Journal articles on the topic 'War victims – Rwanda'

AbstractMedia descriptions of the conflicts in the Eastern Congo usually depict violent events as being systematic attacks by rebels and militias (perpetrators) on the civilian population (victims). While much attention has been given to the victims of such violence, less effort has been made to understand the perspectives and underlying motives for violence of those who are actively engaged in fighting the war. Using anthropological arguments, this article argues that the use of the terms ‘perpetrator’ and ‘victim’ are scientifically problematic when attempting to explain contemporary conflict(s) in the Eastern Congo and other similar war situations in Africa. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), whose leadership was an orchestrating agent in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, I demonstrate that not only is the victim/perpetrator dichotomy unclear, but also that combatants may frequently regard themselves as being both victims and perpetrators at one and the same time. I argue that the main factor behind this dual identity is that, while combatants in the Congo may be under a compulsion to commit violence, they may simultaneously be fully committed to their armed group and to its collective political ideology. While our conventional understanding of the membership of armed groups tends to make a sharp distinction between compulsory participation and commitment to a cause, I show how, in the context of the Eastern Congo, these categories are not, in fact, mutually exclusive.

Following the death of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana in a plane crash on 6 April 1994, Hutu extremists, members of the Presidential Guard, Rwandan army troops, theInterhamwe(‘Those who work together’) militia affiliated to the ruling party, the M.R.N.D. (Mouvement Révolutionaire National pour la Démocratie) and theImpuzamugambi(‘Those with a single purpose’) militia of the extremist CDR Party (Coalition pour la Défense de la République) began the systematic and widespread killings of Tutsi civilians in the capital Kigali. Hutu moderates were also targeted. Early victims of the violence included Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana along with ten Belgian soldiers of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). This incident prompted the withdrawal of UNAMIR which left the perpetrators of the genocide a free rein. Ministers and the President of the Constitutional Court were also killed within hours of the plane crash.

This article describes the brutalisation of the bodies of Tutsi and Jewish victims in 1994 and during the Second World War, respectively, and contrasts the procedures adopted by killers to understand what these deadly practices say about the imaginaries at work in Rwanda and Poland. Dealing with the infernalisation of the body, which eventually becomes a form of physical control, this comparative work examines the development of groups and communities of killers in their particular social and historical context. Different sources are used, such as academic works, reports from victims organisations and non-governmental organisations, books, testimonies and film documentaries.

War is a complex, enduring trauma composed of variable forms of extreme stress, such as violence, fear of death, displacement, loss of family members, abuse and starvation (Berman, 2001). More than 90% of war victims are civilians (UNICEF, 2006). Children and women are extremely vulnerable to traumatic experiences in times of war and the risk continues even in post-war-situations (Shanks and Schull, 2000). As far as former war-children are concerned, a high prevalence of post-traumatic stress symptoms is apparent even six decades after World War II (Kuwert et al., 2006). In the 1990s, the world was shocked by reports about systematic and widespread rape in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (Shanks and Schull, 2000). The Lancet has published articles about wartime rape and demanded the development of clear strategies against sexual violence in conflict (Hargreaves, 2001). However, it can be concluded that sexual violence was and is common in nearly all crisis zones. One recent example was the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl by U.S. soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq (The Times, 2006).

Last year marked the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide when more than 800,000 people were slaughtered within 100 days under the watch of the international community. As the United Nations has since acknowledged, “[t]he international community did not prevent the genocide, nor did it stop the killing once the genocide had begun.” The whole world failed the victims – a failure the UN Report called a fundamental “failure of the international community [and] failure of the United Nations system as a whole.” Those who could did little or nothing to help. Indeed, some actively concealed or denied the unfolding genocide. Interestingly, the genocide took place more than half a century after the victorious allies of World War II vowed “Never Again!” to genocide in response to the Nazi holocaust. Also, by 1994 the 1948Convention on the Punishment and the Prevention of the Crime of Genocideunder which states assumed a legal duty to prevent and punish the crime of genocide was nearly half a century old.

The development of rules governing non-international, or internal, armed conflicts has long been characterized by a profound tension between concerns of sovereignty and concerns of humanity. Historically, strong sovereignty-oriented interests dictated a slow and cautious pace of progress in this sensitive area. In recent years, however, a growing humanitarian concern for the protection of victims has prompted rapid developments in the regulation of internal armed conflict. This transformation has been greatly assisted by the establishment of the twoad hocTribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda by the Security Council, in 1993 and 1994 respectively, and the operation of these bodies. Clear trends in this area include not only the articulation and recognition of a growing body of norms applicable in internal armed conflicts but also the expanding criminalization of violations of those norms. In a world where most armed conflicts are of a non-international character, these developments are of the greatest significance.From 15 June to 17 July 1998, delegations from 160 countries assembled in Rome to negotiate and adopt a Statute for an International Criminal Court (ICC), with jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

