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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Other warfare & defence issues > War crimes > Genocide
Pioneering study of the role of the Christian churches in the
Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi; a key work for historians, memory
studies scholars, religion scholars and Africanists. Why did some
sectors of the Rwandan churches adopt an ambiguous attitude towards
the genocide against the Tutsi which claimed the lives of around
800,000 people in three months between April and July 1994? What
prevented the churches' acceptance that they may have had some
responsibility? And how should we account for the efforts made by
other sectors of the churches to remember and commemorate the
genocide and rebuild pastoral programmes? Drawing on interviews
with genocide survivors, Rwandans in exile, missionaries and
government officials, as well as Church archives and other sources,
this book is the first academic study on Christianity and the
genocide against the Tutsi to explore these contentious questions
in depth, and reveals more internal diversity within the Christian
churches than is often assumed. While some Christians, Protestant
as well as Catholic, took risks to shelter Tutsi people, others
uncritically embraced the interim government's view that the Tutsi
were enemies of the people and some, even priests and pastors,
assisted the killers. The church leaders only condemned the war:
they never actually denounced the genocide against the Tutsi.
Focusing on the period of the genocide in 1994 and the subsequent
years (up to 2000), Denis examines in detail the responses of two
churches, the Catholic Church, the biggest and the most complex,
and the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda, which made an unconditional
confession of guilt in December 1996. A case study is devoted to
the Catholic parish La Crete Congo-Nil in western Rwanda, led at
the time by the French priest Gabriel Maindron, a man whom genocide
survivors accuse of having failed publicly to oppose the genocide
and of having close links with the authorities and some of the
perpetrators. By 1997, the defensive attitude adopted by many
Catholics had started to change. The Extraordinary Synod on
Ethnocentricity in 1999-2000 was a milestone. Yet, especially in
the immediate aftermath of the genocide, tension and suspicion
persist. Fountain: Rwanda, Uganda
The genocide in Myanmar has drawn global attention as Nobel Peace
Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi appears to be presiding over human
rights violations, forced migrations and extra-judicial killings on
an enormous scale. This unique study draws on thousands of hours of
interviews and testimony from the Rohingya themselves to assess and
outline the full scale of the disaster. Casting new light on
Rohingya identity, history and culture, this will be an essential
contribution to the study of the Rohingya people and to the study
of the early stages of genocide. This book adds convincingly to the
body of evidence that the government of Myanmar has enabled a
genocide in Rakhine State and the surrounding areas.
After the Armenian genocide of 1915, in which over a million
Armenians died, thousands of Armenians lived and worked in the
Turkish state alongside those who had persecuted their communities.
Living in the context of pervasive denial, how did Armenians
remaining in Turkey record their own history? Here, Talin Suciyan
explores the life experienced by these Armenian communities as
Turkey's modernisation project of the twentieth century gathered
pace. Suciyan achieves this through analysis of remarkable new
primary material: Turkish state archives, minutes of the Armenian
National Assembly, a kaleidoscopic series of personal diaries,
memoirs and oral histories, various Armenian periodicals such as
newspapers, yearbooks and magazines, as well as statutes and laws
which led to the continuing persecution of Armenians. The first
history of its kind, The Armenians in Modern Turkey is a fresh
contribution to the history of modern Turkey and the Armenian
experience there.
Providing an indispensable resource for students and policy makers
investigating the Bosnian catastrophes of the 1990s, this book
provides a comprehensive survey of the leaders, ideas, movements,
and events pertaining to one of the most devastating conflicts of
contemporary times. In the three years of the Bosnian War, well
over 100,000 people lost their lives, amid intense carnage. This
led to unprecedented criminal prosecutions for genocide, war
crimes, and crimes against humanity that are still taking place
today. Bosnian Genocide: The Essential Reference Guide is the first
encyclopedic treatment of the Balkan conflicts of the period from
1991 to 1999. It provides broad coverage of the nearly decade-long
conflict, but with a major focus on the Bosnian War of 1992-1995.
