Josh Bicknelll

Please Note: The following article contains descriptions and narratives of violence and genocide, as well as an analysis of human behavior relating to sensitive topics, including racism, intolerance, physical violence, and death. Some images and details may be disturbing or upsetting to readers, including graphic imagery. Please be mindful of the content before continuing.

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Stages 9 and 10 – extermination and denial – are the final stages of genocide. The case study is Armenia, where genocide took place beginning in 1915, and where a second expulsion emptied Nagorno-Karabakh in September of 2023.

Photo by Nasser Ansari on Pexels.com

As the final installment in the series, coverage of previously analyzed regions will also converge, including Sudan and Cambodia.

At the time, there was no word for the crime.

Emtithal “Emi” Mahmoud, speaking at TEDMED in 2016, put it this way: asked why her people were being systematically murdered, she did not remember the clinical definition of “genocide” anyway. “But I remember the feeling,” she said, “…completely alone…invisible.”

On June 3, 1921, Soghomon Tehlirian, an Armenian genocide survivor, was alone, and had for years felt invisible. Now he stood trial for murder which he admitted to openly, even if refusing to call himself “guilty.”

His crime would change his invisibility forever.

Just under three months before his trial took place, Soghomon left his house on the morning of March 15th, crossed the street twice, confirmed he had sight of his target, Talaat Pasha, pointed his gun to the back of his neck, and shot him in broad daylight. He did not get far, and was arrested shortly after by German police.

“I do not consider myself guilty,” he told the judge at his trial. “My conscience is clear. I have killed a man. But I am not a murderer.”

In this case, the murder was highly specific, prompted by hauntings of Soghomon’s own murdered family in recurring nightmares, and a means of coming to terms with the genocide that not only killed his entire family, but an estimated 1.5 million ethnic Armenians beginning in 1915.

It was a vindication.

Soghomon’s target, Talaat Pasha, was a key figure and member of the ruling triumvirate that historians would come to call the “Three Pashas,” who had controlled the Ottoman Empire during the war. More significantly, he was one of the most prominent figures in executing the Armenian genocide, and he managed to slip away from any accountability, fleeing to Germany, who did not extradite him to Turkey despite his sentence to death by an Istanbul court.

Soghomon, learning of this and with little to lose, methodically planned for how he would take justice into his own hands and murder Talaat himself. He rented an apartment in Berlin near Talaat and began obsessively learning his routines, his comings and goings, and his patterns.

At the same time, the nightmares began.

In court documents describing these disturbing dreams, it was reported that Soghomon’s mother appeared vividly to him, shaming him for seeing Talaat on such a regular basis and not taking revenge for the death of his entire family.

“You are no longer my son,” his mother told him.

“I want to be my mother’s son again,” Soghomon said. “I want her to clasp me to her bosom like before….to be with her in heaven.”

Just over an hour after the trial concluded, a jury unanimously rendered their verdict: not guilty.

Mher Shahbaryan cannot disclose his location. Similar to the reasoning behind redactions in the Myanmar case study, today’s technologies combined with a determined lethal force put the lives of people like Mher at great risk.

In 2023, the land area of Nagorno-Karabakh (or Artsakh) was the setting of over nine months of blockade against ethnic Armenians, where they had lived for thousands of years. The blockade began in late 2022, when Azerbaijan deliberately blockaded the Lachin Corridor, effectively cutting all food and other resources from over 120,000 Armenians. Medical supplies, fuel, and other necessities for life were blocked, leading a number of legal experts to sound the alarm for genocide, as genocide’s definition includes intentionally inflicting “destructive living conditions” – that is, making life itself virtually impossible to continue on without forcible removal or relocation.

Twice the International Court of Justice ordered the road opened, and twice nothing happened.

In August, Luis Moreno Ocampo – the first chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court – published an expert legal opinion whose first sentence read: “There is an ongoing Genocide against 120,000 Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh.” He needed no bodies to say it. “Starvation is the invisible Genocide weapon,” he wrote. “Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.”

He testified before Congress on September 6.

September 19 of 2023 marks the day when Azerbaijan initiated a violent military assault on Artsakh and its Armenian inhabitants. Armenia’s Investigative Committee would eventually count 223 dead, including 25 civilians, five of them children. Those who were not killed witnessed atrocities they had heard about from their ancestors and were now watching happen.

Six days later, a fuel depot outside Stepanakert exploded as thousands queued for gasoline to make the drive out. Two hundred and eighteen more died, most of them burned. Twenty-one were never found.

Then the road opened and everyone left. Between September 24 and the afternoon of October 3 – nine days – 100,617 people crossed into Armenia, which was nearly every Armenian in Artsakh. They left behind the dead, the graves of their ancestors, their churches, their belongings, and their identity cards.

The United States took no military action and imposed no sanctions. Dozens of members of Congress had warned that it would be complicit in genocide, and Los Angeles, home to perhaps the largest Armenian diaspora population in the U.S., filled with protesters. Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, which bars U.S. assistance to the government of Azerbaijan, stayed waived through the entire blockade, as it has been waived every year since 2002.

For many of the displaced this was the fourth time in a lifetime. One of them is Mher Shahbaryan.

Mher, appearing in his mid-sixties perhaps, sits in a still, empty living room of the rental he shares with five other family members. The chair he sits on is ornate – a seemingly deliberate attempt to cling to the life he and his family once shared. But the photos next to him, his shoulders slumped slightly forward with his hands gripping one another as he holds back tears during his interview for a documentary project on Artsakh’s stories of survivors – all this juxtaposes any attempt at clinging to a past life.

Mher was one of the 120,000 forcibly displaced, in particular from a village in a region of Artsakh called Martakert. He is the father in a family of five, with three sons – two who are 7 and 9 years old, and another, Davit, who is grown.

He recalls how his eldest son took part in a last-ditch effort against the advance on Artsakh and its regions. On the day of the September 19 attacks, Mher reflects how he did not know a fight would take place at all. Then, a call came from his son. He was at the border.

“Mom, there are so many Turks….there is no escape from this.”

His mother responded, “Davit, don’t be afraid, your father has seen such things a lot.”

In the interview, with two framed photos of his son next to his side, Mher looks away for a moment, his face tense but tears still forming despite his attempts at stoicism.

“Who would have known it would end like this?”

The 19th century in the Ottoman Empire was bleak for Armenian Christians.

Attacks by Kurdish locals were frequent, with Armenians encountering discrimination in the form of legal rights, taxation, and a lack of any representation. Armenians, despite negotiating a treaty which would improve their quality of life, found themselves betrayed by Sultan Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire. This led to Armenian resistance, which, until 1896, was aggressively put down by the Sultan in a series of massacres that led to the deaths of well over 100,000.

Nobody was tried.

This, however, was only a preview of a far greater crisis to come.

In July of 1908, a group of reformers known as “Young Turks” forced Abdul Hamid II to restore the constitution he had suspended thirty years earlier, promising what Armenians had for a century asked for: equality and constitutional protection. Armenians celebrated in the streets alongside Turks.

The promise, however, lasted less than a year.

By April of 1909, between 15,000 and 30,000 Armenians were murdered over the course of just two weeks in the city of Adana. Trials followed the killings. Among those hanged were Armenians.

The men who promised equality learned an important lesson during this time: killing could be done, and nobody would stop it.

At their center, the Committee of Union and Progress, rose a former postal clerk named Mehmed Talaat.

By 1913, Talaat was named Minister of the Interior, and the Committee had by then abandoned any illusion of establishing a multiethnic empire, favoring instead a Turkish one. When the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on the side of Germany, and when the catastrophic defeat at Sarikamish in the winter of 1914 killed tens of thousands of Ottoman soldiers, the blame was assigned not to the generals who ordered the campaign but instead to the Armenians.

Armenian soldiers serving in the Ottoman army were immediately disarmed, reassigned to labor, and were worked to death or shot. On April 24, 1915, roughly 250 Armenian community leaders and intellectuals were rounded up and deported in Constantinople.

Almost none of them survived.

One month later, the Tehcir Law authorizing the removal of the Armenian population from Anatolia went into effect, and thus the deportations began: waves of women, children, and the elderly were marched south toward the Syrian desert, robbed, raped, and murdered alongside roads that were never intended to actually lead anywhere.

These orders came from Talaat’s ministry. And when the war was lost in 1918, Talaat refused to stay to answer for any of them. He and other members of the Three Pashas, on November 2, boarded a German torpedo boat and narrowly escaped Constantinople. The Ottoman court-martial tried him “in absentia” in 1919, bringing upon him a death sentence for his crimes, but with Germany still a wartime ally to Talaat, they refused to extradite him, where he settled down in Berlin, writing memoirs of denial that any of what was reported actually happened.

He so fully embodied this denial that he took on a new identity – Ali Salih Bey – walking the shops, the streets, as common as any passerby. By every practical measure, he had gotten away with mass murder.

One morning, a young man who had survived one of those marches, however, rented an apartment across the road and started keeping notes.

“Their existence must come to an end however tragic the means may be, and no regard must be paid to age or sex or to conscientious scruples.”

Here was the evidence Tehlirian’s lawyers brought to court: a stack of telegrams obtained in Aleppo by the Armenian journalist Aram Andonian, attributed to Talaat Pasha, naming in the dead man’s own words the intent to destroy a people.

The prosecution objected. The telegrams were never entered into evidence, and Andonian was never called. When the defense sought testimony from Walter Rössler, the former German consul at Aleppo who had concluded the documents were most likely authentic, the German Foreign Office prevented him from appearing.

The single page that named the intent stayed out of the only room where the intent was going to be examined.

What the court did allow was people. Johannes Lepsius, the German pastor whose documentation remains one of the era’s principal records, testified as an expert. Grigoris Balakian, an Armenian priest who had been among those arrested on April 24, 1915, described what he had walked through and survived.

Shortly after, a new witness was called: Christine Terzibashian.

She, like Soghomon, had also survived the massacres, and she was about to provide testimony that would forever mark these “massacres” as a specific type of crime – one of total, systematic extermination, with full intent to do so. Twenty-one members of her family were sent into the desert. Three came back.

Perhaps nobody was prepared for the details to come.

She sat in the witness box, and began her testimony:

I was in Erzerum when in July 1915 the Armenian population of the city was rounded up and ordered to leave the city. We were told to abandon our homes because they would be in the direct line of military operations. We later learned this was a lie, and that only Armenians were told to leave.

There were 500 families in the convoy. My immediate family consisted of 21 people. We had rented three oxcarts and took everything we could with us – money, and food.

As soon as we had left the city, the gendarmes came and searched all our belongings for arms. They confiscated knives and umbrellas and other things. Once Erzinga was in sight, they forbade us to enter the city. We were forbidden to drink water. The oxen we had with us were taken away and driven out into the mountains. Then we started walking again. That’s when we started noticing the corpses piling up, on which we sometimes had to step to keep going forward.

My legs were covered with the blood of the corpses I stepped on.

They separated about 500 of the young boys and tied them together, then they pushed them into the river. The current was so strong that they were swept along and drowned. I saw this with my own eyes.

We begged and we cried but we didn’t know what to do. They didn’t even allow us to cry.

We arrived in Malatia carrying what we could on our backs. We were taken up to the mountains where they separated the men from the women, but not too far away from one another, so that we were able to see what was happening to the other group. Men were killed with axes.

When night came, the gendarmes came to pick the prettiest women and the prettiest young girls. Those who resisted were pierced with bayonets and their legs were torn apart. Pregnant women were not spared. Turks would open their wombs, take the fetus out, and throw it on the ground.

I swear… this… is the truth.

Turks who had come to see the trial began to leave the court one at a time while the jury remained visibly shaken by Terzibashian’s testimony.

Thousands of these accounts exist, Tehlirian’s lawyers reminded the jury.

Terzibashian’s was only one of them.

In Lwów, a twenty-year-old student was following the case in the newspapers.

Raphael Lemkin had grown up on a farm outside Wołkowysk, in what was then the western edge of the Russian Empire and is now Belarus. His mother, Bella, was a painter, a linguist, and a philosophy student with a large collection of books. She had also given him, when he was twelve, a copy of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis, the novel of Nero’s persecution of the early Christians in Rome. He read it, and he could not stop asking his mother the same question: why did the state not protect them?

She could not give him an answer he could live with. So he began to keep a list of his own – the Assyrians, the Mongol razings, the Huguenots, the massacres of the Jews across Europe. And now, from the Berlin papers, the Armenians.

He read the reports of the deportations, of the testimony from the courtroom, and of the verdict.

Then he took the question to Juliusz Makarewicz, his professor of criminal law at the University of Lwów.

Why, he asked, could Tehlirian stand trial for the murder of one man when the men who had ordered the murder of more than a million Armenians walked free?

Makarewicz answered with a story about a farmer. Consider a man who owns a flock of chickens, he said. He kills them, and this is his business. Sovereignty was sacred. What a state chose to do within its own borders was its own affair.

“But the Armenians are not chickens,” Lemkin said.

He was told he did not yet understand international law.

He spent the next twenty-three years trying to.

In 1933, he prepared a proposal for an international law conference in Madrid, arguing that the intentional destruction of a racial, religious, or social group be recognized as a crime under international law. He called it, provisionally, “barbarity.” He was not permitted to deliver it in person. His proposal was rejected.

Six years later, when the Nazis invaded Poland, Lemkin escaped east on foot and by rail, sleeping in forests. Forty-nine members of his family, including his parents Bella and Josef, would be murdered in the Holocaust. He reached the United States, alone, in 1941.

He kept working on the word.

He found it in 1944. In Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published while the war he had fled was still burning across the continent that had swallowed his family, he combined the Greek génos, meaning race or tribe, with the Latin -cide, meaning killing.

Genocide.

Four years later, on December 9, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Lemkin stood at the back of the hall in Paris. He was crying.

He died in New York in 1959, of a heart attack, at fifty-nine years old. Seven people came to his funeral.

The soldiers who crossed the border on September 19 were Azerbaijani. Davit called them Turks. So does his father, in the interview, four months later.

Among Armenians from Artsakh the word attaches to whatever came for the grandparents, and then transfers.

Davit, don’t be afraid, your father has seen such things a lot.

She was telling her son that the family had been through this and come out the other side. It was the only thing she had to hand.

It was also the last thing she said to him.

His parents did not know for two days that their son had been killed.

Mher explains: “They said that they fled to the forest, but no, there was no way to escape from there. Only 1 person out of 10 survived. We were also waiting for Davit to come through the forests. We waited for two days. A friend boy stretched out his hand and said: Mher, I offer my condolences. I said: ‘what are you saying?’ It was then that I learned that Davit had not survived.”

Davit Shahbaryan’s body was in the forests, which were already occupied by the enemy.

Mher continues: “We went to a friend’s house from there. We took only our clothes with us, because we came from the village to Stepanakert and thought we would go back again. But we learned that Artsakh no longer exists. If it continued for a few more days, they would have killed everyone, that was their goal.”

Their family left Artsakh on 25 September; on the same day, their son’s body was found.

Here is Gregory Stanton’s ninth stage:

“Extermination begins, and quickly becomes the mass killing legally called ‘genocide.’ It is ‘extermination’ to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human… Destruction of cultural and religious property is employed to annihilate the group’s existence from history.”

Importantly, extermination may not always be visible. We’ve seen this in Xinjiang, where the prevention of births through forced sterilizations serves as its own elimination tactic of the Uyghur population.

Armin Wegner walked out of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 with photographs of the deportation camps hidden inside his belt, and six years later published the stenographic transcript of Tehlirian’s trial with his own foreword attached to the front. Those photographs are still being reproduced a century on. There is no photograph of the blockade.

Then there is the last clause of Stanton’s definition, the one about cultural property, and Azerbaijan has been working at it ever since.

Caucasus Heritage Watch, a satellite monitoring project run out of Cornell, has been photographing Nagorno-Karabakh from orbit since before the exodus. It recorded the demolition of St. John the Baptist Church in Shusha, a hundred and seventy-seven years old. It showed bulldozers cutting a road through the Yerevan Gate Cemetery, and in the spring of 2026 it recorded the flattening of the Holy Mother of God Cathedral in Stepanakert, the largest church in Artsakh, consecrated four years before the town was emptied of the same people who built it.

It also recorded the destruction of the Armenian Genocide Memorial.

The memorial was a white marble bell tower, put up for the centennial of 1915. Inside was a reliquary, and inside the reliquary were human remains that had been carried back from Der Zor: bones out of the desert at the end of the road people like Christine Terzibashian had walked.

Somebody had gone to Syria, found them, brought them home, and built a tower to hold them, only for a machine to tear it down.

Stanton’s recommended intervention at the ninth stage is the shortest in his framework, and in that sense also perhaps the most bleak: at this stage, he says, only rapid and overwhelming armed intervention can stop genocide.

And in the case of Armenia, nobody came.

Denial is not Armenia’s problem alone, and it has picked up new tools since 1921. The clearest look at those tools is in Sudan.

It’s near 2026, and yet this particular satellite does not know what it is looking at.

It passes over North Darfur on a schedule and records reflected light, and over two days at the end of October it recorded, scattered through the streets and courtyards and compounds of El Fasher, small clusters of objects measuring somewhere between one and two meters across, with the ground around many of them discolored.

The analysts at Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab published the following day, and then kept publishing — six more reports across the next month, each one counting more than the last.

The clusters were bodies. The discoloration was blood.

By December the lab had logged a hundred and fifty clusters consistent with human remains and thirty-eight separate patches of reddish ground. It had also watched them go. Within a month seventy-two percent of the clusters had shrunk and thirty-eight percent were no longer there at all. Fresh burial mounds appeared beside the university and widened over successive passes. At the Saudi hospital, white objects were burning in one image, and in the image taken a week later there was thermal scarring and ash.

Nathaniel Raymond, who runs the lab, described to NBC News what he had spent a week watching.

“They are moving like a wood chipper, and they are killing everything that moves.”

And: “This is the final battle of the Darfur genocide.”

The Rapid Support Forces filmed themselves doing it. Fighters livestreamed from inside the city. One commander posted video of himself executing civilians and told TikTok he had killed more than two thousand people. Another turned his phone on a column of detained men being marched down a dirt road and called them the harvest of the day.

Within about a week, fabricated images of the massacre began circulating alongside the real ones: a woman on the ground, a child beside her, the shadows of soldiers falling across them both. BBC Verify traced that picture to an Instagram account belonging to a self-described “Creative AI Specialist,” noticed that the woman cast no shadow although the men did, found that in an animated version of the same image the arms passed through one another, and found Google’s generation watermarks sitting in the file. AFP assessed it independently and reached the same conclusion. Deutsche Welle debunked two more, one of which turned out to show Sudanese army soldiers and to have been posted a month before the city fell.

A spokesman for the RSF’s parallel administration then went on television and said the atrocities in El Fasher were fake.

Nobody at the RSF had made those images. They came from accounts chasing engagement, people who had probably never heard of Zaghawa, and as a result, they inadvertently handed those who did the killing a plausible sounding question they had never previously been able to ask.

How do you know that’s real?

In February the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan concluded that what happened at El Fasher bore “the defining characteristics of genocide” against the Zaghawa and the Fur. Survivors described what the fighters had asked before firing.

Is there anyone Zaghawa among you? If we find Zaghawa, we will kill them all.

The mission’s finding depended significantly on Yale’s imagery and on the hundred and fifty clusters from a satellite recording without knowing for certain what it initially was.

The first post in this series looked at Darfur through the classification stage. Ahmad Abubakar Mousa and others in El Geneina said then that the killing would not stop with the Masalit, and that the other non-Arab tribes would be next if nobody stepped in.

Nobody stepped in.

At its ninth World Congress, held in Yerevan in the autumn of 1919, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation resolved that the men who had organized the destruction of the Armenians and then walked away from every court that wanted them would be found and killed.

They named the plan after Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution.

A man born Hagop Ter Hagopian, who called himself Shahan Natalie, handled operations. He drew up a list, Talaat headed it, and over the next three years most of the names on it were killed in Tiflis, in Rome, and on the streets of Berlin.

Talaat came first, and Soghomon Tehlirian was the man assigned to him.

Shahan Natalie’s instruction survives.

“You blow up the skull of the Number 1 nation-murderer and you don’t try to flee. You stand there, your foot on the corpse and surrender to the police, who will come and handcuff you.”

Standing there was the point. What Natalie wanted was not a dead man in Charlottenburg but a trial in a European capital, in front of European reporters, in a proceeding where somebody would finally be required to stand up and explain what had happened to a million and a half people — and the only way to buy that proceeding was to give a European court a corpse it could not ignore.

It was not even Tehlirian’s first job. A year or two earlier in Constantinople he had shot an Armenian informer who helped assemble the lists used on the night of April 24, and that killing was his audition.

The Berlin court never heard about it.

Nor did the court hear anything true about the caravan out of Erzincan, or the mother shot in front of him, or the blow to the head, or the hours spent lying under the bodies waiting for dark.

He was in Serbia when the war broke out. He went to Russia that autumn and enlisted in the Armenian volunteer units attached to the Caucasus Army, and he was in uniform, several hundred miles away, through the whole of 1915. He entered the country of his childhood later, with the advancing columns, and saw what was left.

His mother did die in the genocide, and his eldest brother Vazken with her, and his memoirs list eighty-five members of the extended family among the dead.

He simply was not there to watch it.

Nobody asked him whether he belonged to an organization. Nobody asked about Constantinople. Rolf Hosfeld, the German historian who spent a career on the case, called the testimony “extremely well groomed” and concluded that had the court known the killing was part of a conspiracy, “Tehlirian would not have been acquitted.”

So a man who had not been there described what he had not seen, to a court that never asked, and walked out into a Berlin evening — and a twenty-year-old in Lwów read about it in the newspaper, asked his professor a question, got an answer about chickens, and spent the next twenty-three years building the word we now use for what was done to the people Tehlirian was not standing beside when they died.

Tessa Hofmann, among the historians most sympathetic to him, put it as carefully as anyone has. The account he gave “was thus a construct, but one that contains extremely typical and essential elements of the collective fate of his compatriots.”

Every sentence he spoke about that road happened to somebody. Christine Terzibashian sat in the same room on the same day and told the truth about herself, and of the twenty-one members of her family who went into the desert, three came back.

Tehlirian lived another thirty-nine years and ended up in San Francisco, working as a postal clerk, which is where Talaat Pasha had started out in Edirne.

He died in 1960 and lies in Fresno beneath an obelisk topped with a gold eagle killing a snake.

And on the monument, it gives his birth date wrong too.

Stanton’s tenth stage:

“Denial is the final stage that lasts throughout and always follows genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims.”

Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to the president of Azerbaijan, was asked what had become of a hundred thousand people in nine days.

“It was their own decision,” he said. “Firstly, we did not expel Armenians from Karabakh. They made the decision to leave.”

Azerbaijan calls the nineteenth of September an anti-terror operation, and its state-financed campaign apparatus calls the Republic of Armenia “Western Azerbaijan.” President Aliyev has told audiences that Azerbaijanis will return to their historical lands — “not with tanks, but in cars” — and that the Armenians of Karabakh were brought there in the first place from Iran and Anatolia, by Russia, to change the composition of the region. Leaked documents obtained by OC Media traced the campaign to his own presidential administration.

Which is what makes Soghomon Tehlirian useful to them.

He lied under oath, and deniers have used it for a hundred years. But the lie concerns his biography. Christine Terzibashian sat in the same room on the same day and was telling the truth about herself.

Washington’s record ran forward and then back. Joe Biden used the word in his 2021 remembrance statement, the first sitting president to make it the operative term, a hundred and six years late. Turkey summoned the ambassador within hours, and Erdoğan told a televised cabinet meeting that nobody gets to “put the genocide label on the Turkish nation.” Biden used it three more times.

The two statements issued since mourn a disaster of the twentieth century, and events that occurred over a hundred years ago but neither contains the word.

Earlier posts covered the standard ground, and it still holds. These five are specific to the last two stages, and each one has somewhere to send it.

Resisting extermination has always produced its heroes. In Rwanda, after the radio had spent months reducing Tutsis to cockroaches, Paul Rusesabagina found the nerve and the wit to keep 1,268 people alive inside a single hotel. But rescue takes stranger forms. The Kindertransport put children on trains away from their parents. Edward Anders survived because his mother passed her children off as something they were not — a rescue in which betraying who you are is the only road out.

And the erasure does not stop when the killing does.

In the second post of this series we met Tep Vanny standing knee-deep in the flooding of Boeung Kak Lake, a blue and white krama around her neck — the same checkered pattern the Khmer Rouge once handed to Eastern Cambodians to mark them for immediate execution, worn now in daylight. She was fighting the eviction of thousands so that a lake could be filled with sand.

“It’s easy to wake a sleeping person up,” she said then, “but you can’t wake up someone who only pretends to be asleep.”

She was jailed for it in 2016 and pardoned in 2018. She did not stop.

Years later, speaking to Aurora Humanitarian, she was still making the same argument, in her second language, without softening it:

“The government development destroys our house, they take our land, and they do not give justice for us, so that is why almost 99% of women stand up, include me, to fight back with the government to find justice from them.

What I want and my community want and my people in Cambodia want, we want the government to respect human rights and we want the government to be just as a leader that takes care of the people, that they follow the rule of the international, that they cover Cambodia like democracy. But right now they lie to the world, they are not doing proper democracy.”

Two million Cambodians were murdered between 1975 and 1979, and the tribunal that followed convicted three people. Tep Vanny was born after all of it. She is still here arguing about land, and justice, and what a government owes the people it governs.

Two blocks of Maryland Avenue in downtown Glendale display a different name than they did in 2017. The city council voted in June of 2018, the signs went up that October, and the street became Artsakh Avenue — a pedestrian stretch with restaurants down both sides and a farmers market on Thursdays.

Roughly a third of Glendale is Armenian. There are blocks here where a person could go a full day without needing English.

The renaming was not universally popular, and a quantity of displeasure went up on Nextdoor and Facebook in the way these things do: foreign names on American streets, who is taking over what, why it could not simply have stayed Maryland. That spring the Armenian Weekly ran a piece about it under the headline “What’s in a Name? Artsakh Street, My Neighbors, and Social Media Bigotry in Glendale, Calif.”

The council voted anyway.

Artsakh was a place then. It had a parliament, a flag, and a hundred and fifty thousand people, and although hardly any government on earth recognized it, people were born there and buried there, which counts for more than recognition does.

Five years later it was gone in nine days.

