Malaysia Star, Malaysia
July 30 2006
Doomed to repeat the horror?
One Malaysian got a lot closer to these tragic events than was
comfortable. He came away from the experience despairing, he tells
SUHAINI AZNAM.
FOR most Malaysians, Rwanda is just a name `somewhere on the map of
Africa’. And genocide is a big word to grapple with.
But one Malaysian had the dubious privilege of coming to grips with
the tragedy at close range. After Justice Tan Sri Lal Chanda Vohrah
retired from the High Court of Malaya in 1993, he was appointed first
as a permanent trial judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for two terms (1993-2001), sitting in
the Hague, and subsequently as an ad litem judge (where he could be
called upon as need arose) in the Appeals Chamber for the ICT for
Rwanda (ICTR), sitting in Arusha, Tanzania (2001-2005).
Retired Justice Tan Sri Lal C. Vohrah desribing the horrific tales of
genocide he listened to in his capacity as a judge.
The Yugoslav stories in particular affected him tremendously because
as a trial judge, he heard first-hand accounts of the atrocities
committed by man against his fellow men.
`It was horrifying actually, the suffering the victims underwent,’ he
recalls soberly. `Bosnians were being chased out of their villages.
There were heart-rending experiences. We used to shed tears listening
to their stories.’
He was not alone. One judge was so appalled he had to down a bottle
of wine in the evenings. Another resorted to haunting art museums to
find peace of mind.
Ironically, genocide, as it is committed today, came with the
civilisation of mankind. `Before 1900, we never saw genocide as we
know it today,’ Vohrah points out.
Genocide is defined as `the deliberate extermination of a race of
people’. The past century has seen at least nine instances of
attempted genocide: the Armenians in Turkey; the Nazi holocaust; the
Cambodian `killing fields’; Yugoslavia; Rwanda; the attempt to wipe
out the tribal Karen by the military junta of Myanmar; the ongoing
displacement in Darfur, Sudan; and the ethnic killings in Sierra
Leone and Sri Lanka.
`Nothing was done until the newspapers showed (pictures of) emaciated
people in Bosnia. That was the sort of apathy we saw then. The United
Nations was propelled to do something at the instigation of the
United States.’
When Rwanda finally grabbed attention, `there was that thought, `Are
you not bothering with us because we are Africans?’ So the UN was
pushed to set up a sister commission to the one on Yugoslavia.’
Vohrah used to travel to Arusha because the Rwandan tribunal had to
hear cases in an African court.
When the ICTR was formed in October 1994, its jurisdiction was
backdated to Jan 1 of that year because its members also wanted `to
go after the minds who had instigated the mission and planned the
genocide,’ recalls Vohrah.
This tragedy happened because `politics came into play,’ he said
simply. Its propagators were `harping on ethnic fears.
‘By 1994, a lot of inter-marriage had taken place between the Tutsi
and the Hutu. But because the society is patrilineal, as long as the
father was Tutsi, his children would also be persecuted.
`Whole families were thrown into wells,’ says Vohrah. `I didn’t see
the skulls because it was thought to be unsafe for the judges to go
(to the scenes of massacres). But there was a museum of skulls in
(the capital) Kilgali.’
Globally, the trend is encouraging in that the international
community is forced to take into account that genocide does occur and
can always recur, notes Vohrah.
To prevent it from recurring, `one has to prevent the people who
commit these crimes from getting off with impunity.’
But Vohrah himself holds little hope that we have learnt any lessons
from these dark chapters of `ethnic chauvinism’.
`Well, we keep repeating them, don’t we?’ he says in despair. `It’s
human nature, that’s what it is. Human nature has to be controlled.
We must never allow the bad side of human nature to rear its ugly
head.’