Europe: stay or leave? Focus on fact - 10

Today’s fact: My father and grandfather both had to go to war in Europe. My son and I have not had to go to war in Europe. I am very grateful.

The greatest achievement of the EU is surely that it has made war in most of Europe unthinkable. When you remember that more than 450,000 British people were killed in World War Two, and about 750,000 in World War One, while millions more were injured, and millions more lost their homes, it is odd that nobody seems to care about this.

Perhaps people in Britain now just take peace in Europe for granted. That is very, very foolish. The peaceful years since the founding of the EU are actually a glaring exception in Europe’s history. Before that, since the dawn of time, the continent’s history has been dominated by virtually unrelieved war.

What is particularly worrying about the anti-Europeans, is that they do not just want to leave the EU, they want to destroy the organisation and make everyone else leave too.

But even if that happened, in this day and age you could not get, say, ten years of war, with mass rape and murder, atrocities on all sides, hundreds of thousands driven from their homes, could you? No? Ever heard of Yugoslavia?

However much you hate immigration, is this a price worth paying to reduce it? War is hell. Keep it out of Europe. Vote Stay.

Terrorism: Remember Paris....but don't forget Nigeria

The murders by Muslim fanatics in France have attracted widespread condemnation, and an impressive demonstration of international solidarity. What a pity the same cannot be said of the massacres committed by the Islamic terrorists of Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Amnesty International, after compiling eyewitness reports and studying satellite pictures, says last week’s attack on the villages of Baga and Doron Baga killed at least 150, including small children and a woman in labour.

The terrorists are said to have opened fire indiscriminately, and some say the death toll could be as high as 2,000. The villages were razed to the ground, with about 3,700 buildings, mainly people’s homes, destroyed.

In April 2013, the Baga area was raided by the Nigerian military in response to a Boko Haram attack that killed a soldier. Human Rights Watch say local people were killed, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed, though the Nigerian government denied the claims.

(See also my blogs of March 3 and June 23, and December 19, 2014.)

Birmingham pub bombings + 40. Who were the killers?

Forty years ago today, I was a reporter at ATV (the forerunner of Central Television covering the English Midlands) covering the Birmingham pub bombings. Two pubs in the city centre were blown up by the IRA, killing 21 people and injuring more than 180 others in what was then the worst terrorist attack in British history.

Today we still do not know who was responsible. The ‘Birmingham Six’ were wrongly convicted of the crime, and were released in 1991. Devon and Cornwall Police later conducted an inquiry into the West Midlands Police investigation. The authorities have decreed its contents must remain secret for another 55 years.

Julie Hambleton, whose sister was killed in the bombings, has been highly critical of this decision. The current Chief Constable for the West Midlands, Chris Sims, has maintained the investigation remains open, but Ms Hambleton has accused the police of lack of commitment to investigating Britain’s ‘largest unsolved mass murder,’ saying they seemed to be waiting for evidence to ‘drop on their desks’.

Another blow to those wanting to bring the killers to justice was the revelation that 35 pieces of evidence had gone missing, including a bomb that failed to explode. Mr Sims said it seems the items had been disposed of in the 1980’s, and that this was ‘not unusual at the time.’ 

The Yazidis - a history of persecution

The Iraqi government says ‘Islamic State’ militants have murdered at least 500 Yazidis, some women and children they buried alive. They are also accused of forcing 300 women into slavery.

Tens of thousands of other Yazidis are taking shelter on the hot, desolate summit of Mount Sinjar, with the Americans trying to drop aid from the air, and strike at the Islamists who are threatening the refugees.

The Yazidis’ religion is much older than Islam. They believe God created the world, but then left if to be ruled by seven angels and that after death, our souls are transferred to other human beings. They do not believe in hell or the devil.

Over the centuries, they have been persecuted by many groups including the Ottoman Turks, Muslim Kurdish princes, and Saddam Hussein’s government. Then after his fall, nearly 800 Yazidis were killed in 2007 in the deadliest terrorist act in history apart from 9/11. No one has admitted responsibility for the co-ordinated four-bomb attack, but it is generally blamed on al-Qaeda or other Sunni militants.

Two Khmer Rouge convicted of mass murder

Almost 40 years after the mass murder by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia that left perhaps a quarter of the population dead, two of the regime’s leading lights have been sentenced to life imprisonment.

88 year old Nuon Chea (pictured) served as the notorious Pol Pot's deputy, while Khieu Samphan, now aged 83, was head of state. The judge said they were guilty of ‘extermination encompassing murder, political persecution, and other inhumane acts.’

The Maoist regime’s speciality was to drive people out of the cities and force into the countryside, where they were worked or starved to death. Many in Cambodia have criticised the slow pace at which justice has proceeded, and a judge resigned in 2012, complaining that investigations into suspects were being blocked.

The convicted pair deny the offences and say they will appeal, though they will remain in gaol. They could also face a further trial on charges of genocide.

Who remembers the Armenians? Many people

‘Who remembers the Armenians?’, Hitler is supposed to have asked scornfully as he prepared to invade Poland in 1939, referring to the deaths of perhaps 1m people during the First World War at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, now Turkey.

Now for the first time, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has offered his ‘condolences’ over the mass killings. The Turks still reject the idea that they constituted genocide, and Mr Egoyan talked instead of the ‘shared pain’ of the Turkish and Armenian peoples for their losses in World War One.

Even so, the comments are a marked step forward. In 2006, Orhan Pamuk, the first Turk to win the Nobel Prize, was threatened with prosecution for insulting ‘Turkish identity’ when he drew attention to the killings.

At the start of the First World War, after years of inter-communal tension the Turks feared the Christian Armenians might help their enemy, Russia. They began a mass deportation during which perhaps 600,000 were murdered, while another 400,000 died from hardship.

*Tomorrow at Shoe Lane Library, London EC4, 1230 my talk on Flood: Nature and Culture

http://disasterhistorian.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/talk-on-flood-nature-and-culture.html

Rwanda + 20

This week Rwanda has been marking the 20^th anniversary of the genocide of 1994, in which 800,000 people were murdered in just 100 days – the fastest mass murder in history.

While the Nazis favoured industrial methods of extermination, this one was carried out with low-tech weapons, notably the machete, though some victims were allowed to be shot instead, if they paid. The murderers were Hutu supremacists; their victims Tutsis and sometimes moderate Hutus.

A United Nations international tribunal based in Tanzania has tried more than 70 people in connection with the events of 1994. So far, 29 have been convicted. Another 11 trials are in progress, and 14 people are in detention awaiting trial, while 13 suspects are still at large.

Although last month, a French court sent Rwanda’s former spy chief to gaol for 25 years for his part in the genocide, the Rwandan government still accuses France of complicity in the killings, and France’s Justice Minister cancelled her plans to attend the commemorations in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Joseph Stalin - unhappy birthday

On this day........134 years ago, Joseph Stalin was born. The Russian Communist dictator went on to be one of the greatest mass murderers in history, being responsible for the deaths of perhaps 30 million people.

In 1928, he embarked on a forced collectivisation of Soviet agriculture, but millions of peasants would have nothing to do with it, often slaughtering their animals rather than hand them over to the state. Hundreds of thousands of villagers died as they were marched off to Siberia.

Even when famine swept through the Ukraine in 1932, the government carried on seizing grain from farmers. How many died? ‘No one was counting’, shrugged Khrushchev, then one of Stalin’s aides. An official estimate in 1990 put the number at four million, but many believe it was far more.

Then came the purges - intellectuals, artists, engineers, army officers, police chiefs, communist officials, people who had made an unwise comment.  Millions were sent to the gulags, where the commandants were given a quota of inmates - 28% - who had to be shot or otherwise punished for anti-state agitation.

For more, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Two war criminals sentenced

Two convicted war criminals have received long prison sentences.    The former president of Liberia, Charles Taylor, has been sent to gaol for 50 years for aiding and abetting rebels in Sierra Leone during the civil war of 1991-2002.

The judge at The Hague acknowledged that Taylor had never set foot in Sierra Leone, but declared he had ‘been found responsible for aiding and abetting some of the most heinous crimes in human history.’   

The former president backed rebels from the Revolutionary United Front, who killed tens of thousands of people, employing a strategy of murder, rape, and hacking off limbs. Taylor, who is 64, says he will appeal.  

Meanwhile, in Rwanda, Callixte Nzabonimana, a former youth minister, has been found guilty by a court in Tanzania of genocide and other crimes during the 100 days of madness in 1994, which saw 800,000 people murdered.   He was imprisoned for life, but he too says he will appeal.

London's deadliest post-war fire

New light has been cast on the deadliest fire in London since World War Two, and one of the worst mass killings in British history.   In the early hours of August 16, 1980, fire ripped through two illegal clubs in Denmark Street - ‘Tin Pan Alley’ – just off Charing Cross Road.

The second floor housed a gambling den, while the first floor was a club where salsa music – virtually unknown in London in those days – attracted lots of South American expatriates.    A disgruntled customer who had been refused admission, poured petrol into the building and set fire to it.   The disc jockey was one of those killed, as he tried to save his record collection.

There were no proper fire escapes, and with much of the building made of wood, it went up in no time.    A total of 37 people were killed, and in May 1981, a 42 year old man was gaoled for life for causing the fire.

Matt Rendell has come up with some fascinating new details about the disaster in his new history of salsa in Britain.   For the full story, see Salsa for People Who Probably Shouldn’t just published by Mainstream.  

Yugoslav war crimes - job done?

161 down, none to go.   The calling to account of suspected war criminals after the tragedy of Yugoslavia has been perhaps the most successful operation of its kind in history.

Last month’s arrest of Goran Hadžíc, the leader of Croatia’s Serb minority during the conflict, meant that not one of the 161 people wanted for trial was still at large.    Hadzic, a former warehouse worker, is alleged to have played a leading role in the destruction of the town of Vukovar in 1991, during which at least 264 people were tortured and killed.

He has already appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia which was set up back in 1993, joining Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.   Ten of the people indicted by the court died before they could be brought to justice, while Slobodan Milosevic died during his trial.

A crucial factor in the successful pursuit of the suspected war criminals has been the wish of the nations of the former Yugoslavia to join the EU, which has enabled international pressure to be brought to bear on their governments, even though many local people deny that any war crimes were committed.

Target Mumbai

Mumbai was always regarded as a diverse, tolerant city.   Maybe that is why it has been targeted so often by terrorists.    In Wednesday’s attack, three bombs went off, thought to have been activated by timers, and 18 people were killed.

In 2008, a group of ten Muslim gunmen murdered 165 people in attacks on hotels, a station, and other places frequented by foreigners.   Back in March 1993, more than a dozen bombs made from plastic explosives and detonated by timers killed at least 257 people, while the terrorists also threw grenades at Mumbai airport.

Ten years later, bombings killed another 50 people, while in July 2006, seven bombs were set off on rush-hour trains during a period of 11 minutes, claiming 209 lives.   Police blamed an outlawed Indian Muslim organisation, Lashkar-e-Toiba (‘Soldiers of the Pure’), but said the outrage had been planned by Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI.

A trial of 13 people accused of involvement is still wending its way through the Indian justice system, with judgment now expected before the end of the year.

Woman gaoled for Rwanda genocide

The first woman convicted in connection with the 1994 Rwanda genocide has been sent to gaol for life.     Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, aged 65, was the minister for family and women’s development (!).    Her son, Arsène Shalom Ntahobali, and four other people were also convicted.

When Hutus began murdering Tutsis in other parts of the country, the Butare region, by the Burundi border, was for a short time a haven of peace.    Then Nyiramasuhuko, a former social worker, ordered the local governor to get killing.    When he refused, he was sacked and then killed.

The convicted woman brought in militias from the capital, Kigali, and, with the help of her son, organised mass murder and the kidnap and rape of women and girls.   She and her son often manned the roadblocks at which Tutsis were detained.

When the Rwandan Patriotic Front deposed the genocidal government in July 1994, Nyiramasuhuko fled, but was arrested in Kenya in 1997.   Altogether, 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered in just 100 days.   (See also my blogs of April 9, 2009, Dec 11, 2010, May 9 and 29, 2011 etc)

World War Two - last war crimes trial?

In what may turn out to be the last World War Two war crimes trial, 91 year old John Demjanjuk has been found guilty of helping to murder more than 28,000 Jews at the Nazi death camp of Sobibor in what is now Poland.     He was sentenced to five years in prison, but will be released pending appeal.   

Demjanjuk told the court in Munich that he had not served as a guard at the camp, and that he was a prisoner of war.   The case turned on an SS identity card, which the defence claimed was a fake.   In all, an estimated 250,000 people were killed at Sobibor.

In the 1980’s, an Israeli court indentified Demjanjuk as ‘Ivan the Terrible’, a notorious guard at the Treblinka death camp, and sentenced him to death, but the country’s supreme court overturned the verdict after new evidence emerged.

Some of the relatives of those who died at Sobibor said the verdict on Demjanjuk was not the most important thing.    They were satisfied that a court in the city where the Nazi party was born had had to listen to the details of the industrialised murder machine that Hitler’s regime created.    (See also my blog of Nov 30, 2009.)

Congo genocide - trials in Germany

Two Rwandan Hutu leaders have gone on trial in Germany over alleged atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo.   Ignace Murwanashyaka, head of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), and his deputy Straton Musoni face 26 counts of crimes against humanity and 39 of war crimes.

Because both of them live in Stuttgart, they are subject to a new German law which allows foreigners to be prosecuted for crimes committed outside the country.  The two men are accused of ordering militias to commit mass murder and rape during 2008 and 2009.

The prosecutors say the FDLR shot people who would not co-operate with them, used rape as a weapon of war, and burned down whole villages.   A lawyer representing one of the accused claimed the trial was unfair.

