Day 7 Memorial

Facts of the Rwandan genocide.

 In 2002 the government put the death toll for the ethnic slaughter at 1,074,017 with Tutsis as 94% of the dead.

March 13, 2010.  Day 7 of the 100 days of remembrance of the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Teaching Genocide.

Genocide [jen-uh-sahyd]. –noun. the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.

A group of radical pro-lifers called the Genocide Awareness Project are on Ohio State's campus this week.  They display enormous signs with blown-up pictures of mangled, bloody aborted fetuses (they are not "dead babies," they were never alive nor were they babies), and images from the Holocaust.  That's right, they compare abortion to the Holocaust.  They pervert the word "genocide" to fit their agenda.  The images are grotesque, but pretty standard.  Most of the pictures of aborted fetuses are of third-trimester abortions, which aren't legal in the United States.  Meaning the pictures are old and manipulated.  Their tactic is shock and fear; they believe that if women knew what aborted fetuses look like, maybe they won't get abortions.  I'd like to think women do their research before they make a decision like choosing whether or not to let a pregnancy come to term.  I know I would.  VOX, the Voices of Planned Parenthood group on campus, counter-protested with petitions and signs.  They also handed out condoms, pins, and stickers shaped like condoms that said, "just wear it."

The pro-lifers have the right to say whatever they want, even if we don't agree with their hateful, ignorant, woman-hating tactics.

What really pisses me off about this group of people is their intentional misuse of the word "genocide."  I made signs that I plan to use on Wednesday to spread some truths about what "genocide" really means.

The OSU club Right To Life purposely brought the Genocide Awareness Project to campus during Holocaust awareness week.  This is an insult to the tens of millions of people who were murdered in genocides this century alone.  Let's take a look back in time and learn about genocide:

1915-1918: The Armenian
Genocide considered the prototype for future genocides in one of the bloodiest centuries of modern history.  Over 1,500,000 Armenians, about half the Armenian population, were killed by Ottoman Turkey during WWI.

1939-1945: The Holocaust 6,000,000 Jews and more than 5,000,000 others considered "undesirables" were killed by Nazi Germany in Europe during WWII.

1975-1979: The Cambodian Killing Fields 1,200,000 Cambodians were killed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge political party.

1994: Rwandan Genocide In a 4-month period, 800,000 Tutsis killed by ethnic Hutu militias.

2004-?: Genocide in Sudan Janjaweed, government-backed Arab militias, have engaged in campaigns to displace and wipe out entire communities of African tribal farmers.  Nearly 300,000 civilians have died and some 1.6 million have been forced from their homes.

When the Genocide Convention was passed by the United Nations in 1948, the world said, "Never again."

In the twentieth century "never again" became "again and again." The promise the United Nations made was broken, as again and again, genocides and other forms of mass murder killed 170 million people, more than all the international wars of the twentieth century combined. (via the Genocide Education Project - "Learning the past, building the future.")

keep thinking, keep acting.

http://agahozo-shalom.org/

www.savedarfur.org/

Comments

[Seth]

The world said "never again," and then largely stood by while the Rwandans were slaughtered. What hypocrisy we have allowed!

[Emily K]

You're pretty awesome.