Trials of those responsible for large-scale state brutality have captured public imagination in several countries. Prosecutors and judges in such cases, says Osiel, rightly aim to shape collective memory. They can do so hi ways successful as public spectacle and consistent with liberal legality. In defending this interpretation, he examines the Nuremburg and Tokyo trials, the Eicnmann prosecution, and more recent trials in Argentina and France. Such trials can never summon up a "collective conscience" of moral principles shared by all, he argues. But they can nonetheless contribute to a little-noticed kind of social solidarity.

To this end, writes Osiel, we should pay closer attention to the way an experience of administrative massacre is framed within the conventions of competing theatrical genres. Defense counsel will tell the story as a tragedy, while prosecutors will present it as a morality play. The judicial task at such moments is to employ the law to recast the courtroom drama in terms of a "theater of ideas," which engages large questions of collective memory and even national identity. Osiel asserts that principles of liberal morality can be most effectively inculcated in a society traumatized by fratricide when proceedings are conducted in this fashion.

The approach Osiel advocates requires courts to confront questions of historical interpretation and moral pedagogy generally regarded as beyond their professional competence. It also raises objections that defendants' rights will be sacrificed, historical understanding distorted, and that the law cannot willfully influence collective memory, at least not when lawyers acknowledge this aim. Osiel responds to all these objections, and others. Lawyers, judges, sociologists, historians, and political theorists will find this a compelling contribution to debates on the meaning and consequences of genocide.

This book examines the insurgency and flight of the Armenian communities in Musa Dagh between 1915 and 1939. It analyzes the narratives surrounding the Armenian rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, including the community’s resistance against the imperial order for relocation and the flight to the Musa Mountain.

This fully revised edition of Martin Shaw s classic, award-winning text proposes a way through the intellectual confusion surrounding genocide. In a thorough account of the idea s history, Shaw considers its origins and development and its relationships to concepts like ethnic cleansing and politicide. Offering a radical critique of the existing literature on genocide, he argues that what distinguishes genocide from more legitimate warfare is that the enemies targeted are groups and individuals of a civilian character. He vividly illustrates his argument with a wide range of historical examples - from the Holocaust to Rwanda and Palestine to Yugoslavia - and shows how the question What is genocide? matters politically whenever populations are threatened by violence. The second edition of this compelling book will continue to spark interest and vigorous debate, appealing to students and scholars across the social sciences and in international law.

Settler colonialism in Canada has traditionally been portrayed as a gentler, if not benevolent, colonialism-especially in contrast to the Indian Wars in the United States. This national mythology has penetrated into comparative genocide studies, where Canadian case studies are rarely discussed in edited volumes, genocide journals, or multi-national studies. Indeed, much of the extant literature on genocide in Canada rests at the level of self-justification, whereby authors draw on the U.N Genocide Convention or some other rubric to demonstrate that Canadian genocides are a legitimate topic of scholarly concern. In recent years, however, discussion of genocide in Canada has become more pronounced, particularly in the wake of the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. This volume contributes to this ongoing discourse, providing scholarly analyses of the multiple dimensions or processes of colonial destruction and their aftermaths in Canada. Various acts of genocidal violence are covered, including residential schools, repressive legal or governmental controls, ecological destruction, and disease spread. Additionally, contributors draw comparisons to patterns of colonial destruction in other contexts, examine the ways in which Canada has sought to redress and commemorate colonial harms, and present novel theoretical and conceptual insights on colonial/settler genocides in Canada. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research.

IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award™ gold winner, poetry category Sierra Leone’s devastating civil war barely caught the attention of Western media, but it raged on for over a decade, bringing misery to millions of people in West Africa from 1991 to 2002. The atrocities committed in this war and the accounts of its survivors were duly recorded by international organizations, but they run the risk of being consigned to dusty historical archives.    Derived from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown, this remarkable poetry collection aims to breathe new life into the records of Sierra Leone’s civil war, delicately extracting heartbreaking human stories from the morass of legal jargon. By rendering selected trial transcripts in poetic form, Shanee Stepakoff finds a novel way to communicate not only the suffering of Sierra Leone’s people, but also their courage, dignity, and resilience. Her use of innovative literary techniques helps to ensure that the voices of survivors are not forgotten, but rather heard across the world.    This volume also includes an introduction that explores how the genre of “found poetry� can serve as a uniquely powerful means through which writers may bear witness to atrocity. This book’s unforgettable excavation and shaping of survivor testimonies opens new possibilities for speaking about the unspeakable.

