. Among them, a single woman retains her eyesight and chooses to join her blind husband in an isolation camp created for the blind by the government. She essentially argues that in one way or another people quite often choose to be “blind.” The following is a conversation between the woman with sight and a blind woman who finally realizes that the other woman is not blind.3 Today is today, tomorrow will bring what tomorrow brings, today is my responsibility, not tomorrow if I should turn blind. What do you mean by responsibility? The responsibility of having my eyesight when others have lost theirs. You cannot hope to guide or provide food for all the blind people in the world, I ought to, But you cannot, I shall do whatever I can to help. (Saramago, 1995, p. 238).

In retrospect, as I examine my activity over the past twenty-five years in relation to my work in the field of genocide studies, I look upon it with satisfaction. I am doing what I do because I cannot not do it. It is, firstly, a moral issue and, secondly, my struggle for truth. In the end I am perhaps having some influence. Surprisingly, in November 2013, I was awarded a gold medal in the name of Franz Werfel by the Armenian Genocide Museum in Yerevan. I had been invited by the government of Armenia upon the publication of my book, The Banality of Indifference, in Armenian, and there I was received as 191

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a “national hero.” The ceremony in the Opera House in Yerevan was very special for me. I felt the respect, the love, and let me say also, the admiration from people in the streets and from the leaders of the state. They compared me, wrongly in my opinion, with what they call “the Jewish tradition” of identification with the Armenians, represented by such personalities as Henry Morgenthau and Franz Werfel. “Now, maybe this tradition,” they said, “is being renewed by you.” When I walked to the podium, everyone in the hall stood and clapped. I was so overwhelmed, I almost cried. Then, in 2014, I was awarded Armenia’s President Prize. It is a very prestigious international prize given every year for people who have, variously, contributed to the field of art and music, the field of genocide studies, the Armenian genocide, and the struggle against denial of the Armenian genocide. The award is not given every year in each and every field. And sometimes two people in the same field may receive the prize. In 2014, I was the only one in the field of genocide studies to receive the honor. It was a great honor for me. A truly great honor. I have not really thought about this until now, but after I visited Armenia in November 2013, I found that I really desired to be the recipient of the Prize. And then suddenly, the woman who translated my book into Armenian sent me an email in which she said, “My brother, I have good news to tell you . . .” I was very happy.

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Notes

Among some of the many studies and books published about the Second Generation are as follows: Hass, Aaron (1996). In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Second Generation. New York: Cambridge University Press; Berger, Naomi, and Berger, Alan L. (Eds.) (2001). Second Generation Voices: Reflections by Children of Holocaust Survivors and Perpetrators (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press; Grimwood, Marita (2007). Holocaust Literature of the Second Generation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan; and Wiseman, Hadas, and Barber, Jacques P. (2008). Echoes of the Trauma: Relational Themes and Emotions in Children of Holocaust Survivors. New York: Cambridge University Press. Israel’s official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It is comprised of a major research center, one of the largest, if not the largest, archives on the Holocaust in the world, an education center, and a museum, among other branches and memorial sites. Note from editor: It is not always clear as to which person is saying what. In this regard, Yair Auron comments: I imagine Saramago set it up this way purposely.

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References

Auron, Yair (1993). Jewish-Israeli Identity. Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim (Hebrew). Auron, Yair (1994). Sensitivity to Human Suffering: Genocide in the 20th Century. Tel Aviv: Seminar Hakibbutim. Auron, Yair (2000). The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Auron, Yair (2003). The Banality of Denial. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Auron, Yair (2012). Israeli Identities: Jews and Arabs Facing the Mirror and the Other. New York: Berghahn Books. Camus, Albert (1960). The Plague. Middlesex: Penguin Books. Levi, Primo (1986). The Drowned and the Saved. New York: Vintage Books. Saramago, José (1997). Blindness. London: The Harvill Press.

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VII Independent Researchers

9 A Quest for Genocide Justice in Cambodia Craig Etcheson

I love my job—notwithstanding the horrifying subject matter it often involves. I am a genocide investigator. That requires me to constantly learn new things, and that makes me happy. My interests have always been wide-ranging—politics, economics, religion, science, art, technology, history, geography, law, the natural world, and on and on. My profession compels me to scamper back and forth across all these disciplines and more. It is a life of learning. What have I learned? Well, for example, I’ve learned that even though everyone says your idea is impossible, they might all be wrong. I’ve learned that you should never assume that there is nothing more to discover about a particular topic; you can always go further, and excavate more deeply buried truths. And I’ve learned that there is a lot more to transitional justice than just facts and laws—in reality, it is mainly about people. I suppose it all began in my life-long fascination with extreme forms of organized social violence. At first, no doubt, I was captivated purely by the destruction. Boys like things that go bang. But gradually I began to apprehend the waste, and then the suffering. And one cannot help but wonder, what is the purpose of all this? My father had been a naval officer, and an older brother fought in Vietnam and Cambodia, perhaps kindling parts of this early curiosity. Agents of the state come to your town, to your own home, and inform you that you have been selected to destroy things and kill people, and perhaps to die, in the name of God and country. I think I did my first writing on the topic of organized violence in the fourth or fifth grade. It was an essay on the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck in 1941. As I progressed in my studies, I gravitated towards political science and international affairs, aiming to develop a deeper understanding of 197

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how large-scale conflict comes about and how it might be mitigated. My undergraduate work at the University of Illinois was in politics and psychology, which I followed with a master’s in politics and economics. For my doctoral work, I moved to the University of Southern California’s School of International Relations, where I concentrated on foreign policy analysis, political economy, security studies, and research methodology. When I was deciding on a topic for my PhD thesis, I felt compelled to select the most significant problem I could imagine. For me, the two most important problems facing the world were global hunger and the threat of nuclear war. I eventually reasoned that if there were a full-scale strategic exchange among the world’s nuclear powers, then hunger likely would no longer be an issue. So, I elected to study the problem of nuclear war by examining mathematical models of war, seeking to apply the technologies of artificial intelligence to understanding how and why modern national security bureaucracies behave as they do. While I was in the process of carrying out that project, I enrolled in a graduate seminar on Third World revolution. The term paper I wrote for that seminar gradually got out of hand, and with the encouragement of my instructor, Professor Gerald Bender, it eventually morphed into my first book, The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea. This was to be the beginning of a compelling interest in Cambodia and the Communist Party of Kampuchea—popularly known as the Khmer Rouge. While this interest initially manifested itself as what might be termed “area studies,” I soon heeded the advice of another of my most influential teachers, James N. Rosenau, who taught us to always ask, “Of what is this an instance?” Thus in the mid-1980s, I also began to study other episodes of mass political and communal violence, whether they be characterized as atrocities, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. This happened to coincide with the time that the field of genocide studies was beginning to emerge, and it quickly became clear that I was far from the only person fascinated with this macabre area of inquiry. Around this time, I also started to become aware of other scholars who were deeply engaged in the study of genocide in Cambodia, and who also brought an activist orientation to the task. David Hawk and Greg Stanton became role models and inspirations to me. Initially as a team, and later in separate projects, they sought to document what had happened in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, and they also 198

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worked toward having a state or states bring a legal case against Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity and genocide perpetrated between 1975 and 1979. During the 1980s, however, the international community was not ready to contemplate such an unprecedented responsibility. Not since the Nuremberg Trials of Nazis suspects, after all, had there been any sustained international momentum for prosecuting mass crimes of this nature. The fine words of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide were still no more than that—words on a piece of paper. After I finished my doctoral studies in 1984, I taught occasional courses as an adjunct faculty member at my alma mater, the University of Southern California, while I searched for a tenure-track teaching job in a competitive environment. Meanwhile, I was able to leverage my computer skills into a series of interesting positions in southern California’s rich gumbo of high-tech businesses in the aerospace, telecommunications, and entertainment industries. But after five years of fruitless searching for full-time employment in academia, I felt I was drifting further and further from my professional training. I decided it was time to try another approach. I pulled up my stakes and moved to Washington, DC, with the idea that I would supplement my years of training in theory with a spin in the world of policy. Henry Kissinger had once observed that “policy is the imposition of purpose on events.” It would be interesting to see how this works in practice. An opportunity soon arose. An advocacy organization known as CORKR—the Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge—had been lobbying to prevent Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge guerillas from being legitimized as part of an international peace settlement that had been under negotiation for several years. When, on October 23, 1991, the Agreements on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict were signed in Paris, CORKR faced the failure of its central mission, and its director resigned. I proposed to CORKR’s Board of Directors that rather than a crisis, this development should be seen as an opportunity. If Cambodia was to be reborn as a democratic state under the rule of law, and the Khmer Rouge leadership was to be part of that state, I had in mind several laws which should be enforced forthwith, starting with the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. After all, Cambodia was a State Party to the Genocide Convention. The board agreed with this strategy and put me in charge of the organization. We quickly put in place a program to advocate for the 199

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establishment of an international tribunal to try crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime. The United States government was firmly opposed to any such endeavor, so the first challenge would be to bring about a change in US policy. CORKR’s office was on Capitol Hill in Washington, directly across First Street from the Capitol Building, in fact. But it was a small organization; other than the occasional intern and a part-time accountant, I was the only staff member. Nonetheless, CORKR was structured as a coalition of some fifteen organizations, and so we had numerous allies upon whom we could rely. One of these was the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), which for a time had supplied us with an office. FAS leader Jeremy Stone and his staff did much to initiate me into the ways of Washington. At the outset, I thought some internal tweaks to CORKR were needed. For one thing, the name of our organization was inherently negative, with the word “oppose” in it. We were now working on something of which we were in favor—a tribunal—rather than against. So I agitated for an informal name change to “The Cambodia Campaign,” which also helped insofar as a lot more people recognized “Cambodia” than the “Khmer Rouge.” I also worked to massively expand the size of our coalition. I figured that many people would support the idea of a war crimes trial for these mass murderers. Sure enough, before long, the coalition numbered nearly one hundred member organizations. This would prove to be important later, when we moved into a nationwide lobbying campaign. One needs to bear in mind that this was all happening at a time before transitional justice was cool. In fact, transitional justice hadn’t even really been invented yet. Lustration in Eastern Europe, the amnesties in Latin America, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia were only just beginning to emerge as concepts—controversial concepts. So it was perhaps understandable if some people thought I was talking crazy talk when I suggested that what was needed was an international tribunal for Cambodia. After all, who had ever heard of such a thing? But I wasn’t the only person entertaining crazy ideas. Working with two key allies in the US Congress—New York Representative Stephen Solarz and Virginia Senator Chuck Robb—we ramped up a campaign to create legislation that would direct the US government to support a Khmer Rouge tribunal. Solarz pushed one bill in the US House of Representatives while Robb pushed a similar 200

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piece of legislation in the US Senate. The George H. W. Bush Administration used its allies on Capitol Hill to keep the legislation bottled up in committee in 1992. With the advent of the Clinton Administration in 1993, we renewed our push and discovered that opposition to this policy change was deeply embedded in the State Department. We were again stymied. It was time to play hardball. I had studied the Herculean efforts by David Hawk and Greg Stanton through the 1980s to bring about a Cambodian genocide tribunal, and I observed that they had relied primarily on appeals to law, reason, and morality in their futile campaigns. What was needed here, I concluded, was some raw political action. Politicians might not respond to moral arguments, but they would certainly respond to threats to their own political interests. CORKR was structured as an alliance of public interest organizations, including religious, human rights, veterans, labor, relief and other groups. I identified the members of crucial Congressional committees in the House and the Senate whose cooperation would be needed to pass enabling legislation and then, drawing on the far-flung membership of our allied organizations, we mounted a campaign of op-ed writing from constituents in key states and congressional districts, asking why their congressmen and senators were protecting genocidal maniacs from prosecution. At the national level, we raised the same question about the Clinton Administration. The issue then very rapidly moved up on the priority lists of politicians in Washington. Around this same time, the United States was in the process of reestablishing diplomatic ties with Cambodia following a nearly twentyyear break in relations. Charles Twining, a long-time Cambodia watcher in the State Department, had been selected to become the new US ambassador to Cambodia. As part of his effort to clear the decks of troublesome issues prior to assuming his post, Twining decided that he would broker an agreement among the US government, Congress, and CORKR on the tribunal question. The United States would formally declare its support for a Khmer Rouge tribunal—contingent upon the Cambodian government’s agreement with the idea—and half a million dollars would be provided to CORKR to carry out a two-year program of documentation, research, and training on aspects of the Khmer Rouge regime. I balked at the second part of this plan. It seemed to me that a large-scale research operation of this nature was far beyond the capacity of what was essentially a one-person organization operating 201

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out of a single-room office. I thought that such a project would require significant institutional support and could be much more effectively executed, for example, at a major research university. Fortunately, this tweak to the plan was immediately welcomed at the State Department, and soon enough a request for proposals was put out for competitive bids. Numerous teams delivered proposals, and I solicited several of these teams, offering my insider knowledge of what the State Department was seeking. Since I had consulted extensively with the State Department in formulating the project, I had a very good idea of exactly what they were looking for. Only one team responded to my entreaties. Yale University’s Ben Kiernan, one of the world’s leading scholars of the Khmer Rouge—and not incidentally, a CORKR advisor—invited me to join him in crafting a proposal. We proposed to conduct a two-year program of documentation, research, and training in Cambodia, as well as to establish a permanent research institute in Cambodia to carry the work forward after the grant period expired. The training aimed to introduce Cambodian judges and other legal professionals to the basics of international humanitarian law and international criminal law. Our proposal subsequently won the competition. The CORKR/Cambodia Campaign phase of my work was coming to an end. My Board of Directors agreed that it was time to close the office, and that it made sense for me to relocate to Yale University to develop a new chapter of our quest. Getting the US government to support a genocide tribunal as a matter of policy was one thing; getting the rest of the world on board for such an objective was another matter altogether. The enormity of what I had set out to do was beginning to sink in. For starters, how does one go about organizing an inquiry into an entire historical epoch, rife with massive violence of all kinds? It occurred to me that there was a very recent and very relevant precedent. Over the course of the several years that I had been struggling to push forward the idea of a genocide tribunal for the Khmer Rouge, another such institution had actually been established—the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, or the ICTY. It was the first such court since World War II’s Nuremberg tribunal. The establishment of the ICTY had been preceded by a Commission of Experts, which carried out a program of investigation very similar to the one on which we were now embarking. So, my first task was to track down Cherif Bassiouni, who had led that commission, and seek his guidance on how one could best organize such a massive inquiry. Fortunately for me, Cherif taught law at DePaul University in Chicago, 202

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not far from my parents’ home in central Illinois. Even more fortunately, he immediately invited me to meet with him to discuss our undertaking. His advice was extremely encouraging and helpful. I was slightly flummoxed when Cherif presented me with a copy of the report on the Former Yugoslavia produced by his Commission of Experts—it was enormous, with hundreds of hours of video, thousands of pages of analysis, and tens of thousands of documents. He saw the look in my eye, and told me that recruiting volunteers would be central to the success or failure of our mission. He turned out to be right about that. We would need lots more hands than we could afford to hire in order to get the job done. Yale turned out to be an excellent place to launch the work. I was appointed to the faculty as an associate research professor, and I soon discovered that there was a fantastic wealth of expertise there eager to assist in the various prongs of our project. Many entities at Yale eventually helped out in our efforts, including the Fortunoff Video Archive, the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, the Center for Earth Observation, the library’s Southeast Asia Studies Collection, among other units. We also retained the services of the head of the School of Archives, Information, and Library Studies at the University of New South Wales, Helen Jarvis, as a documentation consultant. Helen had created a computer database of the voluminous documents produced by the 1979 People’s Revolutionary Tribunal in Phnom Penh, a controversial in absentia trial that convicted Khmer Rouge leaders Pol Pot and Ieng Sary of genocide. That database became the prototype for the first version of our bibliographic, biographic, geographic, and photographic databases. One of our highest priorities in launching the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale University was to get on the ground in Cambodia and set up an organization to begin compiling data about the Khmer Rouge regime. So in January 1995, I went to Phnom Penh and teamed up with Youk Chhang, who had been the Texas Regional Coordinator for CORKR. Together we established the Documentation Center of Cambodia (later known as DC-Cam) and set about the task of hiring staff, searching for office space, and making local alliances. Youk Chhang has an interesting history. As a child, his family lived in Phnom Penh, from which the Khmer Rouge expelled them on April 17, 1975. His father and a sister were killed during the regime. After the Khmer Rouge fell from power, Youk escaped to a refugee camp in Thailand, and from there he immigrated to the United States. 203

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He settled in Texas and continued his education, eventually earning a master’s degree in political science. Youk then worked as a community relations officer for a police department. When the Cambodian peace process unfolded in the early 1990s, he jumped at the chance to return to Cambodia with the United Nations. He worked initially as a district electoral supervisor in Kampong Speu province, but when Khmer Rouge attacks persuaded many UN staff to abandon their posts, he won something of a battlefield promotion to oversee the elections at the provincial echelon. The experience he gained in this period would yield great dividends when he came to work with us at the Cambodian Genocide Program. When we established the Documentation Center, we quickly realized that we were being tailed everywhere in Cambodia by government intelligence agents. They reminded us of Keystone Cops; Youk kept confronting them and confiscating their identification cards. But eager to establish good relations with the government, we went to see the Minister of Interior, Sar Kheng, first to complain about the annoying surveillance, and second to brief him on our work and hopefully develop a more cooperative relationship. The meeting was a success; Sar Kheng produced a letter of transit authorizing us to go anywhere and seize any object that we judged to be relevant to our research. We expected that once they realized how literally we intended to interpret its terms this letter would be honored more in the breach than in the observance. But with only a couple of exceptions, the Cambodian government did indeed allow us almost completely unfettered access—even when we proposed to raid the archives of the Ministry of Interior itself. There we discovered a massive cache of previously unknown Khmer Rouge documents that included, for want of a better term, the records of the Khmer Rouge human resources department. Those records proved to be the key to decoding much of the structure of the Khmer Rouge organizational hierarchy. Other documents in this cache revealed an extraordinary range of macabre euphemisms that the Khmer Rouge employed. For example, to “resolve” a matter meant to execute the individual in question. To “sweep cleanly away” meant to exterminate a particular group of people. To “construct” oneself meant to be subjected to brainwashing. To be “absolute” meant that you were to show no mercy to your colleagues, friends or family. By their own words, we came to know them. Late in 1995, a French researcher named Henri Locard visited the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), urging us to 204

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a­ ccompany him to a site about forty kilometers southwest of Phnom Penh, near a village called Trapeang Sva. Locard had been studying the Khmer Rouge system of security offices, and he was the first to identify the structure of the system as having nodes at the district, sector, and zone echelons within the Khmer Rouge governance system. At Trapeang Sva, we were stunned when confronted with a massive pile of human skulls numbering, by my estimate, about eight thousand, along with a nearby killing field, which clearly still had many unexhumed graves. I turned to my colleagues and said, “OK, we know about the killing field at Choeung Ek, there is also one at Oudong, and now this place.” At Trapeang Sva that day, four local children tagged along with us as we examined the adjacent killing field. They were scampering in and out of the excavated mass graves. I called them over and asked if they knew what this place was; they said they did. “Aren’t you afraid of ghosts,” I asked them? The oldest child sneered. “There is no such thing as ghosts,” he dismissively retorted. The two youngest children exchanged worried glances and took off running. Since then, the government has bulldozed the entire area and erected a large car park for police vehicles, erasing all physical evidence of the mass killing. Fortunately, researchers had carefully documented the site, and we were also able to show it to the UN Commission of Inquiry before it was destroyed. “I have seen another one in Siem Reap,” added my colleague Helen Jarvis. “So, how many more of these places are there?” I asked. “Let’s find out.” Thus began DC-Cam’s mass grave mapping project, which eventually identified nearly two hundred security offices and some twenty thousand mass graves. This project lasted nearly a decade and ultimately involved hundreds of people, traveling in teams to virtually every district in Cambodia—there are more than 150 of them—often with an armed escort provided by local authorities. With potential threats ranging from venomous snakes to extremely bad roads to land mines to bandits to Khmer Rouge soldiers and more, these teams braved considerable dangers to uncover the truth about the mass killing perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. Our plan for DC-Cam was to spin it off from the Cambodian Genocide Program as an independent and permanent institute, though that, we were to discover, was far easier said than done. Putting in place competent local leadership, arranging sustainable financing, and ensuring a viable relationship with the host government were all potentially game 205

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ending challenges. That said, we had extremely good fortune when we passed the leadership mantle to Youk Chhang. Indeed, once the foreigners got out of the way and turned operations over to Cambodians, the effectiveness of DC-Cam grew rapidly. Youk had exactly the right combination of skills and natural abilities to nurture DC-Cam’s core missions. Moreover, we also found that many additional funders came forward to support the organization once it was unhitched from Yale. It is one of my proudest accomplishments. I decided that it was time for me to move on from Yale University and the Cambodian Genocide Program, and I had more good fortune when I connected with Pippa Scott. Pippa ran an organization in California called the International Monitor Institute (IMI), which specialized in preparing audio-visual evidentiary materials for international tribunals. Most of IMI’s work had been for the Yugoslavia and Rwanda (The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda or ICTR) tribunals, so Pippa was interested in adding my Cambodian expertise to her team. The experience allowed me to learn more about many aspects of the ICTY and ICTR, as well as about what prosecutors are looking for when they are building cases against war crimes suspects. My collaboration with IMI also enabled me to continue to work with DC-Cam and helped jumpstart another prong in DC-Cam’s documentation work, this time in visual and aural memory, supplementing our database of still photography, which had already grown to an impressive size. This period also coincided with the work of the UN Group of Experts, assigned by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to evaluate evidence of international crimes during the Khmer Rouge regime and to recommend “further measures,” diplomatic code for an international tribunal. While working in the Cambodian countryside with the experts in November 1998, however, I contracted hemorrhagic fever and was subsequently out of commission for several months. Bleeding from my eyes, nose, mouth, and all other bodily orifices, and on top of that, hallucinating wildly from the viral toxins, I found myself in a rather strange frame of mind. On my flight back to the United States, the cabin crew didn’t say anything to me, but they moved all other passengers a couple of rows away from me. I was very relieved when I finally made it home, where my wife gradually nursed me back to health. That episode gave me a whole new respect for viruses. Nonetheless, while I convalesced, in March 1999 the UN experts recommended the establishment of an international tribunal for Cambodia. Now it was just a matter of time, but traversing that last 206

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mile would take longer than anyone anticipated. Both the UN’s Office of Legal Affairs and the Cambodian government prepared for some hard bargaining. Meanwhile, I continued my collaboration with DC-Cam as it amassed ever greater depths in its archive of materials on the Khmer Rouge. One important project was assisting in the start-up of a research department at DC-Cam. Since Youk Chhang had taken over as director, he insisted that DC-Cam not analyze the materials it collected, but rather simply archive them. With the establishment of a research department, Youk turned a page and began to develop an indigenous cadre of young Cambodian researchers who could exploit DC-Cam’s archives to make contributions to our knowledge about the Khmer Rouge regime. With colleagues like Steve Heder and David Chandler, we began to train staff in techniques of research and scholarship. Because these young researchers were all either survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime, or the children of survivors, our training heavily emphasized the importance of working from empirical facts and of carefully examining the assumptions that one brings to the work in order to protect against the introduction of undue biases. A field that had always been dominated by foreigners was about to be joined by Cambodians in Cambodia, writing new histories of the Khmer Rouge. Soon they were producing book-length studies on topics such as Khmer Rouge child soldiers, the genocide of the Chams, the Khmer Rouge security services, and the organization of the Khmer Rouge military. Another significant piece of work that we undertook was known as the Forensic Project. It was initially conceived as a three-phase operation: first conceptual design, then site selection, and finally a full-scale multi-disciplinary forensic exhumation of mass graves. The mass grave-mapping project had already identified an enormous list of mass gravesites. We set about sorting through the sites, aiming to whittle the list down to a manageable group of locations that might yield probative forensic data. We quickly realized that over the intervening years since the Khmer Rouge regime, the vast majority of the mass graves had been looted, either by relatives searching for their missing loved ones, or by desperate people seeking gold or jewels that might have been buried with the victims. This severely degraded the value of those sites for forensic investigation. Other sites were located in ­insecure areas (the Khmer Rouge was still at war against the ­Cambodian 207

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g­ overnment), in places that were regularly subject to monsoon inundations, or had been destroyed by development projects or, in certain cases, by meandering rivers. Eventually we came up with a small list of promising sites, and we retained a pair of Canadian forensic experts to examine them in more detail. As we were on the verge of selecting sites for exhumation, however, experts from the ICTY persuaded Youk that it would be better to refrain from digging at any of the locations; they explained that there was no way we could know precisely what information a prosecutor might need, and so it was preferable to let the prosecutors organize the dig themselves. The Office of Co-Investigating Judges at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal persuaded the co-prosecutors to defer forensic investigation of mass graves to them, and the co-investigating judges ultimately elected not to dig. It was decided that there already was ample documentary and testimonial evidence to ascertain the truth, so the dead could be left undisturbed. Shortly after the turn of the millennium, I began to seriously examine my assumptions regarding transitional justice. I realized that much of what I thought I knew about transitional justice was in the nature of received wisdom—such as the idea that retributive justice more or less automatically leads to reconciliation—but that there was not much scholarship out there that attempted to systematically test such hypotheses. Ultimately, my wife and I moved to Takoma Park, Maryland, and at the invitation of Fred Brown, I took up a visiting scholar position at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. With the assistance of a pair of grants from the US Institute of Peace, I launched a systematic study on the efficacy of various methods applied in repairing postconflict societies. One conclusion I reached was that there is simply no empirical evidence of a causal relationship between criminal tribunals and political stability or national reconciliation. Extensive public opinion polling data in Cambodia, however, has consistently shown that overwhelming majorities of the people desire a retributive justice process for Khmer Rouge leaders. My own extensive interviews with Cambodians from all walks of life are consistent with those findings. Victims of war crimes want justice, and I have always been for the victims. The negotiations to establish the court had by this time moved far above my pay grade, but with my contacts at the UN, in Phnom Penh and in Washington, D.C. and the other key interested nations, I was able 208

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to consult extensively with various parties involved in the talks. There was great mistrust, considerable misunderstanding, and a bewildering array of agendas at work, so at times I served as a “lubricant,” translating meaning between mutually suspicious cultures. This phase of my work involved a great deal of travel, to New York to talk with the United Nations, to Washington, DC, to talk with the US government, to Phnom Penh to talk with the Cambodian government, and to other capitals, as well. The politics of the whole thing were fascinating, and it has to be said that the Cambodians ran circles around the UN negotiators. For example, in early 2002, frustrated with Cambodia’s negotiating demands, the UN’s Office of Legal Affairs attempted to wash its hands of the problem by terminating the negotiations. Rather than despair, the Cambodian side patiently and methodically marshaled support from other UN member states until they had enough votes in the General Assembly for a resolution ordering the UN Secretariat to return to the negotiations and conclude a deal. In many ways, the final outcome of the process would have done Rube Goldberg proud, but then, it was really the art of the possible at work. In August of 2005, while my wife was studying in Kenya, I moved our household to New Orleans. She returned from Africa on August 28 to see her new home on the banks of the Mississippi River, but the very next morning we were forced to hurriedly evacuate New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina tore into the Crescent City. Within a matter of hours, the city was inundated and almost completely underwater. After a lifetime of working with or around refugees and internally displaced persons, suddenly we knew what that felt like. Meanwhile, from our refuge in Illinois, I prepared to depart for Cambodia, where I was scheduled to assist in a training session for the national commission that had recently been appointed responsibility for security at the incipient Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Cambodia has an incredibly Balkanized and top heavy security service, so at the seminar for the ECCC Security Commission we were confronted with a veritable patchwork of more than a hundred variously uniformed colonels and generals. The substance of my ­intervention/initial talk to the assembled brass dealt with the likelihood that Cambodia’s judicial police would have to prepare themselves for new methodologies and approaches to investigation when they worked with international prosecutors and investigating judges. ­Customarily, Cambodian judicial police operate quite independently from prosecutors and investigating judges. Another key theme I addressed was that 209

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the elements of the international crimes in question—war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity—would likely be much more complex than the crimes they were accustomed to investigating, and therefore it would be important for them to let the prosecutors take the lead in identifying which particular types of evidence were needed. When it came time for the question and answer period, however, the assembled national security officers turned out not to be concerned with investigative methodologies or elements of crimes. Instead, they were focused on one single question, which they found a dozen different ways to ask about: Exactly what does “most responsible” mean (in relation to the atrocities perpetrated)? Many of these police and military officials, after all, had “interesting” life histories. They did not appear reassured when I insisted that only the ECCC co-prosecutors could define this diplomatic-political-legal term of personal jurisdiction, and since the co-prosecutors had not yet been nominated, there was as yet no way to precisely know who was “most responsible.” Little did I then realize that I would soon become a lead investigator in the Office of Co-prosecutors, and consequently would play a key role in transforming this word from legal jargon to an actual list of accused persons. On May 7, 2006, Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihamoni formally appointed the judicial officers of the ECCC, including international co-prosecutor Robert Petit. Co-prosecutor Petit culled through the applications for staff positions in his office within a matter of weeks and then called me in New Orleans. He asked me to meet him in Phnom Penh at the end of June to assist in establishing the Office of CoProsecutors. International co-investigating Judge Marcel Lemonde had hired famed Cambodia scholar Steve Heder, but since his office would not be seized of a case until the co-prosecutors sent him the names of suspects, Lemonde seconded Heder to our office for six months. We were able to hit the ground running because, between the two of us, we had already been studying the Khmer Rouge more than half a century. Petit instructed us to immediately begin assembling dossiers on potential suspects. Some of our national colleagues, however, were uncertain how we should proceed. “How do you investigate two million murders?” they wondered. My answer was that you do not investigate two million murders; instead, what we had to do was identify the patterns of violence and then document typical examples of those patterns in order to prove what happened. This was where the trouble began. In the process of establishing the patterns of violence, our investigation 210

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was very broad and deep, covering essentially the whole country at all echelons of the Khmer Rouge organization, across the entire temporal period of the regime. Many, many individuals crossed our radar, as it were, while we sorted through events in the process of narrowing the focus of the case. The scope of the inquiry alarmed some of our national colleagues, who had never before seen this type of investigation. They may have been concerned that our investigation might turn up the names of some current leaders in the ruling party. In fact, we did investigate Cambodia’s current leadership, as well as everyone else connected to the Khmer Rouge. Our goal was to determine who did what to whom, when, where, and why, as well as who the senior leaders were, and who was most responsible for the most serious violations of international humanitarian and criminal law. We left no stone unturned. DC-Cam had an archive of about fifty thousand documents produced by the Khmer Rouge regime, and we set out to analyze the entire collection. On a first pass, we identified documents that were related to known senior leaders of the regime, or related to events, locations, and organizational units of particular interest in our investigation, or which appeared to be probative—that is, documents that would help ascertain the truth of the matter, whether they were inculpatory or exculpatory. After this initial sorting, we focused on a large sub-set of the archive we classified as “Priority 1” documents, flagged them for translation into English and French, and then subjected them to intensive analysis. In the process, patterns of behavior began to emerge. For example, we noticed that on many occasions, a cadre would be summoned to Phnom Penh by a telegram from the regime’s second in command, Nuon Chea, and the next day that cadre would be listed as having entered the regime’s central extermination center, S-21. With the gradual accretion of this type of evidence, it became quite clear who was responsible for mass killing during the Khmer Rouge regime. We needed to be able to prove who designed the regime’s policies and ordered that they be implemented, thus providing a top-down perspective on the crimes. These were the “senior leaders,” which became the basis of Cases 001 and 002. We also had to prove who implemented the most heinous of those policies, particularly the alleged genocides against the Cham and Vietnamese peoples, thus providing a bottomup perspective on the consequences of following those orders. These were the “most responsible,” which became the basis of Cases 003 and 004. Cambodia’s current leadership need not have worried. None of 211

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them had been senior leaders during the Khmer Rouge regime, and we determined that such crimes as some of them may have committed in that time did not bring any of them anywhere near rising to the status of “most responsible.” But the tensions that arose in this period may have been responsible for the Cambodian government’s decision to publicly oppose the cases we built around the “most responsible” perpetrators. Consequently, the ECCC’s Cases 003 and 004 have had an extremely fraught history at the court. The national co-prosecutor refused to sign the charging papers in Cases 003 and 004, so the international co-prosecutor invoked the court’s dispute resolution procedures, which sent the matter to the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC). The PTC, after long deliberations, split along national/international lines, mirroring the dispute in the Office of Co-Prosecutors. But the rules of the court provided that if the PTC could not achieve a super-majority to halt a case, then the case would proceed, so they were sent on to the Office of Co-Investigating Judges. There, the national/international split once again reappeared. Several international co-investigating judges came and went over the subsequent years, while Cases 003 and 004 continued to languish. As of this writing, the ultimate disposition of those cases remains undetermined. The donor community had originally made it known that they hoped the ECCC would complete its operations within three years of launch. Given the complexity of the crimes in question, as well as the complexity of criminal litigation in an internationalized proceeding, that was never a realistic prospect. But as three years became four, four became five, and five became six, with no end to the proceedings in sight, the donors began to apply increasing pressure. The Office of Administration at the ECCC shared that pressure with the heads of units across the entire court. My colleague Steve Spargo and I were the only internationals in the Office of Co-Prosecutors (OCP) to carry the title “investigator/ researcher/analyst.” In late May 2012, we were informed that both of our positions were being eliminated from the staffing table within a matter of weeks, and henceforth OCP would operate without formal analytical support. Fortunately, some of OCP’s assistant and senior assistant prosecutors were very capable analysts. Those who remained would simply have to work harder—which was not necessarily easy to do in an office accustomed to regular one hundred-hour workweeks. Donor fatigue was cutting into the muscle in the organ of the court that carries the burden of proof. 212

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Notwithstanding the difficulties and shortcomings of the ECCC, it has been a successful attack upon impunity. But above and beyond our attack on impunity for war crimes and genocide, and beyond any novel jurisprudence that may arise from the court’s deliberations, one of the most significant achievements of the ECCC is how much we learned about the Khmer Rouge regime. The initial investigations conducted by my colleagues and I in the Office of Co-Prosecutors and the judicial investigations carried out by the Office of Co-Investigating Judges added up to more than seven years of work (so far) by a large team of professional investigators. This encompassed the scrutiny of tens of thousands of documents and more than one thousand carefully targeted interviews. We also had access to the cumulative research by most of the world’s leading scholars of the Khmer Rouge. We intensively analyzed all of these sources, in the process making many connections that we had never previously realized. The work massively expanded our understanding of how the violence originated and unfolded over the course of the three years, eight months, and twenty days that the regime was in power. One of my personal projects while engaged at the OCP was to create an organization chart of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. This chart, or rather charts, describes the structure and personnel of Khmer Rouge organizations at the commune, district, sector, zone and center echelons, as well as the sector, zone, and center military units of the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea and the organs of the Democratic Kampuchea government, such as they were, and how these organizational units changed over time. In total, I created more than one thousand organization charts for this project, unmasking the DNA of what had been a super-secret cult. As things stand, however, much of the information and key insights we gleaned remain locked in the confidential case files of the ECCC, with only a tiny fraction of the trove having been presented to the public in open court sessions. One of my personal goals now is to find some way to unlock all of that learning and get it into the public and scholarly domains, where it can move beyond the constrained world of legal evidence and become a contribution to knowledge. I believe that I can find a way, although that will have to wait for another day. In the meanwhile, I have plenty of other intellectual pursuits with which to fruitfully occupy myself. When I got the call to join Robert Petit at the ECCC, I was in the process of revising a manuscript on the politics of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Six years at the tribunal 213

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has given me new insights that will have to be incorporated into that draft. On the shelf of my study sits another draft manuscript, this one on methods to achieve reconciliation after large-scale social upheaval. I put both of those manuscripts on hold while I devoted myself to the Office of Co-Prosecutors. Now, however, it is time to return to them and move these two works towards publication. That should be enough to occupy me for the next few years. As a youngster, I was taught, “You can’t fight city hall.” One of the things I have learned is that, in fact, you can. Not only can you fight city hall, you can also win. Senior officials of the United States government insistently told me that they would never permit a Khmer Rouge tribunal to be established. I was part of a small group of people who forced a change in US policy and proved those officials wrong. Over the decades that I worked on this project, I had literally hundreds of otherwise well-informed people tell me that it was impossible, that it would never happen, and that I was wasting my time—not to mention risking my life. But now senior Khmer Rouge leaders have spent years in a courtroom listening to prosecutors detail a withering litany of evidence of their crimes, as literally hundreds of thousands of Cambodians have watched, riveted to the proceedings. Nothing like this has happened in Asia since World War II, and nothing of the sort has ever before happened in Cambodia. And what about those hundreds of thousands of Cambodians who have been intently watching the proceedings of the ECCC? Many of them are victims of the Khmer Rouge regime, and many more of them are the children of victims, born after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. First and foremost, the ECCC is all about them. The ECCC has transformed public discourse in Cambodia, providing official permission for people to talk about what had previously been a taboo topic. The Cambodian people can now discuss the meaning of their own history, and their own places within that history. This transformation is arguably the single most consequential outcome of Cambodia’s transitional justice process to date, significant far beyond the punishment of any perpetrators, and far more important than any jurisprudence that may arise from the court. When I reflect on the course of my career thus far, one thing stands out as particularly noteworthy. My most significant accomplishments have not come in a solitary setting, quietly laboring away at my scholarly desk. Instead, they have happened when I have combined my efforts with those of others. That is when I have had the greatest impact and 214

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have achieved the most lasting results. Whether at the Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge, the Documentation Center of Cambodia, or the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, I have had the most success when I have worked with others in building organizations dedicated to realizing the ideals toward which we are working. There is power in numbers. We can do it.

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10 A Belated Cause Gerald Caplan How It Began

Unlike at least some in the field, I know the precise moment I plunged into the strange world of genocide studies and genocide prevention. In fact, until that moment, I was hardly aware of the small but growing army of dedicated characters who devote their lives to these efforts. And unlike some of them, I had had several careers—all related in some way to the pursuit of social justice—before I was abruptly and unexpectedly immersed in the genocide that ended “the century of genocide.” It was a phone call one quiet Sunday morning in the early summer of 1999 that ultimately led me into that strange world. A close friend, Stephen Lewis, a Canadian, called me in Toronto from Addis Ababa, where he was one of a special seven-member International Panel of Eminent Personalities (IPEP) that had been appointed by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to investigate the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The panelists were genuinely eminent. Two were former African presidents, Quett Masire of Botswana and Amadou Toumani Toure of Mali. Toure of Mali soon resumed that post, in 2002, and a third, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, later became president of Liberia. But the four African and three non-African members of the panel just didn’t know what to do with the mountain of information they had begun to accumulate. They decided they needed a writer post-haste. Appropriately enough, they sought an African writer, but for various reasons none of their choices was available. Then they heard about me from their fellow panelist and my old pal, Stephen Lewis. Although I knew little of Rwanda, I had a doctorate in African history from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. There my focus was British Central Africa. I had co-chaired two public policy commissions in Canada, and I was a writer, having 217

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written a weekly newspaper column for the Toronto Star for some years. I’d also been long involved in the anti-apartheid movement. I suppose a combination of sheer desperation plus these credentials led to a near total stranger, and non-African at that, being brought on to take over the panel’s central task. So when the call came, I was willing and able, though admittedly anxious about immersing myself in such a profoundly morbid subject. But there was no way I could resist this opportunity. This was history in the making. This was Africa, my life’s preoccupation. This was another holocaust, a subject that had tormented me forever. This was, for better but probably worse, about the very nature of our species. I began getting my innoculations the next day. Nine days later I reported to the panel’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the home of the OAU (later the African Union). I accepted this assignment on the assumption that the panel members would tell me what they wanted to say, and that I’d be their faithful pen. This was hardly my usual or preferred role, but, under the circumstances, I was prepared to play it. To my astonishment, when the panel flew in from their home bases to meet me in Addis Ababa, they offered no guidance at all. I was left to produce the report on my own, sending them drafts for approval. For almost a year, I immersed myself in the topic. Mostly I did my reading and writing back in Toronto, though I traveled both with and without the panel to meet witnesses in Kigali, Kinshasa, and Mbeya, Tanzania. Such testimonies had to be woven into the narrative. We (the panel members) met survivors, whose grisly recollections were hard to listen to. We met officials from western governments and the United Nations who carried a great burden of guilt for failing to do more to stop the genocide. We met former Hutu soldiers, all of whom assured us they were guilty of nothing. At almost every level, the story was far more squalid and demoralizing than anything I had anticipated. “Was this,” I mused, “what humanity had come to at the end of the twentieth century?” In the end, the panel approved the vast majority of my draft—even though some were rather less enthusiastic than others in accepting some of my harsh, unforgiving, and thoroughly documented assessments of just about everyone involved in this terrible tragedy. The tragedy in Rwanda proved to be a perfect example of my long-held belief that many of the failures of post-independence African states were the work of foreign interests and venal local elites, often working hand in 218

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hand. A few years later I wrote a short book based on this proposition called The Betrayal of Africa, with Rwanda serving as just one of many dozens of egregious examples of this conspiracy against the ordinary people of the continent. The Panel unhesitatingly accepted my suggestion that we call the three-hundred-page report “Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide.” Released in 2000, the report demonstrated that none of those with the capacity to prevent the genocide had cared enough to try. Indeed, the report indicted • • • • • •

the French government, for actual complicity in the genocide; the Roman Catholic Church as an institution, for complicity in or indifference to the genocide; the American government, for preventing any serious effort to stop the genocide; the United Nations bureaucracy, for failing to tell the world what was happening in Rwanda; the Organization of African Union, for remaining neutral as between those Rwandans executing the genocide and those trying to end it; and the international media, for reporting a mythical story involving various Africans mindlessly slaughtering each other as they had done “from time immemorial.”

I completed my task, but I couldn’t get Rwanda out of my mind. About a year later, I realized that aside from Rwanda itself and a small number of scholars and journalists, the genocide was already being forgotten; even the panel members went back to their other worlds. The survivors were living as traumatized, maimed paupers while most of the perpetrators and enablers were literally getting away with murder, often mass murder: the “globalization of impunity” I had called it in the report. My wife, Carol Phillips, came up with the perfect idea. Why not use the tenth anniversary of the genocide in 2004, then three years away, as a natural occasion to renew interest in the tragedy. The result was “Remembering Rwanda” (RR10), an international voluntary movement that I initiated and organized largely on my desktop computer, with adherents around the globe, all dedicated to ensuring that the memory of the genocide and its victims would not disappear and that those responsible for it would not escape accountability. I managed to get as my co-coordinator Louise Mushikiwabo, a Rwanda woman living in DC, who had lost many relatives in the genocide. A few years later Louise moved back to Rwanda where she became a cabinet minister, soon rising to the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs. 219

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I had already begun meeting Diaspora Rwandans now living in various countries in the West and Africa, many of them survivors. While they all were pleased with an initiative to keep the memory of the genocide alive, some, not surprisingly, couldn’t quite figure out why I was doing this. What did I want? What could I, a muzungu—a white man—get out of this? Rwandans, who have been betrayed by the outside world as much as any people on earth, are entitled to their suspicions of all outsiders. In trying to explain my interest, I found myself, somewhat to my own surprise, telling them that I was Jewish. Although I’m a devout atheist and an outspoken foe of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, I’ve always felt my Jewishness, my Yiddishkeit, deeply. I’ve been tormented by the fact of the Nazis and the Holocaust since my teen years. I’m sad to say that many Jews disagree, but for me, the self-evident lesson of the Holocaust is a universal, not a particular, one; it is not merely that anti-Semitism must be opposed with all of our might, but that all injustice, racism, and discrimination is unacceptable and must be combated. To jump ahead of my story, the divide is between those Jews who say “Never again will this happen to my people,” and those who say, “Never again must this happen to humankind.” I am passionately among the second group. In any event, the Rwandans I met loved this answer. Suddenly, trust emerged; we understood each other. The solidarity of victims prevailed. I spent a good part of three years as a volunteer working on RR10, made contacts around the world, helped increase the awareness of the tenth anniversary, spoke at many forums in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Africa about the genocide, and finally ended up being a speaker at the tenth anniversary commemoration conference that took place in Kigali in April 2004. On commemoration day itself, April 7, Louise Mushikiwabo honored me by having me join her family as they toured the many grave sites across the city where relatives murdered during the one hundred days were buried, including her mother, brother, a niece, a nephew, and dozens more of her extended family. I need hardly elaborate on how moving and shattering the experience was. In the event, Rwanda has not been forgotten after all. Beginning around the tenth anniversary and ever since, for better and worse, Rwanda, the genocide, President Kagame, the war in eastern Congo, denialism, and human rights, justice, and other matters germane to Rwanda, have rarely been out of the news or the movies or the journals 220

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or the bookstores. For this, I understand, RR10 can take little credit. But I’ll never be sorry I did it. Comparing Genocides

From the beginning of my immersion in the Rwandan genocide, I was anxious to put this terrible tragedy into some larger context. I had read a fair amount previously about the Holocaust and now began reading in the field of non-Holocaust genocide generally. Before long, I had come face to face with the burgeoning world of genocide studies. This subculture, I soon discovered, is quite separate from that of high-profile Holocaust studies. While some specialists in “other” genocides are also students of the Holocaust, for a long time only a tiny handful of Holocaust specialists were prepared to accept experts in other genocides as their kin. Sadly, most Holocaust specialists still seem to demand that the genocide of the Jews be treated as qualitatively different from—really a greater catastrophe than—the genocide of others. The Holocaust was, in a linguistic absurdity, accepted by a surprising number of people as “uniquely unique.” The accusation is categorical: To dare to compare the Holocaust with any other calamity is to trivialize it. I disagree, as do most of the genocide scholars I’ve since met. Like them, I believe in the solidarity of sorrow and the solidarity of victims. I have come to believe that what genocides have in common—the deliberate intention by extremists to annihilate a particular group— transcends whatever differences in detail and scale they may have. Indeed, in my attacks on the deniers of the genocide in Rwanda, I have repeatedly asserted that denying 1994 is the moral equivalent of denying the Final Solution. In April 2005, I was asked to present the keynote address to the Toronto Armenian Community on the ninetieth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. I chose to share with them some of the more sensitive issues that I had encountered pursuing the study of various genocides that continue to engage me. I pointed out that over the decades “never again” has been completely trivialized as so much rhetorical bombast by public figures on public occasions, sound and fury signifying nothing. We now know that unless major strategic, economic, or political interests are at play, if nothing is at stake beyond mere human life on however massive a scale, then the accurate description, far from “never again,” is really “again and again and again”—a formulation common enough in the world of genocide scholars. 221

