JOURNEY COMPANIONS: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL IDEAS
3.3 Conceptualising controversial issues and genocide
3.3.2 Conceptualising genocide
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controversy varies from one group to another one (The Historical Association, 2007).
In their paper comparing controversial issues and teacher education in South Africa and Britain, Chikoko et al. (2011) show that some topics such as human immunodeficiency virus and corporal punishment are raised by some African participants whereas it is not the case for British participants. The latter mentioned specific issues such as the Iraq war and the Middle East or immigration. The role of the community in the teaching of controversial issues is therefore a noteworthy concern for many authors (Burron, 2006; Manyane, 1995; McCully, 2006; Stradling, 1984). In addition learners may bring preconceived ideas from home influenced not only by their families but also by the media. But, it is more difficult to deal with the most recent controversial topics than the remote ones in history teaching:
The more contemporary the issue the greater the problems for the teacher, mainly because the outcome may still be very difficult to predict: We do not have the benefit of hindsight regarding the significance of recent events; students are likely to bring with them into the classroom their own interpretations, experiences, judgements and prejudices; the primary sources of evidence are likely to be biased, incomplete and contradictory; and it is even difficult to establish criteria for determining what does and does not constitute valid evidence (Stradling, 1984, p. 3).
In this study, the term controversial issues is used for problems for which no common understanding is held by Rwandan society and sometimes may cause pain, anger and even fear due to their sensitivity. In general, some controversial issues are not discussed openly by the general public but in schools they are discussed in different ways. For this study my working concept relies mainly on Stradling’s (1984) conceptualisation. Thus, controversial issues are those problems for which scholars, the general public, official circles and learners lack a common understanding regarding their conceptualisation, causes, sequences, consequences and action to be taken to deal with them. The discussion of controversial issues may or not bring polemic, anger, fear, painful memories or hope.
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most of its ideational power in the sense that it has been detached from legal and political demands to be used in the context of genocide prevention. Some use this term by analogy during any violent conflict to call for attention. However, a careful analysis shows that when genocide was used to describe the extermination of Jews by the Nazis the concept was coined to not only name a particular type of violence but it also had a certain moral meaning. The term genocide was synonymous with the climax of human evil (Straus, 2001). This is why genocide has also been described as a “disease of the spirit” (Jørgensen, 2001, p.285). Despite the intent to use the term genocide for a particular circumstance, there is no one accepted conceptualisation and use of it. Hence, “From its inception, then, genocide has been an empirical, moral, legal, and political concept. To one person, “genocide” means evil and demands preventive or punitive action by a government; to another,
“genocide” carries a circumscribed juridical meaning while to still others, it designates a specific type of mass violence” (Straus, 2001, p. 358). Thus, genocide became “an attractive concept. But these multiple dimensions also have made for a conceptual muddle” (Straus, 2001, p.359).
Conceptually, different scholars and the United Nations have tried to conceptualise the term genocide. Genocide is generally considered as one of the worst moral crimes a “government” (meaning any ruling authority, including that of a guerrilla group, a quasi-state, a Soviet, a terrorist organization, or an occupation authority) can commit against its citizens or those it controls (Rummel, 1997). In 1948, the United Nations approved and proposed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the norm of prohibiting genocide became unconditional (Jørgensen, 2001). Since its adoption, the definition of genocide as set out in the Convention has not been altered and is included in the Status of the International Criminal Court. In terms of being a crime, the United Nations convention defined genocide as
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” (Jørgensen, 2001, p. 286).
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The above mentioned United Nations conceptualisation has been criticized by many scholars (Chalk & Jonassohn, 1990; Harff & Gurr, 1998; Katz, 1991; Kissi, 2004;
Straus, 2001). In his criticism, one of the scholars, Straus (2001), mentions that the first four elements of the convention mix lethal with non-lethal acts. Thus, people who are opposed to particular action invoked the Genocide convention. This is the case for instance of those who were opposing China’s one-child policy. They claimed that it limited or reduced the population growth of particular ethnic groups. But, the intention is to reduce the high population growth. Another example is the prohibition of a particular language or religion which is considered by affected groups as genocidal. Secondly, only four protected groups are mentioned by the Convention and the political groups are not included in spite of their sufferings since the Second World War.
