This is the unedited text for an article I wrote for Chimurenga magazine "Genocide for Children". The intention was to write about "crimes against humanity" including genocide, for a younger audience.
"Genocide" is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group". When ordinary citizens murder their neighbors, what explanations can one provide for these acts, which defy all logic and humanity as we think we know of these things? The more I have heard terrible stories of such violence the less I feel I know the world and what has been taught to me. The world is indeed the way it is, no matter what we might like to believe.
I was part of a film crew that made a documentary film about a man known as “General Butt Naked” in Liberia. Joshua Milton Blahyi, the former general butt naked, has confessed to murdering 20,000 people during Liberia’s civil war. His real name is Joshua Milton Blahyi and he controlled and inspired young people to commit great violence. He and his child soldiers fought naked, as they believed that their “spiritual powers” would be enabled faster. Joshua claims he killed 20,000 people or/and was responsible for their deaths through the actions of his child soldiers. One day Joshua claims to have had a revelation from god and he changed his religion to that of Christianity and set out as he says, on a journey of redemption which involved him apologizing to people he had hurt and seeking their forgiveness. The process goes on and is complex with different reactions to his requests for forgiveness.
There are no war crimes courts in Liberia and to date many people accused of horrendous crimes occupy seats of power in Liberia. Prince Johnson who was caught on tape murdering the former president is a sitting senator in the Liberian House of Representatives. Joshua, now a pastor, lives today a free man in West Africa, preaching forgiveness. No court has brought him to trial and the Truth and reconciliation commission of Liberia has recommended he be given amnesty after he testified to the commission and revealed in great detail how he killed and tortured thousands of people.
Is it possible to change from being a very violent and dangerous person to some one who is just and law abiding? If one changes, does that mean the person does not have to face a trial? Some of the people I spoke to said they would like to have something larger to believe in, namely a country that looked after them which includes a functioning judicial system. Right before he testified, Joshua, one of the most prolific mass murderers alive today, quoted a line from the Book of Job in the bible. “The wicked creep in the twilight. They go where no eyes see them.”
Iraqi prison, Baghdad 2007
Bringing crimes to light and trial gives humanity the hope that these crimes will not be repeated and that they have been registered in our consciousness. After the Second World War Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Great Britain declined the Russian suggestion to line up all the Nazi war criminals and shoot them, as he believed a trial would register the Nazi crimes against humanity in history and would play a role in the deterrence of such crimes in the future. The respect also shown to these Nazis by virtue of the fact that they were given a fair trial would also morally elevate the allies above the Nazis. What would happen to a society when perpetrators of crimes go free and a justice system does not exist?
In a movie the bad guy is truly a bad guy and victims of the crime come back for revenge or justice and after some challenges they usually get their revenge or justice is applied and everyone applauds. So many of my own ideas about war and revenge, bad guys and justice come from movies and the stories we are told.The realities are different with most perpetrators of crimes walking free and disappearing into the fog of war.
As a child I thought war was a heroic pursuit. I read "Commando" Comics and watched the films. I thought I wanted to be a soldier and win wars for my country, which I believed to be good and just, as that is what all children are taught about their own countries. War and patriotism enjoys exciting press in our storytelling tradition. Photographs of men battling evil enemies make for great movies. Disease, humiliation, rape, poverty, psychological trauma and famine which are often the products of war seldom figure in these movies because people want to believe in an idea of war which would embrace a more heroic vision. How do convince someone its alright to murder people, including women and children? It's being done all the time.
War allows for genocide and many other crimes. Without the social climate of war, genocide might not happen as regularly as it does. War allows people to excuse themselves, their country and their soldiers. “This is war” is a statement that actually means “This is war so we can do anything and justify the same and make people think its alright”. Is war is a “necessary evil”? We are thought to believe this often and when the monsters are real, maybe it is. Are there other means of resolving conflict? Is it okay to kill another human being? Why is it that so many heroes in our films kill people and why do we enjoy these films? What aspect of our selves do they appeal to? Joshua would brainwash the child soldiers under his command by showing them violent movies. He would show the same movie several times and tell his child soldiers that even if they killed someone the same person would come back in another movie. He told them that life was just like a movie!
Joshua with Senegalese Johnson, a former child soldier of his who he shot in the legs for "disobeying orders". Senegalese lost both his legs because of this.
