On Combating Hate

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-It was just a year ago, during the final installment of the ill-fated Jackson Hole Film Festival, that some of humanity’s most dire problems took stage amid the peace and tranquility of this valley.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the film festival with a message of urgency to bring attention to the world’s atrocities and inequities, and over a few days moviegoers became inspired to do something to improve the world.

That spirit returns to Jackson Hole this week, when John Heffernan will speak to the public about the importance of American involvement in preventing genocide and other war crimes. Heffernan, who directs the Genocide Prevention Initiative for the Committee on Conscience, a program of the United States Holocaust Museum, has travelled to the the heart of genocide in Africa and the Balkans.

In 2006, Heffernan presented Assault on Survival, a report on his human rights investigations in the Darfur region of Sudan, to the Hague’s International Criminal Court. He also co-wrote The Use of Rape as a Weapon of War in the Conflict in Darfur, Sudan and has participated in efforts to rescue and relieve some of the most depraved conditions seen in the modern world.  

Heffernan took some time on Monday to talk to JH Weekly about bringing meaning to the phrase, “never again,” the importance of consciousness in a small town, how genocide affects the world, and the June 10 shooting at the Holocaust Museum.

JH Weekly: What is it you do, exactly?

John Heffernan: At the Holocaust Museum, we seek to honor the memory of the millions that perished in the Holocaust, by teaching people today about combating hate, anti-Semitism and preventing genocide. So I am from the part of the museum called the Committee on Conscience that focuses on preventing genocide. There was a line in the report that led to the creation of the museum that was written by Holocaust survivor (and author) Ellie Wiesel and he says “a museum unresponsive to the future would violate the memory of the past.” And to me that gives us our mandate.

We’re trying to give meaning to that phrase, ‘never again,’ because obviously since the Holocaust we’ve had situations like in Rwanda in 1994, where in a period of 100 days upwards of 500,000 people were killed; Bosnia, where I was based during the war, Srebrenica a small little enclave – in the middle of Europe – July 1995, 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men were killed on the basis of their identity. And then of course we have Darfur now. So we’re trying to give meaning to that phrase and we’re doing it in two different ways. One is by building a public, if you will, or what I call a constituency of conscience that cares about responding to genocide. The other is by working specifically with foreign policy professionals and trying to enhance their capacity to prevent genocide.

JHW: Without using up all your good material ahead of Thursday, why is it important to bring that message to a little community like Jackson Hole?

JH: In the face of genocide, what we basically say is nobody can afford to be a bystander, whether they’re in Jackson Hole or New York City or Kartun, Sudan. And by building this public we need to be able to reach a tipping point that will actually affect change. While that tipping point may be amorphous, I’m convinced that once we get there that decision-makers around the world – be it in Washington or Beijing or Paris – will make a decision to combat and prevent genocide. So we need to get as many people as possible focused on whether we’re talking about Darfur or Congo or places around the world where there is an ongoing or significant threat of genocide or mass atrocities. 

JHW: What are you focused on at the moment?

JH: A number of things, we kind of have this two pronged approach. One is, as I mentioned, building this community conscience, reaching out to the public at the museum. We have between 1.7 and 1.8 million people a year come to the museum. We do have an exhibit on Darfur that we opened in 2004. We called what was happening in Darfur a genocide emergency at that time.

The idea is that if we can get even a portion of those 1.7 million people into the exhibit to bring about a better understanding and a knowledge base of what’s happening there, then that will trigger some action. We co-founded an organization called Save Darfur, of which there are now some 250 chapters across the country, largely faith-based organizations working within their own communities and trying to bring about an awareness of what is happening in Darfur and beyond.
We initiated a group called STAND –

Students Taking Action Against Genocide – of which there are some 1,000 chapters across this country and these are split between high schools and universities. The other thing we just did, and I’ll speak a little about it on Thursday, is the new exhibit here at the museum called “From Memory to Action.” What it does is it tries to highlight the fact that genocide still exists today, that it did not end with the Holocaust, that there are still places around the world, with a particular on what happened in Rwanda, what happened in Bosnia and what’s happening in Darfur, where in fact people have been targeted on the basis of who they are. So those are some of the things I’ll be talking about.

The other, newest initiative that we are working on is the Genocide Prevention Task Force Report, which we released in December. It’s a blueprint for U.S. policy makers and it’s a task force that was co-chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen, and the objective really was two-fold. One was to bring the issue of genocide and mass atrocities to the forefront of the foreign policy debate. And two, and probably more importantly, is to develop practical policy recommendations to enhance the capacity of U.S. government to respond to emerging threats.

