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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Other warfare & defence issues > War crimes
This book provides a juridical, sociopolitical history of the
evolution of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Over one million citizens
were massacred in less than 100 days via a highly organized,
efficiently executed genocide throughout the tiny country of
Rwanda. While genocide is not a unique phenomenon in modern times,
a genocide like Rwanda's is unique. Unlike most genocides, wherein
a government plans and executes mass murder of a targeted portion
of its population, asking merely that the majority population look
the other way, or at most, provide no harbor to the targeted
population (ex: Germany), the Rwandan government relied heavily on
the civilian population to not only politically support, but
actively engage in the acts of genocide committed over the 100 days
throughout the spring of 1994. This book seeks to understand why
and how the Rwandan genocide occurred. It analyzes the colonial
roots of modern Rwandan government and the development of the
political "state of exception" created in Rwanda that ultimately
allowed the sovereign to dehumanize the minority Tutsi population
and execute the most efficient genocide in modern history.
Despite considerable progress in research and practice in the
constructive transformation of intractable conflicts beginning in
the 1970s, many terribly destructive conflicts have recently
erupted. New circumstances have emerged that have resulted in
regressions. The contributions in this book examine many of the new
challenges and obstacles to the transformation of intractable
conflicts. It also offers an array of new and promising
opportunities for constructive transformations. The book brings
together analyses of U.S.-based conflicts with those from many
regions of the world. International, intra-state, and local
conflicts are explored, along with those that have been violent and
non-violent. The diversity in disciplines among the authors
provides a wide range of theoretical approaches to explaining how a
variety of intractable conflicts can be transformed. Case studies
of local, national, and transnational conflicts serve to illustrate
this new landscape. These analyses are complemented by conceptual
discussions relating to new conflict systems, actors, dynamics and
strategies. Policy implications of findings are also presented.
On 26 April 1937, a weekly market day, nearly sixty bombers and
fighters attacked Gernika. They dropped between 31 and 46 tons of
explosive and incendiary bombs on the city center. The desolation
was absolute: 85 percent of the buildings in the town were totally
destroyed; over 2,000 people died in an urban area of less than one
square kilometer. Lying is inherent to crime. The bombing of
Gernika is associated to one of the most outstanding lies of
twentieth-century history. Just hours after the destruction of the
Basque town, General Franco ordered to attribute authorship of the
atrocity to the Reds and that remained the official truth until his
death in 1975. Today no one denies that Gernika was bombed.
However, the initial regime denial gave way to reductionism,
namely, the attempt to minimize the scope of what took place,
calling into question that it was an episode of terror bombing,
questioning Francos and his generals responsibility, diminishing
the magnitude of the means employed to destroy Gernika and
lessening the death toll. Even today, in the view of several
authors the tragedy of Gernika is little less than an overstated
myth broadcasted by Picasso. This vision of the facts feeds on the
dense network of falsehoods woven for forty years of dictatorship
and the one only truth of El Caudillo. Xabier Irujo exposes this
labyrinth of falsehoods and leads us through a genealogy of lies to
their origin, metamorphosis and current expressions. Gernika was a
key event of contemporary European history; its alternative facts
historiography an exemplar for commentators and historians faced
with disentangling contested viewpoints on current military and
political conflicts, and too often war crimes and genocide that
result. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for
Contemporary Spanish Studies
The Moral Witness is the first cultural history of the "witness to
genocide" in the West. Carolyn J. Dean shows how the witness became
a protagonist of twentieth-century moral culture by tracing the
emergence of this figure in courtroom battles from the 1920s to the
1960s-covering the Armenian genocide, the Ukrainian pogroms, the
Soviet Gulag, and the trial of Adolf Eichmann. In these trials,
witness testimonies differentiated the crime of genocide from war
crimes and began to form our understanding of modern political and
cultural murder. By the turn of the twentieth century, the "witness
to genocide" became a pervasive icon of suffering humanity and a
symbol of western moral conscience. Dean sheds new light on the
recent global focus on survivors' trauma. Only by placing the moral
witness in a longer historical trajectory, she demonstrates, can we
understand how the stories we tell about survivor testimony have
shaped both our past and contemporary moral culture.
Teaching and Learning About Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity:
Fundamental Issues and Pedagogical Approaches by Samuel Totten, a
renowned scholar of genocide studies and Professor Emeritus,
College of Education and Health Professions, University of
Arkansas, Fayetteville, is a culmination of 30 years in the field
of genocide studies and education. In writing this book, Totten
reports that he "crafted this book along the lines of what he
wished had been available to him when he first began teaching about
genocide back in the mid-1980s. That is, a book that combines the
best of genocide theory, the realities of the genocidal process,
and how to teach about such complex and often terrible and
difficult issues and facts in a theoretically, historically and
pedagogically sound manner." As the last book he will ever write on
education and educating about genocide, he perceives the book as
his gift to those educators who have the heart and grit to tackle
such an important issue in their classrooms.
Since the 1980s, transitional justice mechanisms have been
increasingly applied to account for mass atrocities and grave human
rights violations throughout the world. Over time, post-conflict
justice practices have expanded across continents and state borders
and have fueled the creation of new ideas that go beyond
traditional notions of amnesty, retribution, and reconciliation.
Gathering work from contributors in international law, political
science, sociology, and history, New Critical Spaces in
Transitional Justice addresses issues of space and time in
transitional justice studies. It explains new trends in responses
to post-conflict and post-authoritarian nations and offers original
empirical research to help define the field for the future.
