This issue of GPN is being published as a blog until construction of our website is completed. The website will include a much stronger search capacity, as well as other features. When it is completed, we will also publish this issue on it so that all contents of GPN are included in future searches.

Remember to click on Older Posts at bottom of each page to see the rest of the issue.


Saturday, October 30, 2010

Table of Contents Issue 4 Fall 2010

See in this issue:
ARREST AND INDICT AHMADINEJAD WHEN HE SETS FOOT IN A CIVILIZED COUNTRY. SEE FORMER CANADIAN MINISTER OF JUSTICE, IRWIN COTLER'S REVISED CALL TO LEGAL ACTION AGAINST IRAN'S NUCLEAR THREATS. 

See in this issue:
A TIMELINE OF INCITEMENT AND HATE LANGUAGE BY AHMADINEJAD AND OTHER IRANIAN LEADERS.

GPN asks the reader, 'Have you ever been one of those who claimed the quotations from Ahmadinejad about destroying Israel did not read the same way as the original Iranian text, or plain that he doesn't mean it?'

In this issue of GPN, see a gripping, haunting, real-life account of persecution and courage in Darfur.

GPN conveys heartfelt wishes to the peoples of both Pakistan and Nigeria where there has been serious flooding to bear their incredible suffering with as little loss of life as possible. We urge the Pakistan and Nigerian government to undertake maximum rescue and support operations, and for other countries and the United Nations and other international agencies such as the Red Cross to extend the maximum assistance possible.

GPN 'sings' with the people of the entire world in joy and admiration of the rescue of the 33 trapped miners in Chile. The happiness of the reunions and the joy of the community are the side of our human natures that we seek to promote over our also terrifyingly natural human inclinations to kill and destroy human life.



See a Press Release from the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. Click here.
A NEW PROPOSAL FOR A WORLDWIDE UNION OF GENOCIDE VICTIM PEOPLES - AND ALL CARING PEOPLE - ON BEHALF OF A RIGHT TO LIFE OF ALL PEOPLE: R 2 L


Quotable:
Elie Wiesel:
“Today of course my obsession is [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahamadinejad, who is the No. 1 Holocaust denier in the world, who publicly and repeatedly has said that he wants to exterminate the Jewish state. I have learned to take the enemy’s threats seriously and therefore, wherever I go, I say this man should be arrested and brought to The Hague and indicted for incitement for a crime against humanity... In that particular crime [genocide], the intent itself is a crime and not only the implementation of the crime.”

He added that it was not inconceivable that a suicide terrorist would try to carry out a nuclear attack. "A suicide terrorist is not someone who wants to die, a suicide terrorist is someone who wants to kill. In order to kill more people he kills himself... How do we know that tomorrow a terrorist will not take a little nuclear device? It's not unthinkable." Wiesel said he stood by a statement he made almost 20 years ago that the greatest danger of the 21st century would be nuclear power in the hands of a fanatic. "Fanatism is bad enough. Give it power and we are all in danger." - -* Evyatar I. (Sep 1, 2010). ‘Give fanaticism power and we're all in danger.’  Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/Features/InThespotlight/Article.aspx?id=186739


Editorial by the International Herald Tribune (September 11-12, 2010)
Read the report: Countries that are still enabling Iran need to read the International Atomic Energy Agency's latest report

Iran has spent the last four years ignoring the United Nations' order to stop enriching uranium. And far too many of the world's major players have spent the last four years ignoring Iran's defiance.
Tehran has a long and cynical history of hiding nuclear facilities - including its main enrichment site at Natanz and more recently discovered enrichment facility at Qum. If that isn't enough, an Iranian dissident group said it has found evidence of yet another secret nuclear site. Iran is continuing to refuse to answer questions about whether its hiding other facilities and whether its program has military uses, including a suspected project to fit a nuclear warhead on a missile.
Read the I.A.E.A. report again. Tehran, predictably, insists it is not building a weapon. Its refusal to halt enrichment and cooperate with the I.A.E.A. makes that ever more impossible to believe.

TABLE OF CONTENTS ISSUE 4 FALL 2010



The clock is ticking: The Cotler Report's call to action against Iran's nuclear threats, genocidal incitement, support for genocidal terror, and repression of human rights
GPN Editorial Blog and Introduction to Cotler Report
Irwin Cotler's Renewed Call to Action Against Iran's Nuclear Threats: Responsibility to Prevent Petition



If you ever doubt Ahmadinejad and his colleagues really mean to kill
Yael Stein, Tamar Pileggi, Alex Barnea Burnley
More Mein Kampf: A Chronology of Statements of Incitement and Hate Language by Ahmadinejad and other Iranian Leaders





DARFUR AND SUDAN: A REVIEW AND ANALYSIS WITH A "DARFUR TIMELINE" AND A GPN INTERVIEW OF A DARFUR SURVIVOR
An integrative review that makes sense of the long-since genocide-in-process in a world that knows and does so little
Alex Barnea Burnley, Yael Stein, Elihu D Richter
Darfur and Sudan: A Review and Analysis




A Timeline view of the Darfur-Sudan endlessness
Alex Barnea Burnley
Darfur Timeline: Death Counts





A gripping, haunting, real-life account of persecution and courage in Darfur. The news reports in our Western press and academic publications are pale by comparison.
Andrew Tobin, Alex Barnea Burnley, Nicole Levitan


A's Story: Survivor of Darfur


Al-Bashir Indicted for Genocide by ICC
International Court Adds Genocide Charges against President Al-Bashir


A powerful review essay on a dangerous quite probably genocidal nation-state in our time -- do we recognize the danger sufficiently?
Yael Stein and Elihu D Richter
Suspected Mass Killings - Call them Democide, Politicide, or maybe Genocide in North Korea
With a Timeline of Resolutions on North Korea





Do you remember Sadaam was executed for using poison gas? Are the Turks continuing?
Turks Hit PKK with Chemical Weapons



A public health model generates new tools for preventing genocide
Elihu Richter
Can We Prevent Genocide by Preventing Incitement? Part II
Preventing Genocide by Preventing Hate Language and Incitement: Models from Epidemiology and Public Health





A remarkable university-level instruction on the genocides of many peoples, with a pioneering set of instructional books in Hebrew
Yair Auron
Holocaust and Genocide Education in Israel



When will the Jewish state act more Jewishly and recognize another peoples' genocide?
Israel Awaits Knesset Consideration of Armenian Genocide



A comprehensive and excellent book on denials of the Holocaust, although it bypasses viewing the Holocaust among the genocides of many peoples
The Abuse of Holocaust Memory: Distortions and Responses
Book by Manfred Gerstenfeld
Reviewer: Israel W. Charny




Harut Sassounian warmly summarizes a talk to the British Parliament about Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide as well as the State of Israel's denials, but leaves out a stinging indictment of jihad as a call to destruction - past, present, and future
Harut Sassounian
Dr. Israel Charny Condemns Denial of Armenian Genocide in British Parliament




An address at the British Parliament about the past Armenian Genocide and the current threat of jihad
Israel W. Charny
Confronting Denials of the Armenian Genocide is not only Honoring History, but a Crucial Policy Position for Confronting Threats in our Contemporary World



Another legal victory for us against the deniers
US Massachusetts Court Rejects 'Genocide' Denial



Mr. Erdogan, please keep up the good work - soon Turkey won't have ambassadors left in the world
Harut Sassounian
Advice to Prime Minister Erdogan: Continue Denying the Genocide



Many different ethnic and national groups are increasingly united under a jihad banner
Hamburg Mosque Used by 9/11 Attackers is Closed - Islamic Terrorism is becoming Transnational with a "Connectivity That is Succeeding"



A monument to democratic pluralism, and against Islamic violence or an insult to memory and a capitulation to encroaching Islamic power?
Plan to Build Mosque Near 9/11 Site has Set Off a Bitter Controversy



Finally a verdict for Duch but what is justice for a vicious genocider? And don't count on more indictments of higher-ups in the Cambodian genocide.
A Khmer Rouge Sentence is Denounced as too Lenient while the Cambodia Government Places Obstacles in the Way of Trials of More Senior Genocidal Policymakers



The dangers of appeasement
GPN Editorial Blog
Elihu D. Richter
Sakharov to Obama: Notes on the First Anniversary of the Crushed Iranian Protest Movement




A call for recognition of the genocidal fates of all Ottoman Greeks, and not an exclusive focus on Pontic Greeks
Niklaos Hlamides
Pontic Greeks and the Greek Genocide




