| | | | MARKAR ESAYAN
m.esayan@todayszaman.com | ![]() |
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| | | The anniversary of the genocide carried out in Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, brought to my mind the fact that the 1990s were actually very ominous years. | |
I don't know if this had something to do with the imminent end of the Cold War or with the nearing disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); I don't want to speculate about it.
In 1994, 800,000 Tutsis and dissident Hutus were brutally massacred in less than three months in Rwanda. They had brought cheap machetes from China for Hutu to use to kill Tutsi because machetes were cheaper than guns. The resulting violence was so brutal that no one could believe it to be true. It was unfortunate for me that I had to watch videos of the Rwanda massacre for a long article. I couldn't get rid of those images for months.
I couldn't understand the brutality inflicted by human beings on other human beings. All this malice comes from the dark nature of human beings that we fail to understand. The soldiers who were exhausted from killing people would cut the Achilles tendons of their victims and smoke a cigarette while resting next to them and then resume killing.
The seeds of violence planted by Belgium and France in that country yielded their poisonous product in 1994: genocide. The West currently avoids criticizing the coup in Egypt; yet, it has committed so many sins related to democracy and even crimes against humanity! The "divide and rule" mentality of colonialism that disrupted the social fabric in every country it touched continues to claim lives, as seen in the Palestinian issue and it seems it will claim many more lives in the future.
The Srebrenica genocide occurred in the heart of Europe and before the very eyes of Dutch soldiers. Europe, the UN and the world just sat and watched this massacre until the US shelled the region. The same applied to Rwanda.
The 1990s were nightmarish years for our country, as well. The state had delegated the solution of the Kurdish and Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) issues to groups of murderers established under the control of the army, such as JİTEM -- a clandestine gendarmerie intelligence unit established in the late 1980s to counter ethnic separatism in the Southeast. These clandestine networks would abduct people in broad daylight in big cities and they would execute them in the rural areas. Former PKK members would be used to help commit these executions, while at the same time poor Kurds were paid salaries to fight the PKK. Thus, the same village would be raided alternately by the PKK and the state. The number of unresolved murder cases from that era exceeds 17,000.
We led normal lives as this violence in Rwanda, Bosnia and in our own country continued. We were unaware of most of it. Or, different stories were told to us. It seems the country's eastern provinces belonged to a different world. Kurds were evil and separatist and they deserved everything they got.
We Armenians say the following about the disaster of 1915: "Let those days go and never come back." This is really the case. All victims of genocide are a single nation regardless of their religion, race and gender. I think this also applies to the perpetrators of these genocides. For this reason, we need to develop a new awareness and morality around the globe so that those days never come back. Our duty should be to learn the truth and not to turn our back on the facts, to proactively initiate developments and global movements and force governments to take action.
Currently, Egypt is under military rule. The army is killing people. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has killed more than 120,000 civilians. Muslims of Arakan and Christians of Nigeria are being killed. China is massacring Uighur Turks at every opportunity. There are many more massacres like this. And we lead our daily lives as if nothing is happening. We still discuss whether or not we should call the Egyptian developments a coup or Assad a dictator.
"There are democratic problems in Turkey," we say. Of course there are. But it is not only Turkish democracy, but the global status of democracy that is sounding an urgent alarm. The world needs a new definition of democracy or a new dimension of democracy.
Are the tyrannical rules of Realpolitik unchangeable? Aren't better humanitarian policies possible?
I think they are possible, beneficial and profitable. The oft-parroted assertion that this is not the case is the biggest lie in the world. |
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