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A CAMBODIAN GENOCIDE TRIBUNAL AND LEMKIN'S LEGACY
The Diplomat
July 18 2014
A now obscure author finds relevance and rebirth at the trial of two
former Khmer Rouge leaders.
By Luke Hunt
It was a word that gave meaning to the greatest crimes of the 20th
century. Spawned from the massacre of the Armenians during World War
I and the final days of the Ottoman Empire, the term genocide was set
in stone following the Holocaust and has since become synonymous with
Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia and Cambodia.
But the man who coined the phrase, Raphael Lemkin, had been largely
forgotten by history until recently, when A Problem from Hell:
America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power was published,
and sparked an academic push to raise Lemkin's stature and find a
more fitting place for his work within the public conscience.
He has been described by some as a slightly obnoxious crusader,
obsessive and annoying, but Peter Maguire, an academic, authority on
the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and author of Law & War said Lemkin's work
was useful for planning the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals after
World War II.
"Not content to simply try individuals for recognized violations of
the laws of war, the architects of the Nuremberg trials proposed trying
Nazi organizations for conspiring to commit aggressive war and borrowed
Raphael Lemkin's argument from his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe."
"Lemkin held that the SS, Gestapo, and other Nazi organizations were
an international version of La Cosa Nostra - a criminal organization
of volunteer gangsters," Maguire added. "The concept of conspiracy
would also close legal loopholes that might allow guilty men to
escape punishment."
Lemkin was Polish, born into a poor Jewish family in 1900, and coined
the phrase genocide by combining the Greek word "genos," which means
race or tribe, with the Latin word "cide," meaning to kill - in 1944
after escaping Axis rule in occupied Europe.
His work is also about to find additional stature in Cambodia, where
surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge - Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan
- are about to go on trial for genocide. And a separate verdict is
expected on August 7, in their case of crimes against humanity.
Youk Chhang, Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia has
spent almost two decades collating evidence of atrocities committed
by the Khmer Rouge for a trial of surviving leaders currently underway
in Phnom Penh.
He said one of the principal struggles the world faces in preventing
genocide has remained unchanged for the last 60 years.
"Discrimination, racism, bullying and the entire spectrum of inhumanity
that leads up to the legitimization of violence on fellow human beings
is dealt with at the individual and community level, and there is no
more efficient medium for dealing with these preconditions of genocide
than the medium of genocide education."
Pol Pot ruled Cambodia with a brutal and methodical hand between
1975 and 1979 when up to 2.2 million people were exterminated or died
through starvation and illness while working as slave labour. Muslim
Chams and ethnic Vietnamese were among those targeted.
"For genocide prevention to be truly sustainable," Youk Chhang said,
"it must not only be universally acknowledged at the international
level but also cultivated at the grassroots. Education must be the
next step forward in our collective work to realize a world without
genocide.
"Lemkin reminds the world, and in particular Cambodia, that genocide
will continue to happen because it is a political act and that we
need not only to punish those who commit genocide, but also prevent
it from happening again and again."
Lemkin's fascination with genocide dated back to the mass killings
of the Armenians by the Turks, and this was reinforced by the
extermination of the Jews in his native Poland. He pushed the
U.N. to outlaw what became known as the "crime of all crimes," and
was subsequently shortlisted twice for the Nobel Peace Prize.
He lectured at Rutgers and Yale but fell into obscurity and died in
New York; destitute, unknown and until recently, largely forgotten.
In April during Genocide Appreciation Month, scholars were actively
promoting Lemkin with the publication of an autobiography, graduate
research at Rutgers, a Sundance award-winning documentary on his
legacy, and a UN award in his name.
http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/a-cambodian-genocide-tribunal-and-lemkins-legacy/
The Diplomat
July 18 2014
A now obscure author finds relevance and rebirth at the trial of two
former Khmer Rouge leaders.
By Luke Hunt
It was a word that gave meaning to the greatest crimes of the 20th
century. Spawned from the massacre of the Armenians during World War
I and the final days of the Ottoman Empire, the term genocide was set
in stone following the Holocaust and has since become synonymous with
Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia and Cambodia.
But the man who coined the phrase, Raphael Lemkin, had been largely
forgotten by history until recently, when A Problem from Hell:
America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power was published,
and sparked an academic push to raise Lemkin's stature and find a
more fitting place for his work within the public conscience.
He has been described by some as a slightly obnoxious crusader,
obsessive and annoying, but Peter Maguire, an academic, authority on
the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and author of Law & War said Lemkin's work
was useful for planning the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals after
World War II.
"Not content to simply try individuals for recognized violations of
the laws of war, the architects of the Nuremberg trials proposed trying
Nazi organizations for conspiring to commit aggressive war and borrowed
Raphael Lemkin's argument from his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe."
"Lemkin held that the SS, Gestapo, and other Nazi organizations were
an international version of La Cosa Nostra - a criminal organization
of volunteer gangsters," Maguire added. "The concept of conspiracy
would also close legal loopholes that might allow guilty men to
escape punishment."
Lemkin was Polish, born into a poor Jewish family in 1900, and coined
the phrase genocide by combining the Greek word "genos," which means
race or tribe, with the Latin word "cide," meaning to kill - in 1944
after escaping Axis rule in occupied Europe.
His work is also about to find additional stature in Cambodia, where
surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge - Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan
- are about to go on trial for genocide. And a separate verdict is
expected on August 7, in their case of crimes against humanity.
Youk Chhang, Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia has
spent almost two decades collating evidence of atrocities committed
by the Khmer Rouge for a trial of surviving leaders currently underway
in Phnom Penh.
He said one of the principal struggles the world faces in preventing
genocide has remained unchanged for the last 60 years.
"Discrimination, racism, bullying and the entire spectrum of inhumanity
that leads up to the legitimization of violence on fellow human beings
is dealt with at the individual and community level, and there is no
more efficient medium for dealing with these preconditions of genocide
than the medium of genocide education."
Pol Pot ruled Cambodia with a brutal and methodical hand between
1975 and 1979 when up to 2.2 million people were exterminated or died
through starvation and illness while working as slave labour. Muslim
Chams and ethnic Vietnamese were among those targeted.
"For genocide prevention to be truly sustainable," Youk Chhang said,
"it must not only be universally acknowledged at the international
level but also cultivated at the grassroots. Education must be the
next step forward in our collective work to realize a world without
genocide.
"Lemkin reminds the world, and in particular Cambodia, that genocide
will continue to happen because it is a political act and that we
need not only to punish those who commit genocide, but also prevent
it from happening again and again."
Lemkin's fascination with genocide dated back to the mass killings
of the Armenians by the Turks, and this was reinforced by the
extermination of the Jews in his native Poland. He pushed the
U.N. to outlaw what became known as the "crime of all crimes," and
was subsequently shortlisted twice for the Nobel Peace Prize.
He lectured at Rutgers and Yale but fell into obscurity and died in
New York; destitute, unknown and until recently, largely forgotten.
In April during Genocide Appreciation Month, scholars were actively
promoting Lemkin with the publication of an autobiography, graduate
research at Rutgers, a Sundance award-winning documentary on his
legacy, and a UN award in his name.
http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/a-cambodian-genocide-tribunal-and-lemkins-legacy/