Congo is a too-little-known arena of ongoing genocidal killing
52 Rabbis Call for Action to End Killing in Congo




The EU says Turkey is responsible for the murder of Hrant Dink
European Court of Human Rights Finds Turkey Guilty in Murder of Journalist




Japan's new PM avoids shrine to kamikaze and apologizes
Japanese Prime Minister Apologizes for Japan's War Crimes in WWII



FINALE: MAD AHMAD
The Ahmadinejad Case Now Includes Attributing 9/11 to the USA, Denying the Holocaust, and Experiencing the Hidden Imam with him at the UN

How far can the human mind distort?
Ahmadinejad Claims USA Designed 9/11

The surviving rational world reacts
Obama, Ban Ki Moon Condemn Ahmadinejad 9/11 Comments

Sad to report that life-threatening Ahmadinejad gets a friendly hearing at Yale University
Yale Students Meet with Ahmadinejad

Does a government denying the Holocaust also mean anything about its intentions towards Jews in the future?
Ahmadinejad: The Holocaust is a Fairy Tale

Beliefs in a Messiah can be spiritual, but they can also usher in apocalypse now
Khameini and Ahmadinejad Pursue a Messianic Course, but there is a Rift Among Iran's Clerics

A mental health perspective of the man who says 9/11 was executed by the US and who feels the aura of the Hidden Imam when speaking to the UN, Ahmadinejad is not really a clown of our time - he is a menacing reality
Mad Ahmad
A Psychologists' Blog



HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE REVIEW INFORMATION RESOURCES



THREAT
  • Egyptian Cleric: Hitler was Right to Do what He Did to the Jews
  • Only Much Harsher Sanctions can Halt Iran Nuclear Program
  • Iranian Army General Commander Ataollah Says "I Do Not Think We Will Need More than 11 Days to Wipe Israel Out of Existence"
  • 3 Britons Convicted in Plot to Blow Up Airlines
  • UK neo-Nazi gets 10 years for Planned Chemical Attacks
  • The Legacy of Antisemitism - Quotes from Islam
  • On Al-Jazeera TV: This is a War of Religion, Not Just a War between Arabs and Israelis
  • Video of Uganda Bombing and Survivor's Account at Final Match of World Cup in Uganda
  • Iranian Website: Iranian Nuclear Bomb Spells Death to Israel
  • Reactions in Iran to Gaza Flotilla - Ayatollah Khomeini's Plan to Remove the 'Cancerous Tumor' that is Israel
  • Islam Wants to Establish Supremacy of Allah Everywhere

NEWSPEAK
  • The Winning Cartoons in the Iran Holocaust Cartoon Contest
  • Home of Mohammed Cartoonist Attacked
  • Islam Wants Peace with Israel but Won't Meet with Rabbis or Peres:The New Head Sheikh at Al-Azhar University in Cairo Continues Tantawi's Hateful Doubletalk
  • Antisemitism is the New Form of Holocaust Denials
  • Bomb Plotter Receives Life Sentence: "I didn't mean it when I pledged allegiance to the U.S."
  • Video Post Calling for Muslims in Nigeria to Rise Up Against Christians


Read full text......

EDITOR'S WELCOME TO ISSUE 4 FALL 2010 OF GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW

Welcome to our readers of Issue 4 of GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW

We Need to Act

This is a powerful issue that protests appeasement, indifference and passivity.

Along with a wide range of news and features about many aspects of many genocides and developments in genocide studies and prevention, this issue of GPN includes powerful reviews and summaries of the developments in IRAN, SUDAN-DARFUR and NORTH KOREA.

We believe that significant real action is called for in respect of IRAN's threats to develop nuclear weapons – see the several years of ridiculously self-righteous denials by people who may mean well in their quest for a peaceful world but who, like in pre World War II days, have played right into the hands of calculating totalitarians who are arming to KILL.

We believe that significant real interventions are called for in respect of SUDAN's evident and ongoing, let alone imminent intensification of genocide – how many more campaigns raising money and writing petitions can we tolerate while the killing goes on without real actions to stop it?

We believe that we need a significantly real policy towards NORTH KOREA that continues its nuclear testing and supplies powerful weaponry to Iran and others, even as it is ruled by a despotic family of dictators who can hardly be counted on to act rationally and humanistically-- and God only knows what and when they will do next.

Granted the needs and challenges are awesome and quite obviously beyond the conventional resources of a USA struggling with aspects of decline, or of our current international system and its several corrupt anti-democratic players. But without a consortium of life-respecting countries sounding an inspired call to protect human life everywhere on the planet, and without a resolution to address the most pressing problems, the dwindling free world is riding for a terrifying apocalyptic fall.

Of all the current problems, we believe the immediate dangers of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of totalitarian regimes and transnational terrorist groups is the most imminent and pressing, and will set the note for the larger survival of our civilization or not. It is getting that bad that the stakes are now reaching towards the global and the survival of our species.

Our message to our scholarly and professional field of genocide studies and prevention is also evident in this issue. We believe the time has come for our discipline to make calculated efforts to translate emerging understanding of the genocidal process into tools for action and projects that aim to impact in a real way on our dangerous world. We want to work toward reducing deaths and injury from intentional violence, the most extreme example of which is genocide. Waxing forth in lecture and seminar rooms while the forces of Talaats/Hitlers/Stalins/Maos/Pol Pots/Miloseviches/Ahmadinejads/Bashirs/and more command, and strut and murder doesn't make any kind of sense, not even allowable academic nonsense. The issues are too serious and real.

R 2 L – Right to Life, A Proposal for a Worldwide Organization of Genocide Victim Peoples

Be sure also to see in this issue a proposal for a WORLDWIDE UNION OF GENOCIDE VICTIM PEOPLES – AND ALL CARING PEOPLE – ON BEHALF OF A RIGHT TO LIFE OF ALL PEOPLE – R 2 L.

What do YOU think? Are the various victim peoples YOU know ready to join in recognizing and caring the for histories of other peoples who have suffered genocide, and to work with them together in an umbrella organization that contributes to the prevention of genocides in our time?


GPN is Winning Accolades and Distribution

On a more mundane everyday level of good living, we also admit to our pleasures in the journalism of GPN. It is fun to bring you a wide range of information and analysis on the subject of protecting human life from genocide and genocidal terrorism and massacres. We are grateful and excited at the wonderful feedback we are receiving from many readers all around the world. An amazing number of GPN articles in our first three issues have earned visible placements on Google Searches, and GPN itself as Genocide Prevention Now has moved quickly to a prominent position. Your editors are continuing to explore and learn the range of tools available in this new journalistic medium of a "webmag" (web magazine), at once so familiar, yet in so many new ways also unfamiliar to our tried and true editorial habits of many years.

The New GPN Web Site will be up for the Next Issue

In respect of our medium, we are very pleased and almost certain that we can announce that the next issue of GPN – ISSUE 5, WINTER 2011 – will be produced on our new Web site. The publication of Issue 5 will also be accompanied by a re-publication of Issues 1-4 from our current blog site to our new Web site. This means that all materials on GPN to date will be included in the Search services that will be built into our site. We are told by those of our staff who carry the brunt of the design of the computerization that they are a very good quality, and we too are looking forward to begin working with them. We are also told that all of us on the editorial team are going to have to embrace a whole range of new ways of working just as we have grown reasonably comfortable with the workings of the GPN blog. You can wish us successful transitions.

GPN is Reprint Friendly

Behind the scenes, we do a great deal to make it possible for you to reprint easily individual articles and stories in GPN for classroom and group instruction. Please avail yourselves of this resource freely. While you do not have to write us for permission, we will be grateful if you would email us ever so briefly of your use of a GPN article for instructional purposes. E-mail: gpn.general@genocidepreventionnow.org

Feedback or Letters to the Editor

When the new Web site is working well, we intend to introduce a Feedback or Letters to the Editor mechanism. Watch for it.

We wish you good reading and renewed inspiration to act on behalf of human life and against genocide.

Best wishes from all of us on the GPN Staff,
Israel
Israel W Charny Read full text......

