Darfur protest- wikimedia commons[/caption]Carol Forsloff - One week ago the video Kony 2012 was posted on the Internet, and today’s count shows more than 74,000,000 views of it on YouTube. But it is the long-range problem about genocide, and the lack of consistent response to it, that needs to be the target of opposition against the harbingers of hate.
That opinion from Genocide Watch reminds us the problem of man’s inhumanity to man is a far bigger issue than what is shown in a single video. Joseph Kony is the most recent example of that inhumanity. On the other hand, the horrific crimes against children and others are part of the usual day’s fare in a number of countries, with the additional calamity of a lack of concern established in some concrete way by those with the powers to intervene and stop the corruption and killings.
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times writes the president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir has presided over the killing of “perhaps 300 times as many people as President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.” Al-Bashir instigated the killing in Darfur that ended the lives of 2 million people. The media does little to highlight the atrocities in the Sudan and the latest genocide taking place there. Al-Bashir is on his fourth round of this, as his followers bomb the villages of the Nuba people of Sudan, kill civilians, rape women, starve and cause many thousands of people to flee for their lives.
According to Genocide Watch, the West resists using the term “genocide,” making it difficult to follow through with serious efforts to stop it. A demonstration is planned for April 29 in San Francisco featuring hundreds of genocide refugees and other victims, highlighting the problem of genocide and underlining the need for the West to act in a way that will make a difference.
The "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," was passed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948. It became known as the Genocide Convention that came into effect in January 1951.
Specifically, the Convention maintains "genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war is a crime under international law" which the parties to the convention "undertake to punish and prevent."
It defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" by killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a group, deliberately inflicting serious harm to conditions of life with the target goal to destroy the life of the group, and preventing births within the group or transferring children of the group to an outside group.
Part of the problem related to enforcement of the Genocide Convention has to do with the reservations made about it by some 28 member nations, including the United States, which did not sign the convention until 1988. Many of these reservations have to do with internal political disagreements and controversy over the wording of the Convention and what constitutes an act of genocide. There is also the worry of spreading conflict, as nations continue to either withdraw, ignore or take sides on conflicts that involve genocide.
In the meantime millions of people remain a target of those who wish to destroy them absolutely.
