"Boxed in" semantic indifference to atrocity.

AuthorCrane, David M.
PositionInternational Conference in Commemoration of the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Negotiation of the Genocide Convention

INTRODUCTION

"Silence is the real crime against humanity." (1) In this war-crimes-weary world, the international community appears to be "grading" the result of an atrocity perpetrated by a warlord, general, or head of state in a dark corner of the world where indifference is the operative state. Over the past decade or so, atrocity after atrocity has taken place, numbing the world's senses, rendering its responses spotty, inconsistent, and in some instances, shameful.

The terms war crime, crime against humanity, and genocide invoke different emotions and reactions. (2) Why is this? The mass killing of human beings as a result of a widespread and systematic campaign of terror is no different than a mass killing of human beings for reasons of ethnicity, creed, or religion. Apparently, however, that is not how diplomats and politicians see it.

The confusion over what is happening in Darfur may be a result of semantics, thereby delaying and contorting international assistance, causing further murders, rapes, and other atrocities. Is it genocide or is it mass killing? Should there be a difference?

This essay argues that it should not make a difference. That each of these international crimes is horrific, resulting in pain and suffering that is indescribable in any language. Each must be identified, investigated, and prosecuted with the same vigor. Joseph Stalin allegedly stated that, "one death is a tragedy; one million deaths a statistic." (3) I fear that his words may be prophetic, but operate on the premise that, as Hemmingway said, "a man can be destroyed but not defeated." (4)

AN UNEVEN BEGINNING

"The nineteenth century planted the words that the twentieth ripened into the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. There was hardly an atrocity committed in the twentieth century that was not foreshadowed, or even advocated by some noble man of words in the nineteenth." (5) The twentieth century was mankind's bloodiest. Statistics, studies, and reviews place the death toll at over 200 million. (6) Of that terrible number, approximately 120 million died at the hands of their own government or people. (7) A sad commentary on how far civilization has progressed.

Under King Leopold II of Belgium, an economic enterprise evolved in the Congo that, by the turn of the twentieth century, saw the deaths of untold millions. Largely ignored, it took the likes of novelists, such as Joseph Conrad, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Mark Twain to call attention to what was taking place in central Africa. (8) Despite some political embarrassment, little was done to account for this atrocity. (9)

During the First World War, the eroding Ottoman Empire, led by the Three Pashas, sought an excuse for their demise and military defeats at the hands of the British. (10) They focused on the Christian Armenians, launching a holocaust in Near East Asia, which saw the attempted destruction of a whole people in the eastern desert of Anatolia. Finally, the international community took notice of the Armenian plight, but the calls for action were in vain. To this day Turkey refuses to acknowledge that the so-called Armenian Massacre took place. (11)

The world stumbled forward into the Second World War with no legal standard for international accountability. Internationally, only the codification of various customary laws of war was extant. (12) Accountability for the killing of human beings was a domestic issue as a matter of state sovereignty. Thus, what took place within the borders of a state was largely its own business.

It was only after the end of the Second World War--with the realization of what the Third Reich had done to the Jews of Europe--that the world paused, bleeding, bruised, and weakened by a struggle that saw the deaths of over fifty million people and an entire continent laid to waste. From these ashes rose a new thinking--a thinking that civilization itself was in jeopardy unless there was an accounting for such atrocities under the rule of law.

The establishment of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was not certain, requiring the influence of the United States to ensure that perpetrators of the Nazi regime were fairly and openly tried. In a brief period of time, twenty-three of the most responsible leaders were tried, convicted, and sentenced. Ideas mumbled in corridors by diplomats since the First World War, such as crimes against civilization, emerged as war crimes, crimes against humanity, aggression, and crimes against peace. The veil of state sovereignty had never before been pierced in this way. The fact that leaders themselves were in the dock was a historic precedent.

But were atrocities finally being reached by the rule of law at the international level? The answer appeared to be yes, but the Cold War largely negated the principles enshrined at Nuremberg. (13) The Cold War locked the world in a death grip for over four decades, and the atrocities continued.

AN OLD CRIME GETS A NEW NAME--GENOCIDE

"I know for sure that there is only one step from insecticide to genocide." (14) Killing vast numbers of human beings for whom or what they are is an old crime. Remarkably, however, it was not until the mid-twentieth century that mankind finally accepted a word that focused on the crime of crimes--genocide. (15)

Though confronted with the Armenian Massacre, politicians, diplomats...

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