KRM 220 Exam Section B PDF

KRM 220 - Exam - Section B Chapters 11-13 ─ Study unit 4 Define the concept assassination ● ● ● ● Part of social reality since the emergence of communal frameworks. Used by leaders of tribes and villages to defend their statuses. ○ Featured in the rise and fall of empires (i.e Alexander the grea...

KRM 220 - Exam - Section B Chapters 11-13 ─ Study unit 4 Define the concept assassination ● ● ● ● Part of social reality since the emergence of communal frameworks. Used by leaders of tribes and villages to defend their statuses. ○ Featured in the rise and fall of empires (i.e Alexander the great’s ascendance to power). Continue to play an important role in modern times Assassinations are understudied and poorly understood. ○ Political assassination is defined as the deliberate, premeditated, murder of a prominent figure for political reasons Discuss the causes of assassinations. 1. Restrictions on political competition and strong polarization and fragmentation. 2. Lack of consensual political ethos and homogenous populations. 3. Politically deprived groups which results in a decline in the legitimacy of political leadership and systems – direct attack against political leaders. 4. Domestic violence during election periods. 5. Territorial fragmentation of a country – loss of control over some parts of a country to opposing groups. Targets: 1. 2. 3. 4. Heads of state Lower- ranking political figures Legislators - acts of protection against an existing political order Vice head of states – rare but intended to promote highly specific policy changes and to prevent the vice from ascending to head of state position 5. Opposition leaders – especially in authoritarian systems, and more vulnerable during violent domestic conflicts. 2 Discuss the implications of an assassination of a political leader. “an action that directly or indirectly leads to the death of an intentionally targeted individual who is active in the political sphere, in order to promote or prevent specific policies, values, practices or norms pertaining to the collective, ● ● ● ● Intensify prospects of a state’s fragmentation and undermine its democratic nature. Assassination of heads of state: ○ Decline in the democratic nature of a polity ○ Increase in domestic violence ○ Instability and economic prosperity (rise of a more open economic power). Opposition leaders: ○ Increase overall unrest and domestic violence Legislators: ○ Public unrest (anti-government demonstrations) ○ Decline in legitimacy of the government. ○ Discuss the policy implications of political assassinations. ● ● Role of policy makers: ○ Promotion of political and social conditions (political participation) ○ Addressing political grievances ○ Stable and regulated succession mechanisms ○ Stable routines and protocols, and creation of institutions ○ Safety of political and opposition leaders. Law enforcers: ○ Most assassins previously involved in criminal activities ○ Veterans may be preferred to perform an assassination. Study unit 5 Genocide according to the United Nations’ (UN) Convention Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group: ○ Killing members of a group; ○ Causing serious bodily harm or mental harm to members of a group; ○ Deliberately inflicting on the group’s conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part thereof; 3 ○ Imposing measures intended to prevent births within group; ○ Forcibly transferring children of a group to another group. The concept ‘ethnic cleansing’ and explain how it is related to genocide. ● ● Purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas. It is carried out in the name of misguided nationalism, historic grievances and a powerful driving force for revenge. ○ Ethic cleansing has been carried out through murder, torture, arbitrary arrest, detention, extrajudicial executions, rape, etc. How genocide and ethnic cleansing are viewed by international humanitarian law. Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. ● ● ● ● Conspiracy, public incitement and attempt to commit genocide as well as complicity in genocide are equally punishable acts. If state commits or contributes to genocide – international community only body able to intervene Convention impotent to convict governments if they did not actively perpetrate the crime. Politicide - An act of killing human groups because of “political opposition to the regime and dominant groups” ○ Multiple deaths based on politics 4 Can also entail other forms of serious physical or mental harm, deliberately aggravating surrounding living circumstances, displacement, and forced birth control Democide - An act of eliminating a group of people in general. ○ Includes politicide ○ He calls an act of indiscriminate murdering of a group of people by government for reasons other than nationality, ethnicity, race, religion or political opinions simply mass murder. ○ ● 5 Exposition of Pramono’s classification of the degrees of genocide Ideological and pragmatic genocide. 1. First degree genocide a. Includes three requirements- mental element , material element and destruction of a human group. b. Also known as absolute genocide or intentional genocide c. Ethnic cleansing constitute intentional genocide i. Example Rwandan genocide. 