The parliament building was ordered demolished, the cathedral came down, the bell tower came down, and Azerbaijani families are now being moved into the city under a stated target of a hundred and forty thousand people — twenty-two families in August, eighteen in June.

Which leaves two blocks in Glendale among the last places on earth where the name appears on a municipal sign at all.

To be sure, there are people eating dinner on Artsakh Avenue tonight who buried family in a place they will not see again. But Aliyev’s argument requires the cathedral to be gone, and the cemetery, and the word — and every place the word does survive means the argument ultimately fails.

In January of 2018 a Sudanese American poet walked out of El Fasher, in North Darfur, and kept walking for a thousand kilometers to Khartoum, collecting what she called Dreams for Peace from the people she met along the road.

El Fasher is her hometown. It is where her family is from. It is the city the satellite photographed from four hundred and fifty miles up.

She was ten the first time the killing started there. Her mother was crying and she asked why they were burying so many people, and her mother tried to find the words for it. Emi Mahmoud has said she remembers the feeling rather than the words — completely alone, as if nobody could hear them, as if they were essentially invisible. Twenty-three years later a United Nations Fact-Finding Mission found the word her mother could not.

She has lost at least seven relatives in this war. One of them she could not bury, because of the bombardment, and she has explained what that costs: in Islam a person’s humanity is weighed at the moment of burial, and burying you is the last thing the people who love you get to do for you.

NPR reached her three days after the Rapid Support Forces took the city.

“This is our Srebrenica moment,” she said. “This is the moment where if no one intervenes, there will be no one left to save.”

And then: “There are still people left in El Fasher that are being killed, but there are hundreds of thousands that we can save if we act now.”

Near the end of her 2016 talk she asked all of us a direct question:

“Will you witness me?”

Christine Terzibashian answered this in front of a gallery that stood up and walked out of the courtroom while she was still testifying. Lemkin answered and died at fifty-nine with only seven people at his own funeral. How will you answer it? What will you witness? And how far are you willing to go?

Mher Shahbaryan answered it in a rented room he is not allowed to name, with two photographs of Davit propped against the wall.

It’s true that nine of the ten stages require decisive action, and genocide can be stopped at almost any stage if we act quickly enough and recognize the processes.

The tenth stage, however, tempts us to look the other way.

But to echo Emi, and the young poet from Afghanistan at stage three, we don’t passively tolerate denial. We stand up for the million voices — Rwanda, the DRC, Bosnia, Xinjiang — and we face it the way Emi has faced life and death: living and loving deliberately, even in the face of tragedy.

No matter what, we do it anyway.

And this…. this is how it ends.

To learn more about the genocide in Armenia, visit genocideeducation.org.

Thank you for listening. Re-visit the stages at stagesofchange.org.

References

Akçam, T. (2018). Killing orders: Talat Pasha’s telegrams and the Armenian genocide. Palgrave Macmillan. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-69787-1

Al Jazeera. (2020, June 29). China forcing birth control on Uighurs to suppress population: AP. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/6/29/china-forcing-birth-control-on-uighurs-to-suppress-population-ap

Armenian National Institute. (n.d.). The Armenian Genocide. https://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocide.html

Armenian Weekly. (2018, April 11). What’s in a name? Artsakh Street, my neighbors, and social media bigotry in Glendale, Calif. https://armenianweekly.com/2018/04/11/whats-in-a-name/

Armenian Weekly. (2018, June 13). Glendale City Council approves Artsakh Avenue renaming. https://armenianweekly.com/2018/06/13/glendale-city-council-approves-artsakh-avenue-renaming/

Armenian Weekly. (2025, July 30). Azerbaijan repeats “voluntary exodus” claim. https://armenianweekly.com/2025/07/30/azerbaijan-repeats-voluntary-exodus-claim/

Armenpress. (2024, January 5). Investigative Committee reveals final death toll of September 2023 Azerbaijani aggression. https://armenpress.am/en/article/1127400

Cambodia Tribunal Monitor. (2009, July 1). Khmer Rouge survivor confronts jail boss. https://www.cambodiatribunal.org/sites/default/files/news/Khmer_Rouge_Survivor_Confronts_Jail_Boss_7_1_09.pdf

CamboJA News. (2026, August). Bou Meng, a S-21 survivor who lived to tell Cambodia’s story, dies at 85. https://cambojanews.com/bou-meng-a-s-21-survivor-who-lived-to-tell-cambodias-story-dies-at-85/

Cambodianess. (2025). Cambodian genocide denial law: The future of Cambodia without genocide. https://cambodianess.com/article/cambodian-genocide-denial-law-the-future-of-cambodia-without-genocide-half-a-century-after-the-khmer-rouge-took-control-over-cambodia-on-17-april-1975

Caucasus Heritage Watch. (2026, May 4). Cultural destruction in Khankendi/Stepanakert. Cornell University. https://caucasusheritage.cornell.edu/?p=2003

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Genocide Watch. (n.d.). The ten stages of genocide. https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages

Hofmann, T. (2021). New aspects of the Talaat Pasha trial. International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, 5(1), 67–89. https://agmipublications.asnet.am/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/IJAGS_Vol._5_N1_67-89.pdf

International Court of Justice. (2023, February 22). Application of CERD (Armenia v. Azerbaijan), Order on provisional measures. https://www.icj-cij.org/node/203318

Mahmoud, E. (2016). A young poet tells the story of Darfur [Video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/emtithal_mahmoud_a_young_poet_tells_the_story_of_darfur

Moreno Ocampo, L. (2023, August 7). Expert opinion: Genocide against Armenians in 2023. https://luismorenoocampo.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Armenia-Report-Expert-Opinion.pdf

NBC News. (2025, November 1). Satellite images suggest mass killing in El Fasher. https://www.nbcnews.com/world/africa/sudan-africa-civil-war-rapid-support-forces-el-fasher-massacre-rcna240708

NPR. (2025, October 29). Sudanese American poet talks about the fall of her hometown El Fasher. https://www.npr.org/2025/10/29/nx-s1-5588669/sudanese-american-poet-talks-about-the-fall-of-her-hometown-el-fasher

OC Media. (2023, August 15). First death from starvation reported in blockade-struck Nagorno-Karabakh. https://oc-media.org/first-death-from-starvation-reported-in-blockade-struck-nagorno-karabakh/

OC Media. (2025, November 3). Aliyev says Azerbaijanis must return to “historical lands” — “not with tanks, but in cars.” https://oc-media.org/aliyev-says-azerbaijanis-must-return-to-historical-lands-not-with-tanks-but-in-cars/

OC Media. (2025, November). Exclusive: Azerbaijan’s “Western Azerbaijan” campaign exposed in leaked documents. https://oc-media.org/exclusive-azerbaijans-western-azerbaijan-campaign-exposed-in-leaked-documents/

Public Radio of Armenia. (2023, December 22). Investigative Committee puts the death toll of Stepanakert fuel depot explosion at 218. https://en.armradio.am/2023/12/22/investigative-committee-puts-the-death-toll-of-stepanakert-fuel-depot-explosion-at-218/

RFE/RL. (2021, April 26). Turkey’s Erdoğan slams Biden over Armenian genocide recognition. https://www.rferl.org/a/turkey-erdogan-slams-biden-armenian-genocide/31224125.html

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United Nations News. (2026, February 19). UN inquiry concludes RSF attacks in El Fasher bear hallmarks of genocide. https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/02/1166997

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2022). Foreign assistance: Agencies should take steps to improve reporting on assistance to the government of Azerbaijan. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-104619

The White House. (2021, April 24). Statement by President Joe Biden on Armenian Remembrance Day. https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/24/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-armenian-remembrance-day/

The White House. (2025, April 24). Presidential message on Armenian Remembrance Day, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/04/presidential-message-on-armenian-remembrance-day-2025/

The White House. (2026, April 24). Presidential message on Armenian Remembrance Day. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/04/presidential-message-on-armenian-remembrance-day/

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Assassination of Talaat Pasha. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Talaat_Pasha

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Nagorno-Karabakh

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Expulsion of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Nagorno-Karabakh_Armenians

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Operation Nemesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Nemesis

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Raphael Lemkin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Lemkin

Yale Humanitarian Research Lab. (2025). Situation reports and atrocity alerts on El Fasher, Sudan. Yale School of Public Health. https://ysph.yale.edu/hrl/publications/reports/

Please Note: The following article contains descriptions and narratives of violence and genocide, as well as an analysis of human behavior relating to sensitive topics, including racism, intolerance, religious persecution, forced sterilization, sexual violence, physical violence, the death of a child, and death. Some descriptions and details may be disturbing or upsetting to readers. Please be mindful of the content before continuing.

Visit Mental Health America’s site for information on mental health, getting help, and taking action.

Persecution is the eighth stage of genocide.

The case study is the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, where, since 2017, an estimated one million or more Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims have been held in a network of camps and prisons, and where the United States and several parliaments have determined that the People’s Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity.

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In her second year of graduate school, while completing a degree in environmental policy at Tufts University, Sydney Marlowe, 29, admits she has been struggling with procrastination since the program began.

“It isn’t that I don’t enjoy the work,” she says, her legs hanging halfway over the futon she managed to afford on an adjunct graduate salary. “I think it’s just one of those things where—where you get online to work, I mean, or to study, and it’s impossible to avoid that temptation.”

The temptation she refers to is, unsurprisingly, social media and shopping. And the temptation is real, and perhaps more frightening, it is universal. One need not sit at the epicenter of misinformation or propaganda to feel its pull.

One site in particular—though there are several of the same variety—has her in a “chokehold,” as she calls it, laughing nervously.

“I hate admitting it, but yeah, it’s Temu,” she says.

Temu is one of the more recognizable storefronts of the Chinese-founded retail giant PDD Holdings, which also owns Pinduoduo, and it is certainly not the sole operator. Shein functions as a close competitor.

It’s 8:53 p.m. on a Tuesday evening, and with her literature review half-finished, she’s earned her scroll time. She opens Temu.

The front page resembles a Ross, a Marshalls, and a Goodwill with a shared identity crisis, all crammed into one awkward but somehow miraculous digital space, with even greater variety and, on second glance, astoundingly cheaper prices: solar outdoor lamps, leather slippers, a women’s engagement ring, teal bamboo bed sheets, a denim patchwork jacket, and a magnetic screen door—all under seven dollars each.

For Sydney, it’s a set of four throw pillows and a blue linen blouse with a scoop neck that catch her eye and end up in her cart. The blouse is listed at $5.49 and has 4.6 stars across 2,347 reviews. It’s a “lightning deal,” and a bright red timer counts down in the corner of the screen:

09:12. 09:11.

With only slight, perhaps feigned reluctance, she buys the blouse. And the pillows. And, at the last minute, two pairs of sunglasses listed “buy one, get one free” under the label LOCAL.

“I mean, let’s be honest: it’s super cheap stuff, but you’d be surprised how much you can still spend,” she says, closing out of the site and pulling her literature review back up.

The delivery is estimated for February 18–22, as announced in the confirmation email. There is something almost cryptic about the whole process, though it isn’t immediately apparent why. Something behind the cheap floral tops and the high-top Converse knockoffs that never quite hold any sort of white to begin with.

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When asked about the lengthy shipping window, she shrugs. “It comes from China or something. But I guess that’s all retail now. I think it’s cheaper because of the longer shipping time, but I’m not sure. I’ve never thought about it that much, to be honest.”

And there are solid reasons she has never had to.

At the time of Sydney’s order, under Section 321 of the Tariff Act of 1930—a provision known as the de minimis exemption—packages valued at $800 or less could enter the United States without customs inspection or formal documentation, and, in practice, without any meaningful screening for forced labor. Laws barring the import of goods made with forced labor applied to these packages on paper; there was simply no one looking. In the fiscal year of Sydney’s purchase, more than one billion such packages entered the country. Each one, legally speaking, was too small to matter.

Roughly two weeks later, the package arrives on February 19. The blouse fits beautifully. The pillows bring light and texture to her living room. The sunglasses don’t fit, but she shrugs: “Their stuff is so cheap, it’s not worth returning, or really giving a second thought to.” Again, an uncomfortable laugh. A sense that something feels “off.”

“That’s kind of the good thing about this stuff, though, right? You can’t really go wrong with it, because tossing it isn’t really losing anything but—what? A few bucks?”

She slides the blouse onto a hanger and puts it away in her closet, admiring it as she steps back.

“But this,” she says, “it’s perfect.”

The province of Xinjiang can appear artificial at first glance—something one might expect to see on a postcard or even on a computer’s wallpaper. Surrounded by high mountains and divided by the Tian Shan range, which separates the Tarim Basin of southern Xinjiang from the Junggar Basin of the north, it is a province of contrast and extremes, featuring the Turpan Depression, one of the lowest and driest places on Earth.

Although Xinjiang is generally not the first place that comes to mind when thinking of China’s provincial-level units, it constitutes roughly one-sixth of the entire land area of China. For scale, it is roughly the same size as Iran, while sharing expansive borders with eight countries, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.

Perhaps even more unexpected is the human geography of Xinjiang, given its scale. It is here, in Xinjiang, where the largest concentration of Muslims in China resides, particularly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, home to Uyghur Muslims. The Uyghur population alone is roughly 12 million—11.62 million by China’s own 2020 census.

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They are unique in that they speak their own distinct language. Uyghur is a Turkic language, and its fusion of Persian, Chinese, and Arabic reflects centuries of contact across the region, serving as lexical evidence of Uyghurs’ historical presence in Xinjiang—a presence that has been repeatedly contested and, in some cases, punished by the Chinese government. They have practiced Islam since at least the 10th century.

In mid to late 2017, a number of human rights and civil society organizations became increasingly vocal about the persecution of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. By 2018, there was widespread international attention, as the United Nations received an increasing number of these allegations.

As growing numbers of Uyghurs continued to disappear between 2017 and 2019, the Chinese government initially denied the existence of internment or detention camps. Then, as evidence of the camps emerged, officials acknowledged detaining individuals but described them as “terrorists” and an existential threat to the People’s Republic. When questions arose about conditions inside the camps—often hidden from outside scrutiny—the government responded with official narratives describing “vocational training centers” and “re-education” programs.

These were framed as opportunities for education and employment, where “residents” were said to have a “choice” between incarceration and re-education. At the same time, the government emphasized job creation and training programs for teachers, though the content of what was being taught and the specifics of the facilities were often unclear or untranslated in external reporting.

This combination—restricted access to the region, state pressure on released detainees not to speak, and tightly controlled information—left significant uncertainty in public understanding of the extent of abuses.

By 2020, however, global attention shifted dramatically for another reason entirely. Roughly 2,500 kilometers to the east, in the Hubei Province city of Wuhan, a novel coronavirus—which most published research attributes to zoonotic spillover, though the question of its origin remains contested—spread rapidly through China and eventually internationally, becoming a global pandemic.

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What followed were waves of xenophobia, paranoia, and violence against Chinese and other Asian people worldwide, as rhetoric such as “China virus” circulated in political discourse. The world’s attention narrowed, and in many places, sustained advocacy regarding Xinjiang diminished.

But detainment of Uyghurs did not slow. If anything, scrutiny decreased.

By 2020, leaked official records reported by the BBC, CNN, and other news organizations described arrests for a wide range of behaviors, including downloading apps, wearing face veils, entering mosques, growing beards, using VPNs, downloading religious videos, having more than the legally permitted number of children, possessing passports, traveling abroad, having contacts in designated “sensitive countries” (of which there were 26, mostly Muslim-majority), communicating with relatives overseas, “thinking unusually,” visiting people for “unknown reasons,” turning off cell phones, using back doors to enter or leave homes, purchasing “excessive” food or gasoline, fasting inconsistently during Ramadan, possessing Uyghur literature, being born after 1980, failing to watch state television, speaking Uyghur instead of Mandarin, being related to someone previously detained, having grandparents with strong religious beliefs, attending funerals, or displaying “excessive emotion.”

These restrictions were described in official terms as part of lawful governance and security policy. In practice, they functioned as a system of surveillance and criminalization of everyday life.

But the camps, as many accounts would later describe, were worse.

Enter Gulzire Awulqanqizi, or Aulhan.

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Born in Ghulja in 1979, Aulhan emigrated to Kazakhstan in 2014. In July 2017, she crossed back into China at the Khorgas border checkpoint to visit her ten-month-old daughter. Her passport was confiscated at the border. A local official—a Uyghur, she notes—told her not to worry. She would only be studying for fifteen days.

She was detained in four facilities over the course of 437 days.

It is September 2021 in London, and Geoffrey Nice—formerly the lead prosecutor of Slobodan Milošević in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia—announced the tribunal’s creation a year earlier, stating there was “no other way of bringing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to judgment.” The goal was to document whether genocide or human rights violations had been committed in Xinjiang. By February 2021, the tribunal’s panel had been finalized. Witnesses were called afterward.

One of these witnesses is Aulhan. In her testimony, counsel questions her about conditions inside multiple camps where she was detained, including her role as a cleaner and later a glove maker in a larger textile operation tied to forced labor.

Aulhan’s testimony takes place six hours and eight minutes into the day’s proceedings in London.

A large screen projects her image: she sits upright in front of a camera and ring light, a red background behind her repeating the words “China Aid.” Her posture is rigid. Her dark hair is pulled back into a low bun, revealing high, defined eyebrows that remain slightly furrowed throughout her testimony.

She is attentive, but after speaking in her Kazakh language and hearing her words translated into English, her eyes occasionally drift downward. There is a subtle shift in her expression, something between fatigue and resignation.

The following is extracted from the transcript documents and footage of her examination, condensed for brevity but otherwise unedited:

Counsel: When you were in the second camps, you served as a cleaner. Can you please tell the Tribunal what you witnessed?

Aulhan: When I was in the second camp, I was kept in shackles for six months. They even took me to see my family with the shackles on. After the six-month period they removed the shackles from me. They made me the cleaner. I saw that Uyghur women were brought to that room, and they were raped. I had to wash them afterwards. I mostly stayed with the Uyghur women. I would hear them scream and shout and beg for help but no one would do so. I was responsible for not just cleaning, but taking care of the whole area, so I saw all the instruments they would use to torture people, like tiger chairs, the chains and shackles and all of that. I was involved in taking those women to shower, and helping them shower, and I always noticed how they had those blue and red hematomas on their bodies, on their hands and legs mostly.

Counsel: How do you know that the men who were visiting those women paid for that service?

Aulhan: While I was in prison, I had to clean some of the premises. Once I came there and there was a man standing in the room, and I needed to wash the floor, so I asked him to move slightly away so I could clean the area under his feet. He said, “I paid to come here, and that is why I will stay wherever I want to.” He was Han Chinese, but interestingly enough he spoke Kazakh to me. Speaking Kazakh was very rare, because even the teachers that we had in the camp spoke Mandarin to us. They would say, “You are here to learn the language, not to speak Kazakh.”

Counsel: In your statement, you stated that you were regularly beaten. Can you explain how you were beaten and how often, and whether you were ever tied to a tiger chair?

Aulhan: The most frequent punishment came whenever we had to use the toilet. The classes lasted for about 14 hours, so that is 14 hours we had to spend sitting, and we would be given two breaks of two minutes each to use the bathroom. Sometimes it would take us longer than two minutes, so they would come and beat us on the head. The excuse was that because we were women we should not be injured on our body—that is why they would hit us on the head with their sticks. Also, once they tied me to a tiger chair for covering for one of the older Uyghur ladies. She had to use the bathroom, but she took a bit longer, and they claimed that she did ablutions, washed herself, as if it was a prohibited ritual. They punished her for it, and they punished me as well for allowing her to do so. They tied me to the tiger chair for 24 hours. In fact, throughout those fifteen months, I was interrogated nineteen times, and each time I would be taken to the tiger chair. I believe in each of the camps where I was, I would be taken to the tiger chair five or six times. Also, when they transferred me to the factory that produced the gloves, I sent a photo, and as a punishment for sending that photo they sent me in isolation in a sort of 20-meters-deep well. They used electric currents on me, they poured water on me, and they kept me there for 24 hours as well.

Counsel pauses, checks the record, and moves to the next line of questioning.

It concerns the gloves.

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Sydney makes it a point to arrive by 9 a.m. at the lower level of the student center—a busy but cozy café and common meeting place for grad students like Sydney to sip coffee and enjoy acai bowls while absorbed in conversation or a new stack of research. Her literature review is in the developmental editing stage, she explains, scraping the remaining raspberry jam from the bottom of the acai bowl she picked up that morning. She shivers and picks up her coffee.

“I probably don’t eat enough,” she says. “I get unusually cold even when inside, even with coffee. So I try to force myself to eat breakfast every day, even though I’m so not a breakfast person.”

After discussing her literature review at length—cuts she’s made, last-minute additions—she recalls the blouse when asked how her shipment has held up.

“You know what,” she says, laughing, “I haven’t even worn it yet. I’m not sure what I was thinking—I mean it’s like, what? 30 degrees out?”

She continues, opening her laptop and darting her eyes left to right as if to make sure she has permission, or that she at least isn’t being watched.

“That reminds me—speaking of Temu, I’ve got to get some winterwear to last me through the freezing temps here. It’s hell. Or… hell frozen over.”

She clicks through the webpage quickly, not casually as she did before. Now there is intent. First, a scarf. $3.99. “Good enough,” she says.

Next, a pair of gloves. “And… these,” she says, adding them to her cart. “And no, I don’t feel guilty about this buy,” she chuckles. “Because I genuinely need these for this weather. And with a total of…” (she pauses, waiting for the final screen to load) “…seven dollars… I don’t think it’s worth even debating.”

She buys the scarf and the gloves.

“Hopefully they get here faster than the last one,” she says.

In May 2022, Adrian Zenz, a German anthropologist and senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, received ten gigabytes of data that would become some of the most widely cited digital evidence regarding detention camps in Xinjiang. The files contained internal records suggesting a system extending beyond re-education or release.

The file structures became known as the Xinjiang Police Files. An anonymous hacker had breached the internal networks of multiple public security bureaus in the counties of Konasheher and Tekes. For months, organizations including the BBC worked to authenticate and cross-reference the data before an international consortium of fourteen media outlets published it simultaneously on May 24, 2022—timed, deliberately, to the day the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights arrived in China for a long-negotiated visit.

Meanwhile, official messaging continued to downplay the discovery, even as scrutiny of the facilities increased. The government described the centers as places of reform, safety, and education.

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The files described something else entirely.

Across the files, 2,884 detainees appeared in photographs, with some appearing disoriented, restrained, or badly injured, and in one image, a basement cell shows a group of men in identical blue uniforms facing a television while a guard stands nearby, hovering over the group while holding a wooden club. In others, officers in riot gear practice “strike” drills on detainees kneeling with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

In the photos, detainees ranged in age from fifteen—a girl named Rahile Omer—to a woman of seventy-three. According to accompanying records, some were listed for offenses such as listening to speeches, studying religion decades earlier, or being related to someone previously detained. One man’s file cited a crime committed in the 1980s. He had been interned, the records state, for who he was at a time when most of his fellow detainees had not yet even been born.

A police manual included in the files outlines procedures for handling escape attempts: one warning shot followed by a directive of “shoot to kill.” The broader directives long associated with the campaign, including Xi Jinping’s “show no mercy” rhetoric, given through internal speeches after his 2014 visit to the region, and the order to “round up everyone who should be rounded up,” had surfaced earlier, in two separate 2019 leaks known as the Xinjiang Papers and the China Cables. What the Police Files added was corroboration.

They also added some basic arithmetic. In Konasheher County alone, the records indicated that more than 12 percent of the adult ethnic minority population was in a camp or prison in 2018. This amounts to roughly one in eight adults. It’s evident that internment at such a high rate is not a response to individual behavior, but rather a quota being met, a target.

Beijing went on to casually dismiss the files as just “the latest example of anti-China voices trying to smear China.” This was not new, as Zenz himself had already been sanctioned by the Chinese government a year earlier, alongside other researchers and institutions studying the region. Somehow, the punishment of documentation itself took precedence over punishing the atrocities being documented.

What is missing from the files, however, is the human impact.

And for that, there are witnesses.

Room 2255 of the Rayburn House Office Building, with its wood paneling, name cards, and glasses of untouched water, gives an immediate sense of bureaucracy.

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Mihrigul Tursun, at the time 29 (the same age as Sydney), sits at the witness table with a written statement in front of her and an interpreter beside her. The hearing is titled “The Communist Party’s Crackdown on Religion in China.” Tursun has been in the United States for sixty-eight days.

She begins with a thank-you to the United States government and the American people, “for saving my life.”

As she narrates her story, she starts from before the camps, where at twelve, she recalls being taken from Cherchen County to Guangzhou under the “Xinjiang Classrooms” policy, a state program that moved Uyghur children to boarding schools in inner China, as far as possible from their language, their families, and of course their faith. It was there, she testified, surrounded by Han classmates who treated her as a sort of anomaly, that she first understood she was “different.”

She went on to study economics and in 2010, she left to study in Egypt, where she met her husband, and in March 2015, gave birth to triplets: two boys and a girl. Two months later, exhausted and grateful for her mother’s offer of help, she flew home to China with her three infants, a fulfilling life she assumed lay ahead.

“My troubles began the moment I set foot in China,” she told the Commission.

At the airport in Urumqi, she was pulled from the border-control line and interrogated for hours. There, her babies were taken from her before she was handcuffed, a dark sack was placed over her head, and she was driven to a detention center. She was not permitted to see or breastfeed her children.

After three months passed, the authorities told her she had been “paroled” because her children were sick. Immediately, she went directly to the hospital to find her oldest son in critical condition, visible only through a glass window, too far away for her to tell whether he was breathing at all.

The next day, they handed her his body.

He was four months old.

The doctors said he had been unable to breathe. All three infants, she discovered, had undergone operations on their necks while she was detained: feeding tubes, they said, though the babies had breastfed without difficulty while in Egypt. Her surviving son and daughter have had health complications ever since, and her daughter required eye surgery shortly after.

“While burying my four-month-old baby,” she testified, “I was tormented and filled with the guilt of not being able to save my son.”

No investigation, death certificate, or funeral rites were allowed to follow. Her grief, in essence, was regulated too. She could not even leave: her documents had been confiscated, and her identity card now carried a black dot that beeped at hospitals, pharmacies, bus doors, and every checkpoint of ordinary life, announcing her as a flagged person.

