President Erdogan of Turkey visited the White House last week. At the meeting, Erdogan handed back a letter to Trump in which the American president told him not to be a “tough guy” and a “fool” by launching an assault on the Kurds.

Last month, Trump announced that he was withdrawing US troops from Syria, despite the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) previously establishing control over much of IS with the help of a US-led coalition. At the beginning of this month, it was speculated that Turkey had a call intercept of Jared Kushner, son-in-law and adviser to Trump, green lighting the arrest of Saudi Arabian journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who was subsequently murdered in a Saudi consulate in Turkey.

On October 9, Turkey invaded northern Syria. Erdogan began ethnically cleansing the Kurds immediately after. As Turkish and Syrian militia advanced into Kurdish-held areas, videos surfaced of civilians being dragged from their cars and shot by the side of the road. Journalists visiting hospitals reported children dying from the flesh-eating effects of white phosphorous, delivered by bombs and shells fired and dropped by advancing Turkish militia. Under international law, these weapons are illegal.

US diplomat, William V. Roebuck, wrote in an internal memo leaked last month that Turkey plans to expel the 1.8 million Kurds living in their semi-independent state of Rojava.

Titled: “Present at the Catastrophe: Standing By as Turks Cleanse Kurds in Northern Syria and De-Stabilise our D-Isis [sic] Platform in the Northeast”, he continued:

“Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria, spearheaded by armed Islamist groups on its payroll, represents an … effort at ethnic cleansing, relying on widespread military conflict targeting part of the Kurdish heartland along the border and benefiting from several widely publicised, fear-inducing atrocities these forces committed.”

For many, the old twentieth-century ideals of national sameness to mean true nationality is still God’s truth. The idea of what it means to be American, for example, was cleverly reconstructed by the mass of immigrants who arrived on its shores in the twentieth century.

We may not be descendants of the founders, they claimed, but we arrived with the same values of wealth, economic equality, success, and hard work. Together, these immigrants found national sameness under one title: American.

“American” was a construction of sameness and difference. Not just anyone could be American. They had to be similar. So the “white American” ethnicity was created. In Europe, where many of the immigrants originated, whiteness was not recognised to be an ethnic similarity. To fit in, to survive, to thrive in the US, whiteness became a uniform race, encompassing nationalities that, before, had not been considered ethnically or racially similar enough to be considered truly white. This included the Slavs, the Italians, the Irish, the Scots and the Jews.

“American” could neither be applied to the children of black slaves who have been part of the US history for long nor could it be applied to the Indigenous owners of the land: the Indians. For America’s new “whites”, citizenship might encompass national and racial difference, but ethnic nationality was a strict club that only similar people could join.

This sameness would protect America’s white nationalities from threats of violence and institutional oppression. Despite the abolition of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, the police, the American legal system, and the presidencies of Reagan and Nixon would rob African Americans of their political autonomy and their basic human rights.

In Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Armenia, the indigenous Kurds have neither political autonomy nor basic human rights. The ethnocentric attitudes of the nations in which they inhabit force a distinction between those ethnicities who belong to the nation-state, and those who are stateless.

Citizenship and nationality are both evanescent. Unlike race or ethnicity, they are unstable. They can be denied, revoked or ignored. Individuals and groups have historically been cheated of their citizenship and nationality by governments hiding their oppression under bureaucracy. Unsettlingly, they are only granted under laws crafted by the oppressive majority.

“I used to be someone who would not even tread on an ant. But this is a war for honour and self-defence. A 100 per cent elimination policy (by Ankara of the Kurds) has forced me to defence and it has become a glorious defence of a people,” the founder of the fight against Turkish oppression of Kurds, Abdullah Ocalan, said.

Nations are “mental constructs”, claim professors from the University of Vienna. West Asian nations have constructed the Kurds as threats to their national consciousness. Comprising between 7% and 20% of the population of these nations, the fear of the difference of the minority threatens the mental constructs of Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi nationalistic sameness.

