Justice for Genocide
What do you consider to be the greatest obstacles to ending genocide today?
 |
David
Matas |
The greatest obstacle to ending genocide is stopping incitement to genocide before genocide occurs. To attempt to stop genocide after it has started is too late. Yet, efforts to stop incitement to genocide before there is genocide are extremely difficult to marshall.
Around the world, there have been several findings of guilt for the crime of incitement to genocide. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda convicted former Prime Minister Jean Kambanda, broadcaster Ferdinand Nahimana, newspaper editor Hassan Ngeze, political leader Jean Bosco Baryagwiza, journalist Georges Ruggiu, Minister of Information Eliezer Niyitegeka and mayor Jean Paul Akeyesu of this crime. In Canada, Rwandan Leon Mugesera lost his permanent residence status and was ordered deported for incitement to genocide.
What these convictions all have in common is that the incitement occurred in the context of an actual genocide. Yet, legally, there is no such requirement. The crime of incitement to genocide is meant to be preventive, to stop genocide before it happens, not just after the fact.
When there is incitement to genocide, the international community should act immediately and not wait for genocide to happen. But so far that has not happened. The crime of incitement to genocide sits there unused until it is too late.
There is much hand wringing in the international community about the need for armed intervention to stop a genocide in course. Many people have expressed the opinion that the international community should have intervened militarily as soon as the genocide in Rwanda began. But introducing armed troops into a foreign conflict, even a genocidal conflict, raises a whole host of political hesitations. The fact that these hesitations may be both legally and morally ill founded does not counter the fact they exist. The international community, when asked to intervene militarily to prevent genocide, is immobilized. I need only refer to the ongoing genocide in Darfur, happening while we sit here, to make my point.
It should be far easier and straightforward to prosecute for incitement to genocide. Prosecution for incitement to genocide means enforcing obligations to which states have committed. It means resorting to legal institutions rather than using force. It means acting when there is still time, rather than after it is too late.
Genocides are inevitably preceded by incitement to genocide. These incitements occur months and years before the genocide occurs. For instance, the incitement to genocide for which Leon Mugesera was ordered deported from Canada occurred in November 1992. The genocide did not begin till April 1994 over fifteen months later. If Mugesera and others like him had been prosecuted at the time, the genocide could have been prevented without use of arms.
The suggestion of prosecution of incitement to genocide in the absence of actual genocide prompts free speech absolutists to raise a fear of a slippery slope leading to ever greater restrictions on speech. But the infliction of one genocide after another should prompt us instead to fear the slippery slope on the other side of the hill leading to ever more allowance of bold and direct incitement to genocide culminating in actual genocide. A theoretical fear of undue restriction of speech has meant closing our eyes to real, acute, injurious incitement. It is time we woke up.
David Matas was a member of the Amnesty International Standing Committee on Mandate of the International Executive Committee, 1993-1999, is Legal Co-ordinator Canadian Section (English speaking branch) 1980 to the present, and was a member of the anti-impunity working group 2002-2005. He is the author of "Justice Delayed: Nazi War Criminals in Canada" 1987 with Susan Charendoff; "The Sanctuary Trial" 1989; "No More: The Battle Against Human Rights Violations" 1994; and co-editor "The Machinery of Death" Amnesty International USA 1995.
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