{"id":85831,"date":"2013-10-20T14:54:13","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T11:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=85831"},"modified":"2014-01-08T15:31:17","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T13:31:17","slug":"a-fight-over-the-word-genocide-is-no-way-to-end-the-aboriginal-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/10\/20\/a-fight-over-the-word-genocide-is-no-way-to-end-the-aboriginal-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"A fight over the word ‘genocide’ is no way to end the aboriginal crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Doug Saunders<\/p>\n

The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

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    Imagine if the Turkish Prime Minister issued this statement: \u201cThe Canadian aboriginal people experienced terrible suffering and loss of life. Our parliament has adopted a motion that acknowledges the native Canadian genocide and condemns this act as a crime against humanity. My party and I supported this resolution, and continue to recognize it today. We must never forget the lessons of history.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Ottawa would reject it, and many Canadians would be outraged to see their country put in the same column as Nazi Germany. Many would point out the hypocrisy of such a statement coming from the Turks.<\/p>\n

    Some Canadians would cheer it. This past year has, for First Nations, been something like what 1963 was for African-Americans, and as part of that awakening, the word \u201cgenocide\u201d has risen in popularity. In this view, the mistreatment and suffering that native and Inuit people suffered must be seen as a deliberate attempt to exterminate an entire people, and should be recognized as such internationally.<\/p>\n

    This week, when the United Nations Envoy on Aboriginal Affairs paid a study visit to Canada, prominent native and Jewish figures sent him a letter<\/span> asking that Canada\u2019s treatment of aboriginals be recognized as a genocide, encouraging him to make a statement like the one at the top of this column.<\/p>\n

    Of course, those words were not uttered by the Turkish Prime Minister. Rather, they come from a statement made last year by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, with \u201cnative Canadian\u201d substituted for \u201cArmenian.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The persecution and mass expulsion of Armenians by Ottoman forces in 1915 involved truly grotesque crimes against humanity, a string of atrocities that deserve condemnation. Many people, especially Armenians, consider it a genocide, although this definition is controversial.<\/p>\n

    Mr. Harper\u2019s Conservatives have officially applied the \u201cG\u201d word to the Armenian experience at least four times. This has not gone over well in Turkey, even among those who are pressing for an atonement and full apology to Armenians. Because of campaigns like Canada\u2019s, the word \u201cgenocide\u201d has become a fixation among both Armenians and Turks \u2013 one that many feel has stood in the way of actual reconciliation.<\/p>\n

    Canada may soon face the same tension. Was our history genocidal?<\/p>\n

    The UN Genocide Convention, which Canada ratified more than six decades ago and has applied against other countries, defines the crime as including \u201cany of\u201d a list of acts committed against an identifiable group, including not just mass killing and mass physical or mental harm but also \u201cdeliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part,\u201d \u201cimposing measures intended to prevent births within the group,\u201d and \u201cforcibly transferring children of the group to another group.\u201d You can find sustained examples of many of these in Canadian history, plus acts of cultural destruction such as forcing thousands of Inuit to replace their names with metal number plates.<\/p>\n

    Were those acts, as the genocide convention requires, committed with \u201cintent to destroy, in whole or in part\u201d the group\u2019s population? In both the Turkish and Canadian examples, this is an open question. The Beothuk people of Newfoundland were literally exterminated, in part through deliberate acts. Some Ottoman and Canadian officials did appear to want all Armenians and natives gone. You could make a strong case, but not a completely waterproof one: Crimes against humanity, even awful ones, are not all genocidal.<\/p>\n

    It feels petty and mean to tell people whose family histories have been defined by cruelty and loss that the atrocities they suffered weren\u2019t quite up to the definition of genocide. On the other hand, it\u2019s an injustice to truly unambiguous genocides, such as the near-successful mechanized slaughter of Europe\u2019s entire Jewish population or Rwanda\u2019s mass slaughter of Tutsis, to attempt to apply the term to every mass atrocity.<\/p>\n

    Nobody wants to be labelled genocidal. Modern Turks live in a state that was created in the 1920s in opposition to the Ottomans who committed the Armenian atrocities. Post-1967 Canadians tend to see indigenous mistreatment as the act of less tolerant Dominion-era Canadians.<\/p>\n

    And yet Canada\u2019s impoverished, racially segregated aboriginal communities are still a source of shame. Progress won\u2019t happen without full and honest atonement. In both countries, it may be better to avoid a generation-long fight over the \u201cG\u201d word, and instead to speak officially of \u201ccrimes against humanity that some consider genocidal.\u201d If we want to end the accusations, that\u2019s the kind of compromise that is needed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    Topics:<\/h4>\n
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    • Stephen Harper<\/span><\/li>\n
    • Canada<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Doug Saunders The Globe and Mail Published Saturday, Oct. 19 2013, 8:00 AM EDT Last updated Sunday, Oct. 20 2013, 12:14 AM EDT 141 comments Imagine if the Turkish Prime Minister issued this statement: \u201cThe Canadian aboriginal people experienced terrible suffering and loss of life. Our parliament has adopted a motion that acknowledges the native […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":774856,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenian-question"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}