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What we also know is that for a large number of those descended from victims and survivors of the genocides of our time, the precise concept is in any event not “never again.” It’s that never again will our people be the victims of such a calamity. But that was not my stance, I told them. When I founded Remembering Rwanda, I particularly sought out the support and cooperation of Jewish and Armenian organizations. I assumed that the solidarity of victims would be obvious to these two communities above all, so that the simple fact of shared victimhood would lead their survivors and descendants to rush to support each other. And I believed (as someone who has always been involved in political action for social change) that for good practical reasons of increased influence, the more of us that we could unite in a common cause, the better for us all. I seem, however, to have been stunningly naïve. Of course we found some support. A number of prominent Jews in North America, Europe, and Israel lent us their names. A few prominent Armenians did the same. That was all. In the end, human nature being what it seems to be, each community was overwhelmingly preoccupied with its own calamity. Even worse, for years the Jewish establishment in the United States followed the example of the Israeli government and actually denied the Armenian genocide. Here we had the most appalling irony of them all: that Jews who consider denial of the Holocaust to be tantamount almost to a second Holocaust had become deniers of the genocide of the Armenians. The motives behind this almost Orwellian stance were clear enough. The first was based on Israel’s determination to maintain a strategic alliance between itself and Turkey in the Middle East. This was at least understandable. The second was precisely the refusal to accept that the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, or the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, or the Holocaust and any other human catastrophe, can be equated in any way. So the “lesson” of the Holocaust can be seen as either a unique episode in human history applicable only to the Jewish people or a ­grotesque reflection of the potential capacity of human nature for depravity. Of course, every event in history is unique and unprecedented in certain ways, and beyond question some aspects of the Holocaust are literally unique, that is to say, nothing else like them had ever happened before or indeed since. But the same, alas, can be said of aspects of both the Armenian and Rwandan genocides. That’s why 222

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I believe that what the Armenian, Jewish, and Rwandan genocides have in common transcend their differences. I Meet “The Family”

In 1999, when I began working on Rwanda, the world of non-Holocaust genocide studies was just beginning to flourish. Since then, of course, it’s become a significant and far-flung endeavor. But even fifteen years ago it was possible to know many, if not most, of the key players, which I did within a very few years. In 2002, I both initiated Remembering Rwanda and attended two international conferences that were bursting with many of the prominent figures in the genocide-prevention movement. The first was in January, when I participated in a Genocide Prevention Conference organized by the Aegis Trust at their new center somewhere in the middle of England. Aegis had been established by two British brothers, James and Stephen Smith, who had decided to dedicate themselves and their resources to fighting genocide, and so to that relatively remote part of the United Kingdom they managed to entice about fifty women and men with some link or another to the fight against genocide, as well as a small number of survivors of the Armenian and Rwandan genocides and the Holocaust. The attendees were a veritable Who’s Who of genocide mavens, plus me. I even made a presentation. The conference deserves to be recognized as another important step in the development of an international network of genocide scholars who were also prevention activists. The second major event was the Stockholm International Conference, convened by Swedish social democratic Prime Minister Göran Persson. In fact, this was one of four such conferences Persson enigmatically sponsored while he was prime minister. I was a speaker at two of them, and they seemed weird to me at the time and have seemed even weirder in retrospect. What Persson thought he was accomplishing was never obvious, and as the second conference demonstrated, which I shall discuss in a moment, we weren’t even allowed to take a stand on Darfur, a genocide unfolding at the very point in time the conferences were held. My only lasting memory of the first conference is that it brought me further into the inner circles of our world. Among the attendees was Henry Huttenbach, founder and editor of the Journal of Genocide Research (JGR). We all agreed there should be an issue of the Journal in 2004 dedicated to Rwanda on the tenth anniversary of the genocide. 223

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I agreed to be guest editor together with Eric Markusen, a genocide studies “pioneer” who was then Research Director of the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Copenhagen. Volume 6, Number 1, of JGR was published around March 2004, and while Eric and I were relatively satisfied with its intellectual clout, we were both furious at Huttenbach’s carelessness with our work. In producing the actual issue he managed repeatedly to misspell my name—both first and last!—and in typical Huttenbach form, barely even apologized. This was yet another reminder, as if I needed one, that being for a good cause and being a good human being were not necessarily related, although Eric Markusen, with whom I became close friends until his untimely death, was very much both. The fourth and final Stockholm Forum in 2004 was dedicated to preventing genocide, and for me and some others in attendance it was a perfect example of why genocide is rarely prevented. Darfur had become the priority of everyone interested in genocide, yet almost no concrete action was being taken by the international community to put serious pressure on the Government of Sudan to stop the massacres and forced migrations. Once again, all the P5—the all-powerful permanent five members of the Security Council—had reasons of self-interest not to intervene. Darfur was inevitably raised several times during the conference, but as time went by word trickled out that it would not be mentioned in the final declaration. Certain unnamed interests at the conference, we were led to understand—I believe Americans were involved, but it was all murky—would have been miffed, and some unnamed government officials might even have walked out had Darfur been mentioned by name. I happened to land on a panel with Samantha Power, very much the star of the show for her groundbreaking 2003 book on America’s consistent failure to intervene in genocides, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. Power’s presence assured that our panel would attract a large crowd. Samantha and I were already friendly, and with her blessing, I frontally attacked the conference decision-makers for refusing to mention Darfur in the declaration emanating from this conference on preventing genocide. Others too were lobbying to make the declaration meaningful in the real world. Not a chance. The most anodyne statement of generalities was issued that must have made Sudan’s president, Omar al Bashir, and his genocidal cronies laugh all the way to the next pogrom. 224

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Genocide Prevention?

In June 2003, I was among two hundred people attending the International Association of genocide Studies (IAGS) conference in Galway, Ireland. It was my first formal IAGS meeting, and alas my last. A Canadian magazine paid my airfare in return for an article, thus allowing me to make the costly trip. For many independent scholars such as myself, it is just too costly to get to such meetings. That said, my experience at the IAGS conference in Ireland was a revelation. There were so many intriguing panels to choose from—forty-four in all—that I couldn’t even attend all the sessions on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, let alone any of the others. And yet a decade later the world of genocide mavens has expanded even more dramatically. Their hero of course is Raphael Lemkin, and their common nemesis is the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, or, more formally, its wildly optimistic title: “The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” The Convention, I’m afraid, left us with a mess. It defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” From these few words spill a host of complications. How do you prove intent? Exactly how many victims are necessary to constitute a “part”? What about “politicide” or “femicide”? What’s the difference between mass murder, pogroms, large-scale massacres, and genocide, and does it matter? And if so, why? Surely all are unacceptable. But what does it mean in practice that they’re unacceptable? How exactly can we know whether a conflict will escalate to genocide until it actually does? Then there are the bedeviling practical issues. What are the consequences of a determination that genocide is being carried out? Countries that ratify the Convention “undertake to prevent and to punish” genocide perpetrators, and they are entitled to call on the United Nations “to take such action under the Charter of the UN as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide.” That’s all the Convention says. Nowhere is there a demand for any real action at all, let alone direct military intervention. So, despite the apparent angst over that which constitutes genocide as defined by the Clinton administration in 1994, that if it recognized Rwanda as a genocide it might be obliged to dispatch US troops, a mere mealy-mouthed resolution at the Security Council urging a halt to the slaughter might have fulfilled the obligations of the Convention. After all, a decade later, the George W. Bush administration formally labeled 225

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the atrocities in Darfur a genocide, but then failed to take serious action to stop it. Was anyone punished? These issues have been debated at interminable length by the cognoscenti, who mostly agree about the Convention’s inadequacies and disagree about how to amend it. As a result, like it or not, it will remain unamended, and we will continue to disagree on what is and what is not a genocide. Have there been fifty-ish, as some claim? Or only the classic four, as others have argued: the Hereros, the Armenians, the Jews, and the Tutsi? Does it matter? Is this more than a merely pedantic academic debate with no real world consequences? Whatever the case, it will never be resolved. Since most genocide specialists believe that under certain circumstances all humans are capable of perpetrating unspeakable crimes against humanity, the great challenge is to figure out how to prevent— or at least limit—their recurrence. It came as no surprise to me that so many genocide scholars subscribe to the old insight memorably articulated by Walt Kelly’s sweet cartoon character, Pogo the Possum: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Indeed, you can’t study this subject without wondering about those around you—and yourself. And we all do. After all, they—we—are the ones who have demonstrated that the vast majority of perpetrators of genocidal violence are not sadists or psychopaths but are as “normal” as we are. Hitler had his “ordinary men,” not to mention enthusiastic accomplices in every nation he conquered. As for Rwanda, hundreds of thousands of Hutu were actively involved in the genocide. Most of them were perfectly ordinary human beings. What possible reason is there to believe they were fundamentally different from me or anyone else? But genocide scholars believe (Hope? Pray?) that our capacity for evil can at least be constrained. The driving passion of much genocide scholarship is to learn from the past to prevent recurrences in the future. But there is, I believe, a more personal connection here. Indeed, in genocide studies, the personal is political. Most authorities on the Armenian genocide, for example, are Armenians, descendants of the genocide’s victims or survivors. Here, of course, is the key to their militancy and activism, and I’d confidently say that virtually all experts on the Armenian genocide, Armenians and non-Armenians alike, have as their overriding purpose getting the world to recognize the 1915 genocide inflicted by the Turks. Similarly, most of the pioneers of Holocaust and genocide studies have been Jewish. Some 226

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have been survivors, relatives of survivors, or child refugees. So genocide conferences aren’t conventional scholarly gatherings, talk shops where the arcane and obscure so often predominate among academics desperate for another paper to publish. They are, rather, a coming together of people who have consciously steeped themselves in the most terrible calamities humans have inflicted on each other. Many have been touched directly by a genocide. All have a cause, most of them worthy ones. Of course a publication or two would not be unwelcome. In the end, the very reason the genocide prevention movement has thrived in the past two decades is because the phenomenon itself has thrived. But if crimes against humanity continue, it’s not because specialists in genocide aren’t trying to prevent them. The question is how to do so. Most preventionists argue for or work on genocide early warning systems so that the world can be informed and take appropriate action. But here’s where us congenital pessimists intrude. In real life, there’s no more reason for genocide scholars to agree on everything than for genocide victims to do so. Not everyone agrees on which conflicts in the past have been “real” genocides. Not everyone agrees on the variables and stages that lead to genocide. In practice, it’s usually more credible and accurate to speak of large-scale massacres and atrocities than of genocide. Despite the killings that preceded the establishment of the death camps, the Nazi genocide against the Jews didn’t begin until late 1941. Until the genocide was actually launched in Rwanda, few believed there’d be an escalation from “mere” massacres to fullblown genocide. And even at its height, there was heated dispute as to whether the Janjaweed attacks on Darfur civilians constituted genocide or “ethnic cleansing.” As I write this, the Central African Republic is in turmoil, which may or may not become genocidal. Surely there’s no need to resolve this semantic dispute before intervening? Even more problematic is the premise that if we’re able to forecast an imminent genocide, policymakers will naturally jump in and end the crisis before it escalates. I don’t see it. Does the truth make us free? Foreknowledge of genocide might just as easily have the opposite effect—politicians conniving to distance themselves from any obligation to intervene in the conflict. In the words of Samuel Totten, genocide scholar and ardent preventionist, developing potential early warning signals “is easy—and this is a vast understatement—compared to mobilizing the political will of the international community to act when such signals appear on the horizon.” 227

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To my mind, for example, Darfur was in some ways a more unspeakable tragedy than Rwanda. Despite all the cheap bluster about “never again,” despite the world’s supposed shame at the betrayal of Rwanda, despite everything we now knew about Darfur, nothing changed until that government was ready to change it. In fact the cynicism was much greater around Darfur. At the very same time as the Bush administration was explicitly labeling Darfur a genocide, it was openly colluding with Sudanese intelligence services in the “war against terrorism.” Just like in Rwanda, the “international community”—a laughable concept— failed to prevent the preventable. At the end of the day, no international convention on genocide, whatever its language, and no early warnings, however unmistakable, can substitute for political will among those with real power. Here we can state that pessimists, like this writer, are rarely disappointed. Final Thoughts

I need to say at least a word about my deep dismay, shared, I know, by so many genocide specialists, of the never-ending scourge of genocide denial. It’s a simple axiom: Where there is genocide, there are deniers. My own major preoccupation is with a new and particularly outrageous breed of deniers: a small band of left-wingers, especially in the United States, who perversely deny the genocide of the Rwandan Tutsi. I must say that on a bad day this very sick phenomenon can make one doubt the very sanity of the human race. Finally, on the central issue of prevention, the questions are pretty obvious. Will all the new structures put into place, such as in the office of the UN Secretary-General, and all the work on early warning signs, have any real impact, as many have long believed? I fear here my pessimist’s proclivities will continue to be well served, as the case of Syria today and the never-ending story of Sudan seem to indicate. The role of the Permanent Five members of the Security Council remains decisive, and as ever, on every occasion, there seems a perfectly compelling reason why one or more of them refuses to permit intervention to prevent or end a man-made disaster. I would be a contented old man if one fine day, while I’m still around, I am proved wrong.

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11 A Matter of Conscience: Part II1 Samuel Totten

In the conclusion to my essay, “A Matter of Conscience,” in Pioneers of Genocide Studies (Transaction, 2002) I, in part, stated the following: As we enter the twenty-first century, my aim is to continue to address the areas of the intervention and prevention of genocide. . . . I must admit, though, that I often wonder if anything of real worth is taking place as a result of all of the efforts of the dedicated and hard-working scholars in this field, and that is especially so as one genocide after another is perpetrated and individual and collective nations (i.e., the United Nations) “conveniently” and abhorrently look the other way as the slaughter is perpetrated and then, hypocritically, in the aftermath, bemoan the tragedies. Due to realpolitik and the hyper-tentativeness of political leaders to become embroiled in “another’s” problems, I am not all that sanguine about the role the U.N. or any other body will play in the intervention and prevention of genocide. That is particularly true in regard to acting in a timely and effective manner. I also plan to continue my work in regard to the impact that genocide has on the individuals of targeted groups.

The rest of this chapter addresses my efforts in the field from 2004 through today (mid-2015). Succinct Overview

Over the past decade (2004–2015), my work in the field of genocide studies has moved from research in libraries and archives to field work in Chad, Rwanda, Sudan, and South Sudan. In Chad, both in N’djamena and in the refugee camps along the Chad/Sudan border, I conducted research into the genocide in Darfur. In Rwanda, I interviewed scores of survivors of the 1994 genocide. In the state of South Kordofan and the Nuba Mountains in Sudan, I continued my research into the crisis in 229

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Darfur, Sudan (in an IDP camp), and initiated research into the genocide by attrition carried out by the Government of Sudan (GoS) in late 1980s and early- to mid-1990s. Finally, in both the Nuba Mountains and in the Yida Refugee camp in South Sudan, I conducted research into the ongoing attacks (which began in June 2011 and continues unabated through today, July 2015) against the civilian population of the Nuba Mountains by the GoS. In between my periods of fieldwork, I’ve also engaged in the following efforts: published my findings into the genocide in Darfur and the genocide by attrition in the Nuba Mountains, Sudan; headed up letter writing campaigns to various members of the Obama Administration (including but not limited to Princeton Lyman, US Special Envoy to Sudan; Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the United Nations; and Samantha Power, first in her role as head of the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB) and then as US Ambassador to the UN; and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) to prod them to press for humanitarian aid to the civilians of the Nuba Mountains; published a detailed criticism of the US Holocaust Memorial Museums’ Committee of Conscience and the US Atrocities Prevention Board vis-à-vis their lax and totally inadequate attention to the ongoing crisis in the Nuba Mountains, Sudan; and, hauled desperately needed food to the civilian population in the war-torn Nuba Mountains. The US State Department’s Atrocities Documentation Project

My desk- and library-bound scholarly efforts took a major turn in 2004 when I was asked to serve as one of the twenty-four investigators on the US State Department’s Atrocities Documentation Project (ADP), which involved interviewing refugees in Chad who had recently fled from Darfur as a result of being attacked by GoS troops and allied militia, the Janjaweed. Prior to my departure for Chad, my wife, Kathleen Barta, said with great prescience, “This is going to be a life-changing event.” Following a short but highly informative orientation session in a small compound in the eastern desert town of Abeche, Chad, teams of two to four investigators were flown to various refugee camps in Chad along the Chad/Sudan border. My fellow team member, Brenda Thornton, an attorney with the US Justice Department, and I were flown in a tiny bush plane to the dusty village of Goz Beida. Ultimately, we set up camp on the grounds of a former French colonial compound situated roughly in the middle of the village. A decrepit, plaster building 230

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still stood within the compound, but it was filthy and stench-ridden. Because of that we slept in our tents, which we set up at a fair distance from the house. Following a meeting with the sheik of Goz Beida, during which we announced our presence, informed him of our work, and sought his imprimatur to enter the refugee camp, which was situated on his land, we drove out to the refugee camp in our Land Cruiser. The UNHCR refugee camp, which constituted one of the smallest camps in the region with about sixteen thousand residents, was a sea of green UN tents spread across a vast expanse of the desert. Since the camp was relatively new, most of the tents were in excellent repair. In the camp we sought out the umda (the primary leader of the camp, who oversaw all of the sheiks in the camp), and repeated the ritual we had taken part in with the sheik of Goz Beida. Shortly thereafter, we began conducting interviews. Each interviewee was asked every question on the ADP’s eight-page questionnaire. Each investigator worked with an interpreter who was fluent in Arabic, at least one tribal language, and English. The interviews lasted between an hour and a half and two hours. Initially, the interviewees were asked to provide basic demographic information: name, date of birth, place of birth, father and mother’s names, years of education, profession, marital status, name and age of wife(s), number of children and names and ages of each child. The next series of questions focused on that which prompted the interviewee to leave/flee from his/her village; what he/ she had personally witnessed, heard, and experienced from the outset of the attack to the point that he/she reached the refugee camp; when, where and how the attack(s) were carried out and by whom; markings on the uniforms of the soldiers and/or militia; whether planes, doskas (trucks mounted with machine guns), Land Cruisers, and/or men on horseback or camels had taken part in the attack, and if so, the time of the attacks, the number of perpetrators involved, and how the attacks were specifically carried out; what, exactly, the perpetrators had said; whether the interviewee had witnessed anyone being killed, and if so, his/her name, age, et al. The first interview I conducted was with a middle aged woman who had been in the refugee camp for nearly a year and had no idea whether her husband and young son were dead or alive, still hiding in the mountains of Darfur, living in an internally displaced persons camp in Darfur, or settled in another refugee camp in Chad, and had no means to attempt to locate them. She had been raped by those who attacked 231

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her village. She was so humiliated by what had happened to her, she could not speak of the rape directly and thus repeatedly referred to it by saying, “They made me do lewd movements.” Throughout the interview, which was held inside her dusty tent, she spoke haltingly. Periodically, she would fall silent for five to ten minutes or more at a time. Each and every time, I reminded her that she was under absolutely no obligation to continue the interview. Witnessing the pain in the woman’s eyes and voice and her sagging body language set the stage, as it were, for what I was about to face in interviewing one survivor after another from 8 am in the morning to 6 pm in the evening, seven days a week over the course of the next two weeks. What I mean is, it set the stage for the abject sadness I would carry with me as I heard one person’s story after another concerning the brutality and horror to which they, their family members and fellow villagers, had been subjected to during the scorched earth attacks carried out by GoS troops and the Janjaweed. Ultimately, after both an internal and external analysis of the data (by the State Department and a firm hired by State, respectively) collected by the ADP teams, Secretary of State Colin Powell, with the assistance of Pierre-Richard Prosper, former war crimes prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and US Ambassadorat-Large for War Crimes Issues, concluded that the GoS had committed genocide in Darfur. On September 9, 2004, Powell, in a report to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced that the GoS had committed genocide against the black Africans of Darfur, and was possibly still doing so. (For a detailed discussion of the ADP and the decision by Powell, see Samuel Totten and Eric Markusen’s Genocide in Darfur: Investigating Atrocities in the Sudan (New York: Routledge, 2006).) Additional Work in Chad

In July 2007, I returned to Chad in order to interview other survivors of the Darfur genocide. Instead of returning to Goz Beida, I interviewed refugees in two other refugee camps: Gaga and Forchana, both of which are not far from the desert town of Abeche in eastern Chad. In each camp I interviewed approximately a half dozen survivors. In Gaga, I interviewed a thirty-year-old man who was a member of the Massalit tribe and a sheik. What he witnessed both during and in the aftermath of a major attack by GoS troops and the Janjaweed could not but haunt him. The tragedy of the injured and dead he was 232

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confronted with when he returned to his village (Hela Zakawa) following the attack was nothing short of horrific: While I was hiding, I heard the whopping sound of the helicopter, a gray helicopter that was circling, but there was so much shooting I didn’t know if it was firing on people or not. When I came out of the trees, I could see the smoke, clouds of it. I decided to return to our village, and as I got closer I saw that about half of the village had been burned down and that some fences and tukuls were still burning. As I continued on I saw a lot of dead bodies. Some people were injured, shot up, and some dead. Some I could recognize, a total of six. Ibrahim Adam, an old man, about fifty years [old], who had been shot in the leg, could not move. He was crying for water, but I had no water. Abdullah Khamiss, thirty years, was shot in the neck, and when I found him I stayed with him, but after one hour he died. Mohammed Gamar, twenty-two years, had been shot in his eye, and the bullet had gone out the back of his head. He was alive, but he could not speak. He died shortly. . . . Mohammed Ahmed, forty years, had both of his legs badly cut by a knife, probably a satour (a knife butchers in the suq use to slice meat), and the wounds were very deep. When I found him he was dying and could not speak. Muhammad Yaha, about eighteen years, had a chest wound from a bullet. This man I found already dead. Yaha Adam, another old man, fifty-eight years, was shot in his side, and his insides were hanging out. He, too, I found dead. On that day, fifteen people were killed, but what I’ve told you is what I remember seeing. (Totten, 2010, p. 50)

In December 2009, I returned to Goz Beida, the camp I had been assigned to during the ADP back in 2004. This time around I interviewed just over a half dozen individuals (whereas the first time I was there I had interviewed fifty survivors). As I left the village of Goz Beida and headed out to the UNHCR camp, I became confused as I did not recall any of the structures we were passing by. Eventually, it dawned on me that the entire area was pretty much void of the hundreds of UN tents that had been there in 2004. In fact, there were only about a dozen, if that, still standing. And, I discovered, they were not the original tents but replacements. Essentially, all of the other tents had been replaced by small roughshod compounds, huts, and small shops. In other words, the camp had morphed into a village. Over and over again, refugees asserted that they feared they were going to be stuck in Chad for the rest of their lives. A young woman heard that I was interviewing survivors of the Darfur genocide, and, unlike most victims of rape in Darfur, she sought me out and gently but persistently insisted that I interview her. She also 233

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insisted that I include her actual name (versus “anonymous,” as many had requested due to their fear of being attacked by GoS troops for talking to outsiders). She had a quiet strength about her and eyes that were heartbreakingly sad. She began by telling me about others who had been raped: The Arabs did not want Jugma destroyed because it was one of the biggest villages, and the place where the Arabs could obtain what they wanted and needed. So they forced all of the people [inhabitants] to remain in the village and began raping the girls and women. Today, there are many children who were born due to those rapes. Some of my family was raped there. My older sister, who was not married, was raped twice, and both times she had a baby from those rapes. Two babies! Arabs and GoS soldiers did this. Anytime they wanted to rape her, they did. If they saw her in the suq, they’d take her; if they saw her along a path and wanted to rape her, they would. And sometimes they even came to my home and took her with them and raped her (Totten, 2010, p. 99).

