On public pressure affecting responses to active mass atrocity events [Note: Content Warning - mention of and links to articles violence and atrocities against victims of a wide range of ages. Reader discretion is advised]

Note: CONTENT WARNING - some of this content is about upsetting, disturbing or triggering events & attitudes. Seek competent help - including professional - if you need it. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that linked articles may contains names and/or images of deceased people. READER CAUTION IS RECOMMENDED! For anyone distressed by anything in this post, or for any other reason considering seeking support, resources are available in Australia here, here, and here. In other nations, you will have to do an Internet search using terms such as “mental health support - <your nation>” (which, for instance, may lead to this, this, and this, in the USA, or this, this, and this, in France [biased towards English-language - my apologies]), or perhaps try https://www.befrienders.org/. 

Note: in my “from the news” posts, quotes are shown