Kim Petersen: Remembering with Shame and Horror
…Neglected Genocides
On the absurdly named island of Newfoundland, existed a society of Original Peoples known as the Beothuk. They had lived on the island for a couple of millennia until the Europeans came to the rich fishing grounds off its shores. A genocide of thousands occurred. Numerically, it is not enormous, but it represented the complete obliteration of the Beothuk.
The genocide that was wreaked on the Original Peoples of the western hemisphere numbers up to 100 million. [1] But the corporate media of Turtle Island seldom mentions the number and the genocide. Moreover, there are no well known museums dedicated to the genocide of the Original Peoples.
The Longevity of Human Memory
While the magnitude of the killing is revelatory, it can serve as a distraction. The focus should be on the circumstances that brought about the abhorrent killing of other humans and learning how to avoid such calamities in the future.
Annan focused on remembrance and protecting the uniqueness and exclusivity of the Holocaust. He stated, “It must be remembered, with shame and horror, for as long as human memory continues.”
Annan has questionable credibility to pronounce on matters of human dignity. After all he is the UN figurehead who labeled the US-UK aggression of Iraq as illegal and yet — while he is helpless to do much about it without damage to his important self — allows the crime to stand unopposed by the UN secretariat. The ongoing US-UK perpetrated genocide that has claimed over a million Iraqi lives is a horror and Annan’s inaction is a shame. It speaks to the longevity of his own memory.
What kind of remembrance is it when members of the victimized group immediately set out on their own genocidal bloodbath? In the aftermath of WWII, Zionist Jews went on to wipe Palestine off the map. The de facto UN approbation of the Nakba came in the form of UN General Assembly Resolution 273 that recognized the ethnically cleansed state of Israel in 1950. [2] The Zionist state stands in contravention to a plethora of UN resolutions and Geneva Conventions but because of US support it escapes relatively unscathed. The UN covers up a Zionist massacre in Jenin, pays little heed to Zionist assassinations of Palestinian leaders, whimpers when its own people are killed by Zionists, and yet prostrates itself to Zionist-US imperialist dictates, as in the UN investigation of the assassination of former Lebanese president Rafik Hariri and those near him — an assassination that best suits the aims of Zionists and US imperialists.
The UN has the blood of Rwandans, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghanis, and the men of Srebrenica on its hands. It is the authority responsible for the behavior of UN troops raping young girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo. What gives with all the platitudes about remembrance when genocides are raging as Annan speaks? The shame and horror.
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