Shouldn’t all lives matter equally?

Opinion

By Dr R Neerunjun Gopee

Although the Black Lives Matter movement was energized following the death of Black American George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, it actually began in 2013. This was in the wake of the death of Trayvon Martin, an African-American teenager who was shot while walking to a family friend’s house, and the subsequent acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who shot him.

In the case of George Floyd, it was a video showing a police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck that went viral following his death which triggered widespread protests in several cities across the US and spread to other cities in the world. Police officer Derek Chauvin was seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck. He has since been charged with murder, found guilty and is now in jail.

From online sources, it may be noted that the international human rights campaign began on social media in 2013 with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, as a movement which is ‘an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.’ A few years later, BLM’s co-founder Alicia Garza said in an interview that BLM’s ‘goal is to build the kind of society where Black people can live with dignity and respect.’

In fact, it should be the goal of all countries and all peoples to build the kind of society where not only people belonging to one particular race, religion or skin colour should be able to live with dignity and respect amongst each other, but ALL the people in any country or society should be able to do so. Unfortunately, although this is the right and reasonable way to coexist and thrive, in practice events around the world from historical times show us that many people have been and are still persecuted because of their ethnicity, race, religion or skin colour. This is especially common during wars, and the violence perpetrated — other than the actual warring which directly kills the warriors involved – includes looting and destruction of property, brutal killings, sexual violence against women and girls, chasing whole communities who have to seek refuge elsewhere, often becoming refugees if they have managed to escape.

In fact, this is no less than genocide, about which there is an abundance of information online. It is defined as an act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Genocide became a crime in itself following the adoption of the ‘Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’ by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948, as result of the events of the Holocaust. The Convention came into force on 12 January 1951.

The various different acts defined in the convention as acts of genocide include: (a) killing members of a group, (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

However, in 1987, Gregory Stanton, a professor of law, published a paper which explored how genocides develop and unfold. He identified eight key stages which resulted in acts of genocide. According to Stanton’s model, some of these stages can happen at the same time or in a different order. In 2012, he added two further stages (Discrimination and Persecution) to make ten. According to Stanton’s current model, therefore, the stages of genocide are as follows:

1. Classification – Dividing people into ‘them’ and ‘us’.
2. Symbolisation – Forcing groups to wear or be associated with symbols which identify them as different.
3. Discrimination – Excluding groups from participating in civil society, such as by excluding them from voting or certain places. In Nazi         Germany, for example, Jews were not allowed to sit on certain park   benches.
4. Dehumanisation – To deny the humanity of one group and associate them with animals or diseases in order to belittle them.
5. Organisation – Training police or army units and providing them with weapons and knowledge in order to persecute a group in future.
6. Polarisation – Using propaganda to polarise society, create distance and exclude a group further.
7. Preparation – Planning of mass murder and identifying specific victims.
8. Persecution – Incarcerating groups in ghettos or concentration camps, forcibly displacing groups, expropriating property, belongings or wealth.
9. Extermination – Committing mass murder.
10. Denial – Denial of any crimes. This does not necessarily mean denying that the acts of murder happened, but denying that these acts were a crime, and were in fact justified.

Stanton hoped that by identifying these stages it would be easier to recognise genocide before it took place and thus stop it from happening.

Much before this genocide was thus characterized, it has been happening, such is the propensity of some twisted minds to resort to Classification of ‘them’ and ‘us’. From there the rest automatically follows. The most well-known genocide in the last century is the Holocaust during World War II, with the extermination of six million Jews out of the then 11 million in Europe. But according to Francois Gautier, a French journalist based in India who has researched the phenomenon in depth, the largest holocaust in history is what he calls the Hindu Holocaust in the Indian subcontinent perpetrated by the Moghul and Turkic invaders over several centuries, killing tens of millions of Hindus.

Despite the UN Convention, genocides have not stopped. During the Indo-Pakistan war of December 1971, which led to the creation of Bangladesh, almost 3 million Hindus were exterminated during the ensuing genocide, and nearly 10 million refugees fled to India. Nearly two decades later, in April 1990, the genocide of Kashmiri Hindus drove out nearly 400,000 of them.

And the latest genocide in the Indian subcontinent is the ongoing one against the Hindus in Bangladesh, after the political turmoil that resulted in its leader Sheik Hasina fleeing to the safety of India, for no other country would accept her. By all accounts that are reaching us, Stenton’s stages of genocide have been unfolding against the Hindus of Bangladesh, despite the guarantee given by the caretaker head of government, Muhammad Yunus, who is well-known as the founder of the Grameen Bank for which he was awarded the Nobel prize.

He even visited the destroyed ISKCON Temple after he took over, to reassure the Hindu community, but the persecution is continuing, nevertheless. What a supreme irony that in the wake of the floods that have recently taken place there, the same ISKCON Temple devotees have swung into action to prepare food for ALL refugees.

Equally concerning is the situation in Gaza, where the Israeli response in retaliation to the October 7 attack by Hamas, with the death of about 1200 citizens and some 240 taken hostage, is resulting in the loss of lives among the civilian population. Some 40,000 people have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

It is a utopian hope, but there is no other way to coexist than to genuinely and sincerely accept that All Lives Matter! And, taking the cue from BLM’s goal, all countries should adopt the credo ‘to build the kind of society where all their people can live with dignity and respect’, and enforce it through the appropriate legal means.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 30 August 2024