Forgiveness

In the Globe and Mail article of September 29, 2003, ‘Some things are best forgotten’, the author, William Thorsell, espouses the virtue of forgiveness, which he considers ‘the most undervalued of virtues’. He also advocates forgetting painful incidents as the first step to construct a new life. Although the author preaches forgiveness with humane intentions, his deduction is at best simplistic, at worst dangerous.

Thorsell bases his analysis on a new conclusion on post-traumatic stress counseling by a panel of the American Psychological Society (APS). According to the APS, “Although psychological debriefing is widely used throughout the world to prevent PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], there is no convincing evidence that it does so …For scientific and ethical reasons, professionals should cease compulsory debriefing of trauma-exposed people.” From this conclusion, the author generalizes that repression, denial and selective amnesia should be the preferable solutions for dealing with ‘bad experiences’.

Thorsell’s generalization is insensitive because of its dangerous assumptions: “…most of us know that these tools (repression, denial and selective amnesia) of avoidance ward off certain madness in our personal lives.” This banal comment has the condescending tone of an arrogant majority, despite his failure to provide any scientific reference to support this ‘obvious fact’. Moreover, the author is quite overt in his disapproval of cathartic counseling- even when the counseling is not compulsory, and he vilifies the ‘culture of confession’ as ‘wasteful indulgence’. The author seems to laud the majority individuals who heroically “grieve privately and then get better on their own.”

Countering these popular myths, PTSD-Alliance (link: www.ptsdalliance.org), a PTSD advocacy organization says, “PTSD is a complex disorder that often is misunderstood. Not everyone who experiences a traumatic event will develop PTSD, but many people do…It is important to understand that people respond differently to trauma. Some people will have a few problems, and these problems may go away without treatment. Others will need support and some kind of treatment before they can move forward with their lives.”

The organization also cautions, “The most critical steps in treating PTSD often are most difficult- recognizing the problem and getting help. There are many reasons why this can be hard to do: People who have experienced an extreme traumatic event may hope, or even expect, to be able to ‘handle it’ and ‘get over it’ on their own…Sometimes the experience may be too personal, painful or embarrassing to discuss…There are a number of effective options for PTSD. Treatment can involve psychotherapy (i.e., counseling), medication or a combination of both.”

Thus, it is dangerous to assume that people should handle their ‘bad experiences’ by selective amnesia since mental health professionals repeatedly warn that many persons suffering from PSTD, as well as other mental illnesses, do not seek help because of the stigma of being perceived as ‘weak’. These people do grieve privately, but not all of them get better on their own. The expected ‘one size fits all’ solution leads some patients to commit suicide because of unbearable suffering unabated by counseling or medication.

Equally dangerous is the author’s attempt to apply the APS conclusion to a broader canvas: collective trauma caused by large-scale political injustice. Thorsell believes since “the nourishment of awful memories that distorts the lives of millions, and threatens the peace of millions more”, ‘thoughtful forgetting’ by victims should be the solution “to construct a new life after wars and horrors…” Although he is correct in his observation that “Revenge is exacted on living innocents in the name of long-dead innocent victims… ”, his panacea, forgiveness, is simplistic.

Contrary to the author’s fear, lives of millions are not at stake over the questions “Was Alexander the Great a Macedonian or a Greek? Did this tribe decimate that tribe 600 years ago in the Balkans?” Lives of millions, indeed, are at stake in the Balkans. The reason is the ‘tribal’ wars that started 600 years ago continues today since the perpetrators of atrocities committed long ago were never brought to justice. As a result, the victims decided to get even by murdering their oppressors, blurring the definition of an oppressor and a victim. Similarly, Macedonia is on the verge of a civil war, not because of questions concerning the ethnicity of Alexander the Great- despite the occasional Greek claims, but because of incessant repression against the minority- ethnic Albanians.

Moreover, it is wrong to assume that seeking justice and planning revenge are analogous. Nor is forgiveness the solution for “leaving dreadful things behind”. Unless perpetrators of atrocities are brought to justice and forced to stand fair trials, the victims’ suffering is not likely to mitigate. They may indulge in revenge and the cycle could go on and on. On the other hand, if the perpetrators can get away with mass murder, they will not refrain from it whenever they wish.

Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, Korean female sex-slaves are still fighting the Japanese government in court to extract the admission of its role in forcing them into prostitution. But the Japanese government is reluctant to admit guilt. In such situations, it would be quite insensitive to preach forgiveness to the victims. Moreover, it will encourage other groups or persons indifferent to human rights to indulge in similar schemes.