Friday, October 29, 2010

Irwin Cotler's Renewed Call to Action Against Iran's Nuclear Threats

The Responsibility to Prevent Petition



GPN Editorial Blog
GPN calls upon the leaders of the world to act on the recommendations of the Cotler Report, without further delay. The world is now facing a plateau effect, similar to what happened in the Darfur campaign in 2004 when protest and publicity failed to get governments to do their job: to use whatever was necessary, including force, to stop the Janjaweed. Some analysts of genocide studies and efforts at prevention believe that in the Darfur campaign we have protestors who make believe they are doing something when in fact they are going through the motions to stop the genocide. We call this genocide shadowboxing. Real history prevails and the killing continues. The mission of those concerned with genocide prevention is to make governments do their job. We need now to bring Ahmadinejad and his accomplices to justice for their very real vitriolic incitement to genocide, their suppression of human rights, to stop their support for terror in other countries, and to prevent, preempt or foil Iran's march toward making nuclear weapons. The clock is ticking.

Introduction to Professor Cotler's Report

GPN is posting a revision of Professor Irwin Cotler’s 200-page report, “The Danger of a Nuclear, Genocidal and Rights-Violating Iran: The Responsibility to Prevent Petition.” This report updates the earlier Responsibility to Prevent Petition which GPN posted in its first webmag in February 2010 (Issue 1).

Cotler, a former Minister of Justice in the Canadian government, stated that Iran is in violation of four distinct threats: the nuclear, state-sanctioned genocidal incitement, the support for genocidal terror, and the massive repression of human rights. The world has been taking action only against the nuclear threat, while ignoring the Iranian regime’s other offenses. In a Jerusalem press conference held in July, Cotler called for more “threat specific” sanctions to be placed against Iran. The keynote speakers at the July press conference were Cotler, former Chief justice Meir Shamgar of the Israel High Court of Justice, Professor Amnon Rubinstein, former Minister of Justice, and Bassam Eid, the Palestinian Human Rights Activist.

“We want to sound the alarm and wake up the international community,” Cotler said. “The Western belief is that if we turn a blind eye, we will be better off,” said former Israel High Court of Justice president Meir Shamgar, who also spoke at the conference. “This is exactly what occurred in the 30s.”

The report, endorsed by 100 scholars, former world leaders, parliamentarians and human rights activists, contains witness testimony and documentary evidence of each of the four threats. Among the signators are:
  • Per Ahlmark, former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden

  • Professor Fouad Ajami, Johns Hopkins University

  • Jose Maria Aznar, former Prime Minister of Spain

  • Prof Yehuda Bauer, Hebrew University

  • Sen. Romeo Dallaire, former Senator Canada and Force Commander for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda

  • Prof. Alan Dershowitz, Harvard University

  • Kamal Hossain, former Minister of Justice and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh and United Nations Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan

  • Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Cairo

  • Anthony Julius, University of London

  • Irshad Manji, New York University

  • Salih Mahmoud Osman, Sudanese Member of Parliament and winner of the Sakharov Prize in human rights

  • Prof. Walter Reich, George Washington University

  • Prof. Sheri Rosenberg, Cardozo School of Law

  • Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, Interdisciplinary Center in Herziliya and former Minister of Education in Israel

  • Soli Sorabjee, former Attorney General of India

  • Prof. Gregory Stanton, former President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars

  • Prof. Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Laureate

  • Sein Win, Prime Minister of the Burmese government in exile

The full list of signators with details of their identities can be found in the Executive Summary.

The report proposes an 18-point road map for action. It calls upon the international community to heed their obligation and stop such violations before they begin. Incitement to genocide is not only considered an early warning sign of potential genocide, but also is a prosecutable crime in itself.

In this issue of GPN, we also post a GPN timeline for incitement to genocide by Ahmadinejad, his predecessors, and his associates. In upcoming issues, we will post the timelines for Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, its suppression of human rights, and genocidal terror. All predate Ahmadinejad.

“Iran has emerged as a clear and present danger to international peace and security, to the Middle East and regional stability, and increasingly and alarmingly so, to the rights of its own people,” Cotler said. “Unless we have… a comprehensive set of remedies and sanctions, for the fourfold critical mass of threats, we will not begin to properly hold up Ahmadinejad’s Iran to account.”

“There had been a critical mass of precursors to genocide in Ahmadinejad’s Iran, constituting thereby not only the prelude to a preventable tragedy, but a crime in and of itself under international law,” said Cotler. “Simply put, Iran’s leaders have already committed a crime of incitement to genocide.”

Cotler said violations could be prevented by limiting foreign visits from Iranian leaders and by freezing their assets. If governments terminate their contract with companies doing business with Iran, these leaders will stop getting money in their pocket, he said, which would help to stop the repression of the Iranian population. However, Cotler warned that in order to succeed, countries like the US need to stop sending “mixed and disturbing messages to the corporate world regarding doing business in Iran.” According to the report, the US government gave $107 billion in contracts to firms trading with Iran while sanctions were in place. “The United Nations of Security Council Resolution has been honored more in the breach then in the observance,” Cotler said. “So in the matter of sanctions, not only is it crucial that they be adopted, but that they be enforced and done multilaterally.”

Human rights violations including deaths and serious injuries in Iran attracted world attention for a short while after the disputed 2009 elections, but the outrage over violence to Iranian citizens has died down and new violences are an everyday event and are ignored.

Cotler noted that Iran has the highest number of juvenile executions in the world. From 2005 until 2008, the country executed 26 offenders, making up 80 percent of total amount in the world.

Click here for the full report

Click here for the Executive Summary

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More "Mein Kampf": A Chronology of Statements of Incitement and Hate Language by Ahmadinejad and other Iranian Leaders



Yael Stein, Tamar Pileggi, Alex Barnea Burnley
In GPN Issue 1, we published a time line of statements of hate language and incitement (HL&I) by President Ahmadinejad, his predecessors, associates and other major figures of the Iranian ruling leadership.

In this issue, we update this timeline, but now assess each statement in terms of what types of hate language and incitement it represents.

Perpetrators use hate language to incite groups to commit genocide and other mass atrocities directed against vulnerable populations. Equally important, perpetrators use HL&I to silence, intimidate and desensitize bystanders and to signal intent.

This timeline shows that the leaders of the Iranian regime are continuing their genocidal incitement, as they continue to suppress human rights of their own people with ever increasing brutality, move towards nuclear capacity, support terror surrogates, and engage in terror themselves. The Islamic Regime’s motifs recycle those in Hitler’s Mein Mampf, and echo those in traditional Shiite texts. Our past work has shown that this incitement goes back to 1979-80, or thirty years, a period some two and a half times longer than that of the 12 year life span of the Nazi regime.

  • Standard definitions of incitement refer to something that incites or provokes; a means of arousing or stirring to action. Incitement to action can be cast in the form of threats, or threats phrased as predictions and prophecies, or praising persons who have carried out acts of genocide or genocidal terror, or elevating them to hero status.
  • Hate language refers to terms which are used to dehumanize demonize, stigmatize, delegitimize, or slander groups defined by their national, ethnic, religious, racial, or political identity.
  • Dehumanization refers to hate language which includes terms and metaphors-usually of epidemic disease, cancer, or physical decay from public health and medicine-- which induce disgust, revulsion, fear and hate for the other.
  • Demonization usually invokes motifs overpowering danger and threat abd evil intent. Delegitimization refers to terms and motifs which deny the identity and political, national, ethnic or religious status of a group, and denigrate its status.
  • Double standards are used to judge a group by norms not applied to all other groups, so as to cast the group or members of the group in an unfavorable light.
  • Disinformation pertains to the spreading of misinformation with the aim of demonization or delegitimizing a group.
  • Denial of past genocides –e.g. denial of the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, or the Rwandan genocide, is used to lay the groundwork for future genocides. There are other forms of hate language, such as the use of euphemisms, and mirroring, as well.
In this timeline we indicate whether each statement individually includes one or more of the foregoing six D’s: dehumanization, demonization, delegitimization, double standards, disinformation or denial of the Holocaust, or plain incitement.

Click here for Timeline of Iranian incitement to genocide.

This project results from the work of GPN World Genocide Situation Room of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem (www.genocidepreventionnow.org) in conjunction with the Genocide Prevention Program of the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine.

For more information, contact Yael Stein at yst.gpn@gmail.com

Yael Stein MD is a researcher-team member of the World Genocide Situation Room, the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem of GPN. She has experience in Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology and Hospital Administration and is currently studying towards a PhD degree in Public Health at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine. Yael describes herself as a "goal-oriented, idealistic entrepreneur, seeking spiritual and ethical fulfillment" in her work; "I focus on making a difference."

