genocide

Courtney Keeton
IGS 233B
11th Blog
Crime
http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/ubcreports/2007/07nov01/genocide.html
I thought that I would choose this article today because we have recently been talking about the subject of genocide in class and I thought that this article may be fitting. The article opens setting the scene of Bosnian women remembering all the lives lost when numerous corpses are taken out of a mass grave from the 1995 massacre of 8 million Muslim men and boys by Serb forces.
The article goes on to discuss studies done by political science professor, Adam Jones. He states that the reason we are becoming more aware of what genocide is and looks like is because it has been happening for years and has continued to happen. Jones is also studying the importance of gender in genocide, in what he has labeled “gendercide.” He says that there is an alarming rate of gender specific genocides and the topic is vastly under-explored.
The article ends on a note of a relatively unknown genocide which Jones said resulted in one, if not the, largest single grave ever discovered. This occurrence took place in the Bolivian silver mine of Cerro Rico, where many Aymara Indians and Africans died mining silver for Spanish monarchs during the colonial period.
Genocide is one of the sickest forms of violence ever committed and I think that further study and awareness are important tools to begin to fight against this atrocity. Jones mentions something that he wants to study, and I’m sure the rest of the world would like to know too…What would make one group seek the total annihilation of another?