Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.

In yesterday’s Independent Magazine, I read an article about the continuing crisis in Darfur. It got me thinking.

Why is it that we continually appease the often evil nature of humanity? Not just in the present day, but throughout history.

In 1939 the allies went to war with Hitler’s Germany after a consistent policy of appeasement by Chamberlain.

War finally begun, not because of the ‘Jewish question’ and ‘final solution’, but because the Nazis invaded Poland.

The allies knew something of the horrors facing Jews in German occupied territory before the war.

Even so, in 1940 around 50,000 ‘enemy aliens’ were rounded up in the UK because of their German origins. Of these, many were actually Jewish refugees who were very anti-Hitler.
They were still sent away to camps.

After the war, the extent of the atrocities which took place in the concentration camps and extermination camps came more fully to light.

The world looks back in horror at the brutal nature of Hitler’s regime – the millions upon millions of men, women and children who suffered. The millions who died a horrifying death.

The Holocaust is often held as a reference point to any later atrocities as the first modern genocide and an extreme case of racial cleansing.

The 1948 Genocide Convention recognised that genocide is a crime under international law and is to be condemned by the civilized world, who undertake to prevent and to punish such acts from taking place.

It defines genocide as ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’.

It seems to me that this convention is simply something which hopes to compensate for the lives destroyed during the Holocaust.
Has it really prevented any other horrific act of mankind since?
Stalin’s purges?
Pol Pot’s regime?
The horror of Bosnia-Herzegovina?

The atrocity of the Rwandan people in the latter part of the twentieth century and 1994 especially, is something which often creeps into my mind when confronted with issues such as this.

The seeds of genocide in Rwanda started as early as 1959 and came to a head in 1994 when between 500,000 and 800,000 Tutsi were murdered at the hands of Hutus in just over four months.

The dead of Rwanda accumulated at nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust, yet the US refused to recognise the events as a genocide.

As Philip Gourevitch records in his book “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families”, ‘neighbours hacked neighbours to death in their homes, and colleagues hacked colleagues to death in their workplaces. Doctors killed their patients, and schoolteachers killed their pupils.’

In Rwanda, the dismembered skeletons of Hutu Power’s victims remain in the killing fields as a permanent memorial to what happened.

One of the main Internally Displaced Persons camps in Darfur is called “Rwanda”.

This isn’t because of the Rwandan genocide, but even so, the image of this atrocity is immediately called to mind.

According to The Independent, over 2 million people from the Darfur region are ‘living’ in displacement camps on desert land in Sudan. These people are the luckier ones.

These are the people who survived the Sudanese government’s policy which burnt down their homes.

But they live in constant fear of the Janjaweed, who carry out frequent killing sprees.

Since 2003 more than 85,000 people have been killed and 200,000 have died from war-related illnesses.

According to The Independent, the conflict has become all the more complicated than the straightforward story of genocide carried out by Arabs against blacks.

The peace-keeping in Darfur at present is controlled by the African Union. But their powers of security are limited.

They have all but given up trying to prevent more deaths and now just record incidents.

The UN on the other hand can only enter the region if the government gives its approval. This is not likely to happen.

If on the off chance it does happen, no British or American soldiers will be sent.

Outside the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington are the slogans ‘Remember’ and ‘Never Again’.

But it has happened again.

Of his experiences in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, Primo Levi wrote that ‘it happened, therefore it can happen again … it can happen, and it can happen everywhere.’

We seem to find it so easy to forget these heinous events.
The horror over the famine in Niger lasted for about two weeks.

We aren’t in the same position as these people. We don’t live on a barren wasteland in constant fear that this day could be our last.

We return to our homes and families at the end of a stressful day and moan about how hard life is.

Moan about the weather. Moan about tax. So trivial.

Christmas is fast approaching. The lights have gone up in almost every town centre in the country and the shops are full of the joys of the season.
The season of giving.
The season of hope.

How can we give the people of Darfur a little hope for a future?