The Curious Relation Between Man and Genocide

Genocide.

A term often used in recent years. A word meant to describe the sheer inhumanity one person, a group of individuals, or even whole countries have committed upon a set of people deemed by those who perpetrate these acts as worthy of incurring such wraths. We see it used to term the atrocities happening in Palestine, and the Greater Levant region. People using the term to describe the horrors committed upon Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The same term used to describe the vile acts in Myanmar committed upon the Rohingyan people. In all three, chaos, destruction and death followed in groves. And in all three, each mastermind of said atrocities claim justification; you hear Israelis, both in power and in public, claiming the right to self-defence, to protect oneself from another’s harmful presence, the privilege of retaliation. The villains of Xinjiang and Myanmar voiced the same sentiments. These acts are not the first of it’s kind in our storied history. Nor will it be the last. For these acts are rooted in our very existence, it’s fire everburning, seeping just beneath the surface. It’s conception, intertwined with that which makes up the very bloodline of our societies.

In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly. Such definitions came in the presence of the atrocities that preceded that exact moment in time, both in the distant past, and closer to home. Even now, such statements carry a hollow and meaningless purpose in the face of what we are witnessing today.

The most classic example of a Genocide, the very event we all have come to remember as the single biggest form of human atrocity to have ever been committed, was the Holocaust. The Great Jewish Purge. The greatest act of villainy, one so vile, it cemented the status of both Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party as some of the great evils of the world. But to understand the conception of the Holocaust, one must truly examine what transpires before it. In the late 19th century, anti-jewish sentiments began to gather pace within european communities. This was also accompanied by widespread discourse addressing the so-called Jewish Question, a nationality dilemma pushed to the forefront of social consciousness within Europe at the time, discussing of Jewish status as a minority and the extent of the privileges they are ought to be given as said minority group, ranging from civil, legal, national, and even political ones. This form of discourse was especially prevalent within then-Europe, with prominent figures being Wilhelm Marr, Karl Eugen Dühring, Theodor Fritsch, Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Paul de Lagarde amongst others, with them declaring that the existence of Jews within their communities posed a racial problem, one unsolvable through integration. They stressed this in order to strengthen their demands to "de-jewify" the press, education, culture, state and economy in many parts of Europe. They also proposed to condemn inter-marriage between Jews and non-Jews. They used this term to oust the Jews from their supposedly, socially-dominant positions. This proliferation of anti-semitic views would be internalised deeply by the people of Germany specifically from then onwards, it becoming a hallmark of German nationalism propaganda in the early 20th century, which was exarcebated further by the economical burden imposed upon Germany proceeding World War I made official through the Versailles treaties, and leading upto World War II with the Great Depression that transpired and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. In 1901, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion began to gain prominence. A fabricated document hailing from the Russian Empire, it became a prominent piece of antisemitic propaganda within Europe. One such figure that came to rever said document was Adolf Hitler, the man deeming it an authentic piece of literary, one that sollidified his view that Jews deserve the fate of annihilation. Hitler continued this sentiment upon his later works, chief amongst which was Mein Kampf, in which he wrote; “the nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated”, further adding that “If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the nation had been subjected to poison gas, such as had to be endured in the field by hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers of all classes and professions, then the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain”. In so doing, Hitler had consolidated the Great Deception upon his people, instilling a perception of hatred and bloodlust directed towards what he deemed as weak, urging them to caste away these imperfections from their lands to provide the space for the strong to continue on living, and thrive. With Mein Kampf’s place as an influential piece in engineering the state of society within Nazi Germany, what transpired upon the European Theatre then was all but a certainty long before the gas chambers had been filled to the brim.

