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20th Century Mass Killings Remembered

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  • 20th Century Mass Killings Remembered

    20TH CENTURY MASS KILLINGS REMEMBERED

    http://lincolntribune.com/?p=9847
    Submitted by Mike O'Sullivan on April 18, 2011

    Two of the worst atrocities of the 20th century started in the month of
    April: the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Empire Turkey
    in 1915 and 1916, and the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate
    Hutus in Rwanda in 1994. Scholars and survivors say the process of
    healing is not easy.

    Donald Miller, who directs the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at
    the University of Southern California, interviewed Armenian survivors
    in the 1970s and '80s. He also has collected the stories of those
    orphaned and widowed by the Rwanda massacre.

    He said several themes emerge from the interviews, most recently in
    Rwanda. "One thing is that forgiveness is extremely difficult. And in
    our experience of doing 100 interviews, that is the exceptional case.

    In fact, what we found is that some individuals are so traumatized that
    they may say that they have forgiven the perpetrators of this genocide,
    but they say so almost with a spirit of resignation in their voice,
    as if, 'we have no other choice,'" said Miller.

    He said that in Rwanda there is an effort is to bring about
    reconciliation through community courts, where perpetrators ask for
    forgiveness and the victims generally give it. He said it is often
    not clear, however, that the forgiveness is heartfelt.

    The killings in Armenia took place in connection with forced
    deportations of the Armenian Christian minority in the largely Muslim
    Ottoman Empire. Historian Richard Hovannisian of the University of
    California, Los Angeles, recalls that it started in the imperial
    capital.

    "In April, 1915, the Armenian intellectual, political, religious
    leaders in Constantinople were arrested, deported and most of them
    killed. And then followed in the following months, the mass deportation
    and massacres of Armenians throughout the Ottoman Empire through forced
    marches, outright killing of the male population, forced marches of
    the woman and children," said Hovannisian. "And the place of so-called
    relocation, for those who made it - not many did, but those who did -
    were the deserts."

    In the documentary The River Ran Red from the Armenian Film Foundation,
    a survivor tells about his experience. The interview was recorded in
    1985, and the man recalled what he witnessed as a child.

    "In the morning, I walked and walked. I saw a boy. Together, we found a
    girl and we hid in the forest. We saw the Turks looking for Armenians
    in forest. At night, they would massacre the men. During the day,
    the women and the boys. We were lying down in the blood.  We woke up
    among the dead."

    The events occurred after the Ottomans entered World War I, and Turkey
    still insists there were civilian deaths on all sides in the confusion
    of war. It says Armenians were deported from the Eastern war zone
    because of fear of unrest and concerns that the Armenian minority
    could aid the enemy, Russia. Turkey also disputes the numbers, saying
    no more than 600,000 Armenians died, and not by intent.

    Hovannisian said the question remains politically sensitive because
    of the strategic importance of Turkey as a bridge to the Muslim world.

    "Some would prefer to avoid it. For example, President Obama, who as
    candidate Obama insisted one of the first things he would do would be
    to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, has skirted the issue by using
    an Armenian term, which is the equivalent of genocide, but does not
    say genocide. It is the Armenian word [Meds] Yeghern, which means
    the Great Crime, the Great Event, the Great Tragedy, rather than
    the word itself. So it does not make the Turkish government happy,
    but on the other hand, it is not the G-word."

    The historian notes that President Woodrow Wilson condemned the
    massacre at the time it happened, and Wilson's ambassador to the
    Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, would call it the murder of a nation.

    The Rwanda genocide began April 6, 1994, when ethnic tensions flared
    after the assassination of Rwanda president Juvenal Habyarimana,
    who was an ethnic Hutu. The Hutu power movement then targeted Tutsis
    for elimination.

    Yvette Rugasaguhunga, a Tutsi, survived the Rwanda massacre. Now
    a financial analyst in New York, she has been living in the United
    States for seven years.

    She recalls that on the third day of the genocide, her father was
    killed. "My father was lucky enough to be shot. He was taken inside
    of a home. They shot him in front of my grandmother, who begged them
    to kill her as well, and they shot her," said Rugasaguhunga.

    The same day, her 22-year old brother was caught and killed by
    clubbing. She would lose another brother and two sisters in the
    killings.

    Ironically, Yvette and her sisters were shielded by a neighboring
    Hutu family, and were later sheltered by a Hutu militiaman who was
    unaware of their ethnic background. She said the man was loving and
    warm in his dealings with the girls, but returned home each day from
    the killings covered in blood.

    "And to me, that is something that I can never completely comprehend,"
    she said. "What it taught me is, any human being can be evil, and
    any human being can be an angel."

    Religion scholar Donald Miller said these were Christians killing
    Christians, and some churchmen were involved.

    "In fact, one survivor that I interviewed said that his own Catholic
    priest refused to serve him communion, or the Eucharist, because he
    said, 'I do not give the body and blood of Christ to cockroaches.' And
    so when you identify someone as a cockroach or in the case of the
    Armenian genocide as an infidel, they become less than human, and
    there is then a campaign to exterminate these individuals who do not
    have the same social and civil rights as the rest of the population."

    Miller said that modern technology, including the use of mass media to
    motivate the killers, made the 20th century a century of genocides,
    from Armenia and the Nazi Holocaust to Rwanda. Mass killings in
    Cambodia, Darfur and Southern Sudan have added other atrocities to
    the tragic list.

    Rugasaguhunga said reconciliation in Rwanda must begin with justice.

    She noted that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has
    completed barely 50 trials, and she hopes for the prosecution of more
    of the ringleaders.

    Hovannisian said that acknowledging the crime is a crucial first
    step to reconciliation, and he said that in Turkey's case, that has
    not happened.




    From: A. Papazian
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