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda involved Hutu extremists killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus.   When the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front came to power, many Hutus fled across into Congo, sparking years of unrest.    Between 1998 and 2003, 5 million people died in what became known as ‘Africa’s world war.’

(See also my blogs of Jan 23, March 23, Sept 23, 2009, Sept 3 and 9, 2010.)

Bangladesh - war crimes trials stall

The war that brought independence for Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) ended in 1971. Estimates of the number of lives lost range up to 3 million – many murdered in cold blood by the West Pakistan army - and perhaps 10 million people fled their homes.

Over the last few months, there have been attempts to call to account some of those responsible for atrocities during the conflict. The authorities are not going after the West Pakistan army, but alleged local collaborators who helped them.

Dozens of suspects are banned from leaving the country, and the war crimes tribunal has issued arrest warrants against five party leaders, including two former ministers, though they are not charged with war crimes, and unfortunately, the whole process has become mired in inter-party political rivalries.

The general belief is that if the opposition wins the next general election, due in 2013, it will scrap the war crimes trials, and they are the favourites. No democratic government in Bangladesh’s short history has ever won a second term.

Rwanda genocide - preserving history

An archive of the Rwanda genocide of 1994 has just opened at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in the country’s capital. It includes thousands of documents, photographs and video and sound recordings collected from survivors, witnesses and perpetrators of the mass murder.

It’s a joint initiative by the Rwandan government and the Aegis Trust, which works to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity, and the memorial site is on slopes above mass graves believed to hold the bodies of up to a quarter of a million victims.

The site’s director, himself a survivor of the genocide says that many people in Rwanda still deny the genocide, and that the archive will help ‘fight them with facts.’ The Aegis Trust is also working with the UK’s University of Nottingham to create a comprehensive map of Rwanda’s genocide sites. So far more than 1,000 have been identified in Kigali alone.

The Rwanda genocide, during which Hutu extremists murdered moderate Hutus and Tutsis was the most rapid in history, with 800,000 people murdered in 100 days. (See also my blogs of Jan 23, March 1, 4, 23; April 9, July 16, May 6, Sept 3, 9, 23; Oct 8, 30; Dec 15, 2009, 25 Feb, 2010.)

Mumbai appeal

The only surviving gunman from the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai has begun his appeal against the death sentence. 23 year old Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, a Pakistani national, was one of ten assailants who caused the deaths of more than 170 people.

Qasab and an accomplice carried out the attack on the city’s main railway station, killing 52 people. In May, he was found guilty of mass murder and waging war against India.

For security reasons, the convicted man is appearing via video link from his prison. Reporters in the courtroom say he smiled frequently as he looked into the camera. The hearing is expected to last three months.

(See also my blogs of July 23 and Nov 26, 2009.)

Another Khmer Rouge trial

Less than two months after the conviction of former Khmer Rouge prison boss Comrade Duch (see my blog of July 26), another four of its leaders have been indicted for genocide and torture in Cambodia in the 1970’s.

Duch was the first person convicted by the UN-backed war crimes court. Now Nuon Chea, deputy to the notorious KR leader Pol Pot, former head of state Khieu Samphan, former foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith will come before it. All of them deny the charges.

Justice has been a long time coming. The events to which the charges relate took place more than 30 years ago. The defendants have all been held since 2007, and the trial is not expected to start before the middle of next year. All of them are now elderly, and Ieng Sary is in poor health.

The Cambodian genocide was one of the most vicious in history, accounting for perhaps one in four of the country’s people. Apart from those who were murdered – “bourgeois” elements such as lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists and their families - many others died from hunger or overwork, as Pol Pot’s Maoist fanatics emptied the cities and drove people out into the countryside.

(See also my blogs of Jan 7, March 4, June 29 and Nov 22, 2009.)

Genocide begets genocide?

The Rwandan government’s threat to withdraw its 3,400 personnel serving with the UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur (see my blog of Sept 3) seems to have had the desired effect. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon quickly jetted into the Rwandan capital, Kigali, to tell President Paul Kagame that he was “disappointed” about the leaking of a UN report accusing Rwandan forces of murdering tens of thousands of Hutus in the Congo.

A team from the UN’s office for the High Commissioner on Human Rights has catalogued more than 600 incidents, and it claims that President Kagame’s Hutu forces were involved in more than 100 of them.

In 1996, for example, Rwandan troops are said to have gone to the Chimanga refugee camp. They told the refugees they would be going back home. Then, on an apparently pre-arranged signal, they opened fire, killing up to 800.

Back in 1994, it was President Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front that put an end to the mass murder of Tutsis by extremist Hutus in Rwanda. Many of the perpetrators fled to the Congo, where they hid among a million other Hutus who had fled fearing for their lives under the new regime. It was when the genocide organisers started re-grouping that President Kagame ordered the invasion.