| Atrocity |
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| Written by Rebecca Secrest | ||||
| Friday, 01 February 2008 | ||||
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The term ‘genocide’ was first used by Raphael Lemkin in 1944, when he combined the Latin words ‘genos’ which means race, and ‘cide’ which means killing. Genocide is defined by the United Nations as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethic, racial, or religious group. The world is currently turning a figurative blind eye to the genocide taking place in the Darfur region of the Sudan, as it has turned a blind eye many times in the past to much worse atrocities. For instance, back in 1932 Joseph Stalin engineered a famine in the Ukraine because the Ukrainian citizens were becoming too independently minded. By 1932 most of the farms in the Ukraine were collectivized, or under government authority, and all of the farms had to meet quotas for production of grain and other goods. In 1933 Stalin raised all of the quotas, and starvation quickly reigned, taking the lives of an estimated seven million Ukrainians. This genocide is called “Stalin’s Forced Famine.” Next on the list is the Pol Pot genocides. In 1962 Pol Pot became the leader of the Cambodian Communist Party. He formed a resistance movement called the Khmer Rouge in the jungles of Cambodia, and went to war with the Cambodian government. He then attempted to form a communist peasant farming society which resulted in death tolls of 25% from starvation and executions. In 1970 the Cambodian government was overturned by a military coup from the United States, which ironically resulted in the unlikely allying of the former royal Cambodian governor with Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. In the mid-90’s there was a huge bloodbath euphemistically referred to by the participants as ‘ethnic cleansing’ within Bosnia-Herzegovina, a former part of Yugoslavia. Slobodan Milosevic rose to power in Bosnia the late 1980’s and soon had riled up the Serbian ethnic group and encouraged its members to begin killing the Muslims who lived in Bosnia. Bill Clinton finally initiated a military intervention through NATO, four years after the ethnic cleansing had begun. An estimated 800,000 to 1,000,000 members of the Tutsi ethnic group were slaughtered in Rwanda in 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. The genocide was carried out by extreme militias comprised of the rival ethnic group, the Hutus. The United States and the UN were heavily criticized for their inaction during this time. And now today we have Darfur, the Sudanese region of Africa that is becoming globally known exclusively for its ongoing genocide. On one side of this conflict is the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed, a group of camel-herding nomads who are killing in an attempt to secure more water for their livestock. On the other side is rebel groups such as the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement. The Sudanese government has reportedly provided money and assistance to the Janjaweed, and has participated in targeting the black African tribes which give support to the rebel groups. The UN finally began sending in peacekeeping forces in the summer of 2006, which seems to have only prompted further killings of innocent tribe members. There are reportedly hundreds of thousands of casualties, not to mention rapes and displaced families, which number in the millions. Many say that the United States is not doing enough, and failing Darfur when we could be assisting the region. If you would like to learn more about Darfur and how you can personally do something to assist in the ending of this ridiculous genocide in the string of horrible genocides that the world has seen, feel free to stop by the Cisler Center at 4pm on Monday, February 11. The College Democrats are holding a special presentation regarding Darfur. The Darfur situation cannot become the ‘Stalin Forced Famine’ that all of our grandchildren read about and wonder why we did not do more.  Add as favourites (0)
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