It probably is some genocide.
Let me just say that I know there is a difference between some common knowledge understandings of the meaning of the term "genocide" , and the specific definition in the United Nations Convention On the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide definition of "genocide". The latter does not have as a mental element (mens rea) of the crime that there be intent to exterminate the whole group, rather the group "in whole or in part". The UN Convention definition is the one I am using here. I must repeat, my usage is more rigorous than yours with respect to international law as codified in the UN Convention. In other words, it is you who has the looser usage. The UN definition is also not tied to any definition of fascism. In other words, you don't have to be a fascist to be a genocidalist.
I don't have a problem with pointing out that there are orders of magnitude of genocides. There are holocaustic genocides, maybe. But, the UN Convention definition of genocide carries more focussed and rational world opinion than the usage tied strictly to the Nazis' attempted annihilation of the Jews, although the latter was the immediate cause of the UN Convention. However, the statute is drawn more broadly than the specific historical impetus. Surely, that does not surprise you. Why write a law against something that so rarely occurs.
Also, this whole discussion seems to procede as if the crime of genocide is worse than the other crimes by international law that the US and NATO are committing. This is not the legal position. Conducting an illegal war is as wrong as committing genocide. Many criminals are charged with several crimes because of one act. Sometimes all of the charges stick, and sometimes only some , and sometimes none.
Charles Brown
>>> Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> 05/26/99 03:16PM >>>
In message <3.0.2.32.19990523234539.00da6c50 at pop.gn.apc.org>, Chris
Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> writes
>
>And indeed NATO is guilty as charged in the indictment above.
>
>Sir Michael Rose from week one was in favour of ground troops, so it is not
>surprising his testimony added to the case for the prosecution.
>
>
>But Serbia is guilty of contravening international standards against genocide.
>
>Do you deny it? Or just think it is somehow revolutionary to evade it?
I deny it. There is no genocide in Kosovo. There are killings, and there are people being burnt out of their homes. But that is not a genocide. A genocide is the attempted extermination of a race. That has not taken place. Dislocation is not extermination. It is not just. But it is not extermination.
To call this a genocide makes a mockery of the actual experience of the genocide against the Jews.
And, for the same reason, I can't agree with Charles.
In message <s7485be3.053 at mail.ci.detroit.mi.us>, Charles Brown
<CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes
>NATO is probably guilty of violating the UN Convention on the Prevention and
>Punishment of the Crime of Genocide by its mass murder of Serbian people, who
>are members of a national group.
Even the Yugoslavs own suit names 1,200 dead, which while deplorable, is not in fact the extermination of a race. Not every war is a genocide. Not every aerial bombardment is a genocide.
If this seems pedantic, I argue that the loose use of terminology is very destructive and dangerous.
The crime of genocide is a very distinctive and unique one, both historically and under international law.
Historically, the term genocide describes the slaughter of the Jews by Germany. Nothing comparable is happening in the Balkans on either side, terrible as the real conflict is.
It is a failure of analysis to judge every event by the standard of the holocaust, and it blunts real insight into what is happening right now. It is as if one could only denounce an action if it were a species of fascism. But not everything is fascism. Milosevic is not a fascist, and nor is Nato.
It is a want of moral judgement and imagination that forces us to make the holocaust into a moral absolute. That does not help us understand the present and it diminishes the real meaning of the holocaust.
But there is another sub-text to discussion of 'genocide' in international relations. And that is the legal sub-text. Under international law the rights of sovereign nations are formally upheld. In practice we know that this is a right more honoured in the breach that the observance. None the less it is an important right.
One of the clearest exceptions in international law, is that national independence should be no limit to the prevention of genocide. Because this is enshrined in international law, those powers that wish to abrogate another nations sovereignty have a clearly mapped out strategy: accuse the other nation of committing genocide.
The propagandistic accusation of genocide made against an enemy is entirely functional. It holds the enemy guilty of the worst crime imaginable. And it creates the legal basis for military intervention and the suspension of national sovereignty.
Consequently, the path is open to war-mongers to justify their actions by casting around accusations of genocide. -- Jim heartfield