World War II genocide in Germany, the Rwanda genocide in the early 1990s and the Darfur genocide today are visceral reminders of the devastation and senselessness in the breakdown of human order, a poignant but sad insight into the nature of man and politics. Yet the international community, and by extension the United Nations (UN), have shown a remarkable reluctance to address rape and other forms of gender violence perpetrated during militarised conflicts. Given the psychological toll and devastating effect of rape and the growing number of conflicts, this effort does not speak well to the UN’s commitment to problems that destabilise international peace. It does however raise concerns in the minds of those who see the UN as cherrypicking which conflicts to address while sidestepping others until it is too late. With a view to the Allies’ response to genocide during World War II, this article argues that the realist analytical framework of world politics provides the most plausible basis for explaining variations in international response in militarised conflicts such as Rwanda and Darfur. We present testable hypotheses to conclude that while rape in itself may not be the sole trigger for interventions, states with unstable regimes or sovereign capacity whose government has been deposed are more likely to be the object for interventions or held accountable than those with otherwise stable governments who benefit from the support of a hegemonic power. To victims of crimes of rape caught in militarised conflicts, and to whom justice may come only after a perpetrator regime has been deposed, the conclusion that the decision to intervene is predicated more on political might than justice is disquieting.

The author identifies the major goals and achievements in the area of recognizing women as full subjects of human rights and eliminating impunity for gender crimes, highlighting the role of non-governmental organizations ("NGO's"). Until the 1990s sexual violence in war was largely invisible, a point illustrated by examples of the "comfort women" in Japan during the 1930s and 1940s and the initial failure to prosecute rape and sexual violence in the ad hoc international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Due in a significant measure to the interventions by NGOs, the ad hoc international criminal tribunals have brought gender into mainstream international jurisprudence. For example, the Yugoslavia tribunal has devoted substantial resources to the prosecution of rape and explicitly recognized rape as torture, while the Rwanda tribunal has recognized rape as an act of genocide. Elsewhere, the Statute of the International Criminal Court is a landmark in codifying not only crimes of sexual and gender violence as part of the ICC's jurisdiction, but also in establishing procedures to ensure that these crimes and their victims are properly treated. Working towards this end the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice met with significant opposition. It persisted because of the imperative that sexual violence be seen as part of already recognized forms of violence, such as torture and genocide.

Africa as a continent has been ravaged by wars that have brought untold hardship and retardation to development. Militarization and war places various demands on both males and females. This study concentrates on how females have been used as sex slaves and have now become vulnerable to rape and outright fighting in the wars. Extenuating the effects of war with its irreparable losses and psychological trauma in recent times has been the focus of governments, nongovernmental organizations and philanthropists. The devastation caused by the conflicts, the destruction to communities and the suffering of women and girls cannot be over emphasized. Recent years have seen many regions of Africa involved in wars and internal or external conflicts. From Liberia to Sierra Leone; Angola, The Democratic Republic of Congo to Rwanda; Burundi, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire to Sudan, the story is a sad and saddening one. Therefore, this article discusses the effects of armed conflicts on women and girls, using Iyorwuese Hagher’s Lamp of Peace as a textual reference. It employs the literary method to consider the response of Iyorwuese Hagher as a playwright regarding the outcry against war atrocities against women. The paper argues that glaring gaps still exist regarding the protection of women and girls during armed conflicts. As such, women and girls deserve special attention that focuses on protection as they are both victims of abuse and actors in reconstruction. Keywords: War, Atrocities on women, Protection and rehabilitation, Lamp of Peace, Africa

This paper seeks to better understand rape as a weapon in genocide and wars, the myriads contributing factors to creating ignorance to rape as a weapon in genocide, other forms of sexual violations, and circumstances that prevent women from witnessing rape acts of genocide violence. Drawing from the feminist perspectives of rape and women's sexual violence theorization, Derrida's accounts of truth and witness, and women as an improper mythic being-tainted witness, this paper shows that the current global gender inequality discrimination perpetuates the practice of rape as a weapon of genocide and wars as well as a repudiation for women's witnessing rape and sexual violations. As this situation of women rape survivors' desertions are not only happened in the Rwanda genocide and witnessing rapes for rape victims and survivors are equally challenging, this paper serves an alternative to support women's witnessing rapes and prevent rape the weapon of war to reoccur in the future. Further, Derrida's considerations on law should extend the notions of witnessing beyond the traditional European juridical tradition that excludes literature from legal exercise of witnessing as literature is regarded as mostly only fiction upbrings witnessing through literature as secret testimony is a useful interpretation on women's witnessing rape. Deciphering Derrida's description of witnessing through literature, this paper also recommends that women's writing literature can be an effective way for women to testify independently of the various gendered political disciplining gazes that hold them back from giving testimonies and then gain liberations.

The ancient dream of international criminal jurisdiction is gradually becoming a reality. Article 227 of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles provided that German Emperor Wilhelm II should be tried by an international court to answer charges of “flagrant offences against international morality and the sacred authority of treaties”. But since the Netherlands refused to give up the accused, the trial never took place, and Wilhelm II died in exile in Holland in 1941. Articles 228 and 229 of the Treaty providing for the prosecution of war criminals were applied in a disappointing way in the Leipzig trial. The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after the Second World War undeniably represented progress towards the creation of a body with truly international criminal jurisdiction, but they were greatly influenced by their origins and in effect applied the law and justice of the victors rather than those of the universal community of States.

