“Those who should use the word genocide never let it slip their mouths. Those who unfortunately do use it, banalise it into a validation of every kind of victimhood” - Michael Ignatieff
In our media driven age, almost every word becomes overused and trivialized.
This BBC article looks at the word, born in 1943.
Greek word “genos” (race or tribe) with the Latin word “cide” (to kill).
In 1951 the UN Convention on Genocide was adopted. Ever since there has been frustration and inaction by governments and people.
Former secretary-general of Medecins Sans Frontieres, Alain Destexhe says: “Genocide is distinguishable from all other crimes by the motivation behind it.
“Genocide is a crime on a different scale to all other crimes against humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group.
“Genocide is therefore both the gravest and greatest of the crimes against humanity.”
Mr Destexhe believes the word genocide has fallen victim to “a sort of verbal inflation, in much the same way as happened with the word fascist”.
Mass grave in Bosnia
However you define the mass killing of human beings, and however lightly you banter words about, this is chilling.
I found this chilling because I realize how quickly we forget. I found it chilling because so many many families had had brothers, sons and fathers just disappear. I find it chilling because the brave work of those who do not forget the dead, who will work to identify and honour goes mostly unnoticed. I find it chilling because there will probably not be justice in this world.
A mass grave believed to contain hundreds of bodies of people killed during the Bosnian war has been found in a coal mine near the town of Foca.
Forensic experts say there could be as many as 350 bodies in the waste dump at the site, in the village of Miljevina.
The remains are thought to be those of Muslims who disappeared from a Bosnian Serb detention camp in Foca in 1992.
Last week, a smaller grave believed to contain more than 100 bodies was discovered in the same region.
When I think of Bosnia & Herzegovina I think of Stranger in a Strange Land, an American blogger teaching english and helping reweave this torn country one person at a time.
Published 4 years ago
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I’m reminded of a post I wrote last year, “Winds of Change”, http://journeyinsidemymind.blogspot.com/2003/10/winds-of-change.html
In college some colleagues of mine shared their experiences at a conference in which fellow Yugoslavians in attendance vowed that they wouldn’t fight each other. This was in the early ’90’s as the threat of war loomed in that region.
I don’t understand why the BBC said that “genocide” is a combination of Greek and Latin, like “television”. Couldn’t “geno” be from the Latin word “genus”, which means the same as the Greek?
I’m definitely not a language expert…I think the BBC would use the Oxford.
Reseaching it as both noun or adjective the origin of geno is from the greek.
The latin root genus is in math, music and biology classifying living organisms.
I didn’t do a deep etymological search, but it is more common to see a latin prefix.
I also checked Merriam-Webster, which uses the main noun classification with the greek root.
Having said that, here is a site with the writings of Lemkin…the man who invented the word.
http://www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/
Last weekend I visited the Srebrenica memorial. I’m going to post on it in the next few days…