Defuse the lexicon of
slaughter
IHT, February 24, 2012
Friday, DAVID SCHEFFER
=======================
Conclusion –
politicians should use
the term “genocide” only when historians and jurists have determined. It is the
responsibility of historians to establish the facts of distant events and of
jurists to determine whether these were a genocide, crimes against humanity,
war crimes, human rights abuse, political repression or other crimes against
civil or political rights
Politicians would be
better off using the phrase “atrocity crimes” – a term with no pre-existing
connotations or legal criteria – to describe any combination of genocide,
crimes against humanity or war crimes
==================================
Legislators play a
dangerous game using the word ''genocide.'' In trying to appease millions of
victims, they needlessly pit nations against one another. They should leave it
to others to sift through the evidence and determine what killings occurred
when and which ones amount to what crimes. Political judgments distort the
search for truth and for justice. reason 1
Millions of people
live with the memories that their ancestors were slaughtered out of prejudice.
They demand that the story of their people's past be confirmed for posterity
and that the perpetrators be condemned. But judging such facts, especially many
years, perhaps even centuries, after they occurred, requires the discipline of
historians and, if surviving suspects can be prosecuted, of jurists.
Some nations have
outlawed Holocaust denial to avoid stoking the violence bred by anti-Semitism.
Such intentions may be sound, but too often the results are problematic.
Legislators and governments have variously decreed or denied that given mass
atrocities were genocides in order to satisfy certain interest groups or
national agendas.
example of reason 1
France and Turkey are now at loggerheads,
for example, over how to characterize the deaths of some 1.5 million Ottoman
Armenians nearly a century ago and whether to criminalize any refusal to call
those atrocities a genocide. The French Parliament says ''genocide'' and wants
to criminalize its denial; Turkey rejects the term and prosecutes those who use
it. The Turkish prime minister has threatened sanctions against France and
countered that France committed a genocide of its own in Algeria between 1830
and 1962.
Mass atrocities were
indeed committed against the Armenians, but deciding to call them a
''genocide'' - or refusing to - is a dangerously divisive political game. It
heightens tensions between countries and sows confusion about what really
happened. reason 1
Politicians should use
the term ''genocide'' only when historians and jurists have determined, based
on evidence and analysis, that a genocide - a specific crime defined according
to narrow factual and legal criteria - has indeed occurred. It is the
responsibility of historians to establish the facts of distant events and of
jurists to determine whether these were a genocide, crimes against humanity,
war crimes, human rights abuses, political repression or other crimes against
civil or political rights.
Reason 2
Using the word
''genocide'' loosely can be tragically ineffective or self-defeating. It can intimidate powerful nations from
reacting quickly enough to prevent further atrocities.
Example of reason 2
The United Nations and
key Western governments failed to act in Rwanda and the Balkans in the
early 1990s partly because their policy makers were searching for
terminological certainty about the nature of the killings. The false notion
arose that invoking ''genocide'' would require immediate military intervention.
(The 1948 Genocide Convention does not demand this; the requirement that parties
to the treaty ''prevent'' genocide can take military, political, diplomatic or
economic forms.) And while the politicians pondered, thousands of civilians
continued to die.
When in 2004 Secretary
of State Colin Powell declared the killings in Darfur a genocide, he
wasn't committing to United States to send the 82nd Airborne into western
Sudan. He was simply trying to prod the U.S. government to take some action,
ideally with others, to stop the atrocities. But others in Washington and
several Western capitals froze at the use of the g-word. (reaction to g-word)
Politicians would be
better off using the phrase ''atrocity crimes'' - a term with no pre-existing
connotations or legal criteria - to describe any combination of genocide,
crimes against humanity or war crimes, leaving it to historians and jurists to
determine, free of political influence, which atrocity crimes belong to which
category. In the face of ongoing mass killings, this would allow policy makers
to concentrate on what needs to be done to end a slaughter rather than debate
how to define it. The Obama administration is rightly creating the Atrocities
Prevention Board to free up decision-making from any confining lexicon.
France, as well as the
United States and Israel - both of which are considering similar genocide
legislation - could call what occurred to the Armenian people a century ago
atrocity crimes. (Turkey might even tolerate that.) And Turkey could condemn
what the Algerians suffered at the hands of the French as atrocity crimes.
If the United States,
the European Union and the Arab League declared that the Syrian government was
currently committing atrocity crimes against its own people, they would have an
easier time getting the U.N. Security Council to refer Syria's leaders to the
International Criminal Court for investigation, leaving it to the prosecutor to
determine what crimes to list in an indictment. Rather than veto such a move,
Russia and China might abstain from voting on it and give justice a chance.
By forgoing
''genocide,'' politicians would no doubt disappoint interest groups determined
to use the label to describe the suffering inflicted on their ancestors. The
Armenians, in particular, would find this compromise hard to accept. But their
strongest case rests with the historians and the jurists now - not with the
politicians whose loose indictments trigger the very tensions that can ignite
prejudice among peoples and nations. Shifting to ''atrocity crimes'' in
government speech, meanwhile, would focus the efforts of officials on getting more
unified international responses to ongoing massacres.
NOTES: the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes
issues from 1997 to 2001, is a law professor at Northwestern University. His
new book is ''All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes
Tribunals.''
