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

Read full text......

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.

Read full text......

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

Read full text......

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.

Read full text......

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 (corvיe 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.

Click here for fully referenced article

Read full text......

Turks Hit PKK with Chemical Weapons

German politicians called for an international investigation into the reported use of chemical weapons by the Turkish military. The weapons were used against members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), according to the online edition of the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel.

A Reuters report said that "German experts have confirmed the authenticity of photographs that purport to show PKK fighters killed by chemical weapons."

A German expert on photo forgeries has confirmed the authenticity of the photos, and a forensics report released by the Hamburg University Hospital has backed the initial suspicion, saying that it is highly probable that the eight Kurds died "due to the use of chemical substances."

Reuters stated "The evidence puts increasing pressure on the Turkish government which has long been suspected of using such weapons against Kurdish rebels. German politicians are demanding an investigation."

Reuters added "It would be difficult to exceed the horror shown in the photos, which feature burned, maimed and scorched body parts. The victims are scarcely even recognizable as human beings. Turkish-Kurdish human rights activists believe the people in the photos are eight members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) underground movement, who are thought to have been killed in September 2009."

According to the Jerusalem Post, "The bodies in the photos were severely deformed and torn to pieces; the photos formed the basis for the forensic report. Hans Baumann, a German expert on the authenticity of photos, confirmed that photos had not been doctored. The 31 photos, according to German media, are so disturbing that news organizations have been reluctant to publish them."

A Chicago blogger, Warner Todd Houston, commented, "Interestingly few European news sources seem very much interested in discussing this story much. Israeli news outlets, though, are covering this story heavily. This is interesting because if Turkey really is using chemical weapons against its internal, political enemies, this fact will cause immeasurable difficulties between the relations of members of the EU and the increasingly Islamized Turkish nation."

Der Spiegel reported: "Turkey has been suspected of using chemical weapons for years, points out Gisela Penteker, a Turkey expert with the international medical organization International Physicians for the Pevention of Nuclear War. 'Local people have said that again and again,' she explained. Finding proof is difficult, however, she said, because bodies were often released so late that it was hardly possible to carry out a thorough autopsy.

Der Spiegel continued: "In Turkey, human rights advocates have long demanded an investigation. The army, however, has refused to comment on the issue. Similarly, the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been stubbornly silent or tried to portray the accusations of war crimes as 'PKK propaganda.'"

According to the Berlin daily newspaper, Die Tageszeitung, the Turkish Foreign Ministry has rejected the accusations. Turkey is a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and its armed forces do not possess any biological or chemical weapons, the Ministry reportedly said.

The newspaper also reports that in the meantime it has obtained additional, shocking pictures supposedly autopsy photographs of six other killed Kurds. These images too have now been submitted to the Hamburg-based experts.

Sources:
Weinthal, Benjamin (August 12, 2010). Turks hit PKK with chemical weapons. Jerusalem Post. http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=184612

Asbarez.com Armenian News (August 13, 2010). Turkey accused of using chemical weapons against PKK. http://asbarez.com/84156/turkey-accused-of-using-chemical-weapons-against-pkk/

Huston, Warner Todd (August 14, 2010). Did Turkey bomb Kurds with chemical weapons in 2009? Publius Forum Gateway Pundit. http://www.publiusforum.com/index.php?s=Did+Turkey+Bomb+Kurds

Steinvorth, Daniel and Musharbash, Yassin (August 12, 2010). Turkey accused of using chemical weapons against PKK. Der Spiegel. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,711536,00.html

Read full text......

Can We Prevent Genocide by Preventing Incitement? Part 2

Preventing genocide by preventing hate language and incitement: Models from epidemiology and public health

Elihu D Richter, Yael Stein, Alex Barnea Burnley, and Marc Sherman

Part I of this article also entitled Can We Prevent Genocide by Preventing Incitement was published in GPN Issue 3.



