Genocide

I slept earlier than the usual last night. I usually sleep past 12 midnight but last night I was already sound asleep around 8 in the evening. After eight hours of sleep I was already awake and it was around 4 in the morning. To kill time I decided to turn on the TV and go to CNN. I found myself crying all throughout the TV program. The program is Christiane Amanpour's documentary on Genocide Scream Bloody Murder.


I learned from that documentary that the word Genocide was coined by Holocaust victim Raphael Lemkin when he campaigned for the international recognition of a law that will define and prohibit Genocide. According to the UN convention Genocide is defined as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

As we all know after the Holocaust mass killings because of ethnic cleansing have continued. Millions upon millions of lives were destroyed in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, and the most recent one in Darfur, Sudan. Watching the documentary have once again stirred me to be an advocate for the acceptance and respect of diversity in culture, race, religion, and sexual orientation.

I think one way of helping Genocide from not happening again is ackowledging that it happened. This is also a way of respecting the people who were victims of Genocide. Having the death of the Genocide victims mourned and acknowledged is the least that we could do. I hope that you will all find time to visit the Scream Bloody Murder link or better yet look up the screening schedule on CNN and watch the documentary.