Tamar Pileggi studied for her BA at Atlantic University and Florida State University in Pre-Health and International Relations. She has volunteered for Shevet Achim, a non-profit amutah that provides life-saving heart surgeries to Palestinian children in Israel; Four Homes of Mercy, a home for physically and mentally handicapped children in the West Bank; French Hospital, a Catholic Hospice and Christ Church, an Anglican Church in Jerusalem.

Alex Barnea Burnley, MSc in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict is Research Assistant and Project Manager of the World Genocide Situation Room section of GPN, the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. He acted as project manager for UK relief work in Tsunami-affected Thailand and later as consultant to a Cambodian NGO - orphanage.


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Darfur and Sudan: A Review and Analysis

Genocide Pussyfooting and Shadow Boxing in Darfur - Is South Sudan Next?
With a "GPN Darfur Timeline" and a GPN Interview of a Darfur Survivor



Alex Barnea Burnley, Yael Stein, Elihu D Richter

In 2008 the International Criminal Court indicted President Al Bashir for genocide and other crimes against humanity. By 2010, the death toll from the genocide in Darfur is estimated between 300,000 to 450,000, with tens of thousands of victims of organized mass rape, and hundreds of thousand victims of expulsions, pillaging, and destruction, and reportedly with over a million internally displaced people. Reportedly, as well, 250,000 refugees or more have fled to Chad. Today, however, as a nervous calm prevails in Darfur, refugees are beginning to return.

The origins of the outbreak of organized mass killing date back to regional Malthusian pressures and zero-sum rivalries over water and land, between nomadic herders -- mostly Arab, and farmers -- mostly black Africans, which broke out in the late 1990’s. The leaders of the Sudanese Government orchestrated and provided backing for the Janjaeweed, [a militia reported to be enlisted by the Sudan government - Ed.] and some of them stand accused as perpetrators. The victims were members of the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit tribes.

The use of racial epithets reported by rape victims coinciding with the direct increase in backing of the central government forces for the Janjaweed, is one of the lines of evidence arguing for the emergence of a genocidal pattern of direction and intent. Janjaweed marauders raped tens of thousands of women. Malthusian pressures over water and land may have triggered original conflicts, but by themselves were do not explain the scale and ferocity of the atrocities.


Responders and Complicit Bystanders
China, seeking oil rights in Darfur has been the Sudanese government’s major protector, together with Iran, the Arab League, and African leaders. Talisman, a Calgary based Canadian oil company, was forced to pay heavy fines for reportedly hiring its own advisers to co-ordinate military strategy with the government, to force Darfurians off of lands destined for drilling. (See http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=621).

Tipping Points
In retrospect, the last big tipping point was in the Autumn of 2004, when US Secretary of State Colin Powell reported to the United Nations that the results of the an investigation indicated that acts of genocide had occurred. A flawed UN investigation questioning this conclusion undermined the case for action.

The Darfur coalition of activist organizations, shied away from recommending the use of force (such as the use of helicopter gunships) to stop the Janjaweed from carrying out their genocidal massacres, or naval or air blockades against the Sudanese government

Current Tipping Point Situation
Currently there is a new “tipping point,” as the perpetrators of the genocide in Darfur weigh the prospect of intervention in south Sudan, should its inhabitants vote for independence. There is a case for the world community to take proactive precautionary protective measures to prevent a new genocide.

By 2008, when Luis Moreno Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced his plans to indict President Al-Bashir, the toll from organized mass atrocities in Darfur, the western Sudan and eastern Chad had been estimated between 300,000 and 450,000 dead - almost 10% of Darfur’s entire population, tens of thousands of victims of organized mass rape, and over a million victims of expulsions, pillaging, and destruction.

There have been reportedly hundreds of thousand refugees or more who fled from Darfur to Chad and elsewhere. By Jan 2010, the New York Times reported that a fragile calm was holding in Darfur, a region larger than France. It notes that few on the ground are talking. The official line in world capitals is that the war between Darfur rebels and the government is over, but the humanitarian crisis continues, and insecurity poses serious problems for aid workers and peacekeepers.

Ocampo characterized the recent election in Sudan as equivalent to a poll under Hitler. Prior to the election, Bashir threatened to expel poll observers.
Recently, the Obama Administration has decided to normalize relations with Sudan based on its assessment that the genocide was over.

Background
Darfur in western Sudan has an estimated total population of 6 million in a land area about the size of Spain; pop. density approximately 25-50 persons/km in most populated areas.

The origins of the outbreak of organized mass killing date back to regional Malthusian pressures and zero-sum rivalries over water and land between nomadic herders, mostly Arab, and farmers, mostly black Africans, which broke out in the late 1990’s. Prior to desertification and drought, the lands of the farmers were fertilized by flocks of sheep brought by nomadic tribes.

Context: Upstream pressures and Islamist expansionism?
Drought, population growth, overgrazing, and desertification were so-called upstream catalysts of political unrest, attacks on government outposts, and later, armed conflict, but there is good reason to believe these ecologic pressures were not determinant. There are accusations that the Sudanese government in Khartoum is taking action to “Arabize” Sudan.

Before Darfur, there was a twenty year civil war in the South resulting in two million deaths.

In 2002-3, attacks by rebel armed groups in Darfur on Sudanese Government Police Stations increased and low-intensity warfare broke out. By the end of 2004, the Janjaweed had killed some 70,000, raped untold numbers of women, plundered and expelled hundreds of thousands.

In the early years, journalists and human rights NGOs provided early warning reports on genocidal massacres. The US State Department collected and published epidemiologic evidence on timeline and scale of the atrocities. This evidence suggested support and direction by the Sudanese. Based on this evidence, the US declared that acts of genocide had occurred. After Colin Powell delivered this report to the UN, a methodologically flawed UN report cast doubt on his conclusions. There was an abrupt mass upsurge, forced migration, destruction of villages, rape, pillaging and killing, and by 2005, the toll is reported to have reached some 250,000.

To this day the Sudanese government has claimed that there were no more than 10,000 victims from what it calls a civil rebellion. There have been claims that the violence and mass killings were not genocidal but a consequence of a civil war between the Central Government and groups of Darfurian rebels, seeking strategic victim-hood to provoke international pressure for an intervention. The horrendous scale, cruelty, and viciousness of the massacres perpetrated by the Sudanese government renders such a hypothesis somewhat hollow.

Perpetrators and Victims
The leaders of the Sudanese Government orchestrated and provided backing for the Janjaeweed, and some of them stand accused as perpetrators. The victims were members of the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit tribes. Hagan’s report on the use of racial epithets reported by rape victims coinciding with the direct increase in backing of the central government forces for the Janjaweed, is one of the lines of evidence arguing for the emergence of a genocidal pattern of direction and intent. So far, little evidence has emerged on the use of state-sanctioned incitement in government statements, media, and state supervised mosques. This suggests a strategy of concealing intent rather than drawing attention to it.

Victims: Rape as an instrument of genocide in Darfur
The UN Convention on the Prevention of Genocide and its Punishment specifies that that killing or causing bodily harm to members of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group are genocidal acts. Throughout Darfur, survivors of attacks by the Janjaweed reported mass rapes. In 2010, girls and women continue to be raped, not just by Janjaweed and Government of Sudan forces but also by members of various rebel groups.

During 2004-5 almost 500 women were given medical care following rape. This number represents a tiny percentage of the women actually raped. The majority (82%) of women and girls were raped while they were pursuing their ordinary daily activities. Only 4% of women reported that the rape occurred during the active conflict, while they were fleeing their home village. Almost a third (28%) of the victims reported that they were raped more than one time, either by single or multiple assailants. A number of women described that the rapists abducted them and held them captive for several days and during that period they were raped regularly by several men. One woman reported that her abduction lasted 6 days and she was raped by 10 men. In addition, almost half of the survivors reported that there was more than one victim in the attack.

In more than half of the cases, physical violence was inflicted beyond sexual violence; women were beaten with sticks, whips or axes. Some of the raped women were visibly pregnant at the time of the assault, sometimes up to eight months. The age range of victims of, attempted rape and physical assault was 5 to 60, a large percentage being very young girls and teenagers.
These attacks on women are characterized by extreme physical abuse. Women who attempt to escape or resist attack are beaten, tortured or killed. Some women have reported having their fingernails pulled out as a form of torture or their legs broken so that they are not capable of escaping.

During the attacks, the Janjaweed often berated the women, calling them slaves, telling them that they would now bear a ‘free child,’ and asserting that they (the perpetrators) are wiping out the non-Arabs.