After speaking about her brothers’ reactions to the treatment of their sister and the confrontation they got into with the perpetrators (as well as the subsequent threats they faced), she began telling me about a time when she set out with some other village women with a load of cooking oil and onions to trade at a suq and was confronted by GoS soldiers: I said [to the perpetrators], “Don’t take these things.” He [the one confronting her directly] said, “Forget about these things. I not only want your goods but you also.” One of the men said, “We will not only rape you, but impregnate you with a child.” I told them, “Instead of raping me, it is better to kill me.” Immediately, one of the men hit me on the neck with a knife and ripped off my tob [a sari-like dress] and sliced off my underclothes with the knife and threw me to the ground and started raping me. The other women screamed and screamed until the men finished. After all three raped me, they took the oil and poured it on the ground. Then one said, “You are rubbish! Get out of here.” As I got up, one said, “We could rape you anywhere. Even in your village” (Totten, 2010, pp. 100, 101).

All of these years later, I can still see this young woman in my mind’s eye—just as clearly as if I had interviewed her yesterday in the tiny Oxfam compound where I was staying. While she had a steely resolve not to allow what was done to her kill her spirit, her sadness was palpable. 234

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Ultimately, I compiled all of the interviews I conducted between 2007 and 2010 (in 2010 I traveled to the Nuba Mountains and conducted additional interviews with survivors of the Darfur genocide who were eking out a meager existence in an internally displaced person’s camp just outside of the town of Kauda) and, along with official documents about the genocide, published them in a book titled An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International, 2010). Fulbright in Rwanda

In between the various trips to the refugee camps in Chad and my initial trip to the Nuba Mountains, I served as a Fulbright Scholar at the National University of Rwanda’s Centre for Conflict Management. While in Rwanda (January–June 2008) I worked on two major projects: interviewing survivors of the 1994 genocide of Tutsi and moderate Hutu, and developing the first master’s degree program on genocide in Rwanda (actually, on the entire continent of Africa). Over the course of six months I interviewed some twenty-five survivors. Each interview took between six and fifteen hours to complete. They were conducted all across Rwanda. Since each interview was relatively long, they were conducted over a series of days. As one can imagine, the stories were harrowing, and it was not easy for the survivors to relate their stories for more than several hours per sitting. The days were long and trying as I spent the better part of daylight interviewing individuals and the evenings (generally from 7 pm to 11 pm) typing up the interviews. Ultimately, most of the interviews were included in a book We Cannot Forget: Interviews with Survivors of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012). As for the Masters Program, it took two years to get the courses designed and the program approved before the first cohort came together. I taught the first course in the program, “An Overview of Genocide in the 20th Century,” and I will never forget the first evening we met for class. Among the twenty-four students in the course were two members of the Rwandan Parliament, a Rwandan Supreme Court Justice, and a former Attorney General of Rwanda (who was the current Head of the Rwanda’s National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide), along with various university professors, journalists, and even a pastor. It was a remarkable experience. There was a lot of discussion and debate over various issues, and remarkable insights 235

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shared by the participants. One female in the course came up to me after one of the sessions on the Holocaust and said, “I never knew such a terrible thing [the Holocaust] had happened. It makes me feel . . . less alone; I mean, that we aren’t the only ones who were so hated by some that we were slaughtered.” Documenting the Experiences of the Survivors of the Genocide by Attrition in the Nuba Mountains

Beginning in July 2010, I began conducting research into a case commonly referred to as “genocide by attrition,” which was perpetrated by the GoS against the Nuba Mountains people from, roughly, the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. Furious that the Nuba Mountains people had joined the south in a civil war (The Second Sudanese Civil War, 1983–2005) against Khartoum, the GoS carried out a scorched earth attack against the people of the Nuba Mountains. Just as it did a decade later in Darfur, instead of solely tracking down and arresting or killing those rebels from the Nuba Mountains fighting alongside the south, the GoS targeted all of the people in the area (including, females, children, infants, and the elderly). Not only were villages attacked and innocents gunned down, but farms were utterly destroyed or taken over while hundreds of thousands of people were displaced from their homes. Deprived access to their farms, the Nuba Mountains people faced inexorable hunger, severe malnutrition, and, in many cases, starvation. Over the past four years, I’ve made five trips to the Nuba Mountains: July 2010; January 2011; December 2012–January 2013, November– December 2014; and April 2015. Initially, I focused on interviewing internally displaced people from Darfur, but almost immediately I also began to interview people about their experiences during the genocide by attrition. And then, after war broke out between the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement/Army-North (SPLM/A-N) and the GoS in June 2011, I not only continued to focus on the genocide by attrition, but also began to focus on the latest assault (aerial attacks) against the civilians in the Nuba Mountains as they faced ever-increasing hunger due to being forced off their farms and up into the mountains, much as they had in the late 1980s and 1990s. During the course of an interview I conducted in Kauda (in the heart of the Nuba Mountains) about the period of genocide by attrition, the interviewee, a young man with a gentle smile and equally gentle nature, 236

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related how his younger sister died of starvation and his mother had all but lost her mind: We had nothing to eat but leaves. . . . We continued like that until the young sister of mine passed away. She died of starvation. I was about twelve years [old] when my sister died. She was ten years. My mother felt so sorrowful, so bad, she said she wanted to die, to take poison. She did not, though, because of me. She, my mother, though, still suffers. She is traumatized, not right in the head, mentally. When I go visit her sometimes she is not right. I’m like her guardian, her son, her husband. Life is just like that. (Totten, 2012, p. 27)

Again, stories such as this young man’s were rife as I spoke to scores of people who lived through the genocide by attrition in the late 1980s and early to mid-1990s. Rumors of War & Relaying Information to the International Press, Human Rights Organizations and Scholars of Genocides vis-à-vis the Outbreak of War in the Nuba Mountains, June 2011

In January 2011, I made my second trip to Kauda in the Nuba Mountains. While there, I encountered rumors of war. The people of the Nuba Mountains had recently experienced a series of setbacks that left them incensed and almost aching for war. First, the people of the Nuba Mountains had been left out of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), an international effort to bring to a close the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005) between the north and south. Part and parcel of the CPA was the option for the south to hold a referendum to ascertain if the people desired to remain part of Sudan or preferred creating a new nation. Since the Nuba Mountains people had fought with the south and did not trust al Bashir—indeed, detested him—they were anxious to break from the north. But that was not an option open to them as the others involved in the talks sidelined them as a result of political wrangling and compromises. Second, the Nuba Mountains people believed that the recent gubernatorial election in South Kordofan (which is the state in which the Nuba Mountains is located) had been rigged, and that that was the only way Ahmed Haroun, a crony of al Bashir and a man who had been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes for atrocities perpetrated in Darfur between 2004–2009, won the election. Third, al Bashir had recently threatened to establish Sharia law throughout Sudan, and that was something that the Christians and moderate Muslims in the Nuba Mountains feared. 237

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Shortly after sunset one evening, the compound in which I was staying erupted in excited chatter as knots of people gathered in intense conversation. The upshot was that a notice, in Arabic, had been nailed to a wall of a small makeshift shop in the suq in lower Kauda, outlining atrocities that had just been perpetrated that day against Nuba in Kadugli (the capital of South Kordofan) by GoS troops. Word quickly spread that many locals were talking about picking up weapons again to fight the government. I later heard that almost every tukul (household) in the Nuba Mountains contained a semiautomatic weapon. Various individuals, many of whom had either fought with the south against the north during the twenty year civil war or had fathers, brothers and uncles who had done so, voiced variations along the following lines to me: “Last time, we, the Nuba, were not prepared to fight, but this time we are!” and “This time we will take the fight all the way to Khartoum.” Each evening thereafter, huge rallies were held out by the tiny UN compound adjacent to the makeshift Kauda airfield. Individuals denounced both al Bashir and Haroun, asserted that they, the Nuba, were ready to put their uniforms back on and pick up their weapons, and that the GoS spies, assumed to be in the crowd, should relay those exact sentiments to al Bashir. The tension was such that those in whose compound I was staying had already dug a deep hole (some three feet by three feet by eight feet) to use as a bomb shelter should GoS Antonovs begin bombing the area. I immediately knocked out an email about the situation and fired it off to a host of journalists, newspapers, and antigenocide activists back in the States. Seemingly, interest in the events unfolding in the Nuba was almost nil among the journalists. Months later, in early June 2011, I received an urgent email from Ryan Boyette, a buddy of mine who served as the coordinator of the Samaritans Purse (SP) project in the Nuba Mountains. He informed me that SP had abruptly pulled out of the Nuba Mountains due to the recent ground attacks and bombings by the GoS against the civilians in the region. He also informed me that he had resigned from SP as he had decided to remain in the Nuba Mountains in order to both witness what was taking place and write up and submit updates to members of the international media in the hope that they would run with the story. He hoped that, in turn, such reports would impress upon the UN, the US government, and major human rights organizations across the 238

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globe that a disaster was in the making. He asked if I would be willing to disseminate his reports to the media contacts I had and international human rights organizations. I readily agreed to do so. Day in and day out for close to a month, I literally worked around the clock communicating with Ryan and forwarding his updates about both the ground and the aerial attacks by the GoS, including the horrific injuries and deaths civilians were suffering (along with gruesome photographs of the injured and dead) to journalists and major human rights organizations across the globe. Day after day I worked roughly nineteen to twenty hours a day, from five or six in the morning to one or two the next morning. And then, after four or five hours of sleep, I got up to do it all over again. In doing so, I relayed the information, for example, to Nick Kristof at the New York Times, Jason Straziuso at the Associated Press office in Nairobi, Amnesty International’s headquarters in London, Human Rights Watch in New York City, The Sentinel Project in Washington, DC, among scores of others. Most not only made use of the updates and helped spread the word about the attacks by Antonov bombers, attack jets, and ground troops (including the door-to-door killing of suspected enemies of the state by GoS troops and militia in the town of Kadugli and beyond, as well as rumors of massacres and mass graves), but requested additional information, including specifics that either corroborated or dispelled rumors that they had received regarding what was taking place in the Nuba Mountains. At one point, Nick Kristof contacted me and asked if I was willing to knock out an article for his New York Times blog on what I knew in regard to what was unfolding in the Nuba Mountains. I welcomed the offer. In part, that piece, “Is Omar Hassan al-Bashir Up to Genocide Again?” (June 18, 2011), read as follows: Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, is a genocide perpetrator extraordinaire. If medals were given out for such activity, he’d be going for the gold. In the early to mid-1990s, under al Bashir’s leadership, the GoS perpetrated genocidal actions in the Nuba Mountains, largely by starving people to death and preventing humanitarian aid from reaching the victims. Not a decade later, Bashir and his henchmen committed genocide in Darfur, carrying out a scorched earth policy that resulted in an estimated 300,000 plus deaths, over two million internally displaced persons, and another 275,000 plus refugees. More recently, just over the past two weeks, al Bashir’s soldiers and hired militia carried out at least crimes against humanity, if not genocidal actions, in the Nuba Mountains. . . . 239

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There are also rumors afloat that Bashir is intent on firming up his hold on all regions of Sudan, as he continues to be miffed that southern Sudan, which Khartoum battled for some twenty years in an internecine war that sucked some two million into its deadly maw, seceded from the north. Next month, South Sudan formally becomes an independent state. As is the case in most violent conflicts across the globe, civilians (women, children, babies, the elderly) suffer most grievously. This is particularly true in Sudan because of Bashir’s propensity for targeting an entire population of a region versus solely those engaged in fighting his troops. A colleague in the Nuba Mountains related the following examples to me over a satellite phone the past week: • • • •

•

Following aerial and ground attacks by Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), tens of thousands are on the run, seeking sanctuary anywhere they can find it. At least two fresh mass graves were discovered late last week; approximately 1,000 dead bodies filled the one in Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan. In Kadugli, SAF soldiers and a ragtag assortment of others went door-to-door in search of SPLM/A members and supporters, executing them on the spot. In Dilling, another town in South Kordofan, SAF soldiers and militia hunted down SPLM/A members and supporters and sliced their throats, leaving them to perish in puddles of their own blood. In Kadugli, soldiers with the United Nations Mission in Sudan allegedly raped girls and women as the latter begged to be allowed into the UN compound as they feared certain death at the hands of the SAF and assorted militia (Totten, 2011, n.p.).

Alarmed at the new violence in Sudan and the fact that hardly any media outlets were covering the tragic events, I began knocking out one editorial after another and firing them off to newspapers around the globe. In total, I wrote and coauthored more than forty editorials, some of which appeared in, for example, The Globe and Mail (Canada), The Guardian (England), The Seattle Times, The South Sudan News, The Huffington Post, The Sudan Tribune, Reuters [on-line], the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and Canada Free Press. Beginning in March 2012, I began contacting various officials in the US government about the crises in the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile, and have continued doing so through today. As time passed and the international community seemingly continued to ignore the plight 240

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of the people of the Nuba Mountains, I decided to not only continue to write such letters (in which I described the situation in the Nuba Mountains and made recommendations as to what could and should be done to help the civilians who were being targeted), but to ask scholars of genocide across the globe to sign on to them. As of early 2015, I’ve written and cowritten more than a dozen letters to various officials, including those in the White House, the State Department, and both branches of Congress, each of which was signed by at least forty-five scholars, and in some cases up to sixty or more. Many of the scholars who cosigned one or more of the letters are among the most renowned in the field of genocide studies today: Dr. Israel Charny (Israel), Dr. Helen Fein (US), Dr. Dominik Schaller (Germany), Dr. Roger Smith (US), Dr. Taner Akçam (Turkey/US), Dr. Norman Naimark (US), Dr. Frank Chalk (Canada), Dr. Eric Weitz (US), and Dr. Colin Tatz (Australia). The letter to Samantha Power alone was signed by sixty-six scholars from eight different countries: Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Israel, The Netherlands, the United States, and Wales. While Princeton Lyman and several Members of Congress responded to the letters, not a single official with the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB) responded to a single letter. (One of the letters submitted to the APB was kindly entered into the record by Senator Boozman and published in The Congressional Record.) While continuing to send letters to various US officials, I also began sending letters to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council’s (USHMM) Committee on Conscience (CoC) about the crisis in the Nuba Mountains, inquiring why the COC, whose mandate, according to the USHMM’s website, is “to alert the national conscience, influence policy makers, and stimulate worldwide action to confront and work to halt acts of genocide or related crimes against humanity,” had failed to address the crisis. Letters were sent to William S. Parsons (Chief of Staff of the USHMM), Michael Abramowitz (Director of the USHMM’S Center for Genocide Prevention and contact person for the CoC), and Michael Chertoff (the standing Chair of the CoC). To their credit, they responded to each and every letter. To their discredit, they often failed to address the specific questions posited in the letters. (For a detailed discussion of this effort, see my article entitled “Paying Lip Service to R2P and Genocide Prevention: The Muted Response of the US Atrocities Prevention Board and the USHMM’s Committee on Conscience to the Crisis in the Nuba Mountains.” Genocide Studies International, Spring 2014, 8(1), 23–57.) 241

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A Challenge and the Formation of a Small Team of Activists

In June 2012, I wrote an article, “Obama’s Empty Promises to Halt Genocide Leave It to Us to Act,” which was published in the South Sudan News (June 28, 2012). The conclusion read as follows: One has to really wonder what lessons the world—leaders and ordinary citizens alike—has really learned from [past genocides]. Even those who espouse such heartfelt sentiments/words/phrases as [i.e., “Never Again!”] are among those who look away when such tragedies break out—and here I include survivors of genocide, scholars, and educators at all levels. And if they don’t look away, then far too often they stand slack jawed and silent. Neither is admirable; and, in fact, both reactions are unconscionable. Not one to suggest that others should pursue an avenue I am not willing to undertake, I shall place my name at the top of the list to take part in any of the above suggestions [including hauling food up to the Nuba Mountains people] that gain traction. Those willing to step up and be counted and thus avoid the tag of being a bystander in the face of certain crimes against humanity and potential genocide by attrition can contact me at [email protected] (Totten, 2011, n.p.).

A week or so after the article was published I received a call from a fellow named John Jefferson, an African American businessman and evangelical Christian who resides in northern California. He said an acquaintance of his, Billy White, an old Sudan hand now based in South Sudan, had sent him a copy of my article and challenged him to act upon it. Almost as soon as he introduced himself, Jefferson asked, “Were you really serious about the challenge and about being ready, willing, and able to act?” “Without a doubt,” I replied. As soon as we got off the phone, Jefferson began contacting various individuals (all of whom are evangelical Christians who had spent time in Sudan at one point of time or another) who he thought would be willing to “accept the challenge.” I, in turn, contacted Dr. John ­Hubbel Weiss, Associate Professor of History at Cornell University, and informed him about my conversation with Jefferson. Ultimately, seven of us ended up on a conference call, and we all agreed that we needed to act in order to help the Nuba Mountains people. More specifically, the members of this new group (which ended up being called, against my wishes, End Nuba Genocide (ENG)) agreed that we would step up and do what the international community and 242

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individual nations had not been willing to do: deliver food to those civilians in desperate need in the Nuba Mountains. We also agreed to keep the fact of the crisis alive via various actions (e.g., contacting the media, writing guest commentaries and editorials for newspapers and blogs, contacting and meeting with Members of Congress, and informing antigenocide activist groups of our actions). In March 2012, against my advice, ENG made its first foray into the Nuba Mountains during the rainy season in an attempt to insert food. Unfortunately, the team’s truck got bogged down in the mud, forcing the team members to load the food on their backs and hike it in; however, due to the rough conditions, they did not get very far and ended up carrying out more of a symbolic effort versus providing real help. In December 2012–January 2013, I volunteered to oversee the insertion of five tons of food into the Nuba Mountains. My interpreter, Ramadan Tarjan, a young Nuba Mountains fellow, and I left the Yida Refugee Camp in South Sudan, which is located right along the border of South Sudan and Sudan, on Christmas Day and traveled for seven hours along a dusty, rutted road deep into the Nuba Mountains. Every single day during the two weeks we were in the Nuba Mountains, the GoS carried out bombing sorties in their Antonovs (planes). We estimated that there were some fifty-five bombings during that period. Whenever we were traveling in our Land Cruiser and heard the drone of an Antonov, we raced to the closest wadi and hid among the trees. When staying in a compound, we made sure we knew where the “bomb shelters” (deep, open air holes in the ground) were so that we could make a run for them at the first sound of a plane. In May of 2013, another team headed into the Nuba Mountains, this time the starting point was Malakal, a river town along which the Nile flows. The team trucked in twenty-five tons of food into an area where we had heard that people were literally starving to death. The trip was treacherous in that not only were the roads extremely bad, but the temperature ranged between 110 degrees and 115 degrees Fahrenheit in a region where none of the vehicles have air conditioning. Along the way, the team came across twenty corpses along the dusty road. All twenty individuals had apparently perished from starvation. In May of 2014, I attempted to carry out a second mission, but once I made it to Juba (the capital of South Sudan), I could get no further. Due to both the civil war raging all across South Sudan and the threat of a looming famine, most nongovernmental organizations had canceled their flights into the Yida Refugee Camp, which is where I planned 243

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to, once again, cross over into Sudan. It was next to impossible to drive the long distance from Juba to Yida due to the lack of security in the region. Fighters on both sides of the civil war had carried out horrific atrocities—and were still doing so—and thus any attempt to make the drive would have been just this side of suicidal. So, I called off the mission, returned to the States, and raised additional funds to purchase and transport food up into the Nuba Mountains once the rainy season ended in late November. I made that trip in November and December 2014. Conducting Research in the War Zone of the Nuba Mountains

As one can imagine, it was radically different conducting research in a war zone versus an IDP or refugee camp. Indeed, everything was different—from gaining entrance to the state of South Kordofan in Sudan (i.e., I had to obtain a pass from the rebels—SPLM-N—to travel through rebel-held territory, while realizing that the GoS would consider my entrance illegal because I did not have a visa issued by Khartoum) to reaching my destination in the Nuba Mountains (since the GoS had essentially established a no-fly zone all across the state of South Kordofan, flying in on a nongovernmental organization’s plane was not an option and thus I had to travel by truck across the border, from South Sudan into South Kordofan, Sudan, and make my way north along rough dirt tracks). I also had to be hyper vigilant to the sound of any aircraft in the sky (again, this was due to the fact that the GoS had established a no-fly zone over the region, which virtually meant that any plane in the sky was either an Antonov bomber or a fighter jet). As I mentioned, when entering a compound or a suq, the very first thing I had to do was check out where the holes serving as bomb shelters were located and to gauge how long it would take me to get to one should there be an aerial attack. Plenty of civilians had not been vigilant enough and died horrific deaths from the shards of shrapnel spinning off of the bombs that were dropped on their villages. Several interviews were abruptly interrupted by the sound of the heavy drone of an Antonov. Everyone’s attention automatically, laserlike, locked onto the skies above. Not infrequently, an interviewee would jump up, yelling, “Get in the hole!” and race towards the nearest one. While most interviews were picked up again, the flow had been disrupted, and it was often difficult to get back on track. In certain cases, the interviews were aborted and never picked up again. 244

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On the positive side, since the rebels controlled the area in which I traveled, it made it far less likely that I’d run into GoS troops (which, in fact, I didn’t). It also helped that the fierce fighting on the ground was limited to areas around certain large towns, particularly Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, which was always at least a several hour drive from any point I was at in the area. November and December 2014 Mission to the Nuba

During the course of this trip to the Nuba Mountains I was able to purchase and deliver about four tons of food to Nuba people residing in the hinterlands and fairly close to the front of the war. One afternoon I traveled with a group of rebels out to several villages that had just been attacked that morning. When we reached an area that was blackened due to a fire, we got out and I felt the ground. It was still warm and in places it was still smoldering. The next three towns in a row were veritable ghost towns. I mean, not a single person remained in any of them. On that same trip, my driver, interpreter and I had four close calls as Antonovs flew overhead. It gave me a “taste” of what the Nuba people face on a daily basis. (For a detailed discussion of this effort, see my article titled “Humanitarian Missions to Nuba Mountains: Delivery of Food to Those in Critical Need” in Genocide Studies International, Volume 9(2). April-May 2015 Mission to the Nuba

Once again, during this trip I was able to insert about four tons of food to those Nuba Mountains civilians in most critical need of food. Due to nothing other than timing, my driver, interpreter and I had luckily passed a crossroad fifteen minutes before a fighter jet swooped in and, sadly, attacked three boys running towards a hole for protection, and ended up killing one of the boys who failed to make it. His body was literally sliced in half. Two days later my driver and I raced a boy of twelve to the only hospital in the Nuba Mountains, Mother of Mercy, after he had been badly wounded from a previously undetonated bomb. Sadly, the boy perished about fifteen to twenty minute before we managed to reach the hospital. The wound in his chest was so deep Dr. Tom Catena was able to fit his entire fist in the cavity and move it towards the boy’s sternum. The boy’s leg was mangled, with bone pulverized into a bloody mash. (For more detail about this mission, see the aforementioned article in Genocide Studies International, 2015, 9(2).) 245

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Poseurs: Playing at Prevention and Intervention

For lack of a better term, over the past decade or so, the issue of genocide has become—and this is a horrible way of putting it, but unfortunately it is apropos—“sexy.” That is, it seems that everyone and his/her brother and sister has latched onto the issue for one reason or another. The plethora of genocide-related groups that currently exist, the number of so-called Centers on the Holocaust and Genocide (many, in fact, focus solely on the Holocaust, but over the past decade many have seemingly assumed that adding “genocide” to their title makes them appear more relevant or “with it”), and educational travel tours to the sites of past genocides (especially Rwanda, Cambodia, and the former Yugoslavia) provide ample evidence of this “genocide craze.” To a certain extent, the concept of genocide prevention has seemingly experienced the same phenomenon. Two classic examples are provided by the US government and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). On April 23, 2012, at the USHMM, US President Barack Obama announced the establishment of the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), and in doing so, he said: We’re making sure that the United States government has the structures; the mechanisms to better prevent and respond to mass atrocities. So I created the first-ever White House position dedicated to this task. It’s why I created a new Atrocities Prevention Board, to bring together senior officials from across our government to focus on this critical mission. This is not an afterthought. This is not a sideline in our foreign policy.

