Books on Genocide and related topics, 1999  ( 1999 , 2000 , 2001 , 2002 , 2003, 2004 )

1999

The Encyclopedia of Genocide, Israel W. Charny, Editor in Chief; Rouben Paul Adalian, Steven L. Jacobs, Eric Markusen, Samuel Totten, Associate Editors; Marc I. Sherman, Bibliographic Editor; Pauline Cooper, Managing Editor; Forewords by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Simon Wiesenthal; [Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1999, Two volumes, 720p.]

Branimir Anzulovic. Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide. New York and London: New York University Press, 1999. xiv + 233 pp

A valuable dissection of the mythical underpinnings of Serbia ultra-nationalism. These concepts and images have been skillfully manipulated by the Milosevic regime during the last decade to persue wars of genocide and expultion against Serbia's numerous ethnic neighbors. Anzulovic, a native of Croatia, focuses on the role of ideology in guiding genocidal actions: "the primary force leading to genocide is not the pathology of the individual organizing and committing the genocide, but the pathology of the ideas guiding them." (p. 4) He believes that the roots of Serbian genocidal behavior--and he accepts as given that Serbian actions have been genocidal--can be found in the mythology that arose to explain the battle of Kosovo of 1389. Although he distances himself rhetorically from accusations of reductionism ("It would be an error to assume that the memory of the Serbian medieval empire necessarily led to the latest war for a Greater Serbia ..." [p. 2]), in the body of his book Anzulovic does in fact interpret virtually every event in Serbia's history following 1389 through the prism of the Kosovo myths. Most outsiders blame the Serbs for the atrocities, but the Serbs themselves believe that they are the ones that are being just; it’s the rest of the world that is wrong. Anzulovic’s book explains why the Serbs, through a potent recollection of their own history, would bring death and destruction to the rest of the area and international condemnation and economic ruin on themselves.

Howard Ball, Prosecuting War Crimes and Genocide: The Twentieth-Century Experience

Beginning with the 1899 Geneva Accords and the Armenian genocide of World War I, Ball traces efforts to create an institution to judge, punish, and ultimately deter such atrocities--particularly since World War II, since which there have been fourteen cases of genocide. He shows how international military tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo set important precedents for international criminal justice, tells what the international community learned from its failure to stop Pol Pot in Cambodia, and describes the ad hoc tribunals convened to address genocide in the Balkans and Rwanda. He then focuses on the establishment of the International Criminal Court with the Treaty of Rome in 1998 and assesses its probable future. The book also analyzes the reluctance of the United States to sanction the ICC, tracing longstanding U.S. reluctance to grant criminal justice jurisdiction to an international prosecutor. Ball examines questions of national sovereignty versus international law and reminds us that although most Americans consider such horrors to be problems of other countries, these are in fact countries in which many of our own citizens have their roots. With its unique focus on the ICC, Prosecuting War Crimes and Genocide is a work of both synthesis and advocacy that combines history and current events to make us more aware of the racist fervor with which these brutalities are carried out, more alert to the euphemisms in which they are cloaked. It forces us to ask not only whether the killing will stop, but whether humanity can prevent future genocides.

Levon Chorbajian and George Shirinian, Studies in comparative genocide, New York : St. Martin's Press, 1999, 270 pp. [ Originally presented at a conference held in Yerevan, Republic of Armenia, 1995. ]

Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story : Genocide in Rwanda, Human Rights Watch; March 1999

This is the most extensive and authoritative account of the Rwandan genocide yet published. Drawing from Rwandan government documents and other official and unofficial sources, the principal author, Alison Des Forges, and her collaborators, have done a remarkable job pulling together the complex and disparate strands of this story.

Mulat Gebi: The Omitted Genocide [Ethiopia], 1999.

The book is about a crime against humanity that occured in Ethiopia and about some of the people who are responsible for this crime. The book attempts to present the origin and the cause of the massacare and schematically walk through the historical background of this human catastrophe that started in mid 1970s and still continued to this day. Several million people have perished by starvation, excution, and other covert methods of killings and millions have been displaced and fled their country. Some of the culprits of this crime reside in the United States and other parts of the world and they must face justice for the horrible crime they committed against humanity. The author is an Ethiopian national who lives in the United States.

