Scoop.co.nz (press release), New Zealand
April 26 2006
Norma Sherry: Genocide
Wednesday, 26 April 2006, 12:48 pm
Opinion: Norma Sherry
Genocide
By Norma SherryAs a people who praise humanity; as a human race we
have a despicable history. Since the beginning of time we, as a
people, have abolished those with whom we didn’t like or agree with,
or those who had what we wanted: like land or rich resources. We
haven’t changed much. It appears we haven’t learned from our past and
as the acts of genocide pile high, clearly, we’re doomed to keep
repeating these atrocious acts.
Throughout history cultural genocide has occurred throughout the
world with little or no punishment. What does that say about us?
Before our ancestors embarked on the shores of what was to become the
Americas in 1492, it was inhabited by indigenous people known to all
today as the American Indian.
Conservative estimates the population of the United States prior to
European contact was greater than 12-million. Four centuries later,
the population was reduced by 95% or 237-thousand.
In 1493, when Columbus returned to the Hispaniola, he implemented
policies of slavery and mass extermination of the Taino population of
the Caribbean. Within three years, five-million were dead. Bartolomé
de Las Casas, priest, scholar, historian and 16th century human
rights advocate was the primary historian of the Columbian era. He
wrote of many accounts of the horrors that the Spanish colonists
inflicted upon the indigenous population: hanging them en mass,
hacking their children into pieces to be used as dog feed, and other
horrific cruelties.
The Removal Act of 1830 set into motion a series of events which led
to the “Trail of Tears” in 1838, a forced march of the Cherokees,
resulting in the destruction of most of the Cherokee population. As
appalling as it is, we now also know that the Indians were
intentionally exposed to smallpox by Europeans.
In California and Texas there was blatant genocide of Indians. In
California, the decrease from about a quarter of a million Indians to
less than 20,000 is primarily due to the cruelties and wholesale
massacres perpetrated by the gold miners and early settlers who were
assured their land by the Homestead Act of 1862.
We have a rich history of killing; of annihilating those who are
deemed inferior. Not just in America, but in the world.
We have a bad track record.
In Canada, the aboriginal natives, the Beothuk people are completely
extinct as a result of loss of habitat and importation of European
diseases. As the European settlements grew, the Beothuk’s withdrew
into the interior of the island and subsequently starved.
Between 1880 and 1920, under the rule of King Leopold II, the Congo
Free State, (before it was taken over by Belgium and became the
Belgium Congo), suffered great loss of life due to criminal
indifference to its native inhabitants in the pursuit of increased
rubber production. Over 10-million natives were the victims of
murder, starvation, exhaustion induced by over-work, and disease.
The Ustashe regime of Croatia committed genocide against Serbs, Jews
and Gypsies during World War II. They also mass murdered other
political opponents. Mile Budak, the Minister for Education &
Culture, said in July 1941 that `The basis for the Ustashe movement
is religion. For minorities such as the Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, we
have three million bullets. We will kill a part of the Serbs. Others
we will deport, and the rest we will force to accept the Roman
Catholic Religion. Thus the new Croatia will be rid of all Serbs in
its midst in order to be 100% Catholic within 10 years.’
In Hitler’s Nazi Germany, 11-million people were systematically
starved, tortured, shot and gassed. Six-million were Jews, including
1.5 million children in the Nazi’s Final Solution to the Jewish
Question. The plan was to rid the world of all Jews, all disabled,
all Gypsies, Slavs, Poles, and Communists.
The world knew it was happening and yet it sat silent while millions
were gassed in Hitler’s ovens. As the world came face to face with
the horrors of Hitler’s Holocaust, we vowed that it would never
happen again. And yet, genocide around the globe continues.
In 1985, German General Lothar von Trotha attempted to exterminate
the Herero and Namaqua peoples of Southwest Africa. Sixty-five
thousand Herero (80 percent of the total Herero population), and
10,000 Nama (50 percent of the total Nama population) were killed or
perished. Characteristic of this genocide was death by starvation and
the poisoning of wells for the Herero and Nama populations that were
trapped in the Namib Desert.
Between 1920 and 1945 the Japanese massacred hundreds of thousands of
its citizens. Some authorities claimed 300,000 people killed during
the three months following the fall of Nanjing to the Japanese.
Reportedly, Unit 731 conducted biological and chemical warfare
experiments on living humans.
When British Malaya fell to the Japanese Imperial Forces in February
1942, ethnic Chinese in Singapore were systematically exterminated on
the pretext of eliminating “anti-Japanese” elements. The death toll
ranged upwards of 100,000. Smaller scale Genocide was also targeted
at Koreans, Filipinos, Dutch, Vietnamese, Indonesians and Burmese.