The political groups have been excluded because one of the victors during the War, the Soviet Union, rejected the idea that genocide could be committed against social classes (Straus, 2001). The Soviet Union opposed the inclusion of political groups to avoid the international communities’ condemnation of millions of victims killed under Joseph Stalin’s rule (Sherti, 2014). Thus, without agreeing on what genocide is, it becomes difficult for scholars to develop plausible comparative explanations of the phenomenon they study as they do not have the same understanding (Straus, 2001).
Returning to the shortcomings of the conceptualisation, ethnocide as reflected in (c) and (e) is also contested by scholars (Eng, n.d.; Straus, 2001). The argument is that it is difficult to prove guilt of genocide if the political or economic group, which can also be victimised, are not explicitly mentioned. Thus, to exclude political groups was a failure on the part of the Convention and was done due to the fear of the ratifying members who had not protected their political dissidents (Eng, n.d.). Signatories of the Convention agreed to prevent genocide but the Convention contains no article showing how to intervene in genocide outside of national borders (Glanville, 2009).
Bearing in mind that genocide is an exceptional phenomenon, and due to the shortcomings in the conceptualisation thereof, certain scholars (Chalk & Jonassohn, 1990; Harff, 1998; Kissi, 2004; Straus, 2001) proposed their own definitions and declared that there is a need for an umbrella concept for genocide and other mass
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killings (Straus, 2001). For instance, one scholar conceptualised “genocide as a structural and systematic destruction of innocent people by a state bureaucratic apparatus” (Horowitz, 1976, p.18). This definition does not specify, the targeted group, as the United Nations definition. Horowitz’s (1976) definition implies killing without distinguishing between innocent people and enemies.
Recently, the concept of genocide has been expanded on by scholars because it is viewed as more than an “act of state”. There is an attempt to destroy rivals and political groups by non-state actors (Kissi, 2004). In the case of Rwanda, for example, Kimonyo (2008) talks about a popular genocide. For the same Rwandan case, the role of the elite has also been highlighted (Rutembesa, 2011). Thus, genocide or politicide are defined by Harff (as quoted by Kissi, 2004) as “the promotion, execution, and or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents – or in the case of civil war, either of contending authorities-that are intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a communal, political or politicized group”
(Kissi, 2004, p. 116). Chalk and Jonassohn (1990) in turn consider genocide as one- sided mass killing where a state or other authority defines the targeted group it intends to destroy. The authors avoided mentioning the problematic concept of race or ethnicity. But, they clearly identified the actor, the targeted group as is defined by the perpetrators, and they point out the intent and that it is one sided killings (Straus, 2001).
Furthermore, genocide is different from ordinary mass violence because it is a specific type of mass violence with the aim of destroying a group (Straus, 2001). In addition, “massacre is never in any case synonym with genocide, although genocide always consists of one or several massacres” (Semelin, 2010, p. 379). This can lead to further conceptual muddling as the notion of massacre is also defined differently. It comes from the popular Latin matteuca, meaning “bludgeon”, which contains the sense of butchery, meaning both the abattoir and the butcher’s shop. Since the eleventh century, it meant the putting to death of animals and human beings. As such it implies a relationship of proximity and a type of “one on one” killing, mainly some civil wars scenarios, by slitting the throat. But the question that arises is related to when killers use technologies such as bombing. A further challenge is about the number of victims needed to constitute a massacre (Semelin, 2010).
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In the case of Rwanda, the United Nations conceptualisation prevailed as it was used to incriminate perpetrators who committed the Genocide (Jørgensen, 2001). It is also necessary to emphasize the fact that even if the Hutu and Tutsi are not considered two distinctly different ethnic groups as they share the same culture, they were taken as separate ethnic groups since the colonial period, and it was recorded as such in identity cards. Different policies during the post-colonial period (1962- 1994) continued to view them as two different groups and the killings followed these identity impositions. As there is no one accepted conceptualisation of controversial issues and genocide, it is important to understand how these issues are taught in school settings.