The Genocide Forum

Table of Contents

  1. Good News. Difficult Choices
  2. Lest We Forget!
  3. More on the Lost Rwandan Hutu Refugees
  4. Early Warnings! When to Act?
  5. "All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann." A Poem

Good News. Difficult Choices

After four relatively exciting years, The Genocide Forum has gained a small but respectable niche in the spectrum of dialogues focusing on the central problems and critical issues with which scholars and teachers of genocide are grappling. It has been a surprisingly gratifying experience.

One of the original intents of The Genocide Forum was to integrate Holocaust Studies into the broader field of Genocide Studies (See Year 1, No. 1). This has been an unqualified success, judging from the constant stream of communications that each issue generates.

Another initial goal of The Genocide Forum was to test the waters whether there was sufficient reason for and interest in a full-fledged scholarly journal. This question was answered by Carfax, a distinguished publisher of scholarly journals in England, with a proposal to undertake such a venture. After lengthy discussions, this has culminated in an agreement to launch The Journal of Genocide Research, to begin in spring 1999. (See the attached Announcement and Call for Papers). That is the good news.

Now to the difficult choices: what future for The Genocide Forum? To terminate? To continue? The first decision is to go on, but on a bi-monthly basis, for one more academic year, 1998-9. The second decision, yet to be taken, rests on whether to continue The Genocide Forum beyond 1999 on its own Web site or to make it available electronically on a subscription basis. The former depends on outside financial support; the latter on readers' willingness to pay a very modest amount to cover production costs. Let us know your preferences and suggestions as soon as possible. It should be an interesting year!

The Editors

Lest We Forget!

As was the case first with Bosnia and then with Rwanda, genocidal violence can rage in full public view while the eyes of scholars of other genocides are myopically glued exclusively on their respective subjects of interest. This suggests that genocide studies are purely academic, calling for no other obligation other than study for its own sake. And yet, was not the original call to academic arms invoked by knowledge of the Holocaust precisely the moral imperative "Never Again!"? This vow went well beyond a promise to stop any future assault on Jews, but embraced a concern for all groups threatened with extermination, no matter what social categories bind them together: whether religion, language, ideology, class or some other criterion of commonality.

It was assumed and remains so that the scourge of genocidal thought and behavior in any form, anywhere, must be confronted immediately as soon as it is identified as such. And yet, genocide research fails again and again to incite scholarly responses to contemporary versions of genocide. Apathy, disinterest, disinclination, or any other excuse or rationalization to avoid getting politically involved, repeatedly keep the professoriate from stirring up public outrage to move governments into action for anything but their "pet" genocide. There seems to be an unwritten agreement not to get one's hands dirty in the business of mounting anti-genocide protest.

Even now as these lines are written a brutal genocidal event is beginning to percolate in Sudan. For over ten years, an intense civil war has been fought by the well-armed forces of the central government in Kaboul against the peoples in the south. At first glance the ferocious fighting suggests a classic internal struggle between two irreconcileable religious groups the Muslim majority in the north versus the Christian minority (and their animist allies) in the south. A second glance suggests other reasons, race and ethnicity: the north is inhabited by Arab speakers, most of whom are relatively light-skinned; the south's population is largely sub-Saharan in cultural orientation and very dark. A third divisive theme is historical: for centuries the northerners dealt in the Nile slave trade, drawing most of their victims from the upper Nile. They enslaved Christians from as far as Abyssinia along the Blue Nile watershed, and anamists from the White Nile valley as far as today's Uganda. Differences of culture and societal institutions have further deepened the gulf of animosity between Sudan's north and deep south. The accident of colonial borders drawn by the English in the nineteenth century and preserved after independence in the twentieth century has left the peoples of Sudan's north and south within the same international borders. What feeds the clash between the two sets of people is the south's persistent secession tendencies countered by the north's equally determined anti-secessionist stance.

Over the past ten years, the increasingly polarized war has intensified and accelerated to the level of genocide. Most recently, in their efforts to sap the south's resistance, Khartoum has launched a totalist campaign. Instead of seeking to dominate the rebellious population in the south, Khartoum has begun a policy of mass destruction in order to force most of the south's populations out of Sudan, hoping to drive them en masse into Ethiopia and Uganda.

In the process, the authorities in Khartoum have introduced a new weapon state-induced starvation. For weeks, the government of Sudan has refused to let most food and medical supplies reach the starving and ill villagers in Sudan's rebellious south. People are dying by the hundreds, if not thousands. Convoys of food are denied entrance into "the war" zone. Helicopters are not permitted to deliver food supplies to people in places too far from the food distribution points.

This policy of systematic starvation of civilians ordered by Khartoum is executed mercilessly by the Sudanese army and is continuing even as this article is being completed. Reports independent and corroborated confirm this contemporary genocidal crime; photographs tell the usual graphic story: emaciated adults, bloated children, the sick and old too weak to move. Yet there seems to be no international response, let alone an outcry from the academic community of scholars engaged in studying genocides past and their contemporary ramifications. Lest they forget: let us remember.

Henry R. Huttenbach

More on the Lost Rwandan Hutu Refugees

To the Editor:

Further to the correspondence on the arithmetic of the Hutu refugees in Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire. Although as you say, the exact numbers may never be known, there are estimates made by the competent authorities.

The joint mission of UNHCR, WFP, USAID and ECHO prior to the return estimated that there were 1,106,000 people in the camps, and the numbers who returned to Rwanda in November and December 1996, based on US and Government of Rwanda statistics, was 685,000. Of the 140,000 Burundians in the total, 103,000 were repatriated, and 20,000 are estimated to have remained in the DRC, leaving 17,000 missing. The balance of 281,000 Rwandans is also unaccounted for.

It is not going to be possible to ascertain the fate of these people with any certainty. Some will have died when they fled the camps, and many others may have been killed. There should be an inquiry by the United Nations into the problems of the whole region, of which this tragedy forms a part.

Lord Eric Avebury, Vice Chair
Parliamentary Human Rights Group
House of Lords.
 

Huttenbach replies:

The Genocide Forum is pleased to receive this clarification from Lord Avebury. In dispute (see TGF 4/3) is the number of Hutu refugees from Rwanda who perished in the jungles of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). The original claim published in TGF was that c. 670,000 Hutu refugees may have been killed or forced to die of exposure. An earlier reply claimed unpersuasively almost the reverse proportion of victims to those who survived, namely, 10% and 90% respectively.

Into this controversy we must now factor in the more conservative totals offered by Lord Avebury who communicates estimates made by a combination of governmental and non-governmental agencies. All of them, however, though independent, are uncorroborated. According to Lord Avebury's figures 281,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees remain unaccounted for. That, however, is only half the story. This total rests on the assumption of the relative accuracy of the other total, that of the Hutu refugees who supposedly returned to Rwanda. He offers a statistic of 685,000 Rwandan Hutu survivors. That, however, is, sadly, a much inflated number; the numbers were largely compiled by the Tutsi government of Rwanda, conclusions accepted on faith by understaffed US government observers.

The reason for embracing this total with real skepticism is that it is in the immediate interest of the Tutsi government of Rwanda to exaggerate and inflate the number of Hutu returnees as much as possible for two reasons, one political, the other financial: 1) the larger the official total of repatriated Hutus, the more can the Tutsi government project an image of a forgiving and tolerant attitude to the ever-watchful international community. In fact, many Hutu refugees were stopped at the border by deliberately erected bureaucratic obstacles, and forced to remain in the Congo where they were set upon by murderous gangs in alliance with the new (pro-Tutsi) regime; 2) the more Hutus who - purportedly - return, the greater the aid funds flowing into Rwanda from government and non-governmental agencies. These monies can add up to tens of millions of dollars annually, a crucial source of revenue for the bankrupt government of Rwanda, much of which will go towards the purchase of arms.

Thus, unless it can be proven otherwise that less than 50% of the 685,000 refugees actually came back to Rwanda, it is safe to add at least another 340,000 to the 281,000 still unaccounted for, making a total of 625,000 "lost" Hutus, a total, very close to the one estimated originally in The Genocide Forum. This number ironically approximates the total of Rwandan Tutsis killed in the first wave of mass-genocidal-slaughter instigated by Hutus.

