"War Crimes, Genocide and Memories; The Roots of Evil, I want ... - ZZI

PHOTO: Tarik Samarah, “Srebrenica July 11, 1995”, Course War Crimes, Genocide and Memories, IUC, Dubrovnik, 2004 DESIGN: Natasa TeofilovicJOHANNES KEPLER UNIVERSITY, LINZ"War Crimes, Genocide and Memories; The Roots of Evil, I want to understand"organized by Zentrum der zeitgemaessen Initiativen-ZZI,oesterreichisch-bosnishes Kultur und Wissenschaftnetzwerk Linz//“Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.” (Heinrich Heine); //“Some primalforce must be at work, a hatred of life or a lack of talent of living.” (Sigmund Freud); //“Soldaten sind Moerder”(Kurt Tucholsky); //“Schwarze Milch der Fruehe wir trinken sie abends wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wirtrinken sie nachts wir trinken und trinken wir schaufeln ein Grab in der Lueften da ligt man nich eng… der Todist ein Maister aus Deutschland…; Todesfuge” (Paul Celan); //“I believe that all cases of genocide are similar anddifferent, special and unique, and appropriately subject to comparative analysis”. (Israel Charny); //“Nicht alle,… warum zu viele gewesen sind?” (Jan Phillip Reemtsma); //“A shocking crime was committed on theunscrupulous initiative of a few individuals, with the blessing of more and amid the passive acquiescence ofall.” (Tacitus); //“Blindness for the misfortune of others, lack of imagination of the heart, inner indifferencetoward the witnessed evil-that is moral guilt.” (Karl Jaspers); “Peace without justice is a recipe for furtherconflict. In the fast-forward world which we live, it is unlikely that another four or five decades would elapsebefore the next war.” (Aryeh Neier); //“You who live in safe / In your warm houses / You who find, returning in theevening / Hot food and friendly faces: / Consider if this is a man/ Who works in the mud / Who does not knowpeace / Who fights for a scarp of bread / Who dies because yes or a no / Consider if this is a woman / Withouthair and without name / With no more strength to remember / Her eyes empty and her womb cold / Like a frogin winter./ Meditate that this come about : / I commend those words to you. /Carve them in your hearts / Athome, in the street / Going to bed, rising; / Repeat them to your children, / Or may your house fall apart, / Mayillness impede you, / May your children turn their faces from you.” (Primo Levi); //“I think you have to havecompassion, and you have to see the other as yourself. You have to really be aware, too, that if you don’t speakup when you see evil, then it’s going to multiply. It’s going to progress. It’s going to get out of hand. It takes thecourage to speak up.” (Simone Lipman); “The first is to be courageous, to have courage. And the second is to seeother as yourself and to realize that to have love in your life. With love, you can resist just about anything. Andto be able to bring help to someone else who is just like you and be able to feel love and be carried by thatemotion.” (Damas Gisimba); //“If the international community could not prevent the genocide, it should at leastnot allow this and other most serious crimes to go unpunished.” (Carla del Ponte); //“The Balkans had sufferedfrom the internalized aggression and backyard psychology of previous generations that has not been workedthrough.” (Dan Bar-On); //“On June 7, 1945 after Holocaust US Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trial RobertH. Jackson said “We must establish incredible events by credible evidence”. Today, here, I say, genocide is notincredible, genocide is credible event, it just shows how our world functions.” (Janja Bec); //“Die Nazishaben das Bewusstsein der Deutshen vorallem dadurch gepraegt, dass sie es daraufgetrimmt haben, die Realitaet nicht mehr alsGesamtsumme harter unausweichlicher Faktenwohrzunehmen, sondern als Konglomeratstaendig wechselnder Ereignisse und Parolen,vobei heute wahr sein kann, was morgen shonfalcsh ist.” (Hannah Arendt); //“…becausehuman suffering due to mutual hatred isuniversal, and by presenting the suffering ofsome we are presenting the suffering of all,and the right place to present suffering ofMuslim men and women is the veryenvironment which spawned it, the Serbianenvironment, because it is precisely there thatmay appear that one person who, moved bythese stories, decides not to inflict furthersuffering.” (Aleksandar Tisma); //“You thinkthey feel sorry, sorry for us?” (Nefa, peasantwoman from village Cejvani, Bosnia andHerzegovina, who lost her sons, husband,mother and sister in genocide in spring 1992);//“The eyes of the buried will close togetheron the day of justice, or they will never close.”(Miguel Angel Asturias); //“Hitler’s FinalSolution missed the entire point of racismwithin capitalist world economy. The object ofracism is not to exclude people, much less toexterminate them. The object of racism is tokeep people within the system, but asinferiors (Untermenschen) who can beexploited economically and used as politicalscapegoats. What happened with Nazism wasa blunder, a skid, a loss of control.” (ImmanuelWallerstein); //“The whites and the reachpeople make fun of us indigenous women forour clothing, for our speech, for our language,for our way of praying and healing, and for ourcolor, which is the color of the earth that wework… When the rights and the culture of theindigenous people are recognized, ...the lawwill begin to bring together its hour and thehour of the indigenous people. And if todaywe are indigenous women, tomorrow we willbe the others, men and women, who are dead,persecuted, or imprisoned because of theirdifference.” (Commandant Esther of the EZLN).