If state-sanctioned hate language and incitement predict, promote and catalyze genocidal scenarios, there is a compelling case for applying models from epidemiology and public health which take us to prediction and prevention. This essay examines concepts and tools of public health, preventive medicine and epidemiology—the field which studies the distribution and determinants of diseases in populations. These concepts and tools, first developed to control and eradicate microbial diseases transmitted by water, food, air-borne and person-to-person spread, have produced spectacular advances in identifying the risks and advancing prevention of chronic non-infectious diseases -- e.g., heart disease, cancer, mass disasters, injuries, and violence. These models include: Surveillance, the Mean determines the Extreme, Positive Deviance, and the use of the Precautionary Principle.

In a previous paper (http://www.genocidepreventionnow.org/2010/06/can-we-prevent-genocide-by-preventing.html), we noted that the case for preventing genocide by preventing hate language and incitement derives from the fact that the latter mobilize and motivate perpetrators and desensitize bystanders. Such prevention requires developing world-wide networks for epidemiologic surveillance of hate language and incitement. These networks would trigger interventions before perpetrators start carrying out mass atrocities against victim populations, exploiting existing legal and extra-legal interventions as well.

The perils of neglecting the propagation and spread of state-sanctioned and state-sponsored hate language and incitement are ominous, especially in an era of push-button genocide and nuclear terror, rogue regimes and terror groups. Conversely, when regimes inciting to genocide are developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the case is imperative for stopping them from doing so, given the fact that such incitement is an early warning sign until proven otherwise.

Will humankind test the efficacy of going from post-event intervention to Predict and Prevent, using the models from public health? The lessons of the Holocaust empower us to address prevention of hate language and incitement when they are used against all populations, without waiting for the consequences.

---

Wars are not fought for territory, but for words.
Man's deadliest weapon is language.
He is susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases.
And where there is an epidemic, the group mind takes over.
--Arthur Koestler 1978

The epidemiology of hate language and incitement: Useful models from public health

Certain concepts from public health are useful for examining the impact of population-wide exposure to dehumanizing medical metaphors and messages on potential individual perpetrators and the population-at-large of followers and bystanders. Here we want to examine concepts and tools of public health, preventive medicine and epidemiology—the field which studies the distribution and determinants of diseases in populations. These concepts and tools, first developed to control and eradicate microbial diseases transmitted by water, food, air-borne and person-to-person spread, have produced spectacular advances in identifying the risks and advancing prevention of chronic non-infectious diseases, --e.g. heart disease, cancer, mass disasters, injuries, and violence.

Concepts such as Predict and Prevent, surveillance, early warning signs, incubation periods, and pro-active intervention against sources of exposure have been the basis of spectacular advances in both infectious and non-infectious diseases and mass violence. They are now part of everyday conventional wisdom concerning decision making and public policy. More recent concepts such as the Mean determines the Extreme and the Precautionary Principle should help advance the locus of genocide intervention from proof of intent after the event to Predict and Prevent.

Hate language and incitement: "The mean determines the extreme," but the extreme also determines the mean

The epidemiologist Geoffrey Rose made the point that for any exposure to a risk factor or disease, “the mean determines the range.” Applied to genocide, we can paraphrase this aphorism to say that the mean determines the extreme. This somewhat simplistic but powerful aphorism is a way of saying that small increases in exposure applied to large numbers of persons—i.e., a population-- produce more persons with an adverse outcome ---i.e., perpetrators--- than large increases in exposure applied to small numbers of people. Applied to incitement and genocide, this concept suggests the hypothesis that massive population-wide exposure to hate language and incitement will shift the distribution curve for the level of hate to the right, producing a pool of potential perpetrators and complicit bystanders. The numbers of perpetrators produced by such population wide incitement will be much larger than the number from high intensity messages directed to small high-risk groups.