The environment is a victim of various armed conflicts that occur in some parts of the world. Such as Congo war in 1998 that create environmental damage like deployment of the HIV-AIDS virus, the extinction of national parks, wildlife poaching and the forest burning. In addition the Rwanda civil war in 1994 affected the loss of biodiversity, natural resources and population decline in rare animals such as the African Gorillas. While the former Yugoslavia war in 1991 that impact in environmental pollution of water, air and land that threaten human survival.The environment becomes a victim when the war was happend its caused the human, but on the other side, the environment can’t be separated from human life because somehow humans need the environment to. However, when the war was happend human can’t maintaining the environment even though there have been rules that regulate about the protection of the environment when the war takes place. Therefore, its necessary to analysed an environmental protection in armed conflict according to international humanitarian law.This research is discusses about how an environmental protection in armed conflict according to international humanitarian law, which aims to explain the regulations that apply to protect the environment at the armed conflict. This research uses normative law approach (literature research).The results of this study show that environmental protection in armed conflict is regulated in the conventions of international humanitarian law both from the Hague Law and the Geneva Law. In The Hague law the environmental protection is governed by the IV Hague Convention 1907of respecting the laws and customs of war and land Art 23 (g) and Art 55. In the Geneva Law an environmental protection is contained in the IV Geneva Convention 1949 Art 53 and Additional Protocol I in 1977 Art 35 (3), 54, 55, 56, 59, and Art 68. Basically both of Geneva and Hague Law against the use of weapons during the war that have an effected in environmental damage and the existence of precautions in the war on environmental protection life. Beside the Geneva and the Hague Law there are have other arrangements to protect the environment in the event of a war that is in ENMOD Convention Art 1 and 2.

Memory is a highly contested notion insofar as it is claimed by the collective (Halbwachs, Young) and deployed within a variety of political and socio-cultural contexts. For Viet Thanh Nguyen, the �true war story� can be told by those who lived through it, thereby wresting power from �men and soldiers� and dominant structures (Nothing Ever Dies, Harvard UP, 2017: 243). Examining the dialectics of remembering and forgetting, this article examines narratives which reclaim memory as a personal and as a collective plea to understand the structural discrepancy at play from the child, who is victim of war. It examines the memoir of a Tutsi refugee child, Moi, le dernier Tutsi (C. Habonimana, Plon R�cit, 2019) and an autobiographical narrative by a Vietnamese refugee in Canada, Ru (K. Th�y, Liana L�vi, 2010), to gauge the extent to which such narratives create their own memorial spaces and in so doing reclaim their marginal memories and centre them, while grappling with the imperative to forget. Ultimately it tests Nguyen�s theory that memory can be just and that in this ethical recoding of memory, the humanity and inhumanity of both sides is underlined.

This article proposes the concept “extra-lethal violence” to focus analytic attention on the acts of physical, face-to-face violence that transgress shared norms about the proper treatment of persons and bodies. Examples of extra-lethal violence include forcing victims to dance and sing before killing them, souvenir-taking and mutilation. The main puzzle of extra-lethal violence is why it occurs at all given the time and effort it takes to enact such brutalities and the potential repercussions perpetrators risk by doing so. Current approaches cannot account for this puzzle because extra-lethal violence seems to follow a different logic from strategic calculation. To investigate one alternative logic—the logic of display—the article proposes a performative analytic framework. A performative lens focuses attention on the process by which actors stage violence for graphic effect. It highlights the range of roles, participants, and activities that contribute to the production process as a whole. To demonstrate the value of a performative approach, the article applies this framework to three very different extra-lethal episodes: the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam War, the rape and killing of two women during the Rwandan genocide, and a lynching that took place in rural Maryland. The article concludes by sketching a typology of performance processes and by considering the policy implications of this type of theorizing and knowledge.

After the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the United Nations Security Council moved quickly to establish an international tribunal to indict the architects of the slaughter. Whether motivated by a sincere desire for international justice or a self-serving desire to assuage international guilt for the lack of significant military intervention, one thing is clear: the Security Council began a program that, when coupled with its establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, represented the most significant return to international criminal justice since the Allied prosecution of German war criminals at Nuremberg. But so much had changed since 1951. Whereas the Nuremberg Tribunal imposed death sentences for the most culpable instigators of the Holocaust, there would be no death sentences for the architects of the Hutu genocidal campaign against the Tutsi. Over the course of forty years, there was a sea shift in attitudes about the legality of the death penalty. When the Allies announced their decision to apply the death penalty at Nuremberg, few objected or suggested that executions would violate international human rights law. Indeed, Churchill was initially suspicious of the plan for a war crimes tribunal, having assumed that what remained of the Nazi leadership would simply be executed on the battlefield. As the proceedings unfolded, there were isolated calls for leniency and clemency, and even complaints of victors’ justice, but certainly no suggestion that executions violated international law as such.

AbstractWaging war appears to be a constant feature of human behaviour. Until World War II, violations of the Law of War were generally punishable before national tribunals; this practice, however, proved unsatisfactory. The Nuremberg and Tokyo International War Crimes Tribunals appeared as the first successful attempts to delocalise proceedings related thereto, bearing in mind the absolute primacy of inflicting exemplary punishment on the guilty. The International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda upheld an extended definition of punishable crimes under Conventional and/or Customary Law, while instituting more guarantees of fairness, i.e.: judges chosen from outside the warring parties, rejection of the death penalty, awarding compensation to victims and ensuring the protection of witnesses. Despite the application of ex posto facto law, it is worth recalling that human rights protection is clearly identified as an essential focus of the later ad hoc tribunals. However, only the institution of a permanent international criminal tribunal seems conductive to setting the seal on the determination of the international community to put in place an effective deterrent to resorting to war as a means of settling inter-societal disputes.