She would be detained twice more. The third time, in January 2018, she was stripped, examined under a machine by officials while naked, and dressed in a blue uniform with a yellow vest bearing the number 54. A Chinese official explained to her that the outfit was usually worn by criminals facing certain death, and that “54” in Chinese also sounds like “I am dead.”

She was placed in cell number 210, an underground room with no windows, a single light always left on, and cameras covering every corner including the open toilet, with forty women crammed inside. By the time she left three months later, there were sixty-eight women: her neighbors, the daughters of her former teachers, a doctor educated in the UK who had once treated her. The women were forced to sleep only in rotations, with ten to fifteen standing at a time so the rest could lie down curled on their sides.

She recalls how they were forced to take unknown pills and drink a white liquid; guards checked their mouths with fingers to confirm swallowing. Some women stopped menstruating while others bled profusely without stopping.

Still, every day, before the breakfast of rice water, they recited together: “Long live Xi Jinping. Leniency for those who repent and punishment for those who resist.” Again. And again.

The interrogation room, with its one light, one chair, and belts and whips on the wall, is where she later had her head shaved “for the maximum impact,” and a helmet placed on her skull. This was the tiger chair.

“Each time I was electrocuted, my whole body would shake violently and I could feel the pain in my veins,” she testified. “I thought I would rather die than go through this torture and begged them to kill me.”

Photo by tslui on Pexels.com

The interrogators told her that her mother had died, that her father would serve a life sentence, that her son had died in the hospital, that her daughter’s eyes would remain crossed forever and she would be thrown into the streets.

“Your family is torn apart because of you.”

Over the course of three months in cell 210, she witnessed nine deaths. Gulnisa, 62, whose trembling hands and rashes the camp doctors were required to pronounce healthy, and who went cold in her sleep after a night spent crying over lines of Chinese she could not memorize as a requirement of the camp. Patemhan, 23, whose crime was attending a 2014 wedding held according to Islamic tradition, where all 400 guests were arrested, and who collapsed one night and was dragged out by her feet by people in masks, never to be seen again.

“If my small cell, cell number 210, in a small county, experienced 9 deaths in 3 months,” she told the Commission, “I cannot imagine how many deaths there must be all over my country.”

The Chinese government disputes her account.

State media later produced hospital records, aired interviews with her relatives, and insisted her children are alive and her detention never happened. The interviews, however, are telling. Her brother, for example, sits alone in an isolated room, with a placard in front of him, his eyes wide and his face without expression, his accusations cold and dry. One can almost feel the hovering of an official standing over him. Human rights researchers have documented China’s use of such “proof-of-life” videos as instruments of intimidation.

Mihrigul has repeated her testimony, under oath and on the record, in Washington and in a sworn statement to the Uyghur Tribunal in London, and still, her brother, in a voicemail she played for reporters, urged her to walk into the Chinese embassy and recant: “Otherwise China can get you wherever you hide.”

Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com

At the end of her testimony, she recalled asking the authorities, during one of her detentions, what her crime actually was.

They answered: “You being Uyghur is a crime.”

It is tempting to think of persecution as an escalation, a hatred grown hot enough to boil over, but history often shows otherwise. By the time a genocide is showing violent levels of persecution, hatred has already been formalized.

Looking at Stanton’s description of the eighth stage of genocide:

Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. In state-sponsored genocide, members of victim groups may be forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is often expropriated. Sometimes they are even segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved.

Persecution is the last stage at which prevention operates at scale. Both after and alongside persecution exists extermination, a climactic point in which victims have been identified, concentrated, and already stripped of any protections. Intervention is no longer about saving the vulnerable. It is about preserving the lives and memory of survivors.

Still, we can see clearly the elements of persecution at work in Xinjiang with painful accuracy: identification in the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, a policing app documented by Human Rights Watch, which aggregates surveillance data like facial recognition, phone spyware, electricity usage, and, as previously mentioned, even which door of the house a person uses, all to flag individuals for detention.

Expropriation and separation: Uyghur land and businesses have been transferred or shuttered completely, an estimated 16,000 mosques have been damaged or destroyed across the region, according to satellite analysis, and hundreds of thousands of children have been placed in state boarding schools while their parents sit in camps. The result is a generation raised by the institution that detained their families, and the consequences of such an upbringing we’ve yet to see come to fruition.

And then, a measure Stanton excludes here, but that is a crucial element in understanding the determination of genocide in Xinjiang as a whole with regard to the U.N. definition of genocide: detained women, like Aulhan, who have described injections after which menstruation stopped completely. Outside the camps, Uyghur women have been subjected to mass IUD insertion, sterilization, and abortion under threat of further imprisonment, or imprisonment of their families, and taking of their children.

The evidence for this is clear: in the two largest Uyghur prefectures, birth rates fell by more than 60 percent between 2015 and 2018; across Xinjiang, they fell 24 percent in 2019 alone, against roughly 4 percent nationwide—a massive red flag for any humanitarian organization.

In December of 2021, once the Uyghur Tribunal delivered its judgment, it was this—the deliberate suppression of births—that carried its finding of genocide. Genocide, in law, does not require mass murder: the U.N. definition explicitly states that “imposing measures intended to prevent births,” such as through sterilization, fits the legal definition of genocide, as does the forcible transfer of children. Not to mention, of course, the forced assimilation through 14-hour or longer “classes” taught by threat of death, permanent imprisonment, communal punishment, or torture and sexual abuse.

Photo by Eray Karataş on Pexels.com

Important, too, is the level of intense secrecy behind the walls of Xinjiang prisons: forced labor exists both within and outside those walls, but within them, so too does torture, humiliation, cultural erasure, and disproportionately high numbers of deaths, of which estimates are likely on the lower end due to lack of access to accurate records or facility exploration.

The tribunal declined to find mass killing on the evidence before it, and said so plainly. That is not a concession. A recurring theme in these case studies is the practice of perpetrators waiting and watching; we may have yet to see the most violent phase of Uyghur elimination, and optimistically, it’s at least encouraging to consider that some of the violence may have been slowed by international outrage and the Uyghur Tribunal, for example.

But genocide is not solely a pile of bodies at the end of a sudden outburst. It is a system that can destroy a people while producing almost none.

A system, in other words, with quotas rather than massacres.

Twenty gloves a day.

Of all the numbers in Aulhan’s testimony—437 days, nineteen interrogations, 24 hours in the tiger chair—it is the production quota that connects her world to ours. Because the gloves did not stay in Xinjiang. “They told us that those gloves were exported to America or to European countries,” she testified, noting that the camp had a clear output.

The scale is difficult to grasp at first. Xinjiang produces roughly 85 percent of China’s cotton and about a fifth of the world’s. By some industry estimates, one in five cotton garments on Earth contains fiber from the region. It has produced as much as 45 percent of the world’s polysilicon, the raw material used in solar panels, and a significant share of its tomato paste.

A tipping point was reached when the United States responded, on paper, with one of the strongest trade laws it has ever written: the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, signed in December 2021, presumes that any goods made in whole or in part in Xinjiang are the product of forced labor and bans them—unless the importer can prove otherwise.

Unless, that is, the package was small enough that no one ever looked.

Photo by Nazım can Pirinç on Pexels.com

This was the genius of the direct-from-China retail model that captured Sydney and tens of millions of shoppers like her. A container of blouses entering the Port of Los Angeles was subject to the UFLPA’s presumption. The same blouse, shipped alone in a gray polybag to Apartment 4B, entered under the de minimis exemption—no inspection, no import documentation, no questions. In 2023, a congressional investigation found that Temu and Shein alone were likely responsible for nearly a third of the roughly one billion de minimis packages entering the United States each year, and that Temu maintained no system whatsoever for ensuring compliance with the forced labor ban. Temu’s own disclosures did not dispute it. The company’s purchase agreements simply required sellers to promise they were behaving.

It took until May 2025 for the exemption to be eliminated for Chinese goods, and until that August for it to be suspended for the world—forced labor and fentanyl cited side by side among the reasons. By then, the model had already reshaped American consumption. The average de minimis package was worth about fifty dollars. Sydney’s gloves were worth seven.

In this sense, the logistics of the piece closes its loop. Aulhan testified that in her month and a half in the factory she sewed more than two thousand gloves. For this she was paid 220 yuan—about thirty dollars. Counsel did the conversion for the panel: roughly one cent per pair.

One cent for the woman with the steel needle. Seven dollars for Sydney. The difference is the discount.

A caveat, and it must be said honestly: there is no way to know where Sydney’s gloves were sewn. No consumer can trace a seven-dollar accessory through a supply chain deliberately built to be untraceable. But that is not the reassurance it sounds like. It is the design. A system in which no single purchase can be proven complicit is a system in which every purchase is safe—for the buyer.

The persecution, meanwhile, remains “astoundingly cheap.”

Below are specific actions you can take now, in your community, to support Uyghurs at home and abroad, to resist persecution in all its forms, and to honor the victims already succumbed to its escalation:

Before the panel releases her, they ask one last question.

Panel: We will draw this to a close. But… is there anything that the witness wants to add?

She could rest. She has given enough, they said. Still, she adds this:

Aulhan: Another thing that they did to us, in one of the four camps, in 2018: they would make us go to the buckets—they would not have proper toilets. Through the small opening through which they would send us food, they would throw us Qurans. They would say, “Here is your book, go and read it,” and once you grabbed the book, they would make you throw it in the bucket, and make you do your thing on top of the Quran. The people that they try to “re-educate” are Uyghurs or Kazakhs, and the rumour has it that this camp will continue to exist until 2026.

Panel: Thank you.

The screen goes dark.

Five more years have passed.

Welcome to Sydney’s thesis defense.

Another caveat, however: if it wasn’t already obvious, Sydney is fictionalized. She represents the casual nature in which we collectively toss our textiles to the side, purchase the latest bargains without a thought of where they originate, and at what cost. She represents the educated, sometimes graduating from elite universities in prestigious programs with genuine care for the environment and the world around her, while the mechanisms of persecution work maliciously in the background, depending on Sydney—on all of us—to buy the thing anyway.

Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com

So here we are in Somerville, or Houston, Los Angeles, Canada, or London. It is 2026, the year the whispered schedule from Aulhan ran out, and still, the camps did not close so much as change on an administrative level out of necessity. Many were converted into formal prisons holding formal sentences, and the persecution has since transformed, shapeshifted, and morphed into a legal system with meticulous planning that no longer needs euphemisms like “re-education” at all. The beds, as far as anyone outside can tell, are still never empty. The persecution of Uyghurs adapts strategically with increased awareness and scrutiny, and they will likely face an ongoing battle for justice and independence.

As emphasized before, the “stages” of genocide are less like stages and more like vertices interweaving to create something far more violent. Still, what the ninth stage looks like from here depends in part on what the watching world will do while still inside the eighth, in the throes of genocide itself, before the final and total annihilation of a people and their culture.

Today, Tursun lives in Virginia with her son and her daughter, the two children the state told her she would lose, now growing up in a country their brother never reached.

They are afraid when someone knocks at the door. This is true.

But, Mihrigul reflects, they are also alive, and in school, and more than anything, they are hers. She gathered her courage, she said, and decided to tell the world about the camps “so the voice of those innocent people in the camps could be heard,” where any sentence she speaks in public is paid for by fear for her parents and siblings.

“My people look to the United States as the beacon of hope for the oppressed people around the world,” she testified earlier. And then she made a request, speaking softly between tears: if any Member of Congress goes to China, please ask where my mother, father, and siblings are. Please.

Ask where they are.

Aulhan, five thousand miles away and three years into her own life after the camps, was never granted a congressional hearing, only a tribunal with no army and no subpoena power, one that could rule “genocide” but still never make Beijing answer for it. What she got instead was a volunteer network: Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights, the group that turns testimonies like hers into public campaigns until an embassy or a border guard finally lets someone go. Pressure like that is part of what got her out, she realizes. Today, she lives in Kazakhstan again. She still tells the story when someone asks, because the quota system was built on the bet that no one would. But she’s also learned to live for her children.

Two women, two hearing rooms, two continents, but ultimately the same sacrifice from each.

In her final words, Tursun testified, “I never thought I would come out of cell 210 alive.” She looks up. “And while I still cannot believe it, I see that miracles do happen.”

To learn more about the ongoing genocide against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, or the ten stages of genocide, visit genocidewatch.com/tenstages.

Thank you for reading.

Follow the stages at stagesofchange.org.

Primary Testimony and Tribunal Documents

Awulqanqizi (Aulhan), Gulzire. Witness statement and testimony, Uyghur Tribunal, London, September 2021. uyghurtribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/UT-211206-Gulzire-Aulhan.pdf

Congressional-Executive Commission on China. “The Communist Party’s Crackdown on Religion in China,” hearing transcript, November 28, 2018. cecc.gov

Tursun, Mihrigul. Revised written testimony for CECC hearing, November 28, 2018. cecc.gov

Uyghur Tribunal. Summary Judgment, December 9, 2021. uyghurtribunal.com

Uyghur Tribunal. Witness statements and evidence archive. uyghurtribunal.com/statements

Leaked Documents and Investigations

BBC News. “The Faces from China’s Uyghur Detention Camps” (Xinjiang Police Files), May 24, 2022. bbc.com

CNN. “China’s Xinjiang Records Revealed” (the Karakax List), February 2020. cnn.com

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. “The China Cables,” November 2019. icij.org

New York Times. “‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims” (the Xinjiang Papers), November 16, 2019. nytimes.com

Voice of America. “Leaked Xinjiang Files Are Not Just ‘Lies and Rumors,'” 2022. voanews.com

Xinjiang Police Files (project site). xinjiangpolicefiles.org

Zenz, Adrian. “The Karakax List: Dissecting the Anatomy of Beijing’s Internment Drive in Xinjiang.” Journal of Political Risk, February 2020. jpolrisk.com

Research and Human Rights Documentation

Associated Press (via PBS NewsHour). “China Stifling Uighur Births with IUDs, Abortion, Sterilization,” June 29, 2020. pbs.org

Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Xinjiang Data Project. “Cultural Erasure,” September 2020. xjdp.aspi.org.au

Council on Foreign Relations. “China’s Repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang” (backgrounder). cfr.org

Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Xinjiang” and “Uyghur.” britannica.com

Genocide Watch. “The Ten Stages of Genocide” (Gregory H. Stanton). genocidewatch.com/tenstages

Human Rights Watch. “China’s Algorithms of Repression: Reverse Engineering a Xinjiang Police Mass Surveillance App,” May 2019. hrw.org

Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. “Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” August 31, 2022. ohchr.org

Scholars at Risk. “China: Revoke Sanctions on International Scholars,” May 2021. scholarsatrisk.org

United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention. “The Genocide Convention” (definition of genocide). un.org

Uyghur Human Rights Project. “‘The Government Never Oppresses Us’: China’s Proof-of-Life Videos as Intimidation,” 2021. uhrp.org

Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. “Beijing Sanctions VOC Senior Fellow Dr. Adrian Zenz,” March 2021. victimsofcommunism.org

Zenz, Adrian. “Break Their Roots: Evidence for China’s Parent-Child Separation Campaign in Xinjiang.” Journal of Political Risk, July 2019. jpolrisk.com

Zenz, Adrian. “Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang.” Jamestown Foundation, June 2020. jamestown.org

Trade, Forced Labor, and Policy

Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Goes into Effect,” June 2022. csis.org

Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Assessing the Impact of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act After Three Years,” 2025. csis.org

Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region. enduyghurforcedlabour.org

House Select Committee on the CCP. “Interim Findings from Shein & Temu Forced Labor Investigation,” June 2023. chinaselectcommittee.house.gov

U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “CBP Ready to Enforce End of De Minimis Loophole,” August 2025. cbp.gov

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” and “UFLPA Entity List.” dhs.gov/uflpa

U.S. Department of State. “Determination of the Secretary of State on Atrocities in Xinjiang,” January 19, 2021. state.gov

U.S. Department of State et al. “Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory,” July 2021. state.gov

White House. “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Closes De Minimis Exemptions,” April 2025. whitehouse.gov

BDO. “CBP Suspends De Minimis Exemption and Introduces New Postal Entry Requirements,” 2025. bdo.com

News Coverage and Current Status

Al Jazeera. “China Guilty of Uighur Genocide in Xinjiang, Tribunal Rules,” December 9, 2021. aljazeera.com

CGTN. “CGTN Investigation Shows Mihrigul Tursun’s Claims Are False,” 2019 (Chinese state media response). cgtn.com

China Digital Times. “New Accounts Describe Torture, Forced Labor Facing Xinjiang Detainees,” October 2021. chinadigitaltimes.net

Foreign Policy. “Xinjiang’s Repression of Uyghurs Has Evolved, Not Ended,” April 16, 2026. foreignpolicy.com

Radio Free Asia. “Report: China Has Half a Million Uyghurs in Prison or Detention,” February 2025. rfa.org

South China Morning Post. “China and CNN in Row over Uygur Campaigner’s Account of Deaths of Nine People in Xinjiang Camp,” 2019. scmp.com

Stop AAPI Hate (anti-Asian hate documentation). stopaapihate.org

The Diplomat. “Documenting the Tragedy in Xinjiang: An Insider’s View of Atajurt,” January 2020. thediplomat.com

Time. “Uighur Woman Testifies to Congress of Torture in China Camps,” November 2018. time.com

World Health Organization. “Origins of SARS-CoV-2.” who.int

by Josh Bicknell
Published December 27, 2025

Please Note: The following article contains descriptions and narratives of violence and genocide, as well as an analysis of human behavior relating to sensitive topics, including racism, intolerance, physical violence, and death. Some descriptions and details may be disturbing or upsetting to listeners. Please be mindful of the content before continuing.

Visit Mental Health America’s site for information on mental health, getting help, and taking action.

The seventh stage of genocide is preparation. The case study is the Holocaust, where an estimated six million Jews were systematically murdered from 1933–1945.

It is December 1941 in Liepāja, a Latvian port city on the Baltic Sea. German forces have held control since the summer, and registration has already been completed, followed by restrictions that accumulate steadily, so that Jews are counted, marked, and summoned, while notices appear on walls, rules are issued and revised, and men who were present one day fail to reappear the next.

Edward is fifteen years old, with blond hair and blue eyes that will later assume significance he does not yet fully understand.

On documents, his mother becomes someone else; no longer the woman who has lived her life in the city as a Jew but an Aryan foundling, a German child left on a doorstep, baptized, raised by Jews without being one of them, so that her sons, by extension, become half-Jews, still restricted and still vulnerable while subject to a different set of regulations.

Two Latvian women agree to confirm the story if asked. Inside the family’s apartment, preparation becomes practical and repetitive.

During that same week, the meaning of relocation in Liepāja, Latvia becomes fixed beyond the streets that remain familiar, as the dunes north of the city are repurposed, and at Šķēde Beach, Jews are marched in groups to prepared sites and shot into trenches.

As his family moves through the city, the sea air reaches Edward’s face, and for a moment, a thought enters of how lovely it would be: the sensation of stillness and facing the water.

The Berghof stands above the Obersalzberg in the Bavarian Alps near the Austrian border, removed from urban centers and approached by roads that narrow as they climb. In August 1939, it functions as Adolf Hitler’s private residence and as a place where military authority is exercised outside formal state structures.

On August 22, one week before the planned invasion of Poland, Hitler addresses senior commanders of the Wehrmacht behind closed doors. The meeting is not announced publicly, and no official transcript is prepared for circulation. The officers present are those whose units will carry out the coming campaign.

A version of the speech later reaches the outside world through Louis P. Lochner, an American journalist based in Berlin, who receives the text from a German informant. Portions are later introduced as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials under document numbers L-3, 798-PS, and 1014-PS.

In the address, Hitler frames the coming war in terms that emphasize method and execution, describing victory as dependent on speed and brutality while dismissing concerns about international reaction. Violence against civilian populations is presented as an instrument of policy, justified through reference to historical precedent.

“Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality,” he tells the assembled officers, invoking Genghis Khan as an example and describing mass slaughter as a method history would later remember only as state-building. He states that criticism will be met with execution and that the aim of the war is the physical destruction of the enemy, carried out by units tasked with killing men, women, and children without distinction.

The response in the room is uneven as some officers remain silent while most applaud. Hermann Göring reacts visibly, rising from his seat and displaying open enthusiasm.

At the conclusion of the address, Hitler poses a question that situates what has been outlined within a longer historical frame. It remains contested in some circles of historical thought, but it serves as a key indicator in the argument for the intentional mass murder of Jews by Hitler.

“Who, after all,” Hitler asks, “speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Several decades after Edward Anders left Liepāja, Latvia at fifteen with his mother and brother, he sits with Randy Goldman in 1997 and records around three hours of eyewitness testimony of his experience in pre-war Liepāja, Latvia, subsequent discrimination, imprisonment, and eventual escape.

As a professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago, Anders devoted decades to the study of meteorites and the early history of the solar system, helping to establish the field of cosmochemistry through work that traces sequence and composition from minute samples.

Anders began with documents—assembling court records, depositions, German directives, Latvian police reports, and transport lists produced during the occupation—placing names alongside dates until patterns became visible.

He describes how removal unfolded in stages, as men disappeared first, followed by elderly relatives taken from apartments and grocery lines, while synagogues were dismantled and sacred texts were brought into public spaces.

By December 1941, those who remained were assembled under guard and instructed to report for relocation, before dawn, by design.

His father, Adolf Alperovich, was later shot during the December actions in Liepāja, Latvia.

Shortly after, Anders and his brother were marched to a prison yard where death was imminent.

What follows is extracted from the transcript of Tape One, Side B of Anders’s oral testimony:

“Of course, they were all going to be killed,” Anders says. “So the rest of us then — all of us slowly worked our way toward the prison. As we approached the prison we could see there were similar processions coming from other side streets, always escorted by Latvian police, and into the prison yard. We were one of the last groups to arrive. It was still dark, around seven a.m. or a little before. There was a German policeman reading out lists and he had reached the letter K, I still remember, he was reading the name Katzenelinbogin. Our name began with A, so we had been called quite awhile ago.”

He continues, “And then, a few minutes late was a commotion and we saw that my mother had managed to sneak into the prison yard with another group of Jews. She had first tried to join our group and they wouldn’t take her, she was not on the list. And so, now they knew who she was, she tried joining another group, but she was recognized, she was pushed out of the prison. And then, another couple minutes later, a German policeman appeared, approached us, and with two or three of the Latvian police in tow who had been — who had arrested us. And he asked, what’s your story? And so we showed him our passes and told him. And so he stared at us for about 10 seconds and then suddenly he motioned, go.”

“Now, probably didn’t hurt, all of us were blonde and — and blue-eyed and didn’t hurt that some of my blonde hair was sticking out from under my cap and so I looked sufficiently Aryan, my brother did too. Told us, go. Barely got out on the street, we almost bumped into my mother. She had, having been kicked out of the prison, rushed over to the German police, managed to see some official, I don’t know how high ranking he was, if he was not the top man, and said look what’s happened, my — my sons are half Jews, they’re not supposed to be arrested, and they have been t-taken and can you get them out. And the man was sympathetic, but then he said, what time were they picked up? And she said four o’clock. He looked at the watch, it was seven. Sorry, he said, it’s too late.”

So she thought that if we were dead, then she certainly didn’t want to live and so her only thought was to get back in the prison, join one of the other groups of Jews, and just be killed with everybody else. And suddenly she saw us coming. And during all this to-do, as well, during the arrest and the arguments with the police and so on, we were absolutely calm. I think our mood can best be described as of re-restrained indignation. We were indignant but not to the point of — of shouting or raising our voices, or throwing a fit.

But now all of a sudden we began to shake, and — anyway, the shakes lasted for awhile. We walked home, by the time we got home they were over. My brother had to go to work that day, showed up about an hour late, and I’m not sure what excuse he gave. And so we realized we had survived it.

Later that day I saw — in town, I saw a group of Jews being marched across the bridge north of the city to — to the execution site. And it’s sad sight to realize that here are these people, we had all been arrested together, I got out, but they didn’t. And two months ago I learned in graphic detail what would have happened to me if the policeman had not said go, if he had said stay instead.

And it’s weird when you suddenly sort of get a flashback where you were at this crossroads 55 years ago and you suddenly realize in great detail what would have happened to you if you had gone.

If you had taken the left fork instead of the right fork.”

What follows next is a series of images depicting a story at the edge of Šķēde Beach that echoes dozens of others that preceded it. In September 1941, nearly 34,000 Jews were shot at Babyn Yar over just two days. In later months, an additional 100,000 to 150,000 Jews were murdered there. Babyn Yar’s ravine sits just outside of Kyiv, Ukraine, and locals later testified that the killings were virtually impossible to keep secret, as the sounds of gunfire and the view from many homes allowed direct access to witness the massacres firsthand—many volunteers from Kyiv even took part.

In November 1941, 25,000 to 30,000 Jews were shot by Einsatzgruppen in the Rumbula Forest, near Riga, in just two days.

Einsatzgruppen commanders recorded the following statement days after the Babyn Yar massacre regarding the logistics that made it possible:

“The difficulties resulting from such a large-scale action—in particular concerning the seizure—were overcome in Kiev by requesting the Jewish population through wall posters to move. Although only a participation of approximately 5,000 to 6,000 Jews had been expected at first, more than 30,000 Jews arrived who, until the very moment of their execution, still believed in their resettlement, thanks to an extremely clever organization.”

Similar wall posters and commands were described by Anders in his testimony. What makes Liepāja, Latvia unique is the discovery of twelve photographs which tell, in chronological order, the otherwise untold story of the journey from arrival at the ravines and forest areas to the final images of only clothing and valuables lying before a covered mass grave.

The photographs emerged years later through a chain of actions. During the German occupation, a Jewish electrician assigned to maintenance work inside the Security Police building encountered a roll of developed film left unattended in an office. He recognized what the images contained, arranged for the film to be copied, returned the original to its place, and hid the prints. When the Red Army entered Liepāja, Latvia, he contacted Soviet counterintelligence and handed the photographs over. They were transported to Moscow the following day and later entered evidence in war crimes proceedings. Here is what those photos reveal:

In the first frame, Latvian policemen stand several paces away from the people they are guarding, coats buttoned, collars turned up, rifles held loosely at an angle. The cold is evident in their stance. In front of them sit Jewish women gathered closely together, knees drawn in, shoulders angled toward one another, yellow stars stitched to their coats and dresses, visible both on their chests and across their backs. Their faces are turned downward or toward the ground ahead. No one appears to be speaking. Behind them, near the dunes, a German military vehicle is parked—its presence a damning confirmation that German military units (Wehrmacht) were deeply involved, despite later denial.