Roy Gutman and Rieff, David editors, Crimes of war: What the public should know, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999). [ For excerpts from the book, see www.crimesofwar.org ]

Wayne Madsen, Genocide and covert operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Lewiston, NY : Edwin Mellen Press, 1999.

Lorna Touryan Miller and Donald Eugene Miller, Survivors : An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide, University of California Press, 1999, 274 pp.

An general a supurb introduction an invaluable primary source for further study of the Armenian Genocide, as most of the survivors are dying off. It is objective, simply telling the facts, including descriptions of helpful Turks.

Martha Minnow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness : Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence, Boston: Beacon Press, Nov. 1999, 224 pp.

A leading legal scholar's judicious examination of our varied reactions to mass violence and their relative potential for healing people and nations. From the Holocaust to apartheid South Africa and Rwanda, 20th-century collective violence has challenged societies to deal with the aftermath. In the groundbreaking and timely Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, Harvard Law School professor Martha Minow explores the benefits and drawbacks of a variety of forms of settlement. For those who have recoiled in horror and outrage at collective violence in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and elsewhere, this book--with chapters titled "Trials," "Truth Commissions," "Reparations," and "Facing History"--is a primer on how the world, and individuals, might respond to such acts once the shock subsides. First she contemplates the possibility of bridging reactions of vengeance and forgiveness, raising one of her central arguments: the healing power of therapy for victims, bystanders, and even offenders. In further chapters, she discusses the history of war-crimes prosecution, focusing on the complex legacies of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials following WWII, and reparations, drawing on the case of the US government and former Japanese-American internees. Minow's chapter on truth commissions proves to be the most engaging, given its timeliness amid the ongoing debates about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Citing the importance of direct personal narratives, she argues that when society prioritizes healing and the restoration of human dignity, a truth commission may serve better than a prosecution actually does. Her final chapter assesses the value of public monuments, educational programs, and amnesty.Minow resists the idea that compensatory measures such as war-crimes tribunals and financial payback can ever bring true closure for those who have suffered. "Legal responses," she writes, "are inevitably frail and insufficient." Nevertheless, Minow advocates addressing these atrocities in a formal way: "The victimized deserve the acknowledgment of their humanity," she asserts, "and the reaffirmation of the utter wrongness of its violation."

Mark J. Osiel, Obeying Orders : Atrocity, Military Discipline & the Law of War, Transaction Pub; 399 pages, 1999.

In this book, Mr. Osiel contends that the military should be more proactive in prosecuting soldiers for violations of the law of warfare. Osiel contends that current policy generally leads to litigation only in cases of atrocity. To his credit, the author recognizes the complexities of the modern battlefield and the "real-world" impact of imposing new or thicker layers of control within the chaos that is war. He also recognizes the complexities that peace-keeping and peace-making operations pose for soldiers and leaders at all levels. Professional soldiers will find some of his example cases distracting, as they are clear violations of the law without imposing his higher standard to the situation. This book should be recommended reading for all Judge Advocate General officers and field-grade commanders that are participating in combined (international) operations. This book should generate some good discussion among professional officers as they digest his proposals for increased responsibility at all levels of the command structure. Any instructor involved in teaching ethics, leadership, or the Law of War will also find this work helpful.

Tove Skutnabb Kangas, Linguistic Genocide in Education -- Or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc, 2000.

'Big' languages are killing their 'smaller' brothers andsisters. Education is their main tool to realize'genocide'. Linguistic diversity is as important as biodiversity and cultural diversity in our globe. This book is one of the best and complete works in linguistic ecology and diversity.

David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, 1998, 312 pp.

