Full Issue 15.1

Home , Killing Fields, Rape in China, Sinicization, War and genocide

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Volume 15 Issue 1 Article 2

5-28-2021

Full Issue 15.1

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Recommended Citation (2021) "Full Issue 15.1," Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 15: Iss. 1: 1–144. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.15.1

Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol15/iss1/2

This Front Matter is brought to you for free and open access by the Open Access Journals at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ISSN 1911-0359 eISSN 1911-9933

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Volume 15.1 - 2021 ii

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/

Volume 15.1 - 2021

Editorial(s)

Christian Gudehus, Fiza Lee-Winter, Laura Collins, Daniel Bultmann, Georgina Holmes, Roland Moerland, Diana I. Popescu, JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz, Sabah Carrim, Bablu Chakma, and Emma Thorpe Editors’ Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..…1

Arts & Literature

Fiza Lee-Winter The Many Faces of Hope……………………………………………………………………………….…5

Kaziwa Salih Feeding Her Child a Green Slipper Instead of a Cucumber..………………………………………13

Dossier

Rukiye Turdush and Magnus Fiskesjö Uyghur Women in China’s Genocide……………………………………………………………………22

Articles

Andrew Woolford, Wanda June, and Sereyvothny Um “We Planted Rice and Killed People:” Symbiogenetic Destruction in the Cambodian Genocide………………………………………………………………………………..….44

Kaitlyn Murphy Art as Atrocity Prevention: The Auschwitz Institute, Artivism, and the 2019 Venice Biennale….…………………………………………………..……………………….68

Nicole Fox, Hollie Nyseth Brehm, and John Gasana Gasasira The Impact of Religious Beliefs, Practices, and Social Networks on Rwandan Rescue Efforts During Genocide…………………….…………………………………..……………..97

Eugen Koh The Healing of Historical Collective Trauma…………………………………………………..…….115

Book Reviews

Remembrance and Forgiveness: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Genocide and Mass Violence by Ajlina Karamehić-Muratović and Laura Kromják, eds., reviewed by Amina Hadžiomerović……………………………………………………………134

Criminalizing Atrocity: The Global Spread of Criminal Laws against International Crimes by Mark S. Berlin, reviewed by Verónica Michel.……………………………………………….137

Collective & State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State by Stephan Astourian & Raymond Kévorkian, eds. reviewed by Cheng Xu …………………………………………………….………………………141

In keeping with GSP’s ambition to promote innovative scholarship, a diversity of source material, and ﬂedgling approaches to the study of genocide and mass atrocities, this issue features a collection of articles that address several aspects related to genocide and the legacy of genocidal processes.

Murphy examines the place of the arts in the prevention of genocide. Woolford, June, and Um broaden our understanding of the Cambodian genocide by revealing the “symbiogenetic destruction” experienced under the Khmer Rouge. Turning to the case of Rwanda, Fox, Nyseth Brehm, and Gasana Gasasira examine the rescue- religion nexus and, speciﬁcally, how religion’s social dimensions are linked to rescue during genocide. And ﬁnally, Koh not only reminds us of the importance of addressing historical collective trauma but also that the legacy of this trauma can be long-lasting and profound, as in the case of First Nations people and other Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples around the world.

For years, we have received articles with extremely interesting and compelling content that examine events about which little is known, due to the lack of source availability. Often, the authors are not established researchers, are unfamiliar with the literature, and draw on sources, including primary data, that are difﬁcult to verify. Therefore, it has never been possible to publish such contributions as peer reviewed articles. Concurrently, it is clear genocide scholars have concentrated their research efforts on a narrow set of cases; here, access to materials and research participants is often facilitated and controlled by institutions—sometimes with the help of translators. With that said, however, international researchers can also lack the relevant linguistic and cultural skills, which can increase the risk of data misinterpretation.

On the one hand, access to other cases, such as the persecution of various groups in the People’s Republic of China, is severely limited; and on the other, state organs exert extreme control over and pressure on those affected and their families. At the same time, there is often a lack of contacts and the necessary language skills. Compounding this challenge is that there is virtually no access to state documents and sources.

Consequently, there is a dramatic lack of academic publications on, for example, China's genocidal policies. GSP has published exactly one article on this topic in the last seven years since CG became Editor-in-Chief.1 Fortunately, there are a number of individuals and institutions that examine such cases and provide information about their dynamics in newspapers, blogs, or in the form of reports. With regards to violence in the Uyghur territories, for example, a report has been available since March 2021.2

1 Maria Cheung, Torsten Trey, David Matas, and Richard An, “Cold Genocide: Falun Gong in China,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 12, no. 1 (2018), 38–62, accessed May 18, 2021, https://doi.org/ 10.5038/1911-9933.12.1.1513. As of May 18, 2021, this article has been downloaded exactly 6,846 times since its publication in 2018, making it one of GSP’s most popular papers amongst readers. 2 The Newlines Institute for Strategy and Polics and Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, ed., The Uyghur Genocide: An Examination of China’s Breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention (March 2021), accessed May 18, 2021, https://newlinesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/Chinas- Breaches-of-the-GC3.pdf.

Christian Gudehus, Fiza Lee-Winter, Laura Collins, Daniel Bultmann, JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz, Georgina Holmes, Roland Moerland, Diana I. Popescu, Sabah Carrim, Bablu Chakma, and Emma Thorpe. “Editors’ Introduction.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1, 1–4. https://doi.org/ 10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1836. © 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention. 2

The GSP editorial team believes it is urgent that such cases, and others that are under-researched, are given space in scientific publications in order to provide information to the community. This goes hand in hand with the use of “new” and only partially verifiable sources, such as communications in messaging services. GSP has created the new Dossier section for these types of texts. The articles published under this new section are not double-blind peer reviewed and contain information that is only conditionally verifiable. The first dossier by Rukiye Turdush and Magnus Fiskesjö focuses on the Chinese government’s systematic violence against Uyghur Women.

Together with this new Dossier section—along with the recently formed Arts & Literature section—the GSP editorial team wants to create a space dedicated to unconventional, unﬁnished, and politically risky contributions with the hope that more authors will come forward with similar types of submissions in the coming years.

Christian Gudehus Fiza Lee-Winter Laura Collins Daniel Bultmann JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz Georgina Holmes Roland Moerland Diana I. Popescu Sabah Carrim Bablu Chakma Emma Thorpe

Meet the GSP Team: Featured Proﬁles

JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz, PhD, GSP Book Review Editor for the social sciences and humanities since 2015, is a Professor of Political Science and Department Head of Liberal Studies at Texas A&M University at Galveston. She is co-editor of Women and Genocide: Gendered Experiences of Violence, Survival, and Resistance. In 2008, JoAnn was a Fulbright Scholar to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and in 2010, a Fulbright Specialist to Cambodia. She was also a Fellow in the Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar on the Holocaust and other Genocides with the United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial. JoAnn’s research focuses on gender and memorialization in the aftermath of mass atrocities. E-mail: [email protected]

Roland Moerland, PhD, GSP Editor since 2016, is an Assistant Professor of Criminology at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. His expertise lies in the ﬁelds of supranational and organizational criminology. In his courses and research, Roland focuses on the causes of gross human rights violations and their aftermath. His areas of interest include the role of language in conﬂict, genocide denial and corporate involvement in human rights violations. E-mail: [email protected]

Fiza Lee-Winter Institut für Entwicklungsforschung & Entwicklungspolitik (IEE) Ruhr-Universität Bochum Bochum, Germany

About the Art Work This essay follows the central theme—hope—a term and emotion which is arguably a coping mechanism against all hardship and suffering. It is most apparent in stories belonging to the many voices who have managed to ﬁnd new lives in a third-country.

This piece is the result of a combination of formal and informal interviews conducted with refugees, ﬁeld notes, conversations—individually and in group settings—and consolidated personal stories from refugees who have undergone the US resettlement program. This essay has been written with the aim of inspiring others—giving hope, in its many faces.

Characters created here are inspired by real-life persons who have had very different experiences in their journey towards resettlement—and yet, bound by the central theme, hope, which manifests itself in different ways. In the first narrative, a young boy stays behind in Kenya while his mother resettles to the United States. He longs for his mother’s care, but that care is many years separated between when he can rejoin her. In the second one, a man emphasizes hope for his children. He consistently stresses his thankfulness for his family’s survival, and the key to a better future now lies in the future generation. And finally, the last narrative in the collection underscores the difficulty, and resilience, in finding hope during prolonged displacement spanning across three continents.

Acknowledgements The author would like to acknowledge Roseline Mugaruka (Home Away from Home) and Idriss Siyat (From Garissa to Greeley) for sharing their personal stories in great detail, as well as assisting with character and place development. The author would also like to acknowledge Collin Cannon, especially for his extensive editorial contributions and for conceptually co- developing this piece, conﬁrming that hope is necessary to be held on to, especially in the most trying of times.

About the Author Fiza Lee-Winter is a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Development Research and Development Policy (IEE) at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) in Germany where she is conducting her research project on the compatibilities of a human rights based approach (HRBA) to refugee protection with Asian regionalism, using the Rohingya Refugee Crisis as a case study. Her research interests include international human rights law, transnational governance, refugee and forced migration studies. She is also a member of the Institute for International Law of Peace & Armed Conﬂict (IFHV) at the RUB, and an associate member of the SYLFF-Mikrokolleg on Forced Migration. Fiza has obtained her Master of Arts in Human Rights & Democratization from EIUC/Global Campus of Human Rights and RUB, and a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice from the University of Northern Colorado. Her project is fully funded and supported by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in Germany since 2019.

Fiza Lee-Winter. “Arts & Literature: The Many Faces of Hope.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1, 5–12. https:// doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1828. © 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention. 6 Lee-Winter

The Many Faces of Hope: From Garissa to Greeley

As a child, I grew up for many years away from my mother. Her distance pained me. It pained the whole family, including herself most of all. It had always been my hope to reunite with my mother and at last feel like a kid again in her arms. Life had separated us. She had ﬂown to a foreign soil eight thousand miles away from Kenya, to the United States—a place I had only ever heard about before. But her journey to America was a dream that came to reality and a light to our family’s darkness.

I was born and raised in Garissa, Kenya, a small, semi-arid town in the east of my country toward the Somali border. Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp, was only sixty-seven miles from us, and Nairobi, the capital city, farther still at 228 miles away. Al-Shabaab, forming a few years prior in Somalia, was just beginning to be seen for the threat that it posed during my childhood.

Life in Garissa was tough. My father worked as a middleman in the livestock market, trying to convince buyers to buy the animals there and only earning himself a meager daily wage hardly enough to keep the family together. As a man, society, religion, and culture pressured him to provide for his family by any means necessary. He lived by that commitment. He never wanted to let himself down and he worked around the clock to make ends meet and to provide for us. My mother too, worked. She was a vegetable vendor in the local market—a market that’s famously known as “Suuq-mugdi” which literally means the “black market.” This was all that was available to her. This too earned her what would not be above basic consumption. But this was life: they both strived hard in the midst of abject poverty to make ends meet. They did this for their children, like any parents would.

My siblings and I were educated in private schools where we hardly ever attended due to a constant lack of fees. I remember spending days in a row at home for not having enough school dues or basic supplies. We switched to public schools eventually, due to ﬁnancial hardship. My parents wanted the best for us and they worked for it, but that life was out of reach. Life was hitting them hard and unforgivingly; they could not keep their heads above water.

One day, there was a breakthrough: my mother had been chosen for resettlement to the United States. It was 2006, I was eight years old, and I found out that my mother would be leaving to a distant land. Alone. Without the rest of us. I vividly recall that chilly morning when my dad called in the Islamic school we were attending (what is known as Dugsi in my native language and what people from other cultures call a Madrasa) to excuse us in order to bid farewell to our mother. Farewell? My siblings and I had no context for what resettlement meant. To us, all that it meant was that our mother was leaving abruptly. Here one day, gone the next. My siblings and I walked home from the Dugsi only to ﬁnd my mom fully dressed with two suitcases next to her. Our neighbors had gathered under the shade of the big tree by our house.

Seeing her ready to leave, I was confused. I was worried. Had a ﬁght erupted between my parents? Was my mom leaving us? Where did this come from? It was not until she was leaving that someone explained to me what was happening: she was leaving for the United States. To America, that distant land from the stories and the news reports.

My worries melted. My anxiety about her leaving became anticipation of when I would get to be next. My mom and I exchanged hugs and ﬁnal kisses, wiping away each other’s tears. She whispered into my ear, “Don’t cry, my son. I will bring the family from grass to grace and I promise that you will no longer do your homework with a torch. God willing, you will not be living much longer in a house that leaks when it rains.” She stepped back and said to the family,

“I will work for this family and keep food on this table. I promise to visit you regularly.” I managed a smile on my face and gave her a tight hug once again. I did not know when that next visit would be, but I believed in this new hope. I felt that change had come.

The ﬁrst night my mother was gone from home felt different. My dad had taken her to Nairobi where she would depart for the United States. My grandmother looked after us that night.

***

My mother started a fresh life in the United States as a refugee. She made a living and contributed to her community, becoming another stitch in the broader fabric of American life— like so many refugees before her, bringing her own unique history and culture to this distant melting pot. She was still a mother of ﬁve and the wife to a husband, but they were eight thousand miles away. She worked in their name. She worked for their future. It paid off.

After a few years of working, my mother managed to build a two-room house for the family. My mother ﬂew back to Kenya in 2010, four long years after she had left, to see the home she hoped to come back to one day. She came back to Kenya again in 2013, this time promising to begin the petitioning process to bring us all to the United States for good.

A lot had changed for the family in the period between when my mother left and when we could ﬁnally join her. Al-Shabaab had taken Mogadishu. The United Nations had assembled a peacekeeping force to retake Somalia. The United States’ War on Terror began targeting Al- Shabaab in our region. Seventy-four had been killed in Kampala. Kenya had invaded Southern Somalia to secure Kismayo. Seventy-seven are killed in a Nairobi mall. Finally, one hundred and forty eight were killed and seven hundred held hostage in a ﬁfteen-hour siege in our very town of Garissa, at the local university, in an attack by Al-Shabaab. I still remember that day. I still remember the sounds of the gunshots during the morning prayer.

But my mother’s work had paid off: it was our turn to come to the United States. It was our turn to wind through the immigration bureaucracy and hope to be reunited. It was time to be together again: to be in my mother’s arms as the little boy I was when she had left me. July 23, 2017 is the day I ﬂew to America, and that day will remain in my mind like a printed paper. That date is etched into my identity now.

My family was received by my mother and her friends in Denver, Colorado. We loaded our belongings into a car and drove to Greeley, our new home, eight thousand miles away from our old home. Everything was organized and so calm. It was quiet. The cloudless sky, the green grass, the mountains on the horizon, the warm weather. “This is America,” I told myself. In Greeley, I joined a nearby high school where I went on to earn my high school diploma. As a college student at one of the public universities in Colorado, I am now studying political science and legal studies and I hope to practice law one day.

In my spare time, I work as a Community Navigator for an immigrant rights organization, helping refugees from East Africa ﬁnd a home, earn a living, and petition for their families to join them here. I work like my mother worked: so that others’ hopes can become real. I work so that other little boys will not be away from their mother for so long. God willing, I will make that difference for families in the same way that difference was made for my mother.

The Many Faces of Hope: Our Children, Our Future1

Our new home in Greeley, Colorado is simple. Of course, we are far from the rest of our remaining family members (those who are still alive) but it is certainly much safer than anywhere we have sought refuge; be it in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, or even in Pulau Pinang in Malaysia.

It was another normal day—I was driving my wife to her English lesson at the refugee center. The sun was shining quite brightly for 10 am, so much so that I almost missed the red light. I applied the brakes...a little harder than I normally would.

“Abang,2 hati-hati! [Dear, be careful]” said my wife. I nodded.

The kids were at home. It was the beginning of their summer holidays. I was happy for them. Relieved for them.

When the light turned green, I hit the gas pedal, exerting force on my right shoulder as we made the turn. I cried out in pain.

I managed to get off from work for 4 weeks—a severe shoulder sprain, the doctor said. I work at the meat-packers nearby; it is hard manual labor, but it is the only thing I can get.

We ﬁnally pulled in to the refugee center. I drove into a parking slot right near the entrance— the parking lot was big. I stopped the car, switched off the engine and turned to my wife who was about to get off.

“Awak datang balik ke, awak tunggu saya? [Will you come and get me? Or will you wait in the parking lot?]” she asked.

“Saya datang balik. See you agak-agak satu jam, [I will come back for you. See you in an hour or so,]” I replied, and smiled at her.

My wife is a very strong woman. She gave birth to our ﬁrst son on the boat to Malaysia. We were very lucky that there were no complications; lucky to have made it; lucky to still be alive. From Bangladesh, we had managed to catch a boat to Malaysia. We made a short stop-over somewhere in Thailand. I remember some people had to get off from our boat—I remember their scared faces. We stayed on and the boat sailed to Malaysia. I still remember the waves; they were really strong. It felt like we were on a swing, being rocked back and forth—only that it was not gentle. I don’t know how many days had passed, but I recall us ﬁnally reaching Malaysia.

A bead of sweat trickled down my left temple. It is warm, I thought. I looked at my watch— 10.10 a.m.—What was it that he asked me yesterday? I thought hard, trying to remember what yesterday’s conversation was about with our friend.

1 The Rohingya couple left Bangladesh and lived in Malaysia for more than ﬁve years in the informal sector where they had to assimilate with the locals to avoid arbitrary detention. 2 “Abang” in Malay means brother but is used as a term of endearment as well, used by wives to address their husbands. In this case, the word means “dear” or “darling”—it is rare for Malay couples to call each other by their ﬁrst name.

Ah yes! He asked if I didn’t want to ﬁnd a better job… Our friend, Amir came from a different life—but he has compassion. He understands.

I told Amir about my shoulder sprain and the hard work at the factory.

“That must really hurt!”

“Yes, it does. It started with my lower back. Then, my neck. And ﬁnally my shoulder—it feels... stuck.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that. Why don’t you try to ﬁnd another job? A better one?”

“It’s OK. It’s part of life. I have suffered more. A new or better job?... Not so simple. My English is not good. Plus, I have very limited skills.”

“But you can attend some skills-building classes…?”

“These classes take time. In the meantime, we need to survive too. It’s ok. I will push on—for the sake of my kids. You know, Amir, life is not so simple. For me, my life is over. But this is the time for my children. We are lucky to have resettled here, in the US. My boys speak very good English. They are in school. They learn English here...and other important subjects too. Plus, they now have a better chance than me. So, let them take this chance.”

“I understand. Although, you must be able to support them. With this job...are you?”

“It’s not an easy job. But I will be strong. My life is over. I don’t need a high-paying job for myself. As long as we have enough for food and a roof above our heads, this is enough. It is their turn to shine. This is my hope for them. They also know they are very lucky to be alive, to be here.”

***

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and held back the tears. Despite that, a tear spilled from my right eye and rolled down my cheek. ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘my life is over...and my children’s have ﬁnally begun.’ When I opened my eyes, I saw my wife coming out of the refugee center.

As she walked towards the car, she waved and called out, “Eh, Abang, kata nak balik ke rumah dulu? [Hi dear, I thought you said you were going home ﬁrst?].”

I smiled at her as she came closer, and said, “Takdelah, saya lagi menikmati matahari. Syukur sangat kami disini [No, I was enjoying the sun. I feel extremely blessed that we are here].”

As my wife entered the car and slid into her seat, she looked at me intently and gently replied, “Anak-anak kita—ini saat mereka. Waktu kita sudah habis; tapi, mereka...ada peluang! [Our children—this is their time. Our time is over; but they...they have a chance!]”

The Many Faces of Hope: Home Away from Home

My hometown, Uvira, was nothing special. It was a small town, maybe small enough to be a village, but it was a beautiful village, nestled between mountains and Lake Tanganyika. Burundi was on the other side of the lake, just ten miles over the water, and Rwanda was just a little north of our village along the main road. Every morning, I heard people start their day early in the morning when it was still dark. I remember the sound of ba mamans (the village women) going to the mountain where they farmed Miyogo (cassava roots) and Miyindi (corn). Sometimes my mom would go, and she would bring vegetables home to us. I never went to the mountain because I heard it was far; moms would say that it’s not good for kids to make the journey alone, and that they must go in groups to stay safe. Luckily for me, my mom preferred ma vieties (selling clothes) in the maendeleo (market) near the lake. On their way to the lake, other vendors would pass by and sell different merchandise to us in the village. It was nice because they gave tasters for free, and I would always taste saucissons (sausages).

I loved playing with dirt, making a mess of everything. I loved running around free and innocent—we all did, that is, all the kids around my age. Every afternoon, after lunch and nap time, those who lived near me went out to play with each other. At ﬁve years old, I was too young to start school with the big kids, and too big to be with maman all the time. I was right in the middle, free.

One afternoon, my sister and I were playing at another’s house when my brother showed up unexpectedly. He was scared and out of breath. He wore an expression I had never seen on anyone before. Without giving an explanation, he told my sister and me we had to leave. We did as we were told and grabbed what we had brought with us and took off after him, running our fastest to keep up. Were we going home?

There was no time for questions, but I knew something had happened. I knew things were different that day.

In fact, the whole week felt different when I thought about it. I remembered my papa spending most days listening to the tiny radio with intense focus, hanging onto every word of the news reports coming in. Usually, when he’d be listening to the radio, one or more of the neighbors would sit next to him and join in. That week, more people were gathered around the radio. All of them seemed worried about something I didn’t understand. I remembered my papa listening so closely as if he was expecting the radio to give him permission to do something. He tapped his ﬁngers on it every time he didn’t hear something correctly, moving around in the yard for a better signal. My maman spent more time in church that week too. She used to take me, but ever since giving birth to a baby, she would take her instead. Being ﬁve, I didn’t mind it at all.

This afternoon felt strange; my mom had gone away to church, my dad worked at night so he had left for work, and it was just my brother, sister, and me left alone. The neighbors were all packing, everyone was running around, moms were calling for their kids, grownups were walking a bit faster than normal. It seemed like the entire world was spinning more quickly than usual around me. My brother told me and my sister to get in the house and wait for maman and everyone else to come home, so we could ﬂee together. Then he went back into the streets.

But we could not wait at home forever. We waited as long as we could before my older brother came back into the house, barely breathing, pushing us to move once again. He threw me on his back, with my sister and brother running after us as we left our house into the streets. That was the last time I saw my home for a very long time.

As we ran down the one main road in town, people were running in every direction. My brother said it was important not to fall down, that’s why he had to carry me. He kept saying how we needed to be out of Uvira before they came back for him. Some people were running toward Burundi like us, some were running toward Baraka—no one knew where safety was going to be found. Men with big guns were walking in the main street and we were all doing everything we could to not upset them, not make eye contact and not even get noticed. Some men with big guns were wearing uniforms while others weren’t; it was impossible to tell who was who or what those men were there for. Sometimes they’d call on other boys in the middle of the street, tear them from their families to carry their luggage and their guns.

Sonidda, my older brother, said they would recognize him if they saw him; they had taken him once before. We had to plan a new route, away from the main road. We headed to the outskirts of town, toward the lake for cover. Walking down next to the lake, people were still running in different directions, but there were no men with guns. We walked a bit slower as my brother had put me down so that I could walk alone. My sister helped a family carry their baby girl, and my other brother carried our bags.

We walked for three days.

***

We lived in Rwanda for a long time. I even started school there. Every so often, my brother made us all get dressed in our best clothes to go meet the people at the UN office. The appointments were non-negotiable: whenever you had an appointment, you had to show up on time or risk losing your case. The office was far from us; we took three buses to get there when we could, but often we had no choice but to walk. It was nice to walk there sometimes because we could see where the president of Rwanda lived, there in Kigali. There were always men with big guns around that building, and no one walked in this area; everyone was in their cars, everyone looked happy, like they had arrived at their final destination. I had never felt that. We had lived in Kigali as if we would have to move at any given time, while the people there looked relaxed; they looked like they had unpacked for good. I always wondered if the men with guns did not scare them. I never understood this. I was always waiting to go back home, to see maman and papa again, to play in the dirt with my friends.

It was always a muzungu (white man) asking us questions at the UN ofﬁce. They were the same questions every time; I even memorized the answers. My brother said it was rude to answer questions unless I was asked directly, but the man always asked the same questions and I always gave the same answers. He didn’t really want to know about my life, the life I had then, the one with my new friends, and my new school and my new church. He wanted to know about the life I wanted but couldn’t have. The life where I left my parents, the life where my brother was taken, beaten, and forced to eat meat otherwise they’d kill him; the life where we had to move three different times because strange men were always looking for my brother. The life we are running away from; the life that brings tears to all of us when we speak of it, and he watched us cry.

He talked of a different life, a new life, a life where he promised safety for all of us. Every time we went to the UN ofﬁce, we were promised this life. It was promised so many times that I started to think he was just saying it to us to give us hope. It worked, I guess; I believed him. He gave us hope—hope that one day we would have a life where I would go to school every day, where I would live in a house like that of the president's neighbors, and drive the cars they drove and eat the food they ate.

I hoped for this life. I waited for this life. We waited for ten years for this life, getting by on just the hope that these muzungus fed to us with each visit. But then it actually happened and hope became my reality.

***

I have been living in the United States for ten years now and I have been naturalized as a citizen. When I first arrived, it was difficult to see this new place as my home. I was separated from my siblings again and was put into foster care. It seemed like everyone was interested in knowing where I was from, where home was for me. People would ask, and to me, home was still Uvira. Home was still the memory of playing with my friends in the dirt, with adults from the village watching over us, talking, teasing each other. I did not know how to explain that to these Americans I was meeting who had no knowledge of the Congo. It was difficult, too, coming to a country that spoke English when I couldn’t speak any back.

Foster care looks different for everyone, but for me, meeting my new family was the best thing that could happen. My foster family showed me a love I hadn’t felt since I was a child: they loved me unconditionally, and continue to do so.

My foster father is a funny man; he taught me everything I know today. He even taught me how and why it’s important to ﬁll up gas to exactly $10. He’d be very concerned if I didn’t get it right. I know now, of course, that putting gas in the car is not that stressful. He taught me how to be successful in this new life, things I needed to know and things I needed to know just in case. My dad helped me understand a world outside my own, a world where I could be anyone I wanted to be; where the only one who was allowed to have expectations of myself was myself. He showed me a world where he and the rest of the family would always be there for me— where nothing would ever separate us.

Thanks to my foster family and the community I have built over the years, I am making my own path for myself, taking risks and following my own hopes and dreams. Today, I am pursuing a master’s degree in human rights law. I am studying to make this world a better place, a safer place, a place where the dreams of little girls in the Congo become real.

I am at peace now; I know where home is. This new life of mine, this new family that is here for me for the rest of my life. I know they’re not going anywhere.

Kaziwa Salih Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada

About the Art Work This essay is a personal story of one of the Kurdish Anfal genocide survivors named Nabat Fayiaq Rahman. During her research ﬁeldwork in 2017, the author interviewed Nabat in BaniGul, which is a village in Chamchamal district in the Kurdistan region. Nabat’s story is the result of the Anfal genocide that took place in Iraq and lasted between 1986 and 1989.

About the Author Kaziwa Salih has a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University in Canada, with a focus on cultural sociology of genocidal violence against the Kurds in Iraq. She is the award-winning author of several fiction and non-fiction books. Salih was a founder and the editor-in-chief of two journals, Nivar and Newkar. Her research interests include Cultural Studies, Cultural- Sociology and Cultural-Psychology of violence, Migration and Displacement, Kurdish Studies, Middle East Politics, and Women Identity, Ethnic Conflicts, State, and Non-State Actors, and Yazidi Affairs.

Kaziwa Salih. “Arts & Literature: Feeding Her Child a Green Slipper Instead of a Cucumber.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1, 13–21. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1827. © 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention. 14 Salih

Feeding Her Child a Green Slipper Instead of a Cucumber

I first observed the confident, sad, yet hopeful face of Nabat Fayiaq Rahman through the black screen of the TV. She was wearing a traditional black Kurdish outfit that matched the stage curtains designed for the anniversary of the Anfal genocide, marked on April 14 of every year. The Kurdish Anfal genocide in Iraq was perpetrated by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980s. Human Rights Watch (1994) estimates that 182,000 Kurds were buried alive in mass graves, many of which were found after Hussein was overthrown. More than 2.5 million people were displaced, 4500 villages destroyed, and 250 towns and villages exposed to chemical weapons.

Nabat was from one of the destroyed villages, in a district called Qadir Karam in the Kirkuk province. Her red eyes, which indicated she’d been crying throughout the event, did not match her angry voice. “What did the government do for us?” she asked. “They did nothing. Once a year, during the anniversary, they [the government] remember that the Anfal genocide happened.”

Nabat’s voice disappeared into a chorus of female voices sorrowfully singing a heartening lullaby, which until that moment had been meekly in the background of the program.

Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby. The grief of the Kurds makes me lose my voice To sing lullaby for all of you, each one thrice Lullaby for my burning soul that doesn't rest day or night Lullaby for my sons Lullaby for my daughters Lullaby for my husband, who was a leading Knight Lullaby for my parents Lullaby for my sisters Lullaby for my brother, who was my posh Lullaby for neighbours who turned to ash Sleep, my loved ones You may ﬁnd peace in the grave Since the Earth is a slaughtering cave

The lullaby is a prominent piece of art in Kurdish society, and the only method through which the female survivors of the Kurdish genocides can express their anguish since they don't have access to psychiatric treatment. However, I am against treating the Kurdish genocides with only lullabies and speeches. The Kurdish genocides require serious attention that should go beyond singing lullabies and expressing emotions.

The lullaby multiplied in my ear. I don’t know if it was the lyric, or if my mind made up its own lullaby because I’d been hearing them ever since I was a child. Historically, Kurdish culture is known for many different types of lullabies: to send children to sleep, to mend lovers’ broken hearts, to record oral history, to pass on classic stories of wisdom. But it has been a century since the lullaby turned mainly into a dark lullaby of the dead, especially during the anniversary of the Kurdish genocides.

I wrote Nabat’s full name down and the name of the region where she lived, making a promise that I’ll go all the way to Kurdistan, if only to see her.

The women who survived the Kurdish Anfal genocide are mostly isolated, and clad in black outﬁts, both of which have been part of the villagers’ culture for over thirty years. Among them, a few elderly survivors attend the genocide events mostly to perform lullabies and make audiences weep. Nabat’s presence on TV was impressive. In the culturally conservative and male-dominated society of the villages, survivors have chosen silence over speech, and some of them refuse to tell their stories, even anonymously, all due to cultural and psychological burdens.

Unlike Nabat, I’ve wiped away my tears, and managed to fake a smile while reminding myself that here is an illiterate widow, a single mother of several children, victimized by one of the most violent events in history, not only telling her story but also participating in a conference on the Kurdish genocide in Iraq, criticizing and ﬁghting the government about the rights of the Anfal genocide survivors.

By the summer of 2017, I was in Kurdistan, at Nabat’s home in BaniGull village. Habil Ahmad, a General Manager of the Directorate of Anfal Monument in Chamchamal, arranged for me to meet her and had helped me with transportation.

***

When we met, as expected, Nabat was fully clad in a traditional black outﬁt. She had been donning it since 1988 in her untraditional way of attempting to make a difference. This time, her red eyes and hopeless face expressed the unspeakable agonies of a heartbroken woman and a mother of seven children who felt that no one understood her pain. My sister Nyan, who accompanied me on this trip, took a few photos of her.

It is challenging to ask victims to relive the trauma they experienced. After I expressed this concern, Nabat replied, “I want to tell not only the Kurds, but the entire world what happened to us; and yet the problems we suffered during the Anfal cannot be put into words.”

Even so, she thought it worth trying, and recounted how she was captured in April 1988, along with her husband, seven children (four sons and three daughters), four brothers-in-law, and several cousins. The people of her village, she continued, were taken to concentration camps in the south of Iraq.

Nabat was released after six months, “by a miracle,” as she calls it, but she lost two of her children in those camps: a seven-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter.

What was the cause of their deaths?

“Hunger and disease,” she said. “We were put in a huge barn ﬁlled with animal excrement and cockroaches. The barn was full of women and children with no food or drink. Once a day, we received a piece of bread with a glass of water.”

She choked on her tears. Her eyes were ﬁxed on an abstract point faraway, and her arms were locked across her chest while she moved her head back and forth. This went on for a while until her gaze moved to the clock, and suddenly, as if she’d remembered something important, she called out a female name. It was 12.20 p.m.

A beautiful teenage girl, presumably Nabat’s daughter, entered the room. After greeting me, she asked her mother if she needed anything. Nabat asked her to prepare lunch for me.

As a member of the community, I already knew about Kurdish etiquette and hospitality: It was expected that I should eat in their home. But I didn’t want to be a burden so I quickly said that I preferred a light meal; perhaps a tomato and cucumber salad, I added.

Silence ensued, and my thoughts wandered to the injustice Nabat had encountered. Despite her anguish, she looked like she couldn’t be older than ﬁfty. If thirty years ago as she said, she was a mother of seven children, it meant she had got married when she was still a child. Yes, I thought, she was one of the many whose childhood had been stolen from her. When she should have been enjoying the beauty of youth, she was forced to be a mother, a wife, and later had to carry the pain of genocide; of losing her loved ones; of being a widow, alone, and having to look after ﬁve children in a male-dominated society.

I didn’t bother conﬁrming her age. “In the end, it's not the years in your life that count; it's the life in your years,” said Abraham Lincoln.

***

Between Nabat and me, where we were seated, stood was a traditional ivory Kurdish pillow with brown flowers and sage leaves. Lost in our silence, I watched her, while she made repeated movements with her index finger, as if pushing the fallen leaf toward the twig of the flower. She was remapping her lost world, I thought. How I wish we could rejoin the broken branch to the family tree just by the art of finger-pointing.

Image 1. Kaziwa Salih & Nabat Fayiaq Rahman, image courtesy of the author.

I looked in Nyan’s direction. She seemed engrossed in taking photos. I wish she too had noticed Nabat’s reaction to the design on the pillow, and processed it in the same way I did.

It didn’t take long for the tomato and cucumber salad to be placed before me. “You have to eat with me,” I told Nabat.

“No, I don’t eat anything that has cucumber.”

“Why? Do you have an allergy?”

“I wish,” she said, and sighed.

I realized then that the salad hadn’t been as effortless to make, as I’d thought. I was overcome with guilt.

Nabat has not eaten a cucumber for more than 30 years. Cucumbers remind her of an incident in the concentration camp of Negrosalman, where her ﬁve-year-old Sharooh was very sick and had a fever and diarrhea like most of the children and elderly people on the premises. Sharooh, she said, was crying continuously and asking for ice and cucumber. “Imagine that. We couldn’t even get water,” added Nabat.

Then she grew silent, and tears ran down her cheeks. I gave her the glass of water I was holding. She took gulps of it and continued, “There was a soldier in front of the camp’s door. He had a tub of cucumbers in front of him; he and his soldier friends were eating from it. I told him that my child was taking her last breath and asking for a cucumber. That maybe she smelled it because he was eating it close to our door.” I urged him to give me one, she added.

“He didn’t answer at ﬁrst. Then I again urged him to help, told him that my child would die soon. Not for me or her, just for God’s sake, give me a small cucumber, don’t ignore her last desire.”

Nabat’s sobbing grew louder.

Nobody, I thought, seemed to realize that the origin of all these brutalities lay in the lack of empathy for ‘the other,’ our estrangement from those we deemed different from who we are. In fact, I was reminded then of one of the golden rules taught to us in conducting research: that we are not expected to get emotionally involved with our interviewees.

Nabat said, “The soldier threw a few cucumbers down in front of himself and started smashing them into the ground with his big combat boots.” She looked down and shook her head. “I thought my daughter was going to die, and I had to do something to give her a little hope before she left this world. I found a green slipper and put it in her hand. My child believed it was a cucumber, and started biting into it. After a while, she died.” Nabat continued to sob and after a long inhale and exhale, added, “Only 40 days afterward, my son Diary also died after he got sick.”

I was deeply moved. What a strong woman, I thought. Without disrupting the mood and ﬂow of our conversation, I told her, “Now I know why, among hundreds, I was drawn to talk to you: because you’re a strong woman and a great mother. You are truly an achiever.”

"Not anymore,” she replied. “I’m overwhelmed with sorrow.”

Like many other survivors of the Anfal genocide, Nabat conﬁrmed that they didn’t have enough tools to dig graves for the people who died in the camps. They were merely buried under thin layers of soil. Sometimes at night, they heard the wild dogs from the desert uncovering and eating the corpses.

I wanted to ask about her husband, but at that moment she was again staring vacantly outside. Then her gaze moved to a pencil drawing of a young man that was afﬁxed on the wall nearby.

“Is he your son?” I asked.

Image 1. Nabat’s husband, image courtesy of the author.

“No, it’s a picture of my husband.”

“How long before the Anfal was that photo taken?”

“Only a few years before the Anfal. This photo was on his eh, ahm… identity.” She didn’t remember the term “identity card.” She added, “A relative redrew it. That is all we have of him.”

Obviously, he would have been a young parent like Nabat. He too didn’t experience a proper, fulﬁlling childhood, and he would have died by being buried alive, or after being shot or killed through torture or hunger, and later fed to the Negrosalman wild dogs—Like so many others.

No one would know.

It was known that before destroying their houses, perpetrators would loot the victims' property, including jewellery, livestock, and pets. That was why surviving victims often remained without a history or memories, nor even with something as banal as family photos. If and when they returned, they owned nothing and had nowhere to go. Consequently, the remaining children could not go to school because they lacked the ﬁnancial means.

“Your husband’s history is lost, just like the history of his people,” I remarked.

“The history of all of us,” Nabat said, “and the real frustration is losing your loved ones; not even having a real photo of them to look at.”

I paused for a while, mulling over whether I should tell her about my experiences of the Anfal.

Finally, I said: “I know what it’s like to be without a family history.” I felt guilt, remorse, embarrassment. “The Ba’ath imprisoned my father almost every year. Most of the time, my mother would take the children—my siblings and I—to one of the villages so she could protect us from being put in prison. Often when we would be back, belongings from our home would be looted or conﬁscated. I don’t have anything from my childhood. No one in my family has any signs or evidence of our history.”

A wound ﬂung on one’s memory lasts longer than any other type of wound. Indeed, things do come to an end but memories last forever. I recalled my second year in elementary school: A few classmates decided to share their childhood photos with one another. Some of them were my best friends, and had assumed I’d be part of this activity.

But I didn’t have any photos, nor even a doll or a toy to remind me of my childhood.

It may sound simple, but it never is. Not when a child comes to a mother, an older woman, and asks her to prove she was once a child, her child, or suddenly exclaims that she couldn’t possible be the woman’s child, because if she was, then where are the toys, she emphasises, the childhood photos and other memorabilia?

***

I didn’t need to be a scholar to know that rape was a tool of genocide and war. Since I started working on the genocide of the Kurds, I’ve been interested in questions of sexual violence against victimized women.

I’ve tried to broach the subject several times, and gain conﬁrmation that the women of the Anfal were indeed rape and sexual assault victims; especially how they dealt with it in the aftermath, but I’ve always been pushed away by male family members of victims, or by male directors of genocide institutions.

It was important for me I thought, to ask Nabat whether she had witnessed these atrocities in concentration camps. Or maybe it would be wiser to delay asking the question till the end, just in case it affected her mood.

Questioning the victim, I’ve long concluded, isn’t half as difﬁcult as thinking about Kurdish scholars’ and feminists’ positions regarding victimized women. It’s disappointing that Kurdish scholars have written books on Kurdish women who’ve been victims of the Anfal genocide, especially in gender studies, but they’ve never asked questions about rape, explaining why victims have never been able to seek counselling.

Nabat didn’t like my question. It made her uncomfortable. She looked to her right, and her upper-right lip twitched twice. Then, reluctantly, she said, “I don’t know. In the concentration camps, we never talked about it. But sometimes, the soldiers would take the ladies who were young and beautiful and return them a few hours later. They were sad and withered day by day. We didn’t ask them—we all had enough on our plates—but we also knew that those women were raped.”

It was the same answer that my aunt Rabia, my mother’s sister, gave me years ago. She was released after almost two years because she was elderly. I also heard the same story from another relative who was from Garmin.

The similarity of these accounts was undeniable, and clearly, it was a conﬁrmation of what I’d thought all along.

***

The cultural practice of wearing black to mourn the death of a loved one, has always tormented me. In my book Feminism and Kurdish Society (2005), I explored the psychological consequences of this dark culture. However, writing for the undereducated traumatized class of society is worthless if activist groups don’t transmit and convert academic or theoretical ideas into a practical, digestible form through counselling and hands-on workshops.

I asked Nabat: “Do you know the black outﬁt you wear, creates more of a psychological burden?”

“What can I say. Inside, everything is black for me. I can’t wear colours. No one does. All the Anfal survivors are still wearing black”.

I knew this would lead to nowhere.

Despite everything, Nabat managed to raise her ﬁve children to be healthy and strong. She is now one of the bold voices of the survivors. To tell her story, she participates in local, national, and international conferences “I’ve been to Europe a few times for conferences. Despite all the difﬁculties I’m going through, I don’t mind going wherever I can to defend the rights of the victims. Unfortunately, we [the Kurds] don’t respect anything,” Nabat said, shaking her head. Suddenly, her lips locked tightly, as if she regretted what she had said. I knew what she meant: no one understands each other better than people with similar experiences.

She mentioned that instead of attracting help and encouragement, she has sometimes been accused of making money out of her horrifying experience. “But I don’t pay attention to people without empathy.

“I congratulate you on your determination. Ignore what they’re saying, and don’t look back, go forward.” I replied.

For the ﬁrst time, a smile lit up her face. I asked her about what she wanted to achieve and where she wished to be heard.

Nabat said, “If the international community knew about our stories and our current conditions, they wouldn’t accept it. They would punish the Iraqi government and the Kurdish individuals who don’t care about our victimization. In essence, Nabat was asking the international community to create an agency that could stop this kind of crime, hoping no one else would experience what she had gone through; that her voice could help guarantee a safer future for her children. “If we, as victims, don’t tell our stories, who is going to make our voice heard?”

I didn’t want to disappoint her further by revealing what I knew to be the true face of the international community.

For the ﬁrst time, I was happy that Nabat Fayiaq Rahman was illiterate, and couldn’t read these words. If she’d asked me in 2017 where I would publish her story, what should I have said? Could I tell her the truth?

For instance:

- Nabat, for three years, the mainstream Canadian media have rejected publishing 700 words of your story, with the excuse that it’s not current and not related to Canadian society.

Rejection of your story, Nabat, indicates that even if members of your community hold Canadian passports, they are not considered Canadians; in fact the pain of their genocide is irrelevant to Canadian society.

- Nabat, I have contacted several feminist media outlets, and they called your story dark and heavy on the readers’ hearts; they don’t want to lose readers because of your story. One of them even asked me to write a weekly column, on one condition: to not tell your kind of story, but the kinds of stories that can turn women’s issues into a lucrative business that would enable them to use them on products and have a store on Amazon.

- Nabat, no problems occur in the world without the permission of the international community. They knew your story before it happened.

- Or should I just tell her the international community against genocide consists only of a few organizations and a number of genocide studies scholars? That even these scholars can’t magnify her voice if her people and government won’t come forward—something that has not happened in at least the last three decades.

Just like your people, Nabat, your voice is without a homeland. Carry on singing your sorrowful lullaby, for it is the only true weapon; the only true balm you have before you lose your voice.