The book examines a variety of perspectives of the conflicts
relating to Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and
Kosovo, among other developments that took place during the years
spotlighted. The entries consider not only the leaders, ideas,
movements, and events relating to the Bosnian War of 1992-1995 but
also examine themes from before the war and after it. As such,
coverage continues through to the Kosovo Intervention of 1999,
arguing that this event, too, was part of the conflict that
purportedly ended in 1995. This work will serve university students
undertaking the study of genocide in the modern world and readers
interested in modern wars, international crisis management, and
peacekeeping and peacemaking. Provides nearly 150 entries-written
in a clear and concise style by leading international
authorities-that summarize the roles of the leaders involved in the
Bosnian Conflict of 1992-1995 and beyond as well as contextualizing
essays on various facets of the Bosnian Conflicts Considers and
evaluates the various strategies adopted by members of the
international community in trying to bring the war to an end Edited
by renowned genocide scholar, Paul R. Bartrop, PhD
This book documents the devastating effects of genocide in the
world's most destructive human environments since the end of World
War II and explores why such events still occur. A Biographical
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Genocide: Portraits of Evil and Good
is a unique study of humanity's most reprehensible actions. It
documents genocides that have occurred after World War II-a period
that was supposed to be the fulfillment of the promise "never
again"-by providing biographies rather than extensive historical
narratives. The entries describe the personal backgrounds; careers;
and relationship to genocidal events, humanitarian actions, or
international initiatives relevant to each person in the book.
Beyond examining the genocidaires who played key roles in mass
murder, individuals who contributed to efforts to stop genocide are
also profiled. By adopting a biographical approach to post-World
War II genocide, the author sheds light on why people behave the
way they do toward their fellow human beings and provides vital
insights into the extremes of human positivity and negativity that
have characterized this period of history. Serving as a vital tool
for scholars and students of genocide as well as compelling reading
for general audiences, the book highlights individual human
behaviors, motivations, backgrounds, and intentions that can form a
platform from which to raise and discuss issues of morality and
ethics in the modern world.
This is the first major study of the mass sequestration of Armenian
property by the Young Turk regime during the 1915 Armenian
genocide. It details the emergence of Turkish economic nationalism,
offers insight into the economic ramifications of the genocidal
process, and describes how the plunder was organized on the ground.
The interrelated nature of property confiscation initiated by the
Young Turk regime and its cooperating local elites offers new
insights into the functions and beneficiaries of state-sanctioned
robbery. Drawing on secret files and unexamined records, the
authors demonstrate that while Armenians suffered systematic
plunder and destruction, ordinary Turks were assigned a range of
property for their progress.
During a one-hundred-day period in 1994, Hutus murdered between
half a million and a million Tutsi in Rwanda. The numbers are
staggering; the methods of killing were unspeakable. Utilizing
personal interviews with trauma survivors living in Rwandan cities,
towns, and dusty villages, We Cannot Forget relates what happened
during this period and what their lives were like both prior to and
following the genocide.
Through powerful stories that are at once memorable, disturbing,
and informative, readers gain a critical sense of the tensions and
violence that preceded the genocide, how it erupted and was carried
out, and what these people faced in the first sixteen years
following the genocide.
Based on a series of detailed case studies, this book presents the
history of genocide in Africa within the specific context of
African history, examining conflicts in countries such as Burundi,
Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, Rwanda, and Sudan. Why has
Africa been the subject of so many accusations related to genocide?
Indeed, the number of such allegations related to Africa has
increased dramatically over the past 15 years. Popular racist
mythology might suggest that Africans belong to "tribes" that are
inherently antagonistic towards each other and therefore engage in
"tribal warfare" which cannot be rationally explained. This concept
is wrong, as Timothy J. Stapleton explains in A History of Genocide
in Africa: the many conflicts that have plagued post-colonial
Africa have had very logical explanations, and very few of these
instances of African warring can be said to have resulted in
genocide. Authored by an expert historian of Africa, this book
examines the history of six African countries-Namibia, Rwanda,
Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Nigeria-in which
the language of genocide has been mobilized to describe episodes of
tragic mass violence. It seeks to place genocide within the context
of African history, acknowledging the few instances where the
international legal term genocide has been applied appropriately to
episodes of mass violence in African history and identifying the
many other cases where it has not and instead the term has been
used in a cynical manipulation to gain some political advantage.
