28th Feb 2003

Genocide

by Erich Marquardt -- Source: www.InformationTimes.com

The Blood will be Shed Once Again

(YellowTimes.org) -- After reviewing the gruesome footage from the Rwandan genocide, I was reminded of how little we have advanced as a global society and as a species. There is the common notion among more "advanced," or industrialized countries that we have escaped our bloody past and have entered a new history, one where violence and civil strife have been largely eliminated within our fortified borders. But deep down beneath our veil of selective perception, we know such thoughts are hopelessly naive.

It is so easy for us in the advanced world to become preoccupied with our own lives, glancing over reports of new cases of innocent civilians being murdered for some government or ruling party's gain. Yet we let it slide out of our memory and we continue about our daily routines. Unfortunately, no matter how oblivious we are of such wanton death and destruction, it still takes place.

It was only sixty years ago that we witnessed the attempted genocide of the Jewish faith by the Nazis, made possible by genuine anti-Semitism in both the German government and the rest of the world who refused to speak out against German leaders when they rounded up Jews and locked them into camps. Millions of Jews were then murdered through starvation, execution, and the use of chemical weapons.

At the same time, we witnessed the literal slaughter of Chinese civilians by Japanese occupiers in what became known as the Rape of Nanking; in this relatively unknown atrocity, Japanese soldiers bayoneted babies, committed mass rapes, and buried civilians alive. The brutality brought upon by World War II did not end in Nanking and culminated when the American government became the first and only nation ever to use atomic weapons on large civilian populations, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese men, women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the aftermath of World War II, violence continued unabated, especially in Southeast Asia. Using high technology warfare, some three million Vietnamese civilians perished under napalm blasts and cluster bombs. Yet, despite these blood soaked years, many of us in the advanced world still thought these were isolated incidents in the general advancement of the human race. But it was only ten years ago, in of what the world is still largely ignorant, when we all stood by and even indirectly encouraged the attempted genocide of the minority Tutsi tribe by the Hutu masses in the small African country of Rwanda.

In an event that made me ashamed to be part of the human race, the world did absolutely nothing when 800,000 civilian men, women and children were hacked to death with machetes, all in a span of 100 days. Despite the significant amount of death, we refused to see this genocide; we allowed ourselves to become preoccupied in our day-to- day activities that are totally insignificant in the face of such a massive loss of life. Our governments could have so easily prevented the genocide, but they did nothing, and we remained silent.

These few examples are only a drop in the bloody lake of our inhumanity. In all of these massacres, we remained silent when the only humane action would have been to speak out. We remained silent when those whose flesh were boiling in the napalm of Vietnam and whose knees were buckling under the machetes of Rwanda knew the world had let them down. In their time of weakness, there was no one to speak out for them and their families.

To assume that our history of continuous violence has somehow ended would be to remain dangerously ignorant. As always, there are sections of our world that have temporarily eliminated day to day devastation, but it still exists; it stills goes on outside the borders of the advanced countries. And because we have failed as a species to end these forms of violence, we cannot delude ourselves into thinking that the advanced world is exempt from these cruel ills. All kingdoms and high societies have fallen, and it is only a matter of time before today's advanced world is tomorrow's bloody news story.

We need to realize that when this day comes, when it is our own family and friends being brought under the fury of the sword, we will die knowing that across the sea, those who have the ability to prevent our deaths will remain silent. They will remain silent as long as we fail, as a species, to remedy our natural human tendency to commit great harm upon each other.

We must understand our deficiencies and attempt to overcome them through creating a true global society where citizens in all countries are considered our brothers and sisters. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., we must "speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers." Until we have accomplished this great feat and true evolution of the human race, it is only a matter of time before the blood of the advanced world is shed once again.

[Erich Marquardt is the Editor and Publisher of YellowTimes.org]