Is the Armenian Genocide a strictly historical matter? If that is the case, why is it still a topical issue, capable of causing diplomatic rows and heated debates? The short answer would be that the century old Armenian Genocide is much more than a historical question. It emerged as a political dilemma on the international arena at the San Stefano peace conference in 1878 and has remained as such into our days. The disparity between knowledge and acknowledgement, mainly ascribable to Turkey's official denial of the genocide, has only heightened the politicization of the Armenian question. Thus, the memories of the WWI era refuse to be relegated to the pages of history but are rather perceived as a vivid presence. This is the result of the perpetual process of politics of memory. The politics of memory is an intricate and interdisciplinary negotiation, engaging many different actors in the society who have access to a wide range of resources and measures in order to achieve their goals. By following the Armenian question during the past century up to its Centennial Commemoration in 2015, this study aims to explain why and how the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide has kept it as a topical issue in our days.

The Oscar-winning movie 'Bridge Over the River Kwai' dramatized to millions the building of the infamous Japanese 'Death Railway' - the supply line for Japan's planned invasion of India during World War II. But the movie told only part of the story, giving the impression that all men working on the line were British. In fact, 668 Americans - serving on the USS Houston and with the Texas National Guard's Second Battalion - worked alongside the other Allied troops in the jungle camps. In 'Building the Death Railway', their story is told for the first time. In 22 interviews with American survivors, we learn the details of their lengthy ordeal. Disease, punishment, camaraderie, work conditions and attempts to escape are described by the men who were there. The story begins with their capture and ends with their liberation 42 months later. The Burma-Thailand 'Death Railway' was one of the most horrible sentences a prisoner of war could endure. Thousands died in the jungles of Burma. More than 130 Americans - one man in five - never returned home, victims of neglect, abuse, starvation and disease. 'Building the Death Railway' gives the American perspective on events that shocked the world.

Criminal punishment is increasingly seen as a necessary element of human rights protection. There is a growing conviction at the international level that those responsible for the most serious crimes should not go unpunished. Although there is a wealth of legal writing on international criminal law, an extensive analysis is still needed of the questions why and to what extent criminal prosecution is a necessary means of human rights protection at the domestic level. This book is the first to examine comprehensively the duty to prosecute serious human rights violations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American and European Conventions on Human Rights, and customary international law. It does so by exploring the phenomena of impunity and amnesties. These issues are particularly relevant for post-conflict situations in which it is often argued that criminal punishment threatens peace and reconciliation. The question of how to deal with post-conflict justice under international human rights law is therefore a continuing theme throughout the book. Apart from post-conflict justice the text also considers the relevance of criminal measures in times of peace by exposing flaws in the criminal legislation and in the conduct of criminal procedure. With its survey of the relevant human rights instruments and jurisprudence, Prosecuting Serious Human Rights Violations is placed at the interface of international criminal law and international human rights. The book analyses the rapidly growing body of human rights case law, dealing with criminalization, prosecution and punishment of serious human rights violations. It identifies and critically examines the standards for the conduct of criminal proceedings developed by the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee, providing a unique reference tool for scholars and practitioners working in this area of law. It also describes the standards for criminal law under the Conventions Against Genocide, Torture, and Enforced Disappearances. As the analysis of pertinent case law reveals shortcomings in the current conceptualization of the prosecution of human rights violations, the author develops a solid theoretical framework for future jurisprudence. By evaluating the relationship between criminal law and the protection of human rights, the book elucidates not only the potential but also the limits of the role human rights law can play in the emerging concept of international criminal justice.

Except for a short period after the end of the First World War and the ensuing armistice, Turkey has consistently denied that it ever employed a policy of intentional destruction of Armenians. Th e 1913-1914 census put the number of Armenians living in Turkey at close to two million. Today only a few thousand Armenians remain in the city Istanbul and none elsewhere in Turkey. Armenian sites in Turkey, including churches, have been neglected, desecrated, looted, destroyed, or requisitioned for other uses, while Armenian place names have been erased or changed. As with the Jewish Holocaust, Armenian properties that were seized or stolen have not been restored. Sixty and ninety years after these terrible events, Jewish and Armenian victims and their heirs continue to struggle to get their properties back. Th ere has been only partial restitution in the Jewish case and virtually no restitution at all in the Armenian case. No adequate reparation for the deeds committed against the Armenians can ever be made. But resolving claims with respect to stolen property is a symbolic gesture toward victims and their heirs. Th is is unfinished business for Jewish heirs and survivor of the Holocaust, as it is for Armenians. A Perfect Injustice is an essential contribution to understanding why the issue of stolen Armenian wealth remains unresolved after all these years--a topic addressed for the fi rst time in this volume.