Undoubtedly, forgiveness is an honourable virtue. But the article by Thorsell fails to suggest the dangers of pardoning criminals. Unless criminals are prosecuted and punished for their crime, the trauma experienced by an individual or a society is unlikely to culminate into any positive outcome. Moreover, contrary to the author’s belief, because of our forgetfulness, history seems to repeat itself. In this respect, Rwanda might be just one example among many. The Guardian article of April 5, 2004: ‘Rwanda: peace but no reconciliation’ by Rory Carroll states:

“Rwanda is peaceful and stable, even staid…but Rwanda is an abnormal, traumatized society. Tolerance between mistrustful neighbours reflects not a miracle of forgiveness but the will of an authoritarian regime…It’s too early for reconciliation. That’s for future generations…people are coexisting because they have no choice. Where would they go?...(the elected President Paul Kagame) rules like a general and squashes opponents as ‘divisionists’ who stoke ethnic rivalry. Since Tutsis (the tribe of the President) make up less than 15% of the population, Mr. Kagame needs Hutu (the majority tribe) support to stay in power, so promoting ‘unity’ is a political imperative…The hate ideology is gone but homicidal impulses may linger. You hear people say that ‘if Kagame is killed we will eat the Tutsi’s cows’- a euphemism for killing the owners…”

Moreover, forgiving the mass-murderers is difficult, if not a crime. How can one forgive a person whose victim is portrayed by the same article: “Wearing a white dress and an uncertain smile, Irene Mutoni gazes from her cot, a two-year-old girl in a fading photograph. Her favourite food, says the (photo) caption, was banana and rice. Her favourite toy was a stuffed dog. Her first word was daddy. Her method of death was drowning in boiling water.”

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link for the guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1185757,00.html

Responsibility of the UN

THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL SHUOLD RECONSIDER ITS NON-INTERVENTIONIST POLICY TO PREVENT GENOCIDES:

At the end of the Second World War, world leaders decided to resurrect the League of Nations with a new name- The United Nations- to avoid further conflicts that might devastate the world as it entered the nuclear era. The Security Council of the UN is responsible for trying to resolve these inter-state and intra-state conflicts. So far, the Security Council has been successful as a mediator in preventing a major world war, but it has witnessed countless conflicts – often, but not always, proxy wars of the two super powers entangled in a ‘cold-war’ and genocides resulting in the death of millions. Since the primary reason for the inability of the Security Council to prevent genocides is its non-interventionist policy, time has come for the UN to reconsider this policy.

The Security Council considers military intervention a violation of international law – despite tolerating numerous such violations by its powerful members, irrespective of a UN mandate- and is reluctant to use force to prevent any atrocity committed by a sovereign state, especially within its own borders. It prefers conflict prevention as the key strategy. And when this strategy fails to prevent conflicts, the Security Council issues warnings to the countries concerned and then imposes arms embargos and economic sanctions. In case of any cease fire agreement between the belligerents, it forms irregular peace-keeping forces- comprising both lightly armed troops and unarmed observers- for particular conflict zones. Although the bulk of the peacekeepers are supplied by poor countries to earn foreign currency, rich and powerful countries also provide manpower. These peacekeepers are usually deployed, when a cease-fire has already been established between the warring parties, to supervise the cease-fire as impartial observers. They are not allowed to use weapons unless they themselves are under attack. But the warring parties are seldom intimidated by warnings and sanctions or even lightly armed peacekeepers. The central African state of Rwanda has paid horribly as a consequence of the failure of this UN policy of non-intervention.

During the 1994 Rwandan civil war, the majority tribe, the Hutus, slaughtered nearly a million civilian Tutsis, within a hundred days, in order to create a “pure Hutu state”. The UN decided not to intervene and prevent the genocide. Moreover, after the killing of ten UN peacekeepers - who had been overseeing a peace treaty between the government and rebel forces - by Rwandan government forces, out of fear for the safety of the peacekeepers, the UN decided to withdraw all of its diplomats and 3000 peacekeeping troops despite repeated warnings from the UN commander in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, about probable consequences. The result is vividly depicted in The Guardian report on April 12, 1994: “A few yards from the French troops, a Rwandan woman was being hauled along the road by a young man with a machete. He pulled at her clothes as she looked at the foreign soldiers in the desperate, terrified hope that they could save her from death. But none of the troops moved. ‘It’s not our mandate,’ said one …The Belgian and French troops are here to get foreigners out…Rwandans, including staff of international organizations, are left to their fate” (Huband). Furthermore, Linda Melvern of The Guardian commented on the 10th anniversary of the genocide, “What we know now is that a corrupt, vicious and violent oligarchy in Rwanda planned and perpetrated the crime of genocide, testing the UN each step of the way. It was convinced that whatever it did, the UN would fail to act. It would also seem that France’s intimate involvement with the Hutu regime only worsened the situation” (2004).

