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Do you think the world has the will to stop genocide? read article
Yes 0 (0%)
No 6 (66.7%)
Maybe 0 (0%)
It depends 1 (11.1%)
Hopefully 0 (0%)
Eventually 2 (22.2%)
I don't know 0 (0%)
No opinion 0 (0%)
I haven't thought about it 0 (0%)
It never will have the will 0 (0%)
yes and no 0 (0%)
other 0 (0%)
Total Votes: 9
U.N. Asks if World Has the Will; to Stop Genocide
Topic Started: Jan 26 2005, 07:02 PM (273 Views)
Sophie
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Keeper of the spider-cats
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Quote:
 
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - If the world had listened to the horrors of the Nazi death camps, perhaps genocide in Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda could have been avoided, speakers told the first-ever U.N. General Assembly session on the Holocaust of World War II.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) and Nobel Laureate author Elie Wiesel, a death camp survivor, both questioned whether the nations had the will to stop mass murder 60 years after the massacre in Europe.

"If the world had listened, we may have prevented Darfur, Cambodia, Bosnia and naturally Rwanda," Wiesel said.

Annan told the assembly that at this moment, "terrible things are happening today in Darfur, Sudan." He asked the U.N. Security Council to take action once it receives a new report determining whether genocide had occurred in Darfur and identifying gross human rights abuses.

The special session, at which some 40 nations spoke as well as survivors, included the foreign ministers of Israel, Germany, France, Argentina, Armenia, Canada and Luxembourg. It was held as a memorial to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest death camp.

"The tragedy of the Jewish people was unique," Annan said. "Two thirds of all Europe's Jews, including one and a half million children, were murdered. An entire civilization, which had contributed far beyond its numbers to the cultural and intellectual riches of Europe and the world, was uprooted, destroyed, laid waste."

MIDEAST CONFLICT

Still, the session was linked by both Israel and Jordan to the Middle East conflict. The General Assembly voted in November 1947 to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, leading to Israel's creation a year later.

"What sense can we make of this important commemoration, when we allow through our inaction, year after year, one people to dominate another, to deny the latter many of its most basic rights, and so, with the passage of time, also degrade it as a people," said Jordan's U.N. ambassador, Prince Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the only Arab speaker.

Israel's Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, in an obvious reference to Palestinian suicide bombers, said: "Today again, we are pitted against the forces of evil, those for whom human life -- whether the civilians they target or their own youth who they use as weapons -- are of no value, nothing but a means to their goals."

And China's U.N. ambassador Wang Guangya reminded the assembly that invading Imperial Japanese troops in 1937 killed 300,000 Chinese in Nanjing.

The liberation of Auschwitz is to be observed this year as Holocaust Memorial Day, with world leaders attending ceremonies in Poland on Jan. 27, 60 years after Soviet Red Army troops liberated the camp.

Up to 1.5 million prisoners, most of them Jews, were killed in Auschwitz alone. A total of six million Jews and millions of others including Poles, homosexuals, Russians and Gypsies were murdered by the Nazis during the war.

Wiesel asked how "intelligent, educated men, or simply law-abiding citizens, ordinary men" could fire machine guns at hundreds of children every day and read Schiller and listen to Bach in the evening.

Italy's Marcello Pera, speaker of the Senate, was blunt. "How was it possible that Europe, at the peak of its civilization could commit such a crime? How could Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, collaborationist France and many others become responsible...of such an immense massacre?"

To warm applause, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called the Holocaust "barbaric. "For my country it signifies the absolute moral abomination, a denial of all things civilized without precedent or parallel," he said.

He assured Israel that it could "always rely" on support because "the security of its citizens will forever remain nonnegotiable fixtures of German foreign policy."

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who lost most of his extended family in the Holocaust, said if there was one thing the world had learned, it is that nations "cannot close their eyes and sit idly by in the face of genocide."

"We know that there have been far too many occasions in the six decades since the liberation of the concentration camps when the world ignored inconvenient truths so that it would not have to act or acted too late," Wolfowitz said.

Wiesel also drew attention to the indifference of the West during the war to accept more refugees, allow more Jews to go to Israel, or bomb the railway lines to the vast Auschwitz-Birkenau camp site. "This shameful indifference we must remember, "he said.
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Hoss
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Don't make me use my bare hands on you.
The question perhaps should be: "Does the UN have the will to stop genocide instead of degenerating into political squabble on every issue?"
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Dwayne
Profanity deleted by Hoss
Asking the UN to stop genocide, is like asking the Chinese government to stop the black market.
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24thcenstfan
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Something Wicked This Fae Comes
This seems like an abstract question, but I will attempt to answer it anyway.

No. I don't think the world (most or all of its inhabitants, governments, etc.) has the will to stop genocide. Unfortunately some of that world still perpetrates the genocide, some ignore that it happens (for various reasons) and others do what they can to combat genocide with the limited resources they have available to them.

One day, maybe the world will not only have the will (the motivation) to stop genocide, but the way (the ability to combine and focus resources). I don't think the world (majority or all) will have the former, latter or both anytime soon.

Now, if the question is pertaining to the UN Members = World, then I still say "No" for similar reasons.
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Hoss
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Don't make me use my bare hands on you.
I especially like to hear this after the UN's conference on racism saw those responsible for most modern-day genocide, slavery and racism (Africans) blaming the USA and Israel for all of this stuff. :lol:
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DEFIANT
Commodore
What is meant by "will?" Is it desire, ability, rhetoric?
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Admiralbill_gomec
UberAdmiral
Does the world have the will? You'd think so, but between the NIMBY types and the apologists, this will continue.
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somerled
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Admiral MacDonald RN
It depends on politics , in the past , now , and probably in the future , and on actually recognising in a timely manner that genocide and racial or ethnic cleansing is actually happening.

Time to get rid of veto powers in the UN.
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somerled
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Admiral MacDonald RN
38957
Jan 26 2005, 07:04 PM
The question perhaps should be: "Does the UN have the will to stop genocide instead of degenerating into political squabble on every issue?"

No - his question is perfectly fine.

If you want to post a poll with your question , why don't you , rather than trying to be a smart arse.
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DEFIANT
Commodore
Admiralbill_gomec
Jan 27 2005, 10:07 AM
Does the world have the will? You'd think so, but between the NIMBY types and the apologists, this will continue.

Why would NIMBY have a problem?
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Sophie
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Keeper of the spider-cats
and who is NIMBY?
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24thcenstfan
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Something Wicked This Fae Comes
^NIMBY isn't a person. It stands for, "Not in my back yard."
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Sophie
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Keeper of the spider-cats
ok, thanks. :yes:
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Fesarius
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Admiral
T'Lac,

No, I would say not (collectively speaking).
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Admiralbill_gomec
UberAdmiral
DEFIANT
Jan 27 2005, 09:18 AM
Admiralbill_gomec
Jan 27 2005, 10:07 AM
Does the world have the will? You'd think so, but between the NIMBY types and the apologists, this will continue.

Why would NIMBY have a problem?

Because a NIMBY would simply say, "It isn't happening here, so I don't care." Cold, but true. Some do actually think like that.
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