By Maung Zarni
As a lifelong activist & accidental genocide scholar – I trained as a sociologist of education and had no formal training in law or genocide studies – I cannot be selective as to which population I remember, even if @UN #UnitedNations create a hierarchy of worth among human populations.”
All victims and survivors are fellow humans, whether I know their names or stories or not. #srebrenicia I paid my Buddhist customary respect at the genocide memorial last year. You cannot study genocides and atrocity crimes, out of necessity – because your own ethnic lot are perpetrators, like my situation as a Burmese – or out of professional interrst – and not be emotionally effected by the subject matter.
Between 2013 and 2015, I spent 3 years conducting genocide education program which involved talking to the survivors in Cambodia and walking tours of killing fields – over 180 sites of mass killings in 4 years, as well as learning from legal experts at the Cambodian tribunal. I even heard LIVE Khmer Rouge leaders pleading NOT guilty, while sitting behind the glass wall in the audience gallery.
I heard the stomach-turning genocide denial by Aung San Suu Kyi at the world’s court (of states) in the Hague in December before the 1st pandemic lockdown worldwide. I paid multiple visits to Auschwitz, spoke at the biannual conference organised by Auschwitz Museum, and even produced a 50-mimutes film, “Auschwitz: Lessons Never Learned”, with the able assistance from a Ukrainian filmmaker and his Uzbak colleague and director. I recently spoke about the inconceivability of peace, truth or reconciliation in Myanmar at Melbourne’s Eco-Socialism Conference in Australia.
Sadly, countries/societies that perpetrate such heinous crimes did not end well, or did not return to normalcy of freedom, rights or bright future. Many remain stuck in the vicious cycle of wars, and peacetime atrocities. Sri Lanka, and Cambodia are two examples. Myanmar is without a doubt one such country, after Sudan, where atrocities continue unabated. It is also a member of ASEAN, a regional bloc, with no regards for political or social rights, concerns even for genocides (in its region, in Myanmar or Cambodia) , incomparably more impotent and without any principles to speak of, than EU or the African Union.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is another where the situation remains pregnant with pre-genicidal conditions, according to my local friends there. Hope is an essential ingredient or fuel for grassroots activism. But hope is typically constrained by the realities. One ugly reality is outside interests tend to be too keen to rehabilitate genocidal organizations – if doing so advances there own organizations or state economic and strategic interests.
EU was financing Sudan’s recycling of the genocide militia – the Arab-dominated Janjaweed – as “border control” force, after the Sudan’s genocide (to prevent war, grinding poverty and drought-fleeing Africans from reaching the Fortress Europe). Myanmar’s genocidal regime of President Thein Sein was celebrated for opening up Burma as the last economic frontier (or “emerging market”). Obama held up Myanmar as an example for Iran and N. korea to emulate! ICG honored Thein Sein with its higest award.
Never mind that it was Thein Sein who officially declared the intent to commit the crime of mass deportation to the visiting UNHCR head one Antonio Gueteress! Future Sec. Gen did nothing. Kofi Annan shelved “the genocide cable” from Rwanda – because he knew his American Masters- Bill Clinton – M. Albright – had no concern or interest in the looming genocide of Rwandans, and he was promoted to the chief clerk of the UN, and the Norwegians even gave him the Nobel Peace prize.
UN continued with its time dishonoured tradition of promoting depraved and unprincipled bureaucrats or political appointees. GUETERRESS got the top job, for ignoring the warnings of Rohingya genocide, straight from the horse’s mouth of reformist genocudaire! Hope without any regards for such criminal realities is tantamount to delusions.
Prospects for genocides – note the plural – remain strong while fascist and militarist ideologies have increasingly become the order of the day, in many places in the world in 2023, including “Big Power” states. Nazis even won elections in some places in Germany this year! Add the ecological crisis to these troubling global scenario and you get a pretty good idea of where we are heading as a human race.
Maung Zarni is a Burmese educator, academic, and human rights activist.
8 July 2023