Similarly, the UN failed to prevent the 1995 genocide of Bosnian Muslims by the Serbs in the UN declared ‘safe haven’, Srebrenica, during the Bosnian War. Today, in Sudan, government-sponsored Muslim Arab militias are in the process of ‘cleansing’ a Muslim black minority in the western Darfur area, resulting in a thousand deaths daily. The Sudanese government has also been waging a separate war with Christian rebels from the southern part of the country for the last two decades, which has already caused the deaths of two million people. Although Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, “called on the UN Security Council to issue ‘the strongest warning’ to forces fighting in Sudan to bring an end to the civil war in the south and the crisis in the western Darfur region” (Olivier, 2004), the UN is reluctant to intervene militarily and prevent such a catastrophe. Appalled by the UN reaction to the crisis in Darfur, Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch commented, “The norm of international law is still against intervention, even when a government has forfeited its own claim to legitimacy by committing genocide or ethnic cleansing against its own people…We need military forces that can intervene with heavy infantry to prevent or stop genocides when they begin…we need a world movement to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing, an effort as great as the anti-slavery movement” (2004). Therefore, it has become essential that the UN reconsider its non-interventionist policy to prevent genocide.

Despite repeated UN failures to stop genocide, some observers comment that the UN should continue its current peacekeeping policy of consent of the warring parties, neutrality, and the use of force only in self-defense against any proposals of intervention by multi-lateral forces. A former UN Secretary General, Perez de Cuellar, has characterized peacekeeping “as the opposite of military action against aggression, and non-fighting soldiers of peace as a symbol of international authority providing an honourable alternative to war and a useful pretext for peace” (Currier, 2003). Critics also emphasize conflict prevention strategies since they are less costly options for the international community than military action and reconstruction after a war.

Undoubtedly, conflict prevention by diplomatic means is the best solution; but it requires a consensus among all parties involved, and often reaching a settlement becomes impossible because of adherence to inflexible and unjust demands by the parties. Moreover, according to Stanton, “In Sudan, as in Rwanda, diplomats see their job as ‘conflict resolution.’ Genocide isn’t conflict; it’s one-sided mass murder. Jews had no conflict with the Nazis. Armenians posed no threat to Turks. Tutsis did not advocate mass murder of Rwandan Hutus. Conflict resolution isn’t genocide prevention” (2004). In many such cases, governments themselves are reluctant to save their citizens. As a result, they receive condemnation from the UN Secretary General: “When crimes on such a scale are being committed, and a sovereign state appears unable or unwilling to protect its own citizens, a grave responsibility falls on the international community…” (Olivier, 2004).

However, in many cases, threats of arms embargos and later economic sanctions fail to force such parties to refrain from committing atrocities. In such cases, the UN becomes unable to save innocent civilians despite ‘feeling a grave responsibility’. Therefore, the UN should reconsider its current policy of non-intervention. It should stress saving lives instead of endorsement by the warring factions or oppressive governments. It should be bold enough to intervene militarily when all other options fail.

Some critics argue that interventions could escalate the war, as the UN could appear to take sides. Discussing the future of the UN, Tasos Papadimitriou comments, “I would also argue that we need it (the UN) to be able and willing to intervene - and that does not necessarily or primarily mean the use of armed force - when humanitarian principles are at stake. If we accept that gross and systematic infringement of citizens’ well-being can not be tolerated in the name of national sovereignty, the right to intervene is the logical consequence” (2004). Thus, the UN needs to risk taking the side of the victims of genocide. Such a step will make the UN a target of the oppressors, and will result in loss of UN military personnel, but if the UN wishes to espouse universal human rights, it needs to prove that it is serious in its efforts, even at the cost of the lives of its soldiers.

