LISTSERV 16.5 - CLUBGGY Archives

Abstract: We often misconstrue the conduct of genocides in the 20th Century by assuming that they are a by-product of world wars. It is true that the two most notorious genocides—the Holocaust and the Armenian slaughter—occurred in the midst of the two world wars of that century. But far more often genocides have taken place within the boundaries of a single country, or among a region of contiguous nations, and the conflict has been between ethnic and religious groups. In my four human rights courses, I now cover twenty-two other genocides or genocide-like persecutions and mass murders that have taken place on literally every continent in the world. By expanding the number of instances of human-rights violations, I can move beyond the limits of the persecution of Jews and Armenians to suggest the universality of the human capacity for mass murder. As I examine almost two dozen cases, I can bring home to students the importance of geographic features in shaping the failures of human relations. Geography matters in conducting genocidal campaigns. Geography goes a long way in understanding why, where, and how genocides occur. I always consider the geopolitical circumstance in which the genocide occurs. Physical geography is often determinative of the course of a mass killing. How does the actual terrain control the method of genocide? In Armenia, the salient physical reality was the Syrian Desert; in German Southwest Africa’s massacre of the Herreros, it was the Escarpment and the Namib Desert; in Rwanda, the reliance on corn crops, which required the universal use of machetes; in Guatemala, the reliance on rainforest agriculture which was cut off; and in similar fashion, the calculated destruction of the buffalo to starve indigenous people.