There is a Genocide In My Basement

There is a Genocide In My Basement

In a grimy frat-house it should come as no surprise that some of our most pernicious candidates for initiation take the form of mice scurrying around the basement, perhaps drawn by the sweet scent of stale pizza crust, or the gentle drip of the leaky faucet. Regardless, the prospective initiates became so numerous that an exterminator was required to cleanse the basement of the unwanted pledges, leading one brother to proclaim: “a genocide in the basement.” This rather inappropriate comment, along with the beer, led me to think on the growing misuse of the term “genocide”. This term, developed by the late Raphael Lemkin, means, “the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group” has labeled, as best it can, the most unspeakable crimes in our collective history, so much as any word can attempt to encapsulate those terrible offenses.

This word, in recent years, has lost its power and authority to command attention, and demand action. Walking down Yonge St. two weeks ago, seeing the signs of Tamil demonstrators declaring a genocide being committed against their people Sri Lanka; only two weeks earlier, at an anti-Israel protest, similar signs were seen declaring acts against the Palestinian people as a genocide as well. These are only recent examples of movements attempting to garner attention to crimes being committed against their community through the misuse of the term genocide. Perhaps they should evaluate the effectiveness of labeling a real genocide as such and how much applying that label helped to end those conflicts, like the genocide in Rwanda, and the ongoing tragedy in Darfur – which even today threatens to escalate despite having been labeled a genocide years ago.

While we cannot doubt the immense suffering of Tamil and Palestinian civilians, or many others nations who are, or were, made to suffer through terrible violence and war, the term genocide must not be used to leverage attention in the hope of garnering political action. International crises, should and must be addressed on their own merits, and leave it to political scientists, diplomats and historians to define them. Genocide however, must not be cheapened, and the immense and uncomparable acts for which it is meant to label must not be diminished by its misuse. Activists have a responsibility to call attention to violence being committed against their people, however they must respect the important definition of genocide and not dishonor those Survivors who faced real extermination, by manipulating it as a tool for their agenda.

Scotialist is a graduate student at the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto.