A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power Page B
Authors: Samantha Power
Tags: United States, General, Social Science, History, 20th Century, Political Science, Holocaust, Violence in Society, International Relations, International Security, Political Freedom & Security, Genocide
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campaign. When he delivered formal lectures on genocide in Geneva, he was less shy. "I did not refrain from reading aloud from my historical files in considerable detail," he wrote."' Indeed, he rarely censored his graphic tales of torture and butchery.
Wherever the law went, Lemkin followed. He decided to prepare for the September 1948 General Assembly session with a short rest near Montreux, France. Lemkin recovered some of the strength sapped by years of unceasing commotion. While visiting a local casino, he even invited a young lady to dance a tango. He was captivated by her beauty and recalled, "Every word the girl said was intelligent and meaningful." She told him she was of Indian descent, born in Chile. Lemkin saw his opening: He informed her that his work on mass slaughter would be of particular interest to her because of the destruction of the Incas and the Aztecs." This was one pickup line the young woman had probably never heard before. She soon departed.
When he returned to Geneva, Lemkin attended every single session of the Legal Committee. In between sessions he prepared memos for the delegates." He felt it essential that they draw upon historic cases of mass atrocity so the law would capture a variety of techniques of destruction. He ritually reminded the representatives of the old maxim that the "legislator's imagination must be superior to the imagination of the criminal"" The convention's chief opponent in Britain was Hartley Shawcross, who had prosecuted the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg and considered the genocide law a waste of time. Shawcross ran into Lemkin in the hall in the fall of 1948 and remarked, "The Committee is becoming emotional, this is a bad sign." Lemkin, who was so tired that he could hardly stand up, was heartened." The Legal Committee approved the draft and submitted it to the General Assembly, which scheduled a vote on the measure for December 9, 1948.
After a bruising year of drafting battles, the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide settled on a definition of genocide as
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:
A. Killing members of the group;
B. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
C. Deliberately inflicting on the group the conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
D. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
E. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
For a party to be found guilty of perpetrating this new crime of genocide, it had to (1) carry out one of the aforementioned acts, (2) with the intent to destroy all or part of (3) one of the groups protected. The law did not require the extermination of an entire group, only acts committed with the intent to destroy a substantial part. If the perpetrator did not target a national, ethnic, or religious group as such, then killings would constitute mass homicide, not genocide.
Lemkin of course opposed all forms of state-sponsored murder, but his legal efforts were focused on the subset of state terror that he believed caused the largest number of deaths, was the most common, and did the most severe long-term damage-to the targeted groups themselves and to the rest of society. The perpetrator's particular motives for wanting to destroy the group were irrelevant. Thus, when Iraq sought in 1987-1988 to purge its Kurdish minority on the grounds that it inhabited a vital border area, it was still genocide. When the Rwandan government tried to exterminate the country's Tuts] minority in 1994, claiming that armed Tutsi rebels posed a military threat, it was still genocide. And when the Bosnian Serbs tried to wipe out the non-Serb presence in Bosnia after the Muslims and Croats had declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, it was still genocide. What mattered was that one set of
Wherever the law went, Lemkin followed. He decided to prepare for the September 1948 General Assembly session with a short rest near Montreux, France. Lemkin recovered some of the strength sapped by years of unceasing commotion. While visiting a local casino, he even invited a young lady to dance a tango. He was captivated by her beauty and recalled, "Every word the girl said was intelligent and meaningful." She told him she was of Indian descent, born in Chile. Lemkin saw his opening: He informed her that his work on mass slaughter would be of particular interest to her because of the destruction of the Incas and the Aztecs." This was one pickup line the young woman had probably never heard before. She soon departed.
When he returned to Geneva, Lemkin attended every single session of the Legal Committee. In between sessions he prepared memos for the delegates." He felt it essential that they draw upon historic cases of mass atrocity so the law would capture a variety of techniques of destruction. He ritually reminded the representatives of the old maxim that the "legislator's imagination must be superior to the imagination of the criminal"" The convention's chief opponent in Britain was Hartley Shawcross, who had prosecuted the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg and considered the genocide law a waste of time. Shawcross ran into Lemkin in the hall in the fall of 1948 and remarked, "The Committee is becoming emotional, this is a bad sign." Lemkin, who was so tired that he could hardly stand up, was heartened." The Legal Committee approved the draft and submitted it to the General Assembly, which scheduled a vote on the measure for December 9, 1948.
After a bruising year of drafting battles, the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide settled on a definition of genocide as
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:
A. Killing members of the group;
B. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
C. Deliberately inflicting on the group the conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
D. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
E. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
For a party to be found guilty of perpetrating this new crime of genocide, it had to (1) carry out one of the aforementioned acts, (2) with the intent to destroy all or part of (3) one of the groups protected. The law did not require the extermination of an entire group, only acts committed with the intent to destroy a substantial part. If the perpetrator did not target a national, ethnic, or religious group as such, then killings would constitute mass homicide, not genocide.
Lemkin of course opposed all forms of state-sponsored murder, but his legal efforts were focused on the subset of state terror that he believed caused the largest number of deaths, was the most common, and did the most severe long-term damage-to the targeted groups themselves and to the rest of society. The perpetrator's particular motives for wanting to destroy the group were irrelevant. Thus, when Iraq sought in 1987-1988 to purge its Kurdish minority on the grounds that it inhabited a vital border area, it was still genocide. When the Rwandan government tried to exterminate the country's Tuts] minority in 1994, claiming that armed Tutsi rebels posed a military threat, it was still genocide. And when the Bosnian Serbs tried to wipe out the non-Serb presence in Bosnia after the Muslims and Croats had declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, it was still genocide. What mattered was that one set of
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