We released this report in December and I’m pleased to say that a number of people within the administration are focusing on this, and in fact, there has just been a House State Department authorization bill that invokes the work of the task force and requires the Secretary of State, in this case Hillary Clinton, to develop a plan on genocide prevention. So our approach is sort of two-fold. One is building this public-wide constituency that cares about responding to genocide, and two is much more directed specifically to foreign policy professionals and their role as people who have the capacity to prevent genocide.

JHW: Kind of your soft power and your hard power, correct?

JH: Yeah. In a lot of ways, it’s about creating political will within the U.S. government or within any government. I think that what you might refer to as soft power within the general public has a very profound influence on creating that political will, so that these people who are in the position to do something, will in fact do it. We say in this report that basically genocide is preventable. That is achievable, but in order to do that, we have to work with international partners, and there is a lot that can be done between doing nothing at all and large scale military intervention. 

JHW: “Genocide“ can be a difficult and controversial word to use. Does the term in itself present challenges?

JH: This is really part of our mandate, to clarify what genocide means. It’s a word that was coined by a Polish Jew by the name of Raphael Lemkin in the 1930s. He was able to get out of Poland before the millions of people were actually killed in Poland, and he came to the United States and started sort of a one-man campaign that eventually culminated in the introduction of the U.N. Genocide Convention.
“Genocide“ extends from both Latin and Greek roots. “Geno,” meaning people or tribes, and “cide,” meaning killing.

It’s not to say that there haven’t been times in history prior to the Holocaust where people have been targeted on the basis of their identity but there was no word to really describe it, so here it is codified in the Genocide Convention that came to be in 1948.

One of our main goals is to clarify that people really know what this term means. It’s also important for people to understand that a conflict doesn’t have to be labeled a genocide for us to understand that a lot of bad things are happening and therefore we do need to not be bystanders and to take up whatever is needed in order to respond. 

JHW: Are there in fact ongoing genocides?

JH: We did declare what was happening in Darfur, a genocide in 2004, and clearly things have changed on the ground there. Where there are many factions that have switched sides and there are rebel forces that are wreaking havoc and the government continues to play a major role there, and clearly there are consequences of what we determined to be a genocide back in 2004, 2005. But I think the most important thing to note is, whether you label an ongoing genocide or not, people aren’t returning home.

There’s still some 2.5 million people who’ve been rendered homeless. Hundreds of thousands of people have died. I think that’s what you need to focus on, that the civilian population is still in dire straits and something obviously needs to be done, so that people can feel like they can go home to reclaim and rebuild their lives. 

JHW: What are the long-term consequences after the bloodletting has stopped?

JH: In any type of genocidal situation or places where there are mass atrocities, one of the things that we – whether it be in the Balkans or Rwanda or Darfur now – focus on in this task force report, is not only do these genocidal threats threaten our core values, but they also threaten our core national interests.

There are, in fact, spill-over effects that fuel instability, usually in weak and corrupt states. There are long-standing consequences, for instance, refugee flows, humanitarian needs. We still see, in the case of Bosnia, and the International War Crimes Tribunal prosecuting – what, 15 years later – the perpetrators of this genocide, in fact one of the main perpetrators is still at large.

What we’re seeing in this report is it’s crucial for the U.S. government to be viewed as a state that is not a bystander. I think our standing in the world is eroded if we don’t take action, whether it be Bosnia or Rwanda or Darfur. 

JHW: Corruption is such a blight on the world. Do you ever see genocide in a state that isn’t largely corrupt?

JH: When I think, particularly in terms of cases where genocide has been committed again, whether it be in the case of Srebreni, Rwanda, Cambodia, typically in the early stages of these genocides, it’s pretty evident that you have democratically weak –or perhaps not even democratic at all– states but also corrupt states. I think this is a pretty common occurrence that shows you that there’s a pattern where a lot of these places where genocide is committed are states that are corrupt. 

JHW: The Holocaust Museum experienced its own tragedy recently when a guard was killed. Were you in the museum that day?

JH: My office is a couple of blocks away, but I was actually on my way over to a meeting. We certainly do honor the memory of officer Stephen Johns and his tremendously courageous act. The good thing, and this was a big concern of ours, was that this incident would affect the visitorship of the museum, and the good thing is that it hasn’t. That people still come to the museum I think speaks to our mission that I stated earlier on in terms of us being able to teach people about unchecked anti-Semitism and hatred and preventing genocide.

If anything, the incident that happened a couple of weeks ago, where officer Stephen Johns was killed – reportedly by an anti-Semite, white supremacist– that what we do is even that much more important. And that we need to be vigilant in trying to teach people about what this means in terms of what kind of world that will exist when there is unchecked hatred and antisemitism and, in the case of the work that I do, genocide. JHW

Courtesy John Heffernan

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