The next photograph shows the same group after instructions have been carried out. Clothing lies in uneven piles on the sand. Shoes are placed together. Coats are folded or dropped where hands have released them. The distinction between bodies has already begun to shift. Younger women stand or move forward without garments. Older women, children, and the elderly retain some clothing.

In the next frame, a line of young women moves past a row of Latvian policemen. Most are naked. Their arms hang close to their sides or fold instinctively across their bodies. A woman appears to stumble as her weight shifts unevenly. Another woman reaches across and supports her, an arm locked firmly around her shoulders, holding her upright as her head tilts forward. The policemen remain in place. No one steps forward. The distance between those watching and those moving remains unchanged.

The next image draws closer to a single family. Research later confirmed that this was likely the Epstein family of Latvia. A woman bends forward, her face hidden in the crook of her arm, her body folding inward as though bracing against something already known. Beside her stands her daughter, eighteen years old, undressed, her arms crossed over her chest in a gesture that offers no protection and no concealment. In front of her is her younger brother, still clothed, his body turned slightly away, his head angled downward. Behind them, several policemen stand in a loose line, their attention divided among the group. We learn later that pictured is Sorella Epstein, the daughter, and Rosa Epstein, her mother, minutes before their execution.

The father does not appear in the frame. He had been arrested earlier, taken east, and would die months later without learning what happened to his family.

The next photograph widens again. A group is being moved forward together. At the front walks a boy wearing a dark shirt. His posture is rigid. His head is turned to the right, and his face holds an expression of disbelief and anguish, as though whatever he is seeing has not allowed him time to look away. Behind him, a small girl has stopped. She has turned back toward her mother and grips her clothing with both hands. The mother bends toward the child, her face close to the girl’s head, her mouth positioned as if speaking. Another woman carries a baby on her shoulder. The infant’s head rests heavily against her neck, its body slack with the unknowing weight of sleep or distraction. We still do not know what the children see.

The following frame, however, shows what is to the right.

Ten women stand at the edge of a trench, aligned along the far side, facing the sea. The ditch between them and the shooters spans several meters, its depth visible where the sand falls away. One woman leans heavily into the woman beside her, her body no longer maintaining itself, her weight transferred fully, as if the effort of standing has ended. The woman beside her remains upright, receiving the weight without shifting her own position. The others stand facing forward.

This is what the boy sees.

Beyond them, the water stretches outward, flat and pale, the breeze pushing past their bodies, the world standing still, silent.

By the next frame, they are gone.

Just before the Wannsee Conference took place in January 1942, Einsatzgruppen commanders reported that as of the end of 1941, the occupied territories to which they were assigned were at last designated Judenfrei:

Free of Jews.

In the southwestern edge of Berlin, the district of Wannsee stretches along two lakes whose surfaces in winter hold light without movement, bordered by paths and villas that in warmer months draw swimmers, sailors, and families from the city , while in January 1942 the air remains still, the lakes sealed beneath ice, snow hardened and trees glazed.

At Am Großen Wannsee 56–58 stands a villa designed for leisure and private transaction, its pale façade and balanced proportions shaped by money accumulated over decades—a house meant for contracts, meals, and extended conversation among friends and colleagues. Built for the industrialist Ernst Marlier and later owned by Friedrich Minoux, who sold it to the SS in 1941 after his imprisonment for fraud, the structure remains largely unchanged, its rooms adapted to a new function without renovation, their familiarity left intact. (House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial)

By midday, men arrive from across the Reich ministries, coats carrying traces of snow as they move through the entryway and place their belongings alongside one another, exchanging greetings before taking their seats around a long table. Coffee has been poured and left to cool, and a stack of typed pages rests within reach, clipped at the corner, listing fifteen names and offices arranged according to an internal hierarchy, representing the Reich Chancellery, the Reich Security Main Office, the Foreign Office, the Justice Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Office for the Occupied Eastern Territories, and the Party Chancellery—each position occupied by a man whose authority is defined by jurisdiction.

The invitations that brought them here had been issued less than two weeks earlier, their language brief and procedural:

“I therefore invite you to a conference, to be followed by breakfast, on 20 January 1942 at 12:00 hours, at Berlin, Am Großen Wannsee 56–58.”

Signed by Reinhard Heydrich, SS-Obergruppenführer, the letter contains no reference to killing, camps, or shootings—only the expectation of attendance and participation.

Once assembled, the meeting proceeds with Heydrich speaking from the head of the table, stating that responsibility for the central handling of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” has been placed with the SS and the German Police—a declaration that reorganizes authority across departments and binds it to a single chain of command.

The discussion moves through material already familiar to those present, as existing measures are reviewed, responsibilities clarified, and definitions standardized, with particular attention given to legal categories that determine inclusion, exemption, or temporary deferral. Degrees of Jewish ancestry are examined with precision, and deportation is addressed as a logistical matter requiring coordination among ministries, occupied territories, and transportation systems already operating under strain.

As documents are consulted and figures recalculated, a total is presented:

“Here now the number of Jews still living in Europe.”

The minutes record the figures and the jurisdictions, note the agreements reached, and close with a list of names. One entry reads simply:

“Total: approximately 11 million.”

Meanwhile, the goal of creating territories that were Judenfrei was closer than ever. The final stages of preparation had arrived.

After the meeting at the Wannsee Villa concludes, the minutes mark approximately two hours: two hours of euphemisms, some arguments, awkward glances—but ultimately, the participants leave in small groups, returning to offices where their responsibilities resume under structures already in place. Bureaucracy continues.

Next, the protocol is typed, copied, and distributed as sparingly as possible. The construction of extermination camps—under no guise of labor or detention—was underway.

Chelmno would prove that gassing was effective; Zyklon B would later substitute carbon monoxide after the establishment of Belzec and Sobibor, camps consisting solely of gas chambers and crematoria, beginning the industrialization of killing—the culmination of years of process and preparation.

First, Belzec: March 1942.

Then, Sobibor: May 1942.

Treblinka: July 1942.

Subsequent correspondence refers to the phrasing used in the Wannsee minutes. Transport requests cite its categories, and deportation orders repeat the same terms agreed upon at that table.

1.7 million more Jews would be murdered in Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor—on top of the 1.5 million already killed by the Einsatzgruppen.

If there is a distinct coldness felt in the seemingly mundane speeches and descriptions conveyed at Wannsee, at the Obersalzberg, or in the directive of Jews marching toward their fate at Šķēde Beach, this is not accidental.

Resembling, in many ways, the coldness of the organization stage of genocide seen in Myanmar, preparation operates and depends on a similar compartmentalization—from persecutors, collaborators, and even bystanders. Eventually, this compartmentalization begins to blur the lines between personal responsibility and collaboration with state duty and organized instruction. Intention becomes impossible to ignore at this point. We have entered the final, and most deadly, stages of the genocidal process.

Unfortunately, this is where much Holocaust education begins.

The narrative often goes like this: Germany lost World War I. Jews were blamed because it was easy. Hitler came to power with ease, and he and the Nazi Party had the support of vengeful Germans who hated Jews. Jews faced discrimination and exclusion and were put in ghettos. At some point, they were moved to concentration camps on cattle cars—almost always Auschwitz, the only camp many can name, if they can name any at all. Jews were gassed or worked to death and burned. American and British troops liberated the camps and saved the day. Jews found justice at the Nuremberg Trials. End of story.

However, we do a great disservice to our youth—and to ourselves—by accepting this simplicity.

The simplicity of the narrative above ignores the excruciatingly long history of antisemitism, the complicity of neighbors, the complexity of “Jew” and “half-Jew,” the contradictory roles played by both persecutors and the persecuted, and perhaps most importantly: the evolution of the Holocaust as a process, not a series of isolated or sequential events.

To understand the Holocaust as an evolving process—not an inevitable one—we can look at preparation as defined by Gregory Stanton in his Ten Stages of Genocide framework. He writes:

“National or perpetrator group leaders plan the ‘Final Solution’ to the Jewish, Armenian, Tutsi or other targeted group ‘question.’ They often use euphemisms to cloak their intentions, such as referring to their goals as ‘ethnic cleansing,’ ‘purification,’ or ‘counter-terrorism.’ They build armies, buy weapons and train their troops and militias. They indoctrinate the populace with fear of the victim group. There is a sudden increase in inflammatory rhetoric and hate propaganda with the objective of creating fear of the other group.”

And so, perhaps, we should begin at Wannsee. It is there, after all, where the “Final Solution” to the Jewish question was most explicitly described, as preserved in the written record. And yet, this remains insufficient.

The plans set forth in Wannsee were undoubtedly a turning point. The records provide a rare and chilling glimpse at what had been inferred well before the deportations began. We can see the euphemisms Stanton refers to—“evacuated to the East,” “in the appropriate manner”—phrases that concealed systematic murder in bureaucratic code.

But just as the Wannsee Conference took place, it’s crucial to note that nearly a quarter of the deaths in the Holocaust had already occurred—before Treblinka, before Sobibor, before even Chelmno, where the process of gassing was first “fine-tuned.” There was what has been called the “Holocaust by bullets.”

These 1.5 million deaths were the culminating consequence of years of discrimination, propaganda, and polarization. The murders were largely carried out by the Einsatzgruppen—mobile killing units made up of SS soldiers and police whose primary goal, at the onset of Operation Barbarossa and the invasion of Poland, was to make occupied territories Judenfrei—free of Jews.

Perhaps more distressing, however, is that they often enlisted the help of each town’s everyday citizens, willing and ready to shoot their Jewish friends and neighbors—people they had known, in some cases, their entire lives. Worse still, there were individuals who did not need to be “enlisted” at all, despite later claims that they had been coerced. Many helped round up the town’s Jews, herd them to nearby forests and ravines, and oversee the massive task of digging their own graves.

In the Baltics, Latvian auxiliary police units became particularly notorious for their brutality.

In this Holocaust by bullets, there are no cattle cars yet. There are no gas chambers, no death camps for the sole purpose of mass murder—and yet few people know of the Einsatzgruppen at all, much less that they had already killed so many.

This played a crucial role in the preparation stage of genocide, as it depended not only on the special killing squads but on the participation of local collaborators driven by antisemitism and promises of prosperity through propaganda.

Meanwhile, a series of experiments had begun to show promise. It involved herding prisoners into sealed vans, promising transport or relocation, and filling the van with carbon monoxide gas—killing efficiently, wasting fewer bullets, and sparing the perpetrators from direct gunfire.

At the same time, railroad lines were studied. The idea of forcing Jews eastward by train and implementing a scalable system of gassing seemed increasingly feasible.

This, then, is preparation as process in action. Some argue that this process was intentional from the start; others argue that each new progression arose opportunistically, as function dictated form.

Regardless of intention, preparation became the language of execution. Soon all Jews would be liquidated from ghettos and “evacuated to the East.” They would leave behind the things they couldn’t carry—diary pages, photographs, dolls, crafts, sacred texts, suitcases with hidden bread, and the dead.

As gas was being accepted as the most “innovative” method for solving the so-called Jewish question, the Einsatzgruppen had largely fulfilled their duties, paving the way for the next phase of annihilation.

When Anders speaks about the period before December 1941, the idea of expectation continues to arise—that is, a set of assumptions built up over years and tied to human nature itself. His family listened to the BBC; they read foreign newspapers; they knew Jews were being excluded, deprived of rights, and pushed out of public life. And yet none of this, he explains, translated into an expectation of death.

This sense of denial echoes through several testimonies, but one can’t help thinking of Elie Wiesel’s Night, in which fifteen-year-old Wiesel arrives at Auschwitz and describes the horror of what he realizes he has walked into:

“Can this be true?!” he says. “This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?”

In Anders’s testimony, he continues:

“It’s a shame that it happened,” he recalls thinking of Kristallnacht, and early reports of violence, “but somehow we weren’t prepared to change my family’s and many other Jews’ perception of the Germans being basically fair.”

“They were very strict with Jews,” he says, “they were depriving them of some civil rights, but we didn’t believe any of this.”

What Anders describes, however, is built on human precedent—where discrimination has limits, states operate within rules, and punishment, if it came, would be selective. Perhaps, too, there are elements of self-preservation at work. Even when the war began, that framework held.

“In my family, out of twenty-seven people, only two fled,” he explains. “The others all stayed, which means they felt that the Germans were the lesser evil.”

This assumption—that brutality would remain bounded—was very much anticipated and exploited by persecutors.

“People grasp at straws in such situations,” Anders says. “There were occasional rumors that somebody had traveled along a country road and passed a huge camp with lots of Jews working there. What they were doing… pure invention.”

“One day,” he recalls, “a German sailor stood there and struck up a conversation… He said, ‘Oh, you have a lot of Jews in your town.’ And then he made a movement of this trigger finger.

You show a poker face,” he says. “It would be disastrous if you made a long face.”

“I don’t know if anybody else survived,” he says again near the end of the interview.

Goldman asks:

“Have you thought about what sorts of long-term impact these experiences have had on your life—on the way you’ve lived it, raised your kids, or just on your personality?”

Anders replies:

“I think it has taught me not to generalize about people, and there are really two factors that pushed me in that direction. One of them was that before the German occupation, we thought that just because my father was a very decent businessman—he had some letters from his German customers commending him for having warned them about unfair practices of some other businesspeople—that no matter what complaints the antisemites had about certain Jews, my father had an excellent record and would be treated accordingly.

But they didn’t. They treated everybody the same, regardless of what you’d done as a person.

And similarly, I’ve learned that there were some awful Germans, some monsters, and there were some angels, and lots in between. The same with Latvians. I began to realize that it’s absolutely wrong to generalize.

I don’t like to say ‘the Germans,’ or ‘the Jews,’ or ‘the Latvians.’ I tend to view people as individuals.”

The tape stops rolling, and Tape 3, Side B ends.

Preparation is the stage at which genocide becomes administratively possible—when violence no longer depends on secrecy or improvisation but moves instead through systems that already exist and continue to appear intact. Meetings are held and recorded, documents circulate between offices, legal categories are refined and narrowed, and transport is discussed in terms of feasibility and coordination.

What distinguishes preparation from earlier stages is not just escalation but normalization, as language shifts toward procedure. By the time preparation is visible, prevention is already constrained, since the machinery has been assembled, authority assigned, and categories agreed upon in ways that leave little room for reversal.

And yet, this stage remains essential to study because it exposes where intervention failed earlier—how warning signs were absorbed into daily practice, and how similar structures continue to operate in the present, often unnoticed, until their outcomes become impossible to ignore.

That isn’t to say that prevention is irrelevant, but rather that we must shift our thinking: from preventing preparation itself, to preventing the signs of preparation as they emerge early on. We can revisit the earlier stages and continue the actions against classification, symbolization, dehumanization, and discrimination. And we can teach what leads to preparation—and, more solemnly, what follows it—as both a warning and a reminder of what inaction can lead to.

Accordingly, there are still actionable steps we can take to spotlight genocide as it unfolds in its final stages, demand accountability, and prevent escalation before it occurs.

The following are actions you and your community can take immediately to make this a reality:

Recall the children being led across the beach at Šķēde, where a woman cradled her baby and a boy in a dark shirt stepped over mounds of sand, his head turned, grimacing at the sight before him.

The frame changes. They are at the edge of the dune.

The boy steps forward when his turn comes. He has already seen the women at the edge and understands what the arrangement means, so what remains is only the short distance across the sand and the stillness required at the end of it.

He stops where he is directed. The trench lies in front of him, close enough now that he does not look down. His attention lifts instead—past the line of bodies and the men standing opposite—toward the water beyond.

A bird crosses his vision, low and steady, and his mind follows it without effort, registering the openness ahead, the simple fact of standing there, facing outward, thinking how lovely it would be to face the sea.

Shortly after research for this article was already underway, Mr. Edward Anders passed away on June 1, 2025, in San Francisco, three weeks before his ninety-ninth birthday. He was the last survivor from the Baltic city of Liepāja.

You can read his obituary and access information about his autobiography through this article’s linked sources. His full oral testimony with Randy Goldman is preserved in the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Rest in peace, Mr. Anders, and may your story continue to serve as both an inspiration and a warning for generations to come.

Thank you for listening.

Follow the stages at stagesofchange.org.

Anti-Defamation League. (n.d.). Glossary terms. Retrieved December 27, 2025, from https://www.adl.org/resources/glossary-terms

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It is the year of “tens.”

Ten Stages of Change (the blog/audio series) is nearing completion, with Stage 7 (Preparation: the Holocaust) coming in the next couple of days with ten new action steps.

December 9 marked the tenth anniversary of the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of This Crime. (And you all said I was wordy.) According to the U.N., this is considered a time to “assess progress, confront ongoing challenges, and renew the international community’s determination to address risks and prevent atrocity crimes.” It goes on to state that the occasion reaffirms “international frameworks” for human rights and genocide prevention and “tackle emerging threats through education [and] robust early warning systems.”

Essentially, it is a day for U.N. reflection.

But if there’s one thing increasingly obvious about the United Nations throughout history to the present day, it is that they are experts in peace rhetoric and elevator pitches in an attempt to give the organization more legitimacy, as if that were somehow the unspoken missing piece to their continued failure, in almost every case of mass atrocity, to make any meaningful intervention. In many cases, they exacerbate and already unraveling crisis.

In 2023, when I first began this project, I wrote about Darfur and how Sudan was facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. For two years, Sudan continued to be ignored. And if there’s one thing the U.N. does state that actually holds some legitimacy, is the necessity for “fighting impunity” – specifically, impunity that results from the silence of the world. In a short video titled “Rethinking Genocide Prevention,” Chaloka Beyani, Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, states, “The one thing that you want to do in the context of dealing with atrocities is to make aware those that are participating in conflict…that they are being watched and monitored. And when that message gets to them, then of course they become cautious. But if there’s just silence, and silence, that’s a driver of impunity.”

It echoes what has been urged in the action steps of each stage/case study/post for this project. Ultimately, when it comes to “raising awareness,” then, is this a sufficient prevention method?

No.

Awareness is an idle act, an internal one. “Spreading” awareness is vague. What are we going to do with that awareness once we hold it? The key is mobilization on a scale that we take that awareness and turn it into actions that yes, talk about it, frequently and without fear, but then to engage in actions that, if nothing else, remind us, lets the crime sit with us for a little longer. The more people that do this, and the more that spark little actions from small towns to big cities, increases the likelihood of prevention significantly.

So, while the U.N. may be a far way off from action instead of mere language, we can take charge of this day (in hindsight, I suppose), but also on December 10th, the day when we celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Human Rights: Human Rights Day.

The establishment of this document was the first time in history that there are indeed fundamental human rights that are non-negotiable, and therefore must be actively protected for all citizens of the world.

I recently watched an interview from 2018 on 60 Minutes featuring Ben Ferencz, the prosecutor who insisted on bringing 22 SS officers to the Nuremberg Trials following the Holocaust. Their crime was committed outside the better-known concentration camps, in fields and ravines, ditches and pits. Over 1 million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) in what has been called the “Holocaust by Bullets.” More on the Einsatzgruppen will be covered in the upcoming article on Stage 7, focusing on the story of a family that emerged from a dozen discovered photos which tells a chilling and unthinkable story.

But what stands out the most from the interview, with Ferencz at age 98, is his steadfast determination.

“You’re not getting very far,” the interviewer said. “Has anyone said you’re naive?”

“They should remember from me it takes courage not to be discouraged. If it’s naive to want peace instead of war, I don’t see that as naive. It’s stupid to incredible degrees. I am naive? That’s insane.”

“You are such an idealist,” she says.

“I’m a realist. Look at the emancipation of women in my lifetime. Look at the legalization of same sex marriage. The world is changing. And there shouldn’t be despair because it hasn’t happened before. Nothing’s happened before. And you know what keeps me going? I know I’m right.”

The following is a distillation: ten actions pulled from the first six stages covered so far in this project, sharpened and reimagined into steps that any of us can take now. They are small enough to begin immediately and large enough to matter, especially when practiced collectively. They are not solutions, but they are footholds.

Commemoration days exist because prevention failed. But they also exist because prevention is still possible. Each stage of genocide reveals a small window where a different choice could have altered the trajectory. These ten steps are not exhaustive, of course, but they are the kind of work that compounds. They are the antidote to resignation, and the reason the next stage of this project matters.

If we are willing to act between the stages, then the stages themselves begin to lose their power.

Naive? Maybe. This entire project is naive. But as Ferencz said himself, “Nothing has happened before.” And change is possible.

And we know we are right.

Happy Human Rights Day.

To learn more about genocide and the ten stages of genocide, visit genocidewatch.com.

Thank you for reading.

Follow the stages at stagesofchange.org.

Human Rights Day 2024: Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now. – National Association of Social Workers. (2024). Naswma.org. https://www.naswma.org/news/688726/Human-Rights-Day-2024-Our-Rights-Our-Future-Right-Now.

Nations, U. (2025). International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime | United Nations. United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/observances/genocide-prevention-day

The Nuremberg Prosecutor | 60 Minutes Archive (2025). Youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI8yRekjeHg

Universal Declaration of Human Rights.. Multilingual Video Collection. (2018). Un.org. https://www.un.org/en/udhr-video/

Human Rights Day 2024: Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now. – National Association of Social Workers. (2024). Naswma.org. https://www.naswma.org/news/688726/Human-Rights-Day-2024-Our-Rights-Our-Future-Right-Now.

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Please Note: The following article contains descriptions and narratives of violence and genocide, as well as an analysis of human behavior relating to sensitive topics, including racism, intolerance, physical violence, and death. Some images and details may be disturbing or upsetting to readers, including graphic imagery. Please be mindful of the content before continuing.

Visit Mental Health America’s site for information on mental health, getting help, and taking action.

The following is part of a series of blog posts concerning genocide and the ten stages of genocide outlined by Gregory H. Stanton. The purpose is not only to raise awareness of the multiple genocides from the past and the present but to provide a set of actions within realistic time constraints that you can take immediately to promote change, prevention, and tolerance. Each week covers a different stage of genocide, with a specific country or region in focus that has or is currently experiencing genocide. It concludes with an analysis of how that stage is or was evident in the featured genocide and what actions can be taken specifically to work against it.

Polarization is the sixth stage of genocide.

The case study is Bosnia & Herzegovina, where ethnic cleansing and war crimes took place between 1992 and 1995, and where genocide took place in Srebrenica between July 11, 1995 and July 16, 1995.

Serbia is not home for Dragica “Aunty Draga” Ednes.

You feel it the second the UNTV tape starts rolling. Through the grain of a 90s camcorder, she balances herself on a metal fold-out chair in a weed-choked yard, an unfolded letter trembling in her hand. Clotheslines sway behind her; Brutalist style dorm blocks loom above a singular tree; somehow a sense of urgency is immediately apparent. A message must be read.

Her large, oversized glasses, sky-blue blouse, and silver hoops clash with the sterile emptiness surrounding her.

It is 1994.

Two years have passed since Draga fled Mostar, a medieval village in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina split by the Neretva River. For four centuries the 16th-century Stari Most (“Old Bridge”) joined east and west and served as both a symbolic and literal bridge bringing together two cultures. Croatian shells destroyed it on November 9th, 1993; by the time of Draga’s recording, the bridge – and the pluralism the city once prided itself on- lay in ruins.

Mostar’s fate, like that of virtually every piece of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its surrounding territories, was bound to the unraveling of Yugoslavia. Once a socialist federation made up of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia (with Kosovo as an autonomous province), Montenegro, and North Macedonia, it began to fracture in 1991 and 1992 as nationalist leaders drew new borders in response to a domino-like effect of disintegration. Belgrade armed Bosnian-Serb forces who were committed to building what they called a “Greater Serbia,” while Bosniak and Croat units first fought together, until between late 1992 and March 1994, when they turned against each other before the Washington Agreement re-allied them against the Serb army.

What followed: expulsions, camps, and distrust that culminated in the Srebrenica massacre in July of 1995. It is impossible to grasp the full scope of Srebrenica’s genocide, however, without taking fully into account the micro and macro-level losses that resulted from the breakup of the once-unified Yugoslavia. Survivors mourn not only the dead but the vanished ease of neighbors who once shared coffee, weddings, and holy days. Former President Josip Broz Tito had (however odd the wording may sound) enforced strict unity, particularly under the slogan “brotherhood and unity” in Yugoslavia. However, his death in 1980 gave way to an underlying reality and hard-line nationalism rushed into the vacuum.

So here sits Draga—herself a Bosniak—in Ražanj, far from the Neretva, holding a letter to her best friend. She reads it to the camera, letting words stretch like a new bridge across a gulf that war insists should be permanent.

Her letter is addressed to Nada, who made the decision to stay in Mostar throughout the war. For Draga, a Bosniak, it was not a choice she could be afforded. The caption of the UNTV clip sets the context: After two years of fighting, Mostar is now a divided city, with a Croat controlled half and a Muslim controlled half.

She begins:

‘My dear Nada,

It’s Dragica speaking. You know that I am not in Mostar, and wherever I am, I don’t feel fine and it cannot be nice. Is Neretva still there, where it used to be, Nada? Have a look at it for me, Nada, and throw a flower into it, instead of my glance. The Old Bridge is for me as it used to be, although it doesn’t exist anymore….After war we are left with nothing and then we start from the beginning again. Does all this make any sense? Two months after I left Mostar, here in Serbia, I made a decision.

I am leaving the Balkans.

Nada, I am leaving full of faith. Full of faith in people who are staying in Mostar. You know how we were brought up: no religion, no nationality. My grandfather used to say: ‘A friend is a friend, no matter what religion he is.’

We were friends with everyone, we accepted everyone, we lived happily. We must preserve this, Nada. I am preserving that special, Mostarian openness to love everyone. Religion is not important, nationality, origin – we are all human beings.

Maybe somewhere these qualities are still important.

Maybe somewhere these qualities are still appreciated.

Maybe somewhere.’

The papers that carried Draga from one checkpoint to the next were still creasing in her pocket when, far away, diplomats lifted their hands for U.N. Security Council Resolution 827, long before 2012. The resolution was a response to the ongoing violations of humanitarian law during the larger Yugoslav Wars, and eventually mandated the prosecution of perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity. To this day, despite its shortcomings, the resolution marked a major development in international criminal justice. A message became clear: Impunity was no longer accepted as the norm.

In 2012, the Tribunal came together again, for a reflection on the legacy as the end of the mandate to prosecute war criminals was close to its end.

