Ethnic Cleansing

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Ethnic Cleansing

In Hague, the tribunal officials trying Slobodan Milosevic are seemingly no closer to the truth than their predecessors at Nuremberg. The truth is elusive, frightening, and oftentimes too revealing. The truth is the answer to the fundamental question of how seemingly ordinary people can commit acts of unfathomable depravity. Perhaps it is so horrible that we cannot bear to imagine it, or perhaps it is so basic to human nature that we do not want to believe that we all have it in us. How can a civilized world stand in silence or indifference before evil's embodiment, whether at Auschwitz, Cambodia, Rwanda, or Srebrenica? It is cliché to say that history teaches us not to repeat the mistakes of our predecessors, but now, in a supposedly more educated society, we are seeing the terrors orchestrated by Hitler manifested all over the world. I believe that the mass terror of the sort practiced by the Nazis will occur again and is occurring again. Whenever certain ingredients are present, Hitler's legacy will continue. The policy of ethnic cleansing can occur and have terrible consequences in all territories with mixed populations, especially in attempts to redefine frontiers and rights over given territories. There is a new logic of conflict that relies on violent actions against the 'enemy's' civilian population on a large scale rather than on war in the traditional sense. Wherever intolerance, discrimination, and ethnic and religious exclusivity exist, the world is in danger of imitating Hitler's actions. Even where historical conflict does not exist between racial or ethnic groups, strategic political interests can often lead the governments of nations to commit genocide. Examples of this logic and policy aboun...

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...s can occur again, is occurring again, and will occur again. Especially in times of transition and uncertainty, there is always the temptation to blame the more vulnerable minorities of conspiracy and to portray them as the cause of misfortune. While the lessons of the Holocaust have not been forgotten, they are often ignored in favor of economic interest. Public opinion demonstrates that Americans in particular do not want to go to war in Kosovo or Rwanda because there is no vested economic imperative to take action, no matter how strong the moral imperative is. Perhaps one day we will have advanced enough as a civilization to see that some causes are worth fighting for, even if it is half a world away, because we are part of humanity. But the danger of perpetuating crimes against humanity is always present, as long as the human heart can hate and discriminate.

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