Grand sentiments and fine assurances. However, as far as anyone outside the sphere of government can ascertain, the APB has done little to nothing anywhere in regard to addressing crimes against humanity or genocide in a concrete fashion. And yet, sadly, since its establishment, a slew of major human rights disasters have unfolded across the globe, including but not limited to the civil war in Syria; the utter destruction of Iraq, resulting from the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the United States’ various and incompetent policies ever since; the new explosion of viciousness in Syria and Iraq with the advent of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS); the civil war in South Sudan, which has resulted in horrific atrocities, including mass murder; the war in the Nuba Mountains between the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement/Army-North and the GoS; the ongoing upheaval and unraveling of the situation in 246

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Darfur, Sudan; and the radical Buddhist attacks against Muslims in Myanmar. And, of course, in North Korea, there is the ongoing and horrific treatment of prisoners in its infamous gulag, as well as its civilians, who have been forced to live like animals in order to even have enough food to eat. For all intents and purposes, the APB looks more like window dressing than anything else. Indeed, its existence has largely proved to be more about looking good than doing good. (For a detailed discussion of this matter, see my article in Genocide Studies International: “Paying Lip Service to R2P and Genocide Prevention: The Muted Response of the US Atrocities Prevention Board and the USHMM’s Committee on Conscience to the Crisis in the Nuba Mountains.”) As for the USHMM, its Committee on Conscience (CoC), whose mandate, as noted earlier, is purportedly “to alert the national conscience, influence policy makers, and stimulate worldwide action to confront and work to halt acts of genocide or related crimes against humanity,” also seems to be more about looking good than actually doing good. In fact, when called out by some sixty scholars of genocide about its lack of action in regard to the daily aerial attacks against the civilians of the Nuba Mountains by the GoS, its director, Michael Abramowitz, sent me the following note: “As a point of clarification, the Museum has moved away from a formal ‘alert’ system in recent years because it suggests a level of precision that we have found difficult to achieve and sustain over time on a particular situation.” What? “. . . a level of precision . . . difficult to achieve and sustain”? What does that say about Abramowitz’ knowledge, or lack thereof, in regard to both genocide warnings and preventing genocide? An individual in his position should know that no such precision is called for; indeed, no one ever knows, for sure, whether a situation constitutes genocide or not until after the fact. Furthermore, at this point in time, the information age, garnering reliable information about potentially catastrophic situations is not all that difficult. Furthermore, Abramowitz does not seem to truly understand the meaning of “warning.” According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of warning is as follows: “something (such as an action or a statement) that tells someone about possible danger or trouble.” The point is, a warning is just that: a warning, not a definitive statement that something will absolutely happen or has already taken place. The upshot is, whenever ethnic cleansing or certain types of crimes against humanity (i.e., persecution against an identifiable group, sexual slavery and/or forced pregnancy, enforced disappearance of persons, extermination) are threatened or beginning to be perpetrated, that is the time to issue a warning! 247

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Quite recently, in an attempt to ascertain why the CoC is a mere shadow of what it had once been under the leadership of Jerry Fowler (a Stanford-educated lawyer with the heart of a human rights activist), I recently discovered that among its board members is none other than Elliott Abrams, who served in US President Ronald Reagan’s administration and oversaw its dealings in Central and South America and seemingly looked the other way as all sorts of atrocities were carried in Guatemala, among other nations. Abrams not only looked away but also attempted to counter human rights reports about such atrocities issued by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. In a letter (October 14, 2014), I brought this matter to the attention of Sara Bloomfield, Director of the USHMM, and Michael Abramowitz, Director of the CoC, noting that COC board member Elliott Abrams had acted in bad faith during his stint with the Reagan Administration in relation to the genocide of the Maya population in the Highlands by the Government of Guatemala. Ms. Bloomfield’s response to the letter, the latter of which had been signed by thirty notable scholars of genocide from five different nations (Canada, the US, Israel and Australia and the Netherlands), was as follows: Dear Dr. Totten, Thank you for contacting us. We have noted your views. You should know that Mr. Abrams has been a very dedicated and constructive member of the US Holocaust Memorial Council and its Committee on Conscience. Sincerely, Sara Bloomfield

How, one has to ask, can a body that is supposed to induce the nation’s conscience vis-à-vis horrific human rights violations be counted on to serve that purpose when it not only allows, but invites, individuals who have acted counter to that to be on its board? Musings Generated by Field Research into the Nuba Mountains Crisis (2011–Present), the Unraveling of the Situation in Darfur (2010–Present), and the Slew of Violent Crises Raging in Africa, the Middle East, and Parts of Asia Today

For the past two decades, many scholars, government policy analysts, and UN personnel, among others, have written reams about the critical need for the international community to develop a genocide early 248

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warning system and the means to overcome a lack of political will by individual nations and the UN Security Council to act in a timely and efficient manner to prevent and/or halt massive crimes against humanity and/or what appears to be a genocide in the making. And yet, for all of the talk over the past twenty-five-plus years about the critical need to develop a highly sophisticated, fully functioning genocide early warning system, the only products that have been produced thus far are a series of reports that essentially assert that “progress is being made.” (See, for example: Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2011; and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, October 5, 2011.) Just how long, though, should it take to develop and implement such a mechanism? It is beginning to appear that perhaps the political will to establish a genocide early warning system is missing as well. If so, what does that say about the international community’s commitment to the prevention of genocide? Now, that is not to say the world is without any sort of mechanism to ascertain and/or gauge violent conflict, only that there is no central highly sophisticated genocide early warning system in operation by either the United Nations, individual nations or any major regional organizations. In fact, there are numerous mechanisms in place that are ideal for detecting various types of violent conflict, if not genocide, and for gauging the ebb and flow of such conflict(s). For example, in response to the 2011 European Council’s Conclusions on Conflict Prevention, the European External Action Service (EEAS) developed The EU Conflict Early Warning System (EWS), which “provides a basis for cross institutional decision making, leading to concrete actions to mitigate conflict risk.” While it is not a predictive tool, it is capable of identifying risks of violent conflict early on “in order to enable senior management to prioritize resources to manage these risks in light of the EU’s strategic interests and leverage.” That, of course, is positive. But still, it is not what many foresee as being the ideal genocide early warning system. While a sophisticated genocide early warning system operated by the United Nations or some regional organization such as the OSCE, NATO, or the European Union would hardly be the panacea that some seem to think it might be, it could serve a number of positive purposes: it would be more systematic than what is available today in relation to systems attempting to predict conflict; it would provide key actors with the same information in a systematic and timely manner, thus not allowing any of them to assert that they did not know about a particular 249

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crisis; it would track various crises to ascertain their waxing or waning; and it would put potential perpetrators on notice that their plans and deeds would be found out early on, and that a systematic record would be kept of their ill deeds. Be that as it may, the question that begs to be asked is, “Would the development and implementation of even the most sophisticated genocide early warning system truly make any difference in regard to how the international community might respond to crimes against humanity and genocide as they are being perpetrated?” Most indications strongly suggest that the answer is a resounding “No!” The reason? Realpolitik. This will be addressed in more detail below. And then there is the concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Recent crises in a host of places around the world (many of which were noted above) have largely proved that R2P is not the paradigm shift that those who crafted it thought it might be. Indeed, its value was grossly oversold, and those that jumped on its bandwagon seemed to do so more out of desperation than any real evaluation of the likelihood of its success. In a nutshell, the crux of R2P is that individual nations are responsible for the protection of their own citizens, and if they fail to provide such protection then it is the responsibility of the international community to step in and act accordingly. It was the hope of those who crafted this concept that R2P would be the first major crack in a long time vis-à-vis the concept of state sovereignty. Unfortunately, while the concept of R2P is original—and at first blush rather intriguing and hopeful—thus far at least R2P has proved to be little more than a paper lion; or put in more strident terms, “full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” In other words, since the advent of R2P most of the major crises across the globe in which serious human rights violations, including at least crimes against humanity, have been perpetrated, neither the UN nor individual nations have seen fit to put R2P into operation. This is certainly evident in the following situations, which constitutes just the tip of the iceberg in regard to the conflicts raging today: the Syrian Civil War; the war between the Sudanese People’s Liberation ArmyNorth and the Government of Sudan; the ongoing conflict in Darfur, Sudan (yes, a peace keeping force is on the ground but its mandate is so weak and the force so undermanned and outgunned that the GoS and various rebel groups do exactly what they please with absolutely no fear of being held accountable); the brutal treatment of the Muslims in Myanmar by radical Buddhists; and the massive number of rapes perpetrated by various fighting groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 250

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Considerable thought about all of the above has led me to reconsider three key issues: the value of the term/concept of genocide in comparison to crimes against humanity; the almost constant refrain that the reason the United Nations and the United States, among other nations, are generally so tentative about undertaking timely and effective prevention and intervention of genocide is a lack of political will; and, impunity and its impact. Use of the Terms/Concepts of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity

The use of the term and concept of “genocide” in relation to issues of prevention and intervention has, somewhat paradoxically, proved to be counterproductive; in fact, its use has contributed to massive numbers of innocents losing their lives to mass killers. There are four basic reasons why this is true. First, again, no one can ascertain whether genocide has been perpetrated until after a genocide has actually been perpetrated. Thus, those who engage in the “is it or isn’t it genocide game?” while the killing is being carried out are engaged in both a pointless and fruitless activity. Second, many of those (particularly government officials) who tend to use the term/concept for the express purpose of deciding whether prevention and/or intervention should be carried out to save a group of people in imminent danger of being killed actually end up prolonging any real effort to stanch the killing, and this is true for such debates are not only pointless (see the point made above) but gobble up precious time—sometimes weeks, if not months—during which an untold number of people (often numbering in the tens and hundreds of thousands) are bound to meet their demise. (A case in point, of course, is the Clinton Administration’s purported (meaning, rather phony) debate over the term genocide and whether genocide was being perpetrated in Rwanda in 1994. Readers need to remember that that genocide lasted a mere 100 days, and in that time between 500,000 and one million people were murdered.) Third, if a particular case of mass murder is not considered to be a case of genocide, then far too many within the international community are apt to sit back and let the killing take its murderous course (i.e., the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is, sadly, the classic example of this phenomenon) or, at the very least, they are inclined to take a position of “wait and see” before attempting to halt the violence (i.e., two recent examples of the latter are (a) the first several years of the civil war in Syria (2011–2013); and, (b) the outset of the mass killing in the Central African Republic 251

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(March through December 2013)). Fourth, the time to stanch crimes against humanity and/or a potential genocide is when it is obvious that masses of people in a group are about to be, or actually already are being, targeted. In other words, the latter situations should serve as a kind of genocide early warning signal that immediate, quick, and effective action is imperative. In light of the above—and in conjunction with my research over the past decade into the scorched earth attacks by GoS troops against the Nuba Mountains people in the late 1980s through the early to mid1990s, the black Africans of Darfur (2003–present), and, now, the ongoing aerial attacks by the GoS against the people of the Nuba Mountains (June 2011–present)—I firmly believe that one of two terms—crimes against humanity2 or atrocity crimes (Scheffer, 2006)—should be used by the media, antigenocide activists, human rights organizations, the United Nations and individual governments when discussing and/ or highlighting situations that either portend the murder of massive numbers of civilians or when such killing is already underway. The point is, crimes against humanity and atrocity crimes are relatively easy to ascertain whereas genocide is not, and that is due to a whole host of issues, including the need to establish the issue of intent when dealing with genocide. The use of crimes against humanity or atrocity crimes would leave no room for anyone or any entity to purposely procrastinate or attempt to wiggle out of acting in a timely manner by claiming uncertainty as to what the situation actually constitutes. Yes, an administration could order its officials not to utter the words “crimes against humanity” or “atrocity crimes,” but in doing so the ruse would be as obvious as anything could be. I am, of course, fully aware, and appreciative, of the fact that the very term “genocide” continues to carry a certain cachet today, and thus it is much more likely to catch people’s attention than “crimes against humanity” or “atrocity crimes.” That is, the use of the term “genocide” is, at least currently, more likely to raise the collective antennae of those who care about others being subjected to mass murder, as well as those individuals and organizations that are in a position to do something concrete to help disseminate a call for action and/or to actually put a plan into action to attempt to halt it. Be that as it may, I firmly believe that, ultimately, either one or the other terms—through their wide and sustained use, along with an emphasis on the horrific nature of each—could, over time, acquire the same cachet that the term genocide has today. 252

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With only rare exceptions, I firmly believe that the concept/term of genocide should not be used at all by any institution/body (e.g., intergovernmental bodies, individual nations, NGOs, the media, early earning systems, etc.) or individuals to attempt to ascertain whether atrocities being perpetrated at the time constitute genocide or not. As noted earlier, either “crimes against humanity” or “atrocity crimes” should be used to issue a clarion call that action must be taken immediately to halt the threat, if not the actual fact, of mass killing. Such an approach would, at least to a large extent, circumvent the altogether pointless folly of having to establish such issues as the following, all of which come into play when deeming an action “genocide”: (a) issues of “intent,” (b) the issue of number of victims (i.e., “in whole or in part”); and (c) whether the group is protected under the UNCG (i.e., “national, ethnical, racial and religious”). The upshot of all of this is that if the international community, individual states, and nongovernmental centers (e.g., research centers and early warning operations) are truly intent on attempting to prevent genocide in a timely and effective manner, then it is imperative for each and every one of them to disabuse themselves of the notion that they need to wait until they can definitively ascertain whether a situation is slouching toward genocide or can definitively be deemed a genocide. To do anything less either constitutes bystander and/or obstructionist behavior Is It a “Lack of Political Will” or Is It Realpolitik?

While many, if not most, who attempt to explain why the international community and/or individual states fail to stanch atrocity crimes early on (if at all) argue that it is due to a lack of political will, I have long argued that the major reason is realpolitik (i.e., politics and/or diplomatic efforts that are primarily predicated on power and on practical factors and considerations versus ideological approaches or ethical or moral premises). Tackling the issue of realpolitik, obviously, is much more complex and difficult than that of a lack political will. Until the international community, scholars, and others figure out how to deal with the issue of realpolitik at the state level and within the UN Security Council, I fear that timely, efficient, and effective preventative and interventionary efforts shall continue to be late in coming (if at all), undermanned, under resourced, outgunned, and operating on a weak and totally inadequate mandate (meaning, a Chapter VI or peacekeeping mandate versus a Chapter VII or peace enforcement mandate). 253

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The Issue and Impact of Impunity

Over the past several years, I have become increasingly concerned with the issue of impunity,3 which has piqued my interest as a result of my field research in Chad and Sudan vis-à-vis the Darfur genocide and the genocide by attrition of the Nuba Mountains people, respectively. I firmly believe that impunity has played a major role in the eruption of a whole series of violent events/crises in Sudan between 1989 and today (a period during which Omar al Bashir has been president of Sudan). As I have stated elsewhere, “[a] strong argument can be made that the regime of Sudanese President Omar al Bashir has been and continues to be, at the least, a serial perpetrator of crimes against humanity.” Certain scholars (e.g., Stanton, 2004/2005; Beny, Hale and Tongun, 2014, n.p.) and many antigenocide activists (e.g., Reeves. 2011; Reeves, 2011/2013; Cohen, 2012) go even further, arguing that the GoS is a serial perpetrator of genocide. Regardless as to how such atrocities are labeled, it is irrefutable that both al Bashir and others in his regime have enjoyed impunity vis-à-vis the violent and deadly crimes they’ve perpetrated over the past two and a half decades. In a 2006 lecture (“60 Years After the Nuremberg Judgment: Challenges Facing the Fight Against Impunity”), then Special Advisor to the Secretary General on the Prevention of Genocide, Juan Mendez, eloquently argued as follows: “Accountability in the form of punishment for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes is crucial to the prevention of similar acts in the future. The sense of impunity for the crimes already committed breeds insecurity among populations at risk and creates an incentive for repetition among the perpetrators” (italics added) (p. 3). What Mendez describes here is directly applicable to the current situation in Sudan. More specifically, impunity for the atrocity crimes and genocide by attrition perpetrated by the GoS in the Nuba Mountains in the late 1980s and early to mid-1990s unquestionably influenced how al Bashir’s regime dealt with the crisis in Darfur (2003–present) and how it is currently dealing with the “new” crisis in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile today (June 2011–present). The Darfur crisis in southwestern Sudan—which erupted in 2003 after rebel groups took up arms against the GoS—resulted in the deaths of at least 300,000 Darfur civilians (black Africans of the Massaleit, Darfur, and Zaghawa tribes) at the hands of GoS troops and their proxy militia, the Janjaweed (Prunier, 2008; Hagan, 2008; Totten and Markusen, 2006; Totten, 2011). Again, in each and every case, the very 254

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same regime, under the very same president, Omar al Bashir, carried out the atrocity crimes. Setting aside for the moment the ongoing dispute over whether the atrocities perpetrated by the GoS troops and the Janjaweed against the black Africans of Darfur constituted “crimes against humanity” or “genocide,” the stark fact is that hundreds of thousands of Darfuri civilians perished from being shot, bombed, stabbed, gang raped, and left to die alone in the desert, as well as from dehydration, disease, and lack of medical attention for injuries incurred. The United Nations, scholars, and various human rights organizations have thoroughly documented how GoS troops and the Janjaweed utterly destroyed entire villages, and, in the process, often purposely poisoned the wells of many black African villages by tossing in dead bodies of animals and, in certain cases, the corpses of human beings. This was done in order to frighten away the survivors and to poison them should they return and drink the water (United Nations, 2005; Totten and Markusen, 2006; Hagan and Rymond-Richmond, 2008; Totten, 2011). On March 4, 2009, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC)4 indicted Omar al-Bashir as an indirect (co)perpetrator on five counts of crimes against humanity (murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture, and rape) and two counts on war crimes (direct attacks on civilians and pillaging). Then, on July 20, 2010, in a second warrant, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC charged al Bashir with three counts of genocide (by killing, by causing serious bodily or mental harm, and by deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group’s physical destruction). To date, though, al Bashir not only remains free, but he continues to serve as the president of Sudan. Furthermore, al Bashir has brazenly traveled to numerous countries, many of which have ratified the UNCG and the Rome Statute, but none of the countries have arrested him (the most recent example being South Africa on June 15, 2015), and thus impunity continues to reign. In June 2011, fighting broke out between rebels (SPLM-N) in the Nuba Mountains and the GoS. True to its modus operandi, the GoS has not only carried out a counterinsurgency operation, but it has carried out wholesale aerial bombings of the civilians in the region (continuing through today).5 Fearing for their lives, tens of thousands of civilians have fled from their villages and farms and sought sanctuary in the nearby mountains and makeshift internally displaced persons camps much as they did during the genocide by attrition in the late 1980s and early to mid-1990s. An untold number of people have been killed 255

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and wounded in the most grievous manner possible. At the same time, many, if not most, in the Nuba Mountains continue to suffer the full spectrum of hunger: from gnawing hunger to malnutrition and from severe malnutrition to outright starvation. Tens of thousands have also fled from Sudan in search of food and now reside in refugee camps in South Sudan. In November 2015, GoS reportedly began dropping chemicals on any patches of land in the Nuba Mountains where people had planted sorghum (their main staple of food). And, as the GoS has done in the past, it refuses access to the region by international humanitarian aid organizations. Once again, the GoS continues to act with impunity, believing it can get away with almost anything and everything it wants, never to be held accountable. (For a detailed discussion of impunity and the regime of Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, see Samuel Totten’s The Problem of Impunity: A Signal That Crimes Against Humanity and/or Genocide Are Forgivable?”) Signs of Extreme Danger in a Society that Merit Immediate Action

While efforts over the past twenty to thirty years to develop a genocide early warning system are admirable, progress on such systems continues to be stymied for one reason or another. Why the latter is the case is, in and of itself, worthy of research. Such systems frequently tend to be built around the antecedents/ causes, processes and patterns of past genocides in order to forge a series of indicators of potential genocidal massacres and/or genocide. The ultimate efficacy of such systems is, obviously, still to be seen. One, though, can foresee instances in which various signals issued by such systems could be interpreted or misinterpreted in different ways by different actors, thus resulting in situations where the international community and/or individual nations might not act out of a sense of urgency but rather take the position of “sitting back” and monitoring the situation (i.e., “waiting to see” how the situation unfolds). When it is a case of mass murder, the latter “approach” is tantamount to allowing mass murder to take its course. Over the past several years I have been developing the theory of what I refer to as “Signs of Extreme Danger in a Society That Merit Immediate Action”—“signs” that cannot be interpreted in any way other than that something has gone TOTALLY AMOK in a society. It is proposed that such signs are crystal clear indicators that no one but no one (not the UN, not individual nations, not nongovernmental organizations, not 256

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human rights activists, not scholars of genocide studies) has to conduct research into whether what is taking place constitutes crimes against humanity, war crimes, or genocide, for it would be an absurdity to do so, not to mention unconscionable. The message, therefore, is that it is both urgent and incumbent on the international community to address the situation, as quickly, efficiently, and effectively as possible, otherwise the result will likely be an ever-increasing rate of murder (to the point of mass murder) against innocents. In such situations, it matters not one whit whether the situation is deemed ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes, massacres, or genocide for the actions are so untoward, so totally out of the realm of what humanity expects in a civilized society (one that honors the rule of law), and so frighteningly out of control that it constitutes a state’s equivalence of going berserk. “Signs of Extreme Danger in a Society That Merit Immediate Action” are not simply processes to be monitored or tracked over time, but rather demand immediate action because something is dangerously and unequivocally askew. Examples of “Signs of Extreme Danger in a Society That Merit Immediate Action” (a single sign is an indication that, at the very least, crimes against humanity are about to erupt or already have): • •

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Hermetically sealing the nation’s borders and not allowing anyone in or out (Two classic cases: Kampuchea under the Khmer Rouge and current-day North Korea) Releasing en masse prisoners incarcerated for violent crimes—such as murder, rape, aggravated assault, or manslaughter—back into society prior to their having completed their full sentences (A classic case: The release of all Hutus from prison—no matter whether they were convicted on charges of murder, rape, etc.—during the early months of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda). The purposeful and mass destruction of farms, produce, and foodstuffs by an entity that leaves the “other” in extremis (Two classic examples: The Soviet Manmade Famine in Ukraine (1933) and The Government of Sudan’s Genocide by Attrition of the Nuba Mountains people (late 1980s–90s). The purposeful and mass poisoning of water sources by one entity that leaves the “other” in extremis (A classic example: The Government of Sudan’s actions in Darfur between 2004 and 2009). Preventing humanitarian aid from reaching groups facing acute hunger or another humanitarian crisis (Two classic cases: The Government of Sudan’s Genocide by Attrition of the Nuba Mountains people (late 1980s–1990s); and the Government of Sudan’s actions in the Nuba Mountains today (June 2011 through, thus far, August 2015) 257

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Evidence of an ever-increasing number of massacres or so-called “test massacres” (A classic case: This is exactly what took place between 1990 and 1994 in Rwanda when Hutu extremists carried out “test massacres” against unsuspecting and innocent Tutsi citizens – all of which was clearly documented by Human Rights Watch far in advance of the outset of the genocide in April 1994). Establishment of rape camps (A classic case: The establishment of rape camps in Bosnia by Serbs during the dissolution of, and war in, the former Yugoslavia) Establishment of death squads (One, among countless, classic examples: The use of death squads to help carry out the Guatemalan government’s genocide of the Mayans of the Highlands in the early to mid-1980s). The use of young children (under ten years of age) as soldiers (Again, there are countless examples: Today, for example, children are being forced to serve as soldiers in such places as the Central African Republic, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, and Iraq, to name but five). Deliberately targeting—brutalization, mutilation, rape and/or murder—of male and female infants and preadolescents (Two, among countless, examples: During the Guatemalan government’s genocide of the Mayan people of the Highlands, both Guatemalan troops and their militia beat babies to death, drowned infants and young children, stabbed children to death with bayonets, and burned them alive), and babies and young children of the so-called black Africans of Darfur were frequently brutalized and killed by the Janjaweed (Arab militia fighting with the Government of Sudan).