The conference room at the Holiday Inn Sarajevo is filled with a low murmur of simultaneous translation and the rustle of folders stamped with UN logos. Refik Hodžić, journalist and former outreach officer for the tribunal (ICTY), stands at the podium, overlooking a crowd that includes mothers from Srebrenica, international lawyers, and a handful of teenagers in the back row, slouched in their seats. The audience is, somewhat surprisingly, exceptionally diverse.

This makes sense, as Panel No. 3 was titled “The Future of the Past,” with its aim to bring attention to education, memory, and reconciliation specifically. The conference organizers had a straightforward goal: to pass down historical truth to a generation too young to have ever experienced the Yugoslav Wars firsthand.

It’s been seventeen years since the presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia came together to sign the Dayton Agreement effectively ending the Bosnian War and the establishment of dividing Bosnia and Herzegovina and Srpska; and subsequently, sixteen years since the Tribunal’s first verdict.

The city outside serves as a living museum of sorts: dotted with bullet holes, littered with rubble; but the streets are alive again, and the bridge over the Miljacka (the Sarajevo version of Mostar’s treasured Neretva) is again crowded with tourists. But inside the Holiday Inn Sarajevo, there is a heaviness. Had the Tribunal done anything to heal the country’s wounds? As the tourists take family photos outside, the question remains open inside.

At the podium, Refik doesn’t read from his notes. He speaks slowly, sometimes pausing to let his words settle.

“We believed, or wanted to believe, that if the facts were established, if the crimes were named and recorded, that would be enough,” he says, before pausing and looking across the crowd. “We thought the truth would be a bridge.”

He glances at the audience again, his eyes meeting the women in headscarves, the young men in suits., the teenagers with their shirts untucked.

“But the truth, it turns out, is only as strong as the hands willing to carry it.”

He recounts moments from the Tribunal’s history: the first time a survivor from Prijedor described the lists, the buses, the silence in the gymnasium they were forced into; the day the verdict was read in the Tadić case, and the press room erupted in arguments over what justice looked like. He remembers the way witnesses would sit, hands clenched, sometimes refusing to look at the accused, sometimes refusing to look at anyone at all.

He remembers the way the accused would stare straight ahead, unmoved.

“We have a record now, thousands of pages, names and dates and orders signed. But outside these walls, in the schools, in the news, in the stories people tell their children, there are still many truths. In some places, the verdicts are denied. In others, they are used as proof that only one group suffered.”

He pauses, then asks the room a critical question: “Can you foresee a future in which the facts established before the Tribunal are accepted as such, and made part of the school curriculum?”

No one answers. Someone coughs, seemingly purposeful to shield the silence. A woman in the front row wipes her eyes.

He continues, “Polarization was not just a wartime tactic. It is a habit now, a way of seeing the world. The Tribunal was supposed to be a mirror, but too often it has become another line drawn between us.”

He closes his folder, steps away from the podium, and the conference moves on to the next panel. But the question lingers in the air, unanswered.

III. Slobodan Milošević. Channel 4 News. June 1992.

In 1992, Bosnian Serb soldiers identified a key target in their determination to take control of large parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina:

Srebrenica.

The planned takeover of Bosnia as a whole which preceded the concentrated massacre in Srebrenica – a finale to years of suffering by Bosnian Muslims – was awkward at best, and its execution disastrous. It started with the breakdown of Yugoslavia as countries seceded from a failing union that once was: a mix of bankruptcy due to negligible prosperity as prices and salaries both increased, and an overall feeling of uncertainty and lack of unified identity, followed with politicians who saw this as ripe for exploitation, where the best way to convince a population to pledge allegiance and gain control is to divide them.

And that’s exactly what was done.

For context, in 1989, the aggressively ambitious Serbia had a new leader: Slobodan Milošević. He only appears unassuming at first. Shortly after gaining power, he made clear an ambitious vision: a new Serbia with equal rights for all. He spoke passionately of this in a 1992 interview, claiming “his people,” the Serbs, suffering a mostly imagined threat living in Bosnia among Bosniaks (ethnic Bosnian Muslims) who he claimed were terrorizing Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as Bosnia finally had declared its independence from Yugoslavia in March of 1992 and formally seceded a month later. Bosnian Serbs boycotted the secession.

Two months after the interview, an investigation obtained the first footage of concentration camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina set up by his own Serb forces.

Ethnic cleansing grew between 1992 and 1995, with forced displacements, detentions, and murder committed under Bosnian Serb control. Bosnian Serbs preferred to call the deportations “evacuations.” Serbs fully believed that that Bosniak inhabitants must be eliminated.

The United Nations, upon their slow admittance that a humanitarian nightmare was taking place, kept roughly 200 Dutch peacekeepers stationed near Srebrenica. One detail was ignored in this plan: They were not authorized to use force to defend the Bosniaks they were sent to protect. Peace attempts failed, NATO was consulted for help, and apparent safe havens under a “no fly zone” were clumsily established.

On July 11, Bosnian Serb forces, led by Ratko Mladic, casually advanced through Srebrenica, and in a statement recorded on a film similar to Draga’s in the Serbian refugee camp she was forced into just years earlier, states, “The time has come…to take revenge on the Muslims.” Killings began the evening of July 12th as Bosniak men fled through surrounding forests for safety, many later tricked into surrendering under false promises of UN safety while women and children were loaded on buses and taken to Bosniak territory.

On July 13, killing accelerated. Men were taken away, blindfolded, executed along the Drina River, in warehouses, along football fields, next to meadows and in ravines, cultural centers and dirt roads. The mass graves discovered later revealed that victims’ arms and feet were bound, with many bodies mutilated.

In total, 19,473 Bosnian Serbs were implicated in the massacres in Srebrenica, and most continued to hold government positions after the war.

Over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were murdered in Srebrenica alone.

With a tribunal already established, it didn’t take long, however, for more than 20 high ranking perpetrators to be indicted. After his arrest in 1998, the trial for Radislav Krstic began. He served as the commander of the Bosnian Serb corps and was accused of aiding and abetting genocide.

Krstic himself describes a childhood in which community was “heterogeneous,” unified, and tolerant of one another’s differences. It is the same sentiment of every person – perpetrators included – within Bosnia and Herzegovina. The words are always the same:

“We were so unified. How could this happen? It was never supposed to be this way.”

Throughout his trial, he describes Yugoslavia’s diversity and ethnic differences as a spiritual uniqueness that was cherished.

But just as there is “Bosnia before” and “Bosnia after” so distinctly in the country’s collective consciousness, so too was there Krstic before and after. His military position after deciding to settle in Bosnia where he was born, grew substantially, until he joined the Army of Republika Srpska – the Bosnian Serb army., shortly after. It was then that for the first time, he described in his testimony, existing within an “ethnically homogeneous” community made up exclusively of ethnic Serbs within Bosnia territory. Although his officers were inexperienced at first, they improved quickly, allowing battles in 1993 and 1994 to end victoriously for Serbs as Bosnian Muslims continued to be “evacuated.” Moreover, the “safe zones” over Srebrenica, he decided, would be a base for operations.

Unfortunately, Bosnian Muslims hid their own solders and weapons there as well. Opportunity presented itself in this case, and thus commenced the order to kill all Bosnian Muslim men and boys. The attempt was disturbingly successful.

Enter Witness DD.

It’s July 26, 2000, and she’s been called as a witness in Krstic’s trial.

The following is extracted from the transcript documents and footage of the court examination of Witness DD on Wednesday, July 26, 2000, condensed for brevity but otherwise unedited:

The witness entered court.

The accused entered court.

JUDGE RODRIGUEZ: We are going to resume our case.  Good morning, madam.  Can you hear me?  I didn’t hear an answer.  Can you hear me?  Yes, I’m in front oF you.  I’m talking to you.

THE WITNESS: Yes, I do hear you.

Witness DD. (A)

Examined by Ms. Karagiannakis (Q)

Q. Can you tell me what your nationality is and what your religion  is?

A. I am a Muslim woman.

Q.   You had four children.  And what was your job or role?

A.   My role was to be a faithful housewife, to work hard, to take care of the household and its needs, to look after the children, to do the housework and the farming and the land, everything that was necessary.

Q.   Now, did you have any Serb neighbours?

A.   We did.

Q.   And were they aware of the way in which your family and other Muslim families were organised in your village?

A.   Yes, they did know.  We were friends, in fact.  We went to have coffee at each other’s houses.  And if we were working on something, we would help one another.  We would help them, and they would help us.

Q.   In general, how would you describe your standard of living at that time?

A.   How can I describe it?  It was a kind of life one could only hope for, the kind of life we had before the war.  One had one’s own land.  You could produce what you wanted: vegetables, fruit, tend livestock, dairy products, everything.  Whatever you needed, you had everything.  My husband was working in a public company.  He brought home his earnings. All we had to do was enjoy life.

Q.   Now, Witness, I’d like to focus your attention on the events in Srebrenica in July 1995.  At that time the attack on Srebrenica started, were you living with your husband and your sons in your home about three kilometres from Srebrenica town?

A. Yes.

Q.   And when the attack commenced, did you and your family leave your home to go into the woods because shells had fallen near your house and you feared for your safety?

A. Yes….My husband threw one by one of us out of the house to the right.  There was a bit of shelter there, and he said run into the vale that was below the house to take shelter.  And he helped one child after another get out of the house, and then me.  I was screaming.  I grabbed him; I didn’t want to go without him.  He said, “You go and I will follow.” I turned around.  There was a line with clothes hanging out to dry.  I grabbed some things because the children had nothing on.  And so we ran through our own fields that were sown with wheat and maize, and we ran and ran and the shells kept falling….We sought shelter, but there was a lot of people there, so there wasn’t enough room. And it was terrible.

Then we got to Srebrenica.

You would think the whole world was there.

At that point, the shelling started again.  The detonations were so loud, one would think that the whole earth was on fire.  Somebody  shouted out, “Nobody is ever going to come and save us.” 

At that point I told my husband for the last time, “We’re no going to separate ourselves,” and he told me not to worry.  He told me to take two of our children and leave, and he said that he would join other men. But as we were talking, we could see that the shells were falling. So we parted; my husband left with my eldest son.

It was on Tuesday.  On that day, we spent the evening there, the whole day Wednesday, and we were still there on Wednesday evening.  The there was this black Thursday that came.  I remember it was around 10.000 or half past ten.  We were still there, and at that time we reached the line near the trucks where people were waiting to be transported.

Q.   What happened then?

A.   Could I please have a glass of water?

The children sometimes revolt. They say they can’t live without Mostar.

So I remind them of the shells, of the threats, of the explosion in our neighborhood when we lost everything. I remind them and they just stand and look at me. They go silent, Nada, they can’t reply.

But you know, Nada, Mostar doesn’t exist anymore.

Not our Mostar.

There are two separate banks, Nada. Which bank should I go to? The left is dear to me, so is the right. I have friends on the left and I was born there. My flat is on the right and my children were born thee.

Which bank do I belong to?

To which bank do I belong?

It’s the stage that perhaps any reader can relate to the most. It’s evident in the content we consume, the social media we scroll, the conversations we have, and the news that we read. Polarization has become so normalized (particularly in the U.S. within the last 20 years or so), that we rarely stop to question it. It is not solely embedded in our behavior, though. Increasingly it has become an expectation, a duty to one’s party, an allegiance and a badge of conformity and black and white thinking where nuance is considered to be the reasoning of traitors.

To claim that two truths can exist at the same time, that evil can and does often crossover with good, that every narrative has an agenda, and that it is mathematically impossible for any “side’ to be statistically correct all the time, is met with virulent disapproval, insults, and separation from one’s group.

And it’s the dynamic of grouping and collective identity that is core to the process of polarization. Polarization, in fact, unfolds within the genocidal process as an entirely different process all its own, like the vertices of an already formed tornado colliding to form a far more powerful and dangerous storm.

And nobody thrives or profits off polarization more than those charged with leading us. It is, perhaps, somewhat misleading to label Bosnia and Herzegovina as the center of the polarization stage in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of much of the Balkans in the 1990s. And it is this fact alone that so vividly and disturbingly captures the evolutionary process of polarization as it erodes society and unity under the guise of “differing opinions.”

To be clear on our definition, we can look at Stanton’s definition of the sixth stage of genocide:

During polarization, extremists work to drive groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda. Extremists use terror tactics to target moderates, intimidating and silencing the center. Laws may forbid intermarriage or social interaction. The laws erode fundamental civil rights and liberties.

When we look at a highly polarized society, some key points are critical:

The case study of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its surrounding republics – what was once a unified Yugoslavia – is a heartbreaking and tragic example of how the right conditions, especially when exploited by powerful leaders, can lead to polarization on such a grand scale that it influences law, supports even more propaganda, and perhaps most importantly: eliminates moderates. Moderates are, in fact, often the first to be murdered in genocide. The reason is that they are the most likely to speak up, and potentially prevent or slow the progression of genocide altogether.

There is a clear point of fracture in the tragic unraveling of Yugoslavia: the death of Joseph Tito in 1980. While his policies and actions were certainly not without controversy and its own forms of corruption, in hindsight one can see a clear before and after. Genocide is often marked as having a number of risk factors, followed by a sort of “tipping point” moment or series of events that rapidly evolve violence. While a number of sources cite the Bosnian war in 1992 when Serbian forces began to seize control of municipal offices while simultaneously broadcasting propaganda blaming “Muslim and Croats” for “war crimes against Serbians” as the most significant turning point, it can be argued that the slow dissolution of a once-unified Yugoslavia’s ethnic homogeneous structure was the real beginning. It is at this point that identity – both individual and collective – deteriorated. And a fragile or threatened identity when met with economic hardship, for example, breeds tensions that left unchecked, can turn to atrocity.

Across testimonies from the ICTY, a common memory continues to surface. Survivors and perpetrators alike often recall communities where ethnic and religious distinctions coexisted without suspicion. Differences were acknowledged, but they did not rule the terms of daily life. There was a kind of trust that came from proximity, shaped by habit and shared time.

Dragica’s letter to Nada still echoes with quiet desperation. Her question, To which bank do I belong?, remains unanswered. It carries the weight of someone forced to choose a side when neither feels complete. For her, identity had once been rooted in friendship, in the sounds of the Neretva, in the rhythms of a neighborhood rather than a flag.

That sense of belonging unraveled slowly. In the years leading up to the war, headlines began to change. Speeches shifted in tone. Familiar phrases were repeated with new emphasis. People began to look at each other differently. Where once there had been recognition, there was hesitation.

The voices that stirred this unease came from above. Serbian politicians and broadcasters spoke more often about existential danger. They reached into the past, naming old atrocities and reviving buried fear. The message was not shouted at first. It was woven into everyday language until it sounded reasonable.

Once suspicion settled in, trust became harder to defend. Conversations thinned. Families reconsidered friendships. Some moved away without saying goodbye. The stories people told about one another began to turn. In those stories, the neighbor became the stranger. The shared table became a memory too fragile to hold.

The battle over narrative is perhaps older than the violence that erupted. In early 1992, Serb nationalists seized control of broadcasting infrastructure and immediately weaponized it. Local news, which had once been a tool of public service, was stripped of complexity.

The SRNA news agency replaced independent journalism with state-sanctioned stories that focused exclusively on fear, resentment, and suspicion. Serbian television reran images of past violence, aired dramatic reenactments of supposed crimes by Muslims and Croats, and passed off century-old artwork as contemporary photojournalism. Essentially, they had masqueraded fiction as fact. And emotional manipulation worked.

It’s important to note that this pattern was not unique to Bosnia. Propaganda has always relied on repetition, simplification, and emotional games. They are tools that bypass all critical thinking, even to the strongest among us. What made the Balkans situation particularly potent, however, was the speed at which media control shifted and the ease with which fear became a sort of moral truth. That, and again, the sharp and jarring contrast between what once was and what had evolved.

Journalists who questioned this reasoning were harassed, dismissed, or forced to flee. A former Bosnian Serb TV producer testified at The Hague that political officials regularly demanded storylines and scripts. He remembered one instance where his team was told to “portray Muslims as backward” and emphasize “the danger they posed to Serbian children.” Saturation was the strategy of the day, for if every image, anchor, and soundbite reinforced the same biased storyline, dissent could essentially cease to exist entirely.

By late 1992, it had become dangerous to show any signs of ambivalence.

It’s a disturbingly familiar strategy though, isn’t it? From social media algorithms that, were they human, would salivate at the expression of outrage and to news segments that rely solely on what is broken rather than what can be healed, many of the same dynamics are at play in every piece of media we consume. Is it any surprise that mistrust has formed as a natural product of a curated reality? How it is more challenging than ever, especially to younger generations, to distinguish facts from falsity? We don’t talk about Bosnia much, despite it’s recent occurrence, and one can’t help but wonder if it’s the same reason we prefer not to look at ourselves in the mirror on a bad hair day.

A. Things were getting worse and more horrible every day, every hour.  We spent sometime there on that day, but we didn’t have anything to eat, we didn’t have any water to drink.  We were looking for shelter and water all the time, and that is how we spent that first day.

Q. Witness –

A. So when that black Thursday came, it was in the early morning hours, and my child was still sleeping, the child that was about to be snatched from me. So I woke him up, telling him that we should leave, that we should go to the trucks…I was trying to calm him down….Then we moved closer to the line.  There was a kind of tape around the area…I realized that my son was not feeling well, that he was about to faint. There was a friend of ours there, an elderly man, and he said that he would go and get some water for my son. So he left, and then after he came back he was totally white in his face. His wife wanted to know what he had actually seen, but he kept crying and shaking his head.  He said, “I saw everything.  I saw heads and limbs all over the place where I went to fetch some water.”

Finally, it was our turn to approach the rope and we were finally let through.  I felt relieved.  I thought to myself, thank God.  After everything I had seen, after I had seen people being separated, I kept thanking God because we seemed to have passed through, me, my children, and these friends of ours.

But then there was a line of their soldiers standing there on both sides, on our left-hand side and on our right-hand side…When we were halfway through, I heard a voice say, “Popovic, look out for this one,” and I immediately realized that he was referring to my child.

We walked for about metres, and then from the left column one of their soldiers jumped out, and he spoke to my child.  He told us to move to the right side, and he told my son, “Young man, you should go to the left side…but I grabbed him by his hand and I — he kept repeating, “I was born in 1981.  What will you do with me?  What do you want me do?”  And then I begged them, I pleaded with them.  Why are you taking him? And I held him so hard, but he grabbed him.

And then my son threw out that bag, and the soldier picked up the bag and threw it on a pile on the right-hand side, and he took my son’s hand, and he dragged him to the left side. 

And he turned around, and then he told me:

“Mommy, please, can you get that bag for me?  Could you please get it for me?”

Nada, I will come back home, but it won’t be home.

I will come back to Mostar, but only when Mostar becomes what it used to be. When there won’t be a left bank or a right bank, but when, no matter who rules, you, Nada, with your Dobrivaje, will be free to walk along both the right and the left banks.

When you’ll be free to say that you are only a citizen of Mostar, and nothing more, Nada. I will come back, with my children. Take care of your children, Nada. Educate Ednes the way we started, when those things were not important, but humanity was.

Nobleness is what counts, and humanity.

And now?

Now Nada, I am leaving.

Educate your children, and I will educate mine.

I love you very much..

Love,

Draga

War officially came to an end on December 14, 1995, with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement. Negotiated in an Ohio airbase and brokered by the United States, the agreement froze the conflict’s frontlines and constructed a fragile state: Bosnia and Herzegovina would now be composed of two autonomous entities; that is, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosniak-Croat) and Republika Srpska (Serb), both linked by a weak central government.

However, what was achieved in Dayton ultimately undermined reconciliation. In essence, the agreement institutionalized ethnic division, therefore solidifying the exact identities that war criminals had exploited, and offered little to nothing to those like Draga, like Witness DD, who had once lived between, across, and along those lines.

And so, a new war emerged: from the forests still filled with mass graves to division now in cities and classrooms, newspapers and parliaments. In Republika Srpska and Serbia proper, genocide denial became not only acceptable, but the language of the state. Politicians and public figures began to openly question the events at Srebrenica, using phrases like “alleged crimes” or calling it “a great tragedy,” avoiding the term genocide. Knowing this brings new meaning to Refik Hodžić’s question to the Tribunal and its audience in 2012: “Can you foresee a future in which the facts established before the Tribunal are accepted as such, and made part of the school curriculum?”

The result? A generation divided, and polarization established yet again as the norm for an entire generation of young people. And once again, it was the moderates, who tried to speak of nuance, or of human pain beyond ethnic boundaries that had been meaningless just decades earlier, who found themselves the most isolated.

Witness DD testified about the soldiers who tore her son from her hands and still years later, she was forced to watch interviews with Serbian officials who claimed the mothers of Srebrenica were exaggerating.

This is the new face of polarization: no longer solely a process of division, but a kind of curated amnesia. In this version of history, documentation is “biased,” eyewitnesses are “delusional,” and common sense is foolishness.

And yet, despite all this, people like Draga still write their letters. People like Witness DD still testify. They tell the story not to win an argument, but because it happened. Because someone must remember.

And therein lies perhaps the only solution to polarization: truth. It is why Nada insisted on educating her children, and Draga’s children, with truth. It’s why the Tribunal still assembled together over. a decade later to insist on education change: for truth. Because the reality is…truth is nuanced, and rarely simple, and that goes against everything polarization aims to be, especially in the wrong hands.

The following are specific actions you can take immediately, both in your community and in support Balkans’ youth abroad, to resist polarization in all forms, embrace nuance, and above all, to see the shared humanity in one another rather than searching for signs of an enemy.

Q. Witness, can you tell me what your life is like now?

A. I’m living in a collective centre. You can only imagine what it’s like. Every minute of the day I wish I was no longer alive. Some people are singing, some listening to music, others dancing—everyone just does what they want.

Q. What’s your living space like?

A. My room is about four by six. That’s where we sleep, live, cook. The bathroom, toilet—everything is in that one space. We dry our clothes there. That’s where we have visitors. That’s all we have.

Q. Who do you live with?

A. My son, born in 1986. My daughter has no home, so she visits with her two children. You can’t keep the place tidy. If you’re in pyjamas, you can’t change. You often sleep in the clothes you wore during the day. And that is how it is.

Q. Do you have any income?

A. I get something small from my husband’s old job—140 marks, I think. It’s barely anything. But I’m not old enough for a pension.

Q. How has all this affected your son?

A. He has demands. He wants things. He starts trembling when I tell him I don’t have the money. Then he blames me. Says if he had a father, he’d have everything. Says, “Maybe it would’ve been better if you didn’t have me.” And I think… maybe it would have been better if none of us had survived. I would prefer it.

Q. Do you think about going back to your village?

A. What would be the point? The people who did this are still free, doing what they want. Should I take my son back there to be killed too? I loved that place—my house, the farm—but it’s nothing compared to the love you have for your children. And what’s the point of any of it now?

Q. Do you know what happened to your husband and your sons?

A. How could I? I’m a mother—I still have hope. I can’t accept that this is real. That someone could destroy everything, kill so many people. My youngest boy… those little hands. I imagine them picking strawberries, holding books, going to school. Every morning I cover my eyes so I don’t see other children heading to school, husbands walking to work, holding hands.

When Nada received the letter from Draga, it had been over two years since the two had been in contact. Sitting around a kitchen table with three healthy boys, two girls, ups of coffee on the table, and a cigarette in her hand as she trembles.

When Draga’s video ends, Nada, too, responds:

Today I’ve experienced both the happiest and the most difficult moment, when I heard something about my Dragica. I’m happy they are all, thank God, alive and in good health. And I am sad because they a re separating us.

I know and am convinced that many people in this world are wrong when they think they can separate and divide us. My personal opinion is that only death can set us apart. While there are people in this world, those real, good people, I believe in a better future. I hope and pray to God for our Mostar.

You say that you can’t go neither the left bank nor the right. You can Dragica, we are the children of ‘Carsija,’ this town, and we’ll always be able to live here.

I will bring up my children in the way we planned. And no matter what happens, I will keep saying the same thing to Ednes, Danijela, and Minela.

Our Neretva is still running, and it has been running for centuries, my Dragica. The old bridge doesn’t exist anymore, but it does exist i nour hearts.

Dear sister, cherish me in your heart just as I cherish you. Mostar will be what it is. We have heart, but we also have the morale.

To learn more about the genocide in Bosnia and Srebrenica, visit rememberingsrebrenica.org. Thank you for reading.

Follow the stages at stagesofchange.org.

Basic, G., & Delić, Z. (2024). Ideology, war, and genocide – the empirical case of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 32(1), 95–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/25739638.2024.2320474

Bliuc, AM., Betts, J.M., Vergani, M. et al. A theoretical framework for polarization as the gradual fragmentation of a divided society. Commun Psychol 2, 75 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00125-1

Bosnia and Herzegovina – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (2015). Ushmm.org. https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/bosnia-herzegovina

Cleverly, F. (2021, June 24). Concentration Camps | Remembering Srebrenica. Srebrenica.org.uk. https://srebrenica.org.uk/what-happened/history/concentration-camps

Genocide Watch- Ten Stages of Genocide. (2025). Genocidewatch. https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia | United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. (2017). Icty.org. https://www.icty.org/

Mascolo, M. (2024, November 12). To End Political Polarization, We Have to Care About Our Opponent’s Problems – CCG. CCG. https://www.creatingcommonground.org/

Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations – Office of the Historian. (2025). State.gov. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/breakup-yugoslavia

Nada Response Video Letter (2025). Imperial War Museums. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060016886

Prosecutor v. Krstić, Case No. IT-98-33-T, Transcript of hearing, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, July 26, 2000. Retrieved from https://www.icty.org/

Smith, R.J. (2025, July 11). Srebrenica genocide. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Srebrenica-genocide

Tadić (IT-94-1) | International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. (2017). Icty.org. https://www.icty.org/en/case/tadic

UNTV Video Letters: Draga and Nada (2025). Youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDVaW7CjH4Q

Why Bosnia has Europe on edge again | Mapped Out (2025). Youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw-KmcfUDHs

World, U. (2018). Old Bridge Area of the Old City of Mostar. Unesco.org. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/946/

Please Note: The following blog post contains descriptions and narratives of violence and genocide, as well as an analysis of human behavior relating to sensitive topics, including racism, intolerance, sexual violence, physical violence, death, and genocidal acts. Some images and details may be disturbing or upsetting to readers, including graphic imagery. Please be mindful of the content before continuing.