We do not have empirical verification of the hypothesis that Rose’s aphorism is a valid tool for predicting the population-wide effects of exposure to incitement. But a simple thought experiment suggests the hypothesis that the power of population-wide exposures could be massive. Marketing a low intensity message of incitement with a success rate of 5% for recruiting perpetrators from a population of 500,000 will yield 2,500 candidates. By contrast, marketing a high intensity message with a success rate of 50% to a high risk subgroup of 500 will yield only 250 candidates.

"The mean determines the extreme" may help us understand why architects of genocide find it useful to direct their messages of hate at the total population. It is suggested, that their aim is to shift to the right the entire population curve for the probability that individuals will act out messages from hate language and incitement. Population-wide exposure not only produces the potential for large numbers of recruits, but also creates a total population-wide protective ambience for the indoctrination directed at the smaller number of hard-core perpetrators.

But, in genocide… does the extreme determine the mean? The notion that the mean determines the extreme is true when the exposure is independent of the outcome, such as with smoking and cancer – i.e., if a larger number of people smoke, we will encounter more cases of cancer. But as with contagious diseases, there are secondary consequences --- producing a small pool of hard core perpetrators who promote the spread of more hate and incitement. There are circular and mutually reinforcing relationships between those who do the inciting—those on the extreme-- and those who have been incited to carry out mass atrocities — i.e., all the others. These relationships produce tipping points for autocatalytic spread of genocidal messages and actions. What may have started as messages coming from the top down into a social system take on a momentum of their own as those on the extreme fringe propagate their messages and use intimidation to recruit more followers.

Positive Deviance, Exposure and Individual Susceptibility

In epidemiology, it is well recognized that the risk for contracting a given disease caused by an environmental agent, is a function of the interaction between exposure and susceptibility. There are individuals who, following exposure to a carcinogenic agent for as briefly as a month will contract a cancer associated with the agent. But then there are other individuals, who will live to the age of 100, going to the funerals of all those who warned them of the risks from far heavier exposures to the same agent. In short, increased exposure is predictive of increased risks for members of the group, but not determining for individual members of the group.

Is the exposure-susceptibility model useful for understanding the contribution of past exposure to background levels of incitement as triggers of terror rampages in troubled individuals? This question applies to the case of the US military psychiatrist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, in whom the warning signs of danger were missed prior to his rampage killing of 14 of his colleagues. The exposure susceptibility model also applies to the "underwear bomber" and "Jihad Jane," two other troubled individuals who were recruited via the internet. The exposure-susceptibility paradigm leads us directly to examine the potential of applying the concept of promoting positive deviance—for which there are now abundant precedents in public health.

Shifting the mean to the left and promoting positive deviance

It is suggested that "the mean determines the extreme" can be exploited for prevention of genocide. Preventive approaches have to be population-wide and directed to removing population-wide exposures to incitement. Strategies which aim to shift the curve to the left need to exploit the public health experience with promoting positive deviance. The aim is to shift the distribution curve for the entire population back to the left. It is not enough to restrict attention only to the high-risk groups at the right end of frequency distribution.

Genocide scholars have noted that among ordinary people, there is a minority---estimated by Christopher Browning to be of the order of 10%--who are resistant to such incitement and are unwilling to participate in the mass killing. Browning’s estimate was based on empirical studies of the behavior of reservists, nearly all not members of the Nazi party, in a German police battalion sent to Poland to carry out mass shooting of captive Jews. "The other children egged the boy on, but he did not want to throw the stone through the window", says it all.

Who are these individuals and why are they are resistant to incitement and hate language? Promoting the attitudes and traits of such individuals is one of the major challenges to those concerned with the primary prevention of genocide.

Incubation periods of hate language and incitement: How much time do architects and perpetrators need? The challenge to responders

How much time do perpetrators and their accomplices need to motivate a sufficiently large population to become executioners in Aktions, members of execution squads, wielders of hatchets who bludgeon, behead, and shoot or today send rockets at vulnerable populations with intent to kill. The challenge to perpetrators is formidable: to remove the inhibitions to butchery — in the first cases above, direct hands in one-to-one butchery without the blunting effects of "push-button" distancing when the perpetrators are using weapons which produce a disconnection between action and consequence, as in operating missile delivery systems or chemical warfare systems. In the second instance, the need is to remove the inhibitions to mass killing can be experienced even with the distancing of technological delivery systems. The challenge to responders is even more formidable: to intervene fast enough to prevent incitement leading to killing.