2. Second degree genocide a. Mental element is missing (unintentional genocide) b. Committed typically under conditions of war (USA & Vietnam). 3. Third degree genocide a. Lacks both mental and material elements b. Occurs as a by-product of reckless or negligent policies (Brazil) c. Outcome of mass-death inducing acts and policies lacking intent & knowledge and direct genocidal acts d. Can be called genocidal mass death. ● Ideological genocide/politicides ○ Aim at achieving utopia ○ Divided into progressive and reactionary ○ Progressive – head towards a classless society in the totalitarian Marxist-Leninist tradition, most commonly, to secure results of a revolution ■ ○ Reactionary- strive for a “racially pure” nation-state or establishing capitalist economic regime at any cost ■ ● E.g Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime. E.g killing of Jews by the Nazi empire in Germany Pragmatic genocide Three types: developmental, retributive and hegemonic. ○ Developmental genocide is a situation in which political leadership aims to eliminate “backward” people and their cultures. ■ When an ethnic minority or politically oppressed group seeks revenge of past injustice, the genocide is said to be retributive. 6 ○ Retributive genocide is demonstrated by the Rwandan genocide in April-July 1994. ○ Hegemonic – seizing and maintaining political power ■ Get rid of particular group/party Overview of the factors that contribute to genocide. ● ● Factors leading to genocide: ○ Ethnicity, nationality, religion; ■ Ethnicity, nationality and religion may constitute a source of genocide ○ Economic dependency, underdevelopment, destitution; ■ Underdevelopment and destitution are also key contributors to genocide. ○ Limited physical resources; ■ Limited resources and rapid population growth may lead to ethnic, regional or interpersonal rivalry for means of livelihood ○ Usurpation of political power, marginalisation; ■ Political power prone to marginalise other groups and strip them of their voice and means of influence ○ Quelling of insurgencies or threat of coup d’etat; ■ Genocide can act as a form of extinguishing ethnic rebellion or a threat of violent political upheaval. Earlier genocide; ○ Colonial and alien administrative systems; ○ Artificial national and subnational boundaries; ○ Role of colonial powers and world superpowers. ■ History also plays a key role in genocides – colonialism. 7 The strategies that offenders of genocide use to conceal their actions 1. Deny genocide has taken place. 2. Belittle the scope of the crime if genocide has taken place. 3. Genocide can be presented as justified. 4. Banalise genocide by stigmatising it as a dispute between ethnic or religious groups or as a usual part of war. 5. When both sides commit the act- justify the former victims’ attempts of revenge. Study unit 6 Discuss what the Brana plan entails. ● Brana Plan ○ Brana plan was endorsed by military officers thus distinguishing the Serbian rapes from rapes committed by Bosnians and others. ○ Not all war rapes are committed with genocidal intent. ○ Not all war rapes aim, as policy, to destroy the groups to which victims belong. ● Serbian officers targeted women, adolescents and children, as the most vulnerable spots in social and religious structures of Muslim communities: ○ Women and children are almost always unarmed; ○ Not trained to fight; ○ Vulnerable because they cannot put up resistance; ○ Adolescent women are an especially vulnerable part of the community with respect to their sexual innocence (they have something to lose that could be considered precious to the future of the community)+86w Brana plans are similar to ethnic cleansing. ● Provide an exposition of three forms of mass rape 1. First formMilitary forces enter a village, take several women of varying ages from their homes, rape them in public view and depart; a. Several days later, soldiers from the army arrive and offer the now terrified residents safe passage away from the village - Geographically cleanse 8 2. Second form a. Persons held in concentration camps are chosen at random to be raped; b. Often as part of torture preceding death; c. Torture and murder can also be used to terrorise 3. Third form a. Women are imprisoned in rape/death camps and raped systematically for extended periods of time; b. Either as torture preceding death or as torture leading to forced pregnancy; c. Pregnant victims are raped consistently until its not safe to abort. Discuss the logic behind enforced pregnancies. ● How can rape, enforced pregnancy, and resultant childbirths, be genocide? ○ Intent of Serbian rapists appears to have been to produce Serb children. ○ Serb perpetrators may have thought that the presence of these children would change the identity of the next generation thus altering the identity of the community to something more Serbian. ○ Ironically, the child born of military rape will contain genes of both biological parents, but will most likely be raised by its mother, if she survives. Consequently the child will take on the mother’s