In the wake of modern genocide, we tend to think of violence against minorities as a sign of intolerance, or, even worse, a prelude to extermination. Violence in the Middle Ages, however, functioned differently, according to David Nirenberg. In this provocative book, he focuses on specific attacks against minorities in fourteenth-century France and the Crown of Aragon (Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia). He argues that these attacks--ranging from massacres to verbal assaults against Jews, Muslims, lepers, and prostitutes--were often perpetrated not by irrational masses laboring under inherited ideologies and prejudices, but by groups that manipulated and reshaped the available discourses on minorities. Nirenberg shows that their use of violence expressed complex beliefs about topics as diverse as divine history, kinship, sex, money, and disease, and that their actions were frequently contested by competing groups within their own society. Contents: The Historical Background Ch. 2 France, Source of the Troubles: Shepherds' Crusade and Lepers' Plot (1320, 1321) Ch. 3 Crusade and Massacre in Aragon (1320) Ch. 4 Lepers, Jews, Muslims, and Poison in the Crown (1321) Ch. 5 Sex and Violence between Majority and Minority Ch. 6 Minorities Confront Each Other: Violence between Muslims and Jews Ch. 7 The Two Faces of Sacred Violence Epilogue: The Black Death and Beyond

Maurizio Ragazzi, The Concept of International Obligations Erga Omnes

CONTENTS: The Appearance of the Concept of Obligations Erga Omnes on the Agenda: The Dictum of the International Court in the Barcelona Traction Case; Selected Prefigurations of the Concept of Obligations Erga Omnes: (a)State Servitude, Permanent Dedication, International Status, and Objective Regime; Selected Prefigurations of the Concept of Obligations Erga Omnes: (b)Jus Cogens; The Examples of Obligations Erga Omnes Given by the International Court in its Dictum: (a)The Outlawing of Acts of Aggression; The Examples of Obligations Erga Omnes Given by the International Court in its Dictum: (b)The Outlawing of Genocide; The Examples of Obligations Erga Omnes Given by the International Court in its Dictum: (c)Protection from Slavery; The Examples of Obligations Erga Omnes Given by the International Court in its Dictum: (d) Protection from Racial Discrimination; Selected Candidates of Obligations Erga Omnes Proposed in the International Literature; Other Selected Candidates in Light of the Advisory Opinion on Namibia and the Nuclear Tests Cases; Particular Aspects of the Relationship Between the Concept of Obligations Erga Omnes and the concepts of Jus Cogens and Actio Popularis; Bibliography

Christopher C. Taylor, Sacrifice as Terror, The Rwandan Genocide of 1994, 1999, 224pp.

In the early months of 1994, it became clear that the government of Rwanda had not acted in good faith in signing peace accords with its adversary, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Acts of government-sponsored violence grew more frequent. Christopher C. Taylor of University of Alabama at Birmingham, was at that time conducting fieldwork in Rwanda, on several occasions found either himself or the Rwandans accompanying him threatened with, or sustaining, bodily harm. Finally, active hostilities between the antagonists escalated on April 7, 1994, just hours after the Rwandan President's plane was shot down. During the author's evacuation from Rwanda in the months following, he interviewed many survivors. This book, the outcome of the author's experiences during the conflict, is an attempt to understand the atrocities committed during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which nearly one million people, mostly of Tutsi ethnicity, were slaughtered in less than four months. Beyond this, the author shows that political and historical analyses, while necessary in understanding the violence, fail to explain the forms that the violence took and the degree of passion that motivated it. Instead, Rwandan ritual and practices related to the body are revelatory in this regard, as the body is the ultimate tablet upon which the dictates of the nation-state are inscribed. One rather bizarre example of this is that Hutu extremists often married or had sexual relations with Tutsi women who, according to the Hamitic hypothesis, were said to be sexually alluring. Their mixed-race offspring were not exempt from the genocide. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in light of the recent resurgence of violence, the author advances hypotheses about how the violence in Rwanda and Burundi might be transcended.

Dictionnaire nominatif des victimes du génocide en Préfecture de Kibuye. Kigali : IBUKA, 1999, 1086 pp. : [ Subjects: Victims--Rwanda--Kibuye (Prefecture)--Registers. Genocide--Rwanda--Kibuye (Prefecture) Kibuye (Rwanda : Prefecture)--Registers. ]

New and Forthcoming Books on Genocide and related topics, 2001-2002