Experience from the Holocaust, former Yugoslavia and Rwanda suggests that a period of weeks to months may be sufficient to produce cadres of genocidaires who do the killing and raping, and to deflect bystanders from protest or resistance. Eight months elapsed between the onset of Radio TV de Libre Milles Collines (RTVLMC)’s incitement in Rwanda in August 1993—at first, coy, and then ever more explicit–and the mass killing, although there had been years of preparation and organization partially hidden from the eyes of outside observers.

Often, perpetrators reactivate submerged half buried or half forgotten "memories," or recycle myths, as is the case with the blood libels of antisemitism to produce rage, revulsion, demands for revenge, and hate—and desensitization of bystanders, although, as noted, in an era of push-button genocide, such incitement hardly may hardly be as necessary. Most recently, we see, ominously, the recycling of such blood libels in liberal democratic countries---e.g., the Swedish newspaper story on Israelis harvesting the organs of killed Palestinians, or the Turkish TV series broadcasting fictional images of what appear to be Israeli soldiers killing children. These examples of the demonization, defamation and disinformation by antisemitism, whatever the inciters' intent, can certainly be expected to both increase the pool of perpetrators of genocidal terror and increase mass desensitization of bystanders.

The case for action: 'What Now... and If Not Now, When?'

The foregoing underscores the importance of online surveillance systems for tracking HL&I in real time, so as to trigger interventions directed at those who manufacture and disseminate their toxic messages. The interventions can include a mix of political, economic, educational, legal or military measures. The failure to jam or bomb the Rwandan radio transmitters is an excellent example of a low-cost, low risk missed opportunity for intervention against toxic incitement, which could have crippled the Rwandan regime’s capacity to organize, instruct, inform and incite its genocidaires. By contrast, in Darfur, where there was no widely known public hate language and incitement, but indications of incitement directed to mobilize perpetrators, preventive measures would have required political, military and economic sanctions against leading members of the regime, along with bombing the Janjaweed. Darfur tells us that the absence of evidence of public state-sponsored hate language and incitement is no guarantee of absence of risk for a genocidal scenario. Indeed, the Darfur story shows how the absence of incitement directed towards the outside world may serve to conceal genocidal actions.

How long does it take to reverse the effects of incitement and hate language?

The adverse impacts of incitement and hate language are a function of the intensity and frequency of exposure. They are modified by the political and social context shaping the susceptibility of the target population to the messages, notably an authoritarian structure. Getting rid of the message by removing its propagators from power gets rid of the exposure. Denazification was successful in Germany in transforming its society into a normal democracy ---even if beer hall and kitchen table hate may have persisted, because the Allied Occupiers destroyed the Nazi regime, reshaped Germany’s political and social environment and transformed the educational information system. Half a century later, there are still bigotry and hate crimes in Germany, among others a result of the intergenerational transmission of the age-old motifs of antisemitism and hatred for foreigners. But state-based structures of modern liberal democracy, including laws against hate crimes, so far appear to be robust enough to withstand their challenges—unless there will be violent economic and social upheaval. Where there is lack of will or power at the level of the State to defeat and remove those producing the incitement, we are left with the challenge of decades of work to undo the enduring intergenerational effects of their HL&I.

In Rwanda, the incitement from RTVLMC to “kill the cockroaches” ended when a Tutsi exile army defeated the government’s army. Former bitter enemies live side-by-side, tensely, and in pain and grief, but in peace. In Cambodia, the same happened when the Vietnamese invaded that country and destroyed the Khmer Rouge regime.