Without the protection of a nation of their own, the Kurds are inherently vulnerable to oppression and violence from legitimised nation-states seeking easy scapegoats for their nations’ narcissism. Without the backing of the global community, the Kurds cannot win their nationalistic fight against ethnic-cleansing.

L'articolo The Kurds: Our Unstable Definition of Nationality and Citizenship proviene da InsideOver.

On Oct. 29, the US House of Representative voted in favour of a resolution to recognise the murder of up to 1.5 million Armenians by the Turkish government as a genocide.

Senator Robert Menendez, who has co-authored resolutions to recognise the genocide since 2006, told other senators that “the United States Congress cannot stand idly by and let the truth of genocide be silenced.”

“We must commit ourselves to learning the painful history of the Armenians as we seek to build a better world for our own and future generations.”

President Erdogan of Turkey, who had earlier met with President Trump in part to discuss the resolution, objected and blocked the request. He said that senators shouldn’t “sugarcoat history or try to rewrite it”.

The Turkish government claims that their actions were not a genocide. They assert that their murder of the Armenians was not systematic. Rather, they say, World War One killed many people from all ethnic and religious backgrounds, including Turkish Muslims.

Representative Adam B. Schiff, declared that the vote in favour of the resolution was largely due to Turkey’s present involvement in another form of ethnic cleansing.

“Given that the Turks are once again involved in an ethnic cleansing of the population – this time the Kurds who live along the Turkish-Syrian border – it seemed all the more appropriate to bring up a resolution about the Ottoman efforts to annihilate an entire people in the Armenian genocide,” he said.

Like the United Kingdom, the United States of America has, for decades, circumvented pronouncing Turkey’s systematic slaughter, massacre and deportation of the Armenians between 1915-1923 a genocide.

In a House of Lord’s written answer in February 2008, Lord Malloch-Brown, speaking on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, wrote:

“The position of the government on this issue is longstanding. The government acknowledges the strength of feeling about this terrible episode of history and recognises the massacres of 1915-1916 as a tragedy.

“However neither this government nor previous governments have judged that the evidence is sufficiently unequivocal to persuade us that these events should be categorised as genocide, as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide.”

Article II of the UN Convention on Genocide defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

This definition includes: “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

The Turkish government’s current treatment of the Kurds give us a look into the nation’s collective identity.

A country that participates in the ethnic cleansing of its minorities –  under a leader who criticises democracy and promotes a highly hierarchical radical Islamist leadership – will simply not admit its actions to be undemocratic or illegal.

Narcissistic national identities are built on the hate of minorities. The Nazis hated the Jews, the English hated the Scots and Irish, and the Americans, the African Americans. Yet, this hate is always birthed from an insecurity in the very national identity proclaimed to be great.

As Armenian’s in Turkey grew economically and socially successful, despite policies designed to keep them destitute, the Turks became jealous, as their national greatness was increasingly challenged on their soil.

Psychologically, admittance of the Armenian genocide is a death for Turkish arrogance. Without this arrogance, Turkey cannot survive politically, as nations driven on ego refuse to end their persecution of minorities until they are defeated by an outside force.

Politically, should the Turkish government admit to the genocide, Turkey could become liable to consequences from the international community under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide.

“Importantly,” it reads, “the Convention establishes on State Parties the obligation to take measures to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide, including by enacting relevant legislation and punishing perpetrators, “whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals” (Article IV).

Even more worrying for this gateway nation between Europe and the Middle East is the precedent the Armenian genocide will set for Turkey’s decades-long persecution and massacre of the Kurds. Presently, President Erdogan has received no measures from the international community to prevent or punish his ethnic cleansing of the Kurds. By declaring that it did not violate international law, Turkey avoids facing a myriad of consequences for its crimes against humanity, both present and past.

It cannot be escaped, however, that the international community’s century-long reluctance on the matter of the case of the Armenian genocide has further emboldened Turkey to continue the violent and systematic oppression of its minorities.

