60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

288 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness
years, which amounts to a recognition of what it calls the reality of
Israel, is virtually unknown; and that Israel has sworn to destroy Palestine
is unspeakable.
Silence also surrounds what is happening in Iraq. Between 2007 and
2008 the bombing has doubled, and this is not being reported. And
who began this bombing? Bill Clinton – with the knowledge and
approval of the Nobel Peace Laureate of 2007, Al Gore. During the
1990s Clinton rained bombs on Iraq in what were euphemistically
called the ‘no fl y zones’. At the same time he imposed a medieval siege
on the country in the form of economic sanctions, killing perhaps a
million people, including a documented 500,000 children. Almost
none of this carnage was reported in the so-called mainstream media,
says John Pilger. 10
What happens when aggression takes place against an entire nation
like Iraq? How much do you read in the press about the economic
sanctions imposed on that country for decades by the United States?
Or one could take the case of Cuba. The Cuban government speaks
of the genocidal embargo placed on their economy by the US, which
aff ects the entire population – genocide as a form of economic war
or blockade.
Structural violence and neoliberalism
A people’s South perspective on genocide would look at the mass
death and destruction that takes place on a day-to-day basis as a product
of the global power order. For example, payment of debt, the debt
relation as managed by the IMF and the World Bank, and the imposition
of constraints on state-led autonomous economic development
paths under the coercion of World Trade Organization regulations
(so-called investor rights, intellectual property, and other inside-theborder
rules) have served as key tools leveraging imperialist control
and extraction of surplus from the Global South. This is not just modern-day
slavery and exploitation, but also genocide: witness the infant
mortality rates and deaths occasioned by preventable disease. That
violence is being supported by every major Northern donor agency,
with your tax money!
Global neoliberalism as an instrument of imperialist domination forces
privatisation of public goods and basic services, turning them over
10 ‘Freedom Next Time: Filmmaker and journalist John Pilger on Propaganda, the Press,
Censorship and Resisting the American Empire’, 7 August , 2007. www.democracynow.
org