Rukiye Turdush Uyghur Research Institute Ankara, Turkey

Magnus Fiskesjö Cornell University Ithaca, New York, USA

Introduction The aim of genocide is to intentionally destroy a group, in whole or in part, targeting the group as a race, ethnicity, religion, and/or culture, and not specifically in terms of gender. Like in many other cases, China’s genocide against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims aims to destroy the group, in whole or in part. However, the genocide’s process and implementation are very different from other genocides. This article focuses on China’s implementation of genocidal policies against Uyghur women, which stands out in several respects. Analyzing gender-based cases of the Uyghur genocide is not intended simply to prioritize female victims over male victims. Rather, it is done to better understand China’s crimes, and create practical protocols to prevent genocide. Through an examination of first-hand victim interviews,1 reports, Chinese state media and western media, and probing Chinese philosophy as a source of the ideology behind the genocide, the authors focus specifically on Uyghur women in order to discuss the following questions: How do gendered policies targeting Uyghur women expose the Chinese government’s genocidal intention in East Turkistan? As a root cause of this genocide, how is Chinese colonialism reflected in the policies implemented against Uyghur women and, particularly in the implementation processes that use the tools of punishment borrowed from Legalism?

Policies against the Uyghur Women: Genocidal Intent China’s gender-based policies, including policies to prevent births, state-sponsored forced marriages, forced labor, and the policy of appointing male Han Chinese cadres to Uyghur homes, as well as mass rape camps which we discuss in this article, expose China’s intent to commit genocide as a direct outcome of its colonialism. All of these acts committed by China's government today are self-evident, and the results are predictably destructive. Behind these actions, we address the systematic character of the planning, policy- making, and repetitive implementation of these policies, which are all directed toward the same ﬁnal outcome. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) mentioned how “existing plans would be strong evidence of the speciﬁc intent requirement for the crime of genocide.”2 While the Chinese government’s plans do not explicitly advertise genocide but are instead couched in the language of re-education, employment skill training, pair up relatives for ethnic unity, family planning, development, and the like, their destructive effect is plainly evident. It is achieved by planning, budgeting, and allocating resources and personnel to enforce and carry out these plans. The Chinese government openly insists upon these policies as one hundred

1 All interviews conducted by the ﬁrst author were conﬁdential. To protect the interviewees’ identities, the author and select interviewees have mutually agreed to use aliases (indicated with an asterisk *) and/or redact their last names (indicated with an obelisk †). Where no special symbols appear, interviewees’ original names were retained. 2 The Prosecutor v. Clément Kayishema and Obed Ruzindana, Trial Judgement, May 21, 1999, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), ICTR-95-1-T, para. 276, accessed April 13, 2021, https://www.refworld.org/ cases,ICTR,48abd5760.html.

Rukiye Turdush and Magnus Fiskesjö. “Dossier: Uyghur Women in China's Genocide.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1, 22–43. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1834. © 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention. Dossier: Uyghur Women in China's Genocide 23

percent correct and plan to continue them.3 Before discussing the root causes of China’s genocidal intent, we examine each policy aspect, laying out the evidence for how these policies are repeatedly implemented and have devastating consequences.

Horrific Outcome of the so-called Family Planning Policy: Draining Reproductivity Perhaps most striking is how the Chinese government is violating the Genocide Convention’s Article 2(d) through measures to prevent the children of Uyghur and other Turkic women from being born. Women have been the target of these policies for many years. Newer policies not only include previous measures such as sterilization and enforced abortions under the Chinese family planning policy, but also mass rape and sexual torture in the new concentration camp system built from 2017 onward; state-sponsored inter-racial forced marriages of Uyghur women to Han Chinese men, as well as the state placing Han Chinese male cadres (Party and government staff) in an innumerable Uyghur homes, violating the privacy of Uyghur women. Forced labor camps and factories also segregate Uyghur women and men in different places, thus serving the same purpose. All of these are acts of genocide which meet the Convention’s definition under article 2(b) and 2(d).4 Direct measures imposed by the Chinese government to restrict the number of births in the Uyghur population has a long history. It is thus not surprising that numerous new eyewitness accounts of forced sterilization have surfaced, and a new birth control policy has been imposed on Uyghur women.5 Currently, every married Uyghur woman who lives in East Turkistan and who has had no child or only one child has directly experienced either forced IUD insertion or sterilization. Uyghur women who evade these rules and have more than two children, which is the maximum number allowed, are punished heavily.6 Since 2017, this practice has intensified— even though it was relaxed for the Han Chinese. According to the leaked Karakash List, having illegal children is the most common reason for the detention of Uyghur women in Karakash county.7

3 Chris Buckley, “Brushing Off Criticism, China’s Xi Calls Policies in Xinjiang ‘Totally Correct,’” The New York Times, September 26, 2020, accessed September 26, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/world/asia/xi-jinping- china-xinjiang.html. 4 United Nations (UN), General Assembly Resolution 260, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, December 9, 1948 (UN Doc. A/RES/260(III)). 5 Uyghur Research Institute, Genocide in East Turkistan (Ankara: Uyghur Research Institute, February 2019), 34, accessed May 19, 2020, https://www.uysi.org/en/?p=774; Gulchehra Hoja, “Female Detainees at Xinjiang Internment Camps Face Sterilization, Sexual Abuse: Camp Survivor,” Radio Free Asia, October 30, 2019, accessed May 23, 2020, https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/abuse-10302019142433.html; Peter Stubley, “Muslim Women ‘Sterilised’ In China Detention Camps, Say Former Detainees,” The Independent, August 12, 2019, accessed May 23, 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-china-sterilisation-women-internment- camps-xinjiang-a9054641.html; Amie Ferris-Rotman, Aigerim Toleukhan, Emily Rauhala, and Anna Fifield, “China Accused of Genocide Over Forced Abortions of Uighur Muslim Women as Escapees Reveal Widespread Sexual Torture,” The Independent, October 6, 2019, accessed May 23, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ asia/china-uighur-muslim-women-abortions-sexual-abuse-genocide-a9144721.html. 6 Kelbinur Tursun (victim, currently residing in Turkey), video interview with author, January 17, 2019. Additional excerpts: “China implemented forced sterilization on Uyghur women to prevent births. I, myself, had five children hidden from Chinese forces; 3 of them are illegal if they find out. To save my 6th baby, I escaped to Turkey in 2016 with my youngest child. The Chinese government arrested my husband and sentenced him to 10 years after I escaped, just because we didn’t kill our babies. Despite my parents’ pleading the Chinese forces, they also took away my 4 children that I left behind. No one knows their whereabouts. Just a few days ago, I recognized my daughter Ayisha in a Douyin video that a Chinese worker posted from Hoten’s orphanage camp. She was three years old when I left, and 6 years old now. My home is in Kashgar city and she is in another city’s orphanage camp right now. She was separated from her siblings and sent to another city. I don’t know what happened to my other kids.” 7 Adrian Zenz, “The Karakax List: Dissecting the Anatomy of Beijing's Internment Drive in Xinjiang,” Journal of Political Risk 8, no. 2 (February 2020), accessed April 30, 2021, https://www.jpolrisk.com/karakax/.

Uyghur women are made to undergo gynecological examinations and forced to take birth control medication, have IUDs inserted, or be sterilized, both in the concentration camps as well as outside the camps.8 Adrian Zenz’s research on Chinese documents and statistical data on birth rates in 2019 reveals that 97 percent of women of child-bearing age in Kashgar and Hotan city in southern East Turkistan could not or would not get pregnant and deliver a child.9 A further new report describes the extreme drop in East Turkistan birthrates as worse than the declines during the Syrian civil war and the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia.10 The mass sterilization of women is not limited to the southern part of East Turkistan. Qelbinur Sidik, a resident of Ürümqi, located in the northern part of East Turkistan, shared her experience of how she fell victim to the policy of so-called birth control measures with long term effectiveness. She was forced to get an IUD in April 2017. However, her doctor (who was also a friend) helped her secretly remove the device to save her life after her tubal ligation became severely infected. In April 2019, during the enforced medical check-up for all Uyghur women, she was forcibly sterilized along with many other Uyghur women in the Changliyuan clinic in Ürümqi, even though she only has one child.11 Zumret Dawut, another camp survivor, also testiﬁed that she had been forcibly sterilized along with ﬁve other women in her neighborhood clinic in Ürümqi after her third child was born illegally.12 All female camp survivors and witnesses said that every woman, including unmarried young women, in the camps experienced either heavy bleeding or completely stop menstruating after being forcibly medicated on a daily basis and injected once every two weeks with a mysterious liquid.13 Adrian Zenz’s analysis of family planning statistics between spring 2017 and autumn 2018 for 12 villages and the urban district in Kok Gumbez, in Kuqa county (Aksu Prefecture) also showed that 73.5% of married Uyghur women of child-bearing age were forced to undergo IUD insertions.14 According to Zenz’s research, natural population growth among Uyghurs in East Turkistan declined dramatically in the two largest Uyghur prefectures, with growth rates falling by 84% between 2015 and 2018. As he noted in his report, “for 2020, one Uyghur region set an unprecedented near-zero birth target: a mere 1.05 per mill[ion] compare[d] to 19.66 per mill[ion] in 2018.”15 Chinese state media acknowledged that the birth rate, mortality rate, and natural population growth rate in East Turkistan dropped from 22.55%, 7.69%, and 14.86%

8 Qelbinur Sidik (victim and witness, currently awaiting political asylum in The Netherlands), phone interview with author, September 3, 2020; Zumret Dawut (Chinese concentration camp survivor, currently awaiting political asylum in US), phone interview with author, September 3, 2021; Ayda† (Chinese concentration camp survivor— currently residing in Kazahkstan), phone interview with author, September 3, 2020. 9 Adrian Zenz, Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang (Washington D.C.: The Jamestown Foundation, June 2020), accessed September 4, 2020, https:// jamestown.org/product/sterilizations-iuds-and-mandatory-birth-control-the-ccps-campaign-to-suppress-uyghur- birthrates-in-xinjiang/. 10 Nathan Ruser and James Leibold, Family De-Planning: The Coercive Campaign to Drive Down Indigenous Birth-Rates in Xinjiang (Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), May 12, 2021), accessed May 12, 2021, https:// www.aspi.org.au/report/family-deplanning-birthrates-xinjiang. 11 Sidik, interview. First mentioned in note 8. 12 Dawut, interview. First mentioned in note 8. ,Uyghur Ekrani, YouTube video, 00:37:20, uploaded February 10, 2021 ”,مـــــــــەشـــــــــھۇر جـــــــــازاالگـــــــــىرى شـــــــــاھـــــــــىدى مـــــــــىھىرگـــــــــۈل تـــــــــۇرســـــــــۇن“ 13 accessed March 25, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijxmwpK01Fk; Afroze Fatima Zaidi, “China is Forcibly Sterilising Muslim Women in Internment Camps, According to Former Detainees,” The Canary, August 17, 2019, accessed March 23, 2021, https://www.thecanary.co/global/2019/08/17/china-is-forcibly-sterilising- muslim-women-in-internment-camps-according-to-former-detainees/; Sidik, interview; Dawut, interview; Ayda†, interview; see also Gulbahar Haitiwaji and Rozenn Morgat, “‘Our Souls are Dead:’ How I Survived a Chinese ‘Re- Education Camp’ for Uighurs,” The Guardian, January 12, 2021, accessed January 28, 2021, https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/12/uighur-xinjiang-re-education-camp-china-gulbahar-haitiwaji? CMP=share_btn_tw. 14 Zenz, Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control, 13. 15 Ibid., 2.

respectively in 1978 to 10.69%, 4.56%, and 6.13% respectively in 2018.16 Notably, both the Uyghur population’s fertility rate and natural growth rate declined signiﬁcantly in 2018.17 Despite the well-known consequence of draining Uyghur population, the Chinese government has persisted in applying these birth control policies against Uyghur women.

State Sponsored Interracial Marriage Policy Against the Uyghur Women The genocidal reduction of the Uyghur population has also intensified through China’s interracial marriage policy. According to China’s fifth hukou (household) census statistics in East Turkistan, in 2000, interracial marriages between Han Chinese and Uyghurs made up only 1.05% of all marriages.18 China has not published any further interracial marriage statistics, but based on social media news and Chinese government news and documents, we estimate that interracial marriages between Uyghurs and Han Chinese have increased dramatically since 2017. Further, the majority of these marriages are between Han Chinese men and Uyghur women, and are very rarely the other way around. Under the prevalent patriarchal system, these women will become mothers of Han Chinese children, not Uyghur; so, as a policy, these promoted marriages further accelerate the intended destruction of the Uyghur people “as such” (as expressed in the Genocide Convention). The Chinese government has used many incentives to promote these interracial marriage policy objectives. In August 2014, China announced a reward of 10,000 yuan annually for five years to newly married Han Chinese-Uyghur couples. They also announced a 3,000 yuan reward if the couples’ children enter vocational school, a 5,000 yuan reward if their children enter university, and an extra 15 marks added to their children's university exam.19 In 2014, the Chinese government increased the reward encouraging Han Chinese men to emigrate to East Turkistan and marry Muslim women to 3.33 hectares of land and a 70,000 yuan (estimated USD $10,847) bonus.20 Even with such incentives, interracial marriages are still not common in East Turkistan. However, beginning in 2017, following China’s incarceration of millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps (and especially Uyghur men), there was a dramatic increase in the number of social media posts and Chinese state media news reports about interracial marriages between Han Chinese men and Uyghur women. Based on social media comments, Uyghur women and their entire families have been threatened with the heavy punishment of concentration camp internment if they refuse to marry Han Chinese men.

16 Li Shao Xia, “An Analysis Report on Population Change in Xinjiang,” Global Times, January 7, 2021, accessed February 24, 2021, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202101/1212073.shtml. 17 Ibid. 18 Li Shao Xia 李绍霞, “Xīnjiāng zú jì tōnghūn de diàochá yǔ fēnxī: 新疆族际通婚的调查与分析” [Investigation and Analysis of Cross-Ethnic Intermarriage in Xinjiang], Creaders.net (blog), May 9, 2014, accessed May 23, 2020, http://blog.creaders.net/u/3328/201405/181046.html. 19 Huang Anwei 黄安伟, “Xīnjiāng gǔlì mín hàn tōnghūn míhé mínzú máodùn: 新疆⿎励民汉通婚弥合民族⽭盾” [Xinjiang Encourages Marriage between the Han and Uyghurs to Bridge Ethnic Conﬂicts], New York Times, September 3, 2014, accessed May 23, 2020, https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20140903/c03xinjiang/. 20 Liu Minghuan 刘明焕, “Xīnjiāng kuòdà hànhuà zhèngcè hànrén qǔ jiāng nǚ kě dé 50 mǔ tián jí 7 wàn yuán xiànjīn: 新疆扩⼤汉化政策汉⼈娶疆⼥可得50亩⽥及7万元现⾦” [Xinjiang Expands Sinocization: Han People Marry Xinjiang Women Get 50 Mu Fields And 70,000 Yuan In Cash], New Tang Dynasty Television: 新唐电视台, October 30, 2019, accessed May 24 2020, https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2019/10/30/a102696368.html.

Image 1. Screenshot 1, image courtesy of the author.

Image 2. Screenshot 2, image courtesy of the author.

Image 3. Screenshot 3, image courtesy of the author.

Annotated screen shots show communications with a Uyghur female student in Beijing, whose ﬁrst name is Menzire. The author’s translation is as follows:

Screen shot 1:

A: Salam, it is so hard for me to add you. I am writing from school in inland China. My dad was taken. And my mom [was] left at home. When I [came] back home for vacation, our Chinese “relatives” came and kept asking me to marry his brother.

R: What did you say?

Screen shot 2:

R: What did you say?

A: I was scared. I told him that I needed to ﬁnish school. School will ﬁnish this summer. What should I do?

R: Say no, he can’t do anything.

Screen shot 3:

A: What if they take my mom, too? They will say I [am] harm[ing] the ethnic unity,..an ideological problem. They may ask the whole family to go for re-education.

R: What if you tell them that you found a job and do not want to return home?

A: Is there any international law that you can use to help me without revealing my name?

R: We might need the help of a lot of girls testifying, to do that.

A: That is too dangerous, they will eat me alive if I do that.

Local Chinese work units and social security workers support Han Chinese men and often attempt to convince Uyghur women to marry these men even if the women refuse to do so of their own volition.21 It is not possible to determine the prevalence of such marriages as China conceals national interracial marriage statistics. However, the question is, if these interracial marriages are voluntary and not state-sponsored rape, then why has there been such a dramatic increase in interracial marriage between Han Chinese men and Uyghur women since 2017 when between one to three million Uyghurs were forced into concentration camps? We know that more men than women have been sent to these concentration camps, and many women may have no choice but to marry Han Chinese men when there are no Uyghur men left to marry. The most convincing reason could be fear of being sent to one of these camps. Hundreds of Uyghur women report having married Han Chinese men in TikTok videos, on the Chinese social media platform WeChat, and on other apps, as well as in news reports seen on Chinese government websites, all of which suggests this has become a shocking and devastating new reality for the Uyghurs.22 In one of the Tik Tok videos, an Uyghur woman from Yarkand said:

We do not love each other. I married a Chinese guy to get my brother released from a concentration camp. My brother had been arrested because he had failed to participate once in a ﬂag-raising ceremony. He was released after I married the Chinese guy but he had been mentally harmed and disabled. And my husband married me to get government money. Now

21 Darren Byler, “Uyghur Love in a Time of Interethnic Marriage,” SupChina, August 7, 2019, accessed May 24, 2020, https://supchina.com/2019/08/07/uyghur-love-in-a-time-of-interethnic-marriage/. 22 “Xinjiang guniang wei sha bu neng tong hanzu nanzi jiehun: 新疆姑娘, 为啥不能同汉族男⼦结婚？来听下当地⼈怎么说” [Why Uyghur Women Cannot Marry Han Chinese], QQ Video News, November 27, 2019, accessed May 21, 2020, https://v.qq.com/x/page/f3026lh9hej.html.

we have a child, but he has a Chinese lover. He hates me and always hits my head.23

In practice, as seen in both Uyghur and Chinese patrilineal culture, forcing women to marry Han Chinese men means their future children will not belong to their mothers’ ethnic group. This represents one more measure intended to prevent Uyghur children from being born and reducing the Uyghur population as a result. Further, we believe the colonial ideology of the Chinese government entails the belief that their domination of women means to not only dominate the land but also the entire colonized people (more on this below). This could explain why there are very few interracial marriages between Uyghur men and Han Chinese women, and most Chinese government and social propaganda targets Uyghur women rather than men. To disguise their state-sponsored forced marriage policy, the Chinese government also established dating services around various East Turkistan cities. The sole function of these services is to ﬁnd Uyghur women for Han Chinese men. All of these dating services are intrinsically political, as they are linked directly to, and guided by the Chinese government. One of their video advertisements in Kashgar city, published in Uyghur and translated below, is another example of how the Chinese government treats Uyghur women as commodities—it refers explicitly to government policy and includes an implicit threat:

Thank you to the party and the government! In order to support our government’s policy of increase Uyghur and Han Chinese marriage, we need 100 Uyghur women urgently! It is important for the ethnic unity between the Uyghur and the Han Chinese! Please call us and get counseling. Anyone is welcome to introduce friends and family members. Contact number: 17699989766.24

As a result, the privilege and advantage of freely obtaining Uyghur women, as a wife and as a commodity, give Han Chinese men an ideologically framed image through which to view Uyghur women and, particularly how to use and value them. Several other videos found by Uyghur activists on Chinese social media show how Chinese men try to attract Han Chinese settlers to the region. These videos contain phrases such as: “Do you want Uyghur beauties? Come, I’ll arrange it for you tonight,” and “Do you want to marry Uyghur girls? They can eat pork. They could not eat it before, but they can eat it now. Don’t worry about [the] cultural differences.”25 These videos include both government- sponsored propaganda videos as well as videos distributed by Han Chinese individuals. This is often accompanied by a stream of insults, used as a tool to humiliate, destroy, and assert power over the Uyghurs.

23 Zumrat Dawut, “Conversation of Uyghur Women who are Married to Han Chinese in Tik Tok Video,” Facebook, November 13, 2020, 2:38 p.m., accessed, May 18, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/100034398679054/posts/ 397615751395044/?d=n. 24 Ashimu Kashijalian 阿西姆·卡什加⾥安, “Zhongguo shipin guanggao huyu baiming Weiwuer nuxing kuai jia Hanren: 中国视频⼴告呼吁百名维吾尔⼥性快嫁汉⼈” [Chinese Video Advertisement Urgently Need 100 Uyghur Women to Marry Han Chinese Men], Voice of America, August 22, 2020, accessed August 22, 2020, https:// www.voachinese.com/a/china-xinjiang-inter-marriage-20200821/5553607.html. 25 Doam (@doamuslims), “Chinese Ofﬁcial Interrogates Uyghur Muslim Girl,” Twitter, April 2, 2019, 12:02 p.m., accessed May 15, 2021, https://twitter.com/doamuslims/status/1113109430177075200; Arslan Hidayat (@arslan-hidayat), “Uyghur Girl Publicly Pimped,” Twitter, May 13, 2020, 8:06 p.m., accessed May 15, 2021, https://twitter.com/ arslan_hidayat/status/1260723117682561025.

Slavery of Uyghur Women in China’s Forced Labor Camps Since 2006, the Chinese government has forced every Uyghur household to send one person to perform factory work in inland China, as shengyu laodong (excess labor force).26 This policy has been intensiﬁed since 2017, under the guise of a new so-called “poverty alleviation” policy. Three important characteristics are concealed within this policy:

• Mainly young Uyghur women are recruited for factory work outside of East Turkistan and are thus separated from the male population of their own people. • All the workers are forcibly sent away to inland China, with those married separated from their husbands and children. • They live under massive surveillance with no freedom of movement or the right to return to their homeland.

China’s government published a White Paper in September 2020 claiming that every year from 2014 to 2019, the average annual relocation of surplus rural labor amounted to more than 2.76 million people, of whom nearly 1.68 million—or over 60 percent—were in southern East Turkistan, which is mainly populated with Uyghurs.27 This indicates that 6.72 million Uyghurs were relocated or sent to forced labor during these four years. Even though the White Paper did not mention the gender of these workers, claiming that they were voluntary and not forced, several sources—including witness testimonies, Uyghur sources, and western media investigative reports—proved that these workers are mostly women. The proportion of male Uyghurs in prison and detention, in contrast, constitutes an overwhelming majority. Based on local Chinese government data from 2017 and 2018 analyzed by Adrian Zenz, the share of all male adults in concentration camps in the document sample was 9.2 times higher than arrested female adults,28 which could explain why the number of Uyghur women is much higher in forced labor. The Uyghur women sent to factories across inland China could well be providing services to global companies such as Volkswagen, Dell, General Motors, Cisco, Calvin Klein, among others. According to a March 2020 Australian Strategic Policy Institute report, at least 80,000 Uyghurs, mostly women, have been transferred;29 the women are either sent directly from Uyghur cities and villages, or by way of the concentration camps. They are not allowed to return home when they get sick even if they have ﬁnished their job contract.30 One factory manager in Shandong Province told Bitter Winter magazine that Uyghurs must work for one year before they are eligible to go home to visit relatives. Even if family members die, they cannot go home without permission. For those who have worked for more than one year and were fortunate enough to be granted permission to go home to visit relatives, if do not come

26 Uyghur Human Rights Project, China: Transfer of 400,000 Young Uyghur Women into Eastern China (Brussels: Human Rights Without Frontiers International, June 19, 2008), accessed September 21, 2020, http://www.david- kilgour.com/2008/Jun_20_2008_01.htm. 27 The State Council Information Ofﬁce of the People's Republic of China, Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang, (white paper, The People’s Republic of China, September 17, 2020), accessed January 28, 2021, http:// english.www.gov.cn/archive/whitepaper/202009/17/content_WS5f62cef6c6d0f7257693c192.html. 28 Adrian Zenz, “‘Wash Brains, Cleanse Hearts:’ Evidence from Chinese Government Documents about the Nature and Extent of Xinjiang’s Extrajudicial Internment Campaign,” Journal of Political Risk 7, no. 11 (November 2019), accessed May 15, 2021, https://www.jpolrisk.com/wash-brains-cleanse-hearts/. 29 Vicky Xiuzhong Xu et al., Uyghurs For Sale: “Re-Education,” Forced Labour, and Surveillance Beyond Xinjiang (Australian Strategic Policy Institute, March 1, 2020), accessed May 23, 2020, https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale. 30 Li Mingxuan 李明轩, “Dàpī xīnjiāng wéizú rén bèi qiángzhì sòng wǎng nèidì gōngchǎng wàichū xū dài dìngwèi shǒu huán: ⼤批新疆維族⼈被強制送往內地⼯廠外出須戴定位⼿環” [A Large Number of Uyghurs in Xinjiang were Forcibly Sent to Mainland Factories, Wearing Tracking Bracelets], Bitter Winter, March 9, 2020, accessed May 25, 2020, https://zh.bitterwinter.org/new-re-education-of-uyghurs-forced-labor-outside-xinjiang/.

back within the stipulated time, they are forcibly returned and punished. If they do not come back, they will be put in an education transformation camp, or prison.31 “I was detained in a concentration camp for two years and it is one year now that I am in a labor camp. It is ok if they don’t pay me, but I am happy if they allow me to see my children once in a while. I can do everything they want, but my kids are in a boarding school and I couldn’t see them when I came home,” explained Aydin, who ﬁnally received permission to visit her own home for the ﬁrst time after three years. She revealed this information to her friend overseas in a secret video conversation, in which she displayed the police tracking bracelet on her arm. For her safety, we decided to publish the photo of the bracelet, but not the video.

Image 4. Tracking bracelet used to control forced labor workers, image courtesy of the author.

Many educated women are also sent to low-skill slave labor camps and separated from their children and homes. Dilnur Idris, an Uyghur nurse, on her release from a concentration camp in May 2019, was sent to a slave labor textile factory to do unpaid low-skill heavy work. She sent a brave message to her sister Gulnur Idris in Melbourne, saying: “I may never have a chance to get out, or contact you again. Please stand up for me!”32 A young ethnic Kazakh man, Yelisin Erkin, who did administration work in Ghulja City’s Chapchal forced labor camp in East Turkistan in 2015 testiﬁed about how the women were forced to work in these camps.

70 percent of the workers are women between 16–45 years old working in the factory designated as a forced labor camp in Chapsal County. These women are never allowed to go home and see their children, husbands, or other family members unless they have emergency issues, and get permission from

31 Ibid. 32 ABC News In-Depth, “How China is Creating the World’s Largest Prison: Four Corners,” YouTube video, 00:36:39– 00:38:30, uploaded on July 16, 2019, accessed May 15, 2021, https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=t- axd1Ht_J8.

the factory owner. Monthly salaries range between $5.88 to $61.90—barely enough for their hygiene expenses—despite being forced to work 14 hours every day.33

An unpublished video secretly taken in the White Rose factory in Tianjin 13 years ago and preserved by the author also revealed similar evidence. This video explains how Uyghur women aged 16–24 are forced to go to inland China for unpaid factory work. “If we refuse, we have to pay a ﬁne of 3000-5000 yuan, and they will destroy our houses with a bulldozer,” said the women in the video.34 A group of young Uyghur women who had been forced to come to work at a telephone company in Hubei province in central China in the ﬁrst quarter of 2019 said the following to her cousin in Europe over the telephone in 2021. She disappeared the next day and her cousin not been able to contact her again.

They said we could go back home when they bring new workers. When I arrived, they chose some women from among the previous workers, and the government decided these women could return home. After these women left, we never heard about them. We don’t know where they [have] sent them. Please help me! They have selected several of us today. I am amongst them. I was separated from my baby daughter three years ago. I don’t know where she is right now. I don’t know where they will take us tomorrow. Please help!35

Not Only Mass Gang Rapes but Sexual Torture Similar to the genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur, Uyghur and other Turkic women have been targeted through mass rape as a tool of genocide, which Chinese state policy facilitates through the newly built women’s concentration and forced labor camps. A recent camp survivor, Tursunay Ziyawudun, 39, described what happened to her as follows:

I was bleeding heavily after they kicked my stomach so badly in the interrogation room. I didn’t know what these dimly red- lit rooms were for when I passed by, going all the way to the interrogation room. I learned later it was the rooms prepared for the rape and torture of detainees.36

She, herself, was gang-raped, sexually tortured, and mutilated when she was taken to those dark rooms.

There were 12 women in my cell, each one of them, mostly young girls and aged under 40, randomly taken out at night. When they came back, they looked as if their spirit had vanished. I didn’t imagine sexual torture and rape until they took me there. I thought those women who were taken out at night were taken for interrogation and physically tortured.37

33 Yelisin Erkin (eye-witness, currently awaiting political asylum in Ukraine), phone interview with author, January 25, 2021. 34 Quote was from a private video, provided by East Turkistan Information Center. This video is not published publicly to protect the identities of the forced labor workers in the video. 35 Ibrahim*† (Second-hand witness), interview with author, March 28, 2021. 36 Tursunay Ziyawudun (Chinese concentration camp survivor), phone interview with author, March 25, 2021. 37 Ibid.

Another camp survivor, Gulbahar Jelilova, told the author: “The young Chinese guy sexually assaulted me in the interrogation room. I begged him: ‘Don’t you have a mother?’ He banged my head to the table and said: ‘Don’t you dare compare yourself to my mom! You are not human to me! You cannot compare yourself to any human!’”38 Both Gulbahar Jelilova and camp survivor, Zumret Dawut, conﬁrmed the use of gang rape in concentration camps.39 Tursunay Ziyawudun added:

Each time, the same tall Chinese man with a blue suit and shining shoes came with his other followers with military camouﬂage uniforms. They talked to each other. From their accents, I learned they are Han Chinese. (…) I heard one of these Chinese men say: ‘She is going to die. She is bleeding too much!’ when they inserted an electric baton in my private parts and tortured me, like pulling all of my organs one by one, chopping my body into a thousand pieces. Another one said: ‘So what?!’ The third man said: ‘No difference! Just destroy her womb!’ I didn’t get it why they hate women’s wombs.40

The masked men who raped and sexually tortured her were likely Chinese government ofﬁcials and soldiers who represent the Chinese state. Like many other detainees, Tursunay did not know what her crime was when she was arrested. “When they brought me to the concentration camps from the detention center, they gave me a list of papers and forced me to choose one of the crimes they listed,” she said. She shared what she remembered from the list as follows:

1. wearing a long dress; 2. wearing a hijab [head scarf/head covering]; 3. shaved body hair; 4. praying; 5. having a Muslim name; 6. traveled abroad; 7. participated in a religious nikah [Muslim wedding] ceremony 8. having a traditional handheld vessel at home that contains water to assist in bathroom hygiene; 9. having a religious friend; 10. your father is an Imam [Islamic religious leader]; 11. participated in a party and there was a religious person at the party; 12. contacted someone overseas by phone; 13. having an illegal child outside of the government plan.41

“They had a long list; I don’t remember all,” she said. “I chose the one that said ‘traveled abroad,’ because my husband was a Kazakhstan national and I went to Kazakhstan before. Many people do not even ﬁt into the list; they didn’t have any fault[s], but they have to choose.”42

38 Gulbahar Jelilova, phone interview with author, March 24, 2021. 39 Dawut, interview. 40 Ziyawudun, interview, March 25, 2021. First mentioned in note 36. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid.

Tursunay had surgery in the United States after being released due to the activism of her Kazakh husband and diplomatic pressure on China from Kazakhstan. Doctors removed her badly injured uterus due to severe medical risks. She cannot be a mother anymore, but she said the surgery helped her since she feels like she removed something scary and dirty from her life. “They will make you hate to be a women,” she said. “I feel a little better and feel safe after doctors removed my womb in the US, because it is something that reminds me, every second, of those horrible and disgusting days.”43 The ICTR noted that “[r]ape and sexual violence also constitute genocide in the same way as any other act, as long as they were committed with intent to destroy a particular group targeted as such.”44 The tribunal also concluded rape and sexual violence were one of the worst ways of inflicting physical and mental harm on women.45 Clearly, the Chinese government’s actions constitute a serious violation of Article 2(b) of the Genocide Convention. In many cases, systematic mass rape in China’s concentration camps is intentional, conducted from the top-down, and centrally directed as part of the genocide plan to destroy the Uyghur people and nation. China’s intention to destroy the whole Uyghur people and nation by destroying Uyghur women and their dignity is evident through the horrific torture and systematic mass rape in Chinese concentration camps, as confirmed by several victims and eyewitnesses.46

‘Pair Up and Become Family’ Policy: Invaders in the Uyghur family The Chinese government’s policy of speciﬁcally targeting Uyghur and other ethnic Muslims in East Turkistan is done through several means, including with experimental AI technology, observing each person’s movements with digital spying techniques such as face and voice recognition cameras and phone spyware, collecting blood types and DNA samples from entire segments of the Uyghur population, as well as sending more than one million Han Chinese male cadres into Uyghur homes, as human spies, to sleep over for one or two weeks every month, monitoring household members for possible infractions. All of these tactics induce responses ranging from anxiety to outright terror, severely damaging the Uyghurs’ mental health.47 Uyghur women have been particularly targeted as a vulnerable victim of this policy. In many Uyghur families, Han Chinese men dominate the Uyghur women they are paired up with them while male Uyghur household members have been detained elsewhere. Many instances of sexual harassment and rape have been reported during these male Han Chinese sleepovers with Uyghur Muslim families.48 Zumret Dawut, who was ﬁnally able to escape to the United States, stated:

43 Ibid. 44 United Nations, “Rwanda International Criminal Tribunal Pronounces Guilty Verdict in Historic Genocide Trial,” press release, September 2, 1998, accessed May 15, 2021, https://www.un.org/press/en/ 1998/19980902.afr94.html. 45 See in particular the article abstract in Jonathan M. H. Short, “Sexual Violence as Genocide: The Developing Law of the International Criminal Tribunals and the International Criminal Court,” Michigan Journal of Race and Law 8, no. 2 (2003), accessed May 15, 2021, https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl/vol8/iss2/5. 46 Matthew Hill et al., “‘Their Goal is to Destroy Everyone:’ Uighur Camp Detainees Allege Systematic Rape,” BBC News, February 2, 2021, accessed February 4, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071; Sayragul Sauytbay and Alexandra Cavelius, The Chief Witness: Escape from China’s Modern-Day Concentration Camps, trans. Caroline Waight (Melbourne: Scribe, 2021). 47 Alexandra Ma, “China is Reportedly Sending Men to Sleep in the Same Beds as Uighur Muslim Women while their Husbands are in Prison Camps,” Business Insider, November 4, 2019, accessed May 23, 2020, https:// www.businessinsider.com/china-uighur-monitor-home-shared-bed-report-2019-11. 48 Peter Goff, “‘Become Family:’ China Sends Officials to Stay with Xinjiang Minorities,” The Irish Times, December 17, 2019, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/become-family-china-sends- officials-to-stay-with-xinjiang-minorities-1.4118327.

Government workers appoint those Han Chinese to sleep over in every Uyghur household, under the program of ‘Pair Up and Become Family.’ They do not care if there are any men in the household or not, an extra bed or not. They do not allow us to ask any personal information about those Chinese guests. We do not know what kind of people they are or their medical or social or criminal history.49

Qelbinur Sidik, who recently found refuge in the Netherlands, said: “I was threatened, intimidated, and attacked with verbal sexual harassment in front of my husband many times in my own home by the Han Chinese sleepover men. Even though I am free right now, I constantly suffer from nightmares, and anger issues.”50 Zumret Dawut also described how a 20-year-old single Han Chinese male “relative” of her 12-year-old daughter, matched by the Chinese government, became a huge problem for her before she was eventually able to leave for Pakistan with her family. “Bring your daughter to sleepover in my home. Make sure she takes a shower before she comes,” she remembered her daughter’s male “relatives” asking every weekend. “I found excuses to delay the time and left the country with my daughter, but the rest of the Uyghur mothers have no chance to escape like me.”51

Image 5. The Chinese government appointed Han Chinese male “relative” for Zumret Dawut's 12-year-old daughter, image courtesy of the author.

49 Dawut, interview, March 24, 2021. 50 Sidik, interview, September 3, 2020. 51 Dawut, interview, March 24, 2021.

The colonial ideology behind the Pair Up and Become Family policy created an opportunity for Han Chinese settlers to dominate Uyghur women as colonial property. There are many cases of Han Chinese men raping and assaulting Uyghur women, which the first author learned about from unofficial Uyghur sources about Han Chinese men. However, we could not include these cases here since it is very difficult to verify each one, and many of the victims are still in East Turkistan.

China’s Genocidal Policy Ideas: Where did they Originate? Where do these genocidal policy ideas and the motivating intention come from? As Maureen Hiebert noted in her book Constructing Genocide and Mass Violence, the “idea of destroying the group starts with a cluster of social and political attitudes, belief, values and practices.”52 This is also very true in the case of China’s genocide. The General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, is singularly preoccupied with the “rejuvenation of the Great Chinese Nation,” and noted in his report to his party’s 19th national congress that: “We should do more to foster a Chinese spirit, Chinese values, and Chinese strength, to provide moral guidance to our people.”53 This implies there is no survival space for other ideological values. As a result, any Uyghurs or others in the East Turkistan colony who do not succumb to the forced transformation into ethnic Han Chinese will be considered a threat—an “ideological enemy,” and as “opponents” that must be eliminated. The idea of the superiority of the Han Chinese belief system that can dominate, absorb, and eliminate any other group is applied as a first step, particularly with the conception of a superior self vs. an inferior other which many Han Chinese settlers have cultivated towards the Turkic peoples in the colony. Once the belief of an enemy is created and established, the intent to eliminate soon follows. In this regard, briefly addressing the colonial history of East Turkistan is significant in this article as women are the symbol of the land, country, honor, and dignity of the Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims culture, who their Chinese colonizers subject to the most direct and symbolic destruction.

Brief History of Colonization of East Turkistan East Turkistan has natural boundaries as well as a constructed border formed by the Great Wall. In the past, before the Mongol and Manchu invasions, Uyghurs established their own kingdoms and states, such as the former Ediqut Uyghur state and the Qarahanli state.54 Today, the Chinese government claims that East Turkistan was part of its former Han dynasty’s empire. However, this claim is unfounded; the Han dynasty only captured the Turpan area—a minute portion of the vast Tarim and Jungaria regions of East Turkistan—for a short period in 120 BCE. The Han Chinese state was never able to rule East Turkistan until after 1949.55 In 1949, when the new Chinese nation state was established, it claimed the previously colonized borderland territories of the Manchu empire, including East Turkistan, Mongolia, and Tibet. Globally, this was a period of decolonization, and the people of East Turkistan had already established the East Turkistan Republic after the Manchu empire collapsed.56 Undeterred, the newly established Chinese state claimed East Turkistan as Chinese state territory, which was illegitimate and should be regarded as an invasion. Nonetheless, the newly formed UN ofﬁcially recognized China’s territorial claim. Despite this victory, Chinese

52 Maureen S. Hiebert, Constructing Genocide and Mass Violence: Society, Crisis, Identity (London: Routledge, 2017), 23. 53 Xi Jinping, “Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” (speech, Beijing, delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, October 18, 2017), accessed September 23, 2020, www.xinhuanet.com/english/download/Xi_Jinping's_report_at_19th_CPC_National_Congress.pdf. 54 James A. Millward, Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang, 1st ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 52. 55 Ibid., 24. 56 Gardner Bovingdon, The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land, 1st ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 31–39; Rian Thum, The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2014), 4.

government officials continued to grow uneasy; because the religion, culture, and ethnicity of East Turkistan’s population are highly distinct from those of the Han Chinese, the assimilation of Uyghur and other Turkish people would still be difficult to accomplish. Beijing increasingly felt that they had failed to assimilate Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims. Further, since its recent rise to power, China has aimed to expand, through central Asia and Europe, to implement its New Silk Road project (or “One Belt, One Road,” OBOR) to create economic connections between more than 65 countries. This has rendered East Turkistan even more geo- strategically significant as the region is pivotal in China’s ability and capacity to accomplish such a project.57 The characteristics of both China’s military and civilian-settler colonialism of East Turkistan have also determined China’s intention to destroy the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, as the Chinese government has come to view the local population as an obstacle.

China’s Ideological Tools of Genocide: Punishment in Legalism China’s intention of genocide today stems from its recent colonialist efforts in East Turkistan. In the implementation of the genocide, the state mobilizes the legalist concept of punishment ﬁrst pioneered in Qin dynasty. Ancient Chinese Legalism was originally developed to harshly control and exploit people under state rule, but it has now become one of the tools of genocide in its application on China’s colonized region of East Turkistan. In the following sections, we discuss how the ancient idea of punishment, as seen in legalist thinking, is applied to Uyghur women as a tool of genocide in recently colonized East Turkistan. The head of the Chinese state, Xi Jinping, was quoted in a leaked secret speech as saying that there should be “absolutely no mercy” toward the Uyghurs.58 This clearly indicates the intent to target the Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslims in East Turkistan, portraying them as a deadly threat that must be eliminated if China is to build its new empire. This intention also aligns with the classic Chinese philosophy of Legalism (Fa Jia) that emerged during the Warring States period. The main ideas of Legalism focus on about power and position, as well as how to ignore moral issues and dominate those ruled. The famous Chinese legalist thinker and ofﬁcial Shang Yang argued: “If strength remains on the other side, one perishes; but if strength is removed on the other side, one attains supremacy.”59 The Chinese government has always considered the people of East Turkistan as a threat that needs to be destroyed. This follows from the zero-sum thinking in legalism, formulated to help those in power to gain supremacy over any region. As one of the tools for enforcing supremacy, Legalists advocated punishments applied even to people who were innocent, much like China’s cruel and punitive policies being applied to Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims today. Indeed, as detailed in the accounts of Tursunay Ziyawudun as well as others cited above, East Turkistan women are punished despite having committed no real crime (other than their identity as Uyghur women). The Book of Lord Shang described punishment as follows:

Therefore, if you govern by punishments, the people will fear; being fearful, they will not commit villainies; there being no villainies, people will be happy in what they enjoy. If, however, you teach people by righteousness, they will be lax; if they are lax, there will be disorder; if there is disorder, the people will suffer from what they dislike.60

57 Jeff Desjardins, “Mapped: China's Most Ambitious Megaproject—The New Silk Road,” Business Insider, March 19, 2018, accessed September 14, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-most-ambitious-megaproject-the- new-silk-road-mapped-2018-3. 58 Austin Ramzy and Chris Buckley, “‘Absolutely No Mercy:’ Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims,” The New York Times, November 16, 2019, accessed March 21, 2020, https:// www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html. 59 Shang Yang, The Book of Lord Shang: A Classic of the Chinese School of Law, trans. Jan Julius Lodewijk Duyvendak (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1928), 155. 60 Ibid., 65

The righteousness referred to here is, of course, the Confucian idea that has helped underpin Chinese patriarchy, but which legalists saw as an obstacle to their ideology of total power. Cruel punishment methods were encouraged by legalists, such as when Shang Yang advocated heavier punishments in order to make it easier to control the people: “In applying punishments, light offences should be punished heavily; if light offences do not appear, heavy offences will not come. This is said to be abolishing penalties by means of penalties, and if penalties are abolished, affairs will succeed.”61 As we have seen, China’s policies in East Turkistan today reject and grossly violate human rights and are reinforced by legalist thought. The devastating policies of sterilization and forced labor, as well as the state-sponsored forced marriages and sexual torture applied to Uyghur women as legalist-styled punishments are evidently intended for genocidal purposes— to destroy the Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim people. For example, in mass rape camps, Uyghur women are sexually tortured after they are raped. Their body parts used for childbirth become the enemy of the perpetrators, since they regard Uyghur women as the vehicle of Uyghur population growth. As a result, attempts to eliminate the Uyghurs are being implemented using the barbaric punishment methods disclosed in the testimonies. Clearly, the Chinese government’s intention is not only to instill fear in people, as the legalists advocated, but also to commit genocide through legalist-style punishments applied to its colony of East Turkistan. Umide, a 30-year-old Uyghur woman now living in the Netherlands, who traveled to Ürümqi in 2018, and, Eldos, a Kazak Canadian who traveled to Ghulja in 2019, both learned that the threatening and punishing of the male relatives of Uyghur women who refuse to marry Han Chinese men or putting the entire family of the Uyghur woman in a concentration camp is a common issue.62 Uyghur women are also punished for their lifestyles and tortured because of so-called sins of relatives, which they never committed.63 These kinds of punishments are referred to as the lianzuo or zuxing system, meaning shared responsibility and family penalty. This originates from legalism, but it has resulted in some contemporary Chinese believing that it is part of Chinese culture to put family above the individual and that an individual’s sin can be the sin of the family, since an individual’s achievement is also considered to honor the family.64 Legalism stressed the related measure of the shiwu (ten-ﬁve) system of population control, with groups of ﬁve or ten families that become mutually responsible for each other (lianzuo).65 The Book of Lord Shang stressed these extended penalties of Legalism as follows:

If there are severe penalties that extend to the whole family, people will not dare to try (to see how far they can go), and as they dare not try, no punishments will be necessary. If punishments are heavy and rigorously applied, then people will not dare to try (to see how far they can go), with the result that, in the state, there will be no people punished.66

The Book of Lord Shang further explained that the reason for making people responsible for each other was also to have them spy on each other as follows:

61 Ibid., 133. 62 Umide*† (eye witness), phone interview with author, March 22, 2021; Eldos*† (eye witness), phone interview with author, January 2, 2021. 63 Ziyawudun, interview, March 25, 2021. First mentioned in note 36. 64 Yao Lao, “Families that Hang Together,” China Daily, May 17, 2004, accessed March 22, 2021, https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ english/doc/2004-05/17/content_331252.htm. 65 Daniel Haitas, “Shang Yang and Legalist Reform in The Ancient Chinese State of Qin,” Challenges of the Knowledge Society 12 (2018), 524–531, accessed March 22, 2021, https://doaj.org/article/1675416918714f20b18ef6ce5890255f. 66 Shang Yang, The Book of Lord Shang, 143.