In the Philippines, at least one-million civilians perished from
outright slaughter, disease, and famine between 1899 and 1908. A
largely forgotten genocide of at least three-million Roman Catholics
and over a half a million Jews took place in the Commonwealth of
Poland-Lithuania by Orthodox, Protestants and Muslims. One-third of
its population was slaughtered between 1648 and 1662.
Nearly two-million Armenians were killed during the Ottoman Empire
from 1915 to 1923. During the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, in
267-days 1 to 3 million ethnic Bengalis were killed by the Pakistan
Army and 200,000 women were raped. Between 1975 and 1979, 1.7-million
Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge.
After Kashmiri uprising began in late 1989 over 100,000 Kashmiri
Muslim and Hindu civilians have been killed and over 500,000 people
have been driven away from their homes. Other atrocities including
rape, torture and massacre are attributed to the Indian Army
personnel in the region.
The Sri Lanka authorities have been committing systematic genocide
against the Tamil people since 1958. Murder, rape, arson, maiming and
pillage are all acts perpetrated upon the Tamils.
In 1992-1995 there was an organized killing of thousands of Bosnians
and displacing of a million more. A hundred days in 1994 took almost
a million lives in Rwanda. Hutus with machetes in hand slaughtered
their Tutsis neighbors in their effort to annihilate all Tutsis from
Rwanda. The Belgian police left, the U.N. ran for cover and the blood
ran down the streets and no country came to their protection.
In 2002, Sudan was accused of the genocide of more than two-million
lives and the displacement of more than four-million people since the
Sudanese War started in 1983. In 2004 it became widely known that
there was an organized campaign by Janjaweed militias (nomadic Arab
shepherds with the support of Sudanese government and troops) to get
rid of 80 black African groups from the Darfur region of western
Sudan. These peoples include the Fur, Zaghawa and Massalit.
Knowing that the atrocities are taking place the Western world is
still unwilling to take action. The death toll rises every day. The
inhumanity of man upon man, woman and child is so appalling, so
horrible that the words are inexplicably inadequate.
The Western world is not innocent. In fact, there are more instances
of intrusion, escalation and insertion than this article can include.
But, there is one issue that must be stated and that is Depleted
Uranium: The dream child of Dick Cheney. In 1991 he was responsible
for the wholesale use of radioactive munitions back in the Bush I
administration. It is the genocide that keeps on giving, disabling
and killing all that come into contact with it and leaving its
devastating effects on generations contaminating the air, water and
earth and every aspect of living free of contaminates. It is a price
our enlisted men and women know all too well as they are sick and
dying of a myriad of immobilizing diseases.
If, as 1776 author, David C. McCullough wrote, `History is who we are
and why we are the way we are’ is true, we’re in trouble. Our history
does not speak well for us. George Bernard Shaw said, `We learn from
history that we learn nothing from history’. How sad and how true is
that statement?
If this partial list – and yes, folks, this horrific accounting is
only a partial list of carnage isn’t enough to cause one to rethink
our place in this world and what we owe to one another then we are
doomed to keep repeating our shocking history. Is this acceptable? Is
this what we want for us, for our children, for our history?
Why is it that as a human race we think killing, raping, mayhem,
mutilation and butchery is an acceptable means for change? For years
we’ve watched as religious disagreements waged on as wars destroying
entire nations. Some of our ancestors have witnessed first hand the
inhumanity of man and gasped at the horror. After Hitler’s expansive
Holocaust the world swore never to allow it again, and yet, here we
are in the twenty-first century and everywhere in this world someone
is being killed, beaten, imprisoned, raped, and pillaged because
someone else thought them inferior.
On a smaller scale murder, rape and arson are crimes of every
community. Local police departments deploy officers to school yards
with Tasers in hand to disrupt volatile youngsters. Parents’ abuse
their children in unspeakable ways and spouses beat one another in
numbers too many to count. Are these symptoms of our greater ill?
What is our remedy? Are we destined to destroy ourselves with hatred?
We can no longer ignore the pain of others whether in our community
or our country or the world with which we all live. Silence is not an
option.
As Edmund Burke so eloquently stated, `The only thing necessary for
the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
*************
Norma Sherry 2006
Norma Sherry is an award-winning writer/producer. She is the host of
The Norma Sherry Show on WQXT-TV. She is also co-founder of Together
Forever Changing, an organization designed to enlighten and encourage
citizens to fight for our liberties.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress