Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

HADEMAR
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Controversy has swirled around the issue as to who was behind the shooting down of
Habyarimana’s plane. A French investigation team blamed Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front
leader—and later president of Rwanda—Paul Kagame. Others, including Kagame,
however, have argued it was Hutu extremists.
Hademar. The name of a location in Germany where thousands of people with physical
or psychological handicaps, or incurable diseases, were murdered in the Nazi “euthanasia
program” between 1941 and 1945. It is estimated that approximately eleven thousand
victims were killed at Hademar. Part hospital, part sanatorium, the center had originally
been established in 1901 and was extended and refurbished in 1933 as the State
Psychiatric Center. Hademar can be likened to the Austrian Hartheim Castle, the center
of the Nazi euthanasia program, in which thirty thousand people were killed. Hademar was
also utilized for the murder of others: between 1944 and 1945 it was used in order to kill
slave laborers who were unable to keep working because of illness or debility, and at other
times it was used for the purpose of murdering Allied nationals. Hademar has become a
byword for bureaucratic murder masked as medical “improvement” in the name of perverted
science. Many of the doctors involved in the killing at Hademar were transferred to the Nazi
death camps during World War II, the better to practice their lethal skills: these included
Drs. Ernst Baumhardt, Guenther Hennecke, Friedrich Berner, and Hans-Bobo Gorgass.
Hague Conventions. Two conferences relating to issues concerning the conduct of
nations at war took place at The Hague, Netherlands, in 1899 and 1907. At these
conferences, a basic principle was established formally, namely, that individuals had rights
that should be respected as members of the international community. It was recognized at
the 1899 conference that alternatives to war should be sought prior to conflict taking
place, well in advance of antagonism developing into war. These alternatives could
include, it was suggested, such devices as disarmament and international arbitration. The
1907 conference addressed issues that dealt with the laws and customs of war on land.
Both the 1899 and 1907 conferences had at base a need to try to diminish the evils of war
by revising, where possible, its general laws and customs. The 1907 conference established
a series of prohibitions over the behavior of nations engaged in war, with the broad
intention of making warfare more humane and respecting the rights of individuals. These
included, inter alia, prohibitions on attacking undefended towns or villages, using poison
or other weapons that cause “superfluous” injuries, willfully destroying religious or cultural
institutions, mistreating civilians in occupied territory, using poison gas in warfare, and
violating a nation’s neutrality. The 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions were signed by
twenty-six countries, each of which effectively agreed to restrain its behavior in wartime
by enshrining a set of actions that were henceforth to be classed as war crimes. The
signatories refrained from embracing the notion of an international court, however,
preferring to retreat behind well-established principles relating to the absolute sovereignty
of nations. A criticism of the Hague Conventions is that nothing was established in the
way of an enforcement mechanism for states contravening the laws proscribed by the
treaties. The Hague Conventions codified the actions that could be considered war
crimes, and although they failed to prevent the outbreak of war in 1914, they retained
their attraction as an ideal to which states should aspire and were invoked in discussions
throughout World War I and its aftermath.
Hama. A city in central Syria, the location of a genocidal massacre in February 1982.
Hama, a city entrenched as a bastion of traditional, landed power and Sunni Muslim