Never Again

The world was horrified by World War II. The Nazis killed people in horrific ways. Many historians say this led to the rise of human rights. As the world learned of the Holocaust, many people promised, “never again.”

However, genocide continues today. Since World War II, many nations have committed genocide against civilians. Civilians are people who are not soldiers. Genocide has happened in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur (Sudan), and other places. Why does this violence still happen?

Genocide is organized murder. Leaders start killing their own people. Often, minority groups are targets of the majority. Other countries have the power to step in. But many leaders do not. They fear it would be seen as an attack on one nation’s independence.

There is a long global history of organized violence against groups of people. The Charter of the United Nations was created in the mid-1900s. This was an international treaty. It promotes “the dignity and worth of the human person.”

The United Nations passed a Convention on the Prevention and Punishment for the Crime of Genocide in 1948. But this was not enforced for fifty years. The Convention was used on leaders of the Rwandan genocide. Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, and many other countries belonged to the convention. Meanwhile, these countries were all committing their own genocides.

Cambodia and Iraq: Genocide during the Cold War

In 1975, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge military government killed 1.7 million people. That was 21 percent of the country’s population. The Cambodian genocide started with the Vietnam war. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military bombed Cambodia. They wanted to attack North Vietnamese enemies in hiding. Instead, the bombs killed Cambodian civilians.

Many survivors joined the group known as the Khmer Rouge. Khmer Rouge rebelled against the Cambodian government. The United States supported the Cambodian government.

In 1975, Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge. The group seized control of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Khmer Rouge killed anyone who stood in the way of their revolution. Ethnic and religious minorities became targets.

Why did the UN not get involved? There are five members of the UN Security Council: the United States, Soviet Union, China, France, and Britain. These powers can step in to solve problems in other countries. But all five countries must agree. The Soviet Union and China refused to get involved in Cambodia. They each had abusive governments in Eastern Europe and Tibet. If the UN stopped Cambodia, the Soviet Union and China could be next.

The United States and China both supported the Khmer Rouge. The United States’ former enemy Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979 to end the genocide. In response, the United States provided aid to the Khmer Rouge. President Jimmy Carter said that the U.S. was choosing the “lesser evil.” (Yes, in 1975, the Khmer Rouge saw the U.S. as the enemy. Things change fast in war.)

A few years later in Iraq, Saddam Hussein launched a campaign to kill Iraq’s Kurdish population. The Kurds are an ethnic minority. They live along the borders of Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. In the 1980s, almost one-fourth of Iraq’s 18 million people were Kurds. At the time, Iraq was at war with Iran. The Iraqi government claimed the Kurds were helping Iran. Hussein’s military murdered tens of thousands of Kurdish men, women, and children.

Americans and Soviets provided aid to Iraq in its war against Iran. Then, 100,000 Iraqi Kurdish refugees entered Turkey. The United States is an ally of Turkey. Americans then decided to work with the UN to protect civilians in Iraq.

Bosnia and Rwanda: American indifference after the Cold War

The Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. Eastern Europe entered a period of change. The country of Yugoslavia erupted into violence in 1992. Serbian nationalists took advantage of the country’s religious and ethnic divisions.

Serbian generals attacked the Bosnian city of Srebrenica. Tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims died. Western powers failed to support a UN peacekeeping force. During times of war, the UN will send peacekeepers into a country to restore security. Russia blocked UN action in Yugoslavia in the Security Council. This put UN peacekeepers in danger. Serbian forces captured UN peacekeepers and used them as human shields.

Decolonization is when colonies gain independence from empires that controlled them. In many African nations, decolonization increased tensions. Rwanda had endured a century of control under German and Belgian forces. This colonization divided people in Rwanda on ethnic lines.¹ In 1962, Rwanda became independent. Immediately, tensions broke out between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority.

Hutu military groups roamed the countryside. They killed Tutsi and other minorities. Radios played racist messages to encourage normal civilians to kill their neighbors. This radio station was one of the most effective tools of the genocide.

Politicians often claim to not know about genocide. This is a lie. World leaders have detailed knowledge of horrors like those in Rwanda. The UN had a peacekeeping force on the ground in 1994. A UN general begged for more troops. But, as in Bosnia, other countries failed to step up. The U.S. refused to shut down the radio broadcasts. One Pentagon official even said, “Radios don’t kill people. People kill people.” In 1994, the Rwandan government and Hutu militias murdered 800,000 people in 100 days.

Darfur and Rakhine: Genocide in the twenty-first century

The first genocide of the 2000s started in 2003 in Darfur. This is in the western region of Sudan, a nation in northern Africa. Sudan became independent from Britain in 1956. But decolonization worsened ethnic and religious divisions. Civil wars resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. Millions more people have been forced into military service or forced out of their homes.

Many nations pressured Sudan to end the killing. The American government declared a genocide in Darfur in 2004. But Russia and China refused to interfere with Sudan’s independence. A UN peacekeeping force was sent to Darfur in 2007. This force, however, is relatively small. It does not have proper funding and support.

Myanmar is a country bordered by India, Thailand, China, and Laos. In 2017, the military in Myanmar attacked the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority. Years of European control fueled ethnic tensions. Since 2017, the military has carried out a violent campaign against the Rohingya. Millions of people have been attacked, murdered, and forced from their homes.

In 2018, the United Nations declared these killings a genocide. But a declaration does not stop bullets. International refusal to get involved has resulted in the death, assault, and homelessness of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people.

Conclusion: Again, and again

Genocide happens because of many reasons. Hatred causes divisions between groups of people. This can lead one group to become violent. Other people allow it to happen, becoming bystanders who do not help. At the international level, as well, genocides continue to happen because powerful states decide not to get involved.

Samantha Power, former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, argues that early action is critical to stop genocides. But powerful nations of the world continue to ignore mass violence. Why? In each of the cases above, a member of the UN Security Council chose not to get involved. The veto power of the Security Council ensures that the UN cannot stop genocide. All it takes is one of the five members to disagree. Countries often decide to value national sovereignty or their own interests above the mass murder of civilians. The international system is not failing. It is operating exactly as it was designed.

If genocide continues to happen, what does that say about the value of human rights in our world? Or about the morals of our global community?

1 This was a method used by most European empires in their colonies. They would highlight racial and ethnic differences in colonial nations. This divided the colonized people. Separated people were less likely to unite and rebel against colonizers.