COURSE AUTHOR: Profesor Dr. Janja Bec-NeumannJanja Bec-Neumann, born in the house on the Danube in Zemun / Semlin. B.A. in Engineering of Technology,University of Belgrade and Ph.D. in Sociology, University of Zagreb, University of Cambridge and ILO/International Labour Organisation; since 1991 anti-war and since 1994 anti-genocide researcher, writer andlecturer. Books: “Why Wars in Yugoslavia?” (Novi Sad & Belgrade, 1993), “The Shattering of the Soul” (Belgrade,1997), “Sewing up the Blue” (Cairo, 2002), “Archipelago Atlantis” (Sarajevo, 2004), “Darkness at Noon: War Crimes,Genocide and Memories”, (Sarajevo, 2007), ”Talks with Richard Goldstone”, (Sarajevo, 2007), ”Talks with LuisMoreno Ocampo”, (Sarajevo, 2008). Edition: ”Listen/Talk/Reflect/Trust”, editor with Dan Bar-On. Nominated forNobel Peace Prize in 2005. Web links: //www.war-crimes-genocide-memories.org //www.1000peacewomen.orgemail: janjabec@yahoo.comPLACE: Johannes Kepler University, LinzTIME: June 15, 2012 , 7 p.m.LANGUAGE: EnglishKEY WORDS: genocide, genocide convention, crime of the state, victims, perpetrators, bystanders, truthprocess, reconciliation process, amnesty, impunity, ICTY, ICC, chief prosecutors, violence,trans-generational memories, work through trauma, the fabric of violence, human security, violenceagainst women in and after the wars, how to fight back. Genocide as a crime of state (Helen Fein, IsraelCharny, Frank Chalk, Kurt Jonasson, Robert Melson, Ervin Staub); Victims, bystanders, perpetrators,struggle for justice, ICTY and ICC, two chief prosecutors; Richard Goldsone, ICTY and LuisMoreno-Ocampo, ICC.Minimum literature for reading: 1. Helen Fein, “Genocide: A Sociological Perspective” (1993) 2. Israel W. Charny,“Encyclopedia of Genocide” (1999) 3. Ervin Staub, “The Roots of Evil” (1989) 4. Aryeh Neier, ”War Crimes; Brutality,Genocide, Terror and the Struggle for Justice” ( 1998) 5. Dan Bar-On, “The Bystander in Relation to the Victim andthe Perpetrator: Today and during the Holocaust (2002) 6. Dan Bar-On, “Legacy of Silence” (1991) 7.The Path toThe Hague, ICTY (1995) 8. Rome Statute and Rules of Procedure and Evidence of the ICC 9.Celan Paul, “SelectedPoems”, (1996) 10.Primo Levi. “If this is a Man?” (1990)WAR CRIMES, GENOCIDE AND MEMORIES COURSE 2002-2008University of Sarajevo& University of Bologna, Italy (2002-2007)University of Hamburg (2005-2006)IUC/Inter University Centre, Dubrovnik (2003-2008)How to teach about war crimes and genocide in this region after the wars 1991-1999? How to workthrough pain previous generations of our ancestors did not know for centuries? How to talk about it tochildren of these wars? Do we have right to teach about it? Maybe it is really better to keep silent like somany generations before us?MA course “War Crimes, Genocide and Memories: The Roots of Evil I want to Understand” is the first MAcourse with this topic in the region of Southeast Europe after the wars 1991-1999. For four years, sinceNovember, 2002, we have been teaching at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies,University of Sarajevo. The European Regional Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Democracy inSoutheast Europe, ERMA program, is an intensive one-year course established through the joint effortsof the participating universities; University of Tirana, Albania, University of Graz, Austria, University ofSarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina, New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria, University of Zagreb, Croatia,University of Bologna, Italy, University of Skopje, Macedonia, London School of Economics and PoliticalScience, United Kingdom, University of Belgrade, Serbia, University of Pristina, UN administered Kosovo,European Public Law Center, Greece. ERMA program is coordinated by the Universities of Sarajevo andBologna; directors are Professor Zdravko Grebo, University of Sarajevo and Professor Stefano Bianchini,University of Bologna. At present it is in its seventh year of implementation. Each academic year ERMAprogram enrolls 35 students from the countries of Southeast Europe and the European Union. ERMAprogram is co-founded by the European Commission and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Applying interdisciplinary approach (sociology, history, psychology, international criminal law, ICTY, ICTR,ICC, war photography, literature, poetry, war journalism, human rights, music, film, war crimes andgenocide survivors testimonies, war trauma healings, etc.) and using comparative methodology (IsraelCharny, Armenian genocide, Holocaust, Cambodia, Guatemala, Argentina, Bosnia and Hercegovina,Sudan, Rwanda, Congo, Uganda), our aim is “to try to understand the roots of evil” ( Hannah Arendt &Ervin Staub) ”to open the windows in double wall of silencing”, “to reflect, to trust”, “to work throughsuffering and pain, to escape internalized aggression and backyard psychology of previous generationsthat has not been worked through” (Dan Bar-On); to escape “banality of indifference”, “to listen, to talk”and to “teach our students to recognize signals of evil and to speak out when the evil happens, whenbooks start to be burned.” (Janja Bec-Neumann). We have been teaching about genocide as a statecrime (Helen Fein), as a form of extreme destructiveness which is usually the last of many steps alongthe continuum of destruction and cruelty.