Posted on 02/26/2022 5:39:52 AM PST by Kaslin
The United States has done much to keep alive the memory and learn the lessons from the genocides of the 20th century. The Jewish Holocaust, the Tutsi Genocide in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and the Armenian Genocide – most recently recognized by the Biden administration - are seared in the minds of us all.
When discussing genocide, commentators typically focus on terrifying headline numbers – thousands, sometimes millions of victims. But the definition of genocide is not a numerical one. The United Nations defines this crime as “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group”. The benchmark for genocide is not metrics, but morality – and design.
Those who applaud the United States for its recognition of genocides around the world would do well to recall this fact. It means that massacres smaller in number, but with equally destructive intent, deserve the same acknowledgment which our government and society grant to the better-known violations of humanity. Shining a light on some of the less understood corners of human infamy of the last century should be a duty of journalists, historians, and politicians.
As Americans, we watched with a victor’s satisfaction the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, with those same eyes we became blind to the appalling human fallout from that chapter of history just as it produced an eruption of inter-ethnic and cross-border violence of unprecedented brutality.
Of all these, the first and most vicious was between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Azerbaijani region of Karabakh – whose majority ethnic Armenian citizens had lived in peace for decades alongside their Azerbaijani neighbors. Terror reigned across the region, culminating in the horror of the Khojaly massacre. This week marks the 30th anniversary of this atrocity. International media did bear witness and report their findings. It is our shame that the world failed in both proper acknowledgement at the time and, in turn, allowed those ultimately responsible to escape accountability.
Brutal eyewitness reports carried by the Times of London, Reuters, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others spoke of beheadings of children, of mass graves, of journalists walking through streets littered with dead civilians. The victims were Azerbaijani civilians; their attackers were the Armenian Separatists' Army. For Americans, this echoes the Sand Creek Massacre where the Colorado militia slaughtered and mutilated innocent Cheyenne villagers of all ages and genders.
In subsequent weeks and months, following the Khojaly massacre, further eyewitness accounts and forensic investigations emerged. Human Rights Watch reported it as the largest massacre of the entire period. Yet again, the messages went primarily to an unhearing audience.
Today, Azerbaijan has regained control of the greater part of its lost territories. But nearly 1 million people, driven from their homes a generation ago, remain as internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Azerbaijan; 4,000 civilian dead remain missing and unaccounted, including a number of the missing among the 600 victims of Khojaly.
The explicit and unambiguous intention was the erasure of Karabakh’s Azerbaijani population, culture, and history. Former Armenian President (and Defense Minister at the time of the massacre) Serzh Sargsyan said so himself: “Before Khojaly, the Azerbaijanis thought that they were joking with us, they thought that the Armenians were people who could not raise their hand against the civilian population. We needed to put a stop to all that. And that’s what happened.”
Despite these traumas in recent living memory, both countries are today slow walking toward a peaceful settlement. Important barriers to peace remain – not least the historical memory of terror and murder ignored by the world; and for that very reason, felt all the more bitterly by the people of Azerbaijan.
In our quest to support the cause of peace, we must recognize our responsibility to remove barriers by properly acknowledging the evils of the past. The Khojaly massacre was the beginning and headline event in a concerted act of genocide.
The United States has made great strides in identifying and condemning genocide across the world. The Khojaly Massacre deserves that same recognition and condemnation.
In that case, let's not forget about the Waco Genocide, perpetrated by the FBI and the ATF in 1993.
I confess my ignorance, but how could two ethnic groups live side by side for years in harmony and then go on a crazy killing spree. What happened in the breakup of the old Soviet Union to create this catastrophe?
It may seem odd to a peaceful person, but the latent tensions can exist for centuries. Consider Yugoslavia, when it was held together by strongman Tito, versus the inter-state strife that arose in the Balkans after Yugoslavia broke up. Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia... it was a religious war, for the most part.
Srebrenica In the same list as the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, really?
The Soviet Union was held together by force. They weren’t living in harmony, they just knew if they didn’t pretend to get along the hammer would come down, hard. Then the hammer evaporated.
Khojaly massacre? Wikipedia says a few hundred dead. It is also a cruel joke to list this alongside the Armenian genocide & the Holocaust. Absolutely ludicrous, no matter how wrong this relatively unknown massacre was.
Sort of like what Biden and his Communist administration are doing in the USA?
The Soviet Union was held together by force. They weren’t living in harmony, they just knew if they didn’t pretend to get along the hammer would come down, hard. Then the hammer evaporated.
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Yes, it makes perfect sense. Saddam’s iron fist also kept the Muslim tribes in check. The article did suggest that after they both killed each other in staggering numbers, they sobered up somewhat and may have finally figured out that killing each other was not the answer. It’s sort of like the two testosterone laced bullies in the schoolyard who have to whip themselves silly before they settle down.
“The United Nations defines this crime as “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group”. The benchmark for genocide is not metrics, but morality – and design.”
Islam.
***this echoes the Sand Creek Massacre ***
I used to believe this till I found other info on it. The tribe had been raiding and killing all along the Front Range of Colorado, had two or three members who had joined and fought in the Confederate Army in Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi who then returned to the tribe and continued the fight against the Union from there by leading the tribe in raids on farms and towns.
When the weather got too cold for raiding they then wanted to make peace, get fed on government rations so they could go raiding again the next year when the grass got tall enough to support a war pony.
Chivington said that after the raid they found fresh scalps of men women and children in the camp.
This info is ignored by the press even today.
A few years later, this same tribe, supposedly peaceable, was raiding through out central Kansas. Custer followed their trail in the snow from Kansas back to the Washita, which was NOT their reservation at that time.
The Jewish Holocaust is being airbrushed out of history by Democrats as we speak. Ask Omar of AOC about it.
For the last two centuries, the Pawnee had successfully served as a buffer between the agressive Siouxian tribes to the north and the even more agressive Comanche tribes to the south. But the government rations and winter assistance to their once weaker enemies to the west tipped the balance against the Pawnee. There is a reason that the Pawnee often served as cavalry scouts and that reason was twofold: (a)depravations from neighboring tribes; (b)decent, if not warm, relations from the local white settlers who regularly trade with them.
FWIW, some of the Siouxian tribest to the north were equally friendly with the white man and one of them even adopted my 2X great grandfather and enticed him to leave a wagon train. A white boy in the tribe served the purpose of convincing a passing army patrol (or wagon train) that the tribe was friendly.
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