Make A Better World

Without CAH and Genocide

In one seminar held at STPMD “APMD” campus on April 29, 2017, a rarely talked theme was discussed for public. It’s easily pronounced, “Crime against Humanity and Genocide”, but it is difficult to do in reality.

In a glance, Crime against Humanity and Genocide have the same meaning, annihilation of humanity and it is closely tied to human right violation, but if we delve deeper, each term has its own meaning. The victims of crime against humanity are followers of particular ideology and politics. For example: the massacre against the Kulaks (Russian: Rich Farmers) by Stalin’s regime that’s enforcing his socialist concept.

Meanwhile, Genocide according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that is adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 in Paris that is spearheaded by Raphael Lemkin (Polish advocate, Genocide concept inventor), means “… any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, radical, or religious group, …”. For example: the ethnic massacre in Rwanda and Bosnia.

Prevention

Studying history isn’t only for knowledge, but also as a reminder for future generation to prevent them from making fatal mistakes like what happened in the past. As time goes, it may be possible that mass murder cases could be repeated, because there is only one nation in the world that put political victim into genocide, so this particular nation could minimize victims when a political instability happens.

Why so? Because the basic law to react to the crime against humanity cases (that is used on political victims) depends only on the victim’s record, so the deterrent effect to the grass root perpetrator is insignificant. While genocide focuses on the perpetrator’s point of view, so the modus could be figured out. Thus, action to prevent the desire passing on to the next generation could be done.

Prof. Akihisa Matsuno (historian and international law researcher, Osaka University) that came as a speaker said, “It is very important to keep fighting that destruction of political group is seriously treated as genocide, because in the history of mankind, any major crime has a close connection with political motivation”. He also adds further references in the Constitution of the Kingdom of Netherlands, article 1 that says, “Discrimination on the grounds of religion, belief, political opinion, race or sex or on any other grounds whatsoever shall not be permitted”. As a closing statement he added, “Actually, there is no strong reason not to put political victims group into genocide”

The seminar gave a practical new knowledge for youth, that whatever the modus is, heavy human right violation must be brought to justice so there could be reconciliation between the perpetrator and the victim, mainly as a guarantee that this tragedy will not happen again in the future. SRB.