PREVENTION

A full strategy for preventing genocide should include attack on each of genocide's operational processes. 

 

Classification may be attacked either through devaluation of the distinctive features used to classify (e.g. amalgamation of regional dialects and accents by exposure to mass media, standardized education, and promotion of a common language) or through use of transcendent categories, such as common nationality or common humanity. Promotion of mixed categories, such as the financial incentives for inter-caste marriages in Tamil Nadu, India, may help break down group endogamy, but do not combat genocide in bipolar societies where mixed categories have no recognition. In bipolar societies, transcendent institutions like the Catholic Church should actively campaign against ethnic classifications. Special effort should be made to keep such institutions from being captured and divided by the same forces that divide the society, e.g. through hierarchical discipline from Rome for the Roman Catholic Church.

 

Symbolization can be attacked by legally forbidding the use of hate symbols (e.g. swastikas) or ethnic classification words. "Nigger" or "kaffir" as racial expletives may be outlawed as "hate speech." Group marking like tribal scarring may be outlawed, like gang clothing. The problem is that legal limitations on hate speech will fail if unsupported by popular cultural enforcement. Though Hutu and Tutsi were forbidden words in Burundi until the 1980's, the prohibition had little effect, since other euphemisms and code-words replaced them. Prohibition may even become counter-productive, as part of an ideology of denial, which prevents people from naming, discussing and overcoming deep cultural divisions. However, without symbols for our classifications, they would become literally insignificant. Yellow stars became insignificant in parts of France and Bulgaria because many Jews refused to wear them and were not turned in by their Christian neighbors, who rejected the Nazi's classification system.  In cultures that reject negative symbolization,  resistance can be a powerful preventive tactic.  In Denmark, the popular resistance to Nazi classification and symbolization was so strong that the Nazis did not even dare to impose the yellow star, and Danish “fishermen” smuggled ninety-five percent of Danish Jews to safety in Sweden.

 

Dehumanization should be opposed openly whenever it shows its ugly face. Genocidal societies lack constitutional protection for countervailing speech and should be treated differently than democracies. Hate radio stations should be shut down, and hate propaganda banned. Although restrictions on free speech are not necessary for a healthy polity, even in democracies hate speech should be actively exposed and publicly opposed. Direct incitements to genocide should be outlawed. Incitement to genocide is not protected speech. Hate crimes and atrocities should be promptly punished. Impunity breeds contempt for the law and emboldens genocidists, who can literally get away with murder. 

 

Organizations that commit acts of genocide should be banned, and membership in them made a crime. Freedom of association in a democratic society should not be misconstrued as protecting membership in criminal organizations. At Nuremberg, membership in the SS was itself prosecuted. Similarly, the Interahamwe and other genocidal hate groups should be outlawed, and their members arrested and tried for conspiracy to commit genocide. The UN should impose arms embargoes on governments or militias that commit genocide.  Because arms embargoes are difficult to enforce, for Rwanda, the UN established an international commission to investigate and document violations of the arms embargo. The UN may also require member states to freeze the assets of persons who organize and finance genocidal groups. 

 

Polarization can be fought by providing financial and technical aid to the moderate center. It may mean security protection for moderate leaders, or assistance to human rights groups. Assets of extremists may be seized, and visas for international travel denied to them. Coups d'état by extremists should be immediately opposed by targeted international sanctions on their leaders. 

 

Preparation Identification of victims considerably speeds genocide. When ID cards identify victims' ethnic or religious group, or when victims are forced to wear yellow stars, the killing is made efficient.  As soon as such symbolic markers are imposed, a Genocide Watch should be declared and diplomatic pressure should demand their abolition and impose targetted sanctions on regime leaders.  When death lists are drawn up, the international community should recognize that genocide is imminent, and mobilize for armed intervention. Those identified should be given asylum and assistance in fleeing their persecutors. Had the U.S. or Britain in Palestine accepted all Jewish immigrants, millions of lives might have been saved from the Holocaust. 

 

Extermination, whether carried out by governments or by patterned mob violence, can only be stopped by force. Armed intervention must be rapid and overwhelming. Safe areas should be established with real military protection. An intervention force without robust rules of engagement, such as UNAMIR in Rwanda in April 1994 or UNPROFOR in Bosnia, is worse than useless because it gives genocide victims false hope of security in churches or unsafe "safe areas", delaying their organization for self-defense. In bipolar societies, separation into self-defense zones is the best protection for both groups, particularly if international troops create a buffer zone between them.

 

Experience with UN peacekeeping has shown that humanitarian intervention should be carried out by a multilateral force authorized by the UN, but led by UN members, rather than by the UN itself. The Military Staff Committee envisioned in Article 47 of the UN Charter has never been organized, and the UN does not have a standing army. The strongest member states must, therefore, shoulder this responsibility in conjunction with other UN members. The U.S. is now promoting the organization of an African Crisis Response Initiative composed of African military units coordinated and trained by the U.S., Europeans, and other powers.  Regional forces such as those of NATO, ECOWAS, or the EU, or mandated by the African Union or Organization of American States may also effectively intervene if given strong support by major military powers.

 

 

 

 

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Denial, the final stage of genocide is best overcome by public trials and truth commissions, followed by years of education about the facts of the genocide, particularly for the children of the group or nation that committed the crime.  The black hole of forgetting is the negative force that results in future genocides.  When Adolf Hitler was asked if his planned invasion of Poland was a violation of international law, he scoffed, "Whoever heard of the extermination of the Armenians?" Impunity - literally getting away with murder -- is the weakest link in the chains that restrain genocide. In Rwanda, Hutus were never arrested and brought to trial for massacres of Tutsis that began years before the April 1994 genocide. In Burundi, Tutsi youth gangs have never been tried for killing Hutus. Burundi judges are nearly all Tutsis, as are the army and police. They seldom, if ever, convict their own.

 

Social order abhors a legal vacuum. When courts do not dispense justice the victims have no recourse but revenge. In societies with histories of ethnic violence, the cycle of killing will eventually spiral down into the vortex of genocide. In such societies, the international community should fill the legal vacuum by creating tribunals to prosecute and try genocide. That has been done for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and will soon be done for Cambodia. We finally have the  International Criminal Court (ICC) that will have worldwide jurisdiction to try genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.  But the ICC still has no jurisdiction over genocide committed in nations that contain over half of the world’s population because their nations have not become parties to the Rome Treaty of the ICC.  The Court must be supported by effective institutions to arrest and imprison those indicted and convicted by the Court. Only such a permanent court will provide a deterrent to those planning future genocides.

 

The strongest antidote to genocide is justice.