| "...Against partisans
backed by the entire population, colonial armies are helpless. They have
only one way of escaping from the harassment which demoralizes them
.... This is to eliminate the civilian population. As it is the unity of
a whole people that is containing the conventional army, the only
anti-guerrilla strategy which will be effective is the destruction
of that people, in other words, the civilians, women and children..."
Jean Paul
Sartre's Statement 'On Genocide' at the Second Session of the
Bertrand Russell International War Crimes Tribunal on Vietnam, held in
Denmark in November 1967 ".... the sovereign territorial state claims, as an integral part of its
sovereignty, the right to commit genocide, or engage in genocidal
massacres, against peoples under its rule, and that the
United
Nations, for all practical purposes, defends this right. To be sure,
no state explicitly claims the right to commit genocide - this would not
be morally acceptable even in international circles - but the right is
exercised under other more acceptable rubrics, notably the duty to
maintain law and order, or the seemingly sacred mission to preserve the
territorial integrity of the state. And though the
norm for the
United Nations is to sit by, and watch, like a grandstand spectator,
the unfolding of the genocidal conflict in the domestic arena right
through to the final massacres, there would generally be concern, and
action, to provide humanitarian relief for the refugees, and direct
intercession by the Secretary-General. Moreover, some of the steps
presently taken by the United Nations in the field of human rights may
have the effect of inhibiting the resort to massacre; and there are
indications of changing attitudes in the United Nations, though this may
be too optimistic an assessment. In the past, however, there was small
comfort to be derived from the Genocide Convention, or from the
commitments of the United Nations, by peoples whose own rulers
threatened them with extermination or massacre. The almost perennial
complaint is that the world remains indifferent to the genocide or the
genocidal massacres, and that the United Nations turns a deaf ear..."
Leo Kuper in Genocide: Its Political Use in the 20th Century,
1983 |