On August 30, 1999, in a United Nations-sponsored ballot, East
Timor voted for independence from Indonesia and for an end to a
brutal military occupation. Upon the announcement of the result,
Indonesian troops and their paramilitary proxies launched a wave of
terror that, over three weeks, resulted in the murder of more than
1,000 people, the rape of untold numbers of women and girls, the
razing of 70 percent of the country's buildings and infrastructure,
and the forcible deportation of 250,000 people. In recounting these
horrible acts and the preceding events, Joseph Nevins shows that
what took place was only the final scene in more than two decades
of atrocities. More than 200,000 people, about a third of the
population, lost their lives due to Indonesia's 1975 invasion and
subsequent occupation, making the East Timorese case
proportionately one of the worst episodes of genocide since World
War II. In A Not-So-Distant Horror, Nevins reveals the
international complicity at the center of the East Timor tragedy.
In his view, much if not all of the horror that plagued East Timor
in 1999 and in the 24 preceding years could have been avoided had
countries like Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and especially
the United States, not provided Indonesia with valuable political,
economic, and military assistance, as well as diplomatic cover. The
author explores issues of accountability for East Timor's plight
and probes the meaning of what took place in terms of international
institutions and law. Examining issues such as violence, the
geography of memory, and social power, Nevins makes clear that the
case of East Timor has much to tell us about the contemporary world
order.
On August 30, 1999, in a United Nations-sponsored ballot, East
Timor voted for independence from Indonesia and for an end to a
brutal military occupation. Upon the announcement of the result,
Indonesian troops and their paramilitary proxies launched a wave of
terror that, over three weeks, resulted in the murder of more than
1,000 people, the rape of untold numbers of women and girls, the
razing of 70 percent of the country's buildings and infrastructure,
and the forcible deportation of 250,000 people. In recounting these
horrible acts and the preceding events, Joseph Nevins shows that
what took place was only the final scene in more than two decades
of atrocities. More than 200,000 people, about a third of the
population, lost their lives due to Indonesia's 1975 invasion and
subsequent occupation, making the East Timorese case
proportionately one of the worst episodes of genocide since World
War II. In A Not-So-Distant Horror, Nevins reveals the
international complicity at the center of the East Timor tragedy.
In his view, much if not all of the horror that plagued East Timor
in 1999 and in the 24 preceding years could have been avoided had
countries like Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and especially
the United States, not provided Indonesia with valuable political,
economic, and military assistance, as well as diplomatic cover. The
author explores issues of accountability for East Timor's plight
and probes the meaning of what took place in terms of international
institutions and law. Examining issues such as violence, the
geography of memory, and social power, Nevins makes clear that the
case of East Timor has much to tell us about the contemporary world
order.
Secondary level teachers and professors from various disciplines
present their best advice and insights into teaching about various
facets of genocide and/or delineate actual lessons they have taught
that have been particularly successful with their students.
The purpose of the book is twofold: first, to give an accurate and
reasonably complete narrative account of the Armenian events of
1909 and their aftermath in the province of Adana and the
developments leading up to and following them; and equally
importantly, to provide an interpretive framework that makes some
sense out of this episode in Ottoman history. The book opens with
an exposition of the geographical and economic importance of the
province of Adana and its vicinity in the Ottoman Empire. This is
followed by a broad demographical overview of the region. The
position of the Armenians in Adana at the turn of the twentieth
century, their linguistical and educational characteristics, their
role in the economic and social life, and their schooling effort in
the province are all examined. Further, the major causes of the
outbreak in the area in 1908-1909, the dimensions of the disorders
in April 1909, and the responsibility for the outrages are explored
along with the reestablishing of order in the district in
May-August 1909. A description and an analysis of Cemal Pasa's work
of humanitarian relief and reconstruction when he was provincial
governor in Adana and a survey of post-1911 Adana and Cemal Pasa's
governorship at Baghdad are also included in this study.
Ante Pavelic was the leader of the fascist party of Croatia (the
Ustase), who, on Adolf Hitler's instruction, became the leader of
Croatia after the Nazi invasion of 1941. Pavelic was an extreme
Croatian nationalist who believed that the Serbian people were an
inferior race - he would preside over a genocide that ultimately
killed an estimated 390,000 Serbs during World War II. Croatia
under Ante Pavelic provides the full history of this period, with a
special focus on the United States' role in the post-war
settlement. Drawing on previously unpublished documents, Robert
McCormick argues that President Harry S. Truman's Cold War
priorities meant that Pavelic was never made to answer for his
crimes. Today, the Ustase remains difficult legacy within Croatian
society, partly as a result of Pavelic' political life in exile in
South America. This is a new account of US foreign policy towards
one of the Second World War's most brutal dictators and is an
essential contribution to Croatian war-time history.
The traumas of conflict and war in postcolonial Africa have been
widely documented, but less well-known are their artistic
representations. A number of recent films, novels and other art
forms have sought to engage with and overcome post-colonial
atrocities and to explore the attempts of reconciliation
commissions towards peace, justice and forgiveness. This creativity
reflects the memories and social identities of the artists, whilst
offering a mirror to African and worldwide audiences coming to
terms with a collective memory that is often traumatic in itself.
Questioning perception and interpretation, these new art forms
challenge the inexpressible nature of atrocities. This
groundbreaking volume will inspire those interested in African
history and politics as well as broader cultural and artistic
studies.
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