culture. •Military rape aimed at enforced pregnancy in the rape/death camps was apparently committed with genocidal intent. •Forced pregnancies could become genocidal because of misogynous cruelties of the culture to which the women belong (e.g Bengali women raped by Pakistani soldiers). Discuss the statement that sperm can be used as a biological weapon. ● ● Genocidal rape can be viewed as a crime of biological warfare Biological warfare ○ Use of bacteriological or viral organisms that make people sick fairly quickly with diseases that are contagious and spread rapidly through a population; ○ Diseases tend to produce death, permanent disability, or disfigurement; 9 ○ ○ ○ ○ Biological weapons can destroy people, or people’s will to fight, without destroying the inhabited territory; Can make territory uninhabitable for a long time; Are not fine-tunable weapons that can be made to target specific individuals; There is the danger of blow-back. 1. Rape and enforced pregnancy can destroy the morale of a people, especially if inflicted on the youth, who represent its hope for the future. 2. If the objective is to undermine the will to fight, mass rape and enforced pregnancy might contribute to that end as effectively as infectious disease. 3. Soldiers are motivated to fight to protect their homes, families and the futures of their communities. If families become direct targets, what then is left to protect 4. Direct attack on civilian women and children seems designed to motivate men to cease fighting. 5. The use of sperm as a weapon fits the concept of biological warfare used to attack a biological system (reproductive system) in members of the enemy population. 6. Although the attack need not produce illness, it is designed to produce social chaos. 7. Sperm need not carry the HIV virus or other STDs in order to be toxic. It need not harm the reproductive system ● ● Sperm so used becomes a social and psychological toxin, poisoning the futures of victims and their communities, by producing children who, if they survive, will remind whoever raises them of their traumatic origins in torture. Many of the impregnated women rd ○ Attempted 3 trimester abortions; ○ ○ ○ Suicide or infanticide; Others walked out of the hospital room leaving the newborn behind; and They tried to find someone less traumatised to raise it. ● Unlike bacteria and viruses, sperm is easily containable, storable, preservable and deliverable by means of men’s bodies (needs no special equipment). ● If rape and enforced pregnancy are effective in terrorising a people into evacuating a territory, sperm as a weapon does not risk making the territory uninhabitable. ● Women who give birth to children (product of rape and enforced pregnancy) are so traumatised that they may never regain the desire to engage in sexual relationships or to procreate further. ● All that is enough to sustain the claim that military rape aimed at enforced pregnancy contributed to an overall plan of ethnic cleansing that was also genocidal in its intent 10 Discuss enforced pregnancies as the cause of destruction and social death of a community. ● ● Brana plan involved Serb soldiers raping Muslim women and enforcing their pregnancies until the foetuses could not be aborted. Four possible ways the Brana plan’s policy of enforced pregnancy can be made out as part of genocide: ○ 1. Resulting children could be seen as Serbs because of their genetic origin. Thus, Muslim women would be bearing the children of their enemies. ○ 2. Raped women (particularly those who have born children from rape) could be expected to be stigmatised and ostracised and in this way eliminated from society. ■ They are treated worse if they are then pregnant as well, since being pregnant while unmarried is often treated as a crime even if it results from rape ○ 3. Brana rape/enforced pregnancy plan might destroy the community if raped women are unwilling or unable to reproduce the next generation ○ 4. The existence of unwanted children who are the product of rape by the enemy could cause social chaos to the extent of destroying the culture and institutions of the society Male genocidal rape ● ● ● Feminists and women's rights activists does not include "sexually mutilated men, men forced to have intercourse with dead animals, men and young boys beaten to erection," or Tutsi men forced to have intercourse with other Tutsi victims. ○ •consequence of these female-centric discussions is that little is known about male victims ○ 1948 Convention definition was gender-neutral, the implication consistently reflected in both the dialogue surrounding the definition and the research supporting it is that prosecuting criminals would deal primarily with female victims Serbian detention camps ○ Both Muslim men and women and purposefully limited their interactions. ○ Female prisoners were forced to undress in front of the male prisoners and that any male prisoner that had an erection "had his penis cut off. Male prisoners who observed their fellow detainees castrated, were deterred from engaging in future intimate relationships because of the psychological damage of seeing an erection met with violence.