Genocides

Everyone here should know about the genocide that took place in Europe in the 1940's, The Holocaust.
Also, some of you might know about Rwanda.
Right now many people think "Genocides are over, bad people aren't out there".
They obviously haven't heard about Darfur, Sudan.

What do you know about genocides?
How do you feel we could stop or prevent them?

Ok well I think they are really effed up and all but they are always going to occur because in society there will always be a certain type of peoples who think they are better than others.

Oh sorry Yara...I probably should have put that in my first post
I'm not very good at starting threads.

Unfortunately, I don't think theres really any way of stopping genocides... The best way is to educate people about the mistakes made in the past and also for people in other nations to pay attention to the events in others. Its astounding and downright worrying sometimes how little some people know about the world.

I've been to The Genocide Museum and The Killing Fields in Cambodia and just thinking of it makes me feel physically ill. In Cambodia, educated people were seen as a threat to the leader, Pol Pot, so they were systematically tortured and killed. But I think that going there is one of the most valuable experiences. I cried for hours after, but I feel like it was very important to go and to learn from it.

There is no way to stop people from being sick and twisted.
But we can help. The US has troops in Iraq where they don't belong and guarding the Mexican boarder, I think we can spare a few and send them to Sudan.
What about in Rwanda? It was barely ever on the news but countless numbers of people were dying ever day. No one went to help but if they would have, it wouldn't have been half as bad as it was.
There are ways to help, but everyone else is too pre-occupied and selfish to even give an ounce of their thought to others.
When I was in Washington DC for a World Leadership Forum we went to the National Holocaust Museum and they had a little section for the Dafur Genocide with ways to help and there was a boy in my group from a town outside of Darfur. He was saying how he and his family were on vacation visiting relatives when people started raiding their neighborhood and they had to get out of the country. I bought a little braclet from the giftshop and the proceeds go to a fundation helping those in Sudan and as soon as I got home I emptied out my wallet and gave everything I had to a trusted fundation helping victims. It's so sad that a tragic event like a genocide can go as un-noticed as this is.

30 seconds to Sam///:

I think we can spare a few and send them to Sudan.

So they can kill people there too?
WHY? WHY WHY WHY send american troops ANYWHERE?
It's not America's problem. It's not their fault, and not up to them to solve it either. That's like if two kids were fist fighting in a play ground, you'd send in a third kid with a knife to fight against the two kids. America doesn't need to be in Iraq, and it sure as hell doesn't need to be in Sudan.

As for the Mexican border, that's fine. Because that's America saying that they don't need more illegal immigrants in their country. It's not like they're in Mexico, killing people to keep them from immigrating.

I'm not saying you send US troops into Sudan to speed up the course of the genocide. I'm saying that these people are defensless. They have no one to help them.

Someone has to help these poor people, because their country isn't doing anything. America doesn't have to go in there but someone does. How else will this be stopped?

No one wants another Holocaust. Everyone says "If we would have done something sooner..." or "If only...". People all the time are saying "Now you know what can happen so think fast and act fast next time." Well next time is now and these people need to be saved.

30 seconds to Sam///:

What about in Rwanda? It was barely ever on the news but countless numbers of people were dying ever day. No one went to help but if they would have, it wouldn't have been half as bad as it was.

Millions upon millions of dollars are sent to Rwanda every year to help with education, food and health. George Bush himself has a program to catch the people responsible for the Rwanda genocide in 1994. Bush met with President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, in may of this year, and promised to help with funds.

Bush also pledged to help repay the country for troops that it has sent to deal with another genocide, a violent conflict raging in Sudan's Darfur region that has left 180,000 people dead and an additional 2 million homeless.

You can't say that nothing's being done. But these things take time. The violent crime has already been done. The healing is what's happening now. But you can't heal a genocide in a month. It takes years and years.

Touché.

Once again Yara, you beat me.

If you're interested in why genocides happen, a book called 'We Did Nothing' by Linda Polman is very interesting. Its pretty heavy-going and its not pleasant reading, but its based around UN troops' involvement in conflicts and genocide.

