How to Prevent Genocide

Choosing Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as the venue for holding the 4th Regional Forum on the ‘Prevention of Genocide’ from February 28 to March 1, 2013 was not accidental. The legacy of Pol Pot might have tempted the organisers to select Phnom Penh to discuss a sensitive issue that plagues most third world countries even in the 21st Century. Not that the Hitlarite final solution was an end in itself. Today Nazis are everywhere. While parading as democrats they indulge in most barbaric and heinous crime against humanity. The debate on defition of genocide still persits. If anything the terms ‘‘crime against humanity’’, ‘‘ethnic cleansing’’ and ‘‘genocide’’ are the same. Genocide denotes a reality of extinction and ‘it does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings’. While addressing the Phnom Penh gathering on ‘Asian experiences and vision for the future’, justice K G Balakrishnan, chairperson, NHRC, opined in favour of creating a world-wide movement to end genocide like the movement to abolish slavery in the nineteenth century. The hard fact is that third world governments are mostly responsible for genocidal killings, albeit these days official human rights institutes are part of governance everywhere. The authorities in most cases ignore recommendations of their own human rights commissions as it frequently happens in India and elsewhere. Right now a lot of heat has been generated over the war crimes tribunal in Bangladesh. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary innocent people were butchered by the Pakistani military in 1971 with the declared objective of destroying Bengali nationalism once and for all. It was the final solution—Pakistan style. They first eliminated intellectuals to silence the voice of dissent by deploying a Nazi-type execution mission. They didn’t operate gas chambers but it was genocide all the way. People in Bangladesh are demanding punishment of local collaborators of the notorious Pakistani army that committed the crimes against humanity. But no war crimes tribunal can do justice without bringing in Pakistani generals and the government as well under the ambit of tribunal. The so-called international community remained silent about the South Asian tragedy. Even China, a trusted ally of Pakistan, looked the other way and refused to condemn Pakistan’s genocidal killings under the specious argument that it was Pakistan‘s internal affairs. They are now ignoring Syria’s genocidal mission by the Assad regime as the government forces are allegedly using nerve gas against the rebels, plunging the country into a bloody civil war.

Asia has not been free of mass-killings, as yet. How the Sri Lankan government and its army executed a plan of cleansing ethnic Tamils, has been fairly documented and admitted by UN. And yet there is no one to punish the Generals for their war crimes against humanity. They indulge in genocidal killings frequently and play democracy fine.

And the way Mayanmar is resolving its Rohingya problem in the state of Arakan, borders on genocide. International outcry against the Mayanmar authorities has failed to create an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity for the persecuted minority—the Rohingyas. What happened in Iraq was genocidal killings—plain and simple. And what is happening even now in Afghanistan is anything but genocide. How drones kill unarmed civilians day after day in the rugged hills of east Afghanistan, gets currency in the media throughout the world. Then there is none to talk of launching war crimes tribunal against America and its NATO partners. People around the world need one more Bertrand Russel. The Phnom Penh conclave was an ideal place to take stock of Asian situation.

But nearer home, the government of India, otherwise a votary of human rights, violates its own laws with impunity while virtually declaring a war against its own people in central India. ‘Operation Green Hunt’ is aimed at cleansing tribals from their homes and lands, to pave the way for large-scale mining of virgin soil in Chattisgarh and elsewhere. The way tribals are uprooted from their hamlets and subjected to para-military oppression is just Indian variant of ethnic cleansing against which the Balakrishnans went all the way to Phnom Penh to prevent genocide. It is open to question whether the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and Indian judiciary have done a commendable and considerable work to address the human rights and humanitarian catastrophe. True, NHRC has recommended monetary relief to the next to kin of some victims of state terror but it is too inadequate to pacify the anger of a large section of population that forces inhuman treatment at every stage of their precarious existence. No doubt NHRC intervened in the Punjab mass cremation case and Gujarat communal violence but surviving victims of violence are in search of safe place  to live in and rebuild their homes and shrines till date.

India has witnessed gross human rights violations over the past decades and the barbarity of Indian troops in Kashmir and North-East seems to be above the jurisdiction of NHRC.

Genocide cannot be prevented without making the governments accountable mandatory to an international authority. True, a world-wide movement, as suggested by justice Balakrishnan is all that is urgently needed but this movement cannot be developed by a few human rights watch bodies with their limited scope of operation, while sometimes working at cross purposes.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 52, Jul 7- 13, 2013

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