Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Installation Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Photo: Dietmar Walser

All EU states are members of the United Nations. As a global organization, the UN sees its tasks mainly in maintaining peace, achieving worldwide food security, and protecting human rights. Since 1951, the UN’s “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” is in force; it is closely linked to the European catastrophes of the first half of the 20^th century. The term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959). As early as in the 1920s, he was gripped by the genocide of the Armenians. When he learned that the Armenians could not prosecute the responsible for the crimes against the Armenian people Talaat Pasha, the former Turkish minister of the interior, in his exile in Germany, Lemkin began to immerse himself into international law. Already in 1933, he tried without success to persuade representatives of the League of Nations of the need for an international convention against genocide. Lemkin, who came from the region of Vilna, escaped at the outbreak of World War II from Warsaw via Sweden to the USA. As Jews, most of his family members were murdered. Unflaggingly, he sought to direct the Allies’ attention to the genocide of the European Jews. After the end of the war, he fought for the adoption of the legal term “genocide,” which conceives relevant crimes as an act of violation against international law. In 1948, genocide as defined by Lemkin was incorporated into international criminal law. Accordingly, genocide means “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” ^ ID card of Raphael Lemkin for the Ministry of War, © American Jewish Historical Society < Armenians fleeing from Turkish massacres in Anatolia, 1915, © epd-bild/akg-images/Pictures From History > Distressed Nedžiba Salihović from Srebrenica and UN soldiers in a refugee camp in Tuzla, Bosnia, July 17, 1995, © Ron Haviv/VII/Redux/aif In the course of the Yugoslav Wars, the so-called Bosnian War, sparked by the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s drive for independence, took place between April 1992 and December 1995. Fighting against each other were the army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the armed forces of the Republic of Croatia, and the Yugoslav People’s Army together with the army of the newly proclaimed Republika Srpska. Fearing ethnical cleansing, the UN Security Council established a safe area around the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica in today’s Republika Srpska and dispatched UN peacekeeping troops to the region. The Dutch blue helmets Dutchbat failed to intervene—by their own admission because of understaffing and a lack of equipment—when in July 1995 Serbian militiamen murdered around 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks. A genocide before the eyes of the UN.

Lay Down Your Arms!

Installation Lay Down Your Arms! Photo: Dietmar Walser

Since 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to individuals who have “done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses” and thus, “during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.” In 1911, the prize was awarded to two men who came from Jewish families: to the Dutch lawyer Tobias Asser (1838–1913) for the establishment of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) and the Austrian bookseller and publisher Alfred Hermann Fried (1864–1921) who had founded—together with Bertha von Suttner—the periodical “Die Waffen nieder! Monatsschrift zur Förderung der Friedensbewegung” (Lay Down Your Arms! Monthly for the promotion of the peace movement). The ardent pacifist Fried believed in the possibility of overcoming war. He viewed war as a structural “symptom of international anarchy” that must be met with “international organization,” that is, with the establishment of the League of Nations. The latter was intended to safeguard peace in cases of conflict.

^ Alfred Hermann Fried, n. d., © Austrian National Library-Picture Archive

< Nobel Peace Prize diploma for Alfred Hermann Fried, Stockholm 1911, © ÖNB

Mortar, 120 mm, Hirtenberger Defence Systems, Eurosatory (Land and Airland Defence & Security Exhibition), Paris 2018, © armyrecognition.com

After two world wars, the pacifist movement gained broad momentum. Time and again, appeals were made for complete disarmament. However, the arms industry is an important economic sector all over the world. The Hirtenberger munitions factory was, besides the Steyr-Werke, among Austria’s best-known arms factories. For an extended period, Hirtenberger was managed by Fritz Mandl (1900–1977). Already early on, he found also unauthorized ways to export weapons via Switzerland. Ideologically, he was close to fascist systems of the time. In 1933, he made an attempt at supplying weapons, captured in World War I and modernized by his company, to Italy, Hungary, and to the Heimwehr, which elicited an international scandal. Yet, following the Anschluss, his friendship with Nazis could not protect him from being defined as Jewish according to the Nuremberg Laws; he immigrated to Argentina and became an adviser to the dictator Perón. Following his return in 1955, Mandl managed to secure for his restituted company major contracts with the Austrian Armed Forces. In 1999, Hirtenberger Defense Systems started its mortar program. Arms exports to warring states and to those that use weapons in ways that violate human rights are legally banned. Nevertheless, Austrian munition, also from Hirtenberger, keeps surfacing in warring countries such as, for instance, Afghanistan.

Michael Miller (Vienna) about the Pacifism of the Paneuropean-Union:

Escape the Corset!

Installation Escape the Corset!. Photo: Dietmar Walser

While in the wake of the French Revolution, equality for male citizens was met in Europe with acceptance, the emancipation of women had not been among the goals of those championing liberty, equality, and fraternity. Only around 1900, an international feminist movement began to emerge.

< Stamp on the occasion of the 1913 Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Budapest, © Jewish Museum Hohenems > Promotion of Orbán’s “family protection action plan,” 2019, © Gábor Ligeti

In 1912, Schwimmer wrote: “Although as wife, the Hungarian woman is in a much more advantageous position than the German, English, Dutch, etc., the mother in Hungary is subjected to the same laws of illogic, injustice, and cruelty that govern almost all of human society. Poetry and prose exalt motherhood, depict her as a type of earth mother. Yet, outside of these lofty regions, the mother, married or unmarried, is the carrier of the crown of thorns.” More than one hundred years later, her analysis is once again applicable. Following revolution and counterrevolution, Hungary is once more characterized by emigration and sealing-off against anything “alien” as well as by the dismantlement of democracy. In the spring of 2019, Viktor Orbán initiated a new family policy to combat the low birthrate: young Hungarian married women with several children would receive generous financial support. “Family policy” is intended to ward off the supposedly impending Überfremdung (excessive influx of foreigners). However, in the course of the campaign, the government had committed an embarrassing blunder: already long before this family-planning campaign, the “couple” depicted on an agency’s stock photograph had been circulating the internet in other versions under the slogan “distracted boyfriend” as a so-called “meme” to illustrate infidelity.

Andrea Petö (Vienna) about women’s rights, gender studies and Corona: