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Trying to understand genocide
Carol Goar. Toronto Star. Toronto, Ont.: Aug 12, 2005. pg. A.18
Full Text (784 words)
(Copyright (c) 2005 Toronto Star, All Rights Reserved. )
There could scarcely be a grimmer way to spend a summer vacation than to study the worst atrocities of which humanity is capable.
Yet every August, top students from around the world come to the University of Toronto for a two-week course called Genocide and Human Rights. Its aim is to equip young scholars to do what no generation has yet achieved turn the words "Never Again" into a reality.
Since the world made that solemn vow in 1948, it has failed to prevent ethnically motivated slaughters in Cambodia, Burundi, Bosnia, Iraq and Rwanda. It is now watching impotently as thousands of Darfuris are murdered in western Sudan.
This year's class, which holds its final session today, is a fascinating group. There are three Rwandans, two of whom lost parents in the genocide of 1994. There is a Tanzanian lawyer who has set up a voluntary organization to train human rights monitors. There is an Iranian expatriate, struggling to understand how people can turn on their neighbours. There are grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and great-grandchildren of Armenians whose families were almost wiped out in the massacre of 1915. And there are Canadian and American students, searching for a way to reconcile what they've learned with the butchery they see in the world.
What they share is a willingness to look squarely into the face of evil and an impatience with stock answers.
Let me take you into their classroom earlier this week.
Maj. Brent Beardsley, who served as personal staff officer to Maj.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire in Rwanda, has just delivered a harrowing account of the near-extermination of the nation's Tutsi minority. Eric Markusen, an American sociologist who served on a human rights panel interviewing Darfuri refugees, is comparing the two African tragedies.
But the students are restless, troubled, tired of listening.
Markusen points out that the West has paid more attention, devoted more resources and learned more about the atrocities occurring in Darfur than in any previous genocide. "The U.S. and U.N. have gone in and done investigations during the time of killing," he says.
A hand shoots up. "What good is an investigation if there's no action?" asks Simon Maghakyan of Colorado.
Markusen politely acknowledges the importance of the query and presses on, talking about the role Rwanda played in alerting the world to the crisis now unfolding in Sudan.
But he is interrupted again. Lisa Ndejura, a Montrealer born in Rwanda, wants practical guidance. "When we talk among the youth, we feel terrible that we're not doing more," she said. "I want to know how we can do things at the community level."
Markusen's presentation soon turns into a free-for-all, with students asking tough, unanswerable questions Is a black life worth less than a white life in the eyes of the international community? Is it worse to ignore a genocide or to study it and not stop it? Is the use of deadly force justified in protecting innocent people?
No one minces words. The debate is stimulating, unflinching and ultimately inconclusive.
The lack of tidy solutions does not bother Greg Sarkissian, president of the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, which launched the program in 2002.
"It is designed primarily to raise awareness of the most gross violations of human rights," he says. "People thought there would never be another Holocaust, but the same thing keeps happening and the world is barely aware of it. More than 69 million people have been killed in various genocides.
"It shouldn't just be the responsibility of the victims and their descendants to stop these heinous crimes," says Sarkissian, who lost many relatives in the Armenian genocide. "We want to produce a generation of scholars that will understand the warning signals of genocide, talk about the issue and convince governments that it is in our national interest to intervene before genocides take place."
The students live together in a U of T dormitory. They form friendships across racial and geopolitical lines, talk about traumas most outsiders could barely imagine. "One of our goals is to turn that emotional energy into an intellectual force," Sarkissian says.
Although Ndejura finds it draining to talk about death from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., she is glad she came. "These are questions that have haunted me for a long time," the Rwandan immigrant says. "It's a relief to talk about them."
As the segment on Rwanda and Darfur ends, Roger Smith, director of the program, leaves the students with one last thought "A genocide is not an accident. It is a choice. It occurs because human beings make it happen and let it happen."
