Nick, as you know I have been trying to understand why do good people and their governments ignore mass murder and genocide? Heroic efforts by you, Eric Reeves, Mia Farrow, Brian Steidle, and others have likely saved many lives in Darfur. But they have also given Darfur what Richard Just has termed “a morbid sort of distinction.” Writing in The New Republic, Just observed that “No genocide has ever been so thoroughly documented while it was taking place….But the genocide continues. We document what we do not stop. The truth does not set anybody free. How could we have known so much and done so little”? Psychic numbing, the insensitivity we exhibit in the face of mass tragedy, provides one answer to Just’s question. Another is that the laws and institutions designed many years ago to prevent or halt genocide have failed to do so. Darfur and Congo are but the latest in a long line of genocidal violence during the past century, responsible for many millions of deaths.
I would like to see you use your powerful voice to motivate the design of legal and institutional mechanisms that will compel us to respond to mass atrocities with a degree of intensity that is commensurate with the high value we place on protecting individual human lives. There are good ideas available. See, for example, the recent report of the Genocide Prevention Task Force.
The stakes are high. Failure to overcome psychic numbing may compel us to bear witness to another century of genocide and mass abuses of innocent people as has occurred during the previous century.
{ 2 trackbacks }
Comments on this entry are closed.