Responders and Complicit Bystanders
China, seeking oil rights in Darfur, has been the Sudanese government’s major protector, together with Iran, the Arab League, and African leaders. The latter have been nervous about threats to sovereignty from outside intervention by former colonial rulers. In Darfur, as in Rwanda and Bosnia, non-interference by international agencies signaled reluctance to take effective actions against decisions by national leaders to commit genocide.

In Darfur, as in Rwanda, the dispatch of a well- armed UN or African force with a robust mandate to protect civilians could have stopped the spread of organized killing, pillaging and expulsions. African Union Peacekeeping forces now provide a token presence, which may be helping to preserve the uneasy calm. These forces provide some degree of protection for humanitarian aid workers. But up to 2007-8, it appears their impact was limited. There is concern that the current calm presages the possibility of relocation of the Sudan military and a push into South Sudan by the central government, to prevent the latter from breaking away and declaring its independence.

Complicit Bystanders: China and Oil Companies
Major Western powers have failed to do even what they did belatedly in Bosnia and Kosovo. The presence of major untapped oil reserves in Darfur as well as southern Sudan undermined international support for outside pressure on the Sudanese government, to stop its support for the armed Janjaweed.

This role of China as a protector of Sudan’s genocidal leaders suggests certain rough parallels to its role as a protector of repressive regimes in North Korea, Iran, and Zimbabwe; and resonates with its own dismal record in mass killings and cultural genocide in Tibet, and its persecution of religious minorities inside its own borders.

The role of multinational oil companies
Talisman, a Calgary based Canadian oil company, has been accused of collaborating on a plan with the Sudanese government for the security of oilfields and forced to pay heavy fines. Talisman reportedly hired its own advisers to co-ordinate military strategy with the government. The company mapped out areas intended for exploration and discussed how to exclude civilians from those areas. Faced with mounting criticism, Talisman sold its interests in Sudan to Petronas, the Malaysian oil giant. A court ruling against Talisman held that corporations may be held liable, under international law, for crimes against humanity.

Malthusian pressures, genocide, and ecocide
In July 2007, The International Association of Genocide Scholars ratified a resolution calling for prosecution of oil companies.This resolution specified that “Investments in PetroChina and Petronas and in other petroleum companies that are profiting from Sudanese oil extraction should be outlawed by state and national governments. Companies implicated in the use of forced expulsions of Sudanese people inhabiting lands designated for oil prospecting, should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.”

Malthusian Pressures and Genocide
The story of Darfur requires us to ask how important are Malthusian conflicts over limiting resources for increasing risks for genocide? When is it sufficient to address upstream “environmental” pressures of depletion and destruction of carrying capacity, to prevent political conflict and genocide? And if intervention is successful in stopping genocide, how sustainable will its results be, without attention to these upstream pressures?

In Darfur, however important ecological pressures may be as trigger events for genocide, we suggest there comes a point at which genocidal agendas –with or without such pressures, take on a momentum of their own. In Darfur, a second generation of pressures generated by global competition over oil, overtook the first generation of such pressures having to do with water and desertification.

These statements about ecological pressures do not refute the core principles governing the causes and prevention of genocide. Genocide results from human choice and bystander indifference.

Tipping Points
In retrospect, the last big tipping point for those who sought to stop the Genocide in Darfur was in the Autumn of 2004, when there was an enormous surge of reporting and interest in the atrocities. In Sept 2004, US Secretary of State Colin Powell reported to the United Nations that the results of the ADP investigation indicated that acts of genocide had occurred. The State Department investigation discerned a pattern of central organization, direction and backing for the killings, rapes and plundering, carried out by Janjaweed marauders. As noted above, at that time, gangs of Janjaweed marauders, reorganized, equipped and protected by the Sudanese government, had already killed an estimated 70,000 Darfurians from the 3 tribes.

Genocide Pussyfooting
But the UN’s follow up investigation reported that it was unable to confirm the State Department conclusion that genocide had occurred. This investigation had gross flaws in organization, design and implementation. It undermined the impact of the State Department report - by manufacturing doubt and undermining momentum for international intervention. Thereafter, following a weak UN resolution, there was a tremendous upsurge in the number of persons killed. In 2004, one of us wrote the following: Based on the evidence from previous genocides, it is unlikely that these violent events will stop without forceful international intervention.

Genocide Shadowboxing
The Darfur coalition of activist organizations shied away from recommending the use of force (such as the use of helicopter gunships) to stop the Janjaweed from carrying out their genocidal massacres, or use of naval or air blockades against the Sudanese government. Human rights organizations used terms such as “killings,” “humanitarian crisis,” and “ethnic cleansing” in their reports, to replace use of the term genocide or genocidal massacres.

This terminology diffused pressures for effective intervention based on armed force. In August 2006, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1706, authorizing over 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur, but the Sudanese government blocked their deployment and the U.N. failed to implement the resolution. Since then, the killings and rape continued.

Questions for word decision makers
Currently there is a new “tipping point,” as the perpetrators of the genocide in Darfur weigh the prospect of invading south Sudan. Whether they will do there what they did in Darfur will depend significantly on bystander response.

What Next?
GPN poses the following questions for decision makers concerned with prevention of genocide, genocidal massacres, and other crimes against humanity:

1. Will the world community block President Bashir, now indicted for carrying out one genocide, should he attempt to carry out a second war against Southern Sudan? As this piece went to press, there were reports that the US government was exploring the possibility of a deal in which Bashir would be left off the hook, as part of a Truth and Reconciliation process, in return for which he would grant South Sudan a divorce and independence. We suggest that there should be a Truth and Reconciliation Process, but not for President Bashir and the major architects of the Darfur genocide, given their record of violating so many past accords.

2. Will Ocampo’s indictment, though years too late for stopping the genocide, deter the Sudanese government from further mass atrocities—not only in Darfur, but also in Southern Sudan?

3. Should the world Community give Sudan the benefit of the doubt concerning its sovereign rights to hold the country together so long as it is led by a leader indicted for genocide?

4. Should the world community post peacekeeping missions in South Sudan now to avert hostilities, rather than to respond after hostilities begin? Should the African Union and NATO preposition helicopter gunships to attack Janjaweed-type forces should they attack again?

5. Should the UN and the African Union set up an early warning system to monitor for episodes of mass rape, expulsions, and violence using satellite monitoring and imaging systems?

6. Should there be warnings of severe political and economic sanctions on the Sudanese leadership?

If genocide results from human choice and bystander indifference, then what happens in Darfur and Southern Sudan will depend on what the outside world chooses to do or not to do.

Conclusion
In 2009, President Barack Obama declared: “The genocide in Darfur has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and left millions more displaced. Conflict in the region has wrought more suffering, posing dangers beyond Sudan’s borders and blocking the potential of this important part of Africa. Sudan is now poised to fall further into chaos if swift action is not taken." The question is: What action and by whom and why. Is President Obama’s use of the passive voice itself a tip-off of future non-action should Bashir’s government carry out genocidal massacres in South Sudan?

Alex Barnea Burnley, MSc in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict is Research Assistant and Project Manager of the World Genocide Situation Room section of GPN, the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. He acted as project manager for UK relief work in Tsunami-affected Thailand and later as consultant to a Cambodian NGO - orphanage.

Yael Stein MD is a researcher-team member of the World Genocide Situation Room, the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem of GPN. She has experience in Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology and Hospital Administration and is currently studying towards a PhD degree in Public Health at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine. Yael describes herself as a ”goal-oriented, idealistic entrepreneur, seeking spiritual and ethical fulfillment” in her work; “I focus on making a difference.”

Professor Elihu D Richter MD MPH is Editor and Director of GPN World Genocide Situation Room and Associate Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. He is Head of the Genocide Prevention Program at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine and former head of the Unit of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. He has published and lectured on the use of public health models for the prediction and prevention of genocide.

Andrew Tobin is a freelance journalist, and a student of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and School of International Public Affairs. He is interested in conflict resolution and Middle Eastern affairs.

Click here for Darfur timeline

Click here for Darfur interview

Click here for fully referenced article

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International Court Adds Genocide Charges against President Al-Bashir

The International Criminal Court in the Hague has issued a second arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, this time for three counts of genocide. The arrest order is added to the warrant issued in March 2009 for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The New York Times report commented: "Even genocide - the gravest charge- may not bring the Sudanese leader closer to trial in The Hague any time soon. He has so far defied the court's orders and denied all accusations. But because genocide charges carry a heavy weight, they may further complicate his international dealings and travels." Bashir is shunned by several countries who recognize the court's jurisdiction - but the leaders of many Arab and some African countries continue to meet with him.