We present, in a synthetic way, some of the main findings from ten studies that were conducted in the field of ethics in politics, using the Functional Measurement framework. These studies were about (a) Angolan and Mozambican people’s views about the legitimacy of military-humanitarian interventions, (b) French people’s perspectives regarding the government’s responsibility for the health of consumers of illicit substances, (c) Togolese people’s views about the acceptability of political amnesties in a time of political transition, (d) the perspective of victims of the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda regarding the attribution of guilt by association to offspring of perpetrators, (e) slave descendants’ views about the acceptability of national policies on reparations for slavery, (f) Colombian people’s willingness to forgive perpetrators of violence who harmed family members during the civil war, (g) the attitudes of French and Colombian people about national drug control policies, (h) Indian students’ views about the appropriateness of the death penalty for murder or rape, (i) Colombian people’s perspectives regarding corruption, and finally (j) Venezuelan people’s conceptualization of human rights. The main findings are discussed in reference to six of the foundations of Moral Foundations Theory.

In July 2005, while European heads of state attended memorials to mark the ten year anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide and court trials continued in The Hague at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Bosnian-American artist Aida Sehovic presented the aftermath of this genocide on a day-to-day level through her art installation in memory of the victims of Srebrenica. Drawing on the Bosnian tradition of coming together for coffee, this installation, ‘Što te Nema?’ (Why are you not here?), comprised a collection of tiny white porcelain cups (‘fildzans’ in Bosnian) arranged in the geographic shape of Srebrenica in the lobby of the United Nations building in New York. It was to represent Europe’s worst mass killing since the Second World War, which took place in July 1995 in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb troops overran the internationally protected enclave (The Guardian). The cups were gathered from Bosnian families in the United States of America and Bosnia & Herzegovina, and in particular from members of ‘Zene Srebrenice’ (‘the women of Srebrenica’). Each of the 1,705 cups represented one exhumed, identified and re-buried victim of the Srebrenica genocide (1,705 at July 2005). The cups were filled either with coffee or, in the case of victims not yet 18 and therefore not old enough at the time of their death to have participated in the coffee tradition, with sugar cubes. The names and birth dates of the victims were recited on an audio loop. Genocide is the methodical destruction of the existence of a people. It is noted through the ‘UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’ that genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity throughout history (UNHCHR). Tribunals, such as the ICTY, with their focus on justice, are formal and responsibility-based modes of responding to genocide. Society seeks justice, but raising awareness around genocide through the telling and hearing of the individual story is also required. Responding to genocide and communicating its existence through artistic expression has been a valuable way of bearing witness to such a horrendous and immense crime against humanity. Art can address the gaps in healing and understanding that cannot be addressed through tribunals. From Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, to the children’s pictures triggered by the Rwandan genocide, to the ‘War Rugs’ of Afghanistan and to vast installations such as Peter Eisenman’s recently opened Holocaust memorial in Berlin; art has proved a powerful medium for representing such atrocities and attempting to find healing after genocide. Artworks such as Sehovic’s ‘Što te Nema?’ give insight into the personal experience of genocide while challenging indifference and maintaining memory. For the affected communities, this addresses the impact on individuals; the human cost and the loss of everyday experiences. As Srebrenica survivor Emir Suljagic comments, “when you tell someone that 10,000 people died, they cannot understand or imagine that. What I want to say is that these people were peasants, car mechanics or masons. That they had daughters, mothers, that they leave someone behind; that a lot of people are hurt by this person’s death” (qtd. in Vulliamy). ‘Što te Nema?’ transmits this personal dimension of genocide by using an everyday situation of showing hospitality with family and friends, which is familiar and practised in most cultural experiences, juxtaposed with the loss of a family member who is missing as a result of genocide. This transmits the notion of genocide into the sphere of common experience, attachment and emotion. It acts as an invitation to explore the impact of genocide beyond the impersonal statistics and the aloof legalese of the courtroom drama. Beyond providing a representation of the facts or emotions around genocide, art provides a way of responding to a crime, which, by its nature, is generally difficult to comprehend. Art can offer a mode of giving testimony and providing catharsis about events which are not easily approached or discussed. As Sehovic says of ‘Što te Nema?’ (it) is a way of healing for Bosnians, coming to terms with this terrible thing that happened to us … it is building a bridge of understanding where Bosnian people are coming from, because it is very hard to talk about these things (qtd. in Vermont Quarterly Magazine). For its receiver, genocide art, with all its capacity to arouse our emotions and empathy, transmits something that we cannot see or engage with in the factual reporting of genocide or in a political analysis of the topic. Through art, it is possible to encounter genocide at an individual, personal level. As Mödersheim points out, we seem to need symbolic expressions to help us understand, and deal with the complex nature of events so horrific that reason and emotion fail to grasp their magnitude. To the intellect, many aspects of these experiences are unfathomable, and yet to keep our humanity we need to understand them … where words and explanations fail, we look for images (Mödersheim 18). An artist’s responses to genocide can vary from the need of survivors to create actual depictions of the atrocities, to more abstract portrayals of the emotional response to acts of genocide. Art that is created by survivors or witnesses to the genocide demonstrates a documentation and testament to what has occurred – a