L'articolo Why Turkey Refuses to Politically Acknowledge the Armenian Genocide proviene da InsideOver.

As Trump’s retreat from Syria was fueling the mankind’s next potential act of ethnic cleansing and Germany bringing closure to a near century-long hunt for justice with, what could be, the final Holocaust trial, the pursuit of justice for another, almost forgotten atrocity, begins in Brussels. On Monday, November 5, judicial proceedings began for a high-ranking former Rwandan official, Fabien Neretse, who after decades, is standing in judgment for the crime of genocide stemming from the 1994 barbarism in the African nation of Rwanda which resulted in the manslaughter of nearly one-million lives.

Though this is Belgium’s fifth case to prosecute those responsible for the Rwanda genocide, it’s a judicial watershed regarding the 1994 atrocity as it is the first to include genocide as an actual criminal offence. Pursuant to a 1993 law, universal jurisdiction for the prosecution of genocide, regardless of where it occurred, lies with Belgium. The crime of genocide specifically alleges the attempt to exterminate an entire population of human lives, and the case against Neretse, now 71, centres around 13 murders committed between April and July in 1994 in his pursuit to accomplish that macabre goal.

Claire Beckers is one of several Belgiums killed during the four-month-long massacre which claimed hundreds-of-thousands of lives. Beckers, along with her Rwandan husband, and their 18-year old daughter, were killed in the initial wave of murders following the April 6, 1994 assassination of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana.

Claire’s family was part of a group of friends who were killed as they fled for safety to a UN compound after the carnage began. The only survivors of the group’s mass murder were two children, then aged 11 and 15. After the hate-saturated brutality which necessitated them to leave their homes and flee for their lives; as adults, they will face the man responsible for terminating their escape for sanctuary on that April night a quarter of a century ago. They are both scheduled as witnesses in the trial.

The case against Neretse, who maintains his innocence and was Claire’s neighbour, intends to establish the fact that he was the individual who informed the nearby Hutu murder squads of the group’s whereabouts, thus he is responsible for their murders. Neretse himself, the case alleges, ran his Hutu death squad whose murders included a prominent but moderate Hutu politician, Joseph Mpendwanzi. His son, Jacques Rwegenza, now a resident of Belgium will also testify at the trial.

Though Neretse did not appear in the courtroom during the first few days of the proceedings, Claire’s relatives, along with those for many others who have been lost to history, were. Martine Beckers, Claire’s sister, was in attendance to witness the proceedings which she was instrumental in putting into motion. It was Martine who lodged an official complaint against Neretse for the murders of her sister, brother-in-law, and niece which resulted in prosecutors identifying him as the individual who, essentially, sent the death squad to engage and murder the group.

The events which led up to the April 9, 1994 murders of Claire’s family and their friends are streaked with far more guilt than that which lies on the hands of Neretse however. Prior to Claire exposing her family and friends to potential death by going out into the night without any means of protection, she first made all the proper attempts at saving them. Claire called both the Belgium Embassy and the United Nations requesting evacuation. They were all denied assistance and left to fend for themselves.

Thus, Claire, her family, and friends decided to navigate the 500 meters to the safety of the UN compound on their own. They never made it farther than their vehicle. As the group of 13 was loading into the only vehicle they had that spring evening, the Hutu death squad appeared. The death squad led the group into a garden at the rear of the house and gunned them down. The two children survived by acting as if they were dead.

Neretse’s attorney, Jean-Pierre Jacques, believes that the case against Neretse, and specifically the genocide charge, is a difficult case to prove. There is some validity to that assertion. The fact that the crime is decades-old renders material and physical evidence nearly non-existent. Thus, the case hinges upon witness testimony, though many of the pertinent witnesses are dead. However, the witness list includes well over a hundred individuals, spanning from Belgium to a Rwandan prison.

