Genocide denial

Genocide denial is the attempt to deny or minimize statements of the scale and severity of an incidence of genocide. Some examples are Armenian Genocide denial, Bosnian Genocide denial, Denial of the Holodomor, Holocaust denial, Rwandan Genocide denial and Serbian Genocide denial.

This denial of genocide is usually considered a form of illegitimate historical revisionism. The distinction between respectable academic historians and those of illegitimate historical revisionists rests on the techniques used to write such histories. Accuracy and revision are central to historical scholarship. As in any academic discipline, historians' papers are submitted to peer review. Instead of submitting their work to the challenges of peer review, illegitimate revisionists rewrite history to support an agenda, often political, using any number of techniques and rhetorical fallacies to obtain their results.

The European Commission proposed a European Union–wide anti-racism law in 2001, which included an offense of genocide denial, but European Union states failed to agree on the balance between prohibiting racism and freedom of expression. After six years of wrangling a watered down compromise was reached in 2007 giving states freedom to implement the legislation as they saw fit.[1][2][3]

Writing on genocide denial in general

Gregory H. Stanton, formerly of the US State Department and the founder of Genocide Watch, lists denial as the final stage of genocide development:

Denial is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims.[4]

George Orwell writes in 'Notes on Nationalism' that

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles. Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness. In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one's own mind.[5]

Israel Charny, Executive Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Israel, describes genocide denial by putting it into the following categories:

1. Innocence-and-Self-Righteousness

The respondents claim that they only intend to ascertain the truth. Moreover, they do not believe that human beings could have been so evil as the descriptions of the genocide imply. Furthermore, even if many deaths took place a long time ago, it is important to put them aside now and forgive and forget.

2. Scientificism in the service of confusion

The position taken is seemingly an innocent one that we do not know enough to know what the facts of history were, and rather than condemning anyone we should await the ultimate decision of research. This is a manipulative misuse of the valued principle in science that facts must be proven before they are accepted in order to obfuscate facts that are indeed known, and to confuse the minds of fair-minded people who do not want to fall prey to myths and propaganda. The very purpose of science, which is to know, is invoked in order to justify a form of know-nothingness.

3. Practicality, pragmatism and realpolitik

Here the claim is made that dealing with ancient history is impractical, it will not bring peace to the world in which we live today. One must be realistic and live through realpolitik.

4. Idea linkage distortion and time-sequence confusion

This is a dishonest linkage of different ideas, often out of time sequence, to excuse denials of the facts. Present needs, whether justified or not, are taken as a reasonable basis for censoring or changing the record of past history.

5. Indirection, definitionalism, and maddening

These are responses which avoid the issue by failing to reply, or no less by going off on tangents about trivial details that avoid the essential issue whether genocide took place. The avoidance can also be done in a seductive manner of acknowledging that the issue should be discussed, but then it never is.[6]

Notable genocide denials by individuals and non government organisations

Notable genocide denials by governments

Denial of the Srebrenica genocide takes many forms [in Serbia]. The methods range from the brutal to the deceitful. Denial is present most strongly in political discourse, in the media, in the sphere of law, and in the educational system.[30]
The government of Pakistan explicitly denied that there was genocide. By their refusal to characterise the mass-killings as

genocide or to condemn and restrain the Pakistani government, the US and Chinese governments implied that they did not consider it so.

Similarly, in the wake of the 2013 Shahbag protests against war criminals who were complicit in the genocide, English journalist Philip Hensher wrote[33]

The genocide is still too little known about in the West. It is, moreover, the subject of shocking degrees of denial among partisan polemicists and manipulative historians.

