I too think Chris is right 'by international definition', Kim. But I
disagree with this relatively recent definition. Language has to
distinguish between the lot of the Aboriginal Australian of 1960 or the
Albanian Kosovar of 1998 and that of the Rwandan Tutsi of 1991 or the
Warsaw Jew of 1944. After all, for the vast majority of those concerned,
the distinction we're talking about is one of life and death.
I think we are gradually doing this with the word 'rape', too (at least,
it's been happening in some US states). We need a word to distinguish
violation by violence or terror from violation by deceit, infringing
age-of-consent, the plying of alcohol etc.
We get to make a big rhetorical splash when we apply such words, and
hopefully get people to think twice about what they do for a while. But,
in the long term, we lose the ability to name the very ghastliest of human
outrages - and that seems a slippery slope to me.
Of course, I don't know how to make this point in public debate (as opposed
to our cozy little family circle here) without giving licence to
opportunists whose agenda it is to understate or deny what we have been
doing, say, to Aboriginal Australians - so I keep quiet. But I feel this
is a position I've been put in by intemperate leftie rhetoric.
I find myself so often opposed to the middle-class political correctness of
the Australian left, yet can never speak up in a country where to do so
would be further to strengthen the new right (whose own carefully unnamed
political correctness *actually* dominates).
Cheers,
Rob.
>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
>
>
>
>
> --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
--- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