Why is it so vital to keep a close watch on these numbers? Simply put, because the subject of concern in these pages is genocide. If "only" 100,000 Hutu refugees had died around 10% then one would be dealing with an enormous tragedy but not necessarily genocide (coming in the wake of the Hutu-inspired slaughter of the Rwandan Tutsis). But if the number of victims is closer to or above half a million we are definitely in genocidal territory. 500,000 people do not just die or disappear. There has to be human intervention and intention, i.e. motivation, planning and intervention to account for this scale of killing. That is why we must insist on the data and examine it thoroughly through as many lenses as possible. Otherwise we enter into the murky realm of unintended revisionism, denying genocide where it exists before our very eyes.

Early Warnings! When to Act?

Within genocide studies there is a sub-field focusing on the issue of prevention. That in turn brings up the question of prediction or systematized anticipation. That calls for a "science" of early warning, a methodology for detecting symptoms pointing towards genocide. Like those searching for clues of impending earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, genocide watchers hope to set up a general guideline of pre-genocidal conditions that trigger warning signals that will prompt and justify preventive intervention. Towards that end, the brewing ethnic conflict in Kosovo is a worthwhile case study.

The following givens in this inter-ethnic crisis have been established:

  1. Kosovo's population consists of 90% (c. two million) Muslim Albanians and 10% Ortho- dox Christian Serbs;
  2. For the Serbs the region of Kosovo is the spiritual cradle of their history;
  3. For the Albanians, then Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's unilateral revocation of Kosovo's autonomous status in 1989 illegally denied the Albanian majority their right of self-governance;
  4. Since then Kosovo has been autocratically governed by Serbs in the form of heavily armed para-military police units, forcing Albanian political and cultural life underground;
  5. To increase the percentage of Serbs in Kosovo, Milosevic has tried to colonise Kosovo with Serbs, refugees from Bosnia and Croatia, thereby intensifying ethnic tensions;
  6. Initially, the Albanians' response was moderate, a well-coordinated non-violent resistance, a stance increasingly challenged by younger, more militant Albanians seeking not autonomy but outright independence;
  7. Over the past months violence from both sides has escalated, seen by the Albanians as guerilla warfare of liberation against an "occupying" force, and by Serbs as a rebellious war of secession;
  8. The international community has not been of one mind on what to do. The so-called Con- tact Group is divided, Russia, openly supporting Serbia.
  9. Nato allies are themseleves of two mind: those wishing to give Milosevic more time to agree to negotiate, and the US wishing to set a firm deadline and increase sanctions, sig- nalling in point of fact it will be as inactive as it was in Bosnia.

These are the background to and the prevailing circumstances in Kosovo.

Sporadic cycles of fighting have broken out: killings and counter-killings initiated by both sides. A mini-massacre has already taken place. The polarization of attitudes is now a given; without a powerful third party, there may be no compromise, no softening of positions. Both sides are frozen as to their respective rectitude. As for the United States, it has not used its fullest potential to prevent the crisis from exploding into an outright ethnic war of unrestrained killing.

How much more evidence is needed to build a case for preemptive action for genocide in-the-making, from possible genocide to probable genocide? How much more evidence is needed for events in Kosovo to become a bona fide warning of genocide in the making? When is data sufficient warning to justify intervention?

These are not purely academic exercises but questions upon whose answers depend the outcome of many lives. There has, so far, been no satisfactory resolution to the dilemma of acting upon early warning. The concept of Early Warning is an idle one if it is divorced from a policy of action. The study of genocide becomes relatively futile if it rests solely on intellectual understanding if, in the end, it cannot become the basis for lessening the danger of future outbreaks of genocidal incidents. The study of genocide belongs in part integrally to the realm of policy: it must be linked to prevention, and prevention depends on a viable system of early warning. Early warnings left unheeded are of little use and tend to undermine the moral authenticity of this line of academic inquiry.

A Poem

(Quoted in Reading, Analysing and Teaching Literature ed. M.H. Short, 1989)
ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT
ADOLPH EICHMANN
Leonard Cohen

 

EYES...........................................................Medium

HAIR............................................................Medium

WEIGHT........................................................Medium

HEIGHT.........................................................Medium

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES............................. None

NUMBER OF FINGERS.......................................Ten

NUMBER OF TOES...........................................Ten

INTELLIGENCE................................................Medium

What did you expect?

Talons?

Oversize incisors?

Green Saliva?

Madness?