Little more than seventy years after the British settled Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania) in 1803, the indigenous community had been virtually wiped out. Yet this genocide at the hands of the British is virtually forgotten today. The Last Man is the first book specifically to explore the role of the British government and wider British society in this genocide. It positions the destruction as a consequence of British policy, and ideology in the region. Tom Lawson shows how Britain practised cultural destruction and then came to terms with and evaded its genocidal imperial past. Although the introduction of European diseases undoubtedly contributed to the decline in the indigenous population, Lawson shows that the British government supported what was effectively the ethnic cleansing of Tasmania - particularly in the period of martial law in 1828-1832. By 1835 the vast majority of the surviving indigenous community had been deported to Flinders Island, where the British government took a keen interest in the attempt to transform them into Christians and Englishmen in a campaign of cultural genocide. Lawson also illustrates the ways in which the destruction of indigenous Tasmanians was reflected in British culture - both at the time and since - and how it came to play a key part in forging particular versions of British imperial identity. Laments for the lost Tasmanians were a common theme in literary and museum culture, and the mistaken assumption that Tasmanians were doomed to complete extinction was an important part of the emerging science of human origins. By exploring the memory of destruction, The Last Man provides the first comprehensive picture of the British role in the destruction of the Tasmanian Aboriginal population.

Over the last twenty years the world has witnessed four major genocides. There was the genocide in Iraq (1988), in Rwanda (1994), in Srebrenica (1995), and in Darfur (2003 and continuing). Most observers agree there is an urgent need to assess the international community's efforts to prevent genocide and to intervene (once a genocide is under way) in an effective and timely manner. This volume, the latest in a widely respected series on the subject of genocide, provides an overview of a host of issues germane to this task. The book begins with a cogent discussion of the issues of prevention and intervention during the Cold War years. The second chapter discusses the abject failures and moderate (though, in some cases, highly controversial) successes at prevention and intervention carried out in the 1990s and early 2000s. Further chapters examine latest efforts to develop an effective genocide early warning system and examine the complexity of and barriers to prevention. The pros and cons of sanctions and the problems of enforcement and evaluation their effectiveness are then discussed. Conflicts between state sovereignty and the protection of threatened populations are examined both in historical context and by incorporating the latest thinking. Later chapters treat the issue of intervention; why and how it has met with only limited success. Concentrating on Rwanda and Srebrenica, chapter 8 discusses various peace operations that were abject failures and those that were moderately successful. The concept of an anti-genocide regime is examined in terms of progress in developing such a regime as well as what the international community must do in order to implement it. Chapters discuss key issues related to post-genocidal periods, those that need to be addressed in order to establish stability in a wounded land and populace as well as to prevent future genocides. The final chapter asks whether bringing perpetrators to justice has any impact in breaking impunity, ensuring deterrence, and bringing about reconciliation. The contributors to the volume are all noted scholars, some of whom specialize in the study of genocide, and others who specialize in such areas as early warning, peacekeeping, and sanctions.

The Widening Circle of Genocide, the third volume of an award-winning series, combines an encyclopedic summary of knowledge of the subject with annotated citations of literature in each field of study. It includes contributions by R.J. Rummel, Leonard Glick, Vahakn Dadrian, Rosanne Klass, Martin Van Bruinessen, James Dunn, Gabrielle Tyrnauer, Robert Krell, George Kent, Samuel Totten, and a foreword by Irving Louis Horowitz.

This volume presents scholarship on a variety of topics, including: Germany's records of the Armenian genocide; little-known cases of contemporary genocide in Afghanistan, East Timor, and of the Kurds; a provocative new interpretation of the psychic scarring of Holocaust survivors; and nongovernmental organizations that have undertaken the beginnings of scholarship on the worldwide problems of genocide. The Widening Circle of Genocide embodies reverence for human life; its goal is the search for new means to prevent genocide.

This work is distinguished by its excellence, originality, and depth of its scholarship. The first volume was selected by the American Library Association for its list of "Outstanding Academic Books of 1988-89." It is both compelling reading and an invaluable tool for scholars and students who wish to pursue specific fields of study of genocide. It will also be of interest to political scientists, historians, psychologists, and religion scholars.

This book is dedicated to a consideration of genocide in the context of political sociology. It demonstrates that the underlining predicates of sociology give scant consideration to basic issues of life and death in favor of distinctly derivative issues of social structure and social function.