Status and Future of the Field of Genocide Studies

As for my perception of where the field of genocide studies is at today, I will be succinct herein, and then refer readers to an article I’ve written that addresses the issue in a good amount of detail. I should note that I do not agree with those who assert that the field is in a state of crisis. First, despite the fact that initial work on developing the field began in the early to mid-1980s, it is still largely in its infancy. For the first fifteen years or so, a mere twenty-five to thirty individuals across the globe were thinking, writing, and publishing about genocide on a regular basis. The work of the latter individuals—many of whom worked in isolation—helped form the foundation of the field. Second, the study of genocide as a field did not gain real momentum until the late 1990s. Indeed, it was only in the mid- to late-1990s that large numbers of researchers, graduate students, and others began to gravitate to the study of genocide. Third, up through the mid-1990s or so, the number of books about genocide in general and on specific cases of 258

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genocide was relatively small. Indeed, only in the last sixteen years or so has there been an explosion of books published by scholars and others. It is also important to remember that it was only in 1994 that four pioneers in the field (Israel Charny, Helen Fein, Roger Smith, and Robert Melson) established the first international organization dedicated to the study of genocide, the International Association of Genocide Studies. In 1998, scholar Ben Kiernan established the first major research center in the United States at Yale University, and in the same year, Clark University (Worcester, Massachusetts) established the first doctoral degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies in the world. The next year, in 1999, Henry Huttenbach, an historian based at the City University of New York, established the first journal of genocide studies, the Journal of Genocide Research. Gradually from the late 1990s forward, an ever-increasing number of doctoral dissertations have been written about various aspects of genocide—many at some of the most distinguished universities in the United States, including Yale University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is not unusual for incipient fields of study to experience growing pains, and that is exactly what we’re seeing in the field of genocide studies. For example, the field has seen endless debate over the definition of genocide; the value of using an alternative word/concept in the place of genocide, especially when it comes to detecting atrocity crimes and/or calling for intervention or prevention; and the approaches and methodologies of research that are most likely to result in insightful and valuable findings. Concomitantly, factions of scholars have taken (and continue to take) potshots at one another, over: for example, whose research approach, if not the research itself, is most valuable and worthy of serious consideration or not. And heated discussion continues unabated over the scholar/activist divide in the field. (The latter issue will be addressed in more detail below.) Again, such ­differences/ conflict are to be expected. It is hardly a reason to throw one’s hands in the air and declare that a field of study is in complete disarray or on the verge of collapse. The upshot, at least as far as I am concerned, is that before anyone predicts the demise of the field or its lack of relevancy, he/she would be wise to step back and continue to put his/her energy into producing the strongest research possible vis-à-vis those issues they deem highly significant. 259

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Conducting Research in Areas of Violent Conflict

Not a few have questioned my motives as I have continued conducting research in areas of violent conflict/war zones, particularly along the border of South Sudan/Sudan and in the Nuba Mountains (Sudan). One genocide scholar, Greg Stanton, angrily asserted, “Your insistence on going to the Nuba Mountains yourself is a symptom of a narcissistic savior disorder.” When I asked Dr. Israel Charny (a pioneer of genocide studies who is also professor emeritus of psychology at Hebrew University and a practicing analyst) for his opinion of Stanton’s “diagnosis” cum accusation, Charny shared these thoughts: “I don’t see you as narcissistic. I do see you as brave and committed, and I also respect and agree with your hard-hitting genuine protests of the do-nothing duplicity of several officials in the US government. I think you have carved out an exemplary model absent thus far from the so mixed up world of genocide study professionals. However, I will also add that in respect of your travels to Africa, while I admire you greatly, I also worry about a possible shadow side to your courage of your soliciting ‘a way out’ for yourself from this world of tears and the enormous physical stress you have endured.” As a result of Stanton’s accusation and Charny’s insightful comments, I have pondered hard and long over my motives, and while there are probably some ulterior motives sticking like cobwebs to an otherwise clear window, I still stand by what I’ve argued over the years. First, one invariably gleans information and insights in an area of violent conflict that one is not likely to come across anywhere else (and I am talking about important and revelatory pieces of information and insights). Second, conducting research in areas of violent conflict provides one with invaluable insights into what the people on the ground actually experience as they face life and death decisions on a daily basis and deal with the horror of witnessing the suffering and death of loved ones and close friends. Third, while one can craft a host of theories and conduct massive amounts of research into this or that issue germane to genocide (be it antecedents of, causes of, processes of, and/or the ramifications of genocide, etc.) via the examination of primary and secondary documents in one’s office and behind one’s computer (all of which may well generate interesting and valuable findings), being on the ground during a violent conflict (during which one carefully observes what is unfolding, speaks with and listens to key actors, and examines and analyzes what is taking place, including who is saying and doing what and when 260

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and why, etc.), may result in insights that one may never glean from an article or book or by speaking to survivors in the aftermath. Scholar/Activist Divide

Over the past decade or so, what can best be described as a scholar/ activist divide has riven the field of genocide studies. Essentially, the debate, often acrimonious, pits those who believe scholars of genocide studies not only can legitimately engage in antigenocide activism but should do so versus those who infer that scholar/activists cannot possibly produce scholarship that is objective (or put another way, one is either a scholar or an activist, not both). One of the first questions that arises, though, is, what does and does not constitute activism? Is voting in favor of an organization’s resolution (e.g., a resolution put forth by the International Association of Genocide Scholars) to call on the UN to arrest an individual for alleged crimes against humanity and/or genocide an example of activism? Is signing a petition calling on the United States to formally acknowledge the Ottoman Turks’ treatment of the Armenians between 1915 and 1919 as a case of genocide an example of activism? Does speaking at a rally denouncing a government for its genocidal actions constitute activism? Is writing up and presenting a resolution on a contemporary violent conflict at an annual meeting of scholars of genocide studies a case of activism? Does writing an editorial decrying a government that refuses to allow humanitarian aid organizations from reaching people in danger of starving to death constitute activism? Is serving as a consultant to an organization that issues genocide warnings to the media, international organizations, NGOs, etc. an example of activism? One, obviously, could go on and on delineating such scenarios and questions, but such questions are important to ask when members of a field clash over something as significant as the “scholar/activist divide.” Some scholars of genocide studies absolutely refuse to engage in any activity that could possibly be construed in anyway whatsoever as activist in nature, including, for example, supporting an organization’s resolution calling on the United Nations to be more proactive vis-à-vis the need to intervene in a violent crisis in which crimes against humanity are being perpetrated. There are others who may be comfortable supporting such a resolution, but look askance at any scholar who speaks at an antigenocide rally. There are still others who believe it is incumbent on scholars who study genocide to loudly and clearly call 261

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on the international community to intervene when massive crimes against humanity are being perpetrated. For the sake of full disclosure, I fall into the latter camp. In fact, over the past half-decade or so, I have become more intent on raising the consciousness of others (not necessarily scholars, but I have done that as well) in regard to contemporary cases of atrocity crimes. In doing so, I have called on both the United Nations and the US government to act in various and specific ways to address such crimes. Interestingly, the coterie in the field that both tout and advocate for a “critical genocide studies” approach has decried the focus and work of so-called “scholar/activists.” More bluntly, many critical genocide scholars suggest that “scholar/activist” is an oxymoron, and that any research the latter conducts is automatically suspect due to inherent biases. Critical genocide scholars have gone as far as to lambaste the title of a journal, Genocide Studies and Prevention, founded by Israel W. Charny in 2006. Their critique essentially focuses on the concept/ term “prevention,” arguing that the founder and cofounding editors (Alexander Alvarez, Herb Hirsch, Eric Markusen, and Samuel Totten) must automatically be partial to intervention and prevention of genocide and thus are more activists than scholars. What I find particularly interesting—and ironic—is that the scholars who tout “critical genocide studies” but decry antigenocide activism by scholars who are working within a paradigm—critical theory—which, at its heart, is predicated on praxis or the transformation of society. If that is not activist in nature, then I don’t know what is. With absolutely no intention of being rude, its seems that so-called critical genocide studies specialists are either very, very confused as to what critical theory is or are blind to the fact that the theory to which they adhere is inherently activist in nature. Personally, I strongly feel that if innocent groups of people are being deprived of their basic human rights and/or are being brutalized (bombed, gang raped, killed) then it is incumbent upon one to stand up and be heard, and not only that, but to do all one possibly can to help them. I also firmly believe that those who fail in the latter regard are really no different than the millions of bystanders who have existed throughout time. Put another way, I will be damned if I put any credence into other scholars’ criticism of the efforts of scholar/activists, and I am certainly not going to stand by in silence as innocent people are being butchered. Each person’s life is a precious gift, and if we can’t be one another’s brother or sister, then what does it say about 262

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us as human beings? Let’s face it, a great deal of the “oh so precious research” genocide scholars produce today will likely be overshadowed and forgotten about in the not too distant future—and very little of the research produced is likely to, in the end, contribute to saving the lives of innocents (and if that is not the primary goal of the field of genocide studies then I am flummoxed. Indeed, if it’s not then I fear much, if not most of it, is little more than mental masturbation). All that said, if, I have to choose between playing the “scholar’s game” versus helping those who are in dire straits, there is absolutely no contest: I will always endeavor to help those in dire straits. Conclusion

In light of the horrific crimes against humanity (and possibly genocidal actions) being perpetrated today (i.e., in such places as Syria, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur (Sudan), the Nuba Mountains (Sudan), The Republic of South Sudan, Myanmar, and North Korea, among others), and the lack of concrete actions by the United Nations and/or individuals states to stanch such crimes, my fear for the future of humanity is great. Add to that the projected and looming global crisis as a result of global warming—meaning a dearth of water, farm land, and grazing areas, along with the violent conflicts that are likely to ensue—my optimism and hope for a better and more peaceful world is at an all time low. I hope I am wrong. Time will tell. Be that as it may, I am not about to give up—not on humanity and certainly not in trying to help those who face brutality at the hands of perpetrators of crimes against humanity and genocide. 1.

2.

Notes

An essay entitled “A Matter of Conscience” was published in Pioneers of Genocide Studies (Transaction Publishers) in 2002. The current essay builds upon the original, addressing my research, publishing, and advocacy efforts from 2004 through 2014. In light of that, this essay differs from all of the others in this volume in that it does not address the genesis of my interest in the issue of genocide or my efforts during the first fifteen years of my work in the field. My thinking in regard to the issue of crimes against humanity has been duly influenced by the work of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, which was launched by Professor Leila Sadat, the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor at Washington University School of Law, in 2008. The purpose of the initiative is to study the need for and to draft an international treaty aimed at the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity. The steering committee of the initiative constitutes a who’s who of jurists, scholars, and practitioners of international law, including but not limited to Payam 263

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3.

4.

5.

Akhavan, M. Cherif Bassiouni, Justice Richard Goldstone, Juan Mendez, Valerie Oosterveld, Diane Orentlicher, Leila Sadat, William Schabas, and David Scheffer. I should also note that my argument regarding a preference for the use of crimes against humanity or atrocity crimes in place of genocide vis-à-vis the issues of prevention and intervention is mine and mine alone. As Orentlicher (2005) notes, “impunity arises from a failure by States to meet their obligations to investigate violations; to take appropriate measures in respect of the perpetrators, particularly in the area of justice, by ensuring that those suspected of criminal responsibility are prosecuted, tried, and duly punished; to provide victims with effective remedies and to ensure that they receive reparation for the injuries suffered; to ensure the inalienable right to know the truth about violations; and to take other necessary steps to prevent a recurrence of violations” (italics added) (Orentlicher, 2005, p. 7). The ICC is the “first permanent, treaty-based, international criminal court established to help end impunity for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.” The ICC has jurisdiction over four specific criminal acts: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. When I was in the Nuba Mountains in December 2012 and January 2013, Antonovs carried out some fifty-five bombings over a two-week period. Each day, I, along with those in the same vicinity, scrambled toward specially dug holes to jump into at the first sound of the Antonovs or, if moving from one place to another in a vehicle, the driver of our Land Cruiser raced to a wadi, where we hid amongst the trees until the Antonov passed by.

References

Albright, Madeline K., and Cohen, William S. (2008). Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers. Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal (2014). Special issue (Genocide Task Force’s Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for Policymakers) of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Issue 2, Article 2. Hagan, John, and Rymond-Richmond, Wenona (2008). Darfur and the Crime of Genocide. New York: Cambridge University Press. Jehl, Douglas (1994). “Officials Told to Avoid Calling Rwanda Killings ‘Genocide’.” The New York Times, June 10, n.p. Mendez, Juan (2006). 60 Years after the Nuremberg Judgment: Challenges Facing the Fight against Impunity. October 6. Accessed at: www.responsiblitytoprotect. org/files/60_Nuremberg.pdf Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (2011). “Organization Decision No. 3/11. Elements of the Conflict Cycle, Related to Enhancing the OSCE’s Capabilities in Early Warning, Early Action, Dialogue Facilitation and Mediation Support, and Post-Conflict Rehabilitation. MC.DEC/3/11.” December 7. Wien, Austria: Author. Accessed at www.osce.org/mc/86621. Scheffer, David (2006). “Genocide and Atrocity Crimes,” Genocide Studies and Prevention, 1: 229–50, 229. Totten, Samuel (2010). An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International. 264

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Totten, Samuel (2011). “The Birth of a New Nation: The Republic of South Sudan.” Social Education, 75, 215–19. Totten, Samuel (2012). Genocide by Attrition: The Nuba Mountains of Sudan. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Totten, Samuel, and Jacobs Steven (2002). Pioneers of Genocide Studies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Totten, Samuel (2014). “Paying Lip Service to R2P and Genocide Prevention: The Muted Response of the US Atrocities Prevention Board and the USHMM’s Committee on Conscience to the Crisis in the Nuba Mountains.” Genocide Studies International, Spring, 8(1), 23–57. Totten, Samuel (2015). “Humanitarian Missions to Nuba Mountains: Delivery of Food to Those in Critical Need.” Genocide Studies International, Volume 9(2). Totten, Samuel (2015). “The Problem of Impunity: A Signal That Crimes Against Humanity and/or Genocide Are Forgivable?” In Samuel Totten and Amanda Grzyb (Eds.) Conflict in the Nuba Mountains, Sudan: From Genocide by Attrition to the Contemporary Crisis in Sudan. New York: Routledge. Totten, Samuel, and Markusen, Eric (Eds.) (2006). Genocide in Darfur: Investigating Atrocities in the Sudan. New York: Routledge. United Nations Office of the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide (2012). The Responsibility to Protect. New York: United Nations. Accessed at www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/responsibility.shtml. US Department of State (2004). Documenting Atrocities in Darfur. Washington, DC: Author. Accessed at 2001–2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/36028.htm United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2011). “Developing a Public Early Warning System for Genocide and Mass Murder,” October 5. Washington, D.C.: Author. Accessed at http://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/speakersand-events/all-speakers-and-events/forecasting-mass-violence-developing-apublic-early-warning-system.

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Selected Bibliography: Works by Contributors Taner Akçam Books

Akçam, Taner, and Kurt, Umit (2015). The Spirit of the Laws, the Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide. New York: Berghahn. Akçam, Taner (2012). The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Akçam, Taner, and Dadrian, Vahakn (2011). Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials. New York: Berghahn Books. Akçam, Taner (2007). A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Akçam, Taner (2004). From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide. London: Zed Books.

Articles

Akçam, Taner (2011). The Chilingirian Murder: A Case Study from the 1915 Roundup of Armenian Intellectuals. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 25(1), 127–43. Akçam, Taner (2008). Guenter Lewy and New Trends in Genocide Denial. Genocide Studies and Prevention, 3(1), 111–45. Akçam, Taner (2008). The Ottoman Documents and the Genocidal Policies of the Committee for Union and Progress (Ittihat ve Terakki) Toward the Armenians in 1915. Genocide Studies and Prevention, 1(2), 127–48. Akçam, Taner (2006). Deportation and Massacres in the Cipher Telegrams in the Prime Ministerial Archive (Basbakanlik Arsivi). Genocide Studies and Prevention, 1(3), 305–25. Akçam, Taner (2005). Anatomy of a Crime: The Turkish Historical Society’s Manipulation of Archival Documents. Journal of Genocide Research, June, 7(2), 255–77.

Chapters

Akçam, Taner (2013). The Young Turks and the Plans for the Ethnic Homogenization of Anatolia, 258–83. In Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz (Eds.) 267

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Shatterzones of Empires: Coexistence in the German, Habsburg, Russian and Ottoman Borderlands. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Alex Alvarez Books

Alvarez, Alex (2014). Native America and the Question of Genocide. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Alvarez, Alex (2009). Genocidal Crimes. New York: Routledge. Alvarez, Alex (2001). Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approach. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Articles

Alvarez, Alex (2011). Reflections on the Mass Atrocity Response Operations Project. Genocide Studies and Prevention, 6(1), 59–65. Alvarez, Alex (2006). Militias and Genocide. War Crimes, Genocide & Crimes Against Humanity, (2), 1–33. Alvarez, Alex (2002). Justifying Genocide: The Role of Professionals in Legitimizing Mass Killing. Idea: A Journal of Social Issues, 6(1), n.p. Alvarez, Alex (1999). Genocide in Bosnia: Turning Neighbors into Killers. Sociological Imagination, 36, 115–23. Alvarez, Alex (1997). Adjusting to Genocide: The Techniques of Neutralization and the Holocaust. Social Science History, 21, 139–78.

Chapters

Alvarez, Alex (2008). Destructive Beliefs: Genocide and the Role of Ideology, pp. 213–31. In Rolf Haveman and Alette Smeulers (Eds.) Towards a Criminology of International Crimes. Antwerp, Belgium: Intersentia. Alvarez, Alex (2008). The Prevention and Intervention of Genocide During the Cold War Years, pp. 1–21. In Samuel Totten (Ed.), Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Series, Volume 6: The Prevention and Intervention of Genocide. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Alvarez, Alex (2004). The Relationship Between Ideology and Genocide, n.p. In The Report of the Stockholm International Forum 2004 on Preventing Genocide: Threats and Responsibilities. Stockholm: Stockholm International Forum 2004 on Preventing Genocide.

Kjell Anderson Books

Anderson, Kjell. Killing Without Consequence: A Criminology of Genocide, forthcoming. Anderson, Kjell (2005). Silencing Violence: Incitement and the Prevention of Gross Human Rights Violations. Thesis prepared for the degree of Master of Laws. Utrecht: Utrecht University. 268

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Chapters

Anderson, Kjell (2014). The International Criminal Court and the Prevention of International Crimes. In Evelyn Ankumah (Ed.) Ten Years of the International Criminal Court. The Hague: African Legal Aid. Anderson, Kjell (2012). The Universality of War: Jus ad bellum and the Right to Peace in Non–international Armed Conflicts, pp. 52–73. In David Keane and Yvonne McDermott (Eds.) The Challenge of Human Rights: Past, Present, and Future. Cheltenham, U.K: Edward Elgar.

Articles

Anderson, Kjell, and Brakstad, Ingjerd Veiden. The Impossibility to Protect? Media Narratives and Bystander Apathy in the Face of Mass Atrocities. Die Friedens–Warte–Journal of International Peace and Organization, forthcoming.

Reports

Anderson, Kjell (2011). Simon Bikindi Appeals Chamber Judgement, n.p. Oxford Reports in International Law. New York: Oxford University Press. Anderson, Kjell, and Tessa Alleblas, Tessa (2013). Forfeit Legitimacy: Syria and the Responsibility to Protect. Policy Brief #2. The Hague, Netherlands: The Hague Institute for Global Justice.

Yair Auron Books

Auron, Yair (2004). The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. (Also available in Hebrew) Auron, Yair (2005). The Pain of Knowledge: Holocaust and Genocide Issues in Education. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Auron, Yair (1999). The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. (Also available in Hebrew, Russian, and Armenian.) Auron, Yair (2013). The Holocaust, the Rebirth and the Nakba. Tel Aviv: Resling (Hebrew). The book has also been published in Arabic by Madar Publishing House in Ramallah (2014) and in English by Berghahn Books (2014). Auron, Yair, and Lubelsky (Eds.) (2009). Racism and Genocide. Tel Aviv: The Roth Institute for Research of Contemporary Anti Semitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University and the Open University. Karagueuzian, Hrayr S., and Auron, Yair (2011). A Perfect Injustice: Genocide and Theft of Armenian Wealth. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Refereed Articles

Auron, Yair (1994). The Holocaust and the Israeli Teacher. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 8(2), 225–57. 269

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Chapters

Auron, Yair (2006). Who is Afraid of Genocide, pp. 25–38. In Hanna Herzog and Kinneret Lahad (Eds.) Knowledge and Silence: On Mechanisms of Denial and Repression in Israeli Society. Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute. Auron, Yair (2007). On the Obligation of Teaching the Holocaust and Genocide in Israel and in the World, pp. 191–210. In Naomi Kramer (Ed.) Civil Courage. New York: Peter Lang. Auron, Yair (2014). Israel and the Genocide of Other People. In Amal Gamal (Ed.) The Memory of the Nakba in Israeli Society. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press.

Gerald Caplan Books

Caplan, Gerald (2000). Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, Report produced for the International Panel of Eminent Persons Appointed by the Organization of African Unity. Addis Ababa: OAU. Caplan, Gerald (2008). The Betrayal of Africa. Toronto: Groundwood Books/ House of Anansi Press.

Chapters

Caplan, Gerald (2013). The 1994 Genocide of the Tutsi of Rwanda, pp. 446–475. In Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons (Eds.) Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. Fourth Edition. New York: Routledge.

Guest Editor of a Special Issue of a Journal

Caplan, Gerry (2007). Rwanda (and Other Genocides) in Perspective. Genocide Studies and Prevention, Fall, 2(3), 275–288.

Online Articles in Pambazuka News (online journal and web forum devoted to African issues from a special justice perspective)

Gerald Caplan (2004). Why We Must Never Forget the Rwandan Genocide. Pambazuka News. January 4. Issue 150. Accessed at: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/21165. Gerald Caplan, (2006). From Rwanda to Darfur: Lessons Learned? Pambazuka News. December 1. Issue 237. Accessed at: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/ category/features/31248. Gerald Caplan (2010). The Politics of Denialism: The Strange case of Rwanda. Pambazuka News. June 17. Issue 486. Accessed at: http://www.pambazuka. org/en/category/features/65265. Gerald Caplan (2010). Who Killed the President of Rwanda? Pambazuka News. January 21. Issue 466. Accessed at: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/ category/features/61625. 270

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Gerald Caplan (2011). Gacaca Courts, Justice and Reconciliation: Challenges for Rwanda. Pambazuka News. April 21. Issue 526. Accessed at: http:// www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/72786. Gerald Caplan (2011). Rwanda 17 Years Later: What Is the Truth? Pambazuka News. October 19. Issue 553. Accessed at: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/ category/books/77258.