Can genocide be stopped once it is started? It seems unlikely without a total defeat of a regime carrying out genocidal mass atrocities. However, preventing genocide in advance by preventing incitement and hate language seems possible. It requires effective use of the tools of international law to punish the inciters, as proposed by Irwin Cotler and cosigners in their Petition, and if not officially, at least in the court of public opinion.

Push button genocide: When incitement may not be necessary

Today, in the era of mass bombing, the threats of nuclear genocide, and the threat of push-button genocide, the distance between those pressing the button and those who are the “targets”—itself a dehumanizing term - creates possibilities for genocide without mass hate. In a scenario in which a small number of perpetrators carry out atrocities directed against a defined population --- as when Saddam used helicopter gunships to gas the Kurds in Iraq - in theory, all that is necessary is to rely on the readiness to obey the orders of those told to push the buttons and/or to harden feelings of disconnection and depersonalization in them.

Past action against hate language and incitement

The horrific effects of dehumanizing hate language by the Nazis led to the enactment of the provisions in the UN Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of Genocide. Incitement to genocide was defined as a crime against humanity. The Convention was the basis for the conviction and execution of Julius Streicher for the inflammatory language he published in Der Sturmer. Following the Rwandan genocide, the UN incorporated the provisions specifying that incitement to genocide is a crime against humanity, into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. These provisions were the basis of the International Criminal Tribunal Court- Rwanda- ICT-R convictions of broadcasters, rock singers and journalists for incitement to genocide. The Mugasera case - in which the former politician was accused of encouraging attacks in Rwanda on Tutsis in his speech - using principles from international law, established the precedent that criminal liability exists even if it is not possible to prove a direct cause and effect connection between the words of the individual inciter and the subsequent genocide. Today, many countries have laws against hate language and incitement.

The Precautionary Principle: Prediction, prevention and protection

Can we prevent genocide by preventing state-sponsored hate language and incitement? A coherent approach to prevention of genocide requires that we advance the temporal locus of intervention from that period in time when the perpetrators start carrying out their mass killings, rapes, expulsions and plundering, or committing push-button genocide -- to an earlier time when warning signs signal genocidal intent. Genocide prevention needs to move from interventions triggered by evidence of proof of intent after the event, to actions to predict and prevent before the event.

Richter and Stanton argue that the proposal to criminalize and prosecute incitement by state authorities and their funded or protected surrogates is an example of applying the Precautionary Principle — public health’s gift to genocide prevention. The Precautionary Principle specifies that when there is uncertainty concerning the likelihood of the occurrence of a catastrophic event, it is better to intervene to prevent rather than wait and do nothing. The Precautionary Principle shifts the burden of proof from those suspecting the risk to those denying it. Since human lives are at stake, there is an ethical import to delay. It restates the aphorism that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The case for application of the Precautionary Principle to the prevention of genocide –perhaps the ultimate man-made human catastrophe, is that the negative consequences of doing nothing to stop state-sponsored hate language and incitement are far greater than the negative consequences of doing something. Intervention against state-sanctioned hate language and incitement before the killing starts is far less dangerous than failing to stop incitement and thereby allowing perpetrators to expel, plunder and exterminate. We suggest that the downside consequences of using the tools of international law to stop hate language and incitement are far less than those from sending in armed forces to defeat or destroy genocidal regimes once the killing and mass expulsions begin.

We have to recognize that if there is state-sanctioned hate language and incitement, there is an increased risk for genocide, but this relationship is not necessarily determinant. Furthermore, note that there can be genocide without hate language and incitement. Perpetrators can use mass starvation to commit genocide without mass incitement, thereby concealing their actions from their own countrymen and the outside world.

This lack of total predictability was the pretext for US Genocide Prevention Task Force’s rejection of recommendations to apply the Precautionary Principle, and promote interventions directed against state-sponsored hate language and incitement.
Using this logic, there would not be case for smoking bans, since most smokers do not get cancer, and many cancer victims have never smoked.