symbolic act of transmitting the personal experience of genocide. Artistic responses to genocide by those, such as Sehovic, who did not witness the event first hand, express how genocide “remains deeply felt to the point where we could not say it has ended” (Morris 329). Such art represents the continuation and global repercussions of genocide. The question of what ‘genocide art’ means to the neutral or removed viewer or society is also significant. Art is often associated with pleasure. Issues of mass killing and war are often not the types of topics one wishes to view on a trip to an art gallery. However, art has a more crucial function as a social reflector. It is often the reaction of non-acceptance of such artworks which indicates how society wishes to consider questions of genocide or of war in general. For example, Rayner Hoff’s 1932 war memorial ‘The Crucifixion of Civilisation 1914’ was rejected for display because it was considered too confronting and controversial in its depiction of a naked, tortured female victim of war in a Christ-like pose. As Picasso commented, “painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy” (qtd. in Mödersheim 15). In discussing the art that emerged from the Sierra Leone Civil War, Ross notes, “as our stomachs and hearts turn over at such sights, we get a small taste of what the artists felt. Even as we look at the images and experience the horror, disgust and anger that comes with knowing that they really happened, we realise that if these images are to be understood as reports from the field, serving the same function as photojournalism, it means that we have been sheltered from this type of reporting from our own news sources” (Ross 39). Here, art can address the often cursory acknowledgment given to ‘events which happen in faraway places’ and lend an insight into the personal. As Adorno notes, “history in artworks is not something made, and history alone frees the work from being merely something posited or manufactured” (133). Here we see the indivisibility of the genocide (the ‘history’) from the artwork – that what is seen is not mere ‘depiction’ but art’s ability to turn the anonymous statistics or the unknown genocide into the realisation of a brutal annihilation of individual human beings – to bring history to life as it were. What the viewer does after viewing such art is perhaps immaterial; the important thing is that they now know. But why is it important to know and important to remember? It has been argued that genocides which occurred in places like Srebrenica and Rwanda happened because the international community did not know or refused to recognise the events to the point of initially declining to apply the term ‘genocide’ to Srebrenica and settling for the more sanitised term ‘ethnic cleansing’ (Bringa 196). It would be nave and even condescending to argue that ‘Što te Nema?’ or any of the myriad other artistic responses to genocide have the possibility of undoing a genocide such as that which took place in Srebrenica, or even the hope of preventing another genocide. However, it is in transporting genocide into the personal realm that the message is transmitted and ignorance to the event can no longer be claimed. The concept of genocide can be too horrendous and vast to take in; art, whilst making it no less horrific, transmits the message to and confronts the viewer at a more direct and personal level. Such art provokes and provides a starting point for comment and debate. Art also stands as a lasting memorial to those who have lost their lives as a result of genocide and as a reminder to humanity that to ignore, underestimate or forget genocide makes possible its recurrence. References Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory. Trans. by Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Bringa, Tone. “Averted Gaze: Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992-1995.” Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide. Ed: Alexander Hinton Laban. London: University of California Press, 2002. 194-225. Kohn, Rachael. “War Memorials, Sublime & Scandalous.” Radio National 14 August 2005. 12 December 2005 http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/ark/stories/s1433477.htm>. Mödersheim, Sabine. “Art and War.” Representations of Violence: Art about the Sierra Leone Civil War. Ed. Chris Corcoran, Abu-Hassan Koroma, P.K. Muana. Chicago, 2004. 15-20. Morris, Daniel. “Jewish Artists in New York: The Holocaust Years.” American Jewish History 90.3 (September 2002): 329-331. Ross, Mariama. “Bearing Witness.” Representations of Violence: Art about the Sierra Leone Civil War. Ed. Chris Corcoran, Abu-Hassan Koroma, P.K. Muana. Chicago, 2004. 37-40. The Guardian. “Massacre at Srebrenica: Interactive Guide.” May 2005. 5 November 2005 http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/0,5860,474564,00.html>. United Nations. “International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.” 10 January 2006 http://www.un.org/icty/>. UNHCHR. “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” 1951. 3 January 2006 http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm>. Vermont Quarterly Magazine. “Cups of Memory.” Winter 2005. 1 December 2005 http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/vq/vqwinter05/aidasehovic.html>. Vulliamy, Ed. “Srebrenica Ten Years On.” June 2005. 10 February 2006 http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-yugoslavia/srebrenica_2651.jsp>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hawkes, Martine. "Transmitting Genocide: Genocide and Art." M/C Journal 9.1 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/09-hawkes.php>. APA Style Hawkes, M. (Mar. 2006) "Transmitting Genocide: Genocide and Art," M/C Journal, 9(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/09-hawkes.php>.

Mass killing (often carried out in the form of genocide) offends the sensibilities of many people around the world. It is considered a “crime against humanity,” such is its barbarity and ruthlessness. When it occurs, the question often asked by both victims and bystanders is, “Why?” I argue in this paper that mass killing is not, as is often portrayed, the result of primal bloodlust or racism. Through an examination of the Third Punic War, the Boer War, World War II, and the Rwandan genocide, I show that mass killing is actually carried out as a rational means to a political end; that is, it is simply politics by other means. If mass killing is a combination of politics and lethal violence, however, can it be called war? I argue that mass killing, while bearing similarities to and often occurring simultaneously as warfare, is nonetheless different from war because it does not require multiple sides actively fighting each other, as war does.