Academics, NGOs, the United Nations, and individual nations are focused on the prevention and intervention of genocide. Traditionally, missions to prevent or intervene in genocide have been sporadic and under-resourced. The contributors to this volume consider some of the major stumbling blocks to the avoidance of genocide. Bartrop and Totten argue that realpolitik is the major impediment to the elimination of genocide. Campbell examines the lack of political will to confront genocide, and Theriault describes how denial becomes an obstacle to intervention against genocide. Loyle and Davenport discuss how intervention is impeded by a lack of reliable data on genocide violence, and Macgregor presents an overview of the influence of the media. Totten examines how the UN Convention on Genocide actually impedes anti-genocide efforts; and how the institutional configuration of the UN is itself often a stumbling block. Addressing an issue that is often overlooked, Travis examines the impact of global arms trade on genocide. Finally, Hiebert examines how international criminal prosecution of atrocities can impede preventive efforts, and Hirsch provides an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, and effectiveness of major international and national prescriptions developed over the last decade. The result is a distinguished addition to Transaction's prestigious Genocide Studies series.

The New York Times bestselling account of one of history's most brutal- and forgotten- massacres, when the Japanese army destroyed China's capital city on the eve of World War II In December 1937, one of the most horrific atrocities in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (what was then the capital of China), and within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. In this seminal work, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, tells this history from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone, which saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang's classic book is the definitive history of this horrifying episode. "Chang vividly, methodically, records what happened, piecing together the abundant eyewitness reports into an undeniable tapestry of horror." - Adam Hochschild, Salon

The open access book examines the consequences of the Italian Constitutional Court's Judgment 238/2014 which denied the German Republic's immunity from civil jurisdiction over claims to reparations for Nazi crimes committed during World War II. This landmark decision created a range of currently unresolved legal problems and controversies which continue to burden the political and diplomatic relationship between Germany and Italy. The judgment has wide repercussions for core concepts of international law and for the relationship between different legal orders. The book's three interlinked legal themes are state immunity, reparation for serious human rights violations and war crimes (including historical ones), and the interaction between international and domestic institutions, notably courts. Besides a meticulous legal analysis of these themes from the perspectives of international law, European law, and domestic law, the book contributes to the civic debate on the issue of war crimes and reparation for the victims of armed conflict. It proposes concrete legal and political solutions to the parties involved for overcoming the present paralysis with a view to a sustainable interstate conflict solution and helps judges directly involved in the pending post-Sentenza reparation cases. After an Introduction (Part I), Part II, Immunity, investigates core international law concepts such as those of pre/post-judgment immunity and international state responsibility. Part III, Remedies, examines the tension between state immunity and the right to remedy and suggests original schemes for solving the conundrum under international law. Part IV adds European Perspectives by showcasing relevant regional examples of legal cooperation and judicial dialogue. Part V, Courts, addresses questions on the role of judges in the areas of immunity and human rights at both the national and international level. Part VI, Negotiations, suggests concrete ways out of the impasse with a forward-looking aspiration. In Part VII, The Past and Future of Remedies, a sitting judge in the Court that decided Sentenza 238/2014 adds some critical reflections on the Judgment. Joseph H. H. Weiler's Dialogical Epilogue concludes the volume by placing the main findings of the book in a wider European and international law perspective.

Presented with accounts of genocide and torture, we ask how people could bring themselves to commit such horrendous acts. A searching meditation on our all-too-human capacity for inhumanity, "Evil Men" confronts atrocity head-on how it looks and feels, what motivates it, how it can be stopped.

Drawing on firsthand interviews with convicted war criminals from the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 1945), James Dawes leads us into the frightening territory where soldiers perpetrated some of the worst crimes imaginable: murder, torture, rape, medical experimentation on living subjects. Transcending conventional reporting and commentary, Dawes s narrative weaves together unforgettable segments from the interviews with consideration of the troubling issues they raise. Telling the personal story of his journey to Japan, Dawes also lays bare the cultural misunderstandings and ethical compromises that at times called the legitimacy of his entire project into question. For this book is not just about the things war criminals do. It is about what it is like, and what it means, to befriend them.

Do our stories of evil deeds make a difference? Can we depict atrocity without sensational curiosity? Anguished and unflinchingly honest, as eloquent as it is raw and painful, "Evil Men" asks hard questions about the most disturbing capabilities human beings possess, and acknowledges that these questions may have no comforting answers."