In an essay on war experiences, an American soldier, Nathaniel Fick, makes this observation: “One of war’s more jarring traits is that it sweeps normal people into its maelstrom and carries them along to places they never imagined they’d be.” He goes on to recount a routine morning in Iraq. “I clearly remember munching a granola bar one morning in Iraq when my Marines saw a man sneaking toward us with an AK-47. After giving the order to shoot him, I went back to my breakfast.”
I look back and wonder how much I have been influenced by the movies I have watched, books I have read and stories I have been told when it comes to my ideas of war and killing other human beings. what would I be in a circumstance of war and how does that define me?
How would I react if I as swept up by circumstances suffered by millions today? Would I be a victim or a perpetrator, a coward or a hero? What is a hero? What would I like to see happen if someone did something horrible to my family and myself. I wonder if I would be so merciful. And then again what about the people I have hurt? How would I like to be treated by them?
Joshua begs for forgiveness from Sata, a woman whose brother he murdered.
I initially expected Joshua to be killed outright when he went on his forgiveness-asking spree. On an occasion, what I witnessed opened my eyes to an idea of forgiveness, which I always thought impossible. In the midst of incredible poverty and loss, I watched people who had nothing, ostensibly absolve a man who had taken everything from them. When we asked some of Joshua’s victims what they felt about him approaching them for forgiveness some seemed to like the fact that he publically confessed his crimes against them and thus maybe, they received some support and understanding from their community. Some said that they could forgive him but that they could never forget the horrors he had inflicted upon them. “I can let go of my hatred toward him now” said one lady whose husband Joshua had murdered. Some said it was their Christian faith, which helped them forgive the person who had harmed them. Others believed that their forgiveness broke a cycle of violence where the victim would one day take revenge in some form or the other on the perpetrator or someone from the perpetrators community. Forgiveness for some, was releasing the past and the horrors it held and regaining control over the pain they had suffered.
There can be no true healing said a Liberian pastor named Kun Kun without true confession from a perpetrator and then hopefully forgiveness from the person who has suffered. Genuine confession and Forgiveness seemed to bring healing to both the perpetrator and the victim. They’re both a part of the community, said the pastor, the perpetrator is also a part of society.
One lady said something quite interesting about Joshua. She said that when she saw him preaching about forgiveness, the energy, which he used to spread that message, was the same when he was a violent man. Basically. Joshua’s energy she meant was being used for a different purpose now, but it was the same person who committed horrific violence standing before her.
Sata
“The banality of evil” is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt that was used to describe how the greatest evils in human history were not executed by psychopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and participated with the view that their actions were normal. “We were just following orders” was a common refrain by German soldiers who murdered numerous people, after the Second World War. Foot soldiers around the world have repeated the same thing when they were questioned about their roles in genocide. Another often heard statement is that people were afraid of the consequences of not committing genocide. The courts have not accepted this defense and have stated that one is not in control of what lies outside yourself but one is in control of ones own decisions that come from within.
Have you ever felt that than institution, church, temple or governemnt you are a part of was doing something wrong? What did you do about it? What do you think you would do if you were ordered by an authority figure to hurt, malign or kill someone? How far would you go to stand up for your own convictions? What if your life was at stake? In ancient times when a public execution took place people ordinary people would often cheer the executioner on. Recently when Osama bin laden, a mass murderer himself was killed, some people were seen celebrating the man’s death in the streets. When the twin towers were brought down by terrorists in New York killing thousands of innocents, people were seen celebrating the event the streets of Palestine. Our so-called humanity sometimes obscures these dark parts of our nature whose existence we often reject and allow for them to manifest in so many ways.
We are taught to believe in judgment days and paradises, end times to misery and perfect ideas of justice. We want to believe in universal peace, love, liberty, equality and fraternity. We want to believe that religious fervor is separate from the functioning of state. The truth is that our existences are circles of shadow and light, murder and forgiveness, peace and war. Rather than thinking that entities like war, genocide and murder are only a part of people far away is that they are as much a part of us as we believe they are a part of our enemies. It will always be no matter what we imagine. Our history is us today.
Our ideas of war often involve defeating an enemy outside ourselves. A terrorist. An enemy. Not within. Our awareness of these things which are a part of ourselves, gives us power, more than just over our real and imagined enemies, power over what can be most terrible, both inside and outside ourselves.
The Arcadian shepherds by Nicolas Poussin are an interesting painting. The Latin inscription the four people are looking at means “I in arcadia also”. Arcadia means a “pastoral paradise” of sorts. There are several interpretations for this painting but what was explained to me by Dr. Ashok Krishnan about this painting I found very interesting. Evil, violence and war are all a part of our potentials and exist in all the societies we create.
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