Now the people in groups of ﬁve are responsible for each other ’s crimes, they spy on each other to discover transgressions, they denounce each other and cause hostile relations. By thus establishing enmity the people harm each other, they injure friendly feelings, destroy benevolence and kindness and damage scholarship and culture.67

This ancient method of punishing extended family members or relatives is currently widely applied to the people of East Turkistan. Abdurishit Burhan, an Uyghur witness currently living in Canada explained: “Each 10 families were made into one group and had to be responsible for each other’s behavior, and spy on each other. People know what kind of torture they will receive if they are going to be arrested. Sometimes I have seen people betray their family member to save themselves.” Abdurishit added that the “mutual responsibility policy started in 2013 in Kashgar.”68 This is exactly what legalism promoted:

In a condition of complete good government, husband and wife and friends cannot abandon each other’s evil, cover up wrong-doing and not cause harm to relatives, nor can the men from the people mutually conceal each other from their superiors and government servants.69

According to the Uyghur witness, Umide:

Each local unit in every neighborhood has Uyghur social workers. They must report and arrest 30 persons in certain periods, for so called re-education camps. They start to report and arrest people that they have no relationship with. Later, they will arrest their relatives. One of my friends works in a local unit. They work under the strict surveillance of people’s police. She said she cried and reported her cousin to ﬁll the numbers. When there are no people left to arrest, they have to report themselves. It is a very common and well-known issue.70

The tenets of Legalism have thus become a very useful tool for the implementation of genocide in China’s colony of East Turkistan. Until now, most men and those who are educated, young, and strong have already been eliminated in East Turkistan. This, too, is exactly what Legalism advocated: “To remove the strong by means of a strong people brings weakness; to remove the strong by means of a weak people brings strength.”71 The rest of the population—mostly women—are controlled through forced labor as the Legalist argument also proposed, in the following way:

If compulsory labour service is rare, the people will feel safe; if the people are safe, the ministers will gain no extra power; if the ministers have no extra power, powerful and inﬂuential

67 Ibid., 35. 68 Abdurishit Burhan*, in-person interview with author, March 19, 2021, Toronto, Canada. 69 Shang Yang, The Book of Lord Shang, 36. 70 Umide, interview, March 22, 2021. First mentioned in note 62. 71 Shang Yang, The Book of Lord Shang, 153.

men will be extinguished; and if powerful and inﬂuential men disappear, all credit will be due to the sovereign.72

Conclusion The ICTR, dealing with another recent genocide, explained that “Genocide does not imply the actual extermination of a group in its entirety, but is understood as such, once any one of the acts mentioned in article II (2)(a) through II (2)(e) is committed with the specific intent to destroy ‘in whole or in part’ a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”73 The ICTR commentary also explained that: “Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” is prohibited under the Convention’s Article 2(d) and is exemplified by the practice of sterilization, forced birth control, and separation of sexes from the targeted group.74 It is clear that the Chinese government has violated the UN Genocide Convention by way of its state policies which include conducting mass scale sterilization, separating the genders by sending Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim males to concentration and forced labor camps, and by forcing Uyghur women to marry ethnic Han Chinese. All of these severe acts are a direct outcome of Chinese colonialism in East Turkistan and violate not only Article 2(d), by imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, but also Article 2(b), “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;” Article 2(c) “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” As symbols of the land and the dignity and continuation of their people, Uyghur women have become the symbolic and direct target of domination under China’s colonialism. The ancient barbaric philosophy expressed in Legalism has also underpinned Chinese colonial ideology and reinforced the genocide. Consequently, preventing the continuation of and ultimately stopping the genocide in East Turkistan may require the decolonization of East Turkistan—as the genocide of its people stems directly from China’s colonization of the region.

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72 Han Fei Tzu, “Guarding Against the Interior,” in Vol. II of The Complete Works of Han Fei Tzu, trans. Wen Kuei Liao (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1939), 148. 73 The Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, Trial Judgement, September 2, 1998, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), ICTR-96-4-T, para. 497, accessed April 13, 2021, https://unictr.irmct.org/sites/unictr.org/ﬁles/case- documents/ictr-96-4/trial-judgements/en/980902.pdf. 74 Ibid., paras. 507–508. See, in particular, “…[i]mposing measures intended to prevent births within the group…” include “…sexual mutilation, the practice of sterilization, forced birth control, separation of the sexes and prohibition of marriages. In patriarchal societies, where membership of a group is determined by the identity of the father, an example…is the case where, during rape, a woman of the said group is deliberately impregnated by a man of another group, with the intent to have her give birth to a child who will consequently not belong to its mother's group.”

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Li, Shao Xia 李绍霞, “An Analysis Report on Population Change in Xinjiang.” Global Times, January 7, 2021. Accessed February 24, 2021. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/ 202101/1212073.shtml. ------. “Xīnjiāng zú jì tōnghūn de diàochá yǔ fēnxī: 新疆族际通婚的调查与分析” [Investigation and Analysis of Intermarriage in Xinjiang]. Creaders.net (blog), May 9, 2014, accessed May 23, 2020, http://blog.creaders.net/u/3328/201405/181046.html. Liu, Minghuan 刘明焕. “Xīnjiāng kuòdà hànhuà zhèngcè hànrén qǔ jiāng nǚ kě dé 50 mǔ tián jí 7 wàn yuán xiànjīn: 新疆扩⼤汉化政策汉⼈娶疆⼥可得50亩⽥及7万元现⾦” [Xinjiang Expands Sinicization: Han People Marry Xinjiang Women Get 50 Mu Fields and 70,000 Yuan in Cash]. New Tang Dynasty Television: 新唐电视台, Oct. 30, 2019. Accessed May 24, 2020. https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2019/10/30/a102696368.html. Ma, Alexandra. “China is Reportedly Sending Men to Sleep in the Same Beds as Uighur Muslim Women while their Husbands are in Prison Camps.” Business Insider, November 4, 2019. Accessed May 23, 2020. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-uighur-monitor- home-shared-bed-report-2019-11. Millward, James A. Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang, 1st ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. QQ Video News. “Xinjiang guniang wei sha bu neng tong hanzu nanzi jiehun: 新疆姑娘, 为啥不能同汉族男⼦结婚？来听下当地⼈怎么说” [Why Uyghur Women Cannot Marry Han Chinese]. November 27, 2019. Accessed May 21, 2020. https://v.qq.com/x/page/ f3026lh9hej.html. Ramzy, Austin and Chris Buckley, “‘Absolutely No Mercy:’ Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims.” The New York Times, November 16, 2019. Accessed March 21, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/ asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html. Ruser, Nathan and James Leibold. Family De-Planning: The Coercive Campaign to Drive Down Indigenous Birth-Rates in Xinjiang. Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), May 12, 2021. Accessed May 12, 2021. https://www.aspi.org.au/report/family-deplanning- birthrates-xinjiang. Sauytbay, Sayragul and Alexandra Cavelius. The Chief Witness: Escape from China’s Modern-Day Concentration Camps. Translated by Caroline Waight. Melbourne: Scribe, 2021. Shang, Yang. The Book of Lord Shang: A Classic of the Chinese School of Law, trans. Jan Julius Lodewijk Duyvendak. London: Arthur Probsthain, 1928. Short, Jonathan M. H. “Sexual Violence as Genocide: The Developing Law of the International Criminal Tribunals and the International Criminal Court.” Michigan Journal of Race and Law 8, no. 2 (2003), Accessed May 15, 2021. https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl/ vol8/iss2/5. Stubley, Peter. “Muslim Women 'Sterilised' in China Detention Camps, Say Former Detainees.” The Independent, Aug 12, 2019. Accessed May 23, 2020. https:// www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-china-sterilisation- women-internment-camps-xinjiang-a9054641.html. The State Council Information Ofﬁce of the People's Republic of China, Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang. White Paper. The People’s Republic of China, September 17, 2020. Accessed January 28, 2021. http://english.www.gov.cn/archive/whitepaper/ 202009/17/content_WS5f62cef6c6d0f7257693c192.html. Thum, Rian. The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2014. United Nations (UN). General Assembly Resolution 260, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. December 9, 1948. UN Doc. A/RES/260(III). ------. “Rwanda International Criminal Tribunal Pronounces Guilty Verdict in Historic Genocide Trial.” Press Release, September 2, 1998. Accessed May 15, 2021. https:// www.un.org/press/en/1998/19980902.afr94.html.

YouTube video, 00:37:20. Uploaded ”.مــــەشــــھۇر جــــازاالگــــىرى شــــاھــــىدى مــــىھىرگــــۈل تــــۇرســــۇن“ .Uyghur Ekrani February 10, 2021. Accessed March 25, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=ijxmwpK01Fk. Uyghur Human Rights Project. China: Transfer of 400,000 Young Uyghur Women into Eastern China. Brussels: Human Rights Without Frontiers International, June 19, 2008. Accessed September 21, 2020. http://www.david-kilgour.com/2008/Jun_20_2008_01.htm. Uyghur Research Institute. Genocide in East Turkistan. Ankara: Uyghur Research Institute, February 2019. Accessed May 19, 2020. https://www.uysi.org/en/?p=774. Xi, Jinping. “Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” Speech, Beijing, delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, October 18, 2017. Accessed September 23, 2020. www.xinhuanet.com/ english/download/Xi_Jinping's_report_at_19th_CPC_National_Congress.pdf. Xu, Vicky Xiuzhong, Danielle Cave, James Leibold, Kelsey Munro, and Nathan Ruser. Uyghurs For Sale: “Re-Education,” Forced Labour, and Surveillance Beyond Xinjiang. Australian Strategic Policy Institute, March 1, 2020. Accessed May 23, 2020. https:// www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale. Yao, Lao. “Families that Hang Together.” China Daily, May 17, 2004. Accessed March 22, 2021. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-05/17/content_331252.htm. Zaidi, Afroze Fatima. “China is Forcibly Sterilising Muslim Women in Internment Camps, According to Former Detainees.” The Canary, August 17, 2019. Accessed March 23, 2021. https://www.thecanary.co/global/2019/08/17/china-is-forcibly-sterilising-muslim- women-in-internment-camps-according-to-former-detainees/. Zenz, Adrian. “The Karakax List: Dissecting the Anatomy of Beijing's Internment Drive in Xinjiang.” Journal of Political Risk 8, no. 2 (February 2020). Accessed May 20, 2020 https://www.jpolrisk.com/karakax/. ------. Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang (Washington D.C.: The Jamestown Foundation, June 2020). Accessed September 4, 2020. https://jamestown.org/product/sterilizations-iuds-and- mandatory-birth-control-the-ccps-campaign-to-suppress-uyghur-birthrates-in- xinjiang/. ------. “‘Wash Brains, Cleanse Hearts:’ Evidence from Chinese Government Documents about the Nature and Extent of Xinjiang’s Extrajudicial Internment Campaign.” Journal of Political Risk 7, no. 11 (November 2019). Accessed May 15, 2021. https:// www.jpolrisk.com/wash-brains-cleanse-hearts/.

Andrew Woolford University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Wanda June University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Sereyvothny Um Independent Researcher Phnom Penh, Cambodia

“The most important thing is rice.”1

In recent years, genocide scholars have given greater attention to the dangers posed by climate change for increasing the prevalence or intensity of genocide.2 Challenges related to forced migration, resource scarcity, famine, and other threats of the Anthropocene are identiﬁed as sources of present and future risk, especially for those committed to genocide prevention.3 We applaud these efforts, but approach the connection between the natural and social aspects of genocide from a different angle. Our research emanates out of a North American Indigenous studies and new materialist rather than Euro-genocide studies framework; meaning, we see the natural and the social (or cultural) as inseparable, deeply imbricated, phenomena. We argue that those entities designated natural are often engaged in co-constitutive relations with the social and cultural groups that are the focus of genocide studies. Simply put, groups become what they are through interaction—or symbiogenesis—with their natural world(s). Rather than forecast the prospects for increased genocidal destruction due to climate change, our project is to re-evaluate cases from the genocide canon to illuminate the symbiogenetic destruction apparent in these earlier events.4 In the present study, we examine testimony that centers on the relationship between Khmer people and rice, including rice cultivation and consumption, as it was impacted by the Khmer Rouge. In so doing, we highlight the cultural consequences of social/natural death in the Cambodian genocide.

1 Thomas Weber Carlsen and Jan Krogsgaard, Voices of the Khmer Rouge (Dec 2002–May 2003), interview 9, from Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, accessed July 2019. 2 See, for example, Martin Crook and Damien Short, “Marx, Lemkin and the Genocide-Ecocide Nexus,” The International Journal of Human Rights 18, no. 3 (2014), 306; Damian Short, Redeﬁning Genocide: Settler Colonialism, Social Death and Ecocide (London: Zed Books, 2016); Michael J. Lynch, Averi Fegadel, and Michael A. Long, “Green Criminology and State-Corporate Crime: The Ecocide-Genocide Nexus with Examples from Nigeria,” Journal of Genocide Research (2020), 1–21; Jürgen Zimmerer, “From the Editors: Environmental Genocide? Climate Change, Mass Violence and the Question of Ideology,” Journal of Genocide Research 9, no. 3, (2007), 349–351; Jürgen Zimmerer, ed., Climate Change and Genocide: Environmental Violence in the 21st Century (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015). 3 See, for example: Alex Alvarez, Unstable Ground: Climate Change, Conﬂict, and Genocide (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefeld Publishers, 2017); Jürgen Scheffran, Tobias Ide, and Janpeter Schilling, “Violent Climate or Climate of Violence? Concepts and Relations with Focus on Kenya and Sudan,” The International Journal of Human Rights 18, no. 3 (2014), 369–390; Andreas Exenberger and Andreas Pondorfer, “Genocidal Risk and Climate Change: Africa in the Twenty-First Century,” The International Journal of Human Rights 18, no. 3 (2014), 350–368. 4 For discussion of the genocide canon, see Alexander Laban Hinton, “Critical Genocide Studies,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 7, no. 1 (2012), 4–15.

Andrew Woolford, Wanda June, and Sereyvothny Um. “‘We Planted Rice and Killed People:’ Symbiogenetic Destruction in the Cambodia Genocide.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1, 44–67. https://doi.org/ 10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1805. © 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention. Symbiogenetic Destruction in the Cambodian Genocide 45

Two important qualifications are necessary. First, though our research project is influenced by Turtle Island (North American) Indigenous ontologies of relations between human and more-than-human life, having been “civilized” by our previous work on settler colonial genocide,5 we do not draw an equivalence between Indigenous ontologies of symbiogenesis and those in other cultures. Instead, we seek to show what is distinct in each culture’s particular association with their more-than-human co-constituents. As well, our goal is to elevate and center the work of Indigenous Elders and scholars by allowing it to sensitize our approach and to equip us with another source of critical reflexivity.6 Second, our claim is not that symbiogenetic destruction is genocide. Whether exploring massacres of animal species such as cattle during the Rwandan genocide, the toxification of bodies of water such as Lake Winnipeg under Canadian settler colonialism, the loss of identity- bearing territories such as Mount Ararat, or the transformation of rice farming through the Cambodian genocide, our primary conclusion is not that the destruction of the natural world is in and of itself an act of genocide. We are sympathetic to such arguments7 but we do not wish to add symbiogenetic genocide to a growing list of genocide sub-types that includes terms such as gendercide, urbicide, and ethnocide, among others.8 Instead, symbiogenetic destruction runs in parallel with Claudia Card’s deployment of “social death”—what we refer to later in the paper as social/natural death—in that it describes a key relational stake, or that which is at risk, in genocidal processes. It draws attention to the group-producing relations with more-than-human entities that are integral components of the ongoing formation of group life. In this paper, we focus on the relations between Khmer people and rice. Both Khmer and rice are dynamic rather than static categories. Each is itself a complex set of interactions. Khmer culture is produced through the actions of people who identify as Khmer, who do not always necessarily agree with what it means to be Khmer, thereby making Khmer-ness part of an ongoing set of negotiations.9 This complexity goes beyond the level of the group, since each individual group member is involved in a process of identity formation, locating themselves in terms of what it means to be Khmer, but also refracting this identity through other intersecting sources of belonging, such as family, religion, and politics. Likewise, each individual is also a symbiogenetic composition of millions of microbiota that play roles in growth, digestion, and moods.10 The groups we study are thus a multitude of associations comprised of further associations; meaning, we always face the danger of reification when seeking to contain their fluidity within our categorical terminology. When we speak of Khmer culture it should therefore be noted that we are speaking of the ongoing process of making Khmer culture.

5 For more on the notion of settler colonizer researchers being “civilized” by engagement with Indigenous communities, please see Isaiah Wilner, “A Global Potlatch: Identifying the Indigenous Influence on Western Thought,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 37, no. 2 (2013), 87. 6 In particular, we are grateful for interactions with Anishinaabe and Cree Elders, including Theodore Fontaine, David Courchene, Mary Courchene, and Betty Ross who have reminded us of the centrality of nature in our lives. 7 See, for example, Tasha Hubbard “Buffalo Genocide in Nineteenth-Century North America: ‘Kill, Skin, and Sell,’” in Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America, ed. Andrew Woolford et al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 292; see also, in general, Lauren J. Eichler, “Ecocide is Genocide: Decolonizing the Definition of Genocide,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 14, no. 2 (2020), 104–121. 8 See Martin Coward, Urbicide: The Politics of Urban Destruction (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009); Adam Jones, ed., Gendercide and Genocide (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004), 1; Mary Anne Warren, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection (Totowa: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985); Andrew Markus, “Genocide in Australia,” Aboriginal History 25, no. 3 (2001), 57. 9 See, for example, Alexander Laban Hinton, Why Did they Kill?: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 10 Dorion Sagan, “The Human is More than Human: Interspecies Communities and the New ‘Facts of Life,’” Fieldsights, November 18, 2011, accessed June 4, 2020, https://culanth.org/fieldsights/the-human-is-more-than-human- interspecies-communities-and-the-new-facts-of-life.

Likewise, rice is not a single thing. For example, there are approximately 2,000 strains of rice that are unique to Cambodia.11 Each strain is itself a mixture of protein, fat, fiber, and sand ash. When milled, these properties are further transformed, as the white grain loses fiber, protein, and minerals. Isolating rice from its own web of relations entails analytical decision- making. Each plant from every strain of rice exists within a network of water, animal species, weather, and other factors. As Mak notes, a delicate and intricate balance sustains this network in Cambodia: “Rice-based farming systems in Cambodia incorporate rain fed lowland rice, dry season rice in some cases, animal production (cattle, pigs, chickens, and ducks), fishing (or fish culture) and other activities (such as palm sugar production, vegetable production, wild food collection and trade). Because of the close interaction of these components, a change in any one of them can alter the whole system.”12 For the sake of making a clear argument, we will focus on the symbiogenetic destruction between Khmer and rice that occurred under the Khmer Rouge (KR), and its ruling faction of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), but, in truth, we are speaking to a much more diverse set of relational disruptions.13

Genocide, Ecocide, and Symbiogenetic Destruction Genocide studies takes group destruction as an essential wrong to be prevented.14 What comprises the group is an ongoing topic of debate, with fault lines existing around the question of which types of group are to be included for protection.15 The narrow framing of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNGC 1948), which speciﬁes “national, ethnical, racial, or religious groups” as those protected, has been criticized for ignoring political and class-based groups.16 More capacious readings of the UNGC have since presented these four group types as examples of “stable and permanent” patterns of group life rather than a complete set of groups potentially targeted by genocide.17 Beyond the issue of group types, genocide scholarship also diverges between what A. Dirk Moses describes as “liberal” and “post-liberal” approaches, with the former focusing on state-based, totalitarian forms of genocidal intent while the latter opens the door to consideration of “relations of genocide” into which genocide is structurally embedded rather

11 Kent Helmers, “Rice in the Cambodian Economy: Past and Present,” in Rice Production in Cambodia, ed. Harry J. Nesbitt (Phnom Penh: Cambodia-IRRI-Australia Project, 1997), 2. 12 S. Mak, “Continued Innovation in a Cambodian Rice-Based Farming System: Farmer Testing and Recombination of New Elements,” Agricultural Systems 69, no. 1–2 (2001), 137. 13 Given the exploratory nature of this paper, we restrict our focus to the broader destruction of Khmer social relations under the Khmer Rouge. One could also drill down deeper to examine how speciﬁc minorities experienced symbiogenetic destruction, such as the Cham, or Indigenous groups living among the Khmer, such as the Mnong, Kuy, and Tampuan. Each group will have a distinct story of how relations with rice were impacted by the Khmer Rouge. 14 See, for example: Frank Chalk, “Redeﬁning Genocide,” in Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions, ed. George Andreopoulos (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 47; Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Daniel Chirot and Clark McCauley, Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Helen Fein, “Accounting for Genocide After 1945: Theories and Some Findings,” International Journal on Group Rights 1, no. 2 (1993), 79; Helen Fein, “Genocide, Terror, Life Integrity, and War Crimes: The Case for Discrimination,” in Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions, ed. George J. Andreopoulos (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 95–108; Michael Freeman, “The Theory and Prevention of Genocide,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 6, no. 2 (1991), 185–199; Ervin Staub, “Genocide and Mass Killing: Origins, Prevention, Healing and Reconciliation,” Political Psychology 21, no. 2 (2000), 367–382. 15 Christopher Powell, “What do Genocides Kill? A Relational Conception of Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 9, no. 4 (2007), 527–547. 16 See, for example: Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); Lyman H. Legters, “The Soviet Gulag: Is It Genocidal?” in Toward the Understanding and Prevention of Genocide: Proceedings of the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, ed. Israel W. Charny (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), 60–66. 17 Prosecutor v. Akayesu, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), September 2, 1998, ICTR-96-4, section 6.3.1, para. 516.

than necessarily explicitly expressed.18 Christopher Powell adds to Moses’s distinction that liberal approaches tend to view groups essentially as associations of individuals, making these individual lives the ultimate targets for protection.19 Whereas for post-liberals the group is an entity valued in and of itself, in part because it is a carrier of culture, which is an accumulation of knowledge and practices that bring meaning to group members’ lives. This post-liberal approach has been enhanced by engagement with Indigenous understandings of collectivity.20 But it is also strongly inﬂuenced by Raphaël Lemkin’s scholarship and advocacy in which the group is more than simply a gathering of individuals; it is a distinct cultural entity that through its mere existence contributes to our global diversity and therefore collective wealth as a species.21 Confounding contemporary studies of genocide though is the fact that the persistence of human groups appears more and more impacted by their relations with the natural world. The ecological damage suffered under the Anthropocene has introduced an epoch in which we can no longer draw neat dividing lines between human cultures and their natures,22 if we ever could.23 The human group is entwined with the natural world in a manner that makes their symbiogenesis an important topic of research for those committed to advancing group protection. This inﬂuence may spark a “post-humanist” approach to genocide, adding to Moses’s typology.24 Our preference, however, is to call it a “post-anthropocentric” turn, since we are not yet done with the human; rather, our goal is to better understand entanglements of the human and the more-than-human within genocidal processes.

18 A. Dirk Moses, “Conceptual Blockages and Deﬁnitional Dilemmas in the ‘Racial Century:’ Genocides of Indigenous Peoples and the Holocaust,” Patterns of Prejudice 36, no. 4 (2002), 19–28. On “relations of genocide,” see Tony Barta, “Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia,” in Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death, ed. Isidor Wallimann, Michael N. Dobkowski, and Richard L. Rubenstein (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 237–253. 19 Powell, What do Genocides Kill?, 528. For an example of the liberal approach, see Chalk and Jonassohn, History and Sociology of Genocide. 20 See Barta, Relations of Genocide; Damian Short, “Cultural Genocide and Indigenous Peoples: A Sociological Approach,” The International Journal of Human Rights 14, no. 6 (2010), 833–848; Andrew Woolford, “Ontological Destruction: Genocide and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 4, no. 1 (2009), 81–97. 21 Raphaël Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944); Raphaël Lemkin, Totally Unofﬁcial: The Autobiography of Raphaël Lemkin, ed. Donna Lee Frieze (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); Douglas Irvin- Erickson, Raphaël Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Anton Weiss-Wendt, The Soviet Union and the Gutting of the UN Genocide Convention (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017); A. Dirk Moses, “Empire, Colony, Genocide: Keywords and the Philosophy of History,” in Empire, Colony, and Genocide: Conquest, Occupation and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. A. Dirk Moses (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 3–54. 22 For further discussion of the Anthropocene, see Rodolfo Dirzo et al., “Defaunation in the Anthropocene,” Science 345, no. 6195 (2014), 401–406; David Cecil Smith and Angela Elizabeth Douglas, The Biology of Symbiosis (London: Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd., 1987); Will Steffen, Paul J. Crutzen, and John R. McNeill, “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature,” AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment 36, no. 8 (2007), 614–621; Jan Zalasiewicz et al., “The New World of the Anthropocene,” Environmental Science & Technology 44, no. 7 (2010), 2228–2231. 23 Various authors challenge the nature/culture distinction. See Michel Callon, “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay,” in Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge, ed. John Law (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), 196–233; Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Deborah Bird Rose, “Introduction: Writing in the Anthropocene,” Australian Humanities Review 47 (2009), 87. 24 Authors such as Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour are often included under the label “post-humanism” with varying levels of comfort.

Post-anthropocentrism pushes beyond the human as the measure of all worth.25 Genocide studies has difficulty avoiding anthropocentrism entirely, since the human group remains our central unit of analysis. But what if we blur the boundaries of such groups so that more-than-human co-constituents are allowed in? By centering human and more-than-human relations within the genocide story, rather than isolating the experiences of human actors, we seek to decenter the human subject to explore what new insights can be brought forward through this displacement. In particular, our objective is to make room for a hybrid rather than asymmetrical understanding of human and more-than-human relations so that the latter is not simply held to be instrumental to the former. That is, we move beyond analyses in which a human group’s relationship with land, plants, water, or animals is considered relevant only to the extent that these natural entities serve the physical subsistence and reproduction of the human group.26 Asymmetric genocide research is evident in early scholarship on this topic in which the natural world factored into consideration primarily as an object of human conflict. Culturally differentiated human groups were viewed to be in competition over resources, power, or other desired goods.27 As well, it was noted that the natural world might be invoked in genocide ideology to advance the demonization or dehumanization of the targeted group, treating them as dogs, cockroaches, or beasts.28 More recently, scholars have begun to reflect on the impact of ecocidal destruction and climate change on processes of genocide.29 Ecocide is offered as an addition to the lexicon of destruction, and defined as “the extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been or will be severely diminished.”30 Martin Crook and Damien Short bring this terminology into genocide research to describe the genocide-ecocide nexus as an interstitial space between genocide and ecocide.31 We situate our current research project amidst this “in-between” space. But rather than focus on how larger ecocidal and genocidal processes sustain and reinforce each other, our work highlights the quotidian interactions through which humans form their groups with more-than-human counterparts, as well as the ways these relationships are impacted by genocide and/or ecocide. The terms we rely upon to describe this process are symbiogenesis and symbiogenetic destruction. Both are built from the word symbiosis, which is derived from the Greek sumbiōsis, meaning “a living together.” In biology, symbiosis refers to two or more organisms sharing a

25 Rosi Braidotti, “A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities,” Theory, Culture & Society 36, no. 6 (2019), 32. See also Adam J. Fix, Hugh Burnam, and Ray Gutteriez, “Toward Interspecies Thinking as a Collaborative Concept: Autoethnographies at the Intersection of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Animal Studies,” Humanimalia: A Journal of Human/Animal Interface Studies 10, no. 2 (Spring 2019), 128–149. 26 For exceptions, see Jennifer Huseman and Damien Short, “‘A Slow Industrial Genocide:’ Tar Sands and the Indigenous Peoples of Northern Alberta,” The International Journal of Human Rights 16, no. 1 (2012), 216–237; Woolford, Ontological Destruction. 27 See, in general, Chalk and Jonassohn, History and Sociology of Genocide; Isidor Dobkowski, Michael N. Wallimann, and Richard L. Rubenstein, eds., Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000); Fein, Accounting for Genocide; Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). 28 See, in general, John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond, “The Collective Dynamics of Racial Dehumanization and Genocidal Victimization in Darfur,” American Sociological Review 73, no. 6 (2008), 875–902; Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton, Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Alexander L. Hinton, “Agents of Death: Explaining the Cambodian Genocide in Terms of Psychosocial Dissonance,” American Anthropologist 98, no. 4 (1996), 818–831. 29 Crook and Short, Genocide-Ecocide Nexus; Short, Redeﬁning Genocide; Zimmerer, Climate Change and Genocide. 30 Polly Higgins, Damian Short, and Nigel South, “Protecting the Planet: A Proposal for a Law of Ecocide,” Crime, Law, and Social Change 59 (2013), 257. 31 Crook and Short, Genocide-Ecocide Nexus.

close relationship. This does not need to be an equally beneficial relationship.32 Mutualism, in symbiosis, describes the ways in which two species interact in relationship with one another toward their mutual benefit.33 It contrasts with inter-species forms of competition, such as invasive species, or parasitism, where one entity benefits while the other is harmed.34 More recent discussion of symbiogenesis or sympoiesis—the process whereby complex systems are produced through inter-species relations—moves beyond the potential instrumentality of symbiosis.35 It is a terminology developed in contrast to Darwinian, Hobbesian, and Malthusian notions of competition and survival. Peter Kropotkin, in Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, used the language of symbiosis to demonstrate a natural tendency toward cooperation as a counterpoint to the naturalization of competition in laissez faire capitalism.36 Following this approach, symbiogenesis has found purchase in the work of Lynn Margulis,37 as well as in feminist studies of science that seek to dissolve the boundaries between the social and the biological.38 With respect to the latter, Donna Haraway explains symbiogenesis through the example of Churro sheep in Dinetah (Diné or Navajo, territory).39 Sheep and Diné co-exist in kin-like relations through which patterns of Diné pastoralism, gender relations, and clan organization are made possible. The forced cull of these animals by the US government in the 1930s was thus experienced as a world-destroying assault on the Diné way of being, which impacted not only the physical sustenance of the group, but threw cultural relations, particularly gender relations, into disarray.40 Symbiogenetic destruction is therefore the destruction of symbiogenesis. It is not intended to replace expressions such as ecocide or the genocide-ecocide nexus. Instead, it sensitizes genocide studies to the relations that proposed laws against ecocide intend to protect. It acknowledges that the groups protected by genocide are symbiogenetically formed through their connections to more-than-human entities, and that genocide impacts these connections in multiple ways that are detrimental to human groups and their more-than-human counterparts. Through this notion, one can better understand how inter-species mingling, which is important to how groups define themselves in cultural and symbolic terms, is placed in danger during genocidal processes.

Becoming Groups Together: Symbiogenesis and the Things that make Us In his seminal essay, We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour recasts the culture/nature divide as a result of a modern constitution—one whereby we, as self-styled moderns, agreed to treat

32 Bradford D. Martin and Ernest Schwab, “Current Usage of Symbiosis and Associated Terminology,” International Journal of Biology 5, no. 1 (2013), 32–45; Surindar Paracer and Vernon Ahmadjian, Symbiosis: An Introduction to Biological Associations, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 33 Michael Begon, Colin R. Townsend, and John L. Harper, Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems, 4th ed. (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), 27. 34 Paul W. Ewald, “Transmission Modes and Evolution of the Parasitism-Mutualism Continuum,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 503, no. 1 (1987), 295–306; Regina S. Redman, David D. Dunigan, and Rusty J. Rodriguez, “Fungal Symbiosis from Mutualism to Parasitism: Who Controls the Outcome, Host or Invader?,” New Phytologist 151, no. 3 (2001), 705–716; Peter H. Thrall et al., “Coevolution of Symbiotic Mutualists and Parasites in a Community Context,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 22, no. 3 (2007), 120–126. 35 Beth M. L. Dempster, “A Self-Organizing Systems Perspective on Planning for Sustainability” (PhD diss., University of Waterloo, 1998); Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). 36 Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution (Mineola: Dover, 1902). 37 Lynn Margulis, Symbiosis in Cell Evolution (San Francisco: WH Freeman & Co Ltd, 1981). See also her previous ground- breaking article, published as Lynn Sagan, “On the Origin of Mitosing Cells,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 14, no. 3 (1967), 225–274. 38 Norah Campbell, Stephen Dunne, and Paul Ennis, “Graham Harman, Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory,” Theory, Culture & Society 36, no. 3 (2019), 131. 39 Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 91. 40 See also Marsha Weisiger, Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009).

culture and nature separately, despite their numerous entanglements in our everyday lives.41 For Latour, this constitution requires an act of purification that allows us to ignore the ways that our cultures overlap and engage with our natures, exemplified by the amalgams of culture and nature in climate change and disease spread. In the field of genocide studies, since Raphaël Lemkin first coined the genocide concept,42 several scholars have seen culture as a foundational component of group life.43 However, the intersection between natures and cultures has received less attention, though recent contributions to the environmental history of the Holocaust promise more consideration of multispecies intersections.44 Latour’s innovation was not new to Indigenous scholars. As Kelsey Dale John remarks, such perspectives only appear new because of the attempted erasure of Indigenous knowledges and their exclusion from academia.45 Indigenous scholars such as Leanne Betasmoke Simpson, John Borrows, Eve Tuck, and Glen Coulthard, among several others, have long emphasized how Indigenous peoples, languages, territories, water sources, plant life, the spirit world, kin species, and additional more-than-human actors are integral components of an intricate web of relations.46 Latour’s contribution thus might be better specified as one noting that non- Indigenous cultures are less separate from their more-than-human counterparts than they often imagine, even if the entanglements are perhaps not as cosmologically central as they are for Indigenous peoples. If our cultural selves are formed through interactions beyond those with our fellow humans, what consequences does this have for the notion of the group that is central to genocide studies? The group is a word Latour argues is empty of content; it suggests a fixity, something that is complete, rather than something that is being formed. He prefers the term “associations,” capturing what other scholars describe as the process of becoming through which a collective continuously forms itself.47 Associations emerge through relations that include alliances, attachments, and other forms of multispecies mingling.48 As Donna Haraway notes, processes of becoming are always ones of becoming with,49 and this includes interactions

41 Latour, Never Been Modern; See also Jonathan Mark Anderson, “Transient Convergence and Relational Sensibility: Beyond the Modern Construction of Nature,” Emotion, Space and Society 2, no. 2 (2009), 120–127; Bruce Braun, “Nature and Culture: On the Career of a False Problem,” in A Companion to Cultural Geography, ed. James S. Duncan et al. (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 151–179. 42 Lemkin, Axis Rule. 43 Moses, Empire, Colony, Genocide; Short, Cultural Genocide and Indigenous Peoples; Woolford, Ontological Destruction; Andrew Woolford, This Benevolent Experiment: Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States (Lincoln and Winnipeg: University of Nebraska Press and University of Manitoba Press, 2015). 44 Jacek Małczyński et al., “The Environmental History of the Holocaust,” Journal of Genocide Research 22, no. 2 (2020), 183–196; Jacek Małczyński, “The Politics of Nature at the Former Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp,” Journal of Genocide Research 22, no. 2 (2020), 197–219; Ewa Domańska, “The Environmental History of Mass Graves,” Journal of Genocide Research 22, no. 2 (2020), 241–255; Tim Cole, “Expanding (Environmental) Histories of the Holocaust,” Journal of Genocide Research 22, no. 2 (2020), 273–279. 45 Kelsey Dayle John, “Animal Colonialism: Illustrating Intersections between Animal Studies and Settler Colonial Studies through Diné Horsemanship,” Humanalia: A Journal of Human/Animal Interface Studies 10, no. 2 (2019), 44. 46 John Borrows, “Heroes, Tricksters, Monsters, and Caretakers: Indigenous Law and Legal Education,” McGill Law Journal/Revue de droit de McGill 61, no. 4 (2016), 795–846; Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skins, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Winona Laduke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Cambridge: South End Press, 1999); Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Dancing on our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2011); Eve Tuck and Wayne K. Yang, “Decolonization is not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012), 1–40. 47 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 27–42. 48 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 241–242. 49 Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 60.

with more-than-human entities, whereby the latter contribute in diverse ways to the richness of the assemblage that is being produced.50 We do not discard the notion of the group, given its familiarity within genocide studies. But we understand groups as engaged in an ongoing process of becoming. As such, groups do not stand outside of nature, simply drawing upon it for sustenance, protecting themselves against its force, or mastering it for human betterment. Instead, they become the groups that they are through their relationships with a dynamic and active natural world.51 Simply put, and with reference to our primary case study, one can hardly imagine Khmer as a group without rice. As we show below, the KR transformation of rice production altered many aspects of Khmer life, such as relations to work, family, and food. And the assault upon these relations negatively impacted collective vitality. Building upon Claudia Card’s understanding of “social death,” a term she adapts from Orlando Patterson, one can conceptualize this loss of vitality as a form of social/natural death. For Card, social death is the fundamental harm of genocide.52 Though genocide also destroys lives, at its root it kills the relationships through which collective identities are formed and from which existential meaning is derived. But her argument stops short of acknowledging the full diversity of relations that allow collective life to offer meaning to its constituents. The “cultural heritage” and “intergenerational connections” that are lost in genocide are not restricted to the human, but also include more-than-human relations that span across the life of the group.53 Symbiogenetic destruction is thus a form of social/natural death, since symbiogenesis is a means by which humans and more-than-humans create collective vitality. It is the process of storying ourselves and our world together with our companions, kin, and others.54 In this sense, symbiogenesis does not naturalize nationalism in a manner that echoes Nazi propaganda of “blood and soil;”55 instead, it recognizes that culture and nature are conjoined in practices of co- imagination whereby the groups in which we ﬁnd meaning and belonging are shaped by the more-than-human counterparts with whom we intersect. When we speak of co-constitutive relations between humans and nature, we mean that the cultures of both the human and the more-than-human are transformed into something new when their lives meet. Vinciane Despret captures this symbiogenesis effectively when discussing the study of dogs. She writes: “I think that, for example, the ethology of dogs or cats is really helpful too because the question of nature and culture cannot really be raised, because even if all dogs behave in a certain way, it might be culture, but ... it’s not a culture of the dogs. It’s rather a culture of the history of dogs with humans that transformed both dogs and humans

50 This could be compared with the Guattarian notion of the group-subject, which is actively formed through self- organizing group members rather than an identity externally imposed. Such groups are formed through “transversality,” which enables openness to new members and goals of mutuality rather than domination. See Simone Bignall, Steve Hemming, and Daryle Rigney, “Three Ecosophies for the Anthropocene: Environmental Governance, Continental Posthumanism and Indigenous Expressivism,” Deleuze Studies 10, no. 4 (2016), 463. We are bracketing here the larger debate around the agency attributed to more-than-human entities, which will be addressed in our subsequent work. For more discussion of the debate on the agency of “actants” see Arianne Françoise Conty, “The Politics of Nature: New Materialist Responses to the Anthropocene,” Theory, Culture, & Society 35, no. 7–8 (2018), 73–96; Bruno Latour, “On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clariﬁcations,” Soziale Welt 47, no. 4 (1996), 369–381; Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013); Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (New York: Routledge, 2011); Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). 51 Kristin Asdal, “The Problematic Nature of Nature: The Post-Constructivist Challenge to Environmental History,” History and Theory 42, no. 4 (2003), 71. 52 Claudia Card, Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 237–266. 53 Claudia Card, “Genocide and Social Death,” Hypatia 18, no. 1 (2003), 73. 54 Brian McCormick, “Narrative Meaning and Multispecies Ethical Ontologies,” Humanalia: A Journal of Human/Animal Interface Studies 11, no. 1 (2019), 73. 55 Małczyński et al., Environmental History of the Holocaust, 187.

and created an artefact.”56 This is the history that interests us in the study of symbiogenetic destruction—the cultures transformed by ongoing relations with a natural world counterpart, and the consequences for the human group when these relations, which become part of the group, are subject to genocidal processes. Despret refers to this elsewhere as the “miracle of attunement” whereby humans and more-than-humans form affecting and effected relationships with one another.57 The human becomes a human with the more-than-human. More concretely, one could argue, the groups studied in genocide studies are also groups-with: in the present example, we can speak of Khmer-with-rice.

A Note on Methodology To capture elements of the relationship between Khmer and rice, as well as the destructive consequences of KR rice production policy, we rely on oral historical testimony drawn from multiple sources.58 We do not present the information drawn from these sources to render a complete picture of the past but rather to illustrate a sample of Khmer practices of meaning making about the past in which rice plays a primary role. The stories people tell about their past and their relations with rice offer perspective on the ways Khmer imagine themselves as members of families, communities, regions, and the nation. In this manner, the natural world is a resource for meaning making, and thus an essential foundation to the group’s existence. As McCormick notes: “Because stories are ongoing, revisable, and able to incorporate complexity, narrative forms are ideal for thinking multispecies community in shared, overlapping worlds.”59 Further, he adds: “Storied-places are sites of multispecies encounter. For a place to become a home, there must be successful negotiation amongst its denizens. Storied-places, then, are also multiple overlapping and entangled meaning-making practices that range beyond the individual.”60 Following McCormick’s emphasis on story as a site for exploring the intersections of the human and more-than-human, we examined transcribed memories as interpretations of both the time before, during, and after the period of Democratic Kampuchea. We have reviewed testimony taken both soon and many years after the fall of the KR, including testimony from former cadre, victims, and others who do not ﬁt neatly in either category. In total, as part of our broader research project, we examined over 110 transcripts, as well as a variety of other representations of the KR past, including memoirs, histories, documentaries, and movies. The frequency of rice in these narratives—as a source of labor, food, a family ritual, a community ceremony, among other associations—shows its relational centrality in the Khmer lifeworld. In different ways and different regions, Khmer people have shaped themselves alongside the ﬁelds of rice that support their existence.

Rice/People Rice has fed many cultures. Records of its production date back as far as 2,500 BCE. From its origins in China, it traveled throughout Asia and into Europe and Africa. It is a versatile crop that adapts to its environment. It is grown in both dry and wet regions. It adjusts to peoples, providing a storable food that carries the ﬂavors of cultures while ﬁlling hungry stomachs. And people adjust to it, shaping their daily activities, homes, and family lives to its cultivation and consumption.

56 Brett Buchanan, Matthew Chrulew, and Jeffrey Bussolini, “On Asking the Right Questions: An Interview with Vinciane Despret,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 20, no. 2 (2015), 173. 57 Vinciane Despret, “The Body We Care For: Figures of Anthropo-zoo-genesis,” Body & Society 10, no. 2–3 (2004), 125. 58 Sources include transcripts translated from the Document Center of Cambodia’s “Promoting Accountability” Interviews conducted between 2000–2007, as well as Promoting Accountability Reports, Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia testimony from civil parties and witnesses for cases 001 and 002, video interviews conducted by Thomas Weber Carlsen and Jan Krogsgaard between 2002–2003 and available at the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center in Phnom Penh, as well as interview transcripts obtained from the Jorng Jam and Kdai Karuna oral history projects. 59 McCormick, Ethical Ontologies, 72. 60 Ibid., 73.

Rice is a member of the Poaceae family. Each rice plant produces multiple groupings of approximately 200 flowers called tillers. Fertilized by wind-borne pollens, the thousands of grains of rice take shape in the plant. Cambodia’s wet rice strains are harvested from flooded rice paddies. The paddy is drained prior to harvesting, before the farmers cut the plants, often with a scythe or sickle, and let them dry. The dry plants are threshed against a slotted table that is placed over a tarp so that the rice seeds fall to the tarp to be collected. Milling follows to remove the husk, bran layer, and germ, resulting in white grains of rice.61 Khmer farmers have cultivated rice for more than 2,000 years. The era of the Khmer Empire was a period when irrigation and labor were organized to increase production. Nonetheless, small farm holdings cultivated by traditional methods, such as ox cart plows and hand threshing, remained the dominant practices. In the aftermath of the Khmer Empire, rice farming continued in this fashion. French colonialism (1863–1953) brought with it a push toward modernization, as large plantations were introduced in some regions, as well as inorganic fertilizers and machinery, all in an effort to build an export market, though many Khmer continued with traditional farming methods.62 In the first half of the twentieth century, the colonized region produced from 50,000 to 200,000 tonnes of rice per year for export. By 1940, Cambodia was the world’s third largest rice exporter. Those farmers who produced rice for French export, however, found themselves poorly compensated for their work. They received only 26 percent of the profit, with the remainder going to intermediaries, transport, processing, and government taxes.63 Rice means more than profit for Khmer people. It is central to Cambodian subsistence and the cultures of the region. The English phrase “to eat,” when translated into Khmer is pisa bei, literally meaning “to eat rice.”64 Though practices of rice production have shifted from time to time, rice has remained the staple of the Cambodian diet. Rice is also spiritually salient to Cambodian life. The rice rituals of the Cambodian agricultural cycle are of particular significance. For example, the celebration of Pchuṃ Biṇḍ takes place over two weeks at the end of the rainy season. To participate in the ceremony, Khmer who live elsewhere return to their place of birth to provide nourishment in the form of balls of rice to the lost souls released by the King of the Underworld. They do so to bestow merit upon and bless their ancestors, who may have become lost souls because of a burden of wrongdoing when living. But the ceremony is also an opportunity to participate in rituals of rebirth and renewal, as offerings made to the Buddhist Monks at the temples are acts through which participants themselves make merit. Rice is thus entwined in this ceremony that simultaneously mourns the dead and creates community cohesion.65 Many Khmer worship local spirits (neak ta or ancient ones). Some of these reside in natural spaces, such as mountains, fields, or mounds. Relationships are formed with neak ta through food offerings generously given in hopes that these powerful beings will not become angry and send sickness, floods, or other harms.66 In this manner, symbiogenesis with the natural world is embedded into ritual practice. Courtney Work describes neak ta as “sovereigns of the land,” who are “in and of the water and the land.”67 They are sometimes referred to as

61 The lead author visited a rice farm in Siem Reap to observe traditional rice producing methods and to speak with farmers. 62 Mak, Cambodian Rice-Based Farming System. 63 Helmers, Rice in the Cambodian Economy, 3–4. 64 Ibid., 1. 65 See Eveline Porée-Maspero, Étude sur les rites agraires des cambodgiens (Paris: Mouton, 1962) 315–359; Courtney Work, “Sacred Bribes and Deferred Violence: Buddhist Ritual in Rural Cambodia,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 45, no. 1 (2014), 4–24; Judy Ledgerwood, “Buddhist Ritual and the Reordering of Social Relations in Cambodia,” South East Asian Research 20, no. 2 (2012), 191–206. 66 Hinton, Why did They Kill?, 106–107. 67 Courtney Work, “Chthonic Sovereigns: ‘Neak Ta’ in a Cambodian Village,” The Asian Paciﬁc Journal of Anthropology 20, no. 1 (2019), 74–75.

manuss moel min coeñ (people who we cannot see), among which are included the mcâs dẏk mcâs ṭī (owners/masters of water and land). They are the true owners of the territory with whom social relationships defined by fear, gratitude, and respect are formed.68 These spirits help regulate respectful use of the land and its bounty, as mis- or overuse might result in negative consequences, such as misfortune or even death.69 Drastic changes to rice production thus threaten a web of spiritual relations intended to foster respect for the land. The cultural centrality of rice to Khmer society is broadly illustrated through Rithy Panh’s film Rice People (or Neak Sre, which refers to people who live in a rural area and farm rice for a living), where the rice paddy is presented as a microcosm of Cambodian life. In Panh’s film, a young couple worries about the coming harvest and their lack of land. They have seven daughters and for each the family will be expected to provide a dowry. Their fourteen acres of land amounts to only two acres per daughter. When the mother is bit by a cobra in the field, the fragility of their existence is made clear. Soon after, the father is stabbed by a thorn as he tills the muddy rice paddy, trying to get his rice planted in time. The thorn festers in his foot, leaving his wife, now recovered from her bite, and his daughters to “wake up the paddies.” Before he dies from his injury, the father has a fevered dream of his rice fields and house on fire as KR cadre march past. He searches among them for his family and is struck to the ground by blows from a soldier. After his death, his wife tries to care for the rice paddies with the help of her older daughters, resulting in her breakdown as her obsessive care of the rice eclipses that for her children. The rice people, Khmer in Panh’s film, live in the precarity of deep dependence on the rice harvest. Though many strands connect rice to the Cambodian genocide, we will focus on three in this paper: Rice and labor, rice and family, and rice and hunger.

The Rice of the Khmer Rouge Rice and rice production have been discussed in several studies of the Cambodian genocide.70 Many such studies focus on famine or the brutality of KR rice production policy. Our contribution to this literature is to bring the cultural centrality of rice into the foreground, to show how symbiogenetic relations between Khmer and rice were upset in Democratic Kampuchea. The post-Independence (1953) government of Norodom Sihanouk, who abdicated his throne in 1955 to serve as Cambodian Prime Minister, retained many French land use policies. During this time, rice yields continued to drive the Cambodian economy. Indeed, the rice harvest reached record levels from 1963 to 1965 and, for a brief period, rice exports supported a positive trade balance. But US engagement in the Vietnam War in 1965 brought US forces in the region to 300,000 by mid-1966. As well, there simultaneously occurred increased conscription into both Saigon’s forces and those of the National Liberation Front. All of these soldiers had to be fed and Cambodian rice was smuggled across the border for this purpose. Moreover, Richard Nixon’s “secret war” in Cambodia, which began with a May 1970 invasion, impacted the rice

68 Courtney Work, “‘There was so much:’ Violence, Sovereignty, and States of Extraction in Cambodia,” Journal of Religion and Violence 6, no. 1 (2018), 53. 69 Matthew O’Lemmon, “Spirit Cults and Buddhist Practice in Kep Province, Cambodia,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 45, no. 1 (2014), 34. 70 See, for example Randle C. DeFalco, “Justice and Starvation in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge Famine,” Cambodia Law & Policy Journal 2, no. 45 (2014), 45–84; James A. Tyner, From Rice Fields to Killing Fields: Nature, Life, and Labor under the Khmer Rouge (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2017); James Tyner and Stian Rice, “Cambodia’s Political Economy of Violence: Space, Time, and Genocide Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79,” Genocide Studies International 10, no. 1 (2016), 84–94; Stian Rice and James Tyner, “The Rice Cities of the Khmer Rouge: An Urban Political Ecology of Rural Mass Violence,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 42, no. 4 (2017), 559–571; James Tyner, “Violence, Surplus Production, and the Transformation of Nature During the Cambodian Genocide,” Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economic, Culture and Society 26, no. 4 (2014), 490–506; Maureen S. Hiebert, “Genocide, Revolution, and Starvation under the Khmer Rouge,” Genocide Studies International 11, no. 1 (2017), 68– 86; Daniel Bultmann, “Irrigating a Socialist Utopia: Disciplinary Space and Population Control under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979,” Transcience 3, no. 1 (2012), 40–52.

yield. Not only did the 2.7 million tons of bombs dropped on Cambodia result in lost lives and a refugee crisis, but the countryside was also devastated and rice production seriously compromised in acts some have referred to as ecocide.71 Peasant frustration grew because of land grabs, mounting debts, and other indignities, drawing them toward rebellion in the late 1960s. Then, on March 18, 1970, Lon Nol, with American backing, seized the government from the monarchy. For several cadre, it was this coup that overthrew Prince Sihanouk that brought them to the KR,72 as Sihanouk rallied his supporters to join.73 Between 1970 and 1973, the area of farmable rice land decreased by 77 percent, resulting in an 84 percent decrease to the rice yield, further exacerbating frustration.74 As well, US cross-border forays into Cambodia resulted in antipersonnel mines being hidden across the countryside, presenting new risks to farmers and civilians in these regions.75 Overall, the assault on Khmer, and on their primary source of subsistence, contributed to the growth of the KR. Rice shortages were widely felt. Price increases in rice were noted in Phnom Penh in the early 1970s. The population of the city steadily increased as refugees from the KR advance fled to the city. With the KR victory, Phnom Penh was evacuated on April 17, 1975,76 and both long- term and recent-arrival city dwellers came under suspicion. They were viewed as living an easy life on the backs of the peasant farmers. Their morality was in question because it was perceived that they did not engage in productive work. They were accused of being supporters of the Lon Nol regime. Strategically speaking, it was also the case that it did not serve the KR militarily to have population centers potentially vulnerable to attack, since they foresaw warfare with a weakened regime in Saigon, which would allow KR to claim contested territory from Vietnam before Vietnamese communists could do likewise.77 The city dwellers thus became a new workforce to improve the economic base of the new society. Part of what Alexander Hinton refers to as the “ontological resonance” of the KR message—the connection of socialist ideology to the lived experiences of Cambodians78 —came from the rice paddy. One cadre saw the KR as a natural fit because of the allegiance he felt with the poor who had their land, rice, and animals exploited by the capitalists.79 Another recounts the wisdom shared with him personally by Pol Pot while his wife served as a cook for the leader: “He told me to take root on soil near water. Do not fly around for family economies.”80 The message was to rely on the soil rather than running from opportunity to opportunity like seed blown on the wind. For another cadre, Pol Pot’s lessons about land were most memorable: “What is most important is land. To have land to take roots. His [Pol Pot] guid[ance] was like this, if we don’t have anything, that is fine as long as we did not give up our land.”81 These messages were provided despite the fact that Pol Pot never farmed rice. Though his father owned nine hectares of rice paddy, Pol Pot, whose birth name was Saloth Sar, was educated in

71 Crook and Short, Genocide-Ecocide Nexus, 306. 72 Carlsen and Krogsgaard, Voices of the Khmer Rouge, interviews 2, 9, 11, and 13, accessed July 2019. 73 Hinton, Why Did They Kill?, 7–8. 74 Rice and Tyner, The Rice Cities, 562. 75 Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 16–25. 76 See testimonies of Meas Saran, Case File No. 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/TC, November 22, 2012, Extraordinary Chamber of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), accessed July 2020; Toeng Sokha, Case File No. 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/TC, December 4, 2012, ECCC, accessed July 2020; Denise Affonco, Case File No. 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/TC, December 13, 2012, ECCC, accessed August 2020. 77 Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime, 62–63. 78 Hinton, Why Did They Kill?, 27. 79 Carlsen and Krogsgaard, Voices of the Khmer Rouge, interview 10, accessed July 2019. 80 Ibid., interview 2. 81 Ibid., interview 26.

the royal monastery and in an elite Catholic school thanks to his family’s palace connections.82 Such messaging sought to strengthen connections between Khmer and the rice paddy, but CPK rice production policy signiﬁcantly disrupted symbiogenetic relations, resulting in reverberations that upset patterns of work, family, and food consumption.

Rice and Labor To break free from capitalist contradictions and the trappings of bourgeois society, money was initially banned and removed from circulation in Democratic Kampuchea. This did not mean that there existed no unit of exchange nor did it mean that the CPK did not seek to accumulate capital.83 In this regard, the CPK viewed rice as the new Cambodia’s most important export and a means of exchange and accumulation. Rice would not only feed the revolutionary nation; surplus rice would be shipped to markets in China, Africa, Singapore, and elsewhere in order to secure capital that would pay for the weapons and infrastructure required to secure the revolution.84 This meant that three tons of rice had to be produced per hectare, according to the calculations of what was required for the CPK’s “Super Great Leap Forward.” This demanded mass mobilization of the workforce, with the so-called “new people” forced from the cities to engage in agricultural labor in the countryside alongside the “old” or “base” people. Immense irrigation projects were also initiated to meet rice production goals, allowing monsoon rainwater to circulate to feed second crops of rice in what would normally be dormant seasons. The plan was for a nationwide system to distribute water to one square kilometer rice paddies bordered by canals and dikes.85 Through this plan, water was enlisted in the production of Democratic Kampuchea through the manufacture of a hydrosocial cycle of dams and canals used to organize rice production and perpetrate mass violence.86 Rather than a project designed in accordance with orthodox communism, James Tyner refers to the CPK vision of labor for purposes of creating exchange value as a variant of “state capitalism.”87 For Tyner, it was the desire of the CPK to accumulate capital quickly that compromised their Marxist values and magnified the devastation. By dispossessing people of their lands, engaging in forced removals, increasing agricultural production through intensive human labor, and providing starvation-level subsistence, the structural conditions were set to produce brutal results. Exploitation of labor and the commodification of rice to generate surplus value were integral to debilitating Khmer practices of rice production for family use, thereby reconfiguring the broader social relations sustaining Cambodian society and transforming human nature by inspiring a political consciousness formed through hard labor.88 The Khmer Rouge sought to effect a new symbiosis of humans and nature—one through which a socialist society could be built, accompanied by new cultural and familial relations. Ideological zeal rather than improved seed or machinery was the primary means by which the CPK sought to increase production. Cooperatives often lacked animals to assist in ploughing the fields and much work was done by hand and hoe. A romantic yet pragmatic

82 Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime, 10. 83 For more detailed analysis of the complexities of CPK monetary policy, see James A. Tyner, “‘Currency is a Most Poisonous Tool:’ State Capitalism, Nonmarket Socialism, and the Elimination of Money during the Cambodian Genocide,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 14, no. 1 (2020), 143–158. 84 For example, as noted by the CPK leadership, their objective was “[t]o produce rice for food to raise the standard of living of the people, and in order to export so as to obtain capital for the imports which we need.” See Chanthou Boua, trans., “Document III: ‘The Party’s Four-Year Plan to Build Socialism in All Fields, 1977–1980’ (Party Centre, July–August 1976),” in Pol Pot Plans the Future: Conﬁdential Leadership Documents from Democratic Kampuchea, 1976– 1977, ed. David P. Chandler et al. (New Haven: Monograph 33/Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1988), 51. 85 Bultmann, Irrigating a Socialist Utopia. 86 Stian Rice et al., “The Hydro-Logic of Genocide: Remaking Land, Water, and Bodies in Democratic Kampuchea, 1975– 1979,” Area 52, no. 2 (2020), 389–390. 87 Tyner, Rice Fields to Killing Fields, xiii; see also Tyner and Rice, Cambodia’s Political Economy of Violence, 84–94; Tyner, Violence. 88 Tyner, Rice Fields to Killing Fields, xxi.

vision of manual labor performed by the entire population was advanced in terms that connoted warfare: the farmers and army working together in the battlefield, crushing and winning their quotas.89 Such collective effort was meant to overcome the lack of adequate livestock, farming tools, or rice seed. A 1976 quotation, likely authored by Pol Pot, found in the Khmer Rouge journal, Tung Padevat, captures the CPK’s militaristic framing: “So we must launch offensives for more light rice, and for more corn, more vegetables. One hectare, ten hectares, a hundred hectares; we must go on planting. We strike continuously in all forms, we strike non-stop, we strike on a large scale and on a small scale. If we strike like this, we will be complete masters.”90 As Daniel Bultmann notes, the land was to be disciplined of all of its individualistic and specific qualities; nature was to be “mastered”91 toward the establishment of a socialist society. Such a view was much different than the respect for the rice paddy that was symbolized through gifting to neak ta and practiced through daily family rituals of farming and eating rice. As a matter of fact, within the period of twelve months, the KR completely abolished religious belief of all kinds, including ritual practices.92 Rice farmers, too, were disciplined to try to make their work more efficient. Pech Srey Phal told of a hard rope that was used to time the transplanting of seedlings:

And when the militia men blew a whistle, then the rope would be raised and we had to quickly transplant the seedlings in a row. And if somebody transplanted and could not get up on time when the rope was lifted—and I mean the rope—the rope was a hard plastic rope or a kind of a metal rope. And if we could not get up on time then it would hit our eyes. One day, somebody who was transplanting nearby me got hit by the rope, and the eyes bled, and that person fell onto the ground damaging the seedlings. Then the militia men or the soldiers of the Khmer rouge who were monitoring us came down into the rice ﬁeld and beat that person up, blaming the person of destroying the seedlings.93

Without the tools of modernization, rice farming was nonetheless mechanized through the martial discipline imposed by KR cadre. In this instance, the people themselves become mechanical in their interactions with seedlings and soil. The destruction of seedlings mentioned above is also indicative of a larger process of KR-led devastation whereby the variety of rice seed suffered because of the genocide. At the fall of Democratic Kampuchea, many traditional rice seed varieties adapted to the harsh growing conditions of Cambodia were eaten by starving people or rats. As well, CPK policies resulted in farmers planting poorly adapted rice, with deep-water rice planting discouraged in some areas in favor of early duration varieties. Irrigation interventions imposed by the CPK also impacted deep-water rice varieties that were attuned to existing local conditions. All of these factors

89 DeFalco, Justice and Starvation, 57. 90 For example, see Ben Kiernan, trans., “Document II: ‘Excerpted Report on the Leading Views of the Comrade Representing the Party Organization at a Zone Assembly,’ (Tung Padevat, June 1976),” in Pol Pot Plans the Future: Conﬁdential Leadership Documents from Democratic Kampuchea, 1976–1977, ed. David P. Chandler et al. (New Have: Monograph 33/Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1988), 15. 91 Bultmann, Irrigating a Socialist Utopia, 46–48. 92 Hurst Hannum, “International Law and Cambodian Genocide: The Sounds of Silence,” Human Rights Quarterly 11, no. 1 (1989), 88. 93 Testimony of Pech Srey Phal, Case File No. 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/TC, December 5, 2012, ECCC, accessed August 2020.

combined to compromise the availability of several well-established deep-water rice varieties, leaving Cambodians bereft of the diversity of rice seed that had previously sustained them.94 Though rice production had previously experienced shifts, such as the attempt to modernize the industry under French Colonialism, never before had such dramatic change been implemented. This impacted the way Cambodians and rice were shaped to each other. Land, water, and ﬁelds were re-engineered alongside a brutally enforced division of labor intended to achieve the desired yields. And new cultural meanings of rice appeared—primarily as a unit of exchange and object of conquest—disrupting its centrality to community, village, and family.

Rice and Family To maximize rice production, the CPK undertook a massive reorganization of the family. In 1976, Angkar began to view the individual’s commitment to family as a potential barrier to collectivism. So-called “family-ism” needed to be disciplined out of the population.95 This notion was likely influenced by the Marxist critique of the patriarchal capitalist family, but it also took unique and pragmatic form with respect to the CPK’s goals for rice production.96 Without the technological means to modernize farming and increase yields, they sought instead to deploy human labor in a manner that would ensure the majority of Cambodians, from the very young to the old, would contribute to the goal of three tons per hectare. Many family units, especially those of the new people, were reconfigured, and a new division of labor was imposed on the countryside. Arduous physical labor building dams, digging irrigation canals, and clearing land was largely performed by mobile teams of unmarried youth and adults. Married adults worked in their villages to produce on behalf of their cooperative. They were often separated from each other, as well as from their children and aging parents, who also had roles to play in ensuring their cooperative achieved its quotas.97 Children were typically permitted to visit their parents once every two or three months,98 and women who were up to nine months pregnant were often assigned to grind and husk the rice.99 To remove “family-ism” from this new labor force also entailed a transformation of the family meal. As of 1976, many families could no longer eat together, sitting on the floor around their shared plates. Meals were now collective. Cooperatives of approximately 100 people had three to four kitchens where meals were prepared.100 The rice pot was a large metal cauldron. For one survivor, the collective meal was the worst part of CPK rule: “Anyone can lead us as long as they don’t make us eat in collective kitchens.”101 The families of the new people were frequently stripped of their possessions by the CPK, which saw the holding of such possessions

94 E. L. Javier, “Rice Ecosystems and Varieties,” in Rice Production in Cambodia, ed. Harry J. Nesbitt (Phnom Penh: Cambodia-IRRI-Australia Project, 1997), 40; Glen Denning, “Revisiting Cambodia’s ‘Killing Fields,’ 30 Years Later: The IRRI Pioneer Interviews conducted by Gene Hette,” Rice Today, December 20, 2015, accessed April 27, 2020, http://ricetoday.irri.org/glenn-denning-on-irris-cambodia-experience-revisiting-the-killing-fields-30-years-later/; see also Don Puckridge, The Burning of the Rice: A Cambodian Success Story (East York: Hushion House, 2004); Reena Shah, “Rice Crop Sprouts in Killing Field,” Tampa Bay Times, October 17, 2005, accessed September 12, 2020. https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1990/05/18/rice-crop-sprouts-in-killing-field/. 95 Ben Kiernan, trans., “Document V: ‘Summary of the Results of the 1976 Study Session,’ (Party Center, undated),” in Pol Pot Plans the Future: Confidential Leadership Documents from Democratic Kampuchea, 1976–1977, ed. David P. Chandler et al. (New Haven: Monograph 33/Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1988). 96 James A. Tyner and Hanieh Haji Molana, “Ideologies of Khmer Rouge Family Policy: Contextualizing Sexual and Gender-Based Violence during the Cambodian Genocide,” Genocide Studies International 13, no. 2 (2020), 177. 97 Hinton, Why Did They Kill?, 10. 98 Testimony of Mom Vun, Case File No. 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/TC, September 16, 2016, ECCC, accessed August 2020. 99 Jeffery Himel, Khmer Rouge Irrigation Development in Cambodia, Documentation Center of Cambodia, April 11, 2007, accessed May 7, 2020, https://fliphtml5.com/wqov/xcsk/basic; Carlsen and Krogsgaard, Voices of the Khmer Rouge, interview 23, accessed July 2019. 100 Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime, 58; Carlsen and Krogsgaard, Voices of the Khmer Rouge, interview 4, 24, accessed July 2019. 101 Carlsen and Krogsgaard, Voices of the Khmer Rouge, interview 9, accessed July 2019.

as acts of “privatism” or “individualism.” This included taking from these families the implements of rice production, such as oxen, and rice consumption, such as bowls.102 In a process Michel Foucault terms “refamilization,”103 individuals were not simply cut adrift; instead, they were blended into new communal units, an emergent revolutionary family, with Angkar as the ultimate parent. As one cadre put it, “We cooperatively built a true family here. What a revolutionary family!”104 To not accept this refamilization was to take a “strong private stand,”105 one that could be criminalized. One cadre recalled being told, “favoring the family means breaking the law.”106 Another remembered, “Kinship relationships between human beings did not exist at this time. They were prohibited. Family members did not even know where their relatives were living. So we did not have any means to communicate to tell our family members about our health or our situation.”107 This refamilization failed, in part because it sought to overwrite familial, community, and spiritual relations that had long served to foster local solidarity and harmony.108 In the face of familial recalcitrance, or even because of the perceived crimes of one family member, the KR sometimes sought to eliminate the entire family line. Hinton connects such violence against the family to an extreme form of the principle of disproportionate revenge, whereby a powerful person might seek to “destroy” the “seed” of his enemy, meaning their family or clan.109 The connection drawn between destroying the family line and destroying the seed is not insigniﬁcant. Marriages were also often redesigned to ﬁt the revolutionary vision of Angkar. Though arranged marriages were a common practice in Cambodia prior to the Democratic Kampuchea period, these marriages were arranged through a set of rituals designed to build relationships between the two families, in particular establishing trust between marriage partners, as well as between them and their new in-laws. KR weddings were different. Cadres, who might have only known one another in passing, if at all, would be married in group ceremonies.110 These could be as small as two couples, but could include as many as ten or even twelve couples.111 Some of the grooms were injured in battle and no longer able to engage in combat, making them eligible for marriage.112 There were no parents or relatives in these ceremonies. The couples were united under the symbols of Angkar—the sickle and rice—where they promised to love one another and work hard for their country.113 Most importantly, they were tasked with procreating, as the CPK estimated it needed to grow the population to maximize rice production.114 For many families, their daily lives had been entangled with the production and consumption of rice. Fractured according to the new division of labor, underfed, and deprived of group-sustaining rituals such as the family meal, or tending to the family plot, the “revolutionary family” was weakened by denial of its patterned relations with rice.

102 Ibid. 103 Michel Foucault, “Alternatives to the Prison: Dissemination or Decline of Social Control,” Theory, Culture & Society 26, no. 6 (2009), 15–16; Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Random House, 1979). 104 “Diary of a Cambodian Student in France,” Document Centre of Cambodia, accessed September 10, 2020, http:// d.dccam.org/Archives/Documents/Diaries/Diary_Cambodia_Student_in_France.htm. 105 Hiebert, Genocide, Revolution, and Starvation, 81. 106 Carlsen and Krogsgaard, Voices of the Khmer Rouge, interview 3, accessed July 2019. 107 Testimony of Nhip Horl, Case File No. 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/TC, August 25, 2015, ECCC, accessed July 2020. 108 Hinton, Agents of Death, 821. 109 Hinton, Why Did They Kill?, 71. 110 Testimony of Chea Dieb, Case File No. 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/TC, August 30, 2016, ECCC, accessed July 2020. 111 Carlsen and Krogsgaard, Voices of the Khmer Rouge, interview 7, accessed July 2019. 112 Dieb, Case File No. 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/TC. 113 Ibid; Carlsen and Krogsgaard, Voices of the Khmer Rouge, interview 23, accessed July 2019. 114 Theresa De Langis, Judith Strasser, Thida Kim, and Sopheap Taing, Like Ghost Changes Body: A Study on the Impact of Forced Marriage Under the Khmer Rouge Regime (Phnom Penh: Transcultural Psychosocial Organization of Cambodia, 2014), 105.

Rice and Hunger Labor under the CPK regime was often undertaken in conditions of severe hunger. Whether building dams, digging irrigation ditches, or cultivating rice and other produce, most workers were underfed. Long Tong notes, “every day we had to build dikes for rice cultivation all day and night. We did not get enough food and work was very laborious.”115 He recalls him and his colleagues preparing a murky, waterlily soup in order to ﬁll their bellies and allow them to continue work. Rice, when available, was diluted and portioned to share among his compatriots.116 In the famine that took hold under CPK rule, rice was a measure to assess levels of subsistence. It was measured in units of condensed milk cans. The Angkar leadership proposed the people should receive three cans per day. But many remember their allotment was only one can each day.117 Much depended on whether one was considered a “base” or “old” person or a “new” or “April 17” person evacuated from an urban center. The latter were fed less and worked harder.118 In either case, there was not enough food provided for the back-breaking work demanded of members of cooperatives. Rice farmers often began work at four a.m., received a break between eleven a.m. and one p.m., and then worked from then until seven p.m.119 To sustain themselves, they found edible items that were not part of their normal diets. Chruy Chreun, who hailed from Kampong Cham province and was a soldier under the Khmer Rouge, recalls, “I have eaten everything. I had never eaten ripe toddy palm fruit before, but then whenever there’s a ripe toddy palm fruit [which] fell down, I would ﬁght for it… despite I had never even eaten ripe toddy palm, boiled bael fruit, papaya stump, morning glory, rice mixed with Billygoat Weed. They fed us Billygoat Weed mixed with rice.”120 Ultimately, denial of food under the CPK regime was a denial of humanity. Denise Affonco echoes Agamben’s analysis of the bare life of the Nazi concentration camps,121 seeing famine as an orchestrated technique to reduce the human being to a state in which it can simply be allowed to die:

Do you think we were human beings at all? We weren't. We were totally dehumanized. We became animals. We were utterly dehumanized. That's all I have to say today. And let me tell you again and again, if you want to listen to me, that famine was organized and programmed. It was a way for the system to eliminate us while feeling they had washed their hands of the problem, but they could say, ‘We didn't kill those people; they died because they've been eating rubbish.’ Is that not a technique to assassinate somebody without getting your hands dirty?122

As Randle DeFalco notes, survivors often use the word bong-ot (to starve) rather than tutaphik (the Khmer word for famine, usually connoting hunger caused by unfavorable weather

115 Long Tong-Testimony, KCI381, Document Centre of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, accessed October 2020. Testimony was unofﬁcially translated by Um Sereyvothny. 116 Ibid. 117 Carlsen and Jan Krogsgaard, Voices of the Khmer Rouge, interview 29, accessed July 2019. 118 Testimony of Seng Sivutha, Case File No. 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/TC, June 4, 2013, ECCC, accessed August 2020. 119 Ibid. 120 Chruy Chreun-Testimony, KCI0636, Document Center of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, accessed August 2019. Testimony was unofﬁcially translated by Um Sereyvothny. 121 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998). 122 Testimony of Denise Affonco, Case File No. 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/TC, December 13, 2012, ECCC, accessed August 2020.

patterns) to capture the human agency that created and perpetuated the famine.123 This language is important, since the CPK government, if they acknowledged food shortages at all, claimed natural conditions and traitorous sabotage were the cause of famine in Democratic Kampuchea rather than leadership policies.124 But, as DeFalco reports, previous periods of poor growing conditions had never resulted in as sustained or widespread a famine as occurred during the Democratic Kampuchea era. The CPK leadership was aware that starvation and under-nourishment were rife, yet persisted with policies, such as forbidding people from gleaning food from other sources, that exacerbated the famine.125 Famine is often considered solely as a form of physical destruction, but it is also a culturally destructive event. Through food preparation and consumption our social worlds are made and remade on a day-to-day basis.126 Genocide interrupted these relations for Khmer and even changed Cambodian cuisine. It is sometimes considered a simpler cuisine than that on offer in Vietnam and Thailand, but this is in part because the CPK regime inﬂicted a very basic cuisine on the communal kitchens, and this was further exacerbated by famine. Other traditions of eating, including royal court, elite, and even some forms of peasant cuisine were forgotten.127 Famine thus also instigated cultural loss by transforming Khmer relations with rice.

Conclusion: Rice Relations and Genocide The reorganization of rice production had wide ranging consequences for Khmer people. In the rapid and forced transition toward massively increased rice exports, a complex of relations that had historically sustained Khmer was threatened. Rice was imbricated with family life, spirituality, language, cuisine, art, and so many other aspects of cultural life, that its disruption had long standing consequences. At stake, however, were not just cultural practices attuned to symbiogenesis with the rice paddy. Khmer were compelled to reframe their relationship to their natural world. Farming lost its familial and spiritual dimensions and became an act of war or an obligation to the new family signified by Angkar. Symbiogenesis was thus transformed into human versus nature. The “super great leap forward” entailed a mastery of the natural world. The CPK exhibited a “high modernist” tendency toward social engineering, particularly in the belief that nature could be shaped to fit their ideology.128 Our relations with the natural world are always in flux, but when subject to forced and rapid change, as was implemented by the KR, one can see how the very way that a human group shapes itself alongside a more-than-human counterpart causes disruptions that rob the group of the very relationships through which it forms itself as a group. These relationships represent the possibility of associational vitality. But when they are subject to the social/natural death of symbiogenetic destruction, the building blocks of collective meaning-making are thrown into disarray. To this extent, understanding the genocide in Cambodia comes not solely by tabulating the number of dead or identifying specific groups within the larger population who were targeted for elimination, but also by looking at how a complex symbiogenetic web of social and natural interactions was destroyed in a manner that interrupted vitalizing processes

123 DeFalco, Justice and Starvation, 48. 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid., 82–84. 126 See the literature on the anthropology of food and eating for a more in-depth exploration of this point. For example, Sidney W. Mintz and Christine M. Du Bois, “The Anthropology of Food and Eating,” Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (2002), 99–119. 127 Such as Na Tang, a dish of deep-fried sticky rice dipped in a sauce of pork, chili, and coconut milk. See Rinith Taing, “How Kraya Angkor is Reviving Cambodia’s Forgotten Recipes,” The Phnom Penh Post, March 24, 2017, accessed September 12, 2020, https://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-weekend/how-kraya-angkor-reviving-cambodias- forgotten-recipes; Georgia McCafferty and Dan Tham, “Food for the Soul: Resurrecting Cambodia’s Forgotten Cuisine,” CNN, May 3, 2017, accessed September 12, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/cambodias- forgotten-cuisine/index.html. 128 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 4.

of group formation among human and more-than-human beings. By drawing on an ontology informed by North American Indigenous studies and the new materialism, it is possible to open genocide study to consideration of heretofore muted and understudied aspects of genocide’s social/natural death that impact not only the group’s modes of subsistence, but also its formative relations with the more-than-human entities that inhabit the natural world.

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Kaitlin Murphy The University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona, USA

I’m frustrated by the approaches to genocide and war that have almost become so sanitized and professional. It’s like its own economy. There are the people who produce the weapons, the people who buy the weapons, the people who ﬁre the weapons, there are the ﬁrst aid responders who respond to emergency situations…. There’s a whole system that functions around genocide. I understand, but it’s fucked up. I don’t know how else to say it…. I’m not trying to devalue the way in which these things are addressed, but it’s literally become a business and a profession for organizations and countries and people and all of it feeds off of each other, and it works for everybody who is part of this ecosystem for it to continue in this way. I think art disrupts this.

—Aida Šehović.1

The Venice Art Biennale, often referred to as the “art Olympics” and widely considered the preeminent international art fair,2 is likely not the very first place that comes to mind when one thinks of genocide and atrocity prevention. Ralph Rugoff, curator of the 58th occurrence of the Venice Biennale, which was titled “May You Live in Interesting Times” and took place in 2019, went so far as to proclaim in the opening sentences of his official introduction to the Biennale that we should “acknowledge at the outset that art does not exercise its forces in the domain of politics.”3 While this is an extremely debatable claim, and one with which many Biennale artists would likely take issue, it nonetheless remains true that, for most audiences, the sprawling Biennale is more likely to be associated with top notch contemporary art and transnational economies of influence and access than it is with human rights. Yet, the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (Auschwitz Institute),4 one of the leading NGOs working to prevent future violent conflict, chose to curate an art exhibit in 2019 alongside the Biennale. In the context of genocide and mass atrocity prevention, what is the potential intervention of an exhibition such as this one? This is linked to a much larger question driving this article: what is the role of the arts in the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities?

1 Aida Šehović, in conversation with the author, June 2020. 2 Oscar Boyson, dir., “Behind the Biennale: A Short History of the World’s Most Important Art Exhibition,” uploaded May 3, 2015, Artsy, 00:00:29, accessed June 20, 2020, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-behind-the- venice-biennale-2015-a-short-history-of-the-world-s-most-important-art-exhibition. 3 Ralph Rugoff, “Introduction by Ralph Rugoff: Curator of the 58th International Art Exhibition,” La Biennale di Venezia, accessed May 1, 2019, https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2019/introduction-ralph-rugoff. 4 The Auschwitz Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention changed its name in December 2019. The organization was still using its previous name, the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, when the exhibition opened in May 2019.

Kaitlin Murphy. “Art as Atrocity Prevention: The Auschwitz Institute, Artivism, and the 2019 Venice Biennale.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1, 68–96. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1796. © 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention. Art as Atrocity Prevention 69

While an exhaustive sweep of all arts initiatives5 is vastly beyond the scope of this article, I focus here on the Auschwitz Institute’s 2019 Venice Biennale exhibition, titled “Artivism: The Atrocity Prevention Pavilion,” and draw from fieldwork, interviews, and extensive secondary research to argue that the arts can in fact make powerful contributions to the prevention of genocide and mass atrocity. In what follows, I describe my analytic approach and provide a brief introduction to the Auschwitz Institute, the Venice Biennale, and the artwork in the Artivism Pavilion. I then turn to scholarship on prevention in order to lay the groundwork for analysis in the broader context of mitigating risk factors associated with past and future violent conﬂict. Ultimately, I argue that although largely overlooked in genocide and atrocity prevention scholarship, the arts have a central role to play in genocide and atrocity prevention efforts.

Approach Measuring the preventive capacity of the arts—or anything—is challenging because it relies on establishing proof of a non-event. In practical terms, it is nearly impossible to prove with any certainty that atrocity definitely would have occurred but did not directly because of another intervening factor. Moreover, in the context of measuring impact, the question of what and how much art can actually do will almost always eventually arise. In other words, how do we know when art “worked”—and what does “working” mean? Complicating the question of how the arts might work in fostering change is the problem of accounting for change itself. Change is largely nonlinear and unpredictable, occurring over time, and the result of myriad efforts on multiple fronts. How, then, to determine the impact of the arts in atrocity prevention? First and foremost, it is critical that analysis be grounded in a fundamental understanding of the complexity of change. In “The Limits of Nonprofit Impact,” authors Ebrahim and Rangan describe two types of theories of change: a focused theory and a complex theory.6 A focused theory of change has a linear notion of cause and effect. As Ebrahim and Rangan explain, in the aftermath of atrocity, many forms of emergency response operate on a more easily measured, focused theory of change, such as getting food and water to survivors. While the logistics of such relief efforts are often complicated, the logic—and measurable outcomes—are fairly straightforward: the food arrived or it didn’t.7 A complex theory of change, on the other hand, has a less definitive notion of cause and effect and recognizes that many causal factors outside of the project’s reach are also at play. The distinction is fairly simple but incredibly important, especially in the context of atrocity prevention. A fairly straightforward example of the importance of this distinction in impact measurement is arts programming for children in refugee camps. Using a focused theory of change, if children who receive more arts programming are surveyed and shown to be happier than students who do not, it is a success. A complex theory of change, however, recognizes that there are many other contributing factors beyond the project’s control. The arts programming may well be an important factor, but it is not the only factor. The complex, multifaceted work of meaningful and lasting atrocity prevention necessitates complex theories of change. This is especially true in the case of any exhibition and especially this one, which included artworks from a wide range of geographic and cultural contexts. It is important to note

5 My definition of arts initiative is expansive across medium and method; and includes art such as film and photography, painting and drawing, literature and storytelling, dance, theater and performance, murals, music, and monuments and memorials, arts education programs, arts festivals, exhibits, and community arts collectives. While perhaps obvious, it is worth underscoring that not all art is intended to engage in the sociopolitical milieu of the times or enact change. My focus here is on those artworks, projects, and practices that do. 6 Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan, “The Limits of Nonprofit Impact: A Contingency Framework for Measuring Social Performance,” (working paper no. 10-099, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA, 2010), 22. 7 Ibid., 19.

that the exhibition was received quite positively by visitors;8 and research shows that such an experience can result in increased public awareness, which in turn leads to increased public engagement, strengthened social movements, and, ultimately, social change.9 However, it is all but impossible to definitively prove that a visit to an international art exhibition directly resulted in atrocity prevention—there are simply too many variables. Thus, while audience response is useful to a certain extent (and it is indeed meaningful that feedback was positive), this article takes a different methodological approach and instead analyzes the artworks themselves through the lens of atrocity prevention. While the field of genocide studies lacks sustained research into the role of the arts in prevention, I draw here from research into the impact of the arts in society more broadly and combine it with the thorough research into the risk factors for genocide and atrocity. This overlay of research fields, combined with fieldwork and interviews, creates the foundation for investigation into how different arts initiatives have directly mitigated one or more atrocity risk factors. These established risk factors emerge from a number of well-known and respected early-warning systems that have been developed over the last decade and draw from a diverse range of qualitative and quantitative data to predict the risk for genocide, state-led mass killing, and/or atrocities. In Confronting Evil: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide (2016), James Waller writes that these different prevention systems are “developed and used by national governments, militaries and intelligence services, international and regional organizations, academics, nongovernmental organizations, civil society, think tanks, and private enterprises” to analyze a range of early warning signs, such as political instability, state fragility, and civil unrest.10 Such early warning systems include the Atrocity Forecasting Project at Australian National University,11 the United Nation’s Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes,12 the University of Maryland’s Minorities at Risk Project,13 the Early Warning Project at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,14 and Barbara Harff’s model of risk factors for genocide and politicide.15 In Confronting Evil, Waller analyzed the specific risk factors identified across these different early warning systems and produced a list of twenty risk factors that he divided into four different categories: governance, conflict history, economic conditions, and social fragmentation.16 In what follows, I build from Waller’s comprehensive, comparative

8 I interviewed both Kerry Whigham and Tibi Galis for this article (in May and June 2020, respectively), and they each shared strong positive feedback received from local and international audiences alike (including an array of state officials and government representatives). This anecdotal feedback was corroborated by my July 2019 fieldwork, during which I observed visitors’ responses to the exhibit and spoke with exhibition staffers about their experiences observing visitors make their way through the exhibit. 9 Meg McLagan, “Imagining Impact: Documentary Film and the Production of Political Effects,” in Sensible Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism, ed. Meg McLagan and Yates McKee (New York: Zone Books, 2012), 312. 10 James Waller, Confronting Evil: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 149. 11 “Atrocity Forecasting Project,” Australian National University, accessed July 10, 2020, https://politicsir.cass.anu.edu.au/ research/projects/atrocity-forecasting. 12 United Nations, Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes: A Tool for Prevention (UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, 2014). 13 “The Minorities at Risk (MAR) Project,” University of Maryland, accessed June 30, 2020, http://www.mar.umd.edu/. 14 “Early Warning Project,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Dartmouth College, accessed June 1, 2020, https://earlywarningproject.ushmm.org/. 15 Barbara Harff, “Assessing Risk of Genocide and Politicide,” in Peace and Conflict: A Global Survey of Armed Conflicts, Self-Determination Movements, and Democracy, ed. Monty G. Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr (College Park: University of Maryland Press, 2005), 57–61. 16 Waller, Confronting Evil, 151.

approach to analyze how arts initiatives can and have successfully mitigated risk factors in three of the four categories: conﬂict history, social fragmentation, and governance.17

Atrocity Prevention in Venice? Founded in 2008, and with offices in Buenos Aires, Kampala, New York, and Oświęcim, the Auschwitz Institute’s genocide and atrocity prevention work predominantly comprises comprehensive training, education, and technical assistance intended to help states around the world strengthen their prevention policies and practices, and cultivate regional and international support and accountability networks.18 Their approach is grounded in the understanding that genocides can occur anywhere but do not spontaneously occur—rather, they are the result of “distinct political and social actions” and “preceded by a steady stream of warning signs.”19 As such, the Auschwitz Institute has worked to “operationalize the identification of critical risk factors, providing officials with concrete frameworks to respond to these warning signs before they can gain deadly momentum, protecting the fundamental human rights of their populations.”20 The arts are not a primary programmatic area for the Auschwitz Institute, but Dr. Tibi Galis, executive director of the Auschwitz Institute, explained in a June 2020 interview that participation in the Biennale was not as much of a departure as it first may seem.21 Because the majority of the Auschwitz Institute’s work tends to occur behind the scenes, their participation in cultural projects is not always visible, but the organization has engaged in a number of culturally-focused projects as part of its broader body of prevention work. This includes ongoing support and technical assistance to the Kenyan National Committee for Genocide Prevention toward the establishment of the Never Again Memorial in Nairobi and co-organization of various artistic programs related to memorialization and atrocity prevention in Kigali, Rwanda (2017), Oświęcim, Poland (2017), and Buenos Aires, Argentina (2018).22 Periodic attendance at the Biennale over the years had left Galis with the sense of an untapped opportunity to build connections between the art world and the Auschwitz Institute’s work in atrocity prevention. Since its inception in 1895, the Venice Biennale has grown to be one of, if not the most important international contemporary art exhibition and encompasses

17 Due to space limitations, it is beyond the scope of this article to include all four categories, but there has been substantial research into economic conditions and the impact of the arts. For example, the National Endowment for the Arts’ Office of Research & Analysis and the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis jointly produce the U.S. Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account, which analyzes the size of the arts and cultural sector and its contributions to the U.S. economy, the number of workers employed by those industries and their compensation figures, consumer expenditures on arts and culture, and import/export activity. See “Arts Data Profile Series,” National Endowment for the Arts, accessed April 24, 2021, https://www.arts.gov/impact/ research/arts-data-profile-series. There is also a plethora of sustainable creative economy development initiatives across the globe that are aimed at increasing financial self-sufficiency through arts and craft—the Intuthuko Embroidery Project in South Africa is a perfect example. 18 The Auschwitz Institute advocates for regional solutions to regional challenges and works to develop effective, regionally specific, multidimensional approaches to its work. 19 Deeply rooted in the memory and legacy of Auschwitz, one of the main pillars of the Auschwitz Institute’s work is its landmark training program, the Raphaël Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention. Held on site at Auschwitz- Birkenau, the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp, now memorial and museum, the Seminar draws from the power of place and lessons from the past to create powerful learning opportunities for participants and to promote their ongoing commitment to atrocity prevention. See “Lemkin Seminar, Global Edition,” Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, accessed April 23, 2021, https:// www.auschwitzinstitute.org/what-we-do/global-programs/. 20 Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, Artivism: The Atrocity Prevention Pavilion, 2019 (pamphlet), 2. 21 Tibi Galis, in discussion with the author, June 2020. 22 Ibid.

multiple exhibitions and events that collectively draw over 500,000 visitors each year.23 The core art exhibition is curated by that year’s curator and displayed throughout two main exhibition spaces: a large exhibition hall known as the Giardini, and the Arsenale, a sprawling cluster of renovated shipyards, warehouses, and sheds adapted to be exhibition spaces. These exhibitions are accompanied by country pavilions24 and a range of officially and unofficially affiliated collateral exhibitions and events. Galis explained that even though the inclusive nature of the large Biennale did not lend to a coherent focus on human rights, the significant amount of politically-engaged art at the Biennale suggested its potential as a space for the Auschwitz Institute to reach a wider general audience for their message. At the same time, it presented an opportunity for the Auschwitz Institute to develop a large public facing project that would generate exposure for the Institute’s work while also serving as a model for how ministries of culture could use their access to the arts circuit for atrocity prevention goals. Conversations with senior Biennale staff were quite positive, and the Auschwitz Institute team began developing their proposal. Rugoff’s troublingly apolitical proclamation further underscored the importance of the Auschwitz Institute’s intervention but also raised concerns that such a curator might not be receptive to an exhibition entirely about the relationship between art and politics. These concerns proved valid, and the Auschwitz Institute’s proposal for an officially affiliated exhibition was rejected. Undeterred, the Auschwitz Institute decided to proceed with an unaffiliated collateral exhibition.25 The Auschwitz Institute’s project lead for the exhibition, Dr. Kerry Whigham, worked to develop an exhibition that highlighted an array of distinctive ways artists and activists have used creativity to respond to large-scale identity-based violence and mass atrocity in varying conflict contexts and geographic regions across the globe.26 In a May 2020 interview, Whigham recalled, “a lot of people asked why we hadn’t used the Holocaust as a case study, especially since we’re the Auschwitz Institute. But the exhibition was taking place in Europe, and there’s already so much awareness and action around the Holocaust in Europe. It felt important to choose cases that are less well-known.”27 The exhibition ultimately included works from artists and activist collectives from six countries, each from a different global region: Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina/US, Canada, Indonesia/Belgium, Iraq, and South Africa. Aptly named “Artivism,” a portmanteau term combining art and activism that identifies artistic initiatives and practices using art to impact social change,28 and housed in the Palazzo Dandolo Paulucci, an opulent old building mere steps from the Grand Canal in the heart of Venice, the Auschwitz

23 The art exhibition typically takes place in odd-numbered years and the architecture, cinema, dance, music, and theater-focused exhibitions in even-numbered years. Due to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 architecture exhibition was postponed until 2021, and the art exhibition will also be delayed a year, to 2022. It is unclear if this is a temporary or permanent shift in schedule. 24 Although all countries that wish to curate an exhibition may do so, the countries with permanent pavilions are strikingly reflective of the international politics of the 1930s and the Cold War. All other countries are assigned temporary space, for which they pay per square foot. 25 The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)’s proposal was similarly rejected, and they also chose to do an unaffiliated collateral exhibition. 26 Two Italian curators, Luca Berta and Francesco Giubilei, who together run VeniceArtFactory, a local Venetian curatorial and exhibition production business, helped with the practical aspects of designing and installing the exhibition. They were also supported by Auschwitz Institute staff and local fixers in Venice. 27 Kerry Whigham, in discussion with the author, May 2020. 28 The term artivism has been in circulation since at least 1997 when, following a gathering of Chicano artists from East Los Angeles and the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, the terms artivist and artivism were used by East LA artists Quetzal, Ozomatli, and Mujeres de Maiz, among others, to describe various events, actions, and artworks. The term is now commonly used in and by protest movements and in some academic writing to encompass a fairly wide range of artistic initiatives aimed at impacting social change (see, for example, Chela Sandoval’s scholarship on Chicano/a art activism and M. K. Asante Jr.’s on Black art activism). Chela Sandoval and Guisela Latorre, “Chicana/o Artivism: Judy Baca’s Digital Work with Youth of Color,” in Learning Race and Ethnicity ed. Anna Everett (Boston: MIT Press, 2007), M. K. Asante Jr., It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop (London: St. Martin’s Press, 2009).

