The Pioneer Times

Issue date: 4/14/08 Section: News

Media Credit: I. Wahman Provost Ed Weiil, Prof. Elazar Barkan, Jeffrey Odell Korgen, Mark Weitzman, Prof. Miryam Wahrman

In a recent symposium, "Beyond Guilt: The Role of Retribution and Reconciliation after Genocide", a variety of perspectives on genocide were provided by Jeffry Odell Korgen, secretary of the Roundtable for the Association of Diocesan Social Action Directors, professor Elazar Barkan, professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and Mark Weitzman, director of the Task Force Against Hate at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The conference presented a perspective on how to recover from the atrocious acts of genocide. One response is forgiveness. However, when one group of people dehumanizes, tortures, and even annihilates another, is retribution and reconciliation something to consider?

"When survivors begin to pick up pieces of their lives," said Dr. Miryam Z. Wahrman, a professor of Biology who organized the conference, "the process of recovery begins."

Identifying guilty parties, recognizing guilt, and prosecuting are the steps within this process, said Wahrman, director of the William Paterson University's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

The term "genocide" was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 in his book "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe". The aftermath of the Holocaust in combination with Lemkin's years of tireless efforts, stimulated the United Nations approval of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, marking the first legal use of "genocide". This established the act as an international crime and defined it as the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. The world pledged, "Never again."

However, the scheme of destruction is occurring again and again.

Korgen, the first speaker and author of "Solidarity Will Transform the World", recalled his eye-opening trips to Mexico, Zambia, India, Rwanda, and Nicaragua, gathering first-hand stories of societies living in poverty.

"What I saw there, I didn't think humanly possible," said Korgen, director of Social Ministries for National Pastoral Life Center in New York, in response to his Rwandan journey.

The nomadic Janjaweed militia in Sudan sought to wipe out their Muslim enemies, in efforts to preserve their land resource. In the wake of this 1994 genocide, approximately one million Rwandans, mostly Tutsi, one group of native of Rwandans, had been exterminated. Approximately 120,000 Rwandans, mostly Hutus, were charged with the crimes and imprisoned. Prosecution of all the perpetrators would have taken more than 100 years through the existing legal system, so in attempts to expedite, Rwandan government created the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions, or Gacaca courts.

Continued...

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