Readers will come to understand how, to a large extent, genocide
accusations related to post-colonial Africa have often served to
prolong wars and cause greater loss of life. The book also
clarifies how in areas of Africa where genocides have actually
occurred, there appears to have been a common history of the
imposition of racial ideologies and hierarchies during the colonial
era-which when combined with other factors such as the local
geography, demography, religion, and/or economics, resulted in
tragic and appalling outcomes. Provides an unprecedented
comprehensive history of genocide in Africa that will serve
students of history, war and society, and genocide as well as
general readers Covers Africa's most infamous genocides as well as
lesser-known cases of large scale atrocities Addresses events that
are contested as genocides in Africa in recent history, including
the Nigerian Civil War as well as events in Ethiopia and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo Examines the historical context
for each of these events to clearly explain how they occurred
In this scholarly yet intensely personal history, author Edina
Becirevic explores the widespread ethnic cleansing that occurred in
Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 through 1995, war crimes and
crimes against humanity committed by Serbs against Bosnian Muslims
that fully meet the criteria for genocide established after World
War II by the Genocide Convention of 1948. An in-depth study of the
devastating and dehumanizing effects of genocide on individual
destinies and the mechanisms of its denial in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Becirevic's essential history contextualizes the East
Bosnian program of atrocities with respect to broader scholarly
debates about the nature of genocide.
This book explores the subject of genocide through key debates and
case studies. It analyses the dynamics of genocide - the processes
and mechanisms of acts committed with the intention of destroying,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, religious or racial group
- in order to shed light upon its origins, characteristics and
consequences. Debating Genocide begins with an introduction to the
concept of genocide. It then examines the colonial genocides at the
end of the 19th- and start of the 20th-centuries; the Armenian
Genocide of 1915-16; the Nazi 'Final Solution'; the Nazi genocide
of the Gypsies; mass murder in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge; the
genocides in the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; and the
genocide in Sudan in the early 21st century. It also includes a
thematic chapter which covers gender and genocide, as well as
issues of memory and memorialisation. Finally, the book considers
how genocides end, as well as the questions of resolution and
denial, with Lisa Pine examining the debates around prediction and
prevention and the R2P (Responsibility to Protect) initiative. This
book is crucial for any students wanting to understand why
genocides have occurred, why they still occur and what the key
historical discussions around this subject entail.
Genocide--the deliberate destruction, usually through mass
murder, of an ethnic, racial or religious group--is the ultimate
crime against humanity. Drawing upon a wide variety of disciplines,
this study assesses ways to prevent this crime. While most books
about genocide focus on the history of a particular event, such as
the Holocaust, or compare case studies to derive empirical
theories, this book outlines many practical aspects of genocide
prevention.
Heidenrich covers a broad spectrum of expert opinions, from
Stanley Hoffmann to Henry Kissinger, as well as political opinions
regarding genocide that range from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton.
Topics include international law, humanitarian intervention, early
warning measures, and the effectiveness of such methods as
diplomacy, economic pressure, and nonviolent resistance. Preventing
genocide in a tense socio-political environment is no easy task,
but such prevention is easier and more cost-effective than trying
to put an end to genocide once it is already occurring.
The tools of reason offer the best hope for the international
community to confront the increasing incidents of hate throughout
the world. A historically informed, normative examination of the
elements of the crime of genocide provides an excellent case study
of how the law, reason's handmaiden, enhances understanding and
improves practical ways of dealing with global injustices. How
should we confront hate? As political activists, we could resort to
fighting hate with hate. As concerned citizens, we could
consciously ignore or actively protest hate. As committed
educators, we could put the implements and survivors of hate on
display. As committed scholars, we could resuscitate the idea of
evil. As humanitarian jurists, we could put individual hate-mongers
on trial. Part I of this book makes a case for making the maximum
use of reason to deal with hate. This means that we should actively
debate those who promote hate. Further, as a close look at the
history of applying law to incidents of hate and violence
illustrates, the courtroom proves to be an excellent place to
demonstrate the virtues of applying the tools of reason, not to
global evils, but to the grave injustices of the world. In Part II,
Simon demonstrates the power of legal analysis in enhancing our
understanding of genocide, probably the worst injustice imaginable.
A close examination of each purported element of the crime of
genocide redirects misguided turns taken by international jurists.
Contrary to a more realistic perspective adopted at the Nuremberg
trials, jurists have mistakenly modeled international criminal law
on national criminal law, which focuses on individual
responsibility. However, the cases of grave injustices throughout
the 20th century amply demonstrate the primary collective
responsibility underlying incidences of genocide. The failure to
prosecute criminal organizations for genocide has and will continue
to have disastrous results. While the Nuremberg tribunal at least
disbanded the responsible Nazi organizations, current war crimes
tribunals have allowed organizations responsible for the Rwandan
genocide to continue to wreak havoc throughout Central Africa. If
the international community cannot forge a common understanding of
genocide, then it has little hope of establishing an international
legal order or a global ethics.
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