--Yara--:

30 seconds to Sam///:

I think we can spare a few and send them to Sudan.

So they can kill people there too?
WHY? WHY WHY WHY send american troops ANYWHERE?
It's not America's problem. It's not their fault, and not up to them to solve it either. That's like if two kids were fist fighting in a play ground, you'd send in a third kid with a knife to fight against the two kids. America doesn't need to be in Iraq, and it sure as hell doesn't need to be in Sudan.

As for the Mexican border, that's fine. Because that's America saying that they don't need more illegal immigrants in their country. It's not like they're in Mexico, killing people to keep them from immigrating.

I agree with you 100%. Our government is just overly egotistical and wants to come out looking like the world's "Hero", but in the end they're only making themselves look like tw-ts.

What about the Armenian Genocide. I am a big System of a Down fan and you know the drift about them and the Genocide. One of my favorite songs of theirs "Soilder Side" I think is about it because in the first stages of the genocide the Young Turks of the Ottomen Empire "drafted" all of the able body Armenian men during WW1 but just killed them right when they got to training and were led out back were they were shot and killed. In the song it says, "... all young men must go."

Genocides are horrible mass exterminations of a particular group of people. I believe that nothing can be done to stop or even prevent them because there will always be that one pyscho who wants to take over the world.

30 seconds to Sam///:

I'm not saying you send US troops into Sudan to speed up the course of the genocide. I'm saying that these people are defensless. They have no one to help them.

And that's why the UN should be doing more to step in.

It's not the responisiblity of the US.

I am a native Armenian, and the Armenian Genocide and all the controversy of whether it happened or not always makes me really angry. 1.5 million of my people, my family probably included, were just killed or deported,a nd they died in the most horrible ways. And now Turkey is denying it, saying that 1.5 million people died as a result of civil war and famine. It makes me sick because it means that no one that died in that genocide is going to get justice.

ophelia_rising:

And that's why the UN should be doing more to step in.

It's not the responisiblity of the US.

The UN can only do what the Security Council (Permanent members: USA, UK, China, Russia, France. Current elected members: Argentina, Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Ghana, Greece, Japan, Peru, Qatar, Slovakia, Tanzania.) votes for them to do. And any permanent member has veto power. That is, any veto against a resolution outweighs any majority. France did this when USA and UK tried to involve the UN in the war in Iraq.

And the UN cannot afford to be everywhere at once. Particularly when countries don't pay fees. The US, particularly, owes the UN billions.

Also, over the years, the USA has launched wars against various countries and pulled out, leaving the Blue Helmets to sort out the mess they left behind.

The UN can only do as its told and has the funds to do.

If US troops took a simple peace-keeping stance in Sudan, the USA's reputation in the rest of the world (which, in case you don't know, is terrible) would improve dramatically. That is, if they went there simply to protect the innocent.

The bat keeper:

I am a native Armenian, and the Armenian Genocide and all the controversy of whether it happened or not always makes me really angry. 1.5 million of my people, my family probably included, were just killed or deported,a nd they died in the most horrible ways. And now Turkey is denying it, saying that 1.5 million people died as a result of civil war and famine. It makes me sick because it means that no one that died in that genocide is going to get justice.

That made me mad that Turkey still denies it and that not very many countries recongize it as a genocide. Not enough was done after the Armenian Genocide, because of that it let Hitler think he could get away with killing the Jews.

This thread is just slightly dead, but I'd just like to express a few views for the sake of ranting.

I don't think we are every going to get rid of some sort of genocide as long as people have predjudice or dislike. Genocide has been happening as long as hate, war/dissagreements and greed has existed. In the past 100 years there has been the famous Holocaust, Stalin & the USSR, The Russian Revolution in 1917-1927ish, Somolia and General Adid, Rwanda and the Hutus, Suddam/Iraq and the Kurds, theres one going in China as we speak, and the ones you guys mentioned. Before that there was the French Revolution (Napolean killed all the Bourgouis [nobility]), in Ancient Egypt there was a religious revolution circa Tutankhamen. Its never going to stop.

And that... is all I've got to say about that.