Institute’s exhibit ofﬁcially opened to the public on May 9, 2019.29 In what follows, I offer a brief overview of the exhibit, then turn to scholarship on mitigating risk factors related to atrocity in order to further develop my analysis of art’s role in prevention.

Image 1. Artivism entrance, courtesy of the author.

Artivism: The Atrocity Prevention Pavilion The ﬁrst room of Artivism, and the one through which visitors entered, was designed to resemble a cold, bureaucratic waiting room, reminiscent of those so often faced by genocide survivors and asylum seekers. This drab grey room was small and cramped, with hard plastic and metal chairs lined against two walls, a ticket dispenser, and a sign directly across from the entryway that read:

You have entered the waiting room. Take a number from the machine. Have a seat. Wait for your number to be called to enter the exhibition. This art experience starts here.

As ticket numbers appeared on a screen on the wall above the chairs, so too did the numbers often associated with genocide: “Holocaust: 6,000,000;” “Srebrenica: 8,373;” “Rwanda: 800,000.” The room conveyed a sense of powerlessness, control, and selection. By asking visitors to watch for their entrance numbers amidst genocide death rates, curators placed visitors directly alongside the dead, thus reminding viewers that they are no different—they, too, could be a victim of genocide—and highlighting the dehumanizing nature of framing humans, and their deaths, in vacant statistical terms.

29 It closed on November 24, 2019 when the Biennale ended.

Image 2. Artivism "Waiting Room," courtesy of the author.

Image 3. The Artivism artists speak, courtesy of the author.

From the waiting room, visitors progressed to another small room; this one, dark with several chairs arranged to face three large screens. In direct contrast with the previous room, this room emphasized the individual human experience. A twenty-three-minute-long video installation played across the three screens, with the artists featured in the exhibition positioned sitting facing the camera against a black backdrop. Although each artist was interviewed alone, the video installation was edited so as to give the impression that the artists were in dialogue with each other as they gave historical background, outlined the atrocities experienced in their respective countries, and described how they used their art to impact change. Whigham said

that it was important that visitors encountered the artists ﬁrst—met them, heard their stories, and heard them talk about their art, without necessarily knowing what their art was explaining:

We wanted visitors to understand that these artists were normal people who used the tools that they have, which is art, to do something to transform their society. Everyone has a responsibility and the capacity to contribute to responding to past violence and responding to future violence from whatever position they have, whatever skills they have.30

The artworks were displayed throughout rooms, the smaller of which was accessible through a side doorway from the video installation. This room held just one artwork, ŠTO TE NEMA [translated: “Why are you not here?”], a memorial for the 8,373 Bosnian Muslims murdered in the Srebrenica genocide of July 1995 created by Bosnian artist Aida Šehović.

Image 4. STO TE NEMA as displayed in Artivism, courtesy of the author.

30 Kerry Whigham, in discussion with the author, May 2020.

The rest of the artwork was displayed in a large room overlooking the canal. Upon entering, visitors ﬁrst encountered a small selection of testimonial artworks and objects on loan from the Canadian National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation archives.31 These were displayed alongside embroidered tapestries from the Intuthuko Embroidery Project, a women’s community empowerment collective in Daveyton, South Africa, that uses embroidery to engage social issues and communicate about the traumas experienced and still carried in the aftermath of the long Apartheid regime in South Africa.32

Image 5. Objects from the Canadian TRC archives as displayed in Artivism, courtesy of the author.

31 Canada’s truth commission is the ﬁrst and only commission to date to accept art as part of their testimonial process. 32 South Africa’s oppressive authoritarian system of institutionalized racial segregation, known as Apartheid, lasted from 1948 until the early 1990s.

Image 6. The Intuthuko Embroidery Project tapestries as displayed in Artivism, courtesy of the author.

Yazidi Masks, an art installation made by Iraqi artist Rebin Chalak Ismael in response to the ongoing violence against the Yazidis, a small ethnic-religious group in Northern Iraq against whom the terrorist group known as ISIS33 has been committing genocide since 2014, was displayed by the windows. Located along the opposite wall were two pieces by Elisabeth Ida Mulyani, an Indonesian artist based in Belgium whose work addresses how the 1965 mass killings of roughly 1.5 million people, due to their alleged ties to communism, continues to impact Indonesian life both in country and in the refugee diaspora.

33 ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) started as an al Qaeda splinter group and is also known as ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and IS (Islamic State).

Image 7. Yazidi Masks as displayed in Artivism, courtesy of the author.

Image 8. Oleh-oleh, courtesy of the author.

The remaining contribution was by the Argentinian Grupo de Arte Callejero (GAC/ Street Artist group). When democratic governance was reestablished following Argentina’s horriﬁcally violent 1976–1983 military dictatorship, a number of laws and policies were swiftly passed granting impunity to guilty military leaders. In response, GAC began creating fake signs they then posted throughout the city in order to mark the homes of still-unpunished perpetrators, make visible the kidnapping, torture, and murder that had occurred, and denounce the crimes against humanity. Several of these signs were featured in Artivism, alongside photos, a video documentary, and a map installation.

Image 9. GAC as exhibited in Artivism, courtesy of the author.

Image 10. Final room, courtesy of the author.

Artivism culminated in a room intended to encourage visitors to reflect on their own role in mass atrocity prevention and the protection of human rights and to explore different ways they could take action. Different organizations and individuals taking an array of approaches to atrocity prevention were profiled on the walls, and visitors were presented with concrete steps they could take to become more involved. These steps were divided into three categories based on time commitment: sixty seconds, sixty minutes, or sixty days. These actions ranged from taking a minute to reflect on a time the visitor had been discriminated against due to their identity and a time when they had discriminated against someone else because of their identity, taking one hour before the next election to research what each candidate has proposed to do to protect the rights of a vulnerable identity group where the visitor lived, and researching and volunteering for an organization that actively protects the rights of a vulnerable group for sixty days. Having previously introduced visitors to the lived realities of mass atrocity and shown how artists and activists have used art to respond to widespread violence and help prevent its recurrence, this emphasis on the importance of collective action functioned as a powerful culminating message. Taken as a whole, Artivism conveyed a strikingly coherent message about the quintessential role of the arts in the prevention of systematic violence and provided an array of diverse examples of how art may be used as a grassroots tool for addressing political violence and human rights abuses—and for advancing peacebuilding, transitional justice efforts, and prevention efforts. In what follows, I explore how the arts can and have successfully mitigated risk factors in three of the four categories outlined by Waller: conflict history, social fragmentation, and governance.

Conflict History A history of genocide and atrocity is one of the more notably important indicators for future atrocity. Unfortunately, it’s also one that can never be entirely eliminated—the past cannot be undone. Identity-related tensions and legacies of vengeance or group grievances often continue to exist after the conflict has ended, resulting in deep cultural cleavages that are kept alive and passed down through generations. Waller writes that group grievances grow out of the “painful legacies of groups that have been denied autonomy, self-determination, or political independence; subjected to institutionalized persecution, repression, oppression, or political exclusion; and victimized by nationalist political rhetoric or scapegoating.”34 These tensions can also be further exacerbated by a past record of serious violations of human rights and laws that has not been adequately or transparently addressed. These experiences leave the “aggrieved groups feeling as the ‘other,’ outside of the nation, voiceless and powerless in the face of their imposed marginalization.”35 These tensions and legacies are perpetuated by what John Paul Lederach has identified as the “either-or” categories that are often a defining characteristic after conflict: “We are right. They are wrong. We were violated. They are the violators. We are the liberators. They are oppressors. Our intentions are good. Theirs are bad… You are with us or against us.”36 These tensions and legacies continue to feed into the ongoing fermentation of cultural trauma. While individual trauma focuses on the impact on a singular person of an event or series of events, cultural trauma refers to those injurious events that impact entire communities (even as the specific details of experience may vary across individual). Sociologist Jeffrey Alexander writes that “cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in

34 Waller, Confronting Evil, 169. 35 Ibid. 36 John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 35.

fundamental and irrevocable ways.”37 Such cultural trauma can pass along unhealed psychological and social wounds that impact the formation of individual and group identities for generations, leaving recovering societies especially vulnerable to future iterations of atrocity.38 Without meaningful reparations and rebuilding efforts, these legacies of conflict, grievance, and trauma put a country at risk for future cycles of violence. The impact of the Canadian Indian Residential School System and its corollary cultural trauma provides testament to the importance of this risk category. For over a hundred years and across multiple generations of families, Canada implemented a residential boarding school system intended to, in the words of Duncan Campbell Scott, the top Indian Agent in Canada when the school system was implemented, “take the Indian out of the child.”39 Started in the 1880s, funded by the Canadian government’s Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and run by Christian churches, at least 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly taken from their families and placed into residential religious assimilation schools, where they were forbidden from using their own names, speaking their own languages, wearing their own clothing, or maintaining cultural practices, religions, and relationships. Residential school survivors began implementing legal campaigns to force the government and churches to acknowledge the devastating harm and provide reparations in the 1980s, and the program was finally phased out in the 1990s (the last residential school closed in 1996).40 When it ended, its devastating toll on Canada’s indigenous peoples was almost beyond comprehension. In response to ongoing calls for redress, the federal government finally issued a Statement of Reconciliation that acknowledged the abuse and created the multi-million-dollar Aboriginal Healing Foundation in 1998, and an out-of-court mechanism for determining compensation called the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process began in 2003. The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA)—notably, it is the largest class action settlement in Canadian history to date—was reached in 2007. It formally recognized the harm done to Indigenous peoples by the residential schools and established a multi-billion-dollar fund to intended help survivors in their recovery. $60 million of these funds were set aside for a five-year truth and reconciliation commission intended to provide an opportunity for survivors to give testimony, raise public awareness, and create a “comprehensive historical record” on the residential schools.41 When Linda Young, a Plains Cree Indian from Saskatchewan and fourth generation survivor and ward of Saint Anthony’s Indian residential school, located in Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, was preparing for her ADR hearing in October 2006, she did not want to forget anything. The process was known to be very difficult and hostile, and she had heard that people were being challenged on everything they said. She decided to type out her testimony and read so she could not be thrown off in the moment. Her testimony was 83 pages long. In it, she described the “sanitizing” process she endured upon arrival. She described her name being discarded and being known only as a number—number 47—for many years. She described how the children were forced into constant prayer and spent so much time on their knees that they

37 Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” in Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 1. 38 Waller, Confronting Evil, 168. 39 Paul Barnsley, “ADR Process Launched,” Windspeaker Publication 21, no. 9 (2003), 11, accessed June 10, 2020, https:// www.ammsa.com/publications/windspeaker/adr-process-launched. 40 The Roman Catholic Church was responsible for 60% of schools, the Anglican Church for 25%, and the United and Presbyterian Churches for 15%. See J. R. Miller, “Residential Schools in Canada,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, accessed June 10, 2020, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools. 41 Tabitha Marshall, “Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, accessed June 10, 2020, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indian-residential-schools-settlement-agreement.

developed thick, white calluses—recognized and referred to as “residential school knees.” Her hearing lasted twelve hours.42 After the ADR process, Young wanted to place her story in a safe and respectful place. She gathered cloth bags that had been given to her by her mother and bags belonging to her children and cut them into small squares. She printed her ADR testimony on onion skin paper, then tore the pages into strips. Young took the crushed strips of story and, along with one sage leaf each, nestled them into the cut cloth squares to make little bundles, akin to the many tobacco ties she had made over the years. Young made ties until she ran out of story. She used the seams leftover from the cloth bags to tie the bundles, then dipped the ties into wax to seal them and cauterize the emotions within. Young reﬂected: “Each tie was a small bundle that wrapped painful memories in love, prayer and song.”43 She then took the long string of ties, totaling 250, to form a traditional Cree baby swing, called a wêwêpison. She explained:

Metaphorically speaking, the wêwêpison represents a nurturing environment where culture and language was practiced in the care and raising of a baby—for example, the structure of the swing created a secure and safe environment. The swinging/swaying of the baby swing represents the unborn swinging and swaying in the amniotic ﬂuid (water of life) in the womb. Baby swings were common in First Nations homes; songs/lullabies were sung in our language as we swing the babies to sleep. When we attended the residential schools, we were taken out of the safety of the baby swing, stripped of our culture, our language that guided us and helped us negotiate our nehiyaw environment, our nehiyaw pimatisiwin —our Cree life, and our nehiyaw wiyasiwewina—our Cree laws and teachings. The swing represents giving back the teachings to the little ones who were taken from their mothers, aunties, grandmothers.44

Image 11. Linda Young's wêwêpison and quilt, image courtesy of the author.

42 Linda Young, in conversation with the author, June 2020. 43 Ibid. 44 Linda Young, email message to author, June 4, 2020.

Image 12. The wêwêpison ties, image courtesy of the author.

Young’s swing was empty to represent the babies taken from families and placed in the residential schools. Because the wêwêpison also requires a blanket, Young used onion skin paper to make a blanket that hung on the wall behind the swing. The blanket was a patchwork of two poems, one written by Young about her experience being in the residential schools and the other by her daughter Nahanni about being the child of a survivor. This piece—the wêwêpison and blanket—became Young’s testimonial submission to the Canadian TRC hearings process.45 When Young granted her permission for it to be included in the Artivism Biennale, it was first time the piece had left the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation archives.46 In many ways, this piece highlights the complex and multifaceted role art can play in the atrocity prevention process. Meaningful and effective reconciliation necessitates the acknowledgment of injustices and wrongdoings, the addressal of the root causes of the conflict, a recognition of suffering, spaces for healing, and the rewriting of narratives to acknowledge the truths of the past.47 In the aftermath of conflict and atrocity, art making can function as a

45 Young shared the piece in a local group exhibition titled “The Politics of Mother” before submitting it to the TRC. 46 The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) is the permanent home for all statements, documents, and other materials gathered by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Other pieces included Artivism from the Canadian TRC: a vase, a qulliq (soapstone lamp), a recovered brick from a residential school that burned down in 2002, photographs, a collectively-made healing quilt, and a vinyl record and record player. 47 See Cynthia Cohen and Lesley Yalen, “Recasting Reconciliation through Culture and Art: A Virtual Collection: Posting a Theoretical Framework,” The International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University, accessed April 19, 2021, https://www.brandeis.edu/ethics/peacebuildingarts/pdfs/peacebuildingarts/ recasting_framewk.pdf; Erin Daly and Jeremy Sarkin-Hughes, Reconciliation in Divided Societies: Finding Common Ground (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Priscilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocities (New York: Routledge, 2002); Ernesto Verdeja, Unchopping a Tree: Reconciliation in the Aftermath of Political Violence (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009).

powerful practice of healing, reflecting, and cultivating of personal and communal narratives.48 For Young, the making of the art aided in the healing of her cultural trauma related to decades of devastating, systematic violence inflicted upon her, her family, and her community. She described her art’s creation as a reparative act, stating, “I cannot underestimate or forget the deadly impact residential school education has had on my sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, my mother, my father and step-father, my grandparents and great-grandparents.” She continued, “I view my art as medicine. Art helps us heal… I visit a fractured time in history and through art tell a story through the application and handling of the medium. In doing so I am helping heal the generations affected by this incident.”49 The process of sharing art can also be reparative. Waller writes that an important aspect of prevention is for societies to “have in place functioning, open, transparent dispute resolution or transitional justice mechanisms to address legacies of vengeance and grievance” and to encourage remembrance, teaching, and understanding.50 The Canadian TRC provided an open forum through which survivors could address grievances and share their testimony, including artistically if so desired, creating a space for art to do what Clara Ramirez-Barat has called the necessary work of “bridging the gap between justice processes and the societies in which they take place.”51 Such work can assist in the addressal of legacies of violent conflict and encourage collective preventive processes of remembrance and healing. Young’s art was a means through which to powerfully and effectively convey the deeply painful loss of family, language, culture, ceremony, and identity and to speak directly to the multigenerational legacy of trauma. The public sharing of art also provided an opportunity to engage in the shared processes of remembrance, learning, and grieving that are so essential to reconciliation and prevention. In our June 2020 conversation, Young described how impressed she was with people’s bravery and honesty and how open other survivors were with such painful raw stories and memories. Even though she wanted to leave, she was inspired to honor their honesty and bravery with her own.52 Such opportunities to share stories and hear the stories of others can facilitate a collective reflection on the impact of past violence, the breaking down of cultural barriers, and the shared imagining of new futures. Michelle LeBaron writes: “Cultures are like underground rivers that run through our lives and relationships, giving us messages that shape our perceptions, attributions, judgements and ideas of self and other.”53 As such, and as scholars have argued, dialogue is a necessary component of long-term peacebuilding processes because it enables

48 There is an immense wealth of scholarship on diverse intersections of art and trauma, art during and after conflict, art and violence, art and social justice, etcetera. A comprehensive survey is vastly beyond the scope of this article. In addition to scholars cited elsewhere in this article, see, for example: Cynthia E. Cohen et al., eds., Acting Together I: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict: Resistance and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence (New York: New Village Press, 2011); Cynthia E. Cohen et al., eds., Acting Together II: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict: Building Just and Inclusive Communities (New York: New Village Press, 2011); Catherine M. Cole, Performing South Africa's Truth Commission: Stages of Transition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010); Margarita Saona, Memory Matters in Transitional Peru (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007); Diana Taylor, Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014), Diana Taylor, Performance (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). 49 Linda Young, in conversation with the author, June 2020. 50 Waller, Confronting Evil, 171. 51 Clara Ramírez-Barat, “Introduction: Transitional Justice and the Public Sphere,” in Transitional Justice, Culture, and Society: Beyond Outreach, ed. Clara Ramírez-Barat (New York: Social Science Research Council, 2014), 29. 52 Linda Young, in conversation with the author, June 2020. 53 Michelle LeBaron, “Culture and Conflict,” in Beyond Intractability, eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess (Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado Boulder, July 2003), accessed November 1, 2020, https:// www.beyondintractability.org/essay/culture_conflict.

people to come together to listen to each other and facilitates the shifting of potentially damaging cultural perceptions, judgments, and ideas.54 This experience of healing through art making and sharing expanded even further when Young’s piece was displayed in the Auschwitz Institute’s Artivism Pavilion. Young found the experience extremely powerful, reflecting: “Seeing people be moved by all of the stories of atrocity, it felt very important. That we were working collectively to share a story that is important for the world to hear.”55 She went on to describe a powerful conversation she had at the exhibit’s opening. The Ambassador of Canada to Italy came to the event, and when she met Young, she shared that she had not known much about the Indian Residential Schools until she saw Young’s work in the exhibit.56 This point of connection—of learning and listening across difference—is incredibly valuable. As seen here and elsewhere, art making and sharing can function as a reparative form of processing and healing cultural trauma related to institutionalized persecution, repression, oppression, and it is also a mechanism of remembrance and educating about past atrocities that finds purchase on multiple levels: personal, community-based, national, and international. In this capacity, it educates about past atrocities, correcting the public narrative and creating bridges between survivors and the public. As Waller writes: “[C]onflict history in a state or region is a nonmodifiable risk factor for the onset of future genocide—if it happened, it cannot be unhappened. What can be modified, however, are the ways in which that history is remembered, taught, processed, and understood.”57 Violence interrupts the telling of the story and rips apart social fabric. Art can function as thread to begin to stitch it back together.

Social Fragmentation The arts can also help mitigate risk factors related to what Waller refers to as social fragmentation, or when societies split into different identity groups that have little or almost no interaction or association with each other. Waller writes: “Where social cohesion can unite a people and strengthen a society, social fragmentation splinters a people, reduces the resiliency of a society, and places it at increased risk for violent or genocidal conflict.”58 These identity- based social divisions can be especially corrosive, and they are easily susceptible to escalation. Hate speech, for example, can promote the progressive dehumanization of, and then violence toward, another identity group. As Elazar Barkan notes: “[C]onflict between groups is often transgenerational, and the historical animosity remains if it is not addressed. Fear and desire for revenge often linger and inform the policies of the groups involved and are prone to be awakened by nationalists and fundamentalists as carriers of xenophobia.”59 Political instability, demographic pressures and unequal access to basic goods and services between identity groups (even just the perception of differing treatment and access) can all be strong drivers of conflict related to social fragmentation. In order to effectively mitigate risk factors associated with social fragmentation, Waller argues that states have a responsibility to constructively acknowledge and meaningfully accept and support diverse social identities in such a manner that also cultivates a more inclusive superordinate social identification as an “us” rather than many small separate “thems” that mistrust and compete with each other.60

54 See also David Bohm, On Dialogue (London: Routledge, 2014); Johan Galtung et al., Searching for Peace: The Road to Transcend (London: Pluto Press, 2000); Ereshnee Naidu-Silverman, The Contribution of Art and Culture in Peace and Reconciliation Processes in Asia: A Literature Review and Case Studies from Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh (Copenhagen: Danish Centre for Culture and Development, 2015). 55 Linda Young, in conversation with the author, June 2020. 56 Ibid. 57 Waller, Confronting Evil, 162. 58 Ibid., 181. 59 Elazar Barkan, “Historical Dialogue and the Prevention of Atrocity Crimes,” in Reconstructing Atrocity Prevention, ed. Sheri P. Rosenberg et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 182. 60 Ibid.

The arts have a critical role in this process. In the most extensive and comprehensive research to date into the impact of the arts, Americans for the Arts (AFTA) found that, across a wide range of arts projects and programs, participation helped reduce isolation, encourage cooperation, and build community networks. Nine out of ten participants said the arts had increased their sense of connection to community; nine out of ten arts participants also described meeting new people and making new friends through their arts experiences. Finally, the AFTA research data also showed that arts participation helped to resolve conflicts and increase tolerance and cross-cultural understanding.61 AFTA’s research is focused on the arts in the United States, but its breadth and depth makes it an invaluable resource, all the more so because similar research on a broad international or transnational scale does not yet exist.62 Furthermore, it is important to note that AFTA’s research results, which highlight the positive effect of arts participation on social cohesion, increased partnerships and intercultural understanding, and reduced fear, are corroborated across numerous, albeit more localized international projects.63 Taken as a whole, these studies and projects emphasize the essential role of the arts in encouraging social cohesion and positive intercultural community dialogue, which are essential to atrocity prevention. In the Artivism exhibit, this was powerfully exemplified by Bosnian artist Aida Šehović’s nomadic memorial, ŠTO TE NEMA, which directly engages with the ongoing legacies of conflict history and social fragmentation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and highlights the ability of the arts to address risk factors associated with atrocity and social fragmentation. After Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992,64 increasing ethno-

61 “Social Impact of the Arts,” Americans for the Arts, accessed May 5, 2021, https://www.americansforthearts.org/ socialimpact. For a more comprehensive review of their entire data set as well as the downloadable fact sheets, simply click on “Art” and “Civic Dialogue” on the virtual wheel respectively. 62 This is not to say that there are not larger scale projects happening, but rather that the goal of these projects has not been to produce data similar to AFTA’s on an international or transnational scale. For example, I came across a fairly recent project titled the Art of Peace, led by a research team at the University of Manchester, that seeks to investigate the role of grassroots arts in different types and stages of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Lebanon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo; but at the time of writing, I was unable to find any research or data related to the project. See “The Art of Peace,” University of Manchester, accessed November 9, 2020, https:// sites.manchester.ac.uk/the-art-of-peace/home/about/research/. Another project, Art and Reconciliation: Conflict, Culture and Community, was a collaboration between scholars at the King’s College London, the London School of Economics, and the University of the Arts in London to investigate post-conflict reconciliation by combining history, political science, art and creative practice. See “Art and Reconciliation: Conflict, Culture and Community,” London School of Economics (LSE), November 30, 2016, accessed November 9, 2020, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ government/2016/11/30/art-and-reconciliation-looking-at-post-conflict-reconstruction-in-a-different-light/. The project has produced a useful website with project profiles and lists of research publications, but these do not contain like data outputs. See Art & Reconciliation: Conflict, Culture, and Community (website), accessed April 19, 2021, https://artreconciliation.org/. 63 Brazilian dramaturg and political activist Augusto Boal developed Forum Theatre and Invisible theatre to facilitate dialogue between participants and encourage the breaking down of prejudice and animosity; such theatre-based reconciliation strategies have since gone on to be utilized around the world. See Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1985). Such initiatives include Combatants for Peace, a non-profit organization comprised of ex-combatant Israelis and Palestinians working toward peaceful resolution of the occupation and the conflict, and Ajoka Theatre, which strives for a more peaceful, democratic, and just Pakistan. See Combatants for Peace (website), accessed November 9, 2020, https://cfpeace.org/; Ajoka Theatre (website), accessed November 9, 2020, https://ajoka.org.pk/. There are also a number of prominent organizations that do fairly large-scale transnational arts-based prevention work. For example, the Search for Common Ground, one of the largest dedicated peacebuilding organizations, and with a presence in 31 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America, uses participatory theatre and other creative approaches in their work to transform conflict and violence and promote dialogue and collaboration. See Search for Common Ground (website), accessed November 9, 2020, https://www.sfcg.org/. In Place of War, a global nonprofit that advocates for the use of creativity as a tool for positive change in places of conflict, also seeks to enable grassroots changes through music, theater, and other artforms across twenty-four different sites of conflict, almost all of which are in the global south. See In Place of War (website), accessed November 9, 2020, https://www.inplaceofwar.net/. 64 For more on the fall of Yugoslavia, see Laura Silber and Allen Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (New York: Penguin Books, 1997).

national divisions soon led the new country into war, with violence predominantly occurring between the three principal identity groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), Bosnian Serbs, and Croats. In July 1995, escalating violence and unrest forced thousands of Bosniaks to flee to the United Nations Safe Area for protection. Bosnian Serbs then attacked the Safe Area, and, after relocating most women and girls away from the Safe Area, proceeded to murder the remaining 8,373 men and boys there seeking refuge.65 This massacre was officially ruled genocide by the International Court of Justice in 2006, but the Bosnia and Herzegovina of today remains deeply segregated, with Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Serbs, and Croats tending to live, work, and learn only with those from within their own ethnic group.66 Each group has their own education system, and while they have similar math and science curricula, they learn different versions of history, each positioning itself as the victim of the other groups. Because there is no consensus among the major ethnic groups about the violence of the 1990s, and Bosnian Serb leaders continue to deny the genocide, these ethnic divisions and tensions continue to be reinforced today.67 Seen in Artivism in a dormant state, ŠTO TE NEMA is a nomadic memorial that honors the memory of the 8,372 Bosnian Muslims murdered in the Srebrenica genocide. In the exhibit, visitors encountered large metal shelves stacked with thousands of the small porcelain cups traditionally used for coffee service, an important cultural ritual in Bosnia and Herzegovina— but one day each year, ŠTO TE NEMA is brought to life in the public square of a new city around the world. Every July 11, the anniversary of the genocide, Šehović invites passersby in the square to fill the cups with coffee and place them with the other accumulating cups, collectively contributing to the building of the memorial.68 As they pour, volunteers educate participants about the genocide, raising awareness and expanding communities of knowledge. The coffee remains undrunk, in memory of the victims. When Šehović lays the empty cups down in an urban square and invites others to fill them, she invites them to participate in a shared process of learning, remembering, mourning, and healing. As survivors gift cups to her memorial, it expands to include the voices and memories of thousands. When Šehović first did the performance in 2006, she had 932 cups, given to her by the members of the Women of Srebrenica Association from local families in the region. Today, almost 15 years later, she has 7,714 cups, with the eventual goal of collecting 8,373 cups, one for each victim. Šehović explained the importance of the cups in a June 2020 interview, stating:

I wanted you to feel overwhelmed and to somehow bring the idea of a number closer to you, because we talk about these numbers, and it’s like we forget we’re talking about human lives. We say 127 or 3,056—but we are talking about human lives. And it drives me crazy when people say ‘over 8,000 people’… I know why they say that—because we don’t know the precise numbers. We think it’s 8,273, but we’re not positive. But it can’t be ‘over 8,000’—it’s not apples. It’s humans. So, let’s use the numbers.69

65 Samantha Power, “Bosnia: No More Witnesses at a Funeral,” in A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002), 247–328. 66 For more on the Bosnian war and genocide, see Rabia Ali and Lawrence Lifschultz, eds., Why Bosnia?: Writings on the Balkan War (Stony Creek: Pamphleteer’s Press, 1993). 67 Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, Artivism: The Atrocity Prevention Pavilion, 2019 (pamphlet). 68 On July 11, 2019, the cups were removed from the exhibition space so that the monument could be created once more, this time in Venice’s Giardini. 69 Aida Šehović, in conversation with the author, June 2020. Citation ﬁrst appeared in footnote 1.

Stacked as they were in Artivism exhibit, on metal shelves reminiscent of those used to hold bones and other objects awaiting forensic analysis, the cups really did seem to represent the dead. Non-distinct from a distance, when viewers stepped closer the cups were recognizably individual, possessed of their own unique characteristics: a splash of delicate blush-colored ﬂowers, ﬁne vertical lines, trimmed in gold, polka dots, vibrant blue with an etched white design. Each one of these cups represents an individual person, a person who could have been sharing coffee with family and friends but was instead killed. With the cups serving as reminders of individual lives lost in Herzegovina and the poured—but not drunk— coffee of the ongoing felt presence of their absence, ŠTO TE NEMA is a powerful reminder that such genocidal loss is comprised of many individual stories and lost loved ones whose memory must continue to be recognized and honored.

Image 13. STO TE NEMA, image courtesy of the author

The telling, listening to, and revising of stories is essential to the restoration of fractured relationships and the development of more peaceful communities. As Cynthia Cohen writes, telling and listening to stories is essential to the peacebuilding process because it is through the sharing of stories that “former enemies come to understand each other’s experiences, the meaning each community attaches to historical events, and their moral sensibilities.”70 This

70 Cynthia Cohen, “Creative Approaches to Reconciliation,” in The Psychology of Resolving Global Conﬂicts: From War to Peace: Volume 3: Interventions, ed. Mari Fitzduff and Christopher E. Stout (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005), 15.

shared work of telling and listening is “critical to coexistence work because collective narratives are closely linked with social identities. To change identities, we must revise our stories, and revising stories can create social, emotional and intellectual spaces for more nuanced understandings of identity.”71 This is further corroborated by another AFTA study that found that participation in arts activities markedly increases tolerance. For example, in a study of US high schoolers, AFTA found that students who participated in the arts were forty percent more likely to have friends from different racial groups and twenty-nine percent less likely to think it was acceptable to make racist remarks. The research also emphasized the crucial role of the arts in bringing together children from immigrant and resident populations and found that arts programming created a common bridge that promoted friendship, empathy and mutual trust.72 Again, while this research was not done through the lens of genocide prevention, these results nonetheless have powerful implications for mitigating risk factors associated with genocide and mass atrocity because they emphasize the power of the arts to encourage people to literally and figuratively come together to listen and be listened to, to engage side by side in shared activities, and to cultivate community, self-reflection, and empathy for others—all of which are necessary to the diminution of social fragmentation and growth of social cohesion. Along similar lines, Rachel Kerr argues that “it is precisely the idea that the engagement is open- ended, and not predetermined, that is valuable. The arts can accommodate difference, not seek a single didactic ‘truth.’”73 This ability to create a pathway to meaningful dialogue and learning across difference is essential to prevention. Ending cycles of violence—whether it is recovering from previous conflict or preventing future conflict—necessitates functioning relations grounded in connection and support—both felt and practiced—between those in governance and society and between the identity groups of which society is comprised. ŠTO TE NEMA, exhibited in Artivism in dormant format, is a reminder that reconciliation and prevention are intricately linked, multifaceted processes that rely upon increased and shared understanding, trust, and respect to effectively dismantle entrenched grievances and social fragmentation. As Sarah Madison writes, reconciliation is both process and goal and requires “a change of values, a willingness to venture beyond the promotion of rigid identities that result in war and cultivate a new attitude towards others.” This is the basis from which to address the “major material and structural challenges that so often cause post-conflict societies to slide back into war…”74 This is akin to what John Lederach has called the “moral imagination”—the ability to be grounded in the realities of the present while imagining and working toward a different world.75 Artistic interventions like ŠTO TE NEMA can play a critical role in this process because they encourage people to stop, listen, learn, and connect. In our conversation, Šehović reflected: “Art can be the way toward preventing violence. For people who feel safe and comfortable, whose life is safe and comfortable, it’s really, really hard for them to understand, without disrupting their comfort and safety, to understand, even in a small form, what it means to not be safe, what it means to be hurt.”76 However, she believes that artistic interventions like ŠTO TE NEMA have a very unique role in making that violence accessible. Šehović explained:

If you are someone who has never felt unsafe, has never felt that your identity has been threatened, if you hold that cup in your hand, you are connected forever. You can never tell me

71 Ibid. 72 Americans for the Arts, Social Impact of the Arts. Citation ﬁrst appeared in footnote 59. 73 Rachel Kerr, “Art, Aesthetics, Justice, and Reconciliation: What Can Art Do?,” AJIL Unbound 114 (2020), 127, accessed November 1, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2020.24. 74 Sarah Maddison, Conﬂict Transformation and Reconciliation: Multi-Level Challenges in Deeply Divided Societies (London: Routledge, 2016), 46. 75 Lederach, The Moral Imagination, 3. 76 Aida Šehović, in conversation with the author, June 2020.

you don’t know. Your understanding of Srebrenica and hopefully all genocide and atrocities changes, because here you were holding a cup that represents one human who was killed because of who they were.77

This intimate connection to the past, this ability to hold it in one’s hands and to understand it as an individual life lost, can create shared spaces of remembering and mourning, listening and learning, and envisioning and committing to more peaceful futures. As Rachel Kerr argues, effective reconciliation requires the “ongoing processes of building relationships and mutual respect that are crucial to social repair.”78 And while the arts are and should not be considered a replacement for more formal policy-based processes, “the arts can provide a ‘creative pathway’ to reconciliation, breaking silences, transforming relationships, communicating across cultural divides and providing a means of dealing with trauma and restoring human dignity.”79 Effective atrocity prevention requires the meaningful encouragement and development of social cohesion, aided by efforts to imagine and cultivate different sets of relationships and ways of thinking and being in community. This is a goal and process to which arts initiatives can make a profound contribution.

Governance The final category of risk factors for violent or genocidal conflict addressed here is that of governance. Waller broadly defines governance as how authority is exercised, inclusive of how governments are selected, monitored, and replaced, their capacity to develop and implement policy, and the degree to which citizens trust and respect the state and its representing institutions.80 The five risk factors Waller outlines—regime type, legitimacy deficit, weakness of state structures, identity-based polar factionalism, and systematic acts of discrimination—have far reaching impact. Without strong and functioning structures, states cannot provide basic services and uphold the law. People will not trust the state if it is not seen as functional, legitimate, law-abiding, and impartial. Governmental factionalism and discrimination against identity groups, including through such actions as the removal of civil liberties, arbitrary detention or imprisonment, or unequal access to education is deeply corrosive to efficacy, trust, and public safety. Obviously, arts initiatives are unlikely to instantly transform a dictatorship into a democracy, but they are remarkably powerful in calling attention to corruption and impunity and influencing public opinion about the state and official processes.81 As Whigham writes:

Although it may be true that the most visible and widely discussed aspects of dealing with the past—from truth commissions to criminal prosecution to reparations to institutional reform—require the participation of governmental actors, the fact remains that most of these processes initiate through a movement from the grassroots that begins long

77 Ibid. 78 Rachel Kerr, “The ‘Art’ of Reconciliation,” FICHL Policy Brief Series 78 (2017), 3, accessed November 1, 2020, https:// www.toaep.org/pbs-pdf/78-kerr/. 79 Ibid. 80 Waller, Confronting Evil, 150. 81 That said, it is worth remembering that the “No!” creative marketing campaign is credited with playing a pivotal role in ﬁnally ending General Augusto Pinochet’s longstanding dictatorship in Chile.

before the state opts to assume responsibility for these projects.82

Put simply, those who implement oppressive, violent power systems are unlikely to press for their own accountability, just as those who directly benefit from those systems are unlikely to lead the charge for their change. But arts initiatives, especially at the grassroots level, can be an invaluable and powerful means of calling out atrocity and human rights abuses, activating dialogue, educating others, and demanding change. In Canada, Young’s artwork conveys the damages done to generations of indigenous communities through systematic state- led discrimination and takes part in a public reckoning and healing process. Meanwhile, GAC, in Argentina, is an excellent example of the role artistic activists can play in repudiating state- supported impunity and demanding change. Their creative efforts, along with that of other activist groups, strengthened Argentina’s then-young democracy and helped bring about change in Argentina, which eventually revoked the impunity laws and reopened perpetrator trials. The Trial of the Juntas was the first largescale trial by a democratic government against a former military dictatorial government of the same country in all of Latin America.83 Mulyani’s artwork addresses the ongoing need for reparations in Indonesia, where the genocide has yet to be formally acknowledged by the Indonesian government, nor have there been formal reparations efforts. Of her two pieces in Artivism, the first, “Oleh-oleh” [Souvenir], is a sculptural and sound installation comprised of a row of thirteen ears displayed on the wall to commemorate thirteen activists who were kidnapped in the 1990s for dissent against the dictatorial regime that began in 1965.84 Her second piece, “Supervivere,” is a photography series depicting the lives of a number of Indonesian exiles currently living in Belgium, Sweden, and the Netherlands after their citizenship was revoked and they were made stateless by the Indonesian government in 1965. Works such as these call powerful attention to ongoing silences and erasures and point to the pervasive impact still experienced throughout the Indonesian diaspora decades after the genocide. Art initiatives can also bring attention to ongoing human rights abuses that have been insufficiently addressed by the national and international community. For example, Chalak’s face castings address the ongoing ISIS violence against the Yazidi people in Iraq (including forced conversion to Islam or murder, the kidnapping of Yazidi boys to be ISIS fighters, and the kidnapping, rape, and nonconsensual marriage of Yazidi women and girls). Wanting to share the women’s stories and raise international awareness and condemnation of this ongoing genocide but worried that identifying the women would put them women at further risk, Chalak began casting masks of their faces as a form of representation without identification. He takes these masks around the world, creating opportunities for people to try on the masks themselves, giving powerful new meaning to the concept of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Chalak has created 23 masks to date, all of which were displayed in Artivism woven through and beyond a metal cage reminiscent of those in which many Yazidi women have been held. Across these different examples, the artworks exhibited in Artivism highlight arts’ role in demanding governmental accountability and an end to corruption, contributing to helping rebuild society’s trust, and strengthening transition, justice, and prevention processes.