(Further information is available at www.genocidestudies.org)
Carol Goar. Toronto Star. Toronto, Ont.: Aug 12, 2005. pg. A.18
Full Text (784 words)
(Copyright (c) 2005 Toronto Star, All Rights Reserved. )
There could scarcely be a grimmer way to spend a summer vacation than to study the worst atrocities of which humanity is capable.
Yet every August, top students from around the world come to the University of Toronto for a two-week course called Genocide and Human Rights. Its aim is to equip young scholars to do what no generation has yet achieved turn the words "Never Again" into a reality.
Since the world made that solemn vow in 1948, it has failed to prevent ethnically motivated slaughters in Cambodia, Burundi, Bosnia, Iraq and Rwanda. It is now watching impotently as thousands of Darfuris are murdered in western Sudan.
This year's class, which holds its final session today, is a fascinating group. There are three Rwandans, two of whom lost parents in the genocide of 1994. There is a Tanzanian lawyer who has set up a voluntary organization to train human rights monitors. There is an Iranian expatriate, struggling to understand how people can turn on their neighbours. There are grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and great-grandchildren of Armenians whose families were almost wiped out in the massacre of 1915. And there are Canadian and American students, searching for a way to reconcile what they've learned with the butchery they see in the world.
What they share is a willingness to look squarely into the face of evil and an impatience with stock answers.
Let me take you into their classroom earlier this week.
Maj. Brent Beardsley, who served as personal staff officer to Maj.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire in Rwanda, has just delivered a harrowing account of the near-extermination of the nation's Tutsi minority. Eric Markusen, an American sociologist who served on a human rights panel interviewing Darfuri refugees, is comparing the two African tragedies.
But the students are restless, troubled, tired of listening.
Markusen points out that the West has paid more attention, devoted more resources and learned more about the atrocities occurring in Darfur than in any previous genocide. "The U.S. and U.N. have gone in and done investigations during the time of killing," he says.
A hand shoots up. "What good is an investigation if there's no action?" asks Simon Maghakyan of Colorado.
Markusen politely acknowledges the importance of the query and presses on, talking about the role Rwanda played in alerting the world to the crisis now unfolding in Sudan.
But he is interrupted again. Lisa Ndejura, a Montrealer born in Rwanda, wants practical guidance. "When we talk among the youth, we feel terrible that we're not doing more," she said. "I want to know how we can do things at the community level."
Markusen's presentation soon turns into a free-for-all, with students asking tough, unanswerable questions Is a black life worth less than a white life in the eyes of the international community? Is it worse to ignore a genocide or to study it and not stop it? Is the use of deadly force justified in protecting innocent people?
No one minces words. The debate is stimulating, unflinching and ultimately inconclusive.
The lack of tidy solutions does not bother Greg Sarkissian, president of the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, which launched the program in 2002.
"It is designed primarily to raise awareness of the most gross violations of human rights," he says. "People thought there would never be another Holocaust, but the same thing keeps happening and the world is barely aware of it. More than 69 million people have been killed in various genocides.
"It shouldn't just be the responsibility of the victims and their descendants to stop these heinous crimes," says Sarkissian, who lost many relatives in the Armenian genocide. "We want to produce a generation of scholars that will understand the warning signals of genocide, talk about the issue and convince governments that it is in our national interest to intervene before genocides take place."
The students live together in a U of T dormitory. They form friendships across racial and geopolitical lines, talk about traumas most outsiders could barely imagine. "One of our goals is to turn that emotional energy into an intellectual force," Sarkissian says.
Although Ndejura finds it draining to talk about death from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., she is glad she came. "These are questions that have haunted me for a long time," the Rwandan immigrant says. "It's a relief to talk about them."
As the segment on Rwanda and Darfur ends, Roger Smith, director of the program, leaves the students with one last thought "A genocide is not an accident. It is a choice. It occurs because human beings make it happen and let it happen."
(Further information is available at www.genocidestudies.org)
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