History is not over and that includes media history. Jay Rosen (Zelizer & Allan 33) The media in their reporting on terrorism tend to be judgmental, inflammatory, and sensationalistic. — Susan D. Moeller (169) In short, we are directed in time, and our relation to the future is different than our relation to the past. All our questions are conditioned by this asymmetry, and all our answers to these questions are equally conditioned by it. Norbert Wiener (44) The Clash of Geopolitical Pundits America’s geo-strategic engagement with the world underwent a dramatic shift in the decade after the Cold War ended. United States military forces undertook a series of humanitarian interventions from northern Iraq (1991) and Somalia (1992) to NATO’s bombing campaign on Kosovo (1999). Wall Street financial speculators embraced market-oriented globalization and technology-based industries (Friedman 1999). Meanwhile the geo-strategic pundits debated several different scenarios at deeper layers of epistemology and macrohistory including the breakdown of nation-states (Kaplan), the ‘clash of civilizations’ along religiopolitical fault-lines (Huntington) and the fashionable ‘end of history’ thesis (Fukuyama). Media theorists expressed this geo-strategic shift in reference to the ‘CNN Effect’: the power of real-time media ‘to provoke major responses from domestic audiences and political elites to both global and national events’ (Robinson 2). This media ecology is often contrasted with ‘Gateholder’ and ‘Manufacturing Consent’ models. The ‘CNN Effect’ privileges humanitarian and non-government organisations whereas the latter models focus upon the conformist mind-sets and shared worldviews of government and policy decision-makers. The September 11 attacks generated an uncertain interdependency between the terrorists, government officials, and favourable media coverage. It provided a test case, as had the humanitarian interventions (Robinson 37) before it, to test the claim by proponents that the ‘CNN Effect’ had policy leverage during critical stress points. The attacks also revived a long-running debate in media circles about the risk factors of global media. McLuhan (1964) and Ballard (1990) had prophesied that the global media would pose a real-time challenge to decision-making processes and that its visual imagery would have unforeseen psychological effects on viewers. Wark (1994) noted that journalists who covered real-time events including the Wall Street crash (1987) and collapse of the Berlin Wall (1989) were traumatised by their ‘virtual’ geographies. The ‘War on Terror’ as 21st Century Myth Three recent books explore how the 1990s humanitarian interventions and the September 11 attacks have remapped this ‘virtual’ territory with all too real consequences. Piers Robinson’s The CNN Effect (2002) critiques the theory and proposes the policy-media interaction model. Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan’s anthology Journalism After September 11 (2002) examines how September 11 affected the journalists who covered it and the implications for news values. Sandra Silberstein’s War of Words (2002) uncovers how strategic language framed the U.S. response to September 11. Robinson provides the contextual background; Silberstein contributes the specifics; and Zelizer and Allan surface broader perspectives. These books offer insights into the social construction of the nebulous War on Terror and why certain images and trajectories were chosen at the expense of other possibilities. Silberstein locates this world-historical moment in the three-week transition between September 11’s aftermath and the U.S. bombings of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. Descriptions like the ‘War on Terror’ and ‘Axis of Evil’ framed the U.S. military response, provided a conceptual justification for the bombings, and also brought into being the geo-strategic context for other nations. The crucial element in this process was when U.S. President George W. Bush adopted a pedagogical style for his public speeches, underpinned by the illusions of communal symbols and shared meanings (Silberstein 6-8). Bush’s initial address to the nation on September 11 invoked the ambiguous pronoun ‘we’ to recreate ‘a unified nation, under God’ (Silberstein 4). The 1990s humanitarian interventions had frequently been debated in Daniel Hallin’s sphere of ‘legitimate controversy’; however the grammar used by Bush and his political advisers located the debate in the sphere of ‘consensus’. This brief period of enforced consensus was reinforced by the structural limitations of North American media outlets. September 11 combined ‘tragedy, public danger and a grave threat to national security’, Michael Schudson observed, and in the aftermath North American journalism shifted ‘toward a prose of solidarity rather than a prose of information’ (Zelizer & Allan 41). Debate about why America was hated did not go much beyond Bush’s explanation that ‘they hated our freedoms’ (Silberstein 14). Robert W. McChesney noted that alternatives to the ‘war’ paradigm were rarely mentioned in the mainstream media (Zelizer & Allan 93). A new myth for the 21st century had been unleashed. The Cycle of Integration Propaganda Journalistic prose masked the propaganda of social integration that atomised the individual within a larger collective (Ellul). The War on Terror was constructed by geopolitical pundits as a Manichean battle between ‘an “evil” them and a national us’ (Silberstein 47). But the national crisis made ‘us’ suddenly problematic. Resurgent patriotism focused on the American flag instead of Constitutional rights. Debates about military tribunals and the USA Patriot Act resurrected the dystopian fears of a surveillance society. New York City mayor Rudy Guiliani suddenly became a leadership icon and Time magazine awarded him Person of the Year (Silberstein 92). Guiliani suggested at the Concert for New York on 20 October 2001 that ‘New Yorkers and Americans have been united as never before’ (Silberstein 104). Even the series of Public Service Announcements created by the Ad Council and U.S. advertising agencies succeeded in blurring the lines between cultural tolerance, social inclusion, and social integration (Silberstein 108-16). In this climate the in-depth discussion of alternate options and informed dissent became thought-crimes. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s report Defending Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America (2002), which singled out “blame America first” academics, ignited a firestorm of debate about educational curriculums, interpreting history, and the limits of academic freedom. Silberstein’s perceptive analysis surfaces how ACTA assumed moral authority and collective misunderstandings as justification for its interrogation of internal enemies. The errors she notes included presumed conclusions, hasty generalisations, bifurcated worldviews, and false analogies (Silberstein 133, 135, 139, 141). Op-ed columnists soon exposed ACTA’s gambit as a pre-packaged witch-hunt. But newscasters then channel-skipped into military metaphors as the Afghanistan campaign began. The weeks after the attacks New York City sidewalk traders moved incense and tourist photos to make way for World Trade Center memorabilia and anti-Osama shirts. Chevy and Ford morphed September 11 catchphrases (notably Todd Beamer’s last words “Let’s Roll” on Flight 93) and imagery into car advertising campaigns (Silberstein 124-5). American self-identity was finally reasserted in the face of a domestic recession through this wave of vulgar commercialism. The ‘Simulated’ Fall of Elite Journalism For Columbia University professor James Carey the ‘failure of journalism on September 11’ signaled the ‘collapse of the elites of American journalism’ (Zelizer & Allan 77). Carey traces the rise-and-fall of adversarial and investigative journalism from the Pentagon Papers and Watergate through the intermediation of the press to the myopic self-interest of the 1988 and 1992 Presidential campaigns. Carey’s framing echoes the earlier criticisms of Carl Bernstein and Hunter S. Thompson. However this critique overlooks several complexities. Piers Robinson cites Alison Preston’s insight that diplomacy, geopolitics and elite reportage defines itself through the sense of distance from its subjects. Robinson distinguished between two reportage types: distance framing ‘creates emotional distance’ between the viewers and victims whilst support framing accepts the ‘official policy’ (28). The upsurge in patriotism, the vulgar commercialism, and the mini-cycle of memorabilia and publishing all combined to enhance the support framing of the U.S. federal government. Empathy generated for September 11’s victims was tied to support of military intervention. However this closeness rapidly became the distance framing of the Afghanistan campaign. News coverage recycled the familiar visuals of in-progress bombings and Taliban barbarians. The alternative press, peace movements, and social activists then retaliated against this coverage by reinstating the support framing that revealed structural violence and gave voice to silenced minorities and victims. What really unfolded after September 11 was not the demise of journalism’s elite but rather the renegotiation of reportage boundaries and shared meanings. Journalists scoured the Internet for eyewitness accounts and to interview survivors (Zelizer & Allan 129). The same medium was used by others to spread conspiracy theories and viral rumors that numerology predicted the date September 11 or that the “face of Satan” could be seen in photographs of the World Trade Center (Zelizer & Allan 133). Karim H. Karim notes that the Jihad frame of an “Islamic Peril” was socially constructed by media outlets but then challenged by individual journalists who had learnt ‘to question the essentialist bases of her own socialization and placing herself in the Other’s shoes’ (Zelizer & Allan 112). Other journalists forgot that Jihad and McWorld were not separate but two intertwined worldviews that fed upon each other. The September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center also had deep symbolic resonances for American sociopolitical ideals that some journalists explored through analysis of myths and metaphors. The Rise of Strategic Geography However these renegotiated boundariesof new media, multiperspectival frames, and ‘layered’ depth approaches to issues analysiswere essentially minority reports. The rationalist mode of journalism was soon reasserted through normative appeals to strategic geography. The U.S. networks framed their documentaries on Islam and the Middle East in bluntly realpolitik terms. The documentary “Minefield: The United States and the Muslim World” (ABC, 11 October 2001) made explicit strategic assumptions of ‘the U.S. as “managing” the region’ and ‘a definite tinge of superiority’ (Silberstein 153). ABC and CNN stressed the similarities between the world’s major monotheistic religions and their scriptural doctrines. Both networks limited their coverage of critiques and dissent to internecine schisms within these traditions (Silberstein 158). CNN also created different coverage for its North American and international audiences. The BBC was more cautious in its September 11 coverage and more global in outlook. Three United Kingdom specials – Panorama (Clash of Cultures, BBC1, 21 October 2001), Question Time (Question Time Special, BBC1, 13 September 2001), and “War Without End” (War on Trial, Channel 4, 27 October 2001) – drew upon the British traditions of parliamentary assembly, expert panels, and legal trials as ways to explore the multiple dimensions of the ‘War on Terror’ (Zelizer & Allan 180). These latter debates weren’t value free: the programs sanctioned ‘a tightly controlled and hierarchical agora’ through different containment strategies (Zelizer & Allan 183). Program formats, selected experts and presenters, and editorial/on-screen graphics were factors that pre-empted the viewer’s experience and conclusions. The traditional emphasis of news values on the expert was renewed. These subtle forms of thought-control enabled policy-makers to inform the public whilst inoculating them against terrorist propaganda. However the ‘CNN Effect’ also had counter-offensive capabilities. Osama bin Laden’s videotaped sermons and the al-Jazeera network’s broadcasts undermined the psychological