Conclusion Art is not a panacea for violent conﬂict, and atrocity prevention is complex, ongoing work. Indeed, and as scholars have noted, there is no guarantee that art will necessarily lead to

82 Kerry E. Whigham, “Remembering to Prevent: The Preventive Capacity of Public Memory,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 11, no. 2 (2017), 58, accessed August 1, 2019, http://doi.org/ 10.5038/1911-9933.11.2.1447. 83 “Juicio a la Juntas Militares,” International Crimes Database, accessed April 23, 2021, http://www.internationalcrimesdatabase.org/ Case/1118. 84 Although only 13 ears were displayed in Artivism, the complete Oleh-oleh [Souvenir] comprises 169 ears arranged on the wall in 13 rows of 13.

decreased violence and increased cohesion.85 Art is adiaphorous; it can have positive and negative effects (there are examples throughout history of when the arts have been used in service of the perpetuation of violence and not its cessation); it can also have no effect.86 As Cohen writes: “Whether intentionally or not, creative initiatives can… reinforce power inequities, retraumatize communities, perpetuate harmful stereotypes, trivialize suffering, reactivate hostilities and demean sacred cultural forms.”87 But, she continues, “when care is taken to minimize risks of harm…. artistic and cultural processes can be crafted to engage individuals and communities in transforming consciousness, building relationships and reimagining the future.”88 The Artivism exhibit, in its collection and range, provides a canvasing of multiple and directed creative interventions that allow for a kind of understanding of atrocity as a global problem. It isn’t limited to region, issue, language, or religion; conﬂict impacts across multiple generations; and without meaningful prevention efforts, genocide and atrocity will continue to remain a very real risk. However, Artivism effectively created a space for audiences to bear witness89 to survival and engage in what has in scholarship at times been called “ethical spectatorship,”90 “seeing for,” 91 “empathic vision,” 92 “ethical imagination,” 93 and “ethical vision,”94 and then consider their own role in prevention. As noted earlier, the importance of this should not be underestimated: increased public awareness leads to increased support and calls for change, followed by action and actual change. Furthermore, it modeled for governments how they might learn from, engage with, and support different arts-based prevention efforts in their own countries. It also highlighted our collective responsibility to actively participate in prevention efforts. This lesson seemed especially powerful in the context of the Venice Biennale networks of power and prestige, and it brought to mind what Michael Rothberg has called the implicated subject. Rothberg writes:

85 See, for example, the ﬁlms used for Nazi propaganda, or Hitler’s intricately choreographed marches. 86 Cynthia Cohen, “Reimagining Transitional Justice,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 14, no. 1, (2020), 2; Kerr, The ‘Art’ of Reconciliation, 3. 87 Cohen, Reimagining Transitional Justice, 2. 88 Ibid. 89 The phrase “to bear witness” is widely used across disciplines, although it perhaps appears most prevalently in scholarship on memory and trauma. On one level, “to witness” is relatively straightforward: it is literally to see, to attest to fact or event. This is the level of witnessing at which the live, or eye, witness operates. The concept of witnessing also expands beyond the level of the live witness to incorporate a sense of shared responsibility on the part of the viewer. Writing about the Eichmann Trial, Annette Wieviorka asserts that the witness is the “bearer of history,” and an “embodiment of memory, attesting to the past and to the continuing presence of the past.” See Annette Wieviorka, The Era of the Witness, trans. Jared Stark (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 88. In Seeing Things, John Ellis describes witnessing as a distinct mode of perception, wherein we can no longer say we do not know. See John Ellis, Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000). Similarly, John Peters writes: “To witness an event is to be responsible in some way to it.” In other words, to bear witness is not “just” to see or verify, but to intellectually and affectively acknowledge the magnitude of an event, and feel its weight. To bear witness, either directly or indirectly, is to share in the responsibility for what has occurred and is yet to come. See John Durham Peters, “Witnessing,” Media, Culture, and Society 23, no. 6 (2016), 708, accessed August 1, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1177/016344301023006002. 90 Wendy Kozol, Distant Wars Visible: The Ambivalence of Witnessing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 16. 91 Mieke Bal, “The Pain of Images,” in Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Trafﬁc in Pain, ed. Mark Reinhardt et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 93–115. 92 Jill Bennett, Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2005). 93 Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg, “Who Was Afraid of Patrice Lumumba? Terror and the Ethical Imagination in Lumumba: La Mort du Prophet,” in Terrorism, Media, Liberation, ed. J. David Slocum (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press), 248–266. 94 Kyo Maclear, “The Limits of Vision: Hiroshima Mon Amour and the Subversion of Representation,” in Witness and Memory: The Discourse of Trauma, eds. Ana Douglass and Thomas A. Vogler (New York: Routledge), 233–248.

Implicated subjects occupy positions aligned with power and privilege without being themselves direct agents of harm; they contribute to, inhabit, inherit, or beneﬁt from regimes of domination but do not originate or control such regimes. An implicated subject is neither a victim nor a perpetrator, but rather a participant in histories and social formations that generate the positions of victim and perpetrator, and yet in which most people do not occupy such clear-cut roles.95

Implicated subjects are not perpetrators, but they benefit from and participate in structures of inequality. By not just asking audiences to take seriously the question of how they might actively contribute to prevention efforts, but also giving them concrete examples of how they could contribute from and within their own communities in just sixty seconds, sixty minutes, or sixty days, the Artivism exhibit underscored that, just as we are all participants in intersecting and overlocking histories and social formations, we all have a shared responsibility to actively participate in the prevention of genocide and mass atrocity. Given the sheer numbers of international visitors to the Biennale, this message was especially important. The exhibit asks visitors to not look away—from the art and the specific conflict contexts from which each piece originated, but most importantly from the urgency of the call for a shared commitment in prevention. Artivism brings prevention work to audiences who may have had very little prior contact with the field and asks visitors to take the work home with them. It extends the reach of the artworks displayed therein, finding for them new audiences and broader cross-cultural awareness. But Artivism does not just display powerful examples of atrocity prevention, the exhibit also actively contributes to prevention by arguing that meaningful genocide and atrocity prevention will take each and every one of us and asking for a commitment to supporting and cultivating prevention efforts all across the globe. The power and reach of this ask are profound. Across this study, there are a number of important takeaways. First, the arts have a critical role to play in mitigating risk factors associated with genocide and mass atrocities. This includes through healing to break cycles of violence and trauma, educating to promote a collective story and cultivate moral imagination, sharing to generate bridges between estranged groups and identities, and awareness-raising to address governmental weakness and inaction. Second, this has important ramifications for future prevention efforts because it highlights the importance of meaningful integration and support for the arts as prevention. This includes, but is not limited to the following: The arts should be incorporated into reconciliation and community building and strengthening projects that engage all different aspects of a community. Collaborations between artists, state actors, and civil society should be encouraged and supported. Programs and spaces should be created to enable artists as well as their state and community collaborators to exchange ideas and best practices and build relationships and networks of accountability and support. Funding and grants programs to support artistic residencies, collaborations, and the creation of new works should be prioritized, as well as increased investment in infrastructure for the arts, such as community centers, theaters, galleries, and other public spaces. Finally, further study is required. Advancing the impact of the arts in atrocity prevention requires more targeted arts programming, closely documented case studies, appropriate models of evaluation and assessment, and scholarly attention. I have sketched out a framework for arts-based prevention analysis and employed it in analysis of a series of arts initiatives from differing regional and conflict contexts. Deeper exploration into different art forms and projects or conflicts and their corollary preventive efforts is beyond the scope of this essay. My hope is that this will serve as an intervention into an ongoing scholarly conversation and, as called for by Šehović in the opening epigraph, animate powerful new possibilities for the study and practice of arts-based genocide and atrocity prevention.

95 Michael Rothberg, The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019), 1.

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Nicole Fox California State University, Sacramento Sacramento, California, USA

Hollie Nyseth Brehm The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio, USA

John Gasana Gasasira University of Rwanda Kigali, Rwanda

Introduction When genocidal violence began in Rwanda in April of 1994, Aurore, a pregnant mother of two, stayed close to home. She heard news of killing groups targeting Tutsi throughout the country, and soon, terrified Tutsi arrived in her village to seek refuge where violence had not yet begun. When several of these individuals asked her for help, Aurore knew what she and her family had to do. Even though it was incredibly risky for Hutu to try to save Tutsi, she hid a young boy and his mother (among others) in her home and—when needed—pretended the child was her nephew.1 When asked about the rescue years later, Aurore explained: “No, I was not afraid. If I die, I will die, but people should understand that blood is blood…we should respect each other. But, I was not afraid of this.”2 Aurore began identifying as a Seventh-day Adventist when she was 15 years old, and she was convinced that her actions to rescue people were exactly what God had wanted her to do. Reflecting back, she shared: “Maybe it was God who protected those people [I rescued], along the way until they got to our house.” Further, Aurore believed her collective acts with her husband and children were worth the risk of death. In her words: “We are human. I believe that if you are mortal—and every man is mortal—you may die today, but I will die tomorrow, and it is better to protect each other from this.”3 Unlike Aurore, the majority of Hutu decided not to rescue Tutsi during the genocide. Previous scholarship on rescue has emphasized the seemingly uncommon psychological characteristics of those who rescue, with many scholars arguing that they possess what has become known as an “altruistic personality.”4 Although psychological traits are undoubtedly important for explaining these prosocial behaviors, research also suggests that social factors impact the dynamics of rescue, such as who rescues and how they do so.5 This article focuses on the role of one particular social factor—religion—during rescue efforts. Specifically, we ask: how did religious beliefs, practices, and social networks shape rescue efforts during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda?

1 Pseudonym, Female, Age 39 at the time of rescue, Seventh-day Adventist, 2019, Rwanda. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 For example, see Samuel P. Oliner and Pearl M. Oliner, The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe (New York: The Free Press, 1992), 142; Ervin Staub, “The Psychology of Bystanders, Perpetrators, and Heroic Helpers,” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 17, no. 3 (1993), 334. 5 Nicole Fox and Hollie Nyseth Brehm, “‘I Decided to Save Them:’ Factors that Shaped Participation in Rescue Efforts During the Genocide in Rwanda,” Social Forces 96, no. 4 (2018), 1630.

Nicole Fox, Hollie Nyseth Brehm, and John Gasana Gasasira. “The Impact of Religious Beliefs, Practices, and Social Networks on Rwandan Rescue Efforts During Genocide.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1, 97–114. https:// doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1790. © 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention. 98 Fox et al.

Relying on 45 in-depth interviews with individuals who rescued Tutsi in Rwanda, we demonstrate that religion is tied to rescue efforts in at least three ways: 1) through the creation of cognitive safety nets that enabled high-risk actions; 2) through religious practices that isolated individuals from the social networks of those committing the violence; and 3) through religious social networks where individuals encountered opportunities and accessed resources to rescue. As such, we emphasize the social dimensions of religion and thus depart from existing literature on religion and rescue, which examines the religious denominations of those who rescued as well as the stated religious justiﬁcations underpinning rescue efforts. More broadly, the case of rescue in Rwanda provides important insights about religion and resisting violence. It illustrates how religious socialization and beliefs can support high-risk collective action, how religious practices may buffer individuals from recruitment to violent social movements, and how religious social networks and spaces can connect individuals in ways that enable them to save lives during extreme political violence. It is consequently vital to better understand the religious dynamics underpinning attempts to save persecuted individuals. We begin by examining existing research on religion and rescue efforts. We then address literature on decision-making and high-risk behavior in order to situate how religiosity6 shapes actions and situational contexts. Next, we describe our interview data, followed by our ﬁndings on how religious practices, spaces, and social networks impacted acts of rescue in Rwanda. Broadly, we illustrate how each of these factors shaped rescue efforts, illuminating how religion mattered in previously undocumented ways.

Religion and Rescue Efforts Studies about individuals who have engaged in rescue during genocide are often cited in a wider body of literature that seeks to understand the social and psychological characteristics of “heroes” and “moral exemplars.”7 Among these characteristics, scholars have devoted significant attention to understanding the possible connection between religion and rescue. This scholarship has generally centered on two interrelated questions: 1) What are the religious denominations and the levels of religiosity among those who rescue? and 2) Did religion motivate these individuals to rescue? Regarding the first question, some previous scholarship has suggested that individuals who adhere to minority religions may be particularly inclined to rescue due to the empathy that accompanies identification with a minority group.8 More recent work has likewise argued that individuals belonging to minority religions may be more likely to rescue, while emphasizing the collective aspects tied to their minority status. For instance, Braun9 suggests that a religious community’s desire and ability to resist genocide depends on how it is situated relative to the religious majority, making minority communities more inclined to protect persecuted groups. For Braun, religious social networks are particularly important for understanding minority rescue efforts, as he argues that minority social networks are better able to recruit and retain individuals who rescue.10

6 Religiosity includes religious beliefs, worldviews, convictions, practices, institutional afﬁliations, and rituals. 7 See Stephanie Fagin-Jones, “Holocaust Heroes: Heroic Altruism of Non-Jewish Moral Exemplars in Nazi Europe,” in Handbook of Heroism and Heroic Leadership, ed. Scott T. Allison et al. (New York: Routledge, 2016), 203; Kristian Frisk, “What Makes a Hero? Theorising the Social Structuring of Heroism,” Sociology 53, no. 1 (2019), 88. 8 Robert Braun, Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries during the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 16. 9 Braun, Protectors of Pluralism, 216–242. 10 Ibid.

However, others have frequently noted the diversity of people who rescue, based on both religious affiliation and level of religiosity.11 In one of the largest comparative studies of Christian individuals who rescued during the Holocaust and those who did not, Oliner and Oliner12 found that the majority of both groups were affiliated with religious institutions, and shared similar levels of personal and parental religiosity. This evidence suggests that religiosity and ties to religious institutions (whether majority or minority) may not strongly differentiate people who rescue from those who do not. Indeed, those who rescue are often heterogeneous in terms of religiosity, with levels ranging from non-religious to very devout.13 Researchers have also addressed religious motivations for rescue, with mixed results. In the same study referenced above, Oliner and Oliner14 found that only 15 percent of participants cited religion, God, or Christianity as significant motivators in their decisions to rescue. Varese and Yaish15 even found that the less religious respondents in their study were actually more likely to rescue. However, other studies have cited religion as a more prominent motivating factor for rescue, though this motivation is more likely among those who identify as highly religious.16 A significant number of qualitative studies also provide examples of individuals citing religion, God, or biblical teachings as motivations for their rescue efforts.17 For instance, in the case of Nazi Germany, scholars have argued that some Christians who rescued Jews did so in part because they saw them as the “chosen people of God.”18 Some people who rescued during the Holocaust have also stated that general religious teachings encouraged their efforts.19 Similarly, others have cited biblical texts, which call on believers to be compassionate and assist people in need, as their inspiration to rescue.20 These studies demonstrate how some individuals tie their decision to rescue to moral religious lessons. Taken together, existing scholarship on rescue and religion has thus generated mixed results. This body of work suggests that religious people are not necessarily more inclined to rescue than non-religious people, with some scholarship indicating that religious minorities

11 Gay Block and Malka Drucker, eds., Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust (New York: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992), 6; Stephanie Fagin-Jones and Elizabeth Midlarsky, “Courageous Altruism: Personal and Situational Correlates of Rescue During the Holocaust,” The Journal of Positive Psychology 2, no. 2 (2007), 138, Oliner and Oliner, The Altruistic Personality, 154. 12 Oliner and Oliner, The Altruistic Personality, 156. 13 Jessica Casiro, “Argentine Rescuers: A Study on the ‘Banality of Good,’” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006), 441. 14 Oliner and Oliner, The Altruistic Personality, 155. 15 Federico Varese and Meir Yaish, “The Importance of Being Asked: The Rescue of Jews in Nazi Europe,” Rationality and Society 12, no. 3 (2000), 320. 16 Peal M. Oliner et al., “Very Religious and Irreligious Rescuers,” in Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, ed. John K. Roth et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 313; Michael L. Gross, “Jewish Rescue in Holland and France during the Second World War: Moral Cognition and Collective Action,” Social Forces 73, no. 2 (1994), 474. 17 Eva Fleischner, “Remembrance and Responsibility: Rescuers of Jews During the Shoah,” in Good and Evil After Auschwitz: Ethical Implications for Today, ed. Jack Bemporad et al. (Hoboken: KTAV Publishing House, 2000), 206; Eva Fogelman, “The Rescuer Self,” in The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 674; Mitchell Hoffman, “Does Higher Income Make You More Altruistic? Evidence from the Holocaust,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 93, no. 3 (2011), 880–881; Oliner and Oliner, The Altruistic Personality, 155; Nechama Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 137. 18 David P. Gushee, “Rescuers: Their Motives and Morals,” in The Holocaust and the Christian World: Reﬂections on the Past, Challenges for the Future, ed. Carol Rittner et al. (London: Beth Shalom Holocaust Memorial and Education Centre, 2000), 160; Oliner and Oliner, The Altruistic Personality, 154. 19 Fleischner, Remembrance and Responsibility, 206. 20 David P. Gushee, “Many Paths to Righteousness: An Assessment of Research on Why Righteous Gentiles Helped Jews,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 7, no. 3 (Winter 1993), 389.

may be an exception, perhaps due to greater empathy or well-established, insular social networks in these communities. Scholars have also demonstrated that people who rescue cite religion, God, and biblical teachings as motivating factors in a relatively small percentage of cases but that such motivations may be particularly strong among the highly religious. However, researchers have yet to assess other dimensions of religion—beyond denomination, level of religiosity, and motivation—which may impact rescue efforts. Consequently, we sought to understand how religious beliefs, practices, and social networks may impact rescue, speciﬁcally, exploring how religious beliefs may enable particularly high-risk rescue actions.21 We likewise address how religious practices may insulate those who rescue from mobilization to violence. Finally, we analyze how religious social networks—apart from minority social networks—shape rescue efforts, including who gets rescued, where they are rescued, and how rescues takes place. To inform our inquiry, we looked beyond existing literature on religion and rescue to ascertain how religion shapes action in broader social circumstances with an emphasis on religion, decision-making, and high-risk action.

Religion, Decision-making, and High-Risk Action Scholars have long tied religious beliefs to decision-making. For instance, scholars have found that religion inﬂuences a variety of life decisions,22 including choices relating to family size, 23occupation, 24 education, 25 and voting. 26 Important for this study, much previous research has addressed how religion impacts helping and prosocial behaviors, such as volunteerism and charitable giving.27 Such studies on religion and decision-making have analyzed a range of behaviors, from low-risk, everyday practices to high-stakes action. Particularly relevant to high-stakes action like rescue, a subset of scholarship on religion seeks to understand how religious beliefs shape peoples’ perceptions of and feelings about death, shedding light on why some religious individuals may take life-threatening risks. To be clear, such beliefs are not the motivating factors behind taking such risks but may instead inform peoples’ decision-making processes. Speciﬁcally, scholars have argued that religious convictions reduce some fears about death,28 which can help explain religious individuals’

21 While a motivation consists of a primary reason or justification driving an action (often realized or narrated in the aftermath), a belief is a broader conviction that may also impact action, though often in less linear ways. 22 Emily Sigalow et al., “Religion and Decisions About Marriage, Residence, Occupation, and Children,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 51, no. 2 (2012), 318–321. 23 Jennifer B. Barrett et al., “Religion and Attitudes Toward Family Planning Issues Among US Adults,” Review of Religious Research 56, no. 2 (2014), 184. 24 Esperanza F. Hernandez et al., “Hearing the Call: A Phenomenological Study of Religion in Career Choice,” Journal of Career Development 38, no. 1 (2011), 70; Madonna G. Constantine et al., “Religion, Spirituality, and Career Development in African American College Students: A Qualitative Inquiry,” The Career Development Quarterly 54, no. 3 (2011), 233. 25 Scott Schieman, “Education and the Importance of Religion in Decision Making: Do Other Dimensions of Religiousness Matter?” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50, no. 3 (2011), 583. 26 Chris, J. Fastnow et al., “Holy Roll Calls: Religious Tradition and Voting Behavior in the U.S. House,” Social Science Quarterly 80, no. 4 (December 1999), 694. 27 See Patty Van Cappellen et al., “Religiosity and Prosocial Behavior Among Churchgoers: Exploring Underlying Mechanisms,” The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 26, no. 1 (2016), 24–28; Christopher J. Einolf, “The Link Between Religion and Helping Others: The Role of Values, Ideas, and Language,” Sociology of Religion 72, no. 4 (2011), 442; Jerry Z. Park and Christian Smith, “‘To Whom Much Has Been Given...:’ Religious Capital and Community Voluntarism among Churchgoing Protestants,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 39, no. 3 (2000), 283; Isabelle Pichon and Vassilis Saroglou, “Religion and Helping: Impact of Target Thinking Styles and Just-World Beliefs,” Psychology of Religion 31, no. 2 (2009), 232. 28 L. D. Nelson and C. H. Cantrell, “Religiosity and Death Anxiety: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis,” Review of Religious Research 21, no. 2 (1980), 154; Stephen R. Harding et al., “The Influence of Religion on Death Anxiety and Death Acceptance,” Mental Health, Religion & Culture 8, no. 4 (2005), 256; Nava Silton et al., “The Association Between Religious Beliefs and Practices and End-of-Life Fears Among Members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),” Review of Religious Research 53, no. 1 (2011), 366.

decisions to participate in high-risk action. For instance, Harding and colleagues29 found that parishioners who had high theological religiosity—meaning they had a strong belief in God’s existence and in an afterlife—also had low death anxiety. In turn, when individuals hold religious beliefs that facilitate low death anxiety, they may take extraordinary risks aligning with their religious convictions, as their beliefs may minimize the perceived consequences of high-risk actions. Some of this scholarly work also addresses how religious beliefs influence individuals’ decisions not to engage in high-risk actions, particularly those actions religious teachings label as deviant or wrong. For instance, researchers have argued that religious beliefs often deter drug and alcohol use,30 gambling, 31 cheating behavior, 32 and crime. 33 Important to this study, religiosity at the macro and meso levels—such as the rates of religious adherence and the civic engagement of religious adherents—can shape the frequency and intensity of racial violence.34 Further, community-level religiosity has been found to impact rates of violent crime and youth delinquency.35 Specifically, religious institutions significantly buffer “…the effects of neighborhood disorder on crime and, in particular, serious crime.”36 Observing these relationships, scholars have thus sought to theorize possible underlying mechanisms mediating the relationship between religion and high-risk behavior. In some cases, such deterrence from high-risk behavior can be explained by Durkheim’s “moral community thesis,”37 which proposes that a group’s level of religiosity impacts the behaviors of individual group members. Adherence to religious beliefs, as well as ties within social networks, can deter individuals from behaviors condemned by religious scripture and social networks adhering to the scripture. For instance, studies have shown that lower rates of HIV risk behavior, such as engaging in pre-marital and extra-marital sex, can be partially explained by religious community membership and indoctrination across dominations.38

29 Harding et al., The Influence of Religion, 256. 30 Ira Wasserman and Frank Trovato, “The Influence of Religion on Smoking and Alcohol Consumption: Alberta Case Study,” International Review of Modern Sociology 26, no. 2 (1996), 49. 31 Christopher G. Ellison and Michael J. McFarland, “Religion and Gambling Among U.S. Adults: Exploring the Role of Traditions, Beliefs, Practices, and Networks,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50, no. 1 (2011), 96; David Eitle, “Religion and Gambling Among Young Adults in the United States: Moral Communities and the Deterrence Hypothesis,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50, no. 1 (2011), 76. 32 Azim F. Shariff and Ara Norenzayan, “Mean Gods Make Good People: Different Views of God Predict Cheating Behavior,” The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 21, no. 2 (2011), 92. Note that this study is about cheating behavior such as dishonesty on a test rather than infidelity. 33 Colin J. Baier and Bradly R. E. Wright, “‘If You Love Me, Keep My Commandments:’ A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Religion on Crime,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 38, no. 1 (2001), 13; Thorleif Pettersson, “Religion and Criminality: Structural Relationships Between Church Involvement and Crime Rates in Contemporary Sweden,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30, no. 3 (1991), 288. 34 Jeffery T. Ulmer and Casey T. Harris, “Race and the Religious Contexts of Violence: Linking Religion and White, Black, and Latino Violent Crime,” Sociological Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2013), 610–646. Ulmer and Harris found that different religious contexts matter in reducing violence for black, Latino, and white communities. See Ulmer and Harris, Religious Contexts of Violence, 613. 35 John J. Dilulio, Jr., “More Religion, Less Crime? Science, Felonies, and the Three Faith Factors,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 5, no. 1 (2009), 128; Byron R. Johnson et al., “Does Adolescent Religious Commitment Matter?: A Reexamination of the Effects of Religiosity on Delinquency,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 38, no. 1 (2001), 37. 36 Byron Johnson et al., “The ‘Invisible Institution’ and Black Youth Crime: The Church as an Agency of Local Social Control,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 29 (2000), 490. 37 Emile Durkheim, Suicide (New York: Free Press, [1897] 1966), 159–160. 38 Robert C. Garner, “Safe Sects? Dynamic Religion and AIDS in South Africa,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 38, no. 1 (2000), 64.

Beyond explaining deterrence from high-risk behaviors, religious social networks can also help explain participation in collective action and social movements in general.39 Such low- risk collective action, centering on religious identity and partnership across religious institutions, is illustrated by the recent “Save Darfur Coalition”—which advocated for U.S. intervention in Sudan.40 In another example, Catholic women who spearheaded the movement for New York’s welfare state at the turn of the 20th century drew on their Catholic social networks to mobilize state resources for the poor.41 Likewise, US civil rights activists participating in the 1964 Freedom Summer mobilized with civil rights activists in the North, including white Jews, to participate in Southern voter registration drives, with many sacriﬁcing their personal safety and, for some, their lives.42 As these examples illustrate, various religious movements throughout history have utilized their social networks to mobilize collective action of various risk levels, often championing their religious values. Given this literature on religion, decision-making, and high-risk action, we address how religious beliefs, practices, and social networks impact rescue. Again, we do so because existing literature on religion and rescue has mostly examined religious adherence and religious motivations, rather than these other social factors. Here, we expand to address other mechanisms through which religion may impact rescue via a case study of rescue in Rwanda.

Case Background and Methods Religion and Rescue Efforts in Rwanda On April 6, 1994, unknown assailants shot down Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana’s airplane. His assassination followed decades of tension between Rwanda’s two main ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi, culminating in civil war, economic recession, and volatile social unrest. Targeted killings began a few hours after the plane crash, and radio broadcasters and local leaders urged all Hutu to kill Tutsi. Many answered these calls inciting violence, including army ofﬁcials, political leaders, and thousands of civilians.43 Several months later, up to one million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were dead, and millions were displaced. When the genocide began, Rwanda was one of the most Christian countries in Africa. Approximately 90 percent of Rwandans were members of Catholic or Protestant churches, and most families attended religious services on a regular basis.44 Yet, religious institutions had a complicated relationship with the violence. Well before 1994, churches were engaged in ethnic politics and discrimination, and some priests wrote histories to help justify ethnic exclusion.45

39 Elizabeth D. Hutchinson, “Spirituality, Religion, and Progressive Social Movements: Resources and Motivation for Social Change,” Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought 31, no. 1–2 (2012), 106; Paul Lichterman, “Religion in Public Action: From Actors to Settings,” Sociological Theory 30, no. 1 (2012), 17; Doug McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer,” American Journal of Sociology 92, no. 1 (1986), 78. 40 Jodi Eichler-Levine and Rosemary Hicks, “As Americans against Genocide: The Crisis in Darfur and Interreligious Political Activism,” American Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2007), 712. 41 Maureen Fitzgerald, Habits of Compassion: Irish Catholic Nuns and the Origins of New York's Welfare System, 1830–1920 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 81. 42 Debra Schultz, Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 57. 43 See Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), 10, accessed April 20, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/ﬁles/media_2020/12/rwanda-leave-none-to-tell-the- story.pdf; Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 209; Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 29; Lee Ann Fujii, Killing of Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 55; André Guichaoua, From War to Genocide: Criminal Politics in Rwanda, 1990–1994 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015), 220. 44 Timothy Longman, “Church Politics and the Genocide in Rwanda,” Journal of Religion in Africa 31, no. 2 (2001), 164. 45 Timothy Longman, Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 162.

During the genocide itself, much of the killing occurred in churches, where Tutsi civilians sought refuge.46 While some priests and other religious leaders engaged in violence, other individuals tried to stop the violence and save others.47 Here, we focus on how religion shaped such rescue attempts. In doing so, we follow Burnet’s deﬁnition of individuals involved in rescue efforts as “…those who protected or evacuated Tutsi, or made other efforts to save them and who did not participate in the genocide whether by killing, raping, destroying property, or looting…They required not only the impulse to help but also the persistence to make the decision both to rescue and not to participate [in the genocide] repeatedly over time.”48 To be clear, scholars have documented that people engage in dynamic actions during genocide, with some individuals killing on certain days and rescuing on others.49 Nevertheless, we restrict our analyses to those who rescued, but who did not kill, in order to leverage the connection between religion and rescue. By having a sample of solely those who rescued, we can better identify how religion impacted rescue rather than how killing and religion may have affected rescue, which would be difﬁcult to disentangle.50

Our Sample and In-Depth Interviews We rely upon 45 in-depth interviews with people who participated in rescue efforts in Rwanda between April–July 1994. Working with translators, the first two authors conducted most of these interviews over several fieldwork trips between 2012 and 2019.51 Three Rwandans, including the third author, also conducted interviews, as further explained below. We identified interviewees through Ibuka, a nongovernmental organization that provides services to genocide survivors throughout the country. Specifically, Ibuka recorded the testimonies of people who rescued as part of a 2009 research project. Ibuka researchers randomly selected two sectors (small regions) within each of the country’s 30 districts. They then chose the two cells (a smaller geographic unit) with the largest populations of genocide survivors and the two cells with the smallest populations of survivors within these sectors. In each of the cells, Ibuka researchers worked with researchers from the National University of Rwanda to conduct focus groups with survivors, people who committed violence, community leaders, judges in the post-genocide court system (i.e., gacaca), teachers, religious officials, and others. The main goal of the focus groups was to create lists of people who rescued. The researchers then vetted all individuals whose names appeared on the lists, ensuring both that they rescued and that they did not participate in the genocide by talking with other community members and, if possible, the people they rescued. We obtained Ibuka’s cumulative list of 273 vetted individuals who rescued and worked through local Ibuka representatives to secure their contact information. We then contacted people on the list and asked if they would be willing to participate in an interview on their rescue experience. We began by contacting people close to a central location (Kigali, Rwanda’s capital). We also called potential respondents in each of Rwanda’s five provinces, resulting in

46 Des Forges, Leave None, 161. 47 Daniel Rothbart and Jessica Cooley, “Hutus Aiding Tutsis during the Rwandan Genocide: Motives, Meanings, and Morals,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 10, no. 2 (2016), 77. 48 Jennie E. Burnet, “Accountability for Mass Death, Acts of Rescue, and Silence in Rwanda,” in A Companion to the Anthropology of Death, ed. Antonius C. G. M. Robben (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2018), 207. 49 Fujii, Killing of Neighbors, 585–588; Aliza Luft, “Toward a Dynamic Theory of Action at the Micro Level of Genocide: Killing, Desistance, and Saving in 1994 Rwanda,” Sociological Theory 33, no. 2 (2015), 164. 50 For instance, below we address trust tied to religious networks—trust that was likely tarnished for people who were known for participating in the killings. 51 The research for this project was conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and complied with Institutional Review Boards (IRB) standards and protocols through a partnership with the ﬁrst and second author’s respective universities. The authors also received permission from the Government of Rwanda, who granted them a research permit to conduct interviews throughout the country via sponsorship by the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide.

interviews across the country. Specifically, respondents resided (both in 1994 and at the time of the interview) in the present-day districts of Bugesera, Gasabo, Gisagara, Karongi, Kicukiro, Muhanga, Musanze, Nyamagabe, Nyanza, and Ruhango—totaling one-third of the districts of Rwanda. No individual we asked declined to be interviewed, but several individuals on Ibuka’s list had since passed away or moved. Thirty-two of the 45 respondents were men, while 13 (29 percent) were women. Though we cannot speak to the broader gender distribution of people who rescued, 18.6 percent of those in the full Ibuka dataset were women.52 Furthermore, the average age of people interviewed was approximately 35 at the time of the genocide, aligning with the average age of 40 in the full Ibuka dataset. 31 of the 45 respondents were farmers at the time of the genocide, and others worked as traders, soldiers, mechanics, local leaders, nurses, traders, or business people. Notably, three respondents were religious leaders (pastors or priests). Finally, 20 were Catholic, 11 were Seventh-day Adventists, eight were Pentecostal, four were Protestant, and two were Muslim at the time of the rescue.53 We offered to conduct interviews wherever respondents chose, which in most cases was at their homes. Respondents used the language they felt most comfortable with during interviews—including English, Kinyarwanda, French, or a combination. The first two authors worked with a translator when interviewing respondents who preferred Kinyarwanda. The third author and two other Rwandan research assistants conducted other interviews directly in Kinyarwanda, and the third author also served as a translator. We compared the transcripts of interviews conducted by American and Rwandan interviewers and found no significant differences relevant to the findings presented in this article. However, we recognize that some participants may have decided to share, or not share, certain aspects of their rescue story or religious identity depending on who they were speaking to (Rwandan interviewer vs. American interviewer), given the current political climate in Rwanda in which the government significantly constrains both research and speech.54 Interviews lasted between one to three hours and followed a semi-structured format. We asked respondents about the people they rescued, the situational context of their rescue efforts, and their reasons for rescuing. We also asked targeted questions about respondents’ religiosity and the role religion played in their rescue efforts. However, respondents often also referenced religion spontaneously in their answers to questions unrelated to religion. Upon transcription of interviews, we analyzed the transcripts using Atlas.ti, a computer software program that facilitates the organization of quotes by codes created by the users. We use pseudonyms in all quotations to protect respondents’ identities, modifying quotations only slightly to correct grammatical errors. We did not alter the meaning of any responses with our minor edits. Finally, a reader familiar with the Rwandan case may be concerned about the research climate in the country and its impact on the present study. Other scholars have written about

52 This does not necessarily indicate that women were less likely to rescue, as Ibuka researchers only interviewed the heads of households that rescued. We realized this part-way through data collection and then began interviewing both the head of household and their spouse (if they both participated in the rescue efforts). 53 According to the 1991 Census, approximately 63 percent of the country was Catholic, followed by 19 percent Protestant (including Pentecostal), 9 percent Seventh-day Adventist, 7 percent no religion, and 1 percent Muslim. Minnesota Population Center, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International: Version 7.2 [dataset]. (Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2019), accessed April 20, 2021, https://doi.org/10.18128/D020.V7.2. 54 For exploration on the challenges of conducting ﬁeldwork in Rwanda see Larissa R. Begley, “The Other Side of Fieldwork: Experiences and Challenges of Conducting Research in the border area of Rwanda/Eastern Congo,” Anthropology Matters 11, no. 2 (2009), 1–11; Erin Jessee, “Conducting Fieldwork in Rwanda,” Canadian Journal of Development Studies 33, no. 2 (2012), 266–274; Bert Ingelaere, “Learning ‘To Be’ Kinyarwanda in Postgenocide Rwanda: Immersion, Iteration, and Reﬂexivity in Times of Transition,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 30, no. 2 (2015), 277–292.

state control regarding the narratives of the genocide.55 However, as our interviews focused on narratives the state generally frames as heroic, fear did not seem to be pervasive amongst respondents. We also spent considerable time developing rapport with respondents before conducting interviews, and we took care to clarify that we were not working with Ibuka and that Ibuka would not learn who did or did not participate. Further, the two non-Rwandan interviewers had spent years in the country during previous ﬁeldwork trips, enabling them to better understand the cultural nuances and norms apparent in interviews.

Findings: How Religion Shapes Dynamics of Rescue Our analysis revealed that religion influenced several factors that in turn shaped rescue efforts among Rwandans. Specifically, we identify: 1) religious beliefs that produced cognitive safety nets enabling high-risk action, 2) religious practices that created a social buffer shielding individuals from the targeted recruitment of killing groups, and 3) religious social networks that led to and assisted in rescue efforts. In sum, cognitive safety nets impacted decisions to rescue, while social buffers afforded people (specifically men, as we address below) the space and opportunity to rescue successfully. Finally, religious social networks impacted where rescue took place, how rescue was enacted, and who was rescued.

Religious Beliefs as a Cognitive Safety Net for High-Risk Action Most of the people we interviewed described facing the possibility of death while engaging in rescue efforts. Killing groups often threatened respondents with death or injury, and some participants witnessed the death of friends and family members. For instance, a killing group cut off the leg and ﬁnger of one man we interviewed, while another killing group slaughtered a participant’s livestock. Yet, despite these high personal risks, respondents repeatedly told us that they were not deterred from rescuing—a phenomenon they linked to religious beliefs. Claude, who saved several older adults when he was only 22 years old, explained: “My concern was about helping people. I was very religious, and I was only committed to rescuing people…I was worried, I thought death was coming. But I was bold and waited for it.”56 Christine, a devout Catholic who saved four young children, also told us how she remained staunch in her efforts to rescue, even when her life was in danger: “I was committed; I could die with them. I was not better than them. I put everything in God’s hands.”57 Likewise, Ahmed, a Muslim who saved four people from his mosque by covering them in a ditch in his backyard, echoed Christine’s perspective by saying, “I was scared that rescuing could put me in danger, but I placed everything in God’s hands. God is able to do everything.”58 Many others told us similar stories. For instance, Marie, who saved an infant girl, was threatened by people who tried to purchase and kill the Tutsi baby she was taking care of. Marie explained that her faith in God gave her the strength to refuse, noting, “God gave me this child, so I cannot sell her.”59 Alodie, who saved 11 people days after the genocide began, similarly told us:

Getting killed while saving them was not a concern to me. They [Tutsi] also had life and wanted to live like any of us. We were not special, and at the end of the day all of us will die. Therefore, it is better dying while saving life. The Bible also

55 Andrea Purdeková, “‘Even If I Am Not Here, There Are So Many Eyes:’ Surveillance and State Reach in Rwanda,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 49, no. 3 (2011), 479; Susan Thomson, Whispering Truth to Power: Everyday Resistance to Reconciliation in Postgenocide Rwanda (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), 13. 56 Pseudonym, Male, Age 22 at the time of rescue, Seventh-day Adventist, 2016, Rwanda. 57 Pseudonym, Female, Age 39 at the time of rescue, Catholic, 2016, Rwanda. 58 Pseudonym, Male, Age 34 at the time of rescue, Muslim, 2019, Rwanda. 59 Pseudonym, Female, Age 42 at the time of rescue, Seventh-day Adventist, 2012, Rwanda.

says that lucky are those who die for Christ. If I will die, then dying saving life is honorable.60

Gatera also felt able to risk his life for rescue, sharing that, “[p]eople used to say that I am fearless...I know that if God wants you to live and when your time to die is up, you die. Therefore, I had nothing to fear.”61 Likewise, Damascene, a pastor who hid over 300 people in his backyard church explained: “When it reached the end, I was conﬁdent that what I was doing was right. I was even sure that if I died, I would die doing the right thing.”62 Damascene also believed he had a better place awaiting him, noting, “I knew I would go to Heaven.”63 Thus, these respondents and many others attributed the strength they felt when their lives were at risk to their knowledge that God would protect them. For instance, the teachings of the Koran provided a cognitive safety net for Bashir, who attempted to save four women and three children while also working as a medical practitioner during the genocide. Bashir explained how the promise of an afterlife made him feel safe in his decision to take high risks:

In the Koran, there is a verse which says that when you kill one person, you have killed the entire world...killing that one person is like killing the entire world...saving one person is saving every person that will descend from that person...respecting what the Koran says is a blessing, and God cannot abandon you if you are doing well. Even if he does, he pays in life after death.64

Echoing this notion, William, a Pentecostal who with his parents rescued approximately 100 people, shared that, “[p]eople make different choices whereby they take different routes. Some take the right and others take the wrong route. If you believe in God, you even believe in doing good things. I was conﬁdent that God was on our side and even if it meant dying, I was ready to die.”65 Murenzi’s conﬁdence in God’s protection also enabled his actions. He explained, “I did not feel scared; my hope was that whenever you do something good after praying to God, nothing wrong can happen to you.”66 Matilda, a Catholic who saved a young girl, expressed: “I became bold whenever I heard that killers were approaching. I was determined not to abandon her because I knew God could not let such an innocent child get killed...God was on our side.”67 Those who rescued reported that in their near-death experiences, they knew God would protect them, either preventing them from death or securing their afterlives. In other words, their religious beliefs enabled respondents to experience very low death anxiety in situations where it would be reasonable to experience high death anxiety. As such, religious beliefs in God’s protection and in an afterlife provided those who rescued with a cognitive safety net that facilitated their high-risk actions. Religious respondents, who believed risking one’s life to save another was part of God’s plan or doing right by God, consequently perceived rescue efforts as lower risk, believing they would be rewarded for either successfully saving a life or dying trying and going to the afterlife.

60 Pseudonym, Female, Age 50 at the time of rescue, Catholic, 2019, Rwanda. 61 Pseudonym, Male, Age 43 at the time of rescue, Protestant, 2019, Rwanda. 62 Pseudonym, Male, Age 38 at the time of rescue, Pentecostal, 2012, Rwanda. 63 Ibid. 64 Pseudonym, Male, Age 24 at the time of rescue, Muslim, 2019, Rwanda. 65 Pseudonym, Male, Age 24 at the time of rescue, Pentecostal, 2019, Rwanda. 66 Pseudonym, Male, Age 41 at the time of rescue, Catholic, 2019, Rwanda. 67 Pseudonym, Female, Age 31 at the time of rescue, Catholic, 2016, Rwanda.