Proving the case against Neretse regarding the group’s murder is one thing, proving that he attempted to exterminate the entire Tutsi population, which the genocide charge requires, is a completely different legal challenge.

The Convention criminalizing genocide establishes both a psychological and tangible element to the crime. The prosecution must establish that Neretse possessed the deliberate “intent to destroy” specifically, the Tutsi population in Rwanda, along with evidence that his intention manifested in actual means and methods through which to accomplish that goal. The law extends to those who fostered and nurtured the conditions for the genocide to occur.

The crime of genocide originates from the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a result of the Nazi Holocaust and was signed in Paris. Ironically, Neretse was found and arrested in France in 2011. Though the purpose of the 1948 Convention was that genocide would ‘never happen again’, according to the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy there have been 18 acts of genocide between the signing of the Convention and 1994.

The 1994 genocide was the second act of genocide against the Tutsi people in Rwanda. The first occurred in 1962-63 following the end of Belgium’s colonial rule over the country. Though that incident is officially called the Rwandan Revolution, it was little more than likes of the 1994 genocide; a Hutu purge of the Tutsi people.

Significance of the Rwanda genocide

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda is a landmark in both humanity and international governance for various reasons. It represents the most heinous and quickest act of genocide in our history. In only four months, from April to July 1994, nearly one million people were viciously murdered with nothing more than machetes or simplistic methods of mass murder, such as forcing Tutsi people into a house which the Hutu then burned to the ground.

While the Convention which criminalized genocide was signed in 1948, the first conviction for genocide was not until 50 years later regarding Rwanda. On 2 September 1998, Jean-Paul Akayesu, a former mayor in Rwanda, following a trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) became the first person in history to be convicted of genocide.

Rwanda also marks the failure of the Free World to identify and acknowledge that the rights of the people outweigh the authority of any government and or the sovereignty of any nation. The 1994 genocide was not a spontaneous act but was a planned and coordinated engagement that had historical foundations in the 1962-63 revolution.

The commander of the UN force in Rwanda (UNAMIR), Romeo Dallaire, uncovered the impending atrocity in January 1994 and reported it to the United Nations. In Dallaire’s own words: “Nobody was interested.” During the course of the genocide, the CIA not only sat back and watched the entire atrocity unfold from the US Embassy in Uganda, but on April 15, as the genocide was underway, the US argued for a full UN removal from Rwanda “as soon as possible” stating “there is insufficient justification to retain a UN Peacekeeping presence in Rwanda”.

The US along with the international community made the conscious decision to characterize the events in Rwanda as a civil war and not as genocide, thus it was an internal domestic issue. The US stated in April 1994: “The Rwandan armed parties must bear full responsibility for the tragic situation, and continued violence and instability, in their country.”

The international community’s systemic failure to prevent and or stop the Rwandan genocide, as well as the ethnic cleansing carried out in the Balkans by Serbia at the same time, were clear convictions that established that world governments believed “humanitarian intervention [wa]s, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty,”.

As a direct result of Rwanda and the Serbian atrocities, in 2005 the United Nations adopted the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, R2P. The R2P doctrine, it is hoped, will support and strengthen the principles of the 1948 Convention by, in theory, and a limited set of circumstances, eliminate the barrier of sovereignty which had been invoked as an excuse to allow the genocide in Rwanda and the Serbian engagement of ethnic cleansing to occur.

Whether international governance will ever have the genuine determination to eliminate genocide has yet to be realized. Likewise, whether the global population will ever take the necessary actions to manifest the same is also unknown. To date, only a fraction of the more than 100,000 individuals believed to be responsible for the 1994 Rwanda genocide have been brought to justice. The international parties, which bear equal responsibility, will never be. The ICTR terminated in December 2015. Many believe that Fabien Neretse not only symbolizes the slow process of justice for those in Rwanda but also the endemic problem of those like him, living freely as fugitives from justice on European soil.

L'articolo Why Rwanda Matters: The Trial of Fabien Neretse proviene da InsideOver.