Fight against genocide must be a guiding principle of European and German foreign politics

 

With a view to the 60th anniversary of the UN Convention against Genocide (9.12.2008) the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) has called on the German government to make the fight against genocide a guiding principle of European and German foreign politics. "Hardly any UN agreement has received such little attention as the Genocide Convention of 1948. The chain of genocides has not been broken since the Holocaust. This failure of the international community of states has cost millions of people their lives”, said the GfbV German chairperson, Tilman Zülch, at the end of the AGM of the GfbV on Monday in Göttingen, at which the 40th anniversary of the founding of the human rights organisation was celebrated. Germany must press for the international community to at last take up its responsibility for the protection of ethnic and religious communities.

 

A memorial service will be held in the Berliner Dom on Tuesday with the

Cathedral Council and eye-witnesses of the genocide from Chechnya, Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan, Biafra/Eastern Nigeria and Ruanda to commemorate the passing of the Convention 60 years ago and its initiator, Raphael Lemkin.

 

In 41 German towns and cities there will be vigils on Tuesday under the motto "Save Darfur! Stop genocide now!” for the 400,000 victims to date of the present genocide in Darfur. The GfbV had called out in the run-up to Christmas to this human rights campaign all over Germany in view of the 60th anniversary of the UN Convention against Genocide.

 

We cordially invite you to:

Again and again? Never again!

Memorial service for the 60th anniversary

of the UN Convention against Genocide

on Tuesday, 9.12.2008 at 11 a.m. at the Berlin Cathedral

 

The GfbV is looking forward to welcoming as a special guest the Chairperson of the Central Committee of the Jews, Charlotte Knobloch.

 

The speakers will be:

 

Cathedral preacher Dr. Petra Zimmermann and GfbV founder Tilman

Zülch – Welcome and introduction

 

Dr. Shimon Samuels, Paris, Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre,

Europe

 

Prof. Gregory H. Stanton, Washington, President of the International

Association of Genocide Scholars

 

Eye-witnesses of the genocide from Chechnya, Srebrenica, Iraqi

Kurdistan (Mayor of Halabja and a representative of the Assyrian Chaldean

Christians, Biafra/Eastern Nigeria and Ruanda

 

Auslandsbischof (Lutheran Bishop for Germans living abroad) Martin

Schindehütte

 

School children from Berlin reading passages of the Convention

 

Prof. Dr. Claudia Kraft, University of Erfurt: "The Work of Raphael

Lemkin”

 

Prof. Gunnar Heinsohn, University of Bremen, Presenter, editor of

the Lexicon of Genocide

 

On the background: 60 years Genocide Convention – 60 years crimes of

genocide

 

1948 to 1950 Continuation of the murders of genocide and social strata in the Soviet Union under Stalin and in Yugoslavia under Tito;

 

1950 over one million victims in Tibet by the Chinese People’s army of Mao Tse Tung, which was responsible in the following years for the murder of several tens of millions of people of all nationalities and religious communities of China

 

Between 1955 and 2003 the wiping out of at least 2.5 million members of black-African peoples of Southern Sudan like the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Bari, Zande and many other ethnic groups by the policies of the Arab regime in Khartoum. During this period both the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany provided the genocide regime with military advisers and armaments.

 

Following the Indonesian invasion of West Papua in 1963 more than 100,000 members of the 250 indigenous peoples were killed by Indonesian troops.

 

In 1963 after independence leading personalities of the black-African population of Zanzibar began the genocide of some 10,000 Arabian-speaking Zanzibaris and Indian immigrants.

 

From 1967 until 1969 in the war of Biafran independence more than

two million Eastern Nigerians/Biafrans were killed. The Soviet Union and

Great Britain made this genocide possible.

 

Between 1968 and 1996 during the civil war in Guatemala more than 200,000 people were murdered. 90% were members of the Maya peoples. US governments were partly responsible.

 

From March until December 1971 about three million East Bengalis were killed by Pakistani troops during the war of independence in Bangladesh. The governments of Richard Nixon and Mao Tse Tung supported Pakistan’s military regime.

 

In April and May 1972 more than 100,000 Hutu died under the leadership of the Tutsi minority.

 

From 1972 to 1973 the government in Paraguay had Aceh Indians arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp which was partially financed by the Hoechst company. Many members of this small Indian people were killed.

 

From 1975 until 1979 more than two million people, members of the majority and minorities of the Vietnamese, Chinese, Chams and Thais were murdered by the policies of the Red Khmer in Cambodia. Red China supported these crimes against humanity.

 

Between 1975 and 1999 180,000 East Timorese and Chinese had to pay for the campaign of destruction of the Indonesian army of occupation with their lives. The USA supported this Indonesian policy.

 

Between 1968 and 1999 about 500,000 Kurds, Yezidi, Assyrian Chaldeans and Turkmens were killed in Kurdistan by Saddam Hussein. It is estimated that Saddam’s "Anfal Operation” alone accounted for 182,000 victims. More than 10,000 people died in Halabja and the outlying villages through the air-raids with poisonous gas. German and European firms were involved in building up the Iraqi poison-gas industry.

 

Between 1987 and 2003 about 500,000 members of black-African ethnic groups were murdered in the Nuba region of Kordofan by the Sudanese administration.

 

In 1993 more than 100,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed within ten days in Burundi. With the protection of France an extremist movement of the Hutu majority was able to murder about 400,000 Tutsi and Hutus from the opposition.

 

From April until the middle of 1994 members of the Hutu majority murdered about 75 percent of the Tutsi minority living in Ruanda. The genocide cost about one million people their lives.

 

For some years now Hutu and Tutsi militia have been involved in the dreadful murder campaigns against civilians in the north of Congo.

 

In 1991 Serb troops liquidated in East Slavonia in Croatia over 10,000 Croats, among them being members of the Hungarian minority and the last Danube Swabians.

 

Since 1994 the governments of Yeltsin and Putin have each been responsible for 80,000 dead in Chechnya. The German Chancellor Schröder protected the crimes of Putin by saying nothing and doing nothing. Beforehand under Stalin a third of the Chechnyans and Ingush died in the deportations to Central Asia.

 

Between 1992 and 1995 Serb troops carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina so-called "ethnic cleansing operations”, bombing enclosed towns, trying to starve out their inhabitants and opening concentration and rape camps. About 150,000 people, among them 8,376 boys and men from the town of Srebrenica, were murdered or died as a result of the repression. The governments of France and Great Britain sympathised during the war of extermination with Belgrad. The German government did recognize Bosnia and Herzegovina after Serbian crimes, but took no action to prevent the allied Tudjman regime from marching into Bosnia on the side of Serbia.

 

Since 2003 the air force, army and militia of the Sudanese President, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, have been carrying out genocide in Darfur. About 400,000 members of the black-African Moslem peoples, such as the Fur, the Masalit and the Zaghawa, have already fallen victim to it. Two to three million people have become refugees.

 

This list does not pretend to be complete.