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SS officer Eichelsdoerfer, head of Kaufering IV, stand among the corpses his camp was responsible for killing. |
The problem of ethnic hatred continues to plague modern society. These are the tragic legacies of our time. Bosnia-HerzegovinaThe ConflictThe problem is the location of mutually hostile Muslims, Croats, and Serbs in close proximity. Nationalistic settlements led to fighting betweent he various sides with the disintegration of YugoslaviaThe Persecution Although all sides were responsible for violence, the Serbs were responsible for a policy of "ethnic cleansing," where they sought to remove all other ethnic groups from their parts of Bosnia. Imprisoned for months or years, inmates were beater with steel cables and wooden or metal bars, burned with heated scissors, wrapped with fuses that were then lit, and kept in vats of water, the 49-page indictment says. They also were forced to perform oral sex on each other. Women were raped, it says, and one man died after a badge with a Muslim party logo was nailed to his head. --The Associated Press The SettlementThe conflicts remaining as a result of the war are still under reconciliation. The Dayton Peace Accord has created a tripartite presidency as well as regional governments. The Serbs retain control of a seperate Republika Sparska. However, many people are unable to return to homes not under control of hte opposition. Additionally, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands, is still trying to punish the crimes of the war. However, such settlement is no easy task. "What seems apparent in the former Yugoslavia is that the past continues to torment because it is not past. These places are not living in a serial order of time but in a simultaneous one, in which the past and present are a continuous, agglutinated mass of fantasies, distortions, myths, and lies."--Index on Censorship Rwanda & BurundiThe ConflictThe problem is a result of the inability of two ethnic groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis, to cohabitate. The leadership merely exacerbated the conflict.Nevertheless, the main agents of the genocide
were the ordinary peasant themselves. This is a terrible statement to make,
but it is unfortunately borne out by the majority of the survivors' stories.
The degree of compulsion exercised on them varied greatly from place to
place but in some areas, the government version of a spontaneous movement
of the population to 'kill the enemy Tutsi' is true. This was the result
of years of indoctrination in the 'democratic majority' ideology and of
demonisation of the 'feudalists.' So even in the cases where people did
not move spontaneously but were forced to take part in the killings, they
were helped along into violence by the mental and emotional lubricant of
ideology. We can see it for example in the testimony of this seventy-four
year-old 'killer' captured by the RPF: 'I regret what I did. [...] I am
ashamed, but what would you have done if you had been in my place? Either
you took part on the massacre or else you were massacred yourself. So I
took weapons and I defended the members of my tribe against the Tutsi.
The Pesecution In 1994, an estimated one million Rwandans were killed and millions rendered refugees as ethnic fighting ravaged the region. The rebellious Hutu majority attacked the ruling Tutsi minority. The SettlementIn Rwanda, the arrival of a new government has settled the issues for the time being, and refugees are trickling back home. Yet in the neighboring country of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), the same hatreds led to a renewal of "ethnic cleansing." |
A crematory at Bergen-Belsen. |
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Two Americans among the corpses at Nordhausen. |