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First Person Radio (2011-07-13)

They made us many promises, more than I can remember. But they kept but one – They promised to take our land…and they took it. — Chief Red Cloud ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Laura Waterman Wittstock and Richard LaFortune with Andy Driscoll tomorrow on First Person Radio as we talk with Dr. Chris Mato Nunpa on Dakota treaty issues and the stipulations of the Treaty of 1805 which[...] Read More »

The Cunning of History

I’m in the process of moving and stumbled across a slim volume I hadn’t read since my days as a cynical undergraduate at the Evergreen State College. It’s The Cunning of History by Richard L. Rubinstein and came recommended to me, not on a course required reading list, but like so many books I read at Evergreen, through the recommendation of a professor who was generous enough to suggest a few titles to peruse in my spare time. 

It’s a book well worth revisiting as I have heard Peter Erlinder discuss at great length the legal case he is making to defending the alleged genocidaires. of Rwanda. The story of Peter Erlinder – a man demonized in the European press, somewhat romanticized in our local press – is layered with complexity. And that’s where the value of Rubinstein’s slight, but powerful analysis of the post war years in Germany has come into play. 

Rubinstein makes the argument, and quite convincingly, that the Holocaust was not an illegal act. In fact, one of the brilliant things about the Nazis was how the government systematically stripped undesirables of any legal recourse to assert rights under the law. This may seem obvious, but when you are on trial for violating laws that did not exist during the alleged acts, it provides a powerful argument for your attorney. As Rubinstein coldly points out in The Cunning of History, you cannot convict a person of committing a crime against someone who is stateless, without citizenship. Legally, you are not a person without an institution. That’s why undocumented workers have legal recourse in the U.S. – they might not be American, but have citizenship somewhere. 

Of course in the process of making this argument, Rubinstein is also making the argument that Nazis also knew that they were committing acts that a future body might find reason to seek a legal recourse – hence stripping persons of their citizenship. 

This is not the case in Rwanda, where the 1994 genocide – and I say genocide, not alleged genocide, because I do believe it was a genocide, regardless of the legal arguments Mr. Erlinder and his colleagues will put forth – was committed 46 years after the passage of the United National Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We do have international bodies to pursue offenders, we do have international laws to  hold those who massacre accountable. But still Rubinstein at the end of his little book brings up the parodox of the Holocaust – and there is a parallel paradox in Rwanda. 

There were black lists in Germany and Austria, names of people who were Nazis, which wasn’t unusual in countries where it was required to join the party. Many served jail sentences, a few years, but quickly, at least in the west, the occupiers realized they needed workers. The Marshall Plan needed civil servants, engineers, teachers, professionals who could raise a central Euroepan giant out of the ashes. And so companies that had the taint of Nazism -I.G. Farben (they manufactured the gas used in the death camps) was reborn as Hoechst; and those goofy ads we Americans find so funny are made by Volkswagen, the industrial child midwifed into existence by Adolf HItler and company. And there are many others that bear the mark of Cain. 

Rwanda’s economy has been growing steadily as President Kagame has stabilized the country. And yes, his methods offend our democratic ideals of free speech, free assembly – and the international community should be watching him so that he does not become another African dictator we abhor but are too busy to do anything about. But here is the cunning of Rwanda’s history: asking survivors who’s neighbors, bosses, employees, even priests, attempted to murder them to live with their former attackers. That’s a lot to ask. And it hasn’t come without violence: reprisal killings of Tutsis against Hutus, and then Hutus responding to reprisal killings. This is what President Kagame is dealing with, and no doubt the prospect of more violence as the result of these trials weighs heavy on his mind. 

By no means am I saying Mr. Erlinder’s treatment was right – quite the contrary, I am appalled. Every person accused of a crime deserves to defend him or herself and address his or her accusers. Their day in court, to use the parlance of our times. 

Perhaps that is the ultimate cunning of history: that we will argue about whether a genocide was committed or not. A lot of people were killed in Rwanda over the course of 3 months in the spring of 1994; a lot of people did the killing, mostly by hand with machetes, no easy task. Maybe it doesn’t matter if we call it a genocide; what matters is that the victims, and the genocidaires get justice. 

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Truth To Tell (2010-07-05)

Still recovering from three weeks in a Kigali, Rwanda, prison, attorney Peter Erlinder has been on a whirlwind series of public appearances speaking out less about his prison misery than on the politics behind his arrest and chares of denying genocide, a crime under current Rwandan law within the regime of Tutsi President Paul Kagami.[...] Read More »