ICC judges said there were "reasonable grounds" for three counts of genocide: genocide by killing, genocide by causing serious bodily or mental harm and genocide by deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the ethnic groups. "Towns and villages inhabited by other tribes, as well as rebel locations, were bypassed," the order said, while the villages of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa were singled out for attack.

Bashir was easily re-elected president of Sudan in April 2000, although the voting was marred by boycotts and reports of intimidation and widespread fraud but the elections are also reported to have been fraudulent in addition to the use of coercion.

Dave Eggers and John Prendergast, writing in the International Herald Tribune, called for "a more robust package of carrots and sticks by the U.S. in Sudan. Bill Clinton often says his greatest regret as president is that he didn't do more to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. There were signs that trouble was brewing long before the killing started, but when it did begin, Mr. Clinton and the international community did not act decisively. This is President Obama's Rwanda moment, and it is unfolding now, in slow motion. It is not too late to prevent the coming war in Sudan, and protect the peace we helped build five short years ago."

See the GPN Original in this Issue: Darfur and Sudan: A Review and Analysis

Sources:
Eggers,Dave and Prendergast,John (July 14, 2010). In Sudan, war around the corner. International Herald Tribune.

Simons, Marlise (July 12, 2010). International Court adds genocide to charges against Sudan leader.
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Suspected Mass Killings - Call them Democide, Politicide, or maybe Genocide in North Korea

Report on a Leading Member of the Axis of Genocide
With a GPN Timeline of Resolutions on Human Rights in North Korea

A report, addressing the suspected mass killings and other human rights atrocities, committed by the totalitarian regime of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, since its establishment in 1948

Yael Stein and Elihu D Richter



Information gathered from dissidents and refugees has given the West a fairly clear picture of severe human rights violations committed by North Korea's totalitarian regime, notably mass killing, using methods very similar to those of Stalin and Mao. North Korea’s human rights record is dismal but details about the secretive hermit state are not readily available. Mass killings and summary public executions are repeated major violations. Human rights abuses include arbitrary and lengthy imprisonment, torture and degrading treatment, poor prison conditions, prohibitions or severe restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, movement, assembly, religion, and privacy, denial of the right of citizens to change their government, and suppression of workers’ rights. Witnesses have described watching entire families being put in glass chambers and gassed. They were left to an agonizing death, while scientists watched on and took notes. IF genocide results from human choice and bystander indifference, it remains for the outside world to put North Korea’s leaders on notice, that they will eventually face the same fate as the Khmer Rouge.



Threats of mass murder – violations of the most basic human right – the Right to Life

Between 1948 and 1987, during Kim Il-Sung’s rule, the world knew very little about what was going on behind the closed doors of Kim Il-Sung’s communist totalitarian regime. But gradually, more and more information gathered from dissidents and refugees has given the West a fairly clear picture of severe human rights violations committed by North Korea's totalitarian regime, notably mass killing, using methods very similar to those of Stalin and Mao.

Political scientist, R. J. Rummel, of the University of Hawaii, has proposed an inclusive word, democide, for all forms of mass killing. Demo stands for people, as in the word democracy, and cide for killing, as in homocide or genocide. Rummel’s concern is that when we differentiate between different forms of mass killing—for example, when we distinguish between genocide, politicide and mass murder—the definition of any one category, however correct or useful it may be, may lead us to be unaware or forget that millions more of innocent human beings have been murdered by governments, and that a true picture must include all killings of masses of unarmed peoples by governments. In addition, Rummel is concerned with preserving the original definition of genocide as the killing of persons because of group membership. In order to provide an inclusive word for all mass killings by governments, Rummel has given us the concept of democide.

Based on calculations and assessments, R.J. Rummel estimates 710,000 to slightly over 3,500,000 people murdered between 1948 and 1987 (mid-estimate: 1,600,000, in what he calls the "North Korean Democide". He estimates 510,000 as killed during the Korean War other than those killed in battle (1950-1953).

Prisoners of War - Thousands were murdered by the North Koreans, and up to 50,000 prisoners were forced to join the North Korean military. Citing researchers Don Lawson and Robert Leckie, Rummel concludes that North Koreans killed some 10,000-18,000 South Korean and American Prisoners of War and forced 400,000 South Koreans into their army, who were then allocated the most dangerous tasks – of these, an estimated 225,000 were killed. Prisoners were later forced to work in concentration camps, and, of these, an estimated 265,000 were killed or died in the North Korean camps, at a rate of 6,700 prisoners per year.

Civilians - Besides those killed in war, the party imposed hard labor (corv×™e labor) on millions of citizens. Thousands or even tens of thousands of citizens were ordered to leave their homes for months at a time, to work on building projects in remote areas of the country. With very poor living and labor conditions, the death rate of this forced labor was as high as 20-30%. Others may have been executed for anti-party behavior or non-cooperation. Citizens considered "hostile" to the regime were punished by forced labor in labor camps, with a similar death rate. The estimates sum up to almost 1,000,000 hard laborers killed, over 25,000 a year.

Background

North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a highly centralized single party state, controlled rigidly by the communist Korean Workers' Party (KWP) since its establishment in 1948. A few minor political parties are allowed to exist in name only, but the government controls all activity. Media and News agencies are controlled and censored. North Korea is ranked second to last on the World Press Freedom Index. Highly secretive, it is known as the Hermit State. North Korea is defiantly solitary, run on a principle known as "Juche," a brand of Stalinism emphasizing national self-reliance.

In 2002, United States president George W. Bush labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil," together with Iraq and Iran, and later as an "outpost of tyranny". In 2008, after North Korea agreed to nuclear inspection demands, the country was removed from the "black list" of state sponsored terrorism. The agreement was criticized by many. At the time, both US Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, expressed concerns and warned that if the terms were not met, there would be immediate consequences. Indeed, North Korea indeed has not met the terms of this agreement.

The country's constitution was created in 1948, and then revised in 1972, 1992, 1998, and again in 2009.

Kim Il-sung ruled North Korea from 1948 until his death in July 1994. Since then, the country has been ruled by his son Kim Jong-il. Both leaders have been using a cult of personality to enforce their rule. Kim Il-sung’s title was "Great Leader," and his son, Kim Jong-il, is "Dear Leader". Current reports confirm that Kim Jong-il has assigned his third son, 26 year old Kim Jong-Un, to be the next leader, establishing dynastic rule. The leader's son had taken up a low-level post at the National Defense Commission, and recently was promoted to the rank of general.

Economy on the Brink of Recurrent Famine

North Korea's economy declined sharply in the 1990s with the end of communism in Eastern Europe. Gross national income per capita is estimated to have fallen by about one-third between 1990 and 2002. There has been some restabilization since then, traced especially to renewed North-South Korean economic cooperation, but the practical effect on living conditions is modest.

During Kim Jong-Il's rule, in the 1990's North Korea suffered one of the worst famines of the 20th century, initially brought about by natural causes. It is estimated that, up to 1 million people, about 3 to 5 percent of the country's population, perished of hunger. Genocide scholars suggest that the mass famine was not random, and that the distribution of food was exploited for the regime's needs, withholding food from some populations who were not supporters of the regime and leaving them to starve – a Stalinist method well known and much used by USSR and by China in the past. Kim himself denied that the famine even existed.

Today North Korea appears to be near famine and mass hunger again. Renewed provision of aid is likely to lessen the scale and severity of famine compared to the 1990s, but hunger-related deaths have already been reported to occur.

According to researchers, in 2005, the North Korean government declared private trade in grain illegal, causing many families to lose an important source of food. The government confiscated grain in rural areas and sought to revive state-run quantity rationing systems, but did not succeed at large. It even threatened to expel the World Food Programme (WFP). Although most of North Korea's grain is produced domestically, production is dependent of fertilizer shipments from abroad, notably South Korea. South Korea had been supplying fertilizer to North Korea as part of renewed inter-Korean interaction (South Korea's Sunshine Policy). But since North Korea's nuclear tests in 2006, South Korea suspended these shipments of fertilizer. With global aid down following sanctions, there is again a shortage of food. The regime's weak economy makes it unlikely that it will be able to import commercial amounts of food. Floods in Southwest agricultural regions in August 2007 have worsened the situation substantially.

