GENOCIDE. WHAT’S THAT?
Today __________________ After the Holocaust, the world said ‘Never Again’. Literally. On memorials like the one in the Dachau concentration camp in Germany the words ‘Never Again’ appear for everyone to see. The same thing happened after the genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s. And Darfur at the start of the 21st century. So, after all that, might it be reasonable to think that the world would be able to live up to the promise of ‘Never Again’? Sadly, not. Sadly, the Yazidi people, the Rohingya people and the Uighur people have, and are, being subjected to atrocities that many people think are genocide. So, ‘never again’, all over again. Ignorance is not an excuse. It might have been possible, in years gone by, for the world to say that it had no idea about what was happening...until it was too late. That excuse no longer applies today. Satellites and smart phones mean that atrocities cannot be hidden. Footage of alleged attacks on Rohingya villages in Myanmar, of Uighur people being held in centres in Xinjiang, China and of brutal IS treatment of Yazidi people in Iraq mean that the world knows full well what is occurring. Doing something about it is the problem. In the early hours of August 3rd 2014 the genocide of the Yazidi began. The Yazidi people are a religious minority who live in the Middle East. Fighters from ISIS, who wanted to destroy the Yazidi, their culture and religion, launched an attack on Yazidi villages around Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. Defenceless, those Yazidis who could, fled to the upper slopes of the mountain where they were besieged and attempted to survive in the sweltering heat without food and water. Most were unable to escape ISIS and were captured: men and older boys were executed, women and girls abducted to be enslaved and face relentless sexual violence and younger boys were taken to be indoctrinated and turned into child soldier cannon fodder for their attackers. Thousands were killed and thousands more are still missing. Absent too is the justice that Yazidis deserve. The Rohingya come from Myanmar and are one of the many ethnic minorities who live there. Nevertheless, the authorities there, particularly the army, deny the Rohingya citizenship (much like the Nazis did to the Jews) and have discriminated against them for decades. In 2017 the Myanmar army started an horrific campaign of violence against the Rohingya people. Hundreds of thousands fled for their lives. Thousands of Rohingya have been killed. The Myanmar government has denied that anything approaching a genocide has taken place and the powerful countries of the world have been remarkably ineffective in their response. Indeed, the country that has tried to take action to stop the genocide and take Myanmar to a world court is Gambia. Not the USA or the UK. It is a lesson to us. So far the Rohingya have not received justice and their villages have been bulldozed by the Myanmar government. The genocide, from their point of view, has succeeded. Many people believe that what is happening to the Uighur people in Xinjiang province in China is ‘...genocide, full stop.’40 The Uighur people are a Muslim minority who live within China and are being reportedly subjected to treatment that lots of informed observers say would fulfil Lemkin’s idea of genocide. Satellite images have shown that mosques have been destroyed.41 Reports also tell of thousands of Uighur’s being put in prison camps and ’locked up, indoctrinated and punished.’42 The Chinese Ambassador to Britain has said that all these reports are ’fake news’. Just as worrying is research that some have suggested shows that the Chinese government was trying to reduce the birth rate of its Uighur population by forcing women to have abortions or be sterilised.43 The Chinese government have said that these measures have been entirely voluntary. So, as everyone can see, genocide continues today. It appears that the ‘lessons’ from the Holocaust and more recent genocides have not been learned. ‘Never Again’...has been said again, again and again. Vulnerable people are left without protection and with no one to stand up for them. 41