Visit Mental Health America’s site for information on mental health, getting help, and taking action.

The following is part of a series of blog posts concerning genocide and the ten stages of genocide outlined by Gregory H. Stanton. The purpose is not only to raise awareness of the multiple genocides from the past and the present but to provide a set of actions within realistic time constraints that you can take immediately to promote change, prevention, and tolerance. Each week covers a different stage of genocide, with a specific country or region in focus that has or is currently experiencing genocide. It concludes with an analysis of how that stage is or was evident in the featured genocide and what actions can be taken specifically to work against it.

Organization is the fifth stage of genocide.

The case study is Myanmar (Burma), with genocide against the Rohingya occurring from October 2016 to the present.

By early 2021, the unprecedented wave of fear felt universally across the world as Covid-19 ravaged society opened up, incidentally, the opportunity for otherwise everyday people to become influencers. Public broadcast of otherwise mundane events became the norm, and soon, the demand.

On the morning of Monday, February 1, 2021, individuals across Myanmar felt particularly defeated as they awoke around 7 a.m. to a quiet morning, but with the after-effects of a contentious election from November still permeating throughout the country. Myanmar’s army, claiming the election to be fraudulent, had their eyes on their primary target: Aung San Suu Kyi, who had won the election by a landslide.

Kyi was no stranger to conflict. Described as “a beacon of human rights” and “principled activist,” she had become a figurehead of salvation for the country of Myanmar (formerly Burma), fighting oppressive, violent army forces.

In 1991, Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize, hailed as the voice of the voiceless, the “power of the powerless,” even as she accepted the award from her prison cell: her bedroom, under house arrest. One might say she was prepped for the new normal of 2020, 2021, and beyond.

Between 1990 and the early 2000s, Kyi seemed to be playing a game of cat-and-mouse with the oppressive army she was determined to fight against, and ruling government leaders at various times, bouncing back and forth from house arrest to solitary confinement and, eventually, in an unexpected turn of events supported by an overwhelmingly positive response from the public, she was elected Myanmar’s state counsellor.

But, if at this point in the series, the reader has not yet noticed a recurring trope of “good leader gone bad,” well, here we are again. By now, it should be much clearer.

Among many issues that some came to resent from Kyi was a certain hypocrisy as the self-proclaimed supporter of human rights turned the other way despite an ethnic minority – the Rohingya – suffering immensely under permissible persecution. Though she faced little condemnation from the largely Buddhist majority at home, who didn’’’t take much issue with what others called “complicity” in the rape, murder, and accusations of genocide against the Rohingya minority fleeing in droves to Bangladesh to escape persecution and burning.

Around the same time, “the Lady” as Kyi was known, began silencing and even prosecuting journalists and human rights activists behind the scenes, then openly. Her tactics have been described as “colonial era” in nature.

Kyi had fallen from grace.

At the same time, promises of substantial change, particularly concerning the military, seemed to diminish greatly.

It became clear by August 2018, when Kyi called the military generals who held substantial parliamentary power in her cabinet “rather sweet” men, that the possibility of a democratic transition was illusive, or at the very least — performative.

Covid-19 only heightened tensions. For many, patience was up.

On the morning of February 1, 2021, military-owned television made the initial announcement, but for the most part, Myanmar remained quiet in the early morning hours. However, some awoke to poor cell signal, internet outages, and non-working phone lines.

For many, both in Myanmar and globally, it was the golden hour for tuning into influencers: watching them, getting ready with them, exercising with them, living vicariously through them, and, today, overthrowing a government – a Coup 101: Myanmar Edition.

Khing Hnin Wai, capitalizing on the surging demand for a smiling face (even behind a mask) to brave the elements of the outside world, demonstrating an aerobics routine Myanmar and others around the world would watch as everything seemed to crumble around them and feelings of isolation and loneliness became increasingly toxic, set up her space as she had for the past 11 months.

The location: the parliament complex in Myanmar’s capital of Nay Pyi Taw on a roundabout by the main road leading to the complex, which was Wai’s favorite spot to livestream her upbeat aerobics sessions. The irony only came to light in hindsight, but the parliament complex as a backdrop for her fitness routine was, in some ways, a sense of comfort to both Wai and her viewers.

Precise and purposeful in her movements, one can imagine why Wai enjoys this spot. After setting up a tripod with her phone turned facing her that Monday morning, she appeared confident as ever, as that of an expert instructor: a plot of red, painted concrete laid out like a stage in front of a wide, multi-lane expanse of monochrome views with the sterility of cold, empty streets, straight painted lines, and white lights lining either side of the wide concrete slab bent slightly inward — a bow to symmetry, a bow to conformity and order.

To organization.

On this day, an upbeat track, to start the week off on a positive note.

Her mask placed over her mouth, behind her ears, Wai steps back in full view of the camera as her bright neon green shorts and matching workout shirt shine brightly against her olive skin and otherwise dark, carefully tied hair that drapes down her back with just the right amount of rigidity and hold, just the right amount of looseness and letting go.

Between the bowed street lights behind her, a barricade stands between the free and the parliament – seemingly a permanent fixture to block any bad actors or visitors from the arbitrary entrance.

It’s not a particularly glamorous sight. In fact, it is rather ugly: rows of cars, motorcyclists — all military and government-owned and branded, stationed at the parliamentary grounds where Kyi (the “Lady”) likely woke just a couple hours before, preparing to face another day of Covid, another day of praise, another day of criticism, another day of a “new normal” even she had trouble accepting.

In spite of the ugliness, Wai is ready. Thousands tuned in, and she decided it was a day for upbeat dance music. Her heart pumping, Wai beigns her routine facing the camera’s left, her legs kicking up, arms extending forcefully, throwing punches into the air before lunging from one side to the other.

As she turns to face the camera head-on, repeating the same move, there is evidence perhaps of a smile, something in the eyebrows, even through her mask.  The upbeat track picks up speed and so does Wai’’’s enthusiasm. The thousands upon thousands of viewers, pouring in worldwide to start their day with a push to motivation, feel the energy too. It is electric. Even through the lens of social media; perhaps, especially through the lens of social media.

The sky is perfectly clear as Wai spins, fists lifted up to the sky again as if to say “thank you,” her eyebrows suggesting a smile while a black SUV drives past her staging area and turns at a curve before disappearing behind her as she slightly shuffles to the right, arms pumping back and forth to the increasing speed of the music, her heart rate rising at the same time a truck with several men in helmets swerves behind her, following the SUV.

Her favorite part is next, as she leaps from left to right, with the smash of the drums in the music, arms fully outstretched to the sky now, before lifting each leg as high as she can. By now, she is fully in the moment – this moment of exhilaration, this moment of shared experience, this moment in Myanmar – and six SUVs swerve onto the same curve behind her, following the others before a truck with more men appears, then two sedans with police lights.

Wai stops, but it is part of the dance: a slow, purposeful turn to face the other direction as she shuffles her legs forward, then back as three more police vehicles, one with armed military men piled in the back, crouched and staring curiously at the strange fitness instructor ignoring them, oblivious as four more sedans, two more armored SUVS, and three trucks speed around the corner.

The barrier in the background collapses. Men scatter everywhere.

As Wai shuffles to finish the last moves of her routine, another group of armed men jump from their positions in the back of a truck and, charging the removed barrier and another speeding erratically into the distance toward parliament directly, she smiles, and within moments all vehicles disappear behind her, the sight of rifles, machetes, and other weapons protruding from the back of the trucks before they become so distant that they are gone, heading straight for Kyi, the Lady, the counsellor who fell from grace.

Wai stops the video, out of breath, looking around her but noticing nothing unusual at first glance; the messages start pouring in.

She didn’t know it then, but Wai had just become the first influencer to live-stream a coup that would bring about unprecedented change, hardship, and a state of emergency in Myanmar, all to an international audience frozen in shock.

“What’s the matter?” she thought.

It was the last live stream she would produce at that location after 11 months.

Within two hours, the coup was complete, including the seizure of power, arrests, and declaration of total control. The face of Myanmar would change forever.

Still audible, the dance song by Tian Storm xEver, Silkr, kept on as Wai began to face the horrifying reality of what she had just filmed, its lyrics repeating appropriately:

“They are coming, one by one,
They are coming, to fight.
To fight!”

For the next year, that same state of emergency would further terrorize the country as Aung San Suu Kyi and her government were deposed.

The new normal was suddenly a thing of the past, as a new Myanmar emerged by the end of a fitness video.

They are coming, to fight.
To fight!”

Three years before the coup, on a humid October day in 2018, army private Myo Win Tun stood at the edge of a newly constructed military outpost in the northern Rakhine State of Myanmar. The outpost, strategically placed on land once home to a Rohingya village, was part of the Tatmadaw’s (Myanmar army) broader effort to maintain control over the region following the mass exodus of Rohingya in 2017.

Of all the years that spark the most intense memories, it is, of course, 2017. The village that had stood here had been burned to the ground during the “clearance operations” that year. Many declared genocide in 2017. An already hurting country self-immolated.

Rakhine State, with its rugged hills and dense forests, had long been a contested region for its strategic importance and natural resources. The Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, had been expanding its presence in the area for years, ostensibly to maintain order but in reality to solidify its control over the land. The military’’’s interest in Rakhine was not just about security; it was about economic control—ensuring access to the state’s rich natural resources and strategic coastline.

Army private Myo Win Tun had been one of the officers responsible for executing these operations.

“We were given clear orders,” he later admitted in an interview with a journalist who was able to meet him under the condition of anonymity. “The objective was to clear the area of terrorists, but it was understood that this meant removing the Rohingya entirely.”

Myanmar has historically regarded Rohingya Muslims as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, despite the fact that their families have resided in Myanmar for generations. Since 1982, nearly all have been stripped of citizenship, resulting in their effective statelessness. Additionally, they face severe restrictions on freedom of movement and are denied a range of fundamental rights.

As Tun describes to a journalist the operations he carried out with 19 other perpetrators in what had been deliberately planned in advance with clear directives, he said in one operation, they killed and buried 30 people: “eight women, seven children and 15 men and elderly.” A specific order was to “exterminate all Kalar” — a derogatory name for the Rohingya — and that they shot the men in their foreheads and kicked their bodies into a hole. Then, they raped the women before killing them, one at a time. Tun admits to raping at least one of them.

Tun, and other soldiers filmed on camera committing the atrocities which were obtained by human rights groups, claims the killings were sanctioned and ordered by his battalion commander, Lt. Col Myo Myint Aung.

Human rights group Fortify Rights, who gathered evidence from many of the militia and perpetrators of such crimes, stated that “Myanmar army is a well-functioning national army operating with a specific and centralized command structure where commanders control, direct, and order their subordinates in all they do. In this case, commanders ordered foot soldiers to commit genocidal acts and exterminate Rohingya, and that’s exactly what they did.”

Indeed, the organized “clearance” was an overwhelming success.

The organization behind these operations required careful, measured precision. Tun described how the military spent months planning the attacks, gathering intelligence, and coordinating with local Rakhine militias. The strategy was not only methodical but both highly secretive and, ironically, wildly open simultaneously.

“Everything was mapped out in advance,” he said. “We knew which villages to target, when to strike, and how to cover it up.”

The “clearance” of Rohingya villages was not just about physical destruction or claiming of land, though this was, of course, a major element. But it was also about erasing any trace of Rohingya existence.

“After we cleared a village, we would bulldoze the area to make sure nothing was left,” Tun explained. “Then we built outposts or gave the land to Rakhine settlers.”

The goal, he said, was “total extermination.”

The Tatmadaw’s methods, rooted in the military’s long history of counter-insurgency operations, was, all things considered, quite smooth. It was not, by any means, a sporadic burst of hate-instigated violence.

In Rakhine State, predictably, existed an integral division of ethnic and religious disparities, primarily fueled by decades of propaganda that portrayed the Rohingya as illegal guests. Then, as unwelcome breachers. Then, as illegal invaders. Dangerous invaders. Murderous, violent invaders not to be trusted and who many decided, after the right dose of organized propaganda, must go back from where they came from, or get rid of them entirely. For protection, of course. For extermination.

In this sense, the persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar was beyond a military operation of strict military interest or public safety, despite the propagating which at times suggested otherwise; it was a state-sponsored campaign, over time, reinforced by laws and policies that stripped the Rohingya of their rights to facilitate their total erasure.

It is, perhaps, the oldest trick in the book. Why generate new ways of persecution, discrimination, hate, and racist ideology when the classic means of simple scare tactics on a frightened and vulnerable nation are so wildly successful? If only countering misinformation and hate were as easy as propagating it. But, of course, the natural human reaction is built for scapegoating. We are hard-wired for it to protect our own. At whatever cost. Even when we know it’s wrong. Even if under the guise of religion or, perhaps even worse – morality.

Tun is not the first to chuckle at this – at the ease of manipulation, which is so simple that one can’t help but chuckle. And for Tun, the operation was not only successful but by 2018, the vast majority of the Rohingya who had lived in northern Rakhine were either dead or had fled to Bangladesh. And the most silent and passive, citing an existential threat that had otherwise not existed just years prior? Buddhist monks – arguably the most peace-loving of all.

“Morality is relative,” said Tun. “It’s made up. To reassure oneself that their own selfishness and disregard for others is justified. We capitalize on that.”

The land once inhabited by Rohingya was now under the total control of the military, with new settlements being established to ensure they could never return.

“It was a duty to protect our country,” he continued. “The Rohingya were, and are, a threat to our national security. We did what was necessary to neutralize that threat, and I can’t apologize for it.”

But behind his words lay a brutal reality.

The organization of genocide in Myanmar, to be clear, was never about reshaping the country’s identity into something more prosperous and new. It was about erasing those who were already there and had existed for dozens if not hundreds of years but did not fit into the Tatmadaw’s vision for Myanmar and the pursuit of making Myanmar a place of greatness.

Rakhine State, said Tun, would redeem itself, not through apology – but through elimination.

Annihilation.

In May 2022, Mohammed Rafique sat on a plastic chair outside his shelter in the sprawling Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. He was 27 years old but looked much older, the toll of years in the camp evident in the deep lines on his face. Rafique had fled Myanmar in 2017, escaping the violence that had consumed his village in Buthidaung Township.

Since arriving in Bangladesh, Rafique had become one of the many voices speaking out about the atrocities committed against the Rohingya. He often shared his story with journalists and human rights workers who visited the camp, hoping that his testimony might bring some measure of justice. “I want the world to know what happened to us,” he said. “We were not terrorists. We were farmers, teachers, students. They tried to erase us.”

Rafique’s village had been one of the first targeted in the Tatmadaw’s “clearance operations” in August 2017. The soldiers arrived in the early hours of the morning, their approach heralded by the sound of helicopter gunships overhead. “They came with guns, torches, everything,” Rafique recounted. “They surrounded us, set fire to the houses, and started shooting.”

Rafique had managed to escape into the surrounding jungle, but many of his neighbors were not so lucky. “They killed everyone they found,” he said. “Men, women, children. It didn’’’t matter. They wanted us gone.” After days of hiding and moving through the forest, Rafique eventually made it to the border with Bangladesh, where he joined the thousands of other Rohingya refugees making the perilous journey to safety.

Even in the relative safety of the refugee camp, Rafique’s life was far from easy. The conditions in the camps were dire, with overcrowding, disease, and a lack of basic services making survival a daily struggle. But for Rafique, the greatest pain came from the uncertainty of the future. “We can’t go back, but we can’t stay here forever,” he said. “We are trapped between two worlds, with no place to call home.”

The camp at Cox’s Bazar is one of the largest refugee camps in the world, a sprawling maze of bamboo and tarpaulin shelters that house over a million Rohingya refugees. The air is thick with the smell of cooking fires, mingling with the stench of open sewage. The narrow paths between the shelters are crowded with people, many children who have known nothing but life in the camp. For Rafique, the camp is both a place of refuge and a prison, a constant reminder of what he has lost and may never regain.

Sometime in 2021, Rafique recalls, word first spread across the camp of a coup. Some had seen it go “viral” through social media – a fitness influencer, they said. “But who cares of these matters when one is starving?” said Rafique.

Initially, the overthrowing of Aung Suu Kyi in the coup – the now defamed “peace advocate” and leader who fell from grace in her complicity against the Rohingya for more than 5 years, seemed a welcome change. Perhaps complicity would come to an end.

This hope was short-lived. It was the Myanmar army itself who overthrew Kyi and her circle of equally corrupt supporters. The military’s seizure of power demonstrated its continued willingness to bypass legal and democratic processes to maintain control, and its uncanny ability to continue to get away with it. And yet, the military, who faced minimal to no consequences for the genocide to this point, emboldened its belief that it could act with impunity, including seizing political power. Because…why not?

The instability ushered in by the takeover since hindered international and domestic efforts to hold the military accountable for the genocide or improve conditions for the Rohingya. While the coup and persecution of Rohingya are different manifestations of the same underlying problem, the Tatmadaw’s dominance and disregard for human rights carry the same organizational strategy and with startling success.

As far back as 2017, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the crisis as “the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency…a humanitarian nightmare.”

The same month, the mass graves started to be uncovered.

“But they won’t call it what it is,” Rafique claimed, tears in his eyes.

Guterres’ assertion came in 2017 after over 700,000 Rohingya were forced to flee. (As of today, the number is well over 900,000.)

“To here,” says Rafique. “To the eternal waiting room. To the holding room where we wait to die.”

The Myanmar military brushed the numbers off as “mass volunteer deportation.”

Rafique, staring into the distance with the flames of his village still in his eyes, quietly whispered: “Genocide. It’s genocide.”

In July 2022, two months after Rafique’s interview in which he reported conditions in Cox’s Bazar, a report from Reuters revealed an extensive plan by Tatmadaw to eradicate the Rohingyas, calling the deliberate organization of militia to systematically eradicate the Rohingya population a crime against humanity.

Less than a month later, Myanmar government and its commanding officers were charged with genocide.

Rafique never got to see the day that Myanmar government was charged with genocide, however.

Two days before the announcement, he succumbed to starvation and exhaustion and died alone during the night, his body buried in an overcrowded burial site nearby, with other refugees praying over him in a Salat al-Janazah (funeral prayer) before his final burial.

The need to call a genocide genocide is perhaps one of the most central problems with the crime itself. At times, we are too hesitant to call it out. Other times, we use it too loosely, diminishing its power. But to prosecute the crime of genocide, which historically has been incredibly difficult to do, one must prove intention. And perhaps no stage of genocide exemplifies intent more than that of stage 5: organization.

This fifth stage involves a key element of genocide that is often used to draw the line between what is and isn’t genocide itself, and thus is a stage of critical importance, with the element being systematic.

According to Stanton’s Ten Stages of Genocide, organization is defined as follows:

Genocide is organized by the state or terrorist group. Special army units or militias are often trained and armed. Plans are made for deliberate genocidal killing. Systematic planning and coordination of actions that will lead to the ultimate goal of genocide: the destruction of a targeted group. Unlike earlier stages, which spontaneous or isolated acts of violence may characterize, organization is methodical. It is during this stage that the mechanisms of genocide are put in place—militias are trained and armed, propaganda is disseminated, and logistical support is secured.

In the context of Myanmar, the organization of genocide against the Rohingya was evident long before the violence erupted in 2017. The Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, played a central role in this process. For years, the military had been preparing for what it termed “clearance operations” in Rakhine State. These operations were framed as counter-insurgency efforts aimed at eliminating the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a small militant group. However, the scale and scope of the military’s actions far exceeded what would be necessary to combat a group of insurgents.

The military’s use of fire as a weapon of terror was particularly effective, as it not only destroyed homes and livelihoods but also left behind a scorched landscape that would be difficult for survivors to return to.

It’s important to note, however, that organization is not always, well, “organized” in the traditional sense. It can be layered, complex, and sometimes only partially successful. Of course, think less of this stage (as any stage) as a singular or isolated event, and more as a piece of a much larger process; without it, genocide is incomplete; but isolated, it is insufficient to constitute genocide. That said, organization of the genocide in Myanmar was not limited to the actions of the Tatmadaw alone. The government of Myanmar, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, played a crucial role in legitimizing the violence. State media outlets propagated the narrative that the Rohingya were illegal immigrants and a threat to national security. This narrative served to dehumanize the Rohingya and justify the military’s actions in the eyes of the broader population.

It makes sense then, that the organization stage follows closely after the dehumanization stage, for which so many other elements of genocide depend.

It is critical to note, however, that by stage five, we are unfortunately beyond a mere crossroads. Serious intervention is essential and still not guaranteed to stop genocide. The mechanisms of killing are already in place, and the killings are already occurring in this stage. We are halfway through the stages, but our opportunity to act diminishes by the day. That said, it is never too late to limit further destruction, and it is the obligation of the international community to act and respond when blatant planning and organization takes place center stage in a location like Myanmar with genocidal killings worsening.

The events in Myanmar serve as a case study in how the organization stage of genocide can be recognized and, potentially, prevented. That is, the warning signs were there long before the violence erupted in 2017—decades of discrimination, dehumanization, and propaganda had laid the groundwork for what was to come. The international community’s failure to act in the face of these warning signs allowed the situation to escalate to the point of genocide even further.

While the situation may seem hopeless as the stages progress, I’d encourage a shift in thinking – a shift closer to how we can recognize and learn from these later stages in which the process of killing has begun, and how they are connected to the earlier stages that are much more preventable. Recognizing the organization stage of genocide requires vigilance and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. It involves identifying the early signs of planning and coordination, such as the formation of militias, the stockpiling of weapons, and the dissemination of propaganda. It also requires an understanding of the social and political context in which genocide can occur, including the role of government institutions and the media in perpetuating hatred and inciting violence.

That’s a lot for one person. So let’s start elsewhere.

In the broader sense, the organization stage of genocide is a reminder of the importance of early intervention. Once the mechanisms of genocide are in place, it becomes much more difficult to stop the violence. Preventing genocide requires a proactive approach, one that addresses the root causes of discrimination and violence before they escalate into full-blown genocide. And we can start at home.

The following are specific actions that can be taken both on the individual and collective level to recognize and prevent genocide at the organization stage, and to advocate for and protect the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar and in refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Myanmar Foreign Minister San Suu Kyi Listens to Secretary Kerry Address Reporters during a News Conference following their Bilateral Meeting in Naypyitaw

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Myanmar Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi listens to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as he addresses reporters during a news conference that followed their bilateral meeting on May 22, 2016, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Naypyitaw, Myanmar. (State Department photo/ Public Domain). Original public domain image from Flickr

In a world where words hold significant power, Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence has become as loud as any speech.

In mid-2024, she was moved from prison cell to house arrest, where she sits today, separated from the world she once moved, her legacy under intense scrutiny and shame. The Nobel laureate’s fall from grace and subsequent silence today speaks to the fluidity and temporary nature of the organization of power, its ability to shape narratives, and its cold determination to suppress dissent.

And in this, there might be a strange semblance of hope. As fast as organization can form, it can also be dismantled.

In a recent speech delivered by Myanmar’s current military junta leader, General Min Aung Hlaing, the rhetoric was as harsh as one would expect. From the frontlines of an ongoing battle for legitimacy, he announced, “The country will rebuild, but only under the full control of those who know how to protect it.” These words, heavy with the promise of military rule, reflected not just a statement of power, but a preview of the organization stage still at work, still perpetuating genocide and normalizing persecution and exclusion.

The military junta has proven skilled at consolidating its control, from purging opposition voices to establishing a narrative that justifies their total dominance.

Yet, cracks are beginning to show even in the face of this overwhelming power. First small, then large.

While the general’s speech echoed through the halls of the military complex, a small but defiant group of civilians gathered quietly outside the walls. Nameless, they hold their banners—simple, minimal, but loud—read: “We are not afraid.”

We are not afraid.

Every day, more and more civilians continue to find ways to utilize whatever utility they have left, both Rohingya and non. Their actions—whether online or on the streets—or even in the traditional burial of Rafique, who never lived to see the genocide labeled for what it truly was – reflect the quiet rebellion of a population unwilling to be silenced.

Challenges of justice, peace, and accountability remain, to be sure.

But even in death, there is choice – the refusal to accept a narrative of dehumanization; the refusal to let organized corruption consume, but rather to organize, collectively, fiercely. Every social media post, every march, every petition, every time a person in Myanmar or across the world speaks out against the organized oppression, it weakens the grip of those in power who, as all genocidaires do, wait and watch. Inaction IS permission. It is, perhaps, the small, individual actions, the ones that might seem insignificant to some, that will and have, in time, built a stronger foundation for a new Myanmar.

The story of former Burma is a story unfinished. One can sense it in the history alone. It’s an opportunity to create a new history – one that, unlike the speeches of old, will not and cannot be dictated solely by those who intend to chisel away at humanity for their own gain – or in the case of Myanmar militia, the cowardly fear of an “other” whose culture outlives even the boldest of Tatmadwa – and instead, by those who believe in the power of unity; by those who believe in the power of redemption; by those who believe in the power of cohesion, while rejecting separation.

To learn more about the ongoing genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar, or the ten stages of genocide, visit genocidewatch.com/tenstages or amnesty.org.

We’re halfway through the ten stages. I thought, back in December of 2023, when I first wrote on Darfur, I would have ten stages written in ten weeks. Ha. Since then, I’ve followed my heart and my passion and combined two of the most important issues to me: education and genocide prevention, as I am now pursing an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Gratz College. It might be time to change my bio here, and the initial post in 2023 when I said I could never be a scholar on the subject, that all I could do was English. I remember feeling an odd sense of shame and serious self-doubt about even mentioning the subject. I thought I was restricted in what I could do as an educator, that I had to resist AI, interdisciplinary learning, and openness to a new way of instruction. So much has changed since then, and you can see it even in the materials in the Resources page (hence, many are gone, and in the process of revamping!)

This past year I’ve learned about five countries with incredible people, unbelievable resilience, and unfortunately in dire need of support. Our country in the US, is suffering too, though in far more privileged and different ways. However, I encourage people this holiday season, as the year ends and we try one more time for a new beginning, to lean into optimism – and with that said, to not turn a blind eye to the atrocities of the world, because to do so is to turn a blind eye to humanity, and to reject love.

