Chris B in his original post said that it was genocide "by international
definitions". In this he is correct.
Genocide does not just mean the murder of people in death camps, rape etc.
It is also defined as the forcible removal of people from thier
homeland, as well as the stopping a particular ethnic group from using
thier own language etc. (these are just two of the definitions, there are
more which off hand I can not recall accurately at the moment).
While there has been no "official" evidence of death camps etc, there has
been evidence of genocidal behaviour, for example in 1990 the only
Albanian language daily newspaper in Kosova was banned, as were all tv
and radio broadcasts in the Albanian language. In the following months,
some 115 000 ethnic Albanians were fired from their jobs, including 800
Kosovar lecturers at the university of Pristina. Their sacking ended
teaching in the Albanian language and forced all but about 500 students
(out of about 23 000) to end their studies.
While the use of Albanian language was not forcible banned, these action
have been used to suppress the Albanian language. The suppression of one
language, is used to increase the use of another so that eventually the
other language is rarely or no longer used. By suppressing a language you
succeed in suppressing a cultural identity.
In Australia, the same argument is used when speaking against the genocide
of the Indigenous Aboriginal population (ie that genocide only occures
used in the sense it is used to describe the holocust).
The Bringing them home report on the Stolen generations (ie children who
were forciblely removed from their families and put into hostels or sent
to work for white families) uses the above definitions of genocide.
Aboriginal people were forced to speak English and were forcibly removed
from traditional lands onto reserves or to work in the cities.
While genocide may not be occuring in the sense that it did during the
Holocaust, there is still evidence that it is occuring.
regards,
Kim Bullimore
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