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Genocide in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Prompt: Sadly, genocide did not end with the Holocaust. In fact, a lot more people have died from genocide since World War II than were victims of it in the war itself. How and why has this happened? What have been the steps taken to prevent, stop, and punish in regards to genocide since 1945? Have these efforts been successful or not? Explain why. In these more recent genocides, compare and contrast them. What big similarities and big differences have there been? Do we see anything similar in most of them? If so, what and why? Based on what we learned about genocide in your lifetime (since the 1990s), are we on track to finally eradicate these horrors or are we a long way off from that? Explain.
Response:
The Second World War claimed the lives of tens of millions of civilians including six million Jews and other "undesirables" in the attendant Nazi-led Holocaust. Although it seemed at the time that the enormity of this event should be sufficient for humankind to take the steps that were needed to prevent its recurrence, genocide has remained a constant companion of the human race throughout the remainder of the 20th century and into the 21st century. For example,...
In addition, in 2003, 200,000 more civilians were murdered in Darfur in the Sudan (Past genocides and mass atrocities 3).
Although the precise causes of these more recent genocidal events varied, they all shared a common theme of involving people who were regarded as being undesirable and dispensable by virtue of their race, ethnicity, religion or other marginalized status. The problem has been further exacerbated by the arbitrary geopolitical lines that were drawn after both world wars that thrust peoples with longstanding grievances against each other into closer geographic proximity. For instance, Rubinstein emphasizes that," To the average person, 'genocide' is likely to mean the deliberate and intentional killing of all or most of a specified group of people simply because they are members of that group and for no other reason" (37). Although killing all members of another group because they differ somehow may appear baseless, humans fear what is…
Works Cited
"Past genocides and mass atrocities." (2016). United to End Genocide. Web.
Romaniuk, Scott Nicholas. (2015, March). "Genocide: A Normative Account." Romanian Journal of European Affairs 15(1): 86-90. Print.
Rubinstein, William D. (2004, April). "Genocide and Historical Debate: William D. Rubinstein Ascribes the Bitterness of Historians' Arguments to the Lack of an Agreed Definition and to Political Agendas." History Today 54(4): 36-40. Print.
Former President Bill Clinton "stood by" while what Power calls "the fastest, most efficient killing spree of the twentieth century" ravaged families in Africa. In 1998, he would issue an apology for the inactivity (Power). Indeed, his refusal to call the genocide by the term that Lemkin designated for the violence just 50 years prior was met with international scorn. The Darfur crisis is another, more recent, exhibit of genocide.
Additional countries, such as Argentina, Czech Republic, Chile, Slovak Republic, Spain, Balearic Islands and the Vatican made a Holodomor declaration. Russia continues to be complete denial and is utilizing it political influence to refute that this event ever happened and that it was a deliberate act. In fact, in Russia it has been made illegal to commemorate this event. Stalin's Soviet communist success of relying food as a weapon
The challenge on traditional culture that is resulted from both external cultural and political influences, as well as internal changes is extremely strong and this is the core of Islamic fundamentalism. Fundamentalism arises as a backlash towards the fragmenting of national identity and cultural transparency. Many traditionalists feel that they need to compensate for the growing modernity of their nations by bringing back their fundamental roots, and thus they
Both Nazism and Communism have been proved of being highly ineffective and dangerous for humanity. Some of the reasons which made it easier for the genocide that took place during the Holocaust to occur were Hitler's clever schemes and the favorable conditions in which Germans were searching for a scapegoat that they could blame for their deficiencies. The Khmer Rouge regime has ruled over Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and it
In Genocide, Jane Springer starts by examining the mass murder of Africans in Darfur by the janjaweed (the armed Arabic horsemen, hired mercenaries of the Sudanese government, paid to exterminate the African people). Springer describes in vivid detail the plight of the African people, their hopelessness, and how the outside world barely seems to notice what is going on—the media only intermittently covering the genocide in Darfur.[footnoteRef:2] From there Springer
United States President Barack Obama had made a promise during the 2008 presidential elections that he would state the actions that Turkey committed in 1915 were an act of genocide against the Armenian people. However, every year since that promise, President Obama has broken it, always avoiding offending Turkey in order to keep their NATO ally happy and fighting alongside the United States. This is because not only is Turkey