operations maxim that enemies must not gain access to the mindshare of domestic audiences. Ingrid Volkmer recounts how the Los Angeles based National Iranian Television Network used satellite broadcasts to criticize the Iranian leadership and spark public riots (Zelizer & Allan 242). These incidents hint at why the ‘War on Terror’ myth, now unleashed upon the world, may become far more destabilizing to the world system than previous conflicts. Risk Reportage and Mediated Trauma When media analysts were considering the ‘CNN Effect’ a group of social contract theorists including Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, and Ulrich Beck were debating, simultaneously, the status of modernity and the ‘unbounded contours’ of globalization. Beck termed this new environment of escalating uncertainties and uninsurable dangers the ‘world risk society’ (Beck). Although they drew upon constructivist and realist traditions Beck and Giddens ‘did not place risk perception at the center of their analysis’ (Zelizer & Allan 203). Instead this was the role of journalist as ‘witness’ to Ballard-style ‘institutionalized disaster areas’. The terrorist attacks on September 11 materialized this risk and obliterated the journalistic norms of detachment and objectivity. The trauma ‘destabilizes a sense of self’ within individuals (Zelizer & Allan 205) and disrupts the image-generating capacity of collective societies. Barbie Zelizer found that the press selection of September 11 photos and witnesses re-enacted the ‘Holocaust aesthetic’ created when Allied Forces freed the Nazi internment camps in 1945 (Zelizer & Allan 55-7). The visceral nature of September 11 imagery inverted the trend, from the Gulf War to NATO’s Kosovo bombings, for news outlets to depict war in detached video-game imagery (Zelizer & Allan 253). Coverage of the September 11 attacks and the subsequent Bali bombings (on 12 October 2002) followed a four-part pattern news cycle of assassinations and terrorism (Moeller 164-7). Moeller found that coverage moved from the initial event to a hunt for the perpetrators, public mourning, and finally, a sense of closure ‘when the media reassert the supremacy of the established political and social order’ (167). In both events the shock of the initial devastation was rapidly followed by the arrest of al Qaeda and Jamaah Islamiyah members, the creation and copying of the New York Times ‘Portraits of Grief’ template, and the mediation of trauma by a re-established moral order. News pundits had clearly studied the literature on bereavement and grief cycles (Kubler-Ross). However the neo-noir work culture of some outlets also fueled bitter disputes about how post-traumatic stress affected journalists themselves (Zelizer & Allan 253). Reconfiguring the Future After September 11 the geopolitical pundits, a reactive cycle of integration propaganda, pecking order shifts within journalism elites, strategic language, and mediated trauma all combined to bring a specific future into being. This outcome reflected the ‘media-state relationship’ in which coverage ‘still reflected policy preferences of parts of the U.S. elite foreign-policy-making community’ (Robinson 129). Although Internet media and non-elite analysts embraced Hallin’s ‘sphere of deviance’ there is no clear evidence yet that they have altered the opinions of policy-makers. The geopolitical segue from September 11 into the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq also has disturbing implications for the ‘CNN Effect’. Robinson found that its mythic reputation was overstated and tied to issues of policy certainty that the theory’s proponents often failed to examine. Media coverage molded a ‘domestic constituency ... for policy-makers to take action in Somalia’ (Robinson 62). He found greater support in ‘anecdotal evidence’ that the United Nations Security Council’s ‘safe area’ for Iraqi Kurds was driven by Turkey’s geo-strategic fears of ‘unwanted Kurdish refugees’ (Robinson 71). Media coverage did impact upon policy-makers to create Bosnian ‘safe areas’, however, ‘the Kosovo, Rwanda, and Iraq case studies’ showed that the ‘CNN Effect’ was unlikely as a key factor ‘when policy certainty exists’ (Robinson 118). The clear implication from Robinson’s studies is that empathy framing, humanitarian values, and searing visual imagery won’t be enough to challenge policy-makers. What remains to be done? Fortunately there are some possibilities that straddle the pragmatic, realpolitik and emancipatory approaches. Today’s activists and analysts are also aware of the dangers of ‘unfreedom’ and un-reflective dissent (Fromm). Peter Gabriel’s organisation Witness, which documents human rights abuses, is one benchmark of how to use real-time media and the video camera in an effective way. The domains of anthropology, negotiation studies, neuro-linguistics, and social psychology offer valuable lessons on techniques of non-coercive influence. The emancipatory tradition of futures studies offers a rich tradition of self-awareness exercises, institution rebuilding, and social imaging, offsets the pragmatic lure of normative scenarios. The final lesson from these books is that activists and analysts must co-adapt as the ‘War on Terror’ mutates into new and terrifying forms. Works Cited Amis, Martin. “Fear and Loathing.” The Guardian (18 Sep. 2001). 1 March 2001 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4259170,00.php>. Ballard, J.G. The Atrocity Exhibition (rev. ed.). Los Angeles: V/Search Publications, 1990. Beck, Ulrich. World Risk Society. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 1999. Ellul, Jacques. 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War of Words: Language, Politics and 9/11. New York: Routledge, 2002. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1948. Zelizer, Barbie, and Stuart Allan (eds.). Journalism after September 11. New York: Routledge, 2002. Links http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Burns, Alex. "The Worldflash of a Coming Future" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/08-worldflash.php>. APA Style Burns, A. (2003, Apr 23). The Worldflash of a Coming Future. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/08-worldflash.php>