Craig Etcheson Books

Etcheson, Craig (2005). After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide. Westport, CT: Praeger. Etcheson, Craig (2004). Reconciliation in Cambodia: Theory and Practice. Phnom Penh: Strategic Implementation. Etcheson, Craig (1984). The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea. Boulder, CO: Westview Press/Pinter Publishers.

Chapters

Etcheson, Craig (2006). Designing Justice for Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, pp. 191–209. In John Carey, William V. Dunlap and R. John Pritchard (Eds.) International Humanitarian Law: Prospects. London: Transnational Publishers. Etcheson, Craig (2005). The Limits of Reconciliation in Cambodia’s Communes, pp. 201–24. In Elin Skaar, et al. (Eds.) Roads to Reconciliation. New York: Lexington Books. Etcheson, Craig (2004) The Politics of Genocide Justice in Cambodia, pp. 178–202. In Cesare P.R. Romano, André Nollkaemper, and Jann Kleffner (Eds.) Internationalized Criminal Courts: Sierra Leone, East Timor, Kosovo and Cambodia. London: Oxford University Press. Etcheson, Craig (1998). The Persistence of Impunity in Cambodia, pp. 231–43. In Christopher C. Joyner (Ed.) Reigning in Impunity for International Crimes and Serious Violations of Fundamental Human Rights. Pau, France. ­Association Internationale de Droit Penal. Etcheson, Craig (1991). The Khmer Way of Exile: Lessons from Three Indochinese Wars, pp. 92–116. In Yossi Shain (Ed.) Governments in Exile in Contemporary World Politics. London: Routledge.

Entries in an Encyclopedia

Etcheson, Craig (2004). Estimating Numbers of Genocide Victims. In Dinah Shelton (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.

Maureen Hiebert Refereed Articles

Hiebert, Maureen S. (2011). Mass Atrocity Response Operations (MARO) as Partial Operationalization of R2P. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Spring, 6(1), 52–58. 271

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Hiebert, Maureen S. (2008). Theorizing Destruction: Reflections on the State of Comparative Genocide Theory. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Winter, 3(3), 309–39. Hiebert, Maureen S. (2008). The ‘Three Switches’ of Identity Construction in Genocide: The Nazi Final Solution and the Cambodian Killing Fields. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Spring, 3(1), 5–29.

Chapters

Hiebert, Maureen S. (2013). Do Criminal Trials Prevent Genocide? A Critical Analysis, pp. 223–245. In Samuel Totten (Ed.) Impediments to the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide, Vol. 9. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Hiebert, Maureen S. (2013). Questioning Boundaries: What’s Old and What’s New in Comparative Genocide Theory, pp. 16–41.In Joyce Apsel and Ernesto Verdeja (Eds.) Genocide Matters: Ongoing Issues and Emerging Perspectives. New York: Routledge. Hiebert, Maureen S. (2011). The Role of Globalization in the Causes, Consequences, Prevention, and Punishment of Genocide, pp. 193–222. In Derrick M. Nault and Shawn P. England (Eds.) Globalization and Human Rights in the Developing World. New York: Palgrave. Hiebert, Maureen S., and Policzer, Pablo (2009). Genocide in Chile?: An Assessment, pp. 64–80. In Marica Esparza, Henry R. Huttenbach, and Daniel Feierstein (Eds.) State, Violence, and Genocide in Latin America: The Cold War Years. New York: Routledge.

Adam Jones Books

Jones, Adam (2013). The Scourge of Genocide: Essays and Reflections. New York: Routledge. Jones, Adam (Ed.) (2012). New Directions in Genocide Research. New York: Routledge. Jones, Adam (2010). Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (2nd Ed.). New York: Routledge. Jones, Adam (2009). Gender Inclusive: Essays on Violence, Men, and Feminist International Relations. New York: Routledge Publishers. Jones, Adam (Ed.) (2004). Gendercide and Genocide. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Jones, Adam (Ed.) (2004). Genocide, War Crimes & the West: History and Complicity. Boston, MA: Zed Books. Jones, Adam, and Robins, Nicholas A. (Eds.) (2009). Genocides by the Oppressed: Subaltern Genocide in Theory and Practice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 272

Selected Bibliography

Articles

Jones, Adam (1994). Gender and Ethnic Conflict in ex–Yugoslavia. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 17(1), 115–34. Jones, Adams (2000). Gendercide and Genocide. Journal of Genocide Research, June, 2(2), 185–211. Jones, Adam (2001). Effacing the Male: Gender, Misrepresentation, and Exclusion in the Kosovo War. Transitions: The Journal of Men’s Perspectives, 21(3), 1–3.

Henry C. Theriault Reports

Theriault, Henry; de Zayas, Alfred; McCalpin, Jermaine O.; and Papian, Ara (2015). Resolution With Justice: Reparations for the Armenian Genocide—The Report of the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group. Yerevan, Armenia: Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group. Available at: http://www.armeniangenocidereparations.info/wp-content/ uploads/2015/03/20150331-ArmenianGencoideReparations-CompleteBooklet-FINAL.pdf.

Articles

Theriault, Henry C. (2014). Reparations for Genocide: Group Harm and the Limits of Liberal Individualism. Special Issue (Armenian Genocide Reparations) of International Criminal Law Review, April, 14(2), 441–69. Theriault, Henry C. (2012). From Dialogue to Repair: Resolving the ‘Armenian Question.’ Special Issue (The Global Reparations Movement) of Armenian Review, Spring–Winter 53(1–4), 121–66. Theriault, Henry C. (2012). Against the Grain: Critical Reflections on the State and Future of Genocide Scholarship. Special Issue (50 Years after the Ratification of the Genocide Convention: Critical Reflections on the States and Future of Genocide Studies) of Genocide Studies and Prevention, Spring, 7(1), 123–44. Theriault, Henry C. (2011). The Mass Atrocity Response Operation Handbook: New Possibilities or the Same Old Militarism. Special Issue (A Symposium on MARO: Mass Atrocity Response Operations) of Genocide Studies and Prevention, Spring, 6(1), 7–31. Theriault, Henry C. (2010). Genocidal Mutation and the Challenge of Definition. Special Issue (Symposium on Human Rights: Origins, Violations, and Rectifications) of Metaphilosophy, July, 41(4), 481–24. Theriault, Henry C. (2009). Genocide, Denial, and Domination: Armenian– Turkish Relations From Conflict Resolution to Just Transformation. Journal of African Conflicts and Peace Studies, September, 1(2), 82–96. Theriault, Henry C. (2009). The Albright–Cohen Report: From Realpolitik Fantasy to Realist Ethics. Special Issue (Symposium on the Genocide Prevention Task Force) of Genocide Studies and Prevention, Summer, 4(2), 201–10. 273

Advancing Genocide Studies

Theriault, Henry C. (2004). An Analytical Typology of Arguments Denying Genocides and Related Mass Human Rights Violations. Comparative Genocide Studies Bulletin, 1, 78–101. Theriault, Henry C. (2001). Universal Social Theory and the Denial of Genocide: Norman Itzkowitz Revisited. Journal of Genocide Research, June, 3(2): 241–56.

Chapters

Theriault, Henry C. (2013). Denial of Ongoing Atrocities as a Rationale for Not Attempting to Prevent or Intervene, pp. 47–75. In Samuel Totten (Ed.) Impediments to the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review. Volume 9. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Theriault, Henry C. (2013). Shared Burdens and Perpetrator–Victim Group Conciliation, pp. 98–107. In Bert Ingelaere, Stephen Parmentier, Jacques Haere, and Barbara Segaert (Eds.) Genocide, Risk and Resilience: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Theriault, Henry C. (2007). Rethinking Dehumanization in Genocide, pp. 27–40. In Richard G. Hovannisian (Ed.) The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Theriault, Henry C. (2003). Free Speech and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 131–161. In Richard G. Hovannisian (Ed.) Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Confronting the Armenian Genocide. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Samuel Totten Books

Totten, Samuel (2015). Genocide by Attrition: Nuba Mountains, Sudan. Second Edition. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Totten, Samuel, and Gryzb, Amanda (Eds.) (2014). Conflict in the Nuba Mountains: From Genocide by Attrition to the Contemporary Crisis in Sudan. New York: Routledge. Totten, Samuel (Ed.) (2014). The Plight and Fate of Children During and Following Genocide. A Critical Bibliographic Review, Volume 10. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Totten, Samuel (Ed.) (2013) Impediments to the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, Volume 9. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Totten, Samuel and Parsons, William S. (Eds.) (2012) Centuries of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Testimony. Fourth Edition. New York: Routledge. Totten, Samuel, and Ubaldo, Rafiki (2011). We Cannot Forget: Interviews with Survivors of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Totten, Samuel (2010). An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International Press. 274

Selected Bibliography

Totten, Samuel (Ed.) (2009). The Plight and Fate of Females During and Following Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review. Volume 7. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Totten, Samuel, and Bartrop, Paul (2008). Dictionary of Genocide. Westport, CT: Praeger. Totten, Samuel, and Markusen, Eric (Eds.) (2006). Genocide in Darfur: Investigating Atrocities in the Sudan. New York: Routledge.

Articles

Totten, Samuel (2014). Lip Service vis-à-vis Prevention of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Genocide Studies International, Spring, 8(1): 23–57. Totten, Samuel (2011). The State and Future of Genocide Studies and Prevention. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Winter, 6(3):207–30. Totten, Samuel (2009). The UN International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur: New and Disturbing Findings. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, December, 4(3): 354–78. Totten, Samuel (2006). The US Investigation into the Darfur Crisis and the US Government’s Determination of Genocide. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, July, 1(1): 57–78. Totten, Samuel, and Markusen, Eric (2005).The U.S. Government Darfur Genocide Investigation. Journal of Genocide Research, June, 7(2): 279–90.

Chapters

Totten, Samuel (2009). Talk, Talk and More Talk: Little to No Action in Darfur, pp. 183–214. In Amanda F Grzyb (Ed.) Darfur and the World: International Response to Crimes Against Humanity in Western Sudan. Montreal: McGill–Queens University Press.

Uğur Üngör Books

Üngör, Uğur (2011). The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in

Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950. New York: Oxford University Press. Üngör, Uğur (2011). Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property. London/New York: Continuum.

Articles

Üngör, Uğur (2006). When Persecution Bleeds into Mass Murder: The Processive Nature of Genocide. Genocide Studies and Prevention, 1(2), 173–96. Üngör, Uğur (2011). Team America: Genocide Prevention? Genocide Studies and Prevention, 6(1), 32–38. Üngör, Uğur (2012). Rethinking the Violence of Pacification: State Formation and Bandits in the Young Turk Era, 1914–1937. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 54(4), 746–69. 275

Advancing Genocide Studies

Üngör, Uğur (2012). Studying Mass Violence: Pitfalls, Problems and Promises. Genocide Studies and Prevention, 7(1), 68–80. Üngör, Uğur (2012). Untying the Tongue–Tied: Cultural and Linguistic Genocide as Population Politics. International Journal for the Sociology of Language, Volume 217, 127–50. Üngör, Uğur (2013). Mass Violence in Syria: A Preliminary Analysis. New Middle Eastern Studies, September 2013, available at http://www.brismes. ac.uk/nmes/. Üngör, Uğur, and Weiss–Wendt, Anton (2011). Collaboration in Genocide: Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916; Nazi–Occupied Baltic States, 1941–1944; and Rwanda, 1994. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Winter, 25(3), 404–37.

Chapters

Üngör, Uğur (2011). Fresh Understandings of the Armenian Genocide: Mapping New Terrain with Old Questions, pp. 197–213. In Adam Jones (Ed.) New Directions in Genocide Research. New York: Routledge. Üngör, Uğur (2012). Paramilitary Violence in the Collapsing Ottoman Empire, 1912–1923, pp. 164–183. In Robert Gerwarth and John Horne (Eds.) War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, 1917–1923. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Üngör, Uğur (2013). Genocide and Property: Root Cause or Concomitant Effect? pp. 178–189. In B. Ingelaere, S. Parmentier, J. Haers and B. Segaert (Eds.) Genocide, Risk and Resilience: An Interdisciplinary Approach. London: Palgrave.

276

Index A Act of Killing, The, 43 activism against genocide, 48, 103, 114, 226, 230, 240–241, 242, 243–244, 261–262 criticism of lack of action, 230, 241, 246, 247 United States Atrocities Prevention Board, 230, 241, 246, 247 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee of Conscience, 230, 241, 246, 247 delivering Food to Nuba Mountains, 230, 242, 243, 244, 245 “Humanitarian Missions to Nuba Mountains: Delivery of Food to Those in Critical Need”, 245 letter writing campaigns, 48, 230, 240–241 Samuel Totten, by, 230, 240–244 activist-scholar divide, x, xii, 48, 49, 84, 259, 261–263 Maureen Hiebert on, 84 Samuel Totten on, 261–263 Ugur Ungor on, 48 Akcam, Taner, 3–34 A SHAMEFUL ACT: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, 23 Hurriyet, 5, 12, 20, 21, 24–26, 27 attacks against Taner Akcam, 5, 12, 20, 21, 24–26–27 Turkish National Identity and the Armenian Question, 3 discussion of Turkish national identity, 6, 10, 19, 28 “Turks and Armenians: Toward a Discussion of the Armenian Massacres”, 16

al Bashir, Omar, 90, 224, 237, 238, 239, 254, 255, 256 Darfur, and, 90, 224, 254, 255, 256 impunity, and, 90, 224, 239, 254, 255, 256 International Criminal Court, wanted by, 90, 237, 255 “Is Omar Hassan al Bashir Up to Genocide Again?”, 239–240 and Nuba Mountains, 237, 238, 239, 254, 255 Sharia Law, threatened imposition of, 237–238 “The Problem of Impunity: A Signal That Crimes Against Humanity and/ or Genocide Are Forgivable?”, 256 Aloni, Shulamit, 182 Alvarez, Alex, 44, 115, 119–134 “Adjusting to Genocide: The Techniques of Neutralization and the Holocaust”, 123 authoritarianism, 44, 131 climate change, 128–131, 132 definitionalism, 124, 126–129 Genocidal Crimes, 124 Governments, Citizens and Genocide, 115, 123 Native America and the Question of Genocide, 124 Techniques of Neutralization, 122–123 analytical perspectives (re genocide), 11, 30, 38–39, 51, 105, 108, 123 macro (international), 11, 30, 38–39, 105, 108, 123 meso (domestic), 38–39, 41, 123 micro (local/individual), 38–39, 51, 105, 108, 123 Anderson, Kjell, 99–116

277

Advancing Genocide Studies Forum for the Prevention of International Crimes, 114 Killing Without Consequence, 109, 110, 111, 112 based on interviews of perpetrators of genocide, 106, 107, 109–113 Neutralization theory relevant to genocide, 109, 110–113 Tuol Sleng prison, 107, 108, 112 interviews of perpetrators at, 107, 108, 112, 115 “annihilating difference”, 37 antiquity and genocide, 44 Gat, Azar, 44 Kiernan, Ben, 44 Armenian genocide , 3, 4, 5–6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19–20, 23, 24, 25, 26–27, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 189, 221, 222 The Armenian Question, 3, 4, 5, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 33 Armenians and The Republic of Armenia: Homeland and Exile, 16 Committee for Union and Progress (CUP), 31, 34 Dadrian, Vahakn, 4, 21, 127, 155 denial of, 10, 35, 36, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 164, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 183, 185, 192, 222 by Israel, 176, 177, 181, 182, 183, 222 The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, 179 “uniqueness” of the Holocaust, 30, 180, 184, 221 Hamidian period and the massacres, 9, 139 “Holdwater” (Murad Gumen), 5–6, 23, 24, 25, 27 attacks against Taner Akcam, 5–6, 24, 25, 27 Hurriyet, 5, 12, 20, 21, 24–27 attacks against Taner Akcam, 5, 20, 24–25, 26–27 Ottoman Empire, 9, 11, 13, 14, 19, 28, 30, 31, 35–36, 139, 152, 164, 178, 261 war crime trials of Young Turks in, 11 A SHAMEFUL ACT: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, 23 Turkish approach to the question of the Armenian Genocide, 3–34 278

Turkish National Identity and the Armenian Question, 3 “Turks and Armenians: Toward a Discussion of the Armenian Massacres”, 16 Prime Ministerial Archive in Istanbul, 31 reparations, 156, 157, 158, 159, 165 “Susurluk Incident”, 17 involvement of Turkey’s veteran ultranationalist activists, 17 United States lack of recognition of the Armenian genocide, 176, 180, 181, 222, 261 Barack Obama’s promise he failed to keep, 181 Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group, 157 Atrocities Documentation Project (U.S. Government), 115, 230–232 Interviews of survivors of Darfur, 115, 230–232 atrocity crimes, xi, xii, 29, 48, 90, 121, 125, 126, 127, 129,132, 252, 253, 254, 255, 259, 262, 264 Scheffer, David, 127, 252 Auron, Yair, 171–193 The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, 179 The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide, 178, 191–192 denial of Armenian genocide by Israel, 176, 177, 181, 182, 183, 222 The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, 179 “uniqueness” of the Holocaust, 30, 180, 184, 221 educating about genocide, 177–178, 183, 185, 186, 188 The Holocaust, family impacted by, 171–193 The Six Days War, 174, 175–176 B The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, 179 The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide, 178, 191–192 Bassiouni, Cherif, 202, 203, 264 The Betrayal of Africa, 219

Index Blair, Eric (George Orwell), 63, 64, 65, 72 Animal Farm, 63 Burmese Days, 63 1984, 63 Bloxman, Donald, 37, 44, 122 Bosnia, x, xi, 10, 43, 51, 61, 65, 66, 103, 105, 112, 120, 160, 200, 202, 208, 258 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), x, xi, 103, 200, 202, 208 Boyette, Ryan, 238–239 outbreak of war in Nuba Mountains in 2011, 238 Browning, Christopher, 104 Ordinary Men, 104 Bystanders, 110, 113, 262 Neutralization theory relevant to, 110, 113 C Cambodian Genocide, 197–215 The Cambodia Campaign, 200 The Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge (CORKR), 199, 200, 201, 202, 203 change of name to The Cambodia Campaign, 200 Cambodian Genocide Program (Yale University), 202, 203, 204, 205, 206 Chams, genocide of during, 207, 211 Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211 DC Cam’s mass grave mapping project, 205, 207, 208 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214 forensic project, 207–208 Ieng Sary, 203 Khmer Rouge, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214 Khmer Rouge tribunal, 200, 201, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213 1979 People’s Revolutionary Tribunal in Phnom Penh, 203 Pol Pot, 203 The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea, 198 S-21 (always referred to as Tuol Sleng), 107, 108, 211

Camus, Albert, 190–191 The Plague (La Peste), 190–191 Caplan, Gerry, 217–228 denial of genocide, thoughts about, 222, 228 Holocaust, lessons of, 222 Journal of Genocide Research, Special Issue on 1994 Rwandan Genocide, 223, 224 “Never Again,” thoughts about, 220, 221, 222, 228 “real genocides”, 227 “Remembering Rwanda” (RRIO), 219, 220, 222 Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, 219 Rwandan genocide, 217–228 Stockholm International Forum on Preventing Genocide, views of, 223, 224 Century of Genocide, 71 Chalk, Frank, 67, 71, 85, 121, 127, 151 Chams, genocide of, 207, 211 Chandler, David, 207 Charny, Israel, ix, x, 67, 70, 127, 154, 155, 156, 161, 241, 259, 260, 262 Chomsky, Noam, 63–64 Radical Priorities, 63 Turning the Tide, 63 “chronologically and ontologically modern forms of violence”, 93 Chronicle of a Genocide Foretold, 60 climate change, xiii, 95–96, 129–131 colonialism, 63, 85, 128, 161 Canada, and, 85, 93 Moses, Dirk, 128 Committee for Union and Progress (CUP), 31, 34 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, 237 Nuba Mountains left out of, 237 Confiscation and Destruction, 50 Ugur Ungor, by, 50 crimes against humanity, x, xi, xii, 60, 70, 73, 90, 103, 105, 190, 198, 199, 210, 226, 227, 237, 240, 241, 242, 246, 247, 249, 250, 251, 251–253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 261, 262, 263, 264 criminological approach vis-à-vis the perpetration of mass atrocities, 104–116, 120–134 Alvarez, Alex, 120–134 Anderson, Kjell, 104–116 279

Advancing Genocide Studies Darfur and the Crime of Genocide, 115 Genocidal Crimes, 115, 124 Governments, Citizens, and Genocide, 115 Killing Without Consequence, 109 Supranational Criminology: Towards a Criminology of International Crimes, 115 Victimological Approaches to International Crimes: Africa, 115 cultural genocide, 45–46, 85, 93 Maureen Hiebert, view of by, 85, 93 Raphael Lemkin, view of by, 46 Dirk Moses, view of by, 46 A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System in Canada 1879–1986, 85 D Darfur, xi, 38, 103, 115, 223, 224, 226, 227, 228, 230, 231–232, 233–234, 235, 236, 237, 248, 252, 254, 255, 257, 258 al Bashir, Omar, 90, 224, 239, 254 Atrocities Documentation Project (US Government), 230 Darfur and the Crime of Genocide, 115 Genocide in Darfur: Investigating Atrocities in the Sudan, 232 government of Sudan troops, 232, 234, 235 International Criminal Court (ICC), and, 237 interviews of survivors of, 229, 230, 231–232, 233, 236 of rape victim, 231–232, 233–234 Janjaweed, 227, 230, 232, 254, 255, 258 An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide, 235 Stockholm International Conference, and, 223, 224 United Nations Security Council and, 224, 225–226 U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 232 Colin Powell, and, 232 declared Darfur a case of genocide, 232 Darfur and the Crime of Genocide, 115 Death, Despair and Defiance (African Rights), 68 democratic regimes and mass violence, 44 280

denial of genocide, 3–34, 35–36, 64, 149–150, 153–155, 156–157, 164, 176, 177–178, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 192, 221, 222, 228 Armenian genocide, of, 10, 35, 36, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 164, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 192, 222 by Israel, 176, 177, 181, 182, 183, 222 The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, 179 “uniqueness” of the Holocaust, 30, 180, 184, 221 denial of by Turkish Government, 3–34, 35–36, 177 Edward Hermann and denial of 1994 Rwandan genocide, 64 Noam Chomsky’s endorsement of Hermann’s book, 64 Dadrian, Vahakn, 4, 21, 22, 127, 155 “definitionalism”, 30, 102–104, 126–129, 161, 251–253 recommendation: focus on crimes against humanity, not genocide, 251–253 democide, 127 Dink, Hrant, 5, 7, 24, 25, 26, 33, 33–34 Ergenekon’s assassination of, 7, 33, 34 Hurriyet’s campaign against Hrant Dink, 25 murder of, 5, 7, 24, 25, 26, 33 Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 210, 211 Etcheson, Craig, 202, 203, 204, 206, 206, 207, 208, 211 Youk, Chang, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 211 Downes, Alexander, 44 democratic regimes and mass violence, 44 The Drowned and the Saved, 189 E educating about genocide, 108, 156, 177– 178, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 222 Israel, in, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187 Lesson of the Holocaust, 222 National University of Rwanda, at the, 108 elites’ perceptions of their own actions, 83–84