Love was never meant to be easy. But turning away, ignoring – it’s not turning a blind eye to the horror or to the perpetrators. It’s giving them a pass and rejecting the innocent. We cannot accept a world where that is the norm. We do so at a terrible, terrible cost that affects all of us. I encourage readers to be brave enough to face injustices, even when. it doesn’t affect you immediately, even if you have no knowledge of it. There’s only one way to gain it: Face it. Learn it. Face yourself. Challenge your beliefs. Change the narratives you have instilled in you and have the tough conversations about why they’re there. Change a mind. Change your mind. Just change something. There are five stages on this website, with at least 10 actions for each stage, all meant for everyday people just like me and you. That’s FIFTY ACTIONS! Take one at a time, and show the perpetrators of the world that we ARE listening, that we WON’T tolerate genocide, and that we choose LOVE. Every time. No matter what.

We have such limited time on this Earth. To waste it on racial hate, prejudice, bigotry, and resulting violence – is to destroy your own humanity before anyone’s. Because love prevails either way, and remember: It doesn’t have to be doom and gloom. Make the narrative one of hope. Because if you asked Rafique in Myanmar, Miriam in Darfur, Paul in Rwanda, the women in Afghanistan, or Bo and her sister reunited at last in Cambodia before Ly Siv moved back to making the best donuts on the west side of Houston – the ONLY narrative is hope.

Thank you to those 30 people or so who subscribed and read these posts. I know it’s not a popular subject, and not exactly light reading, but it means the world not just to me, but to the 50 million innocent lives taken by genocide and the millions more who survived and only wish to see a world in which it’s eradicated. Thank you to those who have downloaded the curriculum. For those who may not have time to read or engage completely, but have supported my passion and my project; to those who told me to take a step back and a break – my parents, my friends, former teacher friends – thank you. And to the millions of brave men, women, and children who have both perished tragically at the hands of preventable genocide, and the survivors who spoke to me and shared their stories on Reddit, in classrooms, and in testimony from the Shoah Foundation and more – thank you.

We have five more stages to go. And I think readers will enjoy a new take on how the next five stages are structured come 2025.

For now, I can say that for the sixth post (in 2025), we’ll be exploring a stage that – well, doesn’t seem like a stage – but rather the everyday reality of life all over the world, and most recently, the U.S. in particular – that is, stage 6: polarization.

The case study is Bosnia/Srebrenica, with genocide occurring from April 1992 to November 1995.

Until then, happy holidays and Merry Christmas.

And thank you again for reading, listening, or both.

Follow the stages at stagesofchange.org.

Aldred, John. “Fitness Instructor Obliviously Captures Myanmar Military Coup on Video While Dancing Away.” DIY Photography, 2 Feb. 2021, http://www.diyphotography.net/fitness-instructor-obliviously-captures-myanmar-military-coup-on-video-while-dancing-away/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

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Bhattacharyya, Rajeev. “Investigation: What Happened at Buthidaung Town in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.” Thediplomat.com, The Diplomat, 8 Oct. 2024, thediplomat.com/2024/10/investigation-what-happened-at-buthidaung-town-in-myanmars-rakhine-state/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

“Breaking Away: The Battle for Myanmar’s Rakhine State | Crisis Group.” Crisisgroup.org, 27 Aug. 2024, http://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/339-breaking-away-battle-myanmars-rakhine-state. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

Diamond, Cape. “Viral Woman Who Danced through Myanmar Coup Tells Us What Happened.” VICE, 3 Feb. 2021, http://www.vice.com/en/article/woman-danced-through-myanmar-coup-what-happened/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

Finnegan, Conor. “3 Years Later, US Pressed to Declare Rohingya Crisis “Genocide,” Hold Myanmar Accountable.” ABC News, 25 Aug. 2020, abcnews.go.com/Politics/years-us-pressed-declare-rohingya-crisis-genocide-hold/story?id=72522830. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

Holmes, Oliver. “Myanmar Blocks All UN Aid to Civilians at Heart of Rohingya Crisis.” The Guardian, The Guardian, 4 Sept. 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/04/myanmar-blocks-all-un-aid-to-civilians-at-heart-of-rohingya-crisis. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

Mon, Su. “Between Cooperation and Competition: The Struggle of Resistance Groups in Myanmar.” ACLED, 26 Nov. 2024, acleddata.com/2024/11/26/between-cooperation-and-competition-the-struggle-of-resistance-groups-in-myanmar/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

Mong, Attila. “Myanmar’s Military Weaponizes Disinformation against Media.” Deutsche Welle, 26 Mar. 2024, akademie.dw.com/en/how-myanmars-military-regime-weaponizes-disinformation-against-independent-media/a-68672257. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

“Myanmar Military Leaders Must Face Genocide Charges – UN Report.” UN News, 27 Aug. 2018, news.un.org/en/story/2018/08/1017802, https://doi.org/10/28258/image770x420cropped. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

“Myanmar: Aung San Suu Kyi in Shameful Defence of Reuters Journalists’ Conviction.” Amnesty International, 13 Sept. 2018, http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2018/09/myanmar-aung-san-suu-kyi-in-shameful-defence-of-reuters-journalists-conviction/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

“Myanmar: Government Rohingya Report Falls Short.” Human Rights Watch, 22 Jan. 2020, http://www.hrw.org/news/2020/01/22/myanmar-government-rohingya-report-falls-short. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

“Myanmar: UN Experts Call for “Course Correction” as Civilian Deaths Reach 6,000.” UN News, 2 Dec. 2024, news.un.org/en/story/2024/12/1157666. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

News, BBC. “Aung San Suu Kyi: Myanmar Democracy Icon Who Fell from Grace.” BBC News, 3 Nov. 2010, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11685977. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

—. “Tatmadaw: Myanmar’s Notoriously Brutal Military.” Bbc.com, BBC News, 2 Feb. 2022, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56660483. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

News, PBS. “Myanmar Army Deserters Confirm Atrocities against Rohingya.” PBS News, 8 Sept. 2020, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/myanmar-army-deserters-confirm-atrocities-against-rohingya. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

Paddock, Richard C. “From Hero to Pariah, Aung San Suu Kyi Dashes Hopes about Myanmar.” Nytimes.com, The New York Times, 29 Sept. 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/world/asia/myanmar-aung-san-suu-kyi-rohingya.html. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

“Refugee Camp Cox’s Bazar – Bangladesh | Malteser-International.” Malteser-International.org, 2024, http://www.malteser-international.org/en/our-work/asia/bangladesh/life-in-a-refugee-camp.html. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

Sampson, Eve. “Who Is Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing of Myanmar?” Nytimes.com, The New York Times, 27 Nov. 2024, http://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/world/asia/min-aung-hlaing-myanmar.html. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

“Secretary-General Deeply Concerned by Increasing Violence across Myanmar | Meetings Coverage and Press Releases.” Un.org, 6 June 2024, press.un.org/en/2024/sgsm22257.doc.htm#:~:text=The%20Secretary%2DGeneral%20is%20deeply,Rakhine%20State%20and%20Sagaing%20Region. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

Slow, Oliver. “Myanmar: Aung San Suu Kyi given Three More Years for “Election Fraud.”” Bbc.com, BBC News, 2 Sept. 2022, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-62763419. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

Special Reports. “New Evidence Shows How Myanmar’s Military Planned the Rohingya Purge.” Reuters, 22 July 2022, http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-rohingya-warcrimes-investigation/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

“State Counsellor – National Unity Government of Myanmar.” Nugmyanmar.org, 2024, nugmyanmar.org/state-counsellor/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

The. “Nay Pyi Taw | Burmese, Administrative Hub, Government Center.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 7 May 2008, http://www.britannica.com/place/Nay-Pyi-Taw. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

“The Nobel Peace Prize 1991.” NobelPrize.org, 2024, http://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1991/kyi/facts/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

USCRI. “A Glimpse at Camp Life in Cox’s Bazar: Examining Aid Response.” USCRI, 13 Apr. 2023, refugees.org/a-glimpse-at-camp-life-in-coxs-bazar-examining-aid-response-and-distilling-solutions/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

“What Forces Are Fueling Myanmar’s Rohingya Crisis?” Council on Foreign Relations, 2017, http://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/rohingya-crisis. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

“What Forces Are Fueling Myanmar’s Rohingya Crisis?” Council on Foreign Relations, 2017, http://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/rohingya-crisis. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

Please Note: The following blog post contains descriptions and narratives of violence and genocide, as well as an analysis of human behavior relating to sensitive topics, including racism, intolerance, sexual violence, physical violence, death, and genocidal acts. Some images and details may be disturbing or upsetting to readers, including graphic imagery. Please be mindful of the content before continuing.

Visit Mental Health America’s site for information on mental health, getting help, and taking action.

The following is part of a series of blog posts concerning genocide and the ten stages of genocide outlined by Gregory H. Stanton. The purpose is not only to raise awareness of the multiple genocides from the past and the present but to provide a set of actions within realistic time constraints that you can take immediately to promote change, prevention, and tolerance. Each week covers a different stage of genocide, with a specific country or region in focus that has or is currently experiencing genocide. It concludes with an analysis of how that stage is or was evident in the featured genocide and what actions can be taken specifically to work against it.

Dehumanization is the fourth stage of genocide.

The case study is Rwanda, with genocide occurring from April 7th, 1994 to July 15th, 1994.

From an undisclosed residence in San Antonio, Texas, human rights activist Paul Rusesabagina, now 70 years old, sits poised, polished, and prepared as Christiane Amanpour of CNN introduces him to viewers as they meet remotely by video.

Amanpour’s introduction begins in a similar way that most of Rusesabagina’s introductions – the “real-life hero of Hotel Rwanda,” they say, referring to the 2004 film centered on Rusesabagina’s lifesaving efforts of 1,268 Tutsi refugees from certain death by the Interhamwe during the 100-day genocide.

Interahamwe, translated as “those who attack together,” was a militia that often recruited unemployed young men who banded together, armed with machetes, grenades, and guns as the civil war in Rwanda worsened and in preparation for the country’s ultimate tipping point in April of 1994.

Rusesabagina outsmarted them.

Of the 1,268 Rwandans seeking refuge in his hotel – the Hotel des Mille Collines in Rwandan’s capital of Kigali – all 1,268 survived, uninjured and unharmed. It’s a remarkable story.

However, following the genocide, Rusesabagina found himself at odds with President Paul Kagame, a commander of the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a major party in the Rwandan Civil War which was the larger backdrop in which the genocide took place. They were also the party that ended the genocide with military victory.

Under Kagame’s initial vice presidency and subsequent presidency in 2000, retribution killings of Hutus were commonplace, and attacks back and forth between Hutu refugees in nearby Zaire and Tutsis in Rwanda led to two rebel wars, the first returning Zaire to its former state, which today is one of the quintessential examples of genocide: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Since then, his rule has become increasingly authoritarian, silencing critics and repressing free speech.

However, upon researching the state of Rwanda today, none of this is immediately apparent. Stories of forgiveness, hope, rebirth, camaraderie, and peace are the resounding narratives. Furthermore, armed with the knowledge that Kagame has been accused of, and evidence has pointed to, direct involvement of the RPF in DRC as a means of exploiting the production of cobalt, copper, diamonds, and gold, this sobering reality gives Hotel Rwanda’s theme song, “Million Voices,” an almost ironic touch with the line: “There’s no money, no diamonds, no fortunes / On this planet that can replace Rwanda.”

Except in DRC.

Several years ago, Rusesabagina , after speaking out loudly and publicly against Kagame’s controversial influence and “inciting terror,” was tricked into flying from Dubai to what he thought was Burundi. Instead he landed in the heart of Rwanda again – Kigali, where he was arrested, imprisoned, and found guilty on terrorism charges. He was commuted two years later following international outrage and has since lived in San Antonio as well as Belgium.

Now, Rusesabagina, centered on screen for his interview with CNN, straightens his tie, clears his throat, and listens as the interviewer’s introduction finishes.

“Can you remind us,” Amanpour asks, “what you did 30 years ago during the genocide? How did you do it?”

He explains with seemingly rote memorization the story of rescue, understandably synthesized and simplified for broadcast. But with the knowledge of his kidnapping, his harrowing experience in prison, overcrowded with thousands upon thousands of Hutus who still have not been tried for their crimes in 1994, it’s impossible not to wonder what else lies beneath the surface of his words, and the words of all of Rwanda.

“The killing never stopped,” he says.

Amanpour acts surprised

If the phrase sounds familiar, it was echoed in the first post of this site, in Darfur, when Mariam uttered the same phrase two decades after the genocide in Darfur: “The killing never stopped.”

Researching the country’s history and current political and social landscape is dizzying; Some villainize Kagame; some call him genocidal, while others point to Rusesabagina, and others to vengeful Tutsis, or the U.N., who points to France, who points to the U.S., who forgets what the point even is.

But if there is one element of the 100-day period of genocide that indisputably left a lasting imprint on the minds of Hutus and Tutsis alike in Rwanda, it was the words that came from the airwaves.

“The cockroaches, the snakes, the vermin’‘ the Rwandan radio station would repeat. “Extermination is the only option for subhumans, for cockroaches.”

When Amanpour mentions the words, and utters the phrases – ‘cockroaches’ – you can see the revulsion in Rusesabagina’s eyes. After watching hours of eyewitness testimony, this is the case with every survivor, whether perpetrator or victim. The word has been seared into Rwanda’s worst period of history.

Upon continuing, Rusesabagina is hesitant to voice as loudly his disdain for Kagame while at the same time, he describes the dehumanizing conditions forced upon thousands of cramped prisoners where he spent two and a half years in the prison, eating, he says, “one meal a day, every day, of only beans and corn,” and suggesting that the situation is beyond that of justice and reconciliation, and instead yet another humanitarian crisis.

Changing subjects, Amanpour studies him intently and asks when providing refuge for those who escaped death in Rwanda so many years ago, “How did you know who was there? Hutu? Tutsis? Who they were? How did you know?”

“I did not need to know that they were Hutu or Tutsi,” he responds flatly. “The most important part to know was that they were human beings.”

Amanpour is slightly taken aback.

“I was helping human beings. That is all.”

Sunshine is uncommon in Rwanda.

Rains – often in the form of heavy downpours and violent storms – create a fitting atmosphere for much of Rwanda given its dark history. The tropical climate, however, tends to feel pleasant, in part because of its high altitude, one of the many contradictions that exist within the country.

The wettest month is April.

The Rwandan genocide as we know it began on April 7th, 1994, and April 7th exists today as the International Day of Remembrance for the Rwandan Genocide.

Misty, mountainous, and lush with green, expansive forests and hillsides, Rwanda is the smallest country in Africa, yet its population of nearly 7 million gives an illusion of scale.

On June 19th, 1994, the French government, which had previously supplied substantial military support to the Hutu-led and genocidal government of Rwanda, announced that they would organize “safe zones” within certain areas of Rwanda. The plan was called Operation Turquoise.

On the outside, it was meant to save Tutsi lives from the massacres taking place (albeit two months too late for hundreds of thousands), yet what went on inside the French “safe zones” was, at best, unhelpful. At worst, collaborative in favor of Tutsi elimination.

The Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front, or RPF, was a primary target for France. For those inside Rwandan borders, it became all too obvious that the French were not going to save them, just after they were abandoned by the Belgian and, subsequently, United Nations peacekeeping forces.

“We naively thought that the white man was a savior, that he would bring peace.”

The confession is uttered with resignation in 2020, by Concessa Musabyimana. She, along with Jeanne Murekatete and Prisca Mushimiyimana, have advocated for justice against the French military forces who, according to testimony, made the genocide exponentially worse, especially for Tutsi women.

Allegations of French complicity assert that French soldiers allowed Interahamwe to escape to bordering Zaire (now DRC), to avoid RPF resistance.

For Prisca, Marie-Jeanne, and Concessa, what was supposed to be an act of rescue turned into a worsening nightmare that elevated dehumanization beyond words, beyond the radios.

Toward the end of their visit in 2020, in which the three women re-trace their steps and bear witness to the unimaginable crimes committed against them, they visit the Murambi Memorial, the site where some 50,000 Tutsis were murdered by the Hutu militia. ‘

As part of Operation Turquoise, French soldiers came to Murambi in early July of 1994.

As mist blurs the mountainous terrain around them, the sky highlighting only the rows of former classrooms turned refugee camps in 1994, Concessa and Prisca walk through the entrance gates, holding hands.

Even through a screen, you can see their grip tightening as they walk past the gates, down the manicured path, and into the mist-covered, low-ceilinged rows of buildings that resemble barracks, uniformly spaced on each side of one another. It is an eerie mirror of what one might imagine in a camp like Auschwitz.

“This is where they brought people with their arms and legs cut off with machetes,” Prisca recalls, pointing to one of the first buildings. Inside are shelves full of worn clothing, those of the deceased filling one building and another, then another. “The people…they were crammed into small rooms. Then they’d [the French soldiers] come in and choose which girls they wanted. They’d call us over, shouting, ‘Tutsi, come here!’….we had no choice.”

The memory overwhelms her, and she lowers herself, one knee at a time, to the ground, her head collapsing into her hands as she recalls the brutal rapes that took place there. The other women surround her, caressing her back as she sobs, as if to say, “We know….It’s okay. We know.”

Shortly after, Marie-Jeanne goes on to describe the horror of being captured in a nearby trench after managing to escape machete-wielding Hutu militia who had discovered her and dozens of others. She recalls holding her baby, clinging to him in a desperate attempt to escape, only to be taken down, assaulted with a metal rod repeatedly, to theh point that other Hutu fighters were appalled and begged her assailant to stop. “It’s too much,” they said. “That’s too far.”

She was unable to close her legs afterward, and Hutu left her for dead where she managed to survive for three days before crawling with only her arms to a place of temporary refuge.

The Tutsis, in the eyes of Hutus and even the French, no longer had human faces. They were to be used and discarded like trash.

Eliminated like a virus.

Exterminated like cockroaches.

Six years earlier, in a special event at the United Nations in New York for Holocaust remembrance and genocide prevention, Rwandan genocide survivor Eugenie Mukeshimana spoke to U.N. members with an accent that is warm and motherly, with an expression that is firm and resolute.

Though the speech was given ten years ago, it holds equal relevance today, and it serves as a point of reflection for how far we have or have not come in terms of reducing the “others,” the “them,” to inferiority and subhuman status.

Indeed, the words of Mukeshimana are timeless.

She reflects on her experience growing up as a child in war-torn Rwanda.

The school bus became a playground for bullies who bullied all the Tutsi students on the bus. They came to our faces and said, ‘You are cockroaches. You are a snake. We can kill you right now and nobody will ask about you.’

Later, I would pass these soldiers who were guarding the national radio station. So many soldiers carrying guns. And they said the same thing: ‘Look at them. Where do you come from? What are you doing here? We will get you someday.’ These words that came from soldiers that were supposed to protect me as a citizen of Rwanda…that echoed the bullies I met on the school bus, that equated the same words of Interahamwe militiamen, echoing, chanting: ‘We will exterminate you!’

How did we get there?”

Radio Mille Collines – Radio of a Thousand Hills – or most commonly, RTLM, was the first to broadcast the news on the evening of April 6th.

“It is 7.35 a.m. here in Kigali. They will be struck misfortune. , they will be struck by misfortune, they will indeed be struck by misfortune…Aren’t they responsible for killing them? However, this moment, at this very minute, people living in Rugunga, themselves are being struck by misfortune this hour, at this moment I am talking about those living over there in Kanogo, those living fact, those living in Mburabuturo, look in the woods of Mburabuturo, at to you! You the in Kanogo, look carefully and see whether there are no Inyenzis inside. Inyenzis inside ….”

With the death of Habyarimana, Hutus in Rwanda, hungry for an opportunity to act on the terror they had already been planning and propagating through 24-hour hate speech on RTLM, signaled the commencement of carnage.

“Cut down the tall trees!” they shouted from the radio, “Cut down the tall trees!” (The Tutsi, despite few differences from Hutus, were often taller, which Hutus aimed to ‘“cut down” with machetes.)

Months before April 6th, young men had been steadily recruited into the Interahamwe. Guns were dispersed freely among them, along with new machetes from China and other weapons for the “self-defense” of Hutu officials.

“The Tutsi,” the broadcast continued, “have killed our president….Cut down the tall trees!”

Despite a lack of any evidence that Tutsis had taken down the plane that killed the president, the Tutsi-led RPF was immediately blamed. In response, the RPF claimed that Hutus in the Rwandan army had staged a coup and killed the president. Shortly before his death, the Arusha Accords, which would allow the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority to rule “side by side” in a peace effort, had been negotiated. On the morning of April 7th, it was clear that peace was no longer viable.

The widespread, inescapable killing began.

Miles of land were covered with dead bodies, with almost no grass or land visible in areas. In one village, at least 600 Tutsi were murdered within less than a single minute. The dramatic and quick turnaround from resentment to genocide within a day was in part so easily accomplished because of the pre-meditated and purposeful campaign of hate spearheaded by RTLM and Radio Rwanda.

Just before the brutality was unleashed, RTLM stated that all listeners were ordered to return to their homes as part of a mandatory curfew for the safety of civilians.

For Tutsi civilians, however, the march home was unknowingly a death march. The curfew was part of an orchestrated plan to make the killings more systematic, easy, and efficient.

Their plan worked.

Within hours, militiamen dispersed, kicked down doors, and shattered windows with their rifles, demanding identity cards that had just years before been assigned to all Rwandans, identifying civilians as Hutu or Tutsi. Here we see the process of the ten stages unfolding, with classification and symbolization weaponized for mass murder. From there, the sound of gunshots, machetes slashed into flesh, and cries of women, children, and men echoed across the otherwise still and silent landscape.

The militia immediately built roadblocks, and any Tutsi or moderate Hutus attempting to escape were butchered, typically in front of their families. Women were raped, and babies were shot and thrown onto piles of unrecognizable corpses on the sides of the road. The rivers soon overflowed with corpses.

As the carnage accelerated, RTLM continued playing, 24 hours per day.

“Notice to all cockroaches listening now: Rwanda belongs to those who defend it. And you, cockroaches, are not real Rwandans. Everybody is up in arms to defeat cockroaches. From our military officers to young people, adults, men, and women. So you understand, cockroaches have no way out. It’s our good luck that there are so few Tutsis in our country. They are no longer at 10% they are now at 8%. So… come and rejoice friends. Cockroaches are no more. Come and rejoice, friends, God is merciful. If we exterminate all the cockroaches, nobody will judge us because we will be the winners.”

Anthemic music soon accompanied the RTLM rhetoric, with words turned to joyful singing, a haunting melody dancing across the misty forests of Rwanda, into the ears of Interahamwe. Into the ears of Tutsis.

“Come and rejoice friends!

Inktanyi have been exterminated.

Come and rejoice friends!

God is merciful!

God is merciful!

We must get rid of them

It’s the only solution.

Sing with me!

Sing with me!”

Cockroaches. Vermin. Snakes. Swine.

In the context of tragedy on such a grand scale, it seems insufficient to mention the obvious: Words matter.

In the case of Rwanda, and in the case of all genocides in which the fourth stage is evident, specific words take on new meanings and new purposes. Dehumanization can certainly be a form of hate speech, but at the level of genocide, it is beyond hate. It is methodical, and a tool for a particular crime in the genocidal process: incitement.

In his “Ten Stages of Genocide” document, Gregory Stanton defines the fourth stage and clarifies its role in genocide:

One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects, or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder. The powerless group can become so depersonalized that they are given numbers rather than names, as Jews were in the death camps. They are equated with filth, impurity, and immorality. Hate speech fuels the propaganda of official radio, newspapers, and speeches.”

When RTLM was first introduced in 1990, it created a sense of community that was otherwise lacking in Rwanda. It also made news accessible, and opinions permissable. With much of the population illiterate and few with televisions, the radio became, according to Tutsi survivor and memoir writer, a magnetic point of togetherness: bright, warm light, where crowds, families, and groups of like-minded friends would gather, drawn to the airwaves, “like moths to a flame,” unaware of the devastating role it would play in just a few years.

But it’s also insufficient to focus solely on the RTLM broadcasts, particularly because of its late development and introduction into Rwandan society. In fact, deep within the 457-page document produced by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s prosecution including specifically the evidence, testimony, and transcripts extracted from RTLM, man of the Chamber examines a recording from December 1993, just months before the genocide officially began, but preceded by decades of civil warfare between Hutus and Tutsis alike. The official response reads as follows:

The Chamber notes that in the RTLM broadcasts highlighted above, there is a complex interplay between ethnic and political dynamics. This interplay was not creatcd by RTLM. It is to some degree a reflection of the history of Rwanda…and the inequality of Hutus often treated as second-class citizens. In light of the history of Rwanda, the Chamber accepts that this was a valid concern about which a need for public discussion was perceived.”

Indeed, the method of execution by Hutu extremists in the genocide suggest a narrative that goes beyond pointing all the blame at RTLM. Rest assured: two of the journalists were jailed and sentenced to life imprisonment by Rwanda’s Criminal Tribunal following the overwhelming evidence that takes up at least 150 pages of the prosecution’s court records.

But dehumanization can take many forms beyond names, beyond words, and beyond hate speech and “animalistic” associations. The particularly violent and horrific sexual assault suffered by Marie-Jeanne at Murambai is an example of this. “Subhuman” is included in Stanton’s definition of this fourth stage of genocide, and more importantly, regardless of the type of dehumanization, they serve the same purpose: to deny the individual of their humanity. This particular form of genocide, which includes physical abuse and a total lack of empathy for the individual, is also referred to as mechanistic dehumanization. And it’s not just evident in Rwanda: it’s a consistent step toward worsening crisis in every genocide. It seems that often, animalistic dehumanization in a verbal sense incites not only genocide, but permission for perpetrators and abusers to commit mechanistic dehumanization in response.

But to return to the point made by the Chamber in Rwanda’s Criminal Tribunal, the “complex interplay between ethnic and political dynamics” is a historical one, even one “in need of public discussion.”

With this in mind, we can return to Eugenie Mukeshimana’s testimony to the United Nations when she recalled the “bullying” of both Hutu militias and other children on her schoolbus calling her a “snake” and a “cockroach” to be exterminated and killed, where “nobody will care.”

Eugenie asks, “How did we get there?”

To understand this, we have to consider the historical roots of ethnic differences in Rwanda, and recognize the uncomfortable and often unpopular reality that, above all, choices throughout history has the potential for great change, or terrible devastation. In order to face this truth, and to advocate and practice real change, we must first face our choices.

