Viewing Genocide From the Sofa: Highlights
How Should We Respond?
by Sheri Fink, 6/7/96Now, four years after tanks began pounding Sarajevo's streets, there are hopes for peace, but fears of future violence; there are hopes for justice, but fears that the perpetrators of genocide are being rewarded not punished. Worse yet, the scourge of genocide now rears its head in places like Burundi.
In this forum, we'll discuss the responsibility to act against genocide, on a personal and national level. We will also consider the most effective ways individuals can work to counter genocide in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Rwanda, Burundi and elsewhere.
Some questions to consider: 1) What constitutes an accomplice to genocide? In cases of genocide, does neutrality equal complicity?
2) What options are available for individuals who want to take action to stop or prevent genocide?
News coverage and modern technology make us all accomplices to the genocide in Bosnia
by John Palmer, 6/11/96I'm interested in your first question: what constitutes an accomplice to genocide? And I'm more intersted in it from a moral standpoint than a legal one. I would consider a farmer who lived next to a concentration camp during the Holocaust - who watched the trucks bring people in every day, who heard the screams and smelt the burning - and who never lifted a finger to stop it, to be an accomplice to genocide. Therefore I have to also consider myself to be an accomplice to genocide since I have read the newspaper and had access to the internet and numerous other sources of information for the past four years and have done nothing to stop the genocide in Bosnia.
Respond only if in national interest
By RichG61353@worldnet.att.net, 6/13/96We need to start maturing as a nation and understand throughout human history such genocide has occured. To preserve our resources including our young men and women in the military we need to stop rushing head first into every conflict because we see it on T.V. If the television is going to set our strategy then we have already lost the game. The Bosnian conflict is a tragedy but not our tragedy.
How to define "national interest"
by Daniel E Bontempo, 6/13/96Plunging "head first" into every conflict we "see on TV" is pretty hard to defend. It opens the door for rash emotional responses, possibly premature or incompletely informed responses. Such plunging will certianly lead to the loss of American lives, and for that reason alone restraint and deliberation should be introduced - particularly since those sitting on the sofa and feeling the urge to plunge are not necessiarily the ones who have to do the plunging.
However, I am not sure that there is no national interest involved in foreign interventions, nor is "reactionary plunging" the only option ... Once a broader concept of national interest is embraced, informed and efficient policy would commit resources to difusing conflict before it starts. As a nation we are quick to commit expensive military resources to waging war, but we are very slow to expend anywhere an equal amount of resources waging peace and protecting global interests.
Folly and Despair
by Jay Taylor, 6/13/96I lived in Sarajevo 10/94 - 6/95 and spent part of my stay working as a volunteer with a group of WHO nutritionists and Bosnian physicians (incidentally, from all three of the major ethnic groups) monitoring food security in the besieged city ... At its best, life was difficult for everyone in Sarajevo - snipers and the Bosnian Serb army's artillery would target anyone and anyplace in the city; they killed Muslims, Serbs, Croats, Jews, and foreigners alike, sometimes aiming at individuals or specific places, at other times firing more at random. But imagine how much worse to be a refugee in such a hell, in the midst of strangers, without home or possessions, often with only a fraction of ones family, and with little or no hope of ever returning home ... (It has been written in the forum) 'there are no innocent parties.' Mr. Clinton once said: 'the war will continue until those folks get tired of killing each other.'
So many pronouncements from those who were never there. So many condemnations and excuses. And so, so many lies, too many to refute. One could address them one by one by one. I could tell how I stayed with a 'mixed' family of Muslims and Serbs in Sarajevo, but it would make no difference in the face of the politicians' mythologies, the biggoted comments about 'ancient ethnic hatred' and the 'tribal Balkans'. One is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of lies, and most of us are simply too intellectually lazy to be bothered with the more complex, but not unfathomable, truth.
It must make for an easy, self-satisfied life when there are no other human beings in the world, just 'parties' and 'folks' and 'sides' and 'rogue states.' One lives without responsibility then, therefore without self-doubt, without sadness, without despair .... Reading through the various postings to this page, I am left almost wishing that I had stayed in Sarajevo and been killed. That's not fair to those who stayed and survived, but I am so utterly nauseated by the lies and apathy in this country that I just about don't care anymore. And think, inevitably, someday what was done to the Bosnians, both by those with guns and those with words, will happen amongst us. That's what we have to look forward to. That's what our folly will bring us.
Genocide should not be covered up
by Milan Pavlovic, 6/11/96In cases of genocide, does neutrality equal complicity? The answer is yes. Neutrality does indeed equal complicity. That is why, by keeping silent on the mass murders committed against Bosnian Serbs and Krajina Serbs by Bosnian Muslims and Croatians is a crime that a fairly large group of U.S. journalists -- such as Roy Gutman, Anthony Lewis, etc. -- have committed over the past 5 years. In a rare report which details the genocide committed against the Bosnian Serbs, the New York Times published a news-report on June 4 1992. John F. Burns writes about the massacre of Bosnian Serbs in a town in Bosnia called Bradina -- a massacre committed by Muslims: "Like other Serbs who relayed accounts of the attack, Mr. Gligorevic said that he had lost contact with most members of his family, including his father, mother and 23-year--old pregnant sister, and feared that if they had survived they were now in what he called "concentration camps." ...
Thus, there was evidence already on June 4, 1992 that concentration camps existed in Bosnia. Yet, the media kept quiet about it. This was the only metion of the camps at Konjic and Butorovic Polje. There were no TV cameras that went to investigate. No Roy Gutman or Maggie O'Kane to describe the conditions in these camps. No. Mr. Gutman would wait a full month, until July 1992, when he discovered prisoners in Bosnian Serb detention centers. Of course, the TV cameras went THERE -- in early August. Yet, somehow, they never made it to the Muslim-run and Croat-run camps in southern Bosnia. Thus, Roy Gutman, Maggie O'Kane, and other Western journalists who were in Bosnia during the summer of 1992 all are accomplices to the genocide that was perpetrated on the Bosnian Serbs. In their news-reports, they failed to tell the U.S. and British public about the genocide being perpetrated against Bosnian Serbs by their Muslim and Croat neighbors.