Nevertheless, some observers think that the UN will still be ineffective even with an interventionist doctrine because of the vested interests of powerful nations. This argument cannot be entirely ruled out. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world; powerful nations will never give up their influence. And since they possess the right to veto any Security Council resolution, hardly any military intervention by the UN will be sanctioned which conflicts with the interests of these nations and their allies. As Papadimitriou comments in his article, “Its (Security Council’s) resolutions quite often have nothing much to do with principle or international law but everything to do with the balance of power within it, being results of intimidation, coercion, bribing and horse-trading” (2004). Therefore, some people advocate abolishing the veto power of the five permanent members. It is a fair proposal, but not compatible with realpolitik. As a pragmatic UN official argued, “the UN, at its best, is a mirror of the world…it is far better to have a world organization anchored in geopolitical reality than one too detached from the verities of global power to be effective (Papadimitriou, 2004).” The war in Iraq has proved that powerful nations will act according to their wishes, with or without any UN mandate, with or without veto power. But on the other hand, not all conflicts are the result of power games between powerful nations. Many are caused by hatred of the ethnicity and religion of others without provocation from foreigners. As Emmanuel Dongola commented in the New York Times, “The genocide happened in Rwanda, but it could have taken place in any of the many pseudo-nation-states that are the legacy of colonialism- states in which the people are more loyal to their ethnic communities than to a faraway central government…” (2004). In such cases, a UN-mandated armed force should intervene and save people from genocide.
It is true that the UN is not a panacea. It is unable to end conflicts where major powers are involved, but it should try to intervene where they are not, where they are merely disinterested because of the strategic unimportance of the conflict area. For such interventions, the UN must form a properly equipped armed force under direct command of the Secretary General of the UN by recruiting volunteer soldiers from member nations.

Because of its non interventionist policy, the UN has lost respect from many member nations, especially from civil-war-torn Africa. One Senegalese commentator lamented in Le Quotidien, “As soon as it was understood that this savagery (in Rwanda) was African, it allowed (Europeans) to pontificate at leisure. How else can one explain the infamous phrase, said to have been uttered by François Mitterrand (then French President) that ‘in those countries, genocide is not very important’” (Diop, 2004). While Stanton commented, “Why, 10 years after Rwanda, has the world reacted so slowly to ethnic cleansing in Darfur? Racism is one reason. African lives still are not seen to equal the value of the lives of Kosovars and other white people, who are inside our circle of moral concern” (2004). Unless this kind of resentment is not mitigated by proper action to prevent genocides, the result might be the demise of the UN, or at least of its Security Council, rendering it irrelevant just like its predecessor, the League of Nations, which was accused of being powerless and restricted only to the discussion of trivial issues like the European railway system even on the very day the Germans attacked Poland and started one of the most devastating wars in history: the Second World War.

Fortunately, Kofi Annan’s ‘strongest warning’ of embargos and sanctions resulted in a peace agreement between the government and the rebels in Sudan. The belligerents agreed to end their conflict by December 31, 2004. However, they have made many such agreements in the last two decades and failed to respect them. There is no guarantee that they will not fail this time. Unless the UN adopts the policy of military intervention to save people, instead of the current policy of only keeping the peace after a cease-fire, it will not gain respect and fear from dogmatic armed groups indifferent to mass murder. A decade after the Rwandan genocide, the crisis at Darfur has presented another opportunity for the UN to make the necessary policy shift. The UN must utilize the opportunity this time and regain respect from its member states, all peace-loving people and the victims of genocides.


References:


Currier, N. (2003). 1988 UN peacekeeping forces: ‘the impartial soldiers.’ UN Chronicle. [online serial], 3. Available: http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2003/issue3/0303p45.asp (November 30, 2004).

Diop, B. B. (April 8, 2004). The world stood by for too long (press review- Le Quotidien, April 6, 2004). The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1187931,00.html (November 30, 2004).

Dongala, E. (April 8, 2004). The world stood by for too long (press review- New York Times, April 6, 2004). The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1187931,00.html (November 30, 2004).

Huband, M. (April 12, 1994). UN troops stand by and watch carnage. The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1186807,00.html (November 30, 2004).

Melvern, L. (April 5, 2004). The west did intervene in Rwanda, on the wrong side. The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1185980,00.html (November 30, 2004).


Olivier, M. & Agencies. (November 18, 2004). Annan urges security council warning on Sudan. The Guardian. [online]. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,14658,1354293,00.html (November 30, 2004).

Papadimitriou, T. (2004). A radical vision for the future of the UN. [online]. Available: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/reform/cluster1/2004/1024radical.htm (November 30, 2004).

Stanton, G. (2004). Bloodbath in the making. [online]. Available: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/sudan/2004/0402bloodbath.htm (November 30, 2004).

RESPONSE: The Dutch Transformation

RESPONSE: The Dutch Transformation [Toronto Star]

http://waymoresports.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1096539410014&call_pageid=1096063291893&col=1096063291594


In his Toronto Star article on Oct.1, 2004, “The Dutch Transformation”, Andrew Duffy depicts the recent backlash against immigrants in Holland and examines the possibilities of similar occurrences in Canada.