But what to make of the Palestinian suffering? The Great Dilemma of our modern existence. Some argued that the suffering ought to be fixed upon the conflict that transpired from October 7th, 2023 onwards. Some would argue that it began during the Nakba of 1948. Few would opine it began precisely when the Jewish settlers came to set foot upon Ottoman Palestine. What is certain however, is that the roots of the current events we bear witness to are long and complex. Gathering pace concurrently with the rise of Anti-Semitism within Europe was the conception and emergance of the Zionist movement. Spearheaded by Theodor Herzl, it aimed to legitimise the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people, one that the movement identified as presiding within Palestine, of which Jewish tradition called the Land of Israel. The movement was viewed as a form of “ingathering of exiles” meant to put a stop the exoduses and persecutions that have marked Jewish history by bringing the Jewish people back to their historic homeland. It specified the land that then belonged to Ottoman Palestine as one of importance, citing it’s significance to Jewish national identity, religion, and history that has existed for millennia. This determination to finally gain autonomy for themselves led a focus absolute and unrelenting, a concentrated effort to achieve what they sought most; a place of security, a home. From the beginning of the development of the Zionism movement, the support of the European powers was seen as necessary by the Zionist leadership, a sentiment chiefly shared by Herzl, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion. This coincided with the preexisting perception that dictates European discourse at the time; one of profound disgust and disregard upon Jews. In a wicked way, this became the very essence for which a whirlwind or commonality was birthed. A coinciding of goals, the binary of sentiments evolving into an alliance. The first signifcant ally of international legitimacy towards Zionist cause would wound up being Great Britain, an act worthy to be deemed the kingdom’s greatest sin. For what the British saw as a plausible means of expulsion, the Zionist viewed it as a great opportunity towards fulfilment. And they, the Zionist, clenched upon that opportunity with both hands. All of this would transpire in what became the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Concurrently with the conception of that declaration, was the manouvering of the British Empire in wrestling control of the Levant from the opposing Ottoman Empire. To that end, it sought through it’s proxy in Egypt, the British High Commissioner to Egypt, Henry McMahon, an alliance between the Empire of Britain and the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali. Promising recognition of Arabic independence “"in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca", Britain sought in exchange a pledge for the Sharif to revolt against the Ottoman Empire. It was a pledge taken by the Sharif, and led to the Arab Revolt of 1916. This represented a significant turn of events within the context of the proxy conflict within the Levant as part of World War I, it’s ramifications culminating in the control of the region being seceded to Britain and France, through means of the covert Sykes-Picot Agreement. This meant a renegation of the previous McMahon-Hussein correspondence, effectively devoiding the Arabs of any measure of gain and compounding the revolt to a futile and disruptive act of betrayal. What became of the Balfour Declaration effectively sealed the fate of Palestine. An official form of recognition towards the Zionist ultimate goal in establishing the Land of Israel. What was symbolically a spark of independence for the Jews, became the furnace for which Zionist fueled their long march towards their perceived ancestral home and their exaltion. And as the lust, greed, and vindication of the Jewish grew ever larger, compounded by the events of World War II, it sought not to simply partition the land of Palestine to create a functional home for themselves, but to attain total and absolute dominion over the region by any means necessary. This resolve led to the Great Nakba of 1948, an act which irrevocably conceive the conflict which we are presently witnessing, the consolidation of Israeli dominion, at the expense of Palestinian existence. For the victim of past times, has become the great subjugator of modernity. Sheep turned Wolf.

But our history with Genocide doesn’t stop within the confines of the suffering of Jews and Palestinians. Our ties to Genocide are far-reaching and deeply entrenched, fueled by a sense of entitlement, of hatred towards a supposed enemy, a struggle to assert and vindicate one’s perception made manifest. These provide hallmarks to all the proceeding examples to follow, a cautionary tale of Man’s Hubris upon itself.