Index understanding such, as a mean of possible prevention, 83–84 Ergenekon terrorist organization (Turkey), 5, 7, 8, 24, 26–27, 33, 34 assassination of Hrant Dink, 7, 33, 34 harassment of Taner Akcam, 5, 26–27 Etcheson, Craig, 197–215 Cambodia and the UNCG, 199 The Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge (CORKR), 199, 200, 201, 202, 203 Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211 DC Cam’s mass grave mapping project, 205, 208 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214 forensic project, 207–208 international tribunal for Cambodia, 200, 201, 202, 203, 206–207, 208– 209, 210–213, 214 Khmer Rouge, 198, 199, 203, 204, 205, 206, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214 euphemisms used by, 204 Khmer Rouge Genocide of Cambodians, 198–215 The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea, 198 Transitional justice, issue of, 197, 200, 208, 214 UN Commission of Inquiry, 205 UN Group of Experts, 206 recommend international tribunal for Cambodia, 206 Evoking Genocide: Scholars and Activists Describe the Works That Shaped Their Lives, 74 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214 extreme ideology and genocide, 44 Maoism, 44 Nazism, 44 Stalinism, 44 extremely violent societies, 127 F FACT-Rwanda (Forum des Activistes Contre la Torture), 105 Die Fälscher, 43

Fein, Helen, x, 67, 69, 121, 126, 127, 241, 259 Feinstein, Stephen, 22 films about genocide, 41, 43 The Act of Killing, 43 Die Fälscher, 43 “a nonacademic approach to genocide” (Ungur), 41 Katyn, 43 Hotel Rwanda, 43 Schindler’s List, 43 La Vita è Bella, 43 First Nations (Canada), 80, 85 First person stories of perpetrators, 106, 107, 115 “magnitude gap”, 107 “minimize moral responsibility”, 106, 107 first person stories of survivors, 106, 107, 115, 229, 230, 231–232, 233–234, 235, 236 interviews of survivors, Darfur, 229, 230, 231–232, 233, 236 rape victim, Darfur, 231–232, 233–234 An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide, 235 We Cannot Forget: Interviews with Survivors of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, 235 “magnitude gap”, 107 Forensic Project (Cambodia), 205, 207–208 advice of ICTY, 208 Former Yugoslavia, x, 50, 65, 103, 126, 152, 190, 200, 202, 203, 206, 246, 258 genocide in, 50, 152 190, 246 International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, x, 103, 200, 202, 206 rape camps, in, 258 The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, 163, 179 Forum for the Prevention of International Crimes, 114 “fury of destruction” (Hegel), 93 G Gendercide, 66–67 Adam Jones and, 66–67 “Gender and Genocide in Rwanda”, 68 “Gendercide and Genocide”, 67 281

Advancing Genocide Studies Gendercide and Genocide, 68 Gender Inclusive, 74 Genocide, War Crimes & the West: History and Complicity, 70 Gendercide Watch, 67, 68 Maureen Hiebert’s critique of, 86–87 Henry Theriault’s critique of, 160 Gendercide Watch, 67, 68, 72 Genocidal Crimes, 115, 124 genocide by attrition, 230, 236–237, 237–238, 254, 255, 257, 265 al Bashir, Omar, 237 Impunity, 254 Sharia Law, threatened imposition of in Nuba Mountains, 237–238 Genocide by Attrition: Nuba Mountains of Sudan, 265 Government of Sudan, perpetrated by, 230, 236–237, 237–238, 254, 257 interviews of survivors of Genocide by Attrition in Nuba Mountains, 236–237 mass hunger of civilians, 236, 237, 257 Nuba Mountains, Sudan, in, 230, 236–237, 237–238, 254, 257 starvation of civilians, 236, 237, 257 Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 71–73 genocide early warning systems, 227 Totten, Samuel, 227 genocide as society driven, 45 Christian Gerlach and, 45 Nicholas Werth and, 45 genocide as a state project, 45 Alex Hinton and, 45 Irving Horowitz and, 45 genocide studies activist-scholar divide, x, xii, 48, 49, 84, 259, 261–263 Maureen Hiebert on, 84 Samuel Totten on, 261–263 Ugur Ungor on, 48 obstacles to studying genocide (Ungor), 49 emotions, 49 politics, 49 law, 49 morals, 49 Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, 62 Leo Kuper, by, 62 282

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, 90, 124, 156, 262 Genocides by the Oppressed, 73 genocide as a tool of rape, 160 Gerlach, Christian, 45, 127 Extremely violent societies, 127 German national identity and Turkish national identity, 28 global climate change, see, climate change “Globalization of impunity”, 219 Grossman, Vassili, 42 Life and Fate, 42 Guatemala, 87 genocide of Mayans, in, 87 Gurr, Ted, 127 politicide, 127 H Hagan, John, 115, 122 Darfur and the Crime of Genocide, 115 Hamidian period and the massacres, 9, 139 H-Genocide list serve, 69 Harff, Barbara, 127 politicide, 127 Haroun, Ahmed, 237, 238 Darfur, and, 237 International Criminal Court, wanted by, 237 Nuba Mountains, and, 237, 238 Hawk, David, 198, 200 Heder, Steven, 207, 210 Hiebert, Maureen S., 79–96 activist-scholar divide, 84 “chronologically and ontologically modern forms of violence”, 93 climate change, 95–96 “Do Criminal Trials Prevent Genocide? A Critical Analysis”, 89, 90 “Theorizing Destruction: Reflection on the State of Comparative Genocide Theory”, 90 Hilsenrath, Edgar, 42 The Story of the Last Thought, 42 Hinton, Alex, 37, 44, 45 “annihilating difference”, 37 genocide as a state project, 45 Hirsch, Herbert, 121, 124 History and Sociology of Genocide, 151 “Holdwater” (Murad Gumen), 5–6, 23, 24, 25, 27

Index attacks against Taner Akcam, 5–6, 23, 24, 25 Holocaust, 30, 171–193, 220, 221 family impacted by, 171–193 Israel, and, 184 lesson of, 222 non-Jewish victims, 173 Second Generation of, 173, 192 “uniqueness of ”, 180, 221 Yad Vashem: The Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Authority, 173, 184, 192 Horowitz, Irving, 44, 45, 121, 127 genocide as a state project, 45 Hotel Rwanda, 43 humanitarian intervention, x, xi, xii, 48, 75, 84, 128–131, 152, 175, 189, 225, 228, 229, 246–251, 253, 259, 262, 264 Hurriyet, 5, 12, 20, 21, 24–27 attacks against Taner Akcam, 5, 20, 24–25, 26–27 campaign against Hrant Dink, 25 Hutu, xi, 218, 226, 257, 258 I Impediments to the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide, 89 impunity, 219, 254–255 “Globalization of impunity”, 219 International Association of Genocide Scholars, 70, 77, 105, 155, 225, 259, 261 International Criminal Court (ICC), x, xii, 90, 103, 126, 237, 255, 264 indictment of Ahmed Haroun, 237 indictment of Omar al Bashir, 90, 237, 255 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 103, 255 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), x, xii, 103, 206, 232 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), x, xi, 103, 200, 202, 208 International Panel of Eminent Personalities, 217 Irish Centre for Human Rights, 105 Israel, 70, 181, 182 debate over “nuclear threat”, 70 denial of the Armenian genocide by Israel, 176, 177, 181, 182, 183, 222

The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, 179 “uniqueness” of the Holocaust, 30, 180, 184, 221 Istanbul Security Directorate, 16 Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi or MHP), 14 J Janjaweed, 227, 230, 232, 254, 255, 258 Jarvis, Helen, 203, 205 Jones, Adam, 57–77 gendercide, 66–67 Adam Jones and, 66–67 “Gender and Genocide in Rwanda”, 68 “Gendercide and Genocide”, 67 Gendercide and Genocide, 68 gender inclusive, 74 Genocide, War Crimes & the West: History and Complicity, 70 Gendercide Watch, 67, 68 Journal of Genocide Research, 45, 67, 68, 223–224 special issue on Gendercide, 68 K Katyn, 43 Khmer Rouge, vii, 112, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 257 Khmer Rouge tribunal, vii, 200, 201, 202, 206, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214 Kiernan, Ben, 44, 71, 72, 202, 259 Killing Without Consequence, 109, 110, 111, 112 based on interviews of perpetrators of genocide, 109–112 Kjell Anderson, 109–112 Neutralization theory relevant to genocide, 110–112 The Kindly Ones, 42 Littell, Jonathan, 42 Keane, John, 44 transitions from one from of governance to another and mass violence, 44 Krain, Matthew, 44 Transitions from one from of governance to another and mass violence, 44 283

Advancing Genocide Studies L Lemkin, Raphael, x, 43, 46, 225 cultural genocide, and, 46 Levene, Mark, 37, 44 Levi, Primo, 189 The Drowned and the Saved, 189 Life and Fate, 42 Grossman, Vassili, by, 42 literature about genocide, 41, 42 “a nonacademic approach to genocide” (Ungur), 41 Grossman, Vassili, 42 Life and Fate, 42 Hilsenrath, Edgar, 42 The Story of the Last Thought, 42 Littell, Jonathan, 42 The Kindly Ones, 42 Littell, Jonathan, 42 The Kindly Ones, 42 M macrotheory of violence, 11 Auschwitz, 11 Hiroshima, 11 Nuremberg Trials, 11 Soviet Gulag, 11 The Making of Modern Turkey, 50 Ugur Ungor, by, 50 Mann, Michael, 44, 131 democratic regimes and mass violence, and, 44 Maosim, 44 Markusen, Eric, xiii, 37, 124, 164, 224, 232, 254, 262 Genocide in Darfur: Investigating Atrocities in the Sudan, 232 MARO: Mass Atrocity Response Operations Handbook, A Military Handbook, 88, 89, 128 mass grave mapping project (Cambodia), 205, 208 Melson, Robert, 121, 127, 155, 259 modernity, 44, 93 genocide, and, 44 Bartov, Omer, 4 Weitz, Eric, 44 Moses, Dirk, 46, 122, 128 Mullins, Christopher, 122 Mushikiwabo, Louise, 219 “Remembering Rwanda”, 219, 220 284

N The National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (Kigali, Rwanda), 75 A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System in Canada 1879–1986, 85 Native Americans, 124, 139, 141, 158 genocide of, 141 Native Americans and the Question of Genocide, 124 reparations for, 158 Native America and the Question of Genocide, 124 The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, 115 Nazis, 11, 173, 179, 190, 199, 202 Nuremberg Trials of, 11, 199, 202 Nazism, 42, 44, 59, 120 Neutralization theory relevant to genocide, 109, 110–113, 122–123 “Adjusting to Genocide: The Techniques of Neutralization and the Holocaust”, 123 Techniques of Neutralization, 122–123 “Never Again”, 152, 220, 221, 222, 228, 242 bluster of, 228 meaning of?, 220 trivialization of, 221 1928 Law on Alphabet Reform, 19 Nuba Mountains, xi, 229–230, 236–237 genocide by attrition, 229–230, 236–237 Government of Sudan, by, 236 interviews of survivors of Genocide by Attrition in Nuba Mountains, 236–237 mass hunger of civilians, 236 Desperate for humanitarian aid, 230 starvation of civilians, 236 outbreak of new war (June 2011), 230, 237–240 activism on behalf of Nuba civilians, 240–241, 242–244, 245 “Humanitarian Missions to Nuba Mountains: Delivery of Food to Those in Critical Need”, 245 aerial attacks, 237, 243, 244 al Bashir, Omar, 237 antonovs, 244 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, 237 Government of Sudan, 238

Index Haroun, Ahmed, 237 hunger to starvation, 243 interviews of Nuba civilians, 244 “Is Omar Hassan al Bashir Up to Genocide Again?”, 239–240 Sharia Law, 237–238 “Paying Lip Service to R2P and Genocide Prevention: The Muted Response of the U.S. Atrocities Prevention Board and the USHMM’s Committee on Conscience”, 241 Nuon, Chea, 211 Nuremberg Trials, 11, 199, 202 O Obama, Barack President, 230, 246, 247 Armenian genocide, 181 “Obama’s Empty Promises to Halt Genocide Leave It to Us to Act”, 242 “Paying Lip Ser vice to R2P and Genocide Prevention: The Muted Response of the U.S. Atrocities Prevention Board and the USHMM’s Committee on Conscience”, 247 An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide, 235 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 217, 218 Orwell, George (Eric Blair), 63, 64, 65, 72 Animal Farm, 63 Burmese Days, 63 1984, 63 Ottoman Empire, 9, 11, 13, 14, 19, 28, 30, 31, 35–36, 139, 152, 164, 178, 261 A SHAMEFUL ACT: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, 23 Ottoman materials in the Prime Ministerial Archive in Istanbul, 31 secret Ottoman documents, 28 Naim-Andonian documents, 28 Turkish approach to the question of the Armenian Genocide, 3–34 Turkish National Identity and the Armenian Question, 3 “Turks and Armenians: Toward a Discussion of the Armenian Massacres”, 16 war crime trials of Young Turks in, 11 The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, 122

P paramilitarism and genocide, 38, 39, 40, 43, 50, 51 Permanent Five (UN Security Council), 224, 228 perpetrators, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115 al Bashir, Omar, 90, 224, 237, 238, 239, 254, 255, 256 Darfur, and, 90, 224, 254, 255, 256 impunity, and, 90, 224, 239, 254, 255, 256 International Criminal Court, wanted by, 90, 237, 255 “Is Omar Hassan al Bashir Up to Genocide Again?”, 239–240 and Nuba Mountains, 237, 238, 239, 254, 255 Sharia Law, threatened imposition of, 237–238 “The Problem of Impunity: A Signal That Crimes Against Humanity and/ or Genocide Are Forgivable?”, 256 first person stories of perpetrators, 106, 107, 115 “magnitude gap”, 107 “minimize moral responsibility”, 106, 107 government of Sudan troops, 232, 234, 235 Hutu extremists, 218, 226 Janjaweed, 227, 230, 232, 254, 255, 258 Khmer Rouge, 198, 199, 203, 204, 205, 206, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214 euphemisms used by, 204 Khmer Rouge genocide of Cambodians, 198–215 Killing Without Consequence, 109, 110, 111, 112 based on interviews of perpetrators of genocide, 106, 107, 108, 112, 109–113, 115 Tuol Sleng prison, 107, 108, 112 Nazis, 11, 173, 179, 190, 199, 202 Ottoman Turks, 9, 11, 13, 14, 19, 28, 30, 31, 35–36, 139, 152, 164, 178, 261 war crime trials of Young Turks in, 11 Pinker, Steven, 44 Pinochet dictatorship, 87 Pioneers of Genocide Studies, vii, viii, ix, x, xiii, 229 285

Advancing Genocide Studies The Plague (La Peste), 190–191 political-sociological model vis-à-vis the analysis of genocide, 40 politicide, 127 post Cold War, 51 Powell, Colin, 232 Darfur, 232 declaration of genocide in, 232 U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 232 declaration of genocide in Darfur, at, 232 Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers, 128 prevention of genocide, x, xi, xii, 66, 83–84, 88, 89, 113, 128–131, 223, 225–228, 230, 241, 246, 249, 251–253, 254, 256–258, 259, 262, 263–264 Atrocities Prevention Board, criticism of, 230, 241 “Do Criminal Trials Prevent Genocide? A Critical Analysis”, 89 Impediments to the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide, 89 “genocide” (term of ) counterproductive to prevention and intervention, 251–253 elites’ perceptions of their own actions, 83–84 understanding such, as a mean of possible prevention, 83–84 focus on Crimes Against Humanity vs. solely genocide, 251–253, 263–264 “Paying Lip Ser vice to R2P and Genocide Prevention: The Muted Response of the US Atrocities Prevention Board and the USHMM’S Committee on Conscience to the Crisis in the Nuba Mountains,” 241 political will, lack of, 253 “Poseurs: Playing at Prevention and Intervention”, 246 realpolitik, 250, 253 Responsibility to Protect, 250 signs of extreme danger in a society that demands immediate action, 256–258 Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General on the Prevention of Genocide, 254 Srebrenica, failure to prevent, 66 286

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Genocide Prevention, criticism of, 241 Prime Ministerial Archive in Istanbul, 31 Ottoman documents, 31 Prosper, Pierre-Richard, 232 Darfur, and, 232 Purify and Destroy, 37, 127 R Rape, 43, 65, 99, 106, 107, 160, 231–232, 233–234, 250, 255, 258 Bosnia, 43, 65, 258 Darfur, 231–232, 233–234, 255 Democratic Republic of the Congo, 250 genocide as a tool of rape, 160 Rwanda, 99, 106, 107 Rape as a tool of genocide, 160 genocide as a tool of rape, 160 “real genocides”, 227 realpolitik, xi, 229, 250, 253 Responsibility to Protect, x, xi–xii, 88–89, 128, 241, 250 “R2P as National Security Thesis: Atrocity Prevention and the “Goldilocks’ Problem”, 89 “R2P as National Security Thesis: Atrocity Prevention and the ‘Goldilocks Problem’”, 89 The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea, 198 Robb, Chuck, 200 Robins, Nicholas, 73 Genocides by the Oppressed (with Adam Jones), 73 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 103, 255 Rothe, Dawn, 122 Rummel, Rudolph, 44, 127 Authoritarianism, and, 44 Democide, and, 127 Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, 219 Caplan, Gerald (author of ), 219 Rwandan genocide (1994), 80, 81, 99–100, 112, 115, 152, 217–228, 229, 235 commemoration of, 99–100, 106 complicity French complicity, 219 Roman Catholic Church, 219 denial of, 228 Hutu, 218, 226

Index interviews of survivors of, 229 international media’s misreporting of, 219 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 217, 218 “Remembering Rwanda” (RR10), 219, 220 Gerry Caplan, 219 Roman Catholic Church Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, 219 Caplan, Gerald (author of ), 219 “globalization of impunity”, 219 Tutsi, 228 United Nations bureaucracy’s shameful actions, 219 United States shameful actions, 219 We Cannot Forget: Interviews with Survivors of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, 235 Rymond-Richmond, Wenona, 115, 122 Darfur and the Crime of Genocide, 115 S Saramago, Jose, 191 Blindness, 191 Schabas, William, 105, 126, 264 Scheffer, David, 127, 252, 264 atrocity crimes, and, 127, 252 Schindler’s List, 43 scholar-activist divide, xii, 49, 75, 76, 103, 105, 126, 137, 162–163, 259, 261–262 activist-scholars, 49, 75, 76, 103, 105, 198, 223, 261–262, 126 The Scourge of Genocide, 72 The Second Generation (of the Holocaust), 192 Second Sudanese Civil War, 236, 237 El Secreto de Sus Ojos, 43 A SHAMEFUL ACT: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, 23 Sharia Law, 237–238 Omar al Bashir, and, 237–238 The Six Days War, 174, 175–176 Smeulers, Alette, 115, 122 Supranational Criminology: Towards a Criminology of International Crimes, 115 Solarz, Stephen, 200 Stalinism, 42, 44

Stanton, Gregory, 198, 201, 254 state failure, 130 The Story of the Last Thought, 42 Hilsenrath, Edgar, 42 “Susurluk Incident”, 17 involvement of Turkey’s veteran ultranationalist activists, 17 T TallArmenianTale, 23 temporal complexity of genocide, 39–40 the previolent phase, 39 the phase of mass political violence, 39–40 the postviolence phase, 39, 40 Theriault, Henry C., 137–167 Armenian genocide, 154–155, 156– 157–158, 164 denial of, 153–155, 156–157, 164 Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group, 157 definitionalism, 161 dehumanization and genocide, 159 genocide as a tool of rape, 160 Native Americans, 158 reparations, 157–158, 165 scholar-activist divide, 162–163 teaching about genocide, 156 U.S. imperialism, 164–165 Totten, Samuel, 89, 189, 232, 235 activism by, 48, 240–241, 242–244 scholar/activist divide, 261–263 Atrocities Documentation Project (U.S. Government), 115, 230–232 conducting research in a War Zone, 244–245, 260–261, 264 crimes against humanity, not genocide: a new focus, 251–253 Genocide in Darfur: Investigating Atrocities in the Sudan, 232 genocide early warning systems, 227, 248–250 Impediments to the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide, 89, 189 interviews of survivors of Darfur, 115, 230–232, 233, interviews of survivors of Genocide by Attrition in Nuba Mountains, 236–237 interviews of survivors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, 235 287

Advancing Genocide Studies “Is Omar Hassan al Bashir Up to Genocide Again?”, 239–240 Masters Degree Program in Genocide Studies at National University of Rwanda, 108, 235 development of by, 235 first Masters Degree in Genocide Studies in Rwanda and Africa , 235 “Obama’s Empty Promises to Halt Genocide Leave It to Us to Act”, 242 An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide, 235 research in the Nuba Mountains, Sudan, 235 realpolitik, 250 Responsibility to Protect, 250 signs of extreme danger in a society that demands immediate action, 256–258 We Cannot Forget: Interviews with Survivors of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, 235 Towards a Criminology of International Crimes, 115 transitional justice, 40, 104, 113, 114, 197, 200, 208, 214 retributive justice (Cambodia), desire for, 208 Tuol Sleng prison, 107, 108, 112 interviews of perpetrators at, 108, 112 Turkey, 3–34 Armenian genocide and denial of, 153–155, 156–157, 164 Ergenekon terrorist organization (Turkey), 5, 7, 8, 24, 26–27, 33, 34 assassination of Hrant Dink, 7, 33, 34 harassment of Taner Akcam, 5, 26–27 Hurriyet, 5, 12, 20, 21, 24–26, 27 Attacks against Taner Akcam, 5, 12, 20, 21, 24–26–27 The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950, 50 1928 Law on Alphabet Reform, 19 reparations, 157–158, 165 Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group, 157 A SHAMEFUL ACT: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, 23 “Susurluk Incident”, 17 288

involvement of Turkey’s veteran ultranationalist activists, 17 Turkish approach to the question of the Armenian Genocide, 3–34 Turkish National Identity and the Armenian Question, 3 discussion of Turkish national identity, 6, 10, 19, 28 “Turks and Armenians: Toward a Discussion of the Armenian Massacres”, 16 U Ugur Umit Ungor, 35–52 activist-Scholar Divide, on, 48 Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property, 50 The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913– 1950, 50 obstacles to studying genocide, 49 emotions, 49 politics, 49 law, 49 morals, 49 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, 43, 85, 102–103, 126, 127, 199, 224, 225, 226, 253, 255 Cambodia, and, 199 Clinton administration, and, 225 George W. Bush administration, and, 225–226 protected groups, under, 253 United Nations Security Council, and, 224, 228 United Nations Security Council, 224, 225, 228, 249, 253 Darfur, 224 Permanent Five, 224, 228 U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 232 Colin Powell, and, 232 Darfur, and, 232 United States lack of recognition of the Armenian genocide, 176, 180, 181, 222, 261 Barack Obama’s promise he failed to keep, 181 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 101

Index V La Vita è Bella, 43 Victimological Approaches to International Crimes: Africa, 115 victims perceived as mortal threats, 88 Vietnam War, 147, 158 W We Cannot Forget: Interviews with Survivors of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, 235 Weitz, Eric, 22, 44, 241 Werth, Nicholas, 45

Will to Intervene project, 114 Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies, 114 Responsibility to Protect, x, xi–xii, 88–89, 128, 241, 250 Y Yad Vashem: The Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Authority, 173, 184, 192 Yugoslavia (see former Yugoslavia) Youk, Chhang, 203–204, 206, 207, 208 Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), 203, 204, 206, 207, 208

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