Racism, race hygiene, eugenics, and their histories have for a long time been studied in terms of individual countries, whether genocidal ideology in Nazi Germany or scientific racial theories in the United States. As this study demonstrates, however, eugenic racial policy and scientific racism alike had a strongly international dimension. Concepts such as a "Racial Confederation of European Peoples" or a "blonde internationalism" marked the thinking and the actions of many eugenicists, undergirding transnational networks that persist even today. Author Stefan Kuhl provides here a historical foundation for this phenomenon, contextualizing the international eugenics movement in relation to National Socialist race policies and showing how intensively eugenicists worked to disseminate their beliefs throughout the world.

IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award™ gold winner, poetry category Sierra Leone’s devastating civil war barely caught the attention of Western media, but it raged on for over a decade, bringing misery to millions of people in West Africa from 1991 to 2002. The atrocities committed in this war and the accounts of its survivors were duly recorded by international organizations, but they run the risk of being consigned to dusty historical archives.    Derived from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown, this remarkable poetry collection aims to breathe new life into the records of Sierra Leone’s civil war, delicately extracting heartbreaking human stories from the morass of legal jargon. By rendering selected trial transcripts in poetic form, Shanee Stepakoff finds a novel way to communicate not only the suffering of Sierra Leone’s people, but also their courage, dignity, and resilience. Her use of innovative literary techniques helps to ensure that the voices of survivors are not forgotten, but rather heard across the world.    This volume also includes an introduction that explores how the genre of “found poetry� can serve as a uniquely powerful means through which writers may bear witness to atrocity. This book’s unforgettable excavation and shaping of survivor testimonies opens new possibilities for speaking about the unspeakable.

This book provides a critical analysis of how the "war on terror" affected the civilian population in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This "forgotten war," which started in 2001 with the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, has seen more than 212,000 people killed in war-related incidents. Whilst most of the news media shifted their attention to other conflict zones, this war rages on. Badalic has amassed a vast amount of data on the civilian victims of war from both sides of the Durand line, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He conducted interviews in Peshawar, Quetta, Islamabad, Kabul, Jalalabad, and many other cities and villages from 2008 to 2017. His data is mostly drawn from those extensive conversations held with civilian victims of war, Afghan and Pakistani officials, human-rights activists and members of the insurgency. The book is divided into three parts. The first examines the impact the US-led coalition, Afghan security forces and paramilitary groups had on civilians, with methods of combat such as drone strikes and kill-or-capture missions. The second part focuses on civilian victims of abuses of power by Pakistani security forces, including arbitrary detentions and forced disappearances. In the final part, Badalic explores the impact of unlawful practices used by the armed insurgency - the Afghan Taliban. Overall, the book seeks to tell the story of the civilian victims of the "War on Terror".

For a brief period, the attention of the international community has focused once again on the plight of religious minorities in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. In particular, the abductions and massacres of Yezidis and Assyrians in the Sinjar, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Baghdad, and Hasakah regions in 2007-2015 raised questions about the prevention of genocide. This book, while principally analyzing the Assyrian genocide of 1914-1925 and its implications for the culture and politics of the region, also raises broader questions concerning the future of religious diversity in the Middle East. It gathers and analyzes the findings of a broad spectrum of historical and scholarly works on Christian identities in the Middle East, genocide studies, international law, and the politics of the late Ottoman Empire, as well as the politics of the Ottomans' British and Russian rivals for power in western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean basin. A key question the book raises is whether the fate of the Assyrians maps onto any of the concepts used within international law and diplomatic history to study genocide and group violence. In this light, the Assyrian genocide stands out as being several times larger, in both absolute terms and relative to the size of the affected group, than the Srebrenica genocide, which is recognized by Turkey as well as by international tribunals and organizations. Including its Armenian and Greek victims, the Ottoman Christian Genocide rivals the Rwandan, Bengali, and Biafran genocides. The book also aims to explore the impact of the genocide period of 1914-1925 on the development or partial unraveling of Assyrian group cohesion, including aspirations to autonomy in the Assyrian areas of northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, and southeastern Turkey. Scholars from around the world have collaborated to approach these research questions by reference to diplomatic and political archives, international legal materials, memoirs, and literary works.

This book offers a unique and powerful critique of the quest for international criminal justice. It explores the efforts of three successive generations of international prosecutors, recognising the vital roles they play in the enforcement of international criminal law. By critically examining prosecutorial performance during the pre-trial and trial phases, the volume argues that these prosecutors are simultaneously political actors serving in the interests of economic liberalisation. It also posits that international prosecutors help wage a mostly silent and largely unacknowledged politico-cultural war fought for control over the institutions governing modernist international affairs. As the author contends, international prosecutors are thus best understood as agents not only of the law and politics, but also of a war fought by proponents of various utopian projects.