Indian academic Sarmila Bose has claimed that there is greater denial in Bangladesh of war crimes which were committed by Bengalis against Biharis during the 1971 war.[34]

Harms of denial

Victims:

Perpetrators:

Literature

See also

References

  1. Ethan McNern. Swastika ban left out of EU's racism law, The Scotsman, 30 January 2007
  2. runo Waterfield. EU plans far-reaching 'genocide denial' law, The Daily Telegraph 4 February 2007
  3. Ingrid Melander EU to agree watered-down anti-racism law-diplomats, Reuters, 18 April 2007.
  4. Gregory Stanton, Eight Stages of Genocide, Genocide Watch
  5. George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism
  6. The Psychological Satisfaction of Denials of the Holocaust or Other Genocides by Non-Extremists or Bigots, and Even by Known Scholars – by Israel W. Charny
  7. Staff Holocaust denier Irving is jailed BBC, 20 February 2006
  8. Veronika Oleksyn (Associated Press) Holocaust Denier Freed, Gets Probation 20 December 2006.
  9. Robert Fisk Let me denounce genocide from the dock The Independent on Sunday, 14 October 2006
  10. David Campbell. ITN vs Living Marxism, Part 2. Footnote [49] cites Linda Ryan "What’s in a ‘mass grave’?, Living Marxism, Issue 88, March 1996" (The link he provides in the footnote does not exist any more so the link is a substitute). Accessed 20 April 2008
  11. McGreal, Chris. Genocide? What genocide?, The Guardian 20 March 2000
  12. "Genocide? What genocide?". The Guardian (London). 2000-03-20. Retrieved 2009-10-25.
  13. Jaschik, Scott (22 October 2007). "Genocide Deniers".
  14. Stanley, Alessandra (17 April 2006). "A PBS Documentary Makes Its Case for the Armenian Genocide, With or Without a Debate". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-09-02.
  15. Robert Fisk. Peres stands accused over denial of "meaningless" Armenian Holocaust, The Independent, 18 April 2001
  16. Barak Ravid, Peres to Turks: Our stance on Armenian issue hasn't changed, Haaretz, 26 August 2007
  17. Auron, Yair. The Banality of Denial. 2007, page 127.
  18. "Brief Record". US Library of Congress. Retrieved 2009-04-22.
  19. 1 2 Gordana Katana (a correspondent with Voice of America in Banja Luka). REGIONAL REPORT: Bosnian Serbs Play Down Srebrenica, website of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. Retrieved 25 October 2009
  20. Judgement against Miroslav Deronjic ICTY
  21. "Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Newsline, 02-09-03". 3 September 2005. Retrieved 3 July 2009.
  22. Release of Rwanda's mastermind of death promotes genocide denial, Harvard Law Record, 4 December 2009
  23. Holland, Hereward (28 May 2010). "Rwanda arrests U.S. lawyer for genocide denial". Reuters.
  24. "FULL-PAGE WSJ AD DENYING ARMENIAN GENOCIDE SPURS ANGER". Newsweek. April 21, 2016.
  25. 1 2 Evelyn Leopold (9 April 2007). "UN genocide exhibit delayed after Turkey objects". Reuters.
  26. Evelyn Leopold Rwanda genocide exhibit revises words on Armenians Reuters 30 April 2007
  27. Associated Press report. Genocide: Exhibit Opens at U.N. After Compromise [1 May], 2007.(A copy on website of coalitionfordarfur.blogspot.com)
  28. Conquest, Robert (1986). The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. London: Oxford University Press. p. 306. ISBN 0-19-505180-7.
  29. Helen Fawkes Legacy of famine divides Ukraine BBC News 24 November 2006
  30. Denial of genocide – on the possibility of normalising relations in the region by Sonja Biserko (the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia) and Edina Becirevic (faculty of criminology and security studies of the University of Sarajevo).
  31. "His article was – from Pakistan's point of view – a huge betrayal and he was accused of being an enemy agent. It still denies its forces were behind such atrocities as those described by Mascarenhas, and blames Indian propaganda."Mark Dummett (16 December 2011). "Bangladesh war: The article that changed history". BBC Asia. Retrieved 27 December 2011.
  32. Genocide Denial; The Case of Bangladesh by Donald W. Beachler – Online summary hosted at Institute for the Study of Genocide
  33. Philip Hensher (19 February 2013). "The war Bangladesh can never forget". The Independent. Retrieved 26 February 2013.
  34. "Controversial book accuses Bengalis of 1971 war crimes - BBC News". BBC News. Retrieved 2016-03-16.
  35. Stanton, Gregory. "The Cost of Denial." Genocide Watch. Genocide Watch, 2000. Web. http://www.genocidewatch.org/aboutus/thecostofdenial.html. 2016.
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