Religious Practices as a Social Buffer against Recruitment and Discovery Religious practices also shaped rescue efforts by providing a social buffer. By social buffer, we mean practices that insulate a person socially from particular social groups or social situations. Specifically, religious practices tied to abstaining from drinking alcohol or immoral behaviors helped keep people from being recruited to participate in genocidal violence and from being discovered by killing groups. Notably, however, we find such social practices were only a social buffer for men, which we address below and in our discussion. To prepare and recruit for killing sprees, those committing the violence often gathered to consume alcohol.68 Consequently, individuals who were known non-drinkers due to religious convictions were often insulated from some of the most common recruitment methods. As Pascal, a Seventh-day Adventist who rescued a family of five, explained: “We were not supposed to eat meat, use sugar, take beers, and many other things. This helped me to distance myself from all people who did that.”69 Augustine, another Seventh-day Adventist who rescued several families, including his neighbor’s children, similarly explained: “There are people who join religions when they are not converted. For us, we were. We were true Christians. I have never taken alcohol in my life.”70 Neither men were recruited for participation in the genocidal violence. Pascal, Augustine, and others who did not drink alcohol may have avoided recruitment to killing groups because they were not in the bars where recruitment took place. They were also likely able to avoid targeted recruitment in other settings since killing group members assumed they would refuse to drink—a prerequisite in some killing groups for new recruits.71 Pascal and Augustine thus highlight how religious practices—especially pertaining to alcohol use among Seventh-day Adventists, Muslims, and others who abstained from drinking— created a social buffer from others who killed. In turn, this social buffer provides insight into the circumstances surrounding rescue. While abstinence from alcohol did not necessarily impact the decision to rescue, it likely affected the ability to rescue and the probability of successful rescue. Because Pascal and Augustine were not heavily recruited to participate in the genocide, they did not have to openly defy those who were recruiting for killing groups. This lack of confrontation may have bought them time and space from killing groups, who would search the homes of those who refused to participate in the violence. In this sense, their religious social practices likely impacted the assumptions members of killing groups made. While religious minorities at the time of the genocide (specifically Muslims and Seventh- day Adventists) possessed a social buffer due to their abstinence from alcohol, some members of the religious majority (Catholics) also experienced a degree of insulation due to their general religious practices and typical abstention from perceived immoral behavior. Charles, a Catholic who worked with his family to save a mother and child, shared:

I rarely interacted with such people [perpetrators] because I was working at the Catholic priest’s canteen. I could not get time to interact with such guys...I kept moving coming from church, coming home to gather information on where people at home were safe, going back to church, helping people at church, cooking food, serving them with food. Those killers would just tell me that I could also be killed one day, because I helped those people that were being targeted, but no one approached me telling me to join the killing…they thought we were fools because we are not interested in looting, killing people and

68 Des Forges, Leave None, 188. 69 Pseudonym, Male, Age 45 at the time of rescue, Seventh-day Adventist, 2016, Rwanda. 70 Pseudonym, Male, Age 39 at the time of rescue, Seventh-day Adventist, 2016, Rwanda. 71 Straus, The Order of Genocide, 149, 264.

taking their property…no one approached me to mobilize me to participate in killing.72

Like Charles, people knew Chase as a very religious man, and he believed this reputation kept some people from trying to recruit him. In his words:

[Perpetrators] kept on coming, but again, they thought we are Christians, and that is why we are not participating in the killing. I remember they communicated to us that, ‘[i]f you are caught hiding someone, your family will also get killed, and you will also get killed. You will be ordered to kill that person, and then you will also get killed.’ But, I even met the burgomaster [commune leader], and I told him, you are suspecting that we are hiding people. We do not have anyone in our house, come and search it…but they thought we are Christians…They could say: ‘They are fools, do not care about them, they are Christians. That is why they are not participating.’ The trust that people had in us helped. They never thought that we were hiding people in our houses.73

Thus, because Charles’s family was considered to be particularly pious, people engaging in violence believed him when he said that he was not hiding people since they considered him to be too religious to lie. Because lying, killing, and stealing were deemed sins, those who knew Charles believed he could not participate in either and, for the most part, left him alone when genocidal violence swept through his village, ultimately enabling him to save the lives of six people. Noticeably, the respondents who discussed religion as a social buffer were either religious minorities (Muslims or Seventh-day Adventists) or highly-religious Catholics, and all of them were men. No women in our sample discussed religion as a social buffer, but women also seldom mentioned being recruited to participate in the violence. In fact, killing groups rarely recruited women given that killing transgressed gendered norms,74 nor would it have been typical for women to leave their families to drink in bars. For women in this study, gender norms, roles, and socialization likely served as non-religious social buffers, affording women protection from recruitment in ways that allowed for a range of socially-acceptable and plausible excuses to not participate in the violence, given their roles as wives, mothers, or expectant mothers. Religious practices thus functioned as a social buffer largely for men.

Religious Social Networks Providing Opportunities and Resources Religious social networks also influenced rescue efforts in significant ways. Specifically, religious social networks impacted rescue by shaping where rescue took place (e.g., among congregations and in their homes), how rescue was enacted (e.g., through religious community resources), and who was rescued (e.g., fellow church or mosque members). Often, religious social networks facilitated the acquisition of or access to necessary resources. For instance, church members sometimes used religious spaces for rescue efforts. Gloria hid Tutsi in her local church. She explained: “I also had other people that I hid at the church; they were one child and a maid… Then two other women…also came. They had many wounds; they were cut from machetes around their faces. I put all of them in the church.”75

72 Pseudonym, Male, Age 25 at the time of rescue, Catholic, 2019, Rwanda. Emphasis added. 73 Pseudonym, Male, Age 39 at the time of rescue, Seventh-day Adventist, 2019, Rwanda. 74 Des Forges, Leave None, 11, 14; Straus, The Order of Genocide, 143. 75 Pseudonym, Female, Age 30 at the time of rescue, Catholic, 2016, Rwanda.

Thus, while churches were a common site for massacres,76 many acts of rescue also took place in religious spaces. Damascene,77 a pastor, hid people in the church located in his backyard. Bashir78 rescued Muslims from his religious community by hiding them in the local mosque. Echoing these patterns, Mutabazi, a Seventh-day Adventist, explained rescue efforts facilitated by religious social networks: “We agreed as a church to organize and come to church for their [Tutsi’s] safety when attacks began...People … brought them to the church…church leaders could always come to check on us and support us morally and by providing food.”79 Similarly, John used church resources to undertake rescue efforts. As a pastor of a large congregation, John was able to hide hundreds of people in his church, as well as inside the deep holes used as toilets on the church property. Militias repeatedly threatened him as he performed these rescues. However, he continued helping others with the assistance of his family and fellow church members, ultimately saving over 300 lives.80 Notably, John and Damascene, both pastors, felt the most at ease using church spaces for rescue, likely due to their position as religious leaders. Yet, as Gloria, Bashir, and Mutabazi illustrate, one did not need to be a religious leader to effectively use religious spaces to hide others. Respondents’ reliance on fellow church members illustrates another mechanism through which religious social networks aided, and in some instances likely increased the success of, rescue efforts. Speciﬁcally, religious communities provided a network of helpers to assist with rescue endeavors. Forms of assistance included warning when militias were nearby, providing food, water, or shelter, or moving Tutsi from house-to-house in order to avoid discovery. For instance, those who rescued described knowing which congregants they could call upon for help while rescuing. Seth recalled calling on a fellow congregant, explaining: “He was also a Seventh-day Adventist. I called him and asked if two of those children [whom Seth was rescuing] could go to his house… He took the two.”81 Gloria asked a woman from her church to assist her, when she was worried that she was going to be discovered rescuing a little boy. In her words: “I had requested a woman from my church to take him to her home for protection.”82 In this case and others, the success of rescues was at least partially attributed to the religious social networks of those who coordinated their actions to collectively save others. For Eugene, his religious social network even helped save his own life. Eugene was rescuing three young girls and a young man when militias burst into his house. They threatened to kill the people he was protecting, and when Eugene intervened, a member of the militia cut off his leg and left him to bleed to death. Although he was in tremendous pain, Eugene remembered a church night watchman whom he trusted. He sent one of the young girls to the watchman to buy medicine that saved his life. Knowing that they could rely on their religious communities to help them if they were threatened or hurt likely made it easier for people like Eugene to engage in high-risk rescue efforts.83 Finally, many respondents explained that the people they rescued were part of their religious social networks, indicating that pre-existing religious ties shaped rescue. For instance, Gloria shared that the people she rescued were from her religious community: “We shared the same religious denomination. We prayed together ... We could exchange invitations for different ceremonies.”84 Pascal also saved people from his church, explaining: “We belonged to the same

76 Longman, Christianity and Genocide, 269. 77 Interviewee first cited in note 68. 78 Interviewee first cited in note 70. 79 Pseudonym, Male, Age 42 at the time of rescue, Seventh-day Adventist, 2019, Rwanda. 80 Pseudonym, Male, Age 37 at the time of rescue, Protestant, 2012, Rwanda. 81 Pseudonym, Male, Age 30 at the time of the rescue, Seventh-day Adventist, 2016, Rwanda. 82 Interviewee first cited in note 75. 83 Pseudonym, Male, Age 42 at the time of rescue, Catholic, 2012, Rwanda. 84 Interviewee first cited in note 75.

church. We were friends and shared everything.”85 Dido hid people he knew from the church he had been attending since he was a child, including the head choir leader, a pastor, and child parishioners whom he called his “brothers in Christ.”86 Charles and his family hid a woman and a child they knew through church, while Ahmed hid people he knew from the local mosque. Social networks, and speciﬁcally religious social networks, were consequently important for shaping several aspects of rescue during the genocide.

Discussion and Conclusion While prior studies have focused on the religious denominations and motivations of those who rescue during genocide, we have illustrated additional pathways through which religion shapes rescue efforts. Specifically, we emphasize the role of religious beliefs, practices, and social networks in shaping these efforts. Religious beliefs were often a precursor to individuals’ decisions to rescue, when their lives were at risk. The belief that they were doing right by God assured them that if they died while saving others, they would be rewarded in the afterlife, thus providing a cognitive safety net. Previous studies of high-risk actions have demonstrated the correlation between religious beliefs in an afterlife and low death anxiety.87 We argue that respondents in this study who rescued were enabled in part by a low death anxiety. Generally, they believed that the high risks they took to save others were part of God’s plan, and if they died saving others, they would go to heaven. As such, these beliefs diminished the perception of risk; if the choice was between betraying God by doing nothing or dying while doing right by God, these religious individuals considered the latter to be the less risky of the two choices and acted accordingly. Future studies would benefit from comparing the death anxiety of those who solely rescued with the death anxiety among those who killed and also rescued. Religious practices also served as social buffers from intense recruitment to genocidal violence and from being discovered once they were hiding people. Again, we illustrate how this specific factor was highly gendered, and future studies should address whether religion provided a social buffer for women who rescued. Better understanding how religious practices create social buffers enabling individuals to rescue others may also be beneficial in developing strategies for violence mitigation efforts. Finally, religious social networks also shaped rescue efforts, including where these efforts took place, how they unfolded, and who they impacted. Scholars have previously documented that religious social networks provide exchanges of resources and care,88 and we extend this line of work to the context of rescue. For instance, many of our respondents hid Tutsi in churches and mosques, illustrating the importance of the resources provided by religious social networks for rescue efforts. Furthermore, our respondents relied on fellow congregants within their religious social networks to assist them in their efforts to save friends, family, and even strangers. We also saw some evidence that religious social networks facilitated who was rescued, as respondents discussed rescuing people they knew from their churches and mosques. To be clear, religious beliefs, practices, and social networks are not mutually exclusive factors and certainly impact one another. These pathways may have also affected rescue efforts in ways we could not demonstrate here. For instance, in addition to beliefs, religious social networks may have impacted decisions to rescue. It is plausible that simply knowing that one has a strong religious social network might make rescue feel more achievable, or observing others in one’s religious community rescuing might influence one’s decision to engage in such efforts. While it is difficult to ascertain the factors that impacted individuals’ initial decisions to rescue with retrospective data, we have focused on the key factors that emerged from our interviews.

85 Interviewee ﬁrst cited in note 69. 86 Pseudonym, Male, Age 31 at the time of rescue, Pentecostal, 2019, Rwanda. 87 Silton et al., Association Between Religious Beliefs, 366. 88 Corwin E. Smidt, ed., Religion as Social Capital: Producing the Common Good (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2003), 14.

In this case, religious beliefs about God’s plan and the afterlife created cognitive safety nets to enable high-risk action; religious practices socially buffered individuals who rescued from those committing violence, helping them escape recruitment and discovery; and religious social networks supplied shelter, exchanges of information, medical care, and food to keep families, children, and congregants alive. Hundreds of people are alive today because of the actions of these 45 respondents. These respondents teach us that religion—through beliefs, practices, and social networks—has the power to make high-risk actions feel possible, to buffer against violence, and to facilitate coordinated collective action that saves lives.

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Eugen Koh Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne Melbourne, Australia

Introduction1 World Wars are, without question, defined traumatic events that change the course of history and leave a legacy that persists not only in the lives of individuals and their descendants but also on the geopolitical instability we see around the world today.2 Genocides are in some ways more complex than wars. They are rarely isolated events; taking place within centuries-old fomenting hatred and rivalry, they involve not only systematic killing but also the distortion and destruction of cultures.3 Beyond the killings are the more insidious traumatic collective experiences which are difficult to describe, let alone define. We can understand these experiences more clearly when we consider the systematic and institutionalized destruction of First Nations people through geographical and cultural dispossession, and continuing disempowerment and discrimination. The process of cultural dispossession that occurs with colonization over generations can be subtle, but its long-term impact may be nothing less than genocidal; indeed, it can be viewed as genocide in slow- motion.4 In many circumstances, these slow and gradual forms of collective trauma are both historical and continuing. It does not make sense to talk about healing in such situations but rather of repairing wounds from an historical event. There must also be accompanying efforts to expose and bring to an end a process of continuing assault and injury. Efforts to formulate a theory on the healing of historical collective trauma is complex; it is complicated further by a lack of agreement over the definition of trauma, and uncertainty as to how knowledge about individual psychology can be applied to collectives. This paper is in three parts. It begins by clarifying key concepts such as trauma, collective experience and shared consciousness. Next, it proposes a framework for considering the healing of historical collective trauma and discuss a range of relevant ideas and concepts, in particular the psychology of trauma. Finally, it discusses cultural trauma, a particular type of collective trauma. Historical collective trauma is a multidimensional, multifaceted problem that cannot be addressed by a single perspective or discipline; many disciplines have indeed contributed to making sense of it. What is needed is the integration of some of these insights from different perspectives. This paper is an attempt to do that from the vantage point of a practitioner with a psychoanalytic background who has, over the past twenty years, worked with individuals and groups (including communities and societies) who have tried to make sense of their own

1 This present paper builds on papers presented to two UNESCO/Guerrand-Hermes Foundation for Peace symposiums; an unpublished paper, “Trauma and Slavery” (Koh, 2018) contributed for discussion at the symposium Healing the Wounds of Slavery: Towards Mutual Recovery, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. on October 18–19, 2018 and “Collective Healing of Trauma,” a symposium in London in September 2019. 2 This observation is explored in Salman Akhtar, Mind, Culture, and Global Unrest: Psychoanalytic Reﬂections (London: Routledge, 2018). 3 Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (Oxford: Routledge, 2016). 4 A. Dirk Moses, ed., Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004).

Eugen Koh. “The Healing of Historical Collective Trauma.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1, 115–133. https:// doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1776. © 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention. 116 Koh

experience of a particular historical collective trauma. They included the Aboriginals5 from the deserts of central Australia,6 survivors (and transgenerational survivors) of the Holocaust,7 Cambodian genocides, Northern Ireland, and a multidisciplinary group senior academics and practitioners in Japan who are trying to address the transgenerational legacy of their role in the Second World War.8

Clariﬁcation of Key Concepts In this section, I will explore ways to understand some of the key concepts involved in collective trauma and healing. Conceptual clariﬁcations such as these are essential in analyzing the root causes and effects of trauma and can also create space for exploring healing in a holistic way.

The Collective According to The Shorter Oxford Dictionary, the word “collective” is an adjective “denoting or representing a number of individuals or items.”9 There are many different approaches to understanding a collective, each reﬂecting particular presuppositions, underpinning concepts and frameworks. For instance, sociological perspectives focus on describable social networks, structures and processes10 while psychological approaches consider behaviors and possible underlying dynamics, some of which are observable in the conscious realm, and some operating in the unconscious.11 Despite these differences, there is general agreement that a collective has some form of shared consciousness, whether it is conceptualized as “social history,” shared memory or, a group or collective mind. Social science tends to focus on describing what can be seen and considered as being a collective from the perspective of the individual; it views a collective as made up of individuals and construes what is observed as no more than the sum of the individuals. The idea of the group as a single “whole” entity does not sit easily within this perspective. The view adopted in this paper assumes the existence of a group or collective mind whose characteristics are distinct from and more than the sum of its constituting individual minds. The year 2020 marks one hundred years since the publication of The Group Mind by William McDougall.12 Its conceptualization of a collective consciousness was anticipated by studies into the psychology of the crowd, most notably in the work of Le Bon.13 The idea that a collective has a singular consciousness was employed by Freud14 and more recently, by large

5 I have mainly used the term Aboriginals in this paper because those that I have worked with have referred to themselves as such; in other contexts, they might have preferred to be considered collectively as Indigenous, or First Nations people, or most commonly, by the name of their regional group. 6 Eugen Koh, “Cultural Work in Addressing Violence and Conﬂict in Traumatized Communities,” New England Journal of Public Policy 31, no. 1 (2019), 1–14, accessed April 24, 2021, https://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol31/iss1/3/. 7 Eugen Koh and George Halasz, “Back of House/Under the House: Some Psychoanalytic Aspects of the Acquisition and Exhibition of Art by Survivors of the Holocaust,” International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 8, no. 1 (2011), 74–88, accessed April 21, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1002/aps.276. 8 Eugen Koh and Tadashi Takeshima, “The Long-Term Effects of Japan’s Traumatic Experience in the Second World War and its Implications for Peace in Northeast Asia,” New England Journal of Public Policy 32, no. 2 (2020), 1–13, accessed December 21, 2020, https://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol32/iss2/5/. 9 Shorter Oxford Dictionary, 6th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), s.v. “collective,” 451. 10 Christina Prell, Social Network Analysis: History, Theory & Methodology (London: Sage Publications, 2012); Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ronald N. Jacobs, and Philip Smith, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 11 Salman Akhtar and Stuart W. Twemlow, eds., Textbook of Applied Psychoanalysis (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). 12 William McDougall, The Group Mind (London: Cambridge University Press, 1920). 13 Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie des foules (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1895). 14 Sigmund Freud, “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,” in Vol. 18, The Standard Edition of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, [1921] 1955), 67–143.

numbers of writers on different areas of collective life, including politics,15 the arts, 16 and culture.17 Unlike within social science, there appears to be an implicit assumption, without debate or elaboration, in the vast psychoanalytic literature that the collective life consists of a singular consciousness. It might be argued that because so many writers have adopted this notion of a singular consciousness in collective life, and that their writing makes sense to a growing readership, this offers some validation of this view. I wish to highlight, however, that there is usually a complex interplay between the individual and the collective mind; it would be an oversimpliﬁcation to insist that only one of these is in operation. For the purposes of this paper, I focus mainly on the collective mind.

Trauma It might surprise the reader that there is no universal agreement on the deﬁnition of trauma despite its widespread usage. The current popular understanding of trauma as injury and damage, has its roots in the Greek word, trauma, which means wound. Emmanouil Pikoulis et al. noted that in ancient Greek medicine, the term was used to refer to a wound, and the earliest recorded use of trauma in the English language was in Steven Blankart’s “Physical Dictionary,” published in 1684, where it referred to “… a Wound from an external Cause.”18 Hence the specialty of traumatology and establishment of specialized trauma centers for life-threatening bodily injuries from motor vehicle accidents, shootings, natural disasters, etcetera. MacCabe and Yanacek noted:

Once a relatively straightforward term, trauma, with its broadened psychological sense, has been contested and intensely politicized over the past decades. Like, Victim, the word has been used by individuals and groups to make the extent of their suffering known and to advocate particular political agendas. Trauma has become so generalized that almost any negative experience may now qualify as trauma.19

Notwithstanding this trend, the field of psychiatry, as a specialty of medicine, has attempted to maintain a more narrowly defined understanding of psychological trauma as that which emerged from the concept of shell-shock during the First World War and is now understood as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There is, however, another line of development in the conceptualization of trauma, in reaction to the narrow medical definition of PTSD. As Sonya Andermahr noted:

The ﬁeld of trauma studies emerged in the early 1990s as an attempt to construct an ethical response to forms of human suffering and their cultural and artistic representation. Born out of a conﬂuence between deconstructive and psychoanalytic criticism and the study of Holocaust literature, from its outset trauma theory’s mission was to bear witness to traumatic

15 Andrew Samuels, The Political Psyche (London: Routledge, 1993); Paul Hoggett, Politics, Identity and Emotions (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2009); Vamik D. Volkan, Psychoanalysis, International Relations and Diplomacy: A Sourcebook on Large-Group Psychology (London: Karnac, 2014). 16 Ellen Handler Spitz, Art and Psyche (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); James W. Hamilton, A Psychoanalytic Approach to Visual Artists (London: Karnac, 2012). 17 James Donald, ed., Psychoanalysis and Cultural Theory (London: MacMillan Education, 1991); Akhtar, Mind, Culture and Global Unrest. 18 Emmanouil A. Pikoulis et al., “Trauma Management in Ancient Greece: Value of Surgical Principles through the Years,” World Journal of Surgery 28, no. 4 (2004), 425–430. 19 Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, and The Keywords Project, eds., Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 358.

histories in such a way as to attend to the suffering of the other.20

Participants at this meeting expressed concern with the universalism and homogenization of PTSD which considers trauma from a Euro-American western framework, noting that “decolonizing trauma studies is not just about expanding the scope, broadening the focus, but also about critically examining and revising dominant conceptions of trauma and recovery.”21 Accordingly, this field has not offered a definition of trauma but highlights the importance of context within respective assumed paradigms. I have highlighted the politics of defining trauma because of the contested nature of this field, and attempts to pretend otherwise, assuming a dominant view at the expense of others, is, of course, the very nature of colonization and, as I propose later in this article, the essence of cultural trauma. I return to this issue of a definition of trauma once I have explained the importance of culture and the significance of cultural trauma. I propose a broader notion of trauma in that light. I depart from individual psychology and PTSD by first introducing the concept of collective trauma, and the possibility of shared traumatic experience.

Collective Trauma If we assume an experience beyond that of a single individual, i.e. by two or more people, to be collective in nature, then their shared traumatic experience may be described as a collective trauma. However, on closer examination, for an experience to be considered collective implies that there is a degree of sameness in the subjectivity of that experience. I refer to “a degree of sameness” because it is not possible, by definition, for two individuals to possess identical subjectivity. Similarly, we can speak of shared experience but not shared subjectivity. In the case of collective trauma, we can consider some degree of sameness in their wound. Can we assume the 6 million Jews who perished during the Holocaust, and the many millions more who survived it, had similar subjective experiences? While the total experience of each of those people cannot be identical, they would have included a certain degree of shared experience based on their commonality of geography or, more generally, in their identification as Jewish. The traumatic experience of a collective encompasses components of both collective or shared trauma and personal, individual trauma. One might distinguish a shared experience of trauma grounded in geographical commonality as collective trauma (e.g. where everyone from a single village is interned, tortured, and killed together), while the shared experience of trauma based on one’s identity, ethnicity, or culture is, I propose, one of cultural trauma. I now turn to the main focus of this paper, which is collective trauma, or more specifically, historical collective trauma. Cultural trauma is a subset and unique form of collective trauma which I return to in the last part of this article.

Historical Collective Trauma A (Brief) Psychology of Historical Collective Trauma Much of what follows has its roots in the individual psychology of trauma. Historically, proposals for a collective psychology had their origins in individual psychology. For instance, Freud’s analysis of the church and the army in terms of group psychology rested heavily on his formulation of individual psychology with regard to unconscious motivations such as libidinal ties, symptom formation, and defenses.22 The notion of a social defense against anxiety proposed by Elliott Jaques and Isabel Menzies had its origin in theories of ego defense

20 Sonya Andermahr, “Introduction,” in “Decolonizing Trauma Studies: Trauma and Postcolonialism,” ed. Sonya Andermahr, special issue, Humanities 4, no. 4 (2015), 500. 21 Stef Craps et al., “Decolonizing Trauma Studies Round-Table Discussion,” in “Decolonizing Trauma Studies: Trauma and Postcolonialism,” ed. Sonya Andermahr, special issue, Humanities 4, no. 4 (2015), 907. 22 Freud, Group Psychology, 96–97.

mechanisms and object relations, developed from considerations of the mind of the individual.23 It is common nowadays for writers to explore collective psychology using the language and concepts of individual psychology as if they were interchangeable.24 There is no doubt, however, among those who work with large groups and populations, that collective psychology is quite different from individual psychology. There are not yet sufﬁcient conceptual frameworks in the ﬁeld of collective psychology for it to stand alone; hence the need to borrow from and extend the use of our understanding of the individual to the collective mind. While it might be argued that individual psychology cannot be applied directly to a consideration of groups and populations, it does not follow that its language and concepts may not be utilized for tentative preliminary formulations, out of which a more elaborate collective psychology may be established. It is, in my view, possible to use the framework of individual psychology as long as we are mindful of these caveats. Some might wonder: why are we discussing the psychology of trauma when an event is historical? It will be apparent in the ensuing sections that when one is triggered into a traumatic mental space there is a sense of timelessness; what was an historical event is now very present and the individual and the collective mind operates in a particular way. I will discuss these psychological processes in the subsequent pages thematically.

Trauma is Timeless It would be inaccurate to describe the trauma suffered by the Aboriginals in Australia as “historical” even though it began over 200 years ago. Colonization is one of the more devastating forms of cultural trauma; it is a continuous, insidious process of undermining and destroying the culture of the colonized. This contrasts with the form of cultural trauma outlined by Jeffrey Alexander, where defined events, such as specific incidences of massacres, can be identified within the context of history. While these events are deemed historical with regard to the linear dimension of time, they are indeed timeless psychologically. The traumatic wound is not bound by time. When an individual mind finds itself in a mental space where it re-encounters a traumatic event from years ago, it does not re-experience it as an historical event of the past but as something that is occurring very much in the present and it responds to that experience accordingly.25 We can observe the so-called timelessness of collective traumatic experiences when a population responds to a present-day crisis as if it takes them back to a critical event in the past. I am using the phrase “takes them back” rather than reminding because it is not a matter of memory but one of re-experiencing the present as if the past was occurring in totality.

Emotional Disassociation One of the ﬁrst things that happen during an overwhelming traumatic experience is the disassociation of the emotional response associated with it. The individual mind feels numb. Collectively, it is experienced as a gathering of people devoid of emotionality—there is either an

23 Elliott Jaques, “Social Systems as a Defence against Persecutory and Depressive Anxiety,” in New Directions in Psychoanalysis, ed. Melanie Klein et al. (London: Tavistock Publications, 1955); Isabel E. P. Menzies, “A Case Study in the Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence against Anxiety: A Report on a Study of the Nursing Service of a General Hospital,” Human Relations 13, no. 2 (1960). 24 Lionel F. Stapley, The Personality of the Organization: A Psycho-Dynamic Explanation of Culture and Change (London: Free Association Books, 1996); Halina Brunning and Mario Perini, eds., Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Turbulent World (London: Karnac, 2010); Lene Auestad, ed., Nationalism and the Body Politic: Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia (London: Karnac, 2014). 25 For instance, one of my patients, a man in his forties, has traumatic memories of violence between family members during his childhood. When he was away from his family, he was able to have some insight into the violence in his family as events of the past. However, on occasions when his family gathered, such as Christmas, it felt to him that the situation was recurring; a replay, not with him as an adult but as a child. The situation was experienced by him as in the present rather than the past.

eerie silence or a sense of frozenness; or the situation may be ﬁlled with frantic activity, perhaps even noisy, but devoid of meaningful emotional interactions and exchanges. Some of the main emotions the traumatized mind (both individual and collective) seeks to isolate and avoid are shame and humiliation; these emotions seem to be an integral part of a traumatic experience. It is understandable that we are prone to feeling ashamed and humiliated when we are traumatized, because such overwhelming experiences expose our deepest vulnerability.26

Encapsulation of Trauma Next, the mind tries to protect itself by separating the traumatic wound from the rest of it so that it can continue to function. Technically, the mind is said to repress or dissociate the trauma; commonly, we speak of forgetting. This process is usually spoken of as encapsulation, a wrapping up of the wound and hiding it from consciousness.27 One of the more consistent observations of massive trauma such as genocides is the collective unwillingness or inability to talk about it in its aftermath; there is often a collusive silence in the generation that had direct experience of that trauma.28 This has been seen in the large population of Holocaust survivors who migrated to Melbourne in the aftermath of the Second World War, and also in survivors of the Armenian and Cambodian genocides.29 Such denial is not exclusive to survivors of genocides; the same occurs in the context of major disasters and war, for example, the Japanese response to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, and Second World War.30 Denial and the avoidance of triggers (which takes us back to the traumatic situation) are understandable behaviors when one considers how painful it is to talk about catastrophic losses and emotionally overwhelming experiences.

Triggering The mind is said to be triggered when it becomes re-exposed to a trauma and the previously successful encapsulation breaks down.31 The emotional silence that would otherwise be present, now broken, is overcome with emotional outpourings; that eerie silence, in retrospect, would have been like the calm before the storm, or the receding sea before the tsunami. Individuals who have been triggered are emotionally overwhelmed and often report symptoms consistent with PTSD, namely ﬂashbacks, withdrawal, and numbing of emotionality. Collectively, there may be an initial intense emotionality in the group associated with periodic outbursts of violence. The mind tries to re-package or re-encapsulate the trauma—if it is successful, there is a return to emotional detachment; if unsuccessful, regression will follow.

Regression The mind “falls back” (just as an overwhelmed army retreats) to preserve itself; we refer to this as regression. Psychologically, regression refers to the process whereby the mind operates at an earlier form of itself; a form deemed to be psychically more economical.32 I have previously

26 Based on author’s professional expert observations. 27 Earl Hopper, “Encapsulation as a Defence against the Fear of Annihilation,” The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 72, no. 4 (1991), 607–624. 28 Yael Danieli, ed., International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma (New York: Plenum Press, 1998); Natan P. F. Kellermann, Holocaust Trauma: Psychological Effects and Treatment (New York: iUniverse Inc., 2009). 29 This observation has emerged from my discussions with individuals who have survived these genocides. Also see note 6. 30 Several of my Japanese colleagues have compared the denial of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in the wake of the 2011 Earthquake and tsunami with their denial of the Second World War. See also note 4. 31 Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Viking, 2014). This is also based on author’s professional expert observations. 32 Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis (London: Karnac Books, 1973).

reported on my observations of collective regression in the traumatized Aboriginal communities in the Central Desert of Australia which noted at least four levels of regression.33 Firstly, the mind regresses to a more basic form of thinking; retreating from a complex thinking mode to binary thinking. When a mind can only think in binary terms, there are only two possibilities; black/white, good/bad, present/absent—it is unable to consider the possibilities of grey or a third option. President George Bush Jr. famously declared in the aftermath of the Twin Towers terrorist attacks of September 11 (in the binary thinking mode): “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorist.”34 In this situation, there was only “us” or there were enemies. There was no possibility of neutrality. Collectively, binary thinking expresses itself as an extreme polarization or split in a population. I propose there is another mode of thinking that is even more basic than binary, i.e. unitary thinking. In this form of thinking, which is hardly thinking at all, there is only I/us, and no Other. I wonder if this form of thinking occurs during genocides, where the Other is not even allowed to exist as an enemy, but must be obliterated, and only I/us can conceivably exist. Secondly, if the first level of regression fails, the mind regresses further to the next level, with a heightened concern about threat to its “sense of identity and boundary.” Individuals try to shore up their physical boundaries by isolating themselves into confined spaces (e.g. afraid to leave their home) or build taller fences or become preoccupied about how they are different from others (symbolic boundaries), which might present as a concern about identity. Often, their “preoccupation of difference” from Others deteriorates into a “fear of Others,” manifesting as a greater concern about the enemy, or presenting, for instance, deceptively as benign racism. Thirdly, the regression becomes characterized by fragmentation. In the individual, the mind is no longer able to think (it can only react) and there is a lack of a cohesive sense of self. This is characterized by a paralyzing ambivalence and conflict within, and an experience of the unbearable anxiety of falling apart. Fragmentation is more easily apparent in the collective. In the most severely traumatized Aboriginal communities, there is no longer a “community” in the sense of having a subjective sense of being a collective among themselves, nor is there common identification as one. In that situation, there is no collective voice and a collective decision is almost impossible to reach. Structurally and functionally, the so-called community is fragmented into kinship groups, and sometimes even that level of organization barely holds; the fragmentation deteriorates from extended kinship “families” into core families. Fourthly, in this final level of regression, the mind is no longer concerned about the Other; threat is therefore no longer about identity (or boundaries), and they are no longer concerned about external enemies. The threat is experienced as coming from within and the focus is wholly existential: will they continue to exist? The leaders and elders from some of the severely traumatized Aboriginal communities I worked with expressed great concern about their continuing existence, especially in terms of the loss of their culture and the future of their offspring. In some of these communities, there was a sense of implosion and disintegration. With an understanding of the psychology of historical collective trauma, as outlined above, I next proceed with a proposal for a working model for its healing.

A Framework for Healing Collective Trauma Some might judge the collective trauma of the Aboriginals in Australia to be a descent down the spiral of regression to a place of irretrievable despair. I have observed, however, that in some instances they have courageously confronted their unbearably painful situation and climbed out of the darkest places. Although they have undertaken this work to heal from their cultural trauma collectively, many have also found the need to heal as individuals from their personal losses and grief, and the trauma from violence.

33 Ibid., 4. 34 George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address: Text of George Bush’s Speech,” The Guardian, September 21, 2001, accessed April 27, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/21/september11.usa13.

There are many dimensions to the trauma experienced by a group of people: 1) there is the personal trauma of the individuals that make up the collective, 2) there are the shared traumatic experiences amongst groups of individuals within the collective, and 3) there is the traumatic wound of the collective as a singular whole entity.35 Usually, each of these aspects may involve a particular focus, and require a different approach to healing. Sometimes, however, an opportunity arises where a gathering of people might encounter healing at all three levels: as a personal experience, as a shared experience with others, and as a collective whole. When we speak of collective healing, we usually have in mind, “healing together,” consisting of some aspects of the personal and the shared. We might not be thinking of the healing of the collective as a single entity. However, when we focus on healing as a collective, it is likely there will also be healing, to varying degrees, from personal and shared trauma. I will focus from this point on the healing of shared trauma and that of the collective whole, beginning with some of the key aspects of what such a healing would entail.

Safe and Supportive Environment In my experience as a psychotherapist, one of the first and most basic requirements for the healing of traumatic wounds is a safe and supportive space. In order for a traumatic wound to heal, it needs to be exposed. However, when we approach such exposure, we may anticipate as overwhelming, the possible humiliation from revealing our most vulnerable self, and that it is “too much” to overcome alone. The greater part of therapy is primarily the creation of an “emotionally” safe and supportive environment where such pain can be overcome with the help of a trusted Other. It is a much more difficult task to create such an environment for hundreds or thousands of people, and perhaps almost impossible, for a whole nation consisting of millions, with varied social identifiers across a broad geography. Safety in these contexts involves more than an absence from physical threats; it includes political and cultural safety. A politically safe environment allows differences of identity, opinion and values. It is also underpinned by the principles of respect, fairness and justice. Some would add that such a space should be free from prejudice and discrimination. It might be possible to create such a space framed by these principles in a self-selected gathering of a few hundred; it is much more difficult to imagine a situation largely free of prejudice and discrimination in the “real world” of a community meeting or other non-selective, heterogenous, gathering. A “culturally safe space” is framed by an understanding that while there is a shared and common culture within a collective, there may also be significant cultural differences among the members of the gathering, and these differences are valued and respected. The creation of a culturally safe space is relatively easy in a homogenous collective without significant differences among its members. It is particularly challenging in a heterogenous, multi-cultural collective where a balance must be found between supporting the common cultural elements while embracing differences at the same time. The emphasis on common or shared culture is particularly important from the perspective of healing collective trauma. It is critical, however, to be mindful that excessive emphasis of commonality risks extinguishing individuality and differences.

Shared Experiences and Collective Healing There is a common assumption that the process of healing a collective trauma is necessarily “collective” in approach, and the experience should be one that is shared.36 The rationale for this widespread assumption is not clear, but there are three possibilities. The ﬁrst is a belief that the woundedness of individuals within a collective is so great that its healing cannot be

35 Based on author’s professional expert observations. 36 Jack Saul, Collective Trauma, Collective Healing: Promoting Community Resilience in the Aftermath of Disaster (New York: Routledge, 2014); Ellen S. Zinner and Mary Beth Williams, When A Community Weeps: Case Studies in Group Survivorship (Philadelphia: Brunner/Mazel, 1999).

undertaken alone but needs the empathetic support of others within the collective who have had similar experiences, or preferably, shared some of their experiences, as illustrated by the effectiveness of survivor support groups. Often these groups are successful because they help individuals to overcome their tendency to avoid the painful exposure of their traumatic wound. In other words, the presence of collective forces is needed to draw the traumatized individuals from their state of withdrawal. Finally, the idea of a shared wound invites the notion of a common wound that requires common healing. This idea involves an imagined, singular collective wound that can only be healed through a process of the simultaneous healing of its affected members.37 The healing of a collective trauma can be compared to the process of mending a shattered picture; its pieces are like those of a jigsaw puzzle, needing to be brought together to form a whole image again. However, unlike the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that are neatly cut and can be brought together perfectly, the pieces of a picture shattered or ripped apart by trauma are torn at their edges. The repair of these pieces with their jagged edges requires the presence of the adjoining pieces to define the gaps to be filled; the adjoining pieces may serve as a mold for each other to hold the filler binding them together. These adjoining pieces may be made up of supporting people who were not affected by that collective trauma. This process of repair may indeed serve as a metaphor for an aspect of the healing of historical collective trauma.

Collective Memory, Contested History and Remembering There is a popular, but erroneous, belief that healing is marked by forgetting.38 However, the guilt of forgetting can lead one to cling to a distorted and fixed memory of what happened, where one becomes preoccupied by certain purported facts and loses sight of the whole picture. There is little room remaining for the emotionality of the events and for how one feels about it. From the perspective of healing, this is not remembering, but rather being stuck in a certain past. Furthermore, as I have outlined in the section on the psychology of trauma, the timelessness of trauma makes it difficult to distinguish the present from the past. Remembering in the context of healing, is different from the mere recollection of facts. It is a complex process of recalling what happened, being aware of how one felt about what happened then, and now, and appreciating the significance of what happened; a process that consists of aspects of working-through and making-sense, on which I will elaborate later. The narrative of a collective traumatic event, especially an historically shared trauma, cannot accurately be recalled or recreated by one person. At best, it would be incomplete, and at worst, at risk of being biased. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the complex issues around historiography and the numerous, relevant, critical points from the field of memory studies.39 If healing were to be considered from the psychoanalytic sense of “working through” the experience of a past event (see below), it follows that how that past is remembered is critical. In terms of individual psychology, the subjective past is what matters, notwithstanding the possibility that what we recall may be distorted by the trauma itself and the formative experiences that preceded it. However, when we come to collective psychology, the notions of memory and subjectivity are more complex. There are personal differences between individuals in a collective as to what and how they remember a particular event and everyone’s subjective experience will be unique. There are, however, some experiences in one person that approximate, but are not identical to, that of another in the collective. There might be sufficient similarity in the experiences of the two for them to be considered common or shared. When we speak of shared grief over the loss of a particular person or ideal, we are not required to have the same experience of grief; indeed, it is impossible for each of us to have the

37 Based on author’s professional expert observations. 38 Ibid. 39 Jeffrey K. Olick et al., “Introduction,” in The Collective Memory Reader, ed. Jeffrey K. Olick et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

same subjective experience. The notion of shared grief involves two or more people having similar, but not identical, experiences of loss. Significantly, what is similar is not their personal experience or subjectivity but their shared interest in the object. For instance, collective mourning at a funeral is not about everyone being involved in a hypothetical (but impossible) merged, subjective experience of grief; it is about the commonality of what they have all lost. When we speak of collective memory, we are referring both to the commonality of what we remember together as well as that which each person remembers individually. The notion of collective memory is indeed a vast and complex subject, much more than can be considered here. For the purposes of the healing of historical collective trauma, there must be room for both what we remember together and what we remember as individuals. The process of remembering together is challenging as it requires us to negotiate personal differences in recollections; a process that involves listening to each other to create a common narrative while allowing for unique personal memory. This is very much the essence of a collective working- through as I will discuss next. Remembering together is a difficult and demanding task. Often, we find it easier to delegate that task to an appointed or self-appointed historian, while arguing instead about contested issues in historiography.

Working Through and Making Sense An influential psychological concept which is of the greatest relevance to healing is the idea that experiences need to be processed in order for them to be resolved to the extent that they cease to affect us. Freud described this process as “working through,” a process of psychological work that involves remembering what has happened, reconnecting with the emotional response to that experience and making sense of what that experience meant to oneself.40 As I have outlined earlier in this paper, the mind acts to protect itself from trauma by encapsulating overwhelming experiences and detaching the associated emotional response to them, pushing both elements out of conscious awareness, leading to forgetting. The process of working through is the reverse; it begins with remembering and proceeds to reattach our emotional response to an experience, thereby re-creating the original situation for us to make sense of what it meant. If collective healing were to consist of the processing of shared experiences, what would a collective working-through involve? Taking the lead from Freud, it would begin with remembering together and encompass a sharing of stories; each story by itself resembles an isolated broken piece from a shattered picture, waiting to be reassembled with other pieces to recreate the original whole image. There will be some similarities in the stories being shared. There are likely to be subtle differences even among what might appear to be similar in the first instance—differences that reflect individual subjectivity and personal background. If these moments of sharing stories consist only of the telling of factual elements of an event, unaccompanied by a sharing of associated emotions, they will not be of sufficient depth to possess the qualities of working through. The broken pieces may be assembled but considerable gaps will remain between them. A vital aspect of working through is the emotional response to what is remembered; the sharing of feelings about a common experience can be likened to the glue that holds the broken pieces together. In recreating the shattered image, the collective now has the opportunity to look at the whole image, and make sense of it together, asking the questions: “What happened, and why did it happen?” This second question often takes them into a quest for meaning, into the realm of the spiritual and the transcendental. The search for answers to both these questions necessarily begins within a cultural context. As outlined earlier, culture provides the reference points for us to orientate ourselves, and the basic materials for each of us to create stories. When a group of us remember together and share our stories together, this process takes place within a cultural milieu that possesses commonalities and differences. The higher the proportion of shared cultural elements among members of a group, the closer the knit of their woven fabric of

40 Sigmund Freud, “Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through,” in Vol. 12, The Standard Edition of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, [1914] 1955), 147–156.

stories. On the other hand, the greater the proportion of different cultural strands, the richer the woven image. This metaphoric description demonstrates the way culture inﬂuences the stories we tell and the narratives we create, how we make sense of what happened in the past, and why it happened. In practical terms, the process of memorialization creates the opportunity and space for a collective working-through.41 In his insightful observation of the process of building the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and his part in it, Gould highlighted the opportunity for people with shared trauma and loss to gather together to mourn while working constructively on the project. He noted, however, that the process was “a two-edged sword” with the inevitability of re-traumatization while also creating an opportunity to work through.42 He is, however, not the only person who holds the view that re-traumatization is a necessary part of the process of working through.43 While re-traumatization is usually carefully managed and supported in individual therapy, the challenge for those who promote a collective working through of trauma is the creation of a safe and supportive environment for hundreds and thousands who engage with public memorialization.

Acknowledgement by Others There also seems to be a need for the reality of what happened to be acknowledged by Others in order for healing to take place. Recognition and validation by Others are particularly critical since many who experience traumatic events struggle to grasp the reality of what happened themselves; in many instances of genocides, the scale and depth of human cruelty is indeed beyond comprehension. Somehow, the acknowledgment of the reality of what happened by bystanders helps one to digest what is otherwise unthinkable. The acknowledgement by those who carried out the atrocities brings added signiﬁcance. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, in many instances, they are the only witnesses to what happened, and the only other who can know fully, what happened. Secondly, there is a need for at least one party to be responsible for what happened. In terms of individual psychology, when the person who carried out an assault refuses to accept responsibility for what happened, the burden of responsibility for what happened often falls on those assaulted. It is a well-recognized phenomenon that those who have suffered sexual assault often blame themselves for the incident. Thirdly, the issue of responsibility is keenly followed by the question of recompense for the hurt and injury caused, the absence of which is often accompanied by a painful resentment.44 The tripartite acknowledgment of what happened—by those who suffered, those who caused it and those bystanders who recognized it for what it was (cf. victim, perpetrator, and witness)—usually emerges out of their distinct respective cultural contexts; each comes to understand what happened from their own cultural perspective. While the acceptance of these differences in perspectives is often necessary for healing to proceed, there is also a need for some shared understanding of what happened in order for the acknowledgment to be meaningful. For this reason, I think, the effort towards establishing a collective memory should, wherever possible, be a tripartite effort, encompassing the combined contributions of those who suffered, those who inﬂicted the injury and those who witnessed it.