The ethnic divisions in Rwanda, which culminated in the horrific events of 1994, were not inevitable; they were cultivated over time, deeply rooted in the colonial past and socio-political structures imposed by external powers. The distinctions between the Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa were not always as rigid as they became in the 20th century. In f act, before colonial intervention, these groups were more fluid social categories rather than distinct ethnicities.

In pre-colonial Rwanda, the terms “Hutu” and “Tutsi” were primarily associated with social class rather than ethnicity. The Tutsi were generally cattle herders, a sign of wealth and status, while the Hutu were primarily agriculturalists. The Twa, a much smaller group, were traditionally hunters and potters. These distinctions, while present, were not rigid, and individuals could move between categories based on wealth or marriage. The concept of ethnicity as we understand it today was largely absent from Rwandan society.

Colonial powers, particularly the Belgians, solidified these social distinctions into ethnic divisions, favoring the Tutsi as a “natural aristocracy” based on perceived physical traits. This preferential treatment created a sharp divide, leading to resentment among the Hutu majority. Belgian policies, such as identity cards categorizing Rwandans by ethnicity, further worsened the divisions.

What followed was decades of propaganda, pushing the same, mostly invented agenda, which portrayed the Tutsi as the enemy, eventually justifying extermination. Dehumanization thrives in these environments, in which differences are exaggerated and even exploited to the point where the “other” is no longer seen as human at all. It’s yet another common characteristic observed thus far in every case study of genocide. The reaction to it is what worsens, as we can see with identity cards used to symbolize and discriminate, but later to dehumanize and even organize and plan to murder the Tutsi population.

(Side note: I hope the idea of genocide as a predictable process, and thus a preventable one, is becoming increasingly clear with each case study from Darfur to Rwanda. The stages are by no means independent, nor in the exact sequence presented, but the interplay among them and their escalation in terms of tensions, choices, and actions is almost always similar.)

In Rwanda, the path to dehumanization transformed neighbor against neighbor, enabling the violence seen in 1994. The genocide was not just a product of hatred but of a systematic series of both choices, divisive colonial intervention, and eventually theh stripping away of humanity, rooted in artificially constructed separations that, once established, were weaponized to justify the worst, but most predictable, outcome.

Dehumanization can take many forms. In Rwanda, we can hear it through RTLM. We can read it through transcripts and letters. We can also expand our definition of it as rape becomes increasingly weaponized in war and differentiate between animalistic and mechanistic.

Now, what do we do about it? What went wrong in Rwanda? What were the choices individuals and groups made along the way, since the initial tensions invented in part by the Belgian colonists to the decision to pick up a machete and kill?

To fight dehumanization and prevent genocide, a “culture of impunity” must come to a decisive end. it is imperative to facilitate a culture of empathy and respect for all human life. Education plays a crucial role in this. Furthermore, media literacy programs can help us critically evaluate information and recognize manipulative propaganda as it happens, instead of in retrospect.

The international community must stay vigilant and responsive to early warning signs of genocide as countries at risk descend further into the stages of worsening danger, such as dehumanization. The international community’s failure to act promptly in Rwanda should be an example for the urgent need for swift and decisive intervention in the face of impending genocide. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been learned as well as one might imagine.

But that can change.

And it starts with us.

The following are practical, actionable steps that you can take immediately to fight against dehumanization at home and abroad, as well as actions in support of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC.

Report Hate Speech and Discrimination:

Actively report hate speech or discriminatory behavior to relevant authorities or platforms. Support policies and initiatives that combat online and offline hate. Visit stophate.org.

Support Legislation Against Hate Crimes:

Advocate for and support legislation that addresses hate crimes and discrimination. Stay informed about proposed bills and contact legislators to express support. Visit National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs for information on legislation and what you can do to help.

Create and Share Positive Media:

Develop and share media content (videos, articles, podcasts) that highlights stories of resilience and unity, countering negative stereotypes and above all, promoting human dignity. StoryCorps is a fantastic resource for this, and just might lift you out of a dooms scrolling habit as well.

Promote and Support Media Literacy Programs

Advocate for and support programs that teach media literacy to help people critically analyze news sources and avoid dehumanizing rhetoric. Support initiatives like the News Literacy Project.

Support Local and International NGOs

Contribute to or volunteer with organizations working directly in Rwanda and the DRC, such as Survivors Fund (for Rwandan genocide survivors) or The Carter Center (which works on health and conflict resolution in the DRC). These organizations provide critical support to survivors and work on long-term recovery and peacebuilding efforts.

Promote Fair Trade and Economic Empowerment

Support fair trade initiatives that benefit communities in Rwanda and the DRC. Purchase products from fair trade cooperatives or companies that invest in sustainable development and economic empowerment in these regions. For instance, Rwanda Trading Company offers fair trade coffee that supports local farmers, and DRC-based initiatives work on similar principles for economic development.

In late 2022 and early 2023, M23, the rebel militia force in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda under the leadership and presidency of Paul Kagame, faced a series of allegations that were leaked by the United Nations. M23 has been accused of egregious human rights violations historically, as greed for cobalt and other minerals (often used to produce electronics and other technologies consumed primarily in the U.S., though circumvented and denied by companies like Apple and Tesla due to the mining subjecting children to slave labor, sex trafficking, and mass murder.)

It’s not a narrative that fits the smiling photos of Kagame who is often praised as the saviour of Rwanda and the bringer of peace post-1994, or even the U.S. and other international powers who claim to be the face of democracy.

But when RPF pushed out Hutu militias who fled to Zaire (now a part of DRC) in mid-1994, effectively ending the genocide in Rwanda, many refugees seeking an escape from punishment and the prison system that Paul Rusesabagina would eventually be kidnapped into himself, their resentments never stopped. And so as mentioned earlier, the killing…never stopped.

Hutus formed their own militia groups aimed at retaliation against Rwanda, prompting many Tutsi to join the Congolese Army. The result? Two consecutive Congo Wars. And the evolution of M23, one of the most heavily armed, dangerous rebel groups in recent history.

The M23 consists primarily not of Hutus, not of the Congolese Army, and not of the sole bad actors we’re often led to believe exists in an all-good or all-evil binary world, but of Tutsis. And Paul Kagame, despite denial of his participation, is facing increasingly harsh criticism from the U.N. and the international community over the atrocities committed by his own people in DRC under the guise of M23, many of which emulate precisely what happened in Rwanda.

So what does this mean? It’s a rather unsatisfactory ending, I suppose. But it shouldn’t be surprising. This is the way, unfortunately, of all of humanity. Victims often turn into victimizers; the oppressed into oppressors; the wounded into the slaughterers; and it’s important to avoid the mind trap of “Well, they’re all just a mess and that’s their problem then!” Too many are willing to advocate, donate, write representatives, and scream in the streets for a single minority, and when confronted with uncomfortable facts tht those individuals also must be held accountable, advocacy often ends. And it shouldn’t be that way.

Life, human behavior, and the choices we make are nuanced, complicated, and messy. The best we can do is to advocate for the cause, and to stick firmly to it no matter what, ending cycles of impunity. We don’t advocate only for Tutsis because of the 100-day genocide – we advocate to end all dehumanizing behaviors, regardless of who commits it. Any group, any ethnicity, any religion, any minority or nationality – any of these can be both a victim and a perpetrator at different times. And while it’s certianly not our job to fix humanity – it is our obligation, both legally and (hopefully) morally, to educate ourselves, educate others, and protect each other – all of us – from the dangers of a few bad leaders and the dangers of the everyday killer that lurks somewhere deep within all of us, and most importantly – to hold the perpetrators accountable. Every time. No matter what.

As the U.N. listens intently to Eugenie’s story of survival as a young girl, she shifts to a message of action. Specifically, she emphasizes a key element regarding genocide, and why it continues to happen so frequently, often in the same places: a “culture of impunity.”

She admits, humbly, that we “still don’t know” how to stop genocide, and that we don’t even know how to properly punish or prosecute it.

“But there is a way,” she says.

“That way is education. If we cannot change the minds of people who are old today, the people who have their own mentality is set in certain ways, is it possible maybe to save the future generations by educating them? By providing education, investing heavily in education, what are we doing today that is gonna make a child who’s born today 20 years later to behave and look at the world differently?

And it’s not just in Rwanda. It’s everywhere. In what way will the next generation relate differently to the challenges that they’re going to inherit? If we have not invested in them in making sure that they see the world differently? Through a lens of humanity?

I want to remind everyone that we have a chance. We have a chance that my daughter, who is 20, that she won’t have to worry about her own kids witnessing what I witnessed. We have a chance for collective response in a positive way.

A way to change.

A way to humanity.”

To learn more about the genocide in Rwanda and DRC, or the ten stages of genocide, visit genocidewatch.com or The Genocide Archive.

Thank you for reading.

Follow the stages at stagesofchange.org.

ARTE.tv Documentary. (2022, May 25). Rwanda: The Silence of Words | ARTE.TV Documentary [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr06668hrg4

Astoundz. (2023, August 7). Rwandan Genocide – Holocaust Museum Houston. Holocaust Museum Houston. https://hmh.org/library/research/rwandan-genocide-guide/

DR Congo: Atrocities by Rwanda-Backed M23 rebels. (2024, April 26). Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/06/dr-congo-atrocities-rwanda-backed-m23-rebels

Genocide Watch- Ten Stages of Genocide. (n.d.). Genocidewatch. https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages

Hansler, J., Feleke, B., Salem, M., & Guy, J. (2023, March 24). ‘Hotel Rwanda’ hero to be freed after 25-year terrorism sentence commuted. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/24/africa/paul-rusesabagina-released-rwanda-intl/index.html

Jorgensen, C. M. (n.d.). A case study Analysis of dehumanization in Rwanda and Darfur. NSUWorks. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/shss_dcar_etd/50/

Paul Rusesabagina: “I helped human beings, I did not help Hutus or Tutsis.” (2024, April 4). [Video]. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2024/04/04/amanpour-rusesabagina-rwanda-genocide-anniversary.cnn

Paul Rusesabagena (PDR-IHUMURE) Urges Caution and Wisdom in Dealing with FDLR — Rwandinfo_ENG. (n.d.). https://rwandinfo.com/eng/paul-rusesabagena-pdr-ihumure-urges-caution-and-wisdom-in-dealing-with-fdlr/

(PDF) “One would think Satan has invaded the place”: Toxifying Language and the Genocidal Process in Rwanda. (n.d.). ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342534225_One_would_think_Satan_has_invaded_the_place_Toxifying_Language_and_the_Genocidal_Process_in_Rwanda

Princewill, N. (2022, June 24). Paul Kagame is seen by some as a liberator. But critics say Rwanda is only safe for those who toe the line. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/24/africa/paul-kagame-rwanda-regime-intl-cmd/index.html

Reporter, G. S. (2017, May 31). Journalists jailed for inciting Rwandan genocide. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/dec/04/pressandpublishing.radio

RwandanRadioTrascripts_RTLM. (n.d.). https://migs.concordia.ca/links/RwandanRadioTrascripts_RTLM.htm

TSW :: Browsing Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines Transcripts Collected by the UNICTR by Subject “Rwanda–History–Civil War, 1994–Propaganda.” (n.d.). https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/browse/subject?scope=b9006d41-ac27-421e-a802-e6865c4caaf5&value=Rwanda–History–Civil%20War,%201994–Propaganda

United Nations Photo – A Special Event was held today at the United Nations in New York on the topic, “Genocide: A Preventable Crime”. (n.d.). https://dam.media.un.org/archive/A-Special-Event-was-held-today-at-the-United-nations-in-New-York-on-the-topic—Genocide–A-Preventable-Crime—2AM9LOBPTNWU.html

United Nations. (n.d.). Outreach Programme on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and the United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/rwanda/commemorations-2008.shtml

Wrong, M. (2023, July 20). Kagame’s Revenge: Why Rwanda’s leader is sowing chaos in Congo. Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/africa/rwanda-congo-uganda-kagames-revenge

Please Note: This text and its audio recording contain descriptions of violence and war crimes, as well as an analysis of human behavior relating to sensitive topics, including racism, intolerance, sexual and physical violence, and acts of genocide. Some images might be disturbing to readers. Be mindful of the content before continuing.

Visit Mental Health America’s site for information on mental health, getting help, and taking action.

Introduction

Today’s article is part of a series of blog posts concerning genocide and the ten stages of genocide outlined by Gregory H. Stanton. The purpose is not only to raise awareness of the multiple genocides from the past and the present, but to provide a set of steps within realistic time constraints to promote change, prevention, and tolerance. Each week covers a different stage of genocide, with a specific country or region in focus that has or is experiencing genocide, concluding with an analysis of how that stage is or was evident in the featured genocide and what actions can work against it.

Stage 3, discrimination, is the third stage of genocide. The case study is Afghanistan.

I. Jawahir Sedaqat. Bamyan Valley, Central Afghanistan. January 29, 2021.

The mountainous city of Bamyan — or the “Valley of Gods” — peaks at over 8,000 feet above sea level. The city lies within the larger Bamyan Province, a region divided into eight districts, each composed of various ethnic tribes. The most prominent of these are Hazara, and Bamyan is their capital.

Some refer to Bamyan as the ‘Shining Light; ’ ‘Valley of Gods; ’ ‘Roof of the World; ’ and in a month like January, snowcapped mountains, icy blue lakes, and bitter-cold temperatures serve as a dramatic and unexpected backdrop of otherwise flat bottomlands with lush greenery and clear rivers running through its 30-mile valley.

It is, at first glance, a sort of paradise, bounded by cliffs that hold some of the world’s most ancient histories and artifacts. And since 1998 in particular, bounded too, by violence.

An aerial view of the Bamyan province reveals a hollow opening in the mountain that once housed the Bamyan Buddah — a sixth-century statue carved into the cliff side. For years representing the dominance of Buddhism within the region, discriminatory targeting limited and restricted the Hazara way of life until early 2021, when the Taliban snuck bombs into the side of the cliff.

When the logistics of their plan failed, they launched a rocket instead, obliterating the structure and the hope of peace for many.

It was a similar attack that killed Jawahir Sedaqat’s two sons in November 2020 when the Taliban hid two bombs by the side of a road in the city, killing 14 and injuring 45 others.

Since then, Jawahir, as well as countless other mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters, made the difficult climb to where a Hazara memorial still stands honoring their lost loved ones atop a nearby mountain. They travel regardless of rain, ice, storms, or heavy winds, their bodies worn and faces sinking and red from the frigid temperatures and icy winds.

Their destination is a memorial of rows of photographs, all Hazara faces — standing, trembling in the wind, crowded at the peak of the frozen mountaintop with graves buried just beneath them.

As a crew attempts to film the hike and conduct an interview with Jawahir, she struggles to hold her composure as she arrives and clings to the grave of her boys — her face pressed against rock, filling with tears and her affection aimless, with nobody to receive it. So she clings to stone.

She describes the chaos of what happened the day her sons both died, though she may never know the specifics. “My youngest answered my call from the hospital,” she says between tears, clutching her hijab in one hand and a photo of her son in the other. “He said his brother was injured and asked me to go to the hospital as soon as I could. When I arrived, the doctors were standing around, and he was dying. I went to find my eldest son, and…and he was dead.”

The attack on Shi’a Muslims in the valley — targeting the Hazara population — is only one of the relentless attacks on Hazara claimed by the Taliban. Between 1997 and 1998, they massacred up to 20,000 Hazara, a staggering loss for the community.

Following the 1998 massacre, the Taliban ordered the bodies to be left in the streets, unburied.

Starving dogs later ate the corpses.

For those still alive in Bamyan and other parts of Hazara-populated land in Afghanistan, the attacks that killed Jawahir’s two boys are as routine as the climb they make in memory every day.

In 2000, the Taliban carried out mass murder, which left 31 Hazara dead.

In 2001, 170 Hazara were killed in a matter of days.

In 2002, the U.N. investigated the discovery of three mass graves in Bamyan.

In 2010, a Taliban attack targeted 9 Hazara who died.

In 2015, beheadings.

In 2016, bombings.

In 2018, school bombings.

In 2019, wedding bombings.

In 2020, a funeral attack.

In 2020, a maternity hospital.

In 2020, another school.

And then, November 2020: the day Jawahir Sedaqat lost her sons.

Her journey to remember, and the journey of the thousands of families trudging through the bitter cold for the same reason, reveal an unknown crisis: In a series of worsening discriminatory practices, and repeated attempts at erasing Hazara from Afghanistan, the Hazara are at risk of annihilation.

Their future can only be hoped and prayed for in solidarity as they memorialize those lost.

As she pulls herself away from the graves, she takes solace only in that the Taliban has not yet destroyed this final place of dignity. Her hands cupped, caressing the photographed faces of her boys one at a time, she whispers, “If only to hold them one last time — to grow just one year older, one day longer, one last night. If only…”

Just one more.

II. Bushra Seddique. Kabul, Afghanistan. August 13, 2022.

“I’m trying to explain to everyone — to tell them by my words — a picture of how life back in Afghanistan was but, I can’t find the right words…When I’m saying it was normal…. we had a home, we had a job, we had plans, we know we had a future.”

Bushra Seddique, an editorial director with The Atlantic, describes in detail her experience escaping Afghanistan soon after the Taliban upended women’s rights. But before the escape, the U.S. withdrawal, and the fall of Kabul, and prior to the terroristic days of Afghanistan returned once more like cancer, Seddique paints a picture for the world that we don’t often see or hear about:

“It was…. normal.”

To have plans, a job, and to know that each day presented individual choices, is the Afghanistan Seddique cannot find the words to describe.

She recalls shopping in crowds, men and women alike; the smiles of shopkeepers, the energy; everyone pursuing careers and passions; eating at favorite cafes and restaurants and enjoying drinks and music with friends and family boisterously and joyfully.

She recalls enjoying pop music and ’80s music.

She portrays a community that is vibrant and quivering with life.

The rush of the cars, the music in the shops, the voices of a people who with every utterance seemed to do so with relief, the “pure language” of the moment — to be free, a woman, and educated — this was life. This was happiness. This was freedom in all that was sublime in a single moment.

On the afternoon of August 13, 2021, Seddique received a call from her brother, his voice shaking.

“The Taliban is in the center of Kabul, Bushra. It is no longer safe. Come home. Come home now.”

Within an hour, the streets emptied. The music was off. The cars vanished. Silence.

Within minutes, the life built for years — decades — was ripped apart from all those who knew to run home, but a particular sting to women. Achievements gone. Your children’s future — gone. Your freedom gone. Music, crowds, smiles, joy — gone.

Taliban was inside the Presidential palace.

By August 15th, the government had collapsed.

From immediate bans on education for women and girls to the most radical of laws that prevented women from leaving their homes without a husband and prohibitions to work, along with the condoning of gender-based violence, it became evident to Seddique that the language of Afghanistan was no longer pure.

To live in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, For Seddique and all the women and girls across Afghanistan, to live under Taliban rule, the new language was… silence.

A new reality: opportunity did not live here anymore.

III. House Foreign Affairs Committee — Roundtable on Taliban Reprisals. Washington, DC. January 31, 2024. 9:00 a.m.

At the end of the first month of 2024, panelists from multiple organizations appeared in Washington, D.C. for a roundtable hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee — organizations such as Moral Compass Federation, No One Left Behind, 1208 Foundation, Operation Recovery, and others. The organizations are almost entirely nonprofit and self-funded.

The hearing is centered on the discussion of support for nationals of Afghanistan who supported U.S. missions there, including sufficient vetting and establishing unique immigrant status for at-risk Afghan allies and relatives of certain members of the Armed Forces so that they can find safe, legal pathways to the U.S. in response to being systematically targeted, hunted, and sought for execution and torture by Taliban forces.

It’s been almost four years since the United States, represented by Zalmay Khalizad, signed the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan, known as the US-Taliban deal, resulting in the full withdrawal “of all military forces of the United States” from Afghanistan on February 29, 2020.

On August 15, 2021, as the Taliban took over the country, the world witnessed the reversing of two decades and several billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. assistance on military operations and reconstruction activities in Afghanistan.

Soon after U.S. officials announced the completion of the withdrawal of its military and diplomatic presence, President Biden described the mission as an “extraordinary success.”

Panelists at the HFAC Roundtable on Taliban Reprisals disagree.

One of them is Colonel Justin Sapp, representing Badger Six, a humanitarian organization aimed at supporting Afghans in need by bringing them to safety.

In his testimony to the committee, Sapp introduces the story of Engineer Mohammed. Sapp begins by stating that what he is about to describe is a “real life account” of what kind of terror our Allies left behind are facing, even years after the withdrawal. Sapp states:

“Engineer is a member of the Hazara ethnic minority, a group that has been the focus of ethnic sectarian persecution for hundreds of years. In 1998, the Taliban killed thousands of Hazara when swaths of Northern Afghanistan fell under their control. These atrocities are driven by profound racial prejudice, and because most Hazara are followers of Shi’a Islam, a religious branch deemed heretical by the Taliban…we put our lives in [Engineer’s] hands. He was indispensable to our team.

Beginning in October 2021, his village was pillaged, and many Hazara homes were razed. The Taliban issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed and detained his family members. While detained, his family members were interrogated and beaten. The Taliban has raided his house 10 times since 2021, stealing property, and, as a final insult, his daughters were threatened with being married off as second and third wives to local Taliban officials.

As of today, Mohammed has been forced to change his location nightly for the past two years.

He has not seen or heard from any of his family since.”

After his testimony, the remaining organizations share stories of similar or worse magnitude. Their testimony illustrates an Afghanistan devoid of identity, Under the Taliban, it is clear that there is no room for Hazara, no future. Similarly, women suffer a fate equivalent to captivity for possibly the rest of their lives. Hazara women, as one might imagine, face the most brutal of trajectories.

A few months before the hearing, aid workers at non-profit organizations in Afghanistan began to speak out after being forced to pay fees and provide services to the Taliban.

In response, in a testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction John F. Sopko stated the following: “Unfortunately, as I sit here today, I cannot assure this committee or the American taxpayer, we are not currently funding the Taliban. Nor can I assure you that the Taliban are not diverting the money we are sending for the intended recipients.”

IV. Power and Powerlessness

The Hazaras have been systematically targeted and facing discrimination for over 130 years. Women have experienced the most significant discrimination since 1996.

According to Stanton’s The Ten Stages of Genocide document, discrimination is the third stage of genocide, with a much more purposeful and insidious aim of inflicting pain than the initial stages. The official description:

“A dominant group uses law, custom, and political power to deny the rights of other groups. The powerless group may not be given full civil rights or citizenship.”

But in the case of Afghanistan, who is the dominant group? What is meant by dominance? Do we measure dominance by numbers? Or do we measure dominance by power? For all the delusional and self-indulgent arrogance that the Taliban puts on stage, perhaps even the weakest among them is at least somewhat aware that they are disliked on a universal level. How then does a terrorist organization come into dominance?

In Afghanistan, it’s as if it happened overnight.

To understand this, it might be too simplistic to claim democracy alone as the upholder of power falling into the right hands. Indeed, it plays a significant role, but there are, too, societies that are not democratic and do not bomb their ancient world wonders or slit the throats of children. There are democratic nations that have committed genocide. Had establishing democracy been the ultimate solution, Afghanistan wouldn’t have fallen into Taliban hands before many troops were even able to get out.

Of equal importance to comprehending how an unpopular and small number can find their way into a position of power is understanding how the powerless fell to vulnerability. The opposition of these two allows discriminatory practices to become the norm, and practiced long enough, it becomes a societal expectation.

Any solution to this — which provides insight into the bigger picture of discrimination as a part of genocidal processes — requires some historical context and background, both for the Hazara ethnic group and women, and how each faces distinct and mutual widespread discrimination throughout Afghanistan.

Discrimination and Removal of Hazara

For over a century, the Hazaras have suffered countless massacres, genocidal attempts, and egregious human rights violations. Their property has been stolen from them, as evidenced in the example of Engineer by Colonel Justin Sapp at the Roundtable Commission on Taliban Reprisals at the White House.

And there is a reason Engineer was trying so desperately to escape. Since the Taliban takeover in 2021, life has become exponentially more difficult, dangerous, and deadly as Taliban members ramped up a staggering number of suicide bombings at mosques and schools. They used car bombs such as when Jawahhir’s two sons were killed near Bamyan. There is no haven for Hazaras except out.

If we analyze classification, and to an extent symbolization, we can see the ease of discriminating against them. First, they are Shi’a in a predominantly Sunni-practicing country. According to “doctrine,” they are heretics. Put simply, they must be killed for their perceived non-belief.

If it seems there are so few of them, it’s because campaigns for hate, enslavement, and genocide have been extremely successful against them. Between 1891 and 1893, the Pashtun tribe, living largely in Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, were convinced by religious fervor that Hazaras were infidels, resulting in a devastating loss of 60% of the entire Hazara population.

Over the next 12 years, an estimated 400,000 more Hazara families were forcibly and violently displaced. Out of 400 thousand, only 10 percent survived and found safety. Countless tribes within the Hazara community were eliminated. The remaining tribes that did survive lost nearly 90% of their people. It is a loss on a scale of such devastation that it’s almost impossible to comprehend.

In the 1990s, as the Taliban began to issue similar rulings to those seen over 100 years beforehand, a series of discriminatory laws eventually led to the mass murder of Hazaras in two phases, killing roughly 10,000. Later, between 2002–2003, hundreds of violent attacks targeting Hazaras specifically led to thousands more deaths.

And it was discrimination that led them there, which had never stopped since their near elimination in the 1890s. Institutional discrimination took form as Hazara regions within Afghanistan were intentionally left out and neglected to receive vital social services and needed assistance. As a result, development crumbled.

Despite remarkable academic achievements and abilities by Hazaras, they were also vastly underrepresented in any government dealings, including employment. More recently, any Hazaras who were employed as government workers were dismissed. International aid, as we’ve already learned, has been intentionally diverted away from them. After the Taliban takeover, Hazaras are now completely excluded from any government dealings. They have been removed and isolated forcibly from all socio-economic activity.

Discrimination and Disappearance of Women

These intersections of discrimination should sound familiar because Afghan women suffer a similar circumstance.

The return of the Taliban to power in 2021 reignited the worst of fears of a regression in women’s rights, and they worsen with each day. Extreme restrictions such as dress code, lack of education, inability to work, and subservience paint a grim picture of a bleak future. Women have been forced out of public life, including female judges, journalists, and activists, and now live in constant fear for their safety. Meanwhile, gender-based violence remains pervasive, and legal protections for women are often inadequately enforced, if at all. Stoning, hangings, and public shaming are everyday spectacles.