As already noted, the Nazis used hate language, but did not explicitly incite — so as to conceal and camouflage their genocidal goals. As a result, it was not until mid-1942 — more than 3 years after their invasion of Poland, that the world began to recognize the horrible scale of the Holocaust’s atrocities. Legal distinctions between hate language and incitement, while important for ascertaining accountability, are not crucial to prevention. From the standpoint of prevention, what counts is not proof of criminality, but interventions directed at the causes –e.g., the potentially horrific effects of dehumanizing hate language and their genocidal consequences.

Using the Precautionary Principle to prevent hate language and incitement

The foregoing helps clarify strategies for guiding prediction and prevention of genocide and protection of vulnerable populations. We suggest that the case for action for testing these strategies is compelling.

What can be done?

From Darfur and Rwanda, we have learned from bitter experience that the proposal to establish a standby military Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) to intervene to stop genocide may have become an oxymoron. The same conclusion applies to its parent vision: that it is possible to prevent genocide once the mass killing starts. To date, RDF’s have not been rapid (e.g. Bosnia), they did not truly deploy (e.g. Darfur), and they did not have real force at a level which deterred (e.g. Rwanda). So far, those nations with the force to deploy do not have the appetite or will to put their sons at risk to protect some faraway group "out there"—for all too readily understandable reasons.

If state-sanctioned hate language and incitement often predicts genocide, it remains to be seen if stopping such hate language and incitement prevents many genocides. To create the data base for putting this hypothesis to test, Genocide Prevention Now of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem is proposing an international worldwide network for tracking and monitoring hate language and incitement (HL&I) based on predict-and-prevent models for surveillance of epidemic warning signs, derived from epidemiology and public health. This network would develop search engines for tracking dehumanizing language from figures of authority—("top down")-or when it reaches a critical mass from viral dissemination ("bottom up"). The objective is to produce an ongoing worldwide data base which will trigger interventions before the killing starts, by when it is already too late.

Conclusion

Genocide and its prevention both result from human choice. But if state-sanctioned hate language and incitement predict, promote and catalyze genocidal scenarios, then the case is compelling for applying the Precautionary Principle to prevent genocide by preventing such hate language and incitement, which mobilizes and motivates perpetrators and desensitizes bystanders. Such prevention requires developing worldwide networks for epidemiologic surveillance of hate language and incitement. These networks could trigger interventions before perpetrators start carrying out mass atrocities against victim populations. Such interventions can exploit existing legal tools available under international law, but there are extra-legal interventions as well. Surveillance would give force to existing tools of international law to detect, deter, prevent and punish for the crimes of hate language and incitement. Other forms of incitement which need to be monitored are the recycling of demonizing myths such as those of genocidal antisemitism.

One lesson from the Holocaust is that there may be existential dangers associated with ignoring state-sanctioned dehumanizing hate language, with and without explicit incitement, propagated by rogue regimes. We suggest that the spread of dehumanizing hate language drives a new worldwide axis of genocide.

In conclusion, the perils of neglecting the propagation and spread of state-sanctioned and state-sponsored hate language and incitement are ominous, especially in an era of push-button genocide, nuclear terror, rogue regimes and terror groups. Conversely, when regimes propagating such incitement are developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the case is imperative for stopping them from doing so, given the fact that such incitement is an early warning sign (EWS) until proven otherwise.

Will humankind test the efficacy of going from proof of intent after the event to predict and prevent? The lessons of the Holocaust empower us to address prevention of hate language and incitement against all populations without waiting for the consequences.

Acknowledgments: We thank Jacey Macrae, Isabella Glaser, Laura Seton, and David Lisbona for bibliographic and editing notes and Professors Israel Charny, Greg Gordon and Greg Stanton for their helpful advice and suggestions.

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.

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.”

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.

Marc Sherman, M.L.S. is Editor and Director of the Holocaust and Genocide Review. He also is the Director of Information Services for the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, an Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia of Genocide and many volumes of the Institute’s series, Genocide, A Critical Bibliographic Review.

Click here for fully referenced article

Read full text......