The Cruellest Month

A lot of cruelty happened in April.

Hitler and Hirohito were born in April.

The genocides in Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Nazi Germany, and Armenia began in April.

The Bataan Death March began April 9, 1942.

The bloody battle of Gallipoli was fought April 25, 1915.

This year, some commemorate April's designation as Genocide Prevention Month. This morbid gesture is the work of The Genocide Prevention Project, which is the next venture of the team behind Dream for Darfur, the campaign that used the Olympics to urge the Chinese government to use its influence with the Sudanese regime to bring security to Darfur. [I have the t-shirt and stickers...]

Jill Savitt, the head of the Project says the group hope their advocacy will prevent future genocides. "What we want the month to show is that there is a support among genocide survivors to try and prevent such crimes from happening by rallying support from the international community," she said.

It appears that Miss Jill has teamed up with the Armenians. It is a good thing she had gotten practice dealing with aggressive governments, like China, who don't feel guilty about much. The Turks will put you in jail if you say the massacres of the Armenians were genocide.

She is going to find the Turks as tough or tougher. Unlike the Chinese, the Turks have been able to intimidate Congress. Every year the Armenian Genocide Resolution comes up for consideration and the Turkish Government plays take-no-hostages-street-fighting mean politics. Japan likes to point to Turkey as an example of lobbying in Washington done right. In fact, Japan's representatives now whisper wistfully that Tokyo should start acting more like Ankara if they don't get their way in Washington.

The current champion of Armenians in the U.S. House of Representatives is Adam Schiff (D-CA), whose district holds the largest concentration of Armenian Americans. On March 17th, he again introduced a House resolution, H.RES.252, "calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes."

If you look at the Resolution, you will see that it is a mess. There are 30 "findings" stridently condemning Turkey and the declaration requested is simply to ask the President of the United States to denounce and shame Turkey. The cause may be just, but it is a resolution without a constructive goal. It acerbates instead of ameliorates a problem of history. There is no suggestion as to how this difference of opinion over history can be resolved or to what end.

Schiff preceded the resolution with a letter on March 12th to President Barack Obama commending him on his record of supporting the "truth about the Armenian Genocide" and urging the President to make a strong statement of recognition on April 24th. Schiff wrote:

But, of course, the importance of speaking unequivocally about a matter as grave as genocide is a human rights imperative affecting us all. Whether it is today’s Sudanese government or yesterday’s Ottoman Empire, the perpetrators of genocide, as well as the victims, must know that the United States will not shrink from confronting the truth.

In contrast, Cambodia is now conducting its tribunal to prosecute members of the Khmer Rouge for genocide. The effort is to better understand the mass murders and to try to determine responsibility and set out accountability. On the 31st, Durch, once commandant of Cambodia's most notorious prison camp, S-21, testified "As a member of the [Khmer Rouge] I recognise responsibility for what happened at Tuol Sleng,"

He forthrightly said,"May I be permitted to apologise to the survivors of the regime, and also the loved ones of those who died brutally during the regime." And then told the court, "I ask not that you forgive me now, but hope you will later."

"Dry bones can harm no one," wrote T.S. Eliot.

I am not sure if that is true.


N.B.: If you happened to look at this post earlier today, then you know I pressed the publish instead of the save button. And you also now know I research my post. Just like a woman, I am professionally cautious. Personally? Well, all bets are off.

Alas, Justice for Some Monsters

On March 30th and 31st, Comrade Duch will be brought to justice. He and four other senior surviving members of the Khmer Rouge are to be tried for the genocidal atrocities of the KR's nearly four years of ruling Cambodia. Although some find it remarkable that the trial—12 years in the making and 30 years after Khmer Rouge regime ended—is happening, it is more remarkable that this justice by international tribunal is now commonplace.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia is an international tribunal for (essentially) historical justice established in 2003, becoming operational in 2007. Its website is detailed and tri-lingual. The public is welcome at the trials and the stated purpose of the Extraordinary Chambers is:

to provide fair public trials in conformity with international standards. The chief goal is to provide justice to the Cambodian people, those who died and those who survived. It is hoped that fair trials will ease the burden that weighs on the survivors. The trials are also for the new generation - to educate Cambodia's youth about the darkest chapter in our country's history.

As Richard Bernstein wrote in an excellent article on the upcoming trials in the April 9th issue of The New York Review of Books , not everyone will be brought to justice. The Khmer Rouge’s leader Pol Pot died and Cambodia’s current Prime Minister Hun Sen was a KR official. The tribunal’s focus on only five defendants suggests an unofficial immunity to the many others who terrorized and murdered over 3 million of their fellow Cambodians. But this is not an unfamiliar result with other tribunals.

The accounting of history is any tribunal’s real accomplishment. Kaing Guek Eav, aka Comrade Duch, has a history comparable to any German, Japanese, or Serbian war criminal. He was commandant of the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, better known as S-21, which is now Cambodia’s national museum to the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Like other modern torturers, the Cambodians kept detailed records of their victims. hp Even though the vast majority of the victims were Cambodian, foreigners were also imprisoned, including Vietnamese, Laotians, Indians, Pakistanis, Britons, Americans, New Zealanders and Australians. Out of an estimated 17,000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, there were only twelve known survivors.

This last fact recalls many Japanese POW camps. The most infamous was Sandakan, a prison compound in British North Borneo (now Sabah) that held over 2,400 Australian and British POW's, mostly captured when Singapore fell. Only six Australians who escaped survived to the end of the war. Those who did not die of disease or starvation were murdered. [More on Sandakan HERE.]

Tribunals do matter; no matter how imperfect. Yet, too many Japanese argue that they are only “victor’s justice.” They do not understand that there is too deep a need for an accounting, for history to be recorded for both the victims and themselves. It is no longer acceptable for the "winner" to have won the fight to the death. The winner has to be accountable, as does the loser.

This week in Washington there will be two interesting programs on memories of Japanese war crimes and the Tokyo Tribunal.

THE TOKYO WAR CRIMES TRIAL AT SIXTY: LEGACY AND REASSESSMENT. 3/23, 4:00-6:00pm, Washington, DC. Sponsors: Sigur Center Project on Memory and Reconciliation, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University (GWU), and Sasakawa Peace Foundation. Speakers: Yoshinobu Higurashi, Kagoshima University, author of The Tokyo Trial and International Relations: Power and Norms in International Politics, (2002) and The Tokyo Trial (2008); Yuma Totani, University of Hawai'i, author of The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II (2008); Daqing Yang, GWU; Mike Mochizuki, GWU. Location: The City View Room, Elliott School of International Affairs, GWU. 7th Floor, 1957 E Street, NW.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 'MEMORY WAR' IN EAST ASIA? Noon-2:00pm, Washington, DC. Sponsor: George Washington University (GWU) Elliott School of International Affairs' Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies. Speakers: Mike Mochizuki, associate professor of political science and international affairs at GWU; Daqing Yang, associate professor of history and international affairs at GWU; and Lily Gadner Feldman, senior fellow in residence at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Location: GWU Elliott School, 1957 E St., NW, Voesar Conference Room, Suite 412.