RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Unfair Asian Critiques of Adichie

 

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR, FRIENDS!!!

Glad to be back. But while away, I followed the interesting conversation on various issues here including the ongoing discussion on Biafra and genocide.  I recall that this issue has come up in this Forum before. I remember my contribution to it and Kenneth Harrow's as well. I have resisted the urge to offer a thought until I read Gloria's scenarios, and her instructive counsel that we fully understand the concept of genocide (and I would add its genealogy) before we conflate it with war crimes and other crimes against humanity.

I tend to agree with Gloria because "conceptual conflation"--- the appropriation of the word "genocide" as a descriptor of all forms of mass killing, without any careful distinctions, because of the word's emotive force and the moral and legal claims it grants victims----continues to undermine the study and understanding of genocide.

Gloria's scenarios warrant reflection. They imply, accurately in my view, that not all mass murders rise to the conceptual threshold of a genocide. Not least is that war crimes and genocide are not the same, conceptually, although they have the same outcome. They lead to death and cause suffering and trauma to the direct victims and their descendants. Medical doctors do not conflate two or more different diseases that cause suffering and call all of them by one name that grabs public attention. And the study of genocide should not be reduced to an intellectual exercise in mortality statistics. It is not a body count concept. Thus, Gloria's scenarios and advice are consistent with the many issues Martin Shaw discusses in his book What is Genocide?

Finally, let me add that the 1948 UN definition of genocide was the result of a political compromise between the United States, France, and Britain on one side, and the Soviet Union, Poland and Iran on the other. For students of genocide studies, the UN Genocide Convention is not the sole authority on what constitutes genocide. Even in recent cases of adjudication of the crime of genocide, criminal tribunals drew upon other social science concepts of genocide. In fact Ethiopia, the first nation to sign the UN Convention, redefined Article 2 of the Genocide Convention in its Penal Code of 1951. The Ethiopian concept of genocide is, therefore, much broader, and includes protection of political groups, than the UN Convention that does not protect or criminalize the destruction of an armed political or secessionist group. The Soviet delegation insisted on the exclusion of protection for political groups in the UN Genocide Convention. But, can a state or non-state group convert real ethnic or religious groups into political enemies to be destroyed? Yes, but as Gloria suggests we need to "identify the variables."

Gloria's scenarios also underscore two critical features of genocide studies. One, genocides are not committed solely by states or national governments as Raphael Lemkin originally thought. Two, non-state entities such as armed rebel or secessionist groups can commit a genocide too. So we need to get a fine grasp of the concept of genocide before we use it.

One way to get that grasp is to look at the three major ways in which genocide is studied and understood.

1. Raphael Lemkin's original definition of genocide in his only book: Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In it, the creator of the word "genocide" suggests that the crime can actually occur without a single individual killed or physically destroyed. He did not emphasize a body count (outcome) but rather process---a "coordinated plan of several actions" undertaken by a state to undermine "the essential foundations of the life" of a target group. Lemkin meant acts that included the destruction of a group's culture and the replacement of it with the colonizers' language and ways of life. This is Lemkin's original concept of genocide that the US, France and Britain feared and opposed and, thus, advocated for a legalistic concept of genocide based on specific and provable intent in a court of law. See the work of Leo Kuper for a grasp of how the international law of genocide evolved.

2. The idea of genocide in the UN Genocide Convention of 1948 and its narrow and strict focus on "the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part."

3. The many definitions of genocide proposed by scholars of genocide studies (including my own in "Obligation to Prevent," African Security Review, 2016). Although social science definitions of genocide such as Shaw's, Charny's, Chalk's and Jonassohn's, Stanton's, Stotten's, Kissi's, etc, do not have the force of law,  they reveal the limits of the existing law of genocide as the site for the retrieval of adequate knowledge about genocide and the genocidal process.

Edward Kissi

 

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of kwame zulu shabazz
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2018 11:03 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Unfair Asian Critiques of Adichie

 

Gloria,

 

That wasnt exactly my point. In my initial post regarding Biafra, I said that it seems to fit the UN definition of genocide. As a legal matter, one would need to produce evidence that Igbos were targeted for elimination. I then replied to Ken and suggested that a commonsense idea of genocide, as distinct from the formal UN definition, seems to have as it criteria the targeting *and actual elimination* of a people (This is speculative on my part. I cant say with any certainty how people understand genocide). As an example, I cited the indigenous people of the southwestern US who were targeted and wiped out.

 

All Black Lives Matter,

 

brother shabazz

Pronouns: African

 

 

On Dec 31, 2018 6:48 PM, "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:

 

"i must say it saddens me to see such deepseated dissension still today about whether the case of biafra

was one of genocide when so many people died under tragic conditions."harrow


Does Yemen not fit the above  definition? Many died and  are dying under tragic conditions.
The "Houtis" constitute  a sectarian  religious group with Shiite leanings,  opposed to
the  Sunni government faction and the Saudi camp..

If  genocide   is defined by a large  body count in tragic conditions, Iraq  in terms of the two Gulf
 wars will make the list, too, especially given the difference in ethnicity of the belligerents -  and the huge body count.

 Was Biafra a target  because of the ethnic identity of the people, therein,  or because of its secessionist  declaration - or both? Given the huge body count does this matter?


Kwame, Should we disqualify Biafra because there was no major reduction in the Igbo population,  will that disqualify African American claims, too?


Scenario One
A   small population of 1,000 people loses 800 members in the course of  open warfare with people of the same religion and ethnicity. Let us say that this one  was a border war, and  that the  other side may have lost as many. Does this qualify as genocide?

Scenario Two
A population of 1,000 people loses 800 members while fighting people of a different race, ethnicity or religion  over a border dispute with no planned intention to exterminate on either side. Does this qualify as genocide?

Scenario Three
A population of 1,000 people loses 800 members while fighting people of a different race, ethnicity or religion  over a border dispute with the intention to exterminate.  Does this qualify as genocide?


This may seem to be an exercise in  semantics by some but I believe we need  to identify the variables
associated with the concept  before using it. The other option, of course,  is to declare all wars as genocide, given the fact that countless numbers of   people die in the process.


GE

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