According to the article, both countries, until recently regarded as “immigrant havens”, had similar liberal and accepting attitude towards immigrants despite having the similar problems of the concentration of immigrants in few big cities and the creation of extremely poor ethnic enclaves. But in the post-9/11 era, the generous attitude toward immigrants, especially of Muslim origin, started to change all over the world. As a consequence, populist demagogues in Holland have attained prominence by espousing racist policies and exploiting xenophobia of the “erstwhile-generous” native population

Since Canada has, so far, avoided such reprisals against immigrants, the author tries to analyze the dissimilarities with Holland to discover probable reasons. The principal differences between the two countries appear to be how they have chosen the immigrants. While Holland emphasized inviting “guest workers” to do menial jobs on a temporary basis, Canada has been keen to accept only educated professionals or business investors with prior knowledge in either of the official languages. Moreover, while Holland was over-generous offering children of immigrants education in their own languages and allowed, if not encouraged, segregation, Canada has been pragmatic enough to make education available only in the official languages; this policy made the assimilation process easier for the immigrants, and the immigrants have become more successful in society than their Dutch counterparts. But despite this economic and social success, experts, according to the report, believe the possibility of a future hostility cannot be ruled out altogether.

The report, however, fails to identify the most significant difference between Holland and Canada concerning immigration, which parallels the difference between Europe and the “New World”: unlike Holland and rest of Europe, Canada, along with rest of the Americas, is built by European immigrants, and has been inhabited by them for a few centuries. Though there had been strong opposition to non-European immigration, recently, even these groups are considered, correctly, essential to sustain this development as the population growth without immigration has become negative, which forces the Canadian government to allow up to 300,000 immigrants, roughly 1% of the population, a year to settle in the country. Thus, the importance of continuation of immigration, for Canada’s own interests, cannot be overstated.

Another important issue is Canadian society is far less monolithic in ethnicity than the Dutch one. This country has two official languages instead of one. It also has a significant number of “invisible minorities” preferring their own languages among themselves; therefore, Canada doesn’t have a very strong “national-cultural identity” compared to the Dutch “nation state”. With the largest ethnic group, the Anglo-Saxons, forming only 45% of the population, compared to 90% of the Dutch in Holland, questions like, “who are we? And who are they? And how can we make them more like us?” are not as strong. Furthermore, “they”, the immigrants, are also more diverse than those in Holland, where words like “immigrant” and “Muslim” are synonymous because of overwhelming majority of the immigrants also being Muslims (though of different ethnicity). In Canada, Muslims do not form such a significant portion of the immigrant population. As a result, terrorist attacks by Muslims do not foment as violent anti-immigration passion as it does in Holland and other European countries.

Nevertheless, such terrorist attacks result in uncritical media propaganda against Muslims in general in this “Clash of Civilizations” and create anti-Muslim feelings. Therefore, future backlashes against Muslim immigrants, even by immigrants of other ethnicities, are not entirely impossible. Unfortunately, Canadian history has witnessed some horrible injustice: internment of the entire Japanese immigrant population as “enemies” during the Second World War. Strangely, this important example of racial oppression by the government, as well as its US counterpart, against a minority immigrant group remains unmentioned in this article

Finally, anti-immigration and anti-Muslim attitudes are two different phenomena. While terrorist attacks might result in future reprisal against Muslims or blocking further immigration for people of Muslim origin even in a “liberal” country like Canada, with a negative population growth rate, Canada do not have the luxury to declare the country “full” and is unlikely to close its doors to immigration to people other than Muslims in foreseeable future.

The Dutch Transformation

“It was a mistake, the (Dutch parliamentary) report said, to allow children to speak Turkish, Arabic and other native languages in primary schools rather than Dutch. And it criticized the policy vacuum that still allows between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of Dutch-born immigrants to import their spouses from ‘home’ countries, mostly Turkey or Morocco. The report concluded that Holland’s immigrants needed to become more Dutch, and spend more time learning the language”


While I, a first generation immigrant, do agree with the notion that learning the host country’s language is a primary duty of a newcomer, I find the criticism against “importing spouses from ‘home’ countries” quite absurd, especially when the Dutch Crown-Prince himself is not immune to importing one from, thank god, Argentina. Obviously, the criticism is against the origin of the import, not the process itself, another example of pragmatic racism of deluded ‘liberals’.

On the other hand, when I learn that some of my fellow Bangladeshi immigrants, primarily ‘barely legal’ female ones, are forced by their parents to marry someone from the ‘home’ country, available either in the local market (i.e., Toronto) or needs to be imported, to ‘save’ them from western ‘shamelessness’, I feel appalled.

My point is neither the state nor the family should be able to exercise any legal or otherwise power to restrict the choice of an individual, host or immigrant.