From April 7th till 19th, 1994, an event transpired within Rwanda that would forever be etched as one of the great crimes against Humanity. The extermination of the Tutsi people, a tragedy we came to remember as the Rwandan Genocide. Historically, Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi were assigned to Germany by the Berlin Conference of 1884, and in so doing, Germany proceeded to establish an alliance with the King of Rwanda which would be formalised in 1897. German policy was to rule the country through the Rwandan monarchy; this system had the added benefit of enabling colonization with small European troop numbers. During the proxy occupation of Rwanda, The colonists favoured the Tutsi over the Hutu when assigning administrative roles, believing them to be migrants from Ethiopia and racially superior. This sentiment would be consolidated and kept intact, even as the control of colonial power shifted hands to Belgium, which enacted a more direct rule upon the region from 1926. In the early 1930s, Belgium introduced a permanent division of the population by classifying Rwandans into three ethnic (ethno-racial) groups, with the Hutu representing about 84% of the population, the Tutsi about 15%, and the Twa about 1%. Compulsory identity cards were issued labeling (under the heading for "ethnicity and race") each individual as either Tutsi, Hutu, Twa, or Naturalised. While it had previously been possible for particularly wealthy Hutus to become honorary Tutsis, the identity cards prevented any further movement between the groups and made socio-economic groups into rigid ethnic groups. This act led to the reshaping and mythologisation of Hutu and Tutsi ethnical identities, which became the foundation of the Hutu-Tutsi divide that became the basis for the atrocity to come. Following World War II, a movement focusing upon the emancipation of Hutu within Rwanda began to form itself. This movement was fueled by the resentment of Hutus upon inter-war reforms, whilst their poor state was sympathised by the Catholic Church, which began to help empower the Hutus in earnest. In 1957, a group of Hutu scholars wrote the "Bahutu Manifesto". This was the first document to label the Tutsi and Hutu as separate races, and called for the transfer of power from Tutsi to Hutu based on what it termed "statistical law", it also represented the first signal of intent from the Hutus in manifesting their historical grievances upon the Tutsis. In the years to follow, blows were exchanged between these opposing factions, blood and lives spoiled all over, which included a coup in 1973 that placed Juvenal Habyarimana to preside over Rwanda as president, a period of leadership which saw temporary prosperity before plunging to a state of fear and terror once more amongst both cnflicting groups. Everything came to a rapturing crescendo when the Rwandan Civil War began in earnest, emanating firstly in the 1980s and resuming once more in 1991. This led to significant tension between both Tutsis and Hutus, one which culminated with the assasination of President Juvenal on April 6th, 1994. To what extent the Rwandan genocide was planned in advance of the assassination of Habyarimana continues to be debated by historians, what was certain however is that the immidiate impact of the president’s death served as a catalyst for the genocide to follow. Following disputes regarding the succession of leadership pertaining to Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana ascent to power, major figures of the Rwandan military which had served as part of the crisis committee following President Juvenal’s death, namely Major General Augustin Ndindiliyimana and Colonel Théoneste Bagosora amongst others, became figureheads of the genocide to come. This act began in earnest with the killing of the Prime Minister and her husband, which was swiftly followed by the torture and killing of 10 Belgian soldiers sent to originally escort the Prime Minister. Genocidal killings began the following day. Soldiers, police, and militia quickly executed key Tutsi and moderate Hutu military and political leaders who could have assumed control in the ensuing power vacuum. Checkpoints and barricades were erected to screen all holders of the national ID card of Rwanda, which contained ethnic classifications. This enabled government forces to systematically identify and kill Tutsi. They also recruited and pressured Hutu civilians to arm themselves with machetes, clubs, blunt objects, and other weapons and encouraged them to rape, maim, and kill their Tutsi neighbors and to destroy or steal their property. Thousands of bodies were dumped into the Kagera River, which ran along the northern border between Rwanda and Uganda and flowed into Lake Victoria. By the time this genocidal episode came to a close, around 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi lives had been claimed. The horrors exhibited within this genocide serves a painful reminder of the profound impact of colonialism and it’s influence in the division of whole communities, once that had been in unison with one another.

Rwanda wasn’t a singularity. Past and present, it’s echoes had been felt in passing and in continuity. Srebrenica, Armenia, Myanmar, Xinjiang, Nanjing, amongst many others. Genocidal events fueled by eerily similar motives. Some instances lost to time and forgotten, others forming the pages of humanity’s tome of sorrows, forever to be forsaken and remembered as man’s worst inhibitions made manifest. The great fear, is that it will continue on until time’s end. The great question, will we continue to allow for such acts to remain?