North Korea devotes a disproportionately large percentage of its gross domestic product to its military purposes, another factor contributing to its economic difficulties. It also reportedly exports know-how to other members of the axis of genocide, notably Iran and Syria. Reports say that currently, North Korean industry is operating at a small fraction of its potential capacity due to lack of fuel and spare parts.

In December 2009, North Korea redenominated its currency at a rate of 100 to 1 and implemented new laws, banning the use or possession of foreign currency, regulating consumption and controlling the market. Money belonging to private traders has been confiscated. Inflation has risen.

A former finance official, Pak Nam-gi, was reportedly executed by a firing squad in Pyongyang. Yonhap News reported that he was charged with treason for "intentionally ruining the national economy," and held responsible for the failed currency reform and the growing public unrest over the faltering economy. According to the report, many North Koreans believe he was made a scapegoat.

A UNICEF report from 2009, cited also by the World Food Programme (WFP), states that one third of North Korean women and children are malnourished. According to this report, the country will need almost 1.8 tons of food this year to meet the most basic food needs of 24 million North Korean population.
UNICEF reports high percentages of child mortality (55 /1,000 live births), chronic malnutrition among children under age five (37%) and malnutrition of pregnant women (32%). The suggested causes are prolonged poverty, under-resourced health systems, decaying water and sanitation infrastructure, inadequate caring practices for young children and pregnant women, and fragile food security. The report sums that 2 million children under age five and 400,000 pregnant women are relying on international aid.

North Korea’s major trading partners are China, South Korea, Singapore, India, and Russia.

Other Human Rights Violations

North Korea’s human rights record is dismal but details about the secretive hermit state are not readily available.

Mass killings and summary public executions are the major violations. Human rights abuses include arbitrary and lengthy imprisonment, torture and degrading treatment, poor prison conditions, prohibitions or severe restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, movement, assembly, religion, and privacy, denial of the right of citizens to change their government, and suppression of workers’ rights.

In 2003, NBC News revealed that North Korea’ s State Security Agency maintains a dozen political prisons and about 30 forced labor and labor education camps in remote areas of the country. Most information comes from defectors, refugees and escapees. The worst are in the far North of North Korea, near the borders with China and Russia. They assessed that in 2003, these camps held around 200,000 men, women and children accused of political crimes.

The investigation, which was assisted by US and South Korean officials, included interviews with former prisoners, guards and who had been working or imprisoned in one of these camps between the years 1987-1994. It revealed horrifying and shocking conditions in these camps. This information has been verified by additional sources, escaped prisoners and refugees.

Satellite photos provided by DigitalGlobe confirm the existence of the camps. These photos are available on NBC News website (first appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review). The photos show military-style arracks, and the camp is surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence, with landmines and man traps, and a battery of anti-aircraft guns close-by.

At least two camps, Haengyong and Huaong, are very large. These camps have been compared to the Gulags of Mao and Stalin. Reportedly, what are perhaps the most atrocious human rights violations in the world are happening behind these walls, possibly even today.

Many women and children are imprisoned in these camps, because in North Korea three generations of a dissident’s family can be jailed simply on the basis of a denunciation. A child could be imprisoned for years under appalling conditions and hard labor because of some political statement made by his grandfather, not necessarily outright anti-regime activism. For example, a former prisoner, Kang Chol-Hwan, now a journalist in South Korean newspaper and author of “The Aquariums of Pyongyang,” was imprisoned for almost ten years, since the age of 9, with his entire family, because his grandfather had made complimentary statements about Japanese capitalism.

The concentration camps have detention centers, specific spots where executions are decided on, and training and recreation areas for the guards.
Prisoners are held in these camps for years, moving from job to job according to their age and size. In general, the working conditions are described as such that 20-25% of the prison population did not survive the first year. For example, children might be forced to dig for clay or work in building sites, or people would work to exhaustion in giant pits.

In 1985, Oh Kil-nam, an opponent of the South Korean Government, living in Germany at the time, received an offer of a government job in North Korea and medical treatment of his wife's hepatitis. He agreed to the offer, despite his family's objections, and realized his mistake when on arrival he was led to a military camp. Oh was later sent back to Germany to recruit more students for North Korea, but following his wife's request this time, did not recruit any new people, but instead defected to the West and did not return. After he left, his family was sent to Camp No.15. They have reportedly been moved to a section of the camp where prisoners are made to work until they die. Nineteen years ago, Oh received some letters in his wife's handwriting and a recording of his daughters' voices. He doesn't know if they are still alive today. He blames himself for their suffering. In the 1990 Oh Kil-nam wrote a book requesting the release of his family, but to no avail.

A Washington Post report from Feb 2010 brings evidence, through a Seoul-based human rights group called "Democracy Network Against the North Korean Gulag," and evidence collected from former prisoners who saw the family. The report claims that according to the latest estimate by the South Korean government, about 154,000 people are being held in six large camps in North Korea. Public executions are common in the camp, along with beatings, rapes, starvation and the disappearance of female prisoners impregnated by guards. Prisoners have no access to soap, underwear, socks, tampons or toilet paper. Most inmates die by age 50, usually of illnesses exacerbated by overwork and chronic hunger.

Torture

Several dissident former prison-camp guards from different camps explained that the guards were taught to treat the prisoners as if they were not human beings. They were “encouraged and even rewarded” with prizes such as college tuition, for killing prisoners trying to escape.

Beatings and deaths were everyday events which the guards grew used to executing. Prisoners were tortured, sometimes their eyeballs would be taken out by beating, or salt would be applied to open wounds with exposed bones, to make the prisoners suffer.

Pregnant women were forced to abort their babies, by inserting salt water into the women’s wombs with syringes. If the babies were born, they would be killed immediately brutally. Prisoners mentioned that this was done “so that another generation of political dissidents will be eradicated.”

Some of the former prisoners mentioned testing of biological and chemical warfare agents on camp inmates.

One prisoner described an event in which a group of about 50 prisoners were given a leaf of cabbage to eat. “All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes they were quite dead.”

Glass “gas chambers” were also described. Witnesses have described watching entire families being put in glass chambers and gassed. They were left to an agonizing death, while scientists watched on and took notes.

A BBC documentary interviews the former military attaché at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing, Kwon Hyuk (changed name), who was also the chief of management at Camp 22, which is thought to hold 50,000 prisoners. He described watching a whole family, parents and two children, being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. He said "the parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing." He also drew detailed diagrams of the glass chambers, including the gas injection tube.

The experiments were methodical, as is proven in documents smuggled by dissidents, for example a document dated February 2002: "The above person is transferred from ... camp number 22 for the purpose of human experimentation of liquid gas for chemical weapons."

Hyuk explained that everyone at the camps, including himself, had been taught to believe this treatment was justified. North Korea’s regime and society blamed these political prisoners for the country’s failing economy and all of its other problems. He said the prison guards were trained so as not to feel any sympathy towards these prisoners, even when watching children suffering a painful death.

Another source of evidence from 2004 is a man who defected to China, Kang Byong-sop, who claimed he was an engineer at a chemical factory where testing of chemical weapons on political prisoners took place. Kang was later detained in China when trying to cross the border to Laos, and was returned to North Korea. Later, at a press conference with his family in Pyongyang, Kang Byong-sop said that all the information he had given the west had been faked by his eldest son, who had escaped abroad, in order to make money from human rights organizations.

Abductions

North Korea has been involved in the abduction of foreign citizens. Citizens have been reportedly abducted from 12 different countries: South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Romania, China, Lebanon, Malaysia, France, the Netherlands, Singapore, Italy, and Jordan.

In 2002, Kim Jong-il acknowledged to Japanese Prime Minister, Koizumi, the involvement of North Korea "special institutions" in the kidnapping of Japanese citizens between 1977 and 1983, and said that those responsible had been punished. In October 2002, five surviving victims and their families were allowed to leave North Korea and resettle in Japan. Many other cases are unresolved. In October 2005, North Korea acknowledged for the first time having kidnapped South Korean citizens in previous decades, and noted that several abductees, as well as several POWs from the Korean War, were still alive.

In April 2010, an American citizen, an English teacher in South Korea, Aijalon Mahli Gomes, aged 30, was sentenced to eight years of hard labor and a $700,000 fine for illegally crossing the border to North Korea. He was the fourth American detained by North Korea for illegal entry in less than a year. Three other Americans had crossed into North Korea since March 2009. Journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were held captive for five months and sentenced to 12 years in a North Korean labor camp. All were freed after diplomatic negotiations, including a visit by former President Bill Clinton.