41 Laurence J. Gould, “Collective Working Through: The Role and Function of Memorialisation,” Organisational and Social Dynamics 11, no. 1 (2011), 79–92. 42 Ibid., 8. 43 Harold P. Blum, “Psychic Trauma and Traumatic Object Loss,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 51 (2003). 44 The refusal by Japan to acknowledge “what happened”—in what is known in history as the Rape of Nanking during the Second Sino-Japan War—continues to foment a deep resentment towards them among many Chinese. See Rana Mitter, China’s War with Japan: 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival (London: Penguin Books, 2014); Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2012).

Acknowledgement of Emotional Impact In practice, the purportedly factual acknowledgement of what happened, even when it is achieved through a tripartite, collaborative process, may not be sufﬁcient. Traumatized individuals and collectives I have worked with over the years have needed acknowledgment by Others of how they felt about what happened. Such an acknowledgement also helps them to come to terms with how they have been affected emotionally. Historical discourses of collective traumatic events are often dispassionate—disassociated from the emotional response that might be expected to accompany such incidences; thus maintaining the emotional detachment described earlier. The open exploration of how one party feels about what had happened to them is, however, fraught. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the relative success and utility of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, except to note that while they have created space for expressing much emotional pain of loss and suffering, and the airing of grievances, it is unclear if they have led to what is generally understood as healing.45 As this process is usually conducted in the presence of Others, the exposure of woundedness and vulnerability also risks further humiliation, compounding the original trauma. The possibility of sharing how one felt about their experience of certain atrocities, in the presence of those who have committed them, is perhaps far too fraught, and perhaps even unthinkable. However, when an emotionally safe and supportive space can be created, and the pain of a traumatic experience can be shared by those who have suffered it, and if this is understood by those who inﬂicted the harm and witnessed by Others, a profound healing can take place. Cultures that encourage the sharing of emotional experiences and have in place social processes that regulate painful emotions such as shame and guilt are more likely to support such a collective acknowledgement of the emotional impact of a traumatic event.

Making Sense of What Happened After the questions: (1) What happened? and (2) How does one feel about what happened?, what usually follows is: (3) Why did it happen? This question is an attempt to make sense of what had happened and one’s emotional response to it. One perspective on the need to make sense of trauma is the instinctual search for meaning, as suggested by Viktor Frankl. Another view is the need to orientate ourselves within a certain philosophy as part of our continuing efforts to find our place in this world. In ancient Greece, the cradle of modern Western civilization, everyday tragedies were contextualized within mythology. Vast proportions of the people in the world today still make sense of their life and suffering within the framework of their religious beliefs.46 When trauma occurs at the hands of another, or in the broader context of conflict, many in the modern world still return to basic notions of good and evil. Such simple, binary world views enable a person to locate themselves; at the very least, and most commonly, they lead them to see themselves as good. If we cannot locate ourselves within an adopted framework on an ordinary day, we will be left bewildered and adrift, lost and anxious when we are challenged by adversity; we will be completely overwhelmed by a major traumatic experience.47 The Aboriginals in Australia try to make sense of their traumatic experiences within the context of their Culture and Law, which includes the narratives of Dreamtime stories and the order of the natural world according to their kinship systems. As outlined earlier, their culture has been distorted and destroyed by dispossession and the continuing pernicious effects of colonization. In my work with some communities, they were first encouraged to reclaim certain

45 Elizabeth Stanley, “Evaluating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 39, no. 3 (2001), 525–546, accessed April 26, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X01003706; Brandon Hamber and Richard A. Wilson, “Symbolic Closure through Memory, Reparation and Revenge in Post-Conﬂict Societies,” Journal of Human Rights 1, no. 1 (2002), 35–53, accessed April 26, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1080/14754830110111553. 46 Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006). 47 Based on author’s professional expert observations.

elements of their culture that were lost in order to reframe their trauma—the utility of their Dreamtime stories in helping them to understand their present-day predicament soon became apparent. One elder exclaimed, “we now understand that this terrible situation, this suffering, is not about our failures, our weaknesses (so say the colonizers) but what has happened to us, what we have lost, what has been done to us; we are right to feel sad, not shame.”48

Cultural Trauma Relationship between Collective and Cultural Trauma The traumatic event of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre on September 11 highlights the important difference between collective trauma and cultural trauma. All 2,977 individuals who died that day had the shared traumatic experience of being present at that time and place when that event unfolded, and it could be said that they shared a collective trauma.49 The same could be said of those who were in close proximity to that place and the hundreds of ﬁreﬁghters and rescue workers who attended. Many millions more, in the United States and worldwide, who watched the repeated screening of the airplanes crashing into the towers on television may have shared a collective vicarious trauma. For the Americans, however, it was arguably also a cultural trauma, as the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre were a cultural icon for enterprise and national pride. It may also be construed as a cultural trauma for many in other commercial centers around the world, thousands of miles away, who looked upon the World Trade Centre as a symbol of the free market, trade, and capitalism, even though they may not have experienced any direct trauma either as individuals or as a collective. Collective trauma and cultural trauma are overlapping concepts. As illustrated above, not all aspects of a collective trauma are cultural trauma and not all aspects of cultural trauma are experienced collectively. For example, a refugee or migrant may experience cultural trauma in their new host country; in this case, it might be a personal individual experience, or one shared with their family or others with a similar sense of cultural identity. This distinction between collective and cultural trauma is important when we consider potential approaches to healing. In the context of this article—with its focus on the collective—cultural trauma is a subset of collective trauma, notwithstanding the exception of that experienced by individuals, as noted above.

A Model of Culture Any conceptualization of cultural trauma is underpinned by the assumptions we make about the definition and nature of culture. While it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the complex nature of culture and the confusion with regard to its definition, it is relevant that I present my understanding of culture. I offer below a brief outline of the relevant concepts for the purpose of our discussion here. I take the meaning of the word culture from its Latin origin, cultura; its earliest use was found in the writings of the Roman statesman, historian, and philosopher, Cicero.50 He considered culture from the perspective of an agricultural metaphor: it is the soil that holds and nourishes us. When we speak of culture as that which influences our way of being in the world, we can begin to imagine how the constituents of soil may affect the character and growth of a plant and the fruit that it bears. The soil also holds the plant firmly in the ground and supports it to withstand the forces of wind and storm. In the language of psychology, culture holds and nurtures our sense of place in the world, our identity, and guides and regulates our relationships with each other. It supports our sense of confidence and security by providing a

48 From notes of proceedings of a workshop on trauma for Aboriginal leaders in Central Australia in March 2015. 49 Hans-Jürgen Wirth, 9/11 as Collective Trauma: And other Essays on Psychoanalysis and Society (New York: Routledge, 2013). 50 Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, trans. Charles Duke Yonge (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877).

system of symbolic reference that help us make sense of our everyday experience and adverse events. So much of what we often consider as culture, including customs, rituals, arts, language, and culinary delights are those aspects which are within our awareness. I refer to these elements of culture as cultural products. There are, however, aspects of culture that are not so apparent; I call them cultural substrates. These more basic forms of culture are transformed through cultural instruments (e.g. social institutions and their processes) into more elaborate forms and, if they are accepted by the vast majority of a collective, they become their cultural products. Consider how Martin Luther King became an icon of American culture, or more specifically, a symbol of its civil rights movement. I proposed that his life, work, and death were a cultural substrate which, on its own, was not sufficient for him to become an icon or symbol, i.e. a cultural product. Rather, a series of cultural instruments turned the life, work, and death of a person into something that could be embraced by a collective. It might be argued that it was the mass shared experience of the life, work, and death of Martin Luther King that initiated the process of cultural transformation, the collective response to shared experience. The national anthem of a country, the folk songs of an ethnic tradition and the Songlines of the Australian Aboriginals are all cultural products that have emerged from the collective responses of shared experiences. These sophisticated cultural products were developed and expressed through the established musical lexicon and symbolic language of each group and were themselves products that emerged from the shared experiences of their everyday life and historical events. Rituals and customs are formed through an evolution of the collective response to an experience of common situations and crises endured. The elaborate kinship system of many ancient cultures, including those of Australian Aboriginals, would have developed through a collective’s experience of what was required to regulate relationships that ensured genetic diversity and peaceful communal life. This regulatory aspect of culture plays an important role in guiding our sense of place in the world. When we say that we are held and nourished by our culture, this involves not only the customs, language, and arts of that culture, but also the poorly defined cultural substrates that have arisen from our shared collective responses and the cultural instruments that transform them into these recognizable cultural products.

Two Types of Cultural trauma There are two models of cultural trauma. The first considers the traumatic experience in terms of defined events, and the second focuses on trauma as a continuous process. They reflect the two approaches in psychoanalytic thinking. Classical psychoanalysis focuses on how the mind responds to what it experiences, in particular to threats and psychically painful experiences, with a system of protective mechanisms, the most central of which, according to Freud is repression.51 It considers trauma in terms of specific external events that become embedded in the psyche; the mind reacts to them by repression and employs a host of defenses to keep the repressed from consciousness. The second approach, highlighted by work of Bion, focuses on the operation of the mind itself, how it thinks (e.g. the process of symbolization) and what influences its capacity to think.52 It considers trauma in terms of its overall impact on the development and functioning of the mind. Jeffrey Alexander and his colleagues have proposed a model according to the first approach:

51 Sigmund Freud, “Repression,” in Vol. 14, The Standard Edition of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, [1915] 1955), 146–158. 52 Wilfred Ruprecht Bion, “The Psychoanalytic Study of Thinking,” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 43 (1962), 306– 310.

Cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways.53

This psychoanalytically informed sociological approach highlights the social processes by which a shared experience is collectively recognized as traumatic and how its impact is continually mediated through collective memory and representation. Ron Eyerman has applied this approach to his consideration of North Atlantic Slavery.54 In my opinion, it is insufficient to consider the cultural trauma of the slavery from the North Atlantic Slave Trade only as a defined event; the legacy of cultural dispossession and the forced adoption of the culture of those who had stripped enslaved people of their humanity have not received enough attention. I have proposed a model called “complex cultural trauma;” it gives greater emphasis to the continuous experience of trauma and its impact on the function of the collective mind.55 I have suggested that cultural trauma occurs when the apparatus or system through which a collective makes sense of its experience is corrupted, distorted, compromised or destroyed. The “thinking” apparatus or system of the collective mind, as we have earlier discussed, is its culture. If we were to adopt the model of culture as outlined above, complex cultural trauma could begin with the corruption of cultural substrates; for example, by the overvaluing of some collective experiences over others or by censoring the response to particular shared experiences. The privileging of certain cultural processes while devaluing others will also distort the formation of cultural products. In some instances, such as colonization, slavery, and genocide, the whole cultural apparatus is compromised or destroyed. In many instances, cultural trauma involves a pervasive distortion or destruction of its substrates, instruments, and products as well as superimposed, defined events. Significantly, a destruction of a collective’s thinking apparatus—its culture—will severely compromise its ability to make sense of definable adverse events.

Healing Single, Defined-Event Cultural Trauma If cultural trauma is, as Jeffrey Alexander and colleagues have defined it, “a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness...,”56 then the healing would involve a processing of that collective experience, with many of the elements described earlier in this paper. The healing of cultural trauma involves collective remembering, which is a process of remembering together. It is a shared process of recalling what happened, the acknowledgement of how we all felt then and are feeling about it now, and an acknowledgment of its significance. How we remember together will be determined by the components of the culture we share—its substrates, processes, and products. Our common culture is laden with the assumptions we have consciously and unconsciously adopted. The colonized often assume their culture is inferior to that of the colonizer; they are deprived of certain components of their culture that could have given them a more authentic apprehension of their traumas. They would be creating

53 Jeffrey C. Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 1. 54 Ron Eyerman, Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 55 The difference between Jeffrey Alexander’s model of event-based cultural trauma and the cultural trauma I proposed may be compared to the distinction between content and the apparatus of a mind, or the software and operating system of a computer. 56 Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, 1.

a narrative of their traumatic history without their own language, writing their story in someone else’s language. From the perspective of a cultural trauma, the Holocaust has, I think, entrenched forever, for many Jews, a deep sense of persecution, which is not only embedded in their identity but their whole way of life. Safety cannot be assumed and there is ever a vigilance for hatred. As I have highlighted earlier, when an individual or collective regresses under traumatic stress, their tendency towards binary thinking—that “if you are not for us, you are against us” —will influence their interaction with the rest of the world. These basic assumptions, being the substrates of their culture, will influence the creation of their cultural products, which include the writing of their history and the development of public policies. The healing of the Holocaust trauma would require—more than the affirmation of collective memories—full and accurate representations of that traumatic experience and the process of working-through. It requires the most difficult task of re-examining, and sometimes undoing, basic assumptions relating to their fundamental sense of security and trust.57

Healing Complex Cultural Trauma Complex cultural trauma often involves single-event trauma (which may be multiple) superimposed on a pervasive and continuous distortion and destruction of culture. The healing of those superimposing single-event traumas is limited by what has become of the underlying culture. It might be said that in many instances, progress in the healing of single-event trauma may not be possible without some healing of the underlying cultural apparatus. One of the first steps in the healing of a collective’s complex cultural trauma is its critical reexamination of relevant cultural substrates—their values and assumptions, and other more basic elements of the culture which are beyond everyday awareness. The contributions of memory studies and critical cultural theories, especially from the post-colonial perspective, are therefore vital in ensuring that we have the most authentic collective thinking apparatus (our culture) possible to (re)frame what has happened, factually and emotionally, and make sense of it. This, I think, also applies to the healing of the Holocaust. It is, however, a most difficult task as attempts by the Jewish people to re-examine the basic assumptions of their own culture—under the cloud of “if you are not for us, you are against us,” could quickly arouse accusations of betrayal. Sadly, if the cultural distortion caused by the Holocaust is not undone, the collective healing of this single, defined-event trauma will be limited, and the effects of this horrendous event will persist and pervade over many more generations to come. For the Australian Aboriginals, colonized and dispossessed, and those affected by slavery, however, this will necessarily include a reclamation of their culture of origin. If that which has been lost, cannot be found, they will need to create new elements of culture, ones that are authentically theirs. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss further what this might involve, in particular, the complex process of decolonization.

Conclusion Historical collective trauma is embedded in the shared consciousness of a collective, which this paper considers to be its culture. Its healing is a most complex and challenging task. At the core of it, is a collective process of working through painful, overwhelming experiences, a process that, at one level, involves remembering and making sense of deﬁned events. This process is, however, dependent on the possession of a capable and authentic collective thinking apparatus, or culture. In many instances, the healing of single, deﬁned traumatic events is limited by a pervasive, insidious and continuing distortion of, and damage to its underlying culture; a

57 I wish to acknowledge the guidance of my esteemed Jewish colleagues, Dr. Paul Valent and Dr. George Halasz who are themselves survivors of the Holocaust. The views, expressed here, and the responsibility for any error, are mine alone.

complex form of cultural trauma that needs to be addressed in order for the healing of historical collective trauma to be accomplished fully.

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© 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1776. Book Review: Remembrance and Forgiveness: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Genocide and Mass Violence

Amina Hadžiomerović RMIT University Melbourne, Australia

Remembrance and Forgiveness: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Genocide and Mass Violence Ajlina Karamehić-Muratović and Laura Kromják, eds. London, Routledge, 2020 252 Pages; Price: £120.00 Hardcover

Reviewed by Amina Hadžiomerović RMIT University

The volume Remembrance and Forgiveness: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Genocide and Mass Violence, edited by Ajlina Karamehić-Muratović and Laura Kromják, takes a reader on an intellectual and cultural journey across the sixteen chapters and six continents, exploring the social remnants of the post-Holocaust genocides and endeavours to reconcile. At the outset, the editors strongly anchor their stance in the moral imperative to remember, thus framing the two overarching themes of the volume by asking what is the relationship between remembrance and forgiveness; and how the notions of these two central concepts change and differ over time, across the cultures and contexts of genocide. The book gives primacy to the local and cultural—rather than legal and general considerations of the genocides discussed—evident in the judicious and variegated selection of the chapter material that ranges from the studies of vernacular memorialisation initiatives to the semiotic analyses of the short films, newspaper articles, and literary representations of violence. Effectively, the volume bridges the dichotomic gap posed by the platitudinous question of whether it is easier to forgive or forget, through incisive analysis of the inextricable interdependency between the two; further solidifying the notion that “memory is a prerequisite to forgiving.”1 The book, as much as the post-conflict communities deemed, seeks reconciliation in different contexts, by different means and methods, where the notion of forgiveness is seen as a gatekeeper and affectively hardest to achieve. In a sense, the book portrays the post-genocidal memory space as a liminal stage between the precarity of post-conflict anomie and aspired social harmony that unravels with the reconciliation. In the liminal stage, the wounded communities don’t necessarily wait for healing to come, but engage in the collective efforts to assemble the consensual narrative of the past sufferings that might convince the gatekeeper in their readiness to move on. Contributing works in this book usher the reader into different political, historical, and socio-cultural contexts, detailing the merits and shortcomings of the variegated transitional processes that communities come up with in their quest for peace and concord. Based on the premise that “there is no forgiveness without truth just as there is no reconciliation without justice,”2 an ample number of chapters explore the implications and effects of the transitional justice processes in seeking forgiveness—particularly the works of the truth and reconciliation

1 Ajlina Karamehić-Muratović and Laura Kromják, eds., Remembrance and Forgiveness: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Genocide and Mass Violence (London: Routledge, 2020), ii. 2 Joshua R. Snyder, “Reconciling a Divided Society through Truth, Memory, and Forgiveness: Lessons from El Salvador and Guatemala,” in Remembrance and Forgiveness: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Genocide and Mass Violence, ed. Ajlina Karamehić-Muratović and Laura Kromják (London: Routledge, 2020), 109.

Amina Hadžiomerović. “Book Review: Remembrance and Forgiveness: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Genocide and Mass Violence.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1, 134–136. https://doi.org/ 10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1820. © 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention. Book Review: Remembrance and Forgiveness 135

commissions (TRC) and the cases of bottom-up resistance to close the impunity gap. For example, these are explicated in the studies of transitional processes in Guatemala and El Salvador by Joshua Snyder; by Heribert and Kanya Adam in their analysis of the TRC pioneer in South Africa; and later on in the Suranjan Weeraratne’s reflection on the collaborative truth- seeking initiative by the former belligerents in Timor-Leste and Indonesia. The violence sponsored by the communist regimes dominates the book, testifying to the fact that genocides and protracted social reluctance to forgive might be more characteristic of collectivist societies. By contrast, the first chapter written by the late Colin Tatz, reflecting upon the Australian process of coming to terms with the dark history through acknowledgment of the colonial massacre of Aborigines—as well as Kerri J. Malloy’s account of the redemption through joint memorialisation of the genocide over the Native Americans in Northern California— represent the rare examples in the volume where both sides have made a step towards the forgiveness. Yet, my attention, presumably guided by my current research interests, has been drawn to the two ancillary themes that recurred throughout the book. These are the salience of multivocality of narratives and the local/cultural contextualisation of the genocides in the forgiveness-seeking processes; and the notion of gendered remembrance, notably the advocacy of greater involvement of women in the memorialisation of genocide and structural community healing. For example, Mery Kolimon, in the chapter on Indonesian Tragedy and protracted torture imputed by the totalitarian memory regime, advocates for the commemorative culture underpinned by the vernacular and polysemic memory narratives. Natalia Paula Crocco focuses on exploring the bridge between the state and people—the written media—and their role in the construction of Argentine cultural memory. Additionally, the importance of a locally and culturally tailored approach to teaching forgiveness is discussed in Ilham Nasser’s and Mohammed Abu-Nimer’s study of the Middle-Eastern schools and Alfred Sebit Lokuji’s chapter on challenges of parochialism in the multi-ethnic South Sudan. Sterling Recker offers a particularly novel reflection on the Rwandan experimental approach to reconciliation— envisioned through village-based participation in the national economic development plan. All these chapters, in their own ways, exemplify the need for a more inclusive, multivocal, and culturally-contextualised approach to forgiveness and reconciliation in post-genocide milieus. Similarly, in their comparative study of post-genocide memorialisation in Cambodia and Guatemala, JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz and Martha C. Galvan Mandujano poignantly critique the overwhelming essentialization of the women and their linking to the universal tropes of passive mourning mothers and helpless raped victims of the genocide, thus advocating for the greater inclusion of women both in representation and construction of the genocide memorials and commemorations. Likewise, Suranjan Weeraratne raised the issue of an overly masculinised portrayal of Timor Leste’s violent history in TRC reports that engender an inadequate genocide memorialisation. Moreover, both Kolimon in the Indonesian example and Yuval Benziman in the Israeli-Palestinian context reflect upon women in action; the former illustrating mobilisation of female survivors’ counter-narratives in the post-genocide rehabilitation, and the latter featuring the work of Israeli feminist anti-militarist NGO documenting the mistreatment of the Palestinians. All these authors insist on shifting the focus to women’s agency and salience in post-conflict community recovery, memorialisation, and cultivation of forgiveness. The afterword by David Pettigrew eruditely rounds off the whole volume by exemplifying the contemporary memory subversion and the social mutation of genocide denial in Bosnia into the whole new stage of “triumphalism”3 whereby perpetrators humiliate the victims, celebrate their crimes, and glorify the war criminals, only further sabotaging any chance of forgiveness and interethnic reconciliation.

3 Hariz Halilovich, Globalization and Genocide (New York: Springer, 2017), 1–8; David Pettigrew, Afterword to Remembrance and Forgiveness: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Genocide and Mass Violence, ed. Ajlina Karamehić-Muratović and Laura Kromják (London: Routledge, 2020), 228.

The teleological editing of the volume generates an interdisciplinary discourse on the subject matter, whereby the chapters concatenate in conversation by comparing and contrasting different perspectives and actions on the politics of memory and forgiveness in the aftermath of genocide. Arguably, the book does not mention nor praise a single case of fully achieved reconciliation, that prompts one to question whether true rapprochement is even possible; or rather, whether its precursor—the forgiveness—is ever anywhere fully attainable? Contributions to this volume offer a timely reminder and testament that the current transitional and international justice mechanisms have not yet found a panacea for the post- genocide reconstruction, nor did their previous works in the post-war contexts lived up to the world’s promise of never again that had been set in motion since the Holocaust—that upon editors’ early notice takes a leave of absence from this book. The end result of the edited volume is an eclectic, well-balanced, and incisive exploration of the theoretically intricate and politically contested subject matter: the mobilisation of memory in seeking truth, justice, and forgiveness. Remembrance and Forgiveness is a deeply informative and comprehensive read, particularly useful for those who are interested in the interdisciplinary approach to post-conﬂict memory and genocide studies, transitional justice, and reconciliation. It is well-suited for upper- undergraduate and graduate students, and may serve as a compendious overview of the current situation within the context of post-Holocaust genocides.

Verónica Michel John Jay College of Criminal Justice— City University of New York (CUNY) New York, U.S.A.

Criminalizing Atrocity: The Global Spread of Criminal Laws against International Crimes Mark S. Berlin New York, Oxford University Press, 2020 272 Pages; Price: $85.00 Hardcover

Reviewed by Verónica Michel John Jay College of Criminal Justice–CUNY

There is a vast literature focused on the puzzle of why similar institutions, norms, or laws are adopted in different countries. The topics that have been studied include human rights (e.g., same-sex marriage rights, voting rights), judicial reforms (e.g., constitutional courts, criminal procedure codes), and laws that criminalize behavior (e.g., domestic violence, female genital cutting, or the trafficking of persons). But to my knowledge Mark S. Berlin is the first scholar who has studied the diffusion of laws that criminalize atrocity crimes. Atrocity law is a particularly puzzling category of law for states to incorporate as part of their own domestic law. A term coined by David J. Scheffer, atrocity law encompasses the crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.1 Thus, not only the domestication of these crimes constitutes the implementation of norms first adopted in international treaties, but their incorporation into domestic criminal law increases the chances of future prosecutions against state agents in domestic jurisdictions.2 Also puzzling, Berlin notes, is that most states adopted atrocity laws before the international human rights movement prioritized individual criminal accountability for human rights violations in the 1990s.3 So lacking pressure from below, why would states introduce laws that could increase the risk of their own agents to face trial for committing atrocities? In his book, Criminalizing Atrocity: The Global Spread of Criminal Laws against International Crimes, Berlin answers this question following a carefully crafted mixed-method research design that required extensive archival research, interviews, and the construction of two impressive datasets with cross-country data on national atrocity laws and criminal code reforms. To understand why atrocity law has been introduced in domestic criminal law, Berlin argues, we must understand how states have done so.4 A closer look at the processes through which criminal law is created reveals that new offenses may be adopted through two different “pathways” that involve different actors with different motivations. First, through “targeted legislation” governments can pass a new statute or amend an existing one just to incorporate a new crime.5 Adoption of atrocity laws through targeted legislation is explained by what Berlin

1 David J. Scheffer, “The Future of Atrocity Law,” Suffolk Transnational Law Review 25, no. 3 (Summer 2002), 389–432. 2 Mark S. Berlin, Criminalizing Atrocity: The Global Spread of Criminal Laws against International Crimes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 11. 3 Ibid., 12. 4 Ibid., 16. 5 Ibid., 27.

Verónica Michel. “Book Review: Criminalizing Atrocity: The Global Spread of Criminal Laws against International Crimes.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1, 137–140. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1825. © 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention. 138 Michel

calls the “rational expression thesis.” In these instances the legislation is the product of government leaders’ preferences and initiatives.6 Democracies, thus, are more likely than non-democracies to introduce atrocity laws through targeted legislation, although some may take longer than non-democracies to do so.7 Also, “false negatives” are expected, i.e., democracies that have not criminalized atrocities. The reason that democracies either take longer or do not criminalize atrocity laws, Berlin argues, is that these type of laws are a low priority for governments or they are perceived as unnecessary if the country has a monist legal system.8 The second pathway is large-scale reform, when governments decide to rewrite and replace their national criminal codes.9 Berlin found that most atrocity laws around the world have been introduced as part of major criminal code reforms, not through targeted legislation.10 Berlin argues that atrocity crimes are more likely to be incorporated through major reforms because drafting a new penal code requires technical expertise. Thus, the drafting is delegated to technocratic criminal law experts,11 which depoliticizes the legislative review and approval of the code, as the draft itself is both perceived and framed as a technical modernization of the law. 12This second pathway, Berlin argues, increases the likelihood that states adopt atrocity laws because technocratic experts are motivated to draft a “modern” code, which prompts them to seek out ideas/codes which they tend to borrow, a process he names as the “technocratic legal borrowing thesis.” Berlin argues that borrowing happens through an emulation mechanism, when drafters use codes adopted in other states as models, and/or through a professionalization mechanism, when drafters are inspired by ideas promoted by transnational professional networks.”13 There are many things to like about this book (some of which I mention below), but I want to highlight two features that in my opinion make this book unique. First, with this book Berlin has made an incredible empirical contribution. Before this book there was no cross- country data on criminal code reforms or on atrocity laws. Thanks to these datasets we now know, for instance, that criminal code reform is more common than one might assume. Berlin found that “121 states have done so at least once between 1945 and 2018, totaling 170 new codes or an average of 2.3 new criminal codes adopted per year.14 The number of states that have incorporated atrocity laws in their penal law since World War II is also quite surprising. Berlin found that “by the end of 2018, 133 states had criminal laws against genocide, 131 against war crimes, and 90 against crimes against humanity,”15 and as noted earlier, most of these crimes were introduced through criminal code reform. Thus, with these datasets Berlin brings to light a global phenomenon that was previously unknown in its scope. And, second, the book is of great pedagogical and methodological value for social scientists. The reading of this book is interesting, enjoyable, and refreshing in great part because Berlin’s writing is clear and explicit on how the methodologies he used allowed him to test and support his argument using both quantitative and qualitative data. The way Berlin threads

6 Ibid., 33. 7 Monist legal systems are those where constitutions provide that ratiﬁed international treaties are automatically enforceable as domestic law. Dualist legal systems, in contrast, require the implementation of national legislation. Berlin, notes however, that “the consensus among international criminal law scholars is that the direct application of international criminal law in the absence of domestic criminal legislation is both legally and normatively problematic.” See Ibid., 32. 8 Ibid., 32–33. 9 Ibid., 18. 10 Ibid., 11. 11 Ibid., 38. 12 Ibid., 46–47. 13 Ibid., 42–45. 14 Ibid., 34. 15 Ibid., 85.

theory, methodology, and empirics throughout the chapters make this book a great model for both students and teachers of research design, qualitative methods, and mixed methods. In particular, I highly recommend the book as an example of qualitative case selection and process tracing in the social sciences. The book is organized in seven chapters. The first three chapters introduce the reader to the topic and provide necessary background. In the introductory chapter, Berlin describes the puzzle, provides a summary of the argument, and his mixed-method research design. In the second chapter, Berlin draws on the human rights and norm diffusion literatures to build his theoretical framework, and he details the different expectations derived from the “rational expression” and “technocratic borrowing” theses. As thorough as this chapter is in detailing the theory, the puzzle ultimately speaks to the larger question of why a particular behavior or offense is criminalized in domestic statutes, so I was surprised that Berlin did not engage with the literature focused on explaining criminalization of human behavior. I also would have also appreciated a brief explanation of how the diffusion mechanisms proposed here are different to the diffusion mechanisms normally highlighted in the literature (for instance, it is not clear how the “professionalization mechanism” is different from “socialization”). In chapter 3, Berlin offers a fascinating historical journey to trace the origins of the idea of including atrocity crimes in domestic criminal law. Berlin found that this idea originated within a group of influential European criminal law scholars, who through a professional association, the International Association of Penal Law (Association Internationale de Droit Pénal or AIDP), played a key role in spreading the idea as an important feature of a “modern” code.16 Similar to past research that has stressed the key role of experts in norm diffusion, Berlin found that over time the idea spread among criminal law scholars through professionalization and/or emulation mechanisms. The empirical support to his arguments can be found in chapters 4 to 6. In chapter 4, Berlin uses an event history model to test determinants of domestic atrocity laws. The results provide overall support to his two theses, showing that from 1950 until 2013 democratic states were more likely to pass targeted legislation, and states with criminal code reform were more likely to include atrocity crimes when more regional legal peers had already done so and the state had criminal law scholars linked with AIDP.17 Quite surprisingly, an important number of countries that incorporated atrocity laws did so during the Cold War and many of those were autocracies at the time.18 These reforms, Berlin asserts, would later ease the path for future human rights prosecutions in those countries.19 The results of the chapter are compelling and interesting. I was left only wondering why, if one potential explanation for “false negatives” is the type of legal system (monist vs. dualist),20 this variable was not included in the models. I found chapters 5 and 6 the most interesting, where the reader will find a great example of how to verify, through careful case selection and process tracing, the causal mechanisms of an argument. In chapter 5 Guatemala was selected as a “pathway case,”21 i.e., an example of a country that, against the odds, in the middle of a civil war enacted a new criminal code that introduced atrocity crimes in 1973. Through careful process tracing Berlin shows how drafters borrowed provisions from other codes in the region (through emulation) and from ideas supported by the AIDP (through professionalization), and because the drafting process was perceived as technical, the legislative review and approval was depoliticized. In Chapter 6 Berlin demonstrates the methodological advantage of looking at three “negative cases,” i.e.,

16 Ibid., 55. 17 Ibid., 97–105. 18 Ibid., 90. 19 Ibid., 181. 20 Ibid., 32. 21 Berlin deﬁnes a pathway case as “one in which both the explanatory variable and outcome of interest are present or high, yet competing explanatory variables are absent or low. In other words, the case should be ‘most likely’ for the theory of interest and ‘least likely’ for alternative theories.” See Ibid., 21.

cases that did not lead to atrocity criminalization against theoretical expectations, to identify the scope conditions of his thesis. In Colombia and Poland, Berlin found that sometimes, even with a criminal code reform, legislators may fear the potential implications of including atrocity provisions and decide not to include these in the final draft. In the Maldives, at the time of reform the country lacked domestic technical expertise, so the government instead hired foreign experts to draft the code. In this case atrocity crimes were not considered because the drafters did not look for models containing atrocity crimes nor they had links to the AIDP.22 And finally, in his last chapter, Berlin summarizes the book’s findings and provides some implications for research on human rights accountability and international law. In summary, this is a fantastic book. Political scientists will find that Berlin’s research joins the recent wave of pathbreaking scholarship that has emerged within political science that focuses on the study of legal institutions outside constitutional courts and constitutional law. Diffusion scholars may like this complex yet elegant diffusion theory that looks into different pathways to explain different diffusion mechanisms. And human rights and legal scholars will likely enjoy the history of domestication of atrocity laws and may rethink how domestic laws impact human rights prosecutions. I am confident that Criminalizing Atrocity by Mark S. Berlin will be a welcomed addition to many bookshelves.

22 Ibid., 172.

© 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1825. Book Review: Collective & State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State

Cheng Min Xu University of Toronto Toronto, Canada

Collective & State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State Stephan Astourian & Raymond Kévorkian, eds. New York, Berghahn Books, 2021 578 Pages; Price: $69.95 Hardcover

Reviewed by Cheng Min Xu University of Toronto, Canada

The contributors of Collective & State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State1 shed analytical light on some of the lesser known episodes of mass political violence in the Anatolia region from the times of the Ottoman Empire to contemporary Republican Turkey. These essays are set against the backdrop of the most notorious instance of state violence in the region, the Armenian Genocide. As a result, this edited volume effectively demonstrates that the degree of organization, mobilization, and violence marshalled by the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) to prosecute the Armenian Genocide was not a historical aberration, but rather, part of a larger tapestry of collective and state violence endemic to the region that continues to this day. While many of these episodes of violence did not reach the intensity or scope of the Armenian Genocide, they nevertheless demonstrate a historical continuity in which the ideologies, institutions, and social relations designed to facilitate ethnoreligious homogeneity in the region remains durable over time. Both Astourian and Korkmaz point out in their respective chapters, the CUP engineered the Armenian Genocide by inheriting the structures and precedents of anti-Armenian violence established by the preceding Hamidian regime.2 Furthermore, violence against the Armenians did not end with the fall of the Ottoman Empire or the CUP, as Kévorkian, Suciyan, and Törne each document the systematic campaigns of the ethnic cleansing of survivors, erasure of identity, and genocide denial by the subsequent Kemalist and Republican Turkey governments.3 Although none of the chapters directly focus on the events of the Armenian Genocide as a central point of analysis, one of the most important contributions this volume makes to the scholarship on the Armenian Genocide is its focus on the various other groups that have also fallen victim to mass collective and state violence throughout this time period that have been left out of the mainstream discourse. Gaunt’s chapter brings light to the long history of genocidal violence against the Assyrians;4 Shrinian explores the continuity of anti-Greek violence

1 Stephan Astourian and Raymond Kévorkian, eds., Collective & State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State (New York: Berghahn Books, 2021). 2 Stephan Astourian, “On the Genealogy of the Armenian-Turkish Conﬂict, Sultan Abdülhamid and the Armenian Massacres,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey; Ayşenur Korkmaz, “The Hamidian Massacres: Gendered Violence, Biopolitics and National Honour,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey. 3 Raymond Kévorkian, “The Final Phase: The Cleansing of Armenian and Greek Survivors, 1912–1922,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey; Talin Suciyan, “A History of Armenians Remaining in Turkey: Survival and Denial,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey; Annika Törne, “Inscriptions of Denial of the Armenian Genocide in Memory Narrations from Dersim,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey. 4 David Gaunt, “The Long Assyrian Genocide,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey.

Cheng Min Xu. “Book Review: Collective & State Violence in Turkey: The Construction of a National Identity from Empire to Nation-State.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1, 141–144. https://doi.org/ 10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1824. © 2021 Genocide Studies and Prevention. 142 Xu

through Hamidian, Unionist, and Kemalist regimes;5 Bali brings to light the latent anti-Semitism and tenuous social position Jews held in Anatolia and deconstructs the “model minority” myth;6 Yeğen examines the undulating terrain of Turkish-Kurdish relationships and the sustained violence Kurdish movements experience in modern Turkey;7 Dressler discusses both physical and non-physical forms of violence endured by the Alevis under a rubric of Turkish- Muslim hegemony;8 finally, Schneider traces the long history of persecution faced by the Yazidis at the hands of both the Ottoman and Persian Empires, all the way to the visceral events of the Sinjar Massacre perpetrated by the Islamic State in 2014.9 By compiling these vignettes of violence and persecution against a multitude of minority groups in Anatolia, the editors of Collective & State Violence in Turkey remind the readers of two crucial interlocking features of mass state violence and genocide. The first is that the state embarks on an objective towards the creation of an ideal-typically homogenous society that is impossible to achieve. As such, while the state often distinguishes one group as the target for extermination, it will inevitably expand its agenda to other groups that do not fit within this particular ideal-type vision. In the case of Anatolia, it was not only the Armenians that were deemed to be threats to this particularist state-building project, but other Christian and non- Muslim groups as well, such as the Assyrians, Greeks, and Jews. This is not an exclusive phenomenon to Ottoman and Turkish state violence, but is evident in the Holocaust, the Cambodian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, and elsewhere. The second and related feature that is important for scholars of genocide and mass political violence to recognize is that identities are always fluid and dynamic, and that it is impossible to draw clear and hard boundaries between the intersectionality of multiple identities. Yeğen, for instance, demonstrate that despite adoption of Sunni Islam and recruited as allies by the Ottomans to cleanse Anatolia of Christians, Kurdish tribes were still not granted the ability to hold on to their unique cultural identity and were either subject to mass Turkification or face violent reprisal.10 Similarly, Dressler unpacks the complexities of Alevi identity and shows that despite being ethnically Turkish and Muslim, the particularities of Alevism still “others” them from the hegemonic Turkish-Muslim social order.11 As such, the fluidity of identity means that not only is a homogeneous state-building project impossible to achieve, but the impact of violence that different groups experience will vary across time and space, contingent on their positionality within the dominant ideological and social hierarchy. Therefore, while there is a centralized structure of violence imposed at the political centers, the impacts and manifestations of violence at the local and communal levels will be highly varied and contingent. This explains the differential, and often divergent, experiences of the different minority communities throughout the course of the Armenian Genocide, and beyond. In this way, the contributors of Collective & State Violence in Turkey also remind readers to assign agency to the target groups of genocidal and mass state violence. Because of their differential experiences of violence at the hands of the state, their responses are also just as varied. Suciyan and Törne, for instance, each respectively outlined the different strategies adopted by the Armenian diaspora to survive in post-genocide Turkey.12 Similarly, on the experiences of minority groups such as the Jews, Kurds, Alevis, and Yazidis, the respective

5 George N. Shrinian, “Collective State Violence against Greeks in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1821–1923,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey. 6 Rifat N. Bali, “The Attempted Pogrom against the Jews of Thrace, June–July 1934,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey, 234. 7 Mesut Yeğen, “State Violence in Kurdistan,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey. 8 Markus Dressler, “Physical and Epistemic Violence against Alevis in Modern Turkey,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey. 9 Caroline Schneider, “The Yazidis: Resilience in Times of Violence,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey. 10 Yeğen, State Violence in Kurdistan, 311. 11 Dressler, Physical and Epistemic Violence against Alevis, 349. 12 Suciyan, A History of Armenians Remaining in Turkey, 269; Törne, Inscriptions of Denial of the Armenian Genocide, 373.

authors highlight that the variance between how state violence impacted these groups are directly related to their different levels of integration within the dominant Turkish-Muslim social structure. Furthermore, the contributors showed that targeted groups consciously and actively deploy a wide-spectrum of survival tactics from armed resistance to assimilation, and they did not simply resign to becoming hapless victims of history. Given the structures of constraints of violence from which they operated, the subaltern groups exercised resiliency and agency. Through the collection of these historical and analytical accounts of collective and state violence in the Anatolia region, the editors also demonstrate that the use violence itself is multidimensional. Although it is easy to take genocidal violence at face value as a means to the end of creating a homogenous nation-state, several contributors to this volume ask readers to consider alternative forms and logics of violence that serve a variety of purposes. Güven’s account of the anti-Christian riots on September 6–7, 1955 in Pera showed how the state sponsors civil society organizations to decentralize violence on their behalf,13 while Kieser argues that the mass participation of private citizens and civil society in these instances of a public display of violence is essentially a process of socialization for individuals to identify with a particular group.14 As such, violence can be both a means to an end and an end in itself. On the other hand, contributors such as Derin, Dressler, and Copeaux, argue that violence does not even have to be physical, but it can be discursive, cultural, and epistemic, conducted through genocide denial, systemic discrimination and marginalization, and the promotion of ethnic chauvinism.15 Regardless of the form and nature of violence, Bozarslan emphasizes that violence can only occur on this scale because of an existing structure that both enables and incentivizes it.16 By establishing the proximate conditions, agents of violence become less restrained to act. Seen as both means as well as ends, this volume calls upon the readers to examine violence both from rational-instrumental, as well as constitutive perspectives. The central themes of this volume, through highlighting historical continuity and episodic violence against various communities in a multitude of ways, have two important implications for the study of genocide and mass political violence. First and foremost, it is critical to recognize that none of the episodes of violence documented are inevitable. That is to say, by tracing the historical lineages and continuities, the contributors show the different junctures where a different pathway and outcome could have been possible. This places the role of agency back into focus such that albeit agents do not act under conditions of their choosing, they can make their own history and shape those structures and history for posterity. The second, and related, implication is that by understanding the historical continuities of the structures of violence, the culpability and responsibilities of the perpetrator groups should also be brought to the forefront of the discussion. Just as the victims have the agency to resist, the perpetrators also have the agency to choose from a range of possible courses of action that does not lead to genocidal outcomes. Furthermore, regime change does not exonerate and absolve the state from the role it plays in the creation and maintenance of the structures of violence, especially when it inherits the legacies of their predecessors. As such, it begs the reader to question the roles and responsibility that the contemporary Turkish state has towards reconciliation and restitution. By taking an interdisciplinary and multivariate approach to the study of violent episodes, both historical and contemporary, in Anatolia, the editors and contributors of

13 Dilek Güven, “The Events of 6–7 September 1955: Greeks, Armenians and Jews within the Context of the Strategies of the Turkish Republic,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey. 14 Hans-Lukas Kieser, “Public Violence in Turkey from the Nineteenth Century Onwards,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey. 15 Uğur Derin, “‘Who Did this to Us?’ Blaming the Enemies as Part of Turkey’s Authoritarian Political Culture,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey; Dressler, Physical and Epistemic Violence against Alevis, 349; Etienne Copeaux, “Nationalism and History, Masks of Violence,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey. 16 Hamit Bozarslan, “Structures of Power, Coercion and Violence in Republican Turkey,” in Collective & State Violence in Turkey.

Collective & State Violence in Turkey make signiﬁcant contributions to not only the literatures of the Armenian Genocide and Turkish state violence, but the scholarship on genocide and mass political violence as a whole. The human experience with political violence is never even across time and space, and by snapshotting those different experiences, the contributors of this volume paint a cohesive narrative that capture both the nuances as well as broad patterns of the different cases and themes examined. The approaches taken in this book represents a microcosm in the broader array of genocide and mass political violence case studies, and as such, is essential reading for any audience, whether academic or practitioner, vested in understanding how genocidal violence occurs and the potential for its prevention and mitigation.