In August 2009 activist Robert Park, an American citizen and a conscious Christian activist, was allowed to return home, some 40 days after he crossed the border into North Korea. Park had aimed to focus world attention on human rights in North Korea, in order to liberate the concentration camps. However, when he returned home, he was quoted saying that "His understanding of North Korea had been tarnished by ‘false propaganda made by the west.’"

Escapees

Tens of thousands of North Koreans have tried to flee to China, whether to escape political detention or in search of food and new opportunities. According to South Korea's Unification Ministry, more than 16,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, most of them in the past 10 years, with the number rising every year, estimated at around 2,800 people in 2008. Nearly two thirds of them are women.

Making contact with the outside world is considered the most dangerous crime to the regime of Kim Jung-iI. If people are caught trying to leave North Korea, they risk being shot on the spot, or arrested for indefinite periods and possibly eventually executed.

Defectors exit the country aided by smugglers and try to reach a safe haven. They cross the Chinese border, or pay smugglers to take them to Russia, Laos, Thailand or Vietnam. South Korean organizations help dissidents reach South Korea. If arrested by the Chinese police, the escapees are usually returned to North Korea, where they and their family members face the punishments listed above. Other embassies usually do not send the defectors back.

Some escapees are executed publicly. In such cases, party officials compel all the inhabitants of nearby villages, including children, to be present at the passing of the sentence. An undercover video, smuggled out of North Korea, reached CNN and brings evidence of such a public execution.

In the film, the death sentence is read out: “Those who go against their party and their people will end up with a fate such as this. They have been involved in the illegal act of aiding people to defect the country. They trafficked women across the border to China. We have to protect North Korea from the outside influence and build up a strong guard to keep these influences out.” Then, three policemen with rifles are seen from a distance, shooting a prisoner tied to a pole.

A Reuters report described a public execution of 15 North Koreans in Feb 2008 on charges of trafficking and movement out of the country.

North Korea reportedly has a kidnapping unit, which kidnaps and returns defectors and their helpers, under the direction of the head of the Conspiracy Research Office of the North Korean National Security Agency in North Hamkyung Province.

Human "Trafficking"

North Koreans who escape the country cross its long border with China, or escape by sea. According to reports, many of those caught by guards at the Chinese border, especially women defectors, face more suffering. Many women caught escaping North Korea are sold to slavery, "trafficked", for marriage or as live-in labor. If they escaped North Korea with children or other family members, they are often separated from them forcefully.

The Washington Post, June 2009, tells the story of several women who were sold for marriage in China and have eventually managed to escape to South Korea. North Korean former actress Bang Mi Sun, when crossing the Chinese border in 2002, was separated from her two children and sold into marriage three times. On her third escape, Chinese police arrested her and sent her back to North Korea, where the police maimed her left leg and sent her to a labor camp "for reeducation". In 2004 she succeeded to flee to South Korea.

Another North Korean woman defector, Kim Young Ae, was held in China for 8 years and forcefully married to 3 husbands. A child she had by the first man drowned in a creek; and her son by her third "husband" is being withheld from her by his Chinese family.

The National Human Rights Commission conducted a survey of 274 women defectors escaped from North Korea now living in South Korea. Nearly 20 percent of the women said that they had been forced into sexual favors or bribes when caught by patrollers at the Chinese border. According to the commission's report, data from the Unification Ministry last year showed that six out of ten North Korean female defectors who entered Hanawon from 2003 to August of 2008 were diagnosed with ovarian or cervical illnesses.

Healthcare

The WHO’s Director General Margaret Chan praised North Korea's healthcare system following her visit there in April 2010, and said there was no lack of professional care and that public health had moved forward. She stressed several challenges, such as malnutrition, low weight among newborns and anemia among pregnant women. But a new report by Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific chapter claims that healthcare provided in North Korea is grossly inadequate.

Citing data from the World Health Organization, the Amnesty report claims North Korea spends less on healthcare than any other country in the world – under US$1 per person per year in total. Based on interviews with 40 dissidents, and information given by medical colleagues from other countries, the report claims that the most basic necessities are missing from North Korean hospitals, such as clean sheets and sterilized hypodermic needles. Many people reportedly suffer from malnutrition and hunger, some claimed to have survived on grass and tree bark. North Korea is said to be fighting a tuberculosis epidemic, many patients having developed resistance to first-line drugs. Many drugs available in the past have now been removed from hospitals.

Despite North Korea's claim that its healthcare is free for all, the report says people must pay or bribe the physicians with food or cigarettes for checkups and pay cash for surgery or tests.

China as an Enabler

The Chinese have been an enabling partner to many of North Korea's human rights violations. Without such devout cooperation, many more defectors would have succeeded in escaping to freedom.

The Chinese police and border guards hunt for defectors, arrest them and force them back to North Korea, where they face either execution or life-threatening conditions and torture in prisons and labor camps.
For example, in October 2009, Reuters reported that a daughter and granddaughter of a South Korean prisoner of war who escaped the North ten years ago were arrested in Shenyang, China and returned to North Korea.

More than a passive bystander, China helps North Korea enforce its brutal policy and even whitewash some of its human right violations. For example, some products produced by prisoners in labor camps are later marketed globally, passing through Chinese companies on the way for "authentication".


What should be done

North Korea is a key actor in what has been called the Axis of Evil and today can be called the Axis of Genocide. This group of state perpetrators of genocide promotes repression of elementary human rights, and incites to hatred towards democratic states. This group includes Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. China and Russia serve as protectors and enablers. Venezuela, Cuba, and Libya are major accomplices.

We find it disturbing that these countries, as a group, often vote against pro-democratic resolutions at the United Nations General Assembly or UN Security Council, or initiate and vote in favour of anti-democratic resolutions.

GPN WGSR will examine and discuss this point and examine its operational implications for those concerned with preventing genocide in forthcoming issues.

Genocide: The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide specifies four categories of victims: those defined by national, religious, ethnic or racial status. It omits those categorized by political status. This omission was mainly the result of the former USSR’s pressure. The aim and indeed the result of this pressure was to exempt perpetrators of mass-murder of political groupings from prosecution for genocide, starting with the Soviet’s use of starvation to murder the Ukrainians. The Cambodian Tribunal has established a precedent for breaking this exemption — and its rulings therefore bear direct importance on measures to hold the North Korean leadership accountable for their crimes. Despite the omission, today there is enough evidence to indict North Korea's leader, and his party, for crimes against humanity – see table of resolutions.

Currently, the regime requires outside aid from the free world and possibly China to survive. Were it to disintegrate, one can expect upheavals and chaos dwarfing that seen in the Central Asian Republics and Eastern Europe in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union. This scenario is expected because there is so much more suffering, oppression and brutality in North Korea, a “pressure cooker”… The challenge is to foster a transition which will result in the end of totalitarian rule, removing the nuclear threat, feeding the population, and somehow or another providing some kind of stable rule. There are no easy answers to the question: How to go about doing this? China has not been constructive, as it fears the consequences of disintegration of North Korea – currently a rogue hermit state -- which means refugees, unrest, civil war, and terror, including possibly nuclear terror.

North Korea is currently trying to create a new image for itself. It participated in the World Cup competition. It has produced a government web site, (even though the general population of the country has no access to the internet), and is making attempt to foster international tourism.

It is impossible to call by cell phone from South Korea to North Korea, but Chinese handsets can be used to call into North Korea. These are available through Chinese smugglers. It is highly likely that many in its population know far more about what is going on outside its borders than the government wants.

IF genocide results from human choice and bystander indifference, it remains for the outside world to put North Korea’s leaders on notice, that they will eventually face the same fate as the Khmer Rouge.

Yael Stein MD is a researcher-team member of the World Genocide Situation Room, the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem of GPN. She has experience in Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology and Hospital Administration and is currently studying towards a PhD degree in Public Health at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine. Yael describes herself as a "goal-oriented, idealistic entrepreneur, seeking spiritual and ethical fulfillment" in her work; "I focus on making a difference."

Professor Elihu D Richter MD MPH is Editor and Director of GPN World Genocide Situation Room and Associate Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. He is Head of the Genocide Prevention Program at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine and former head of the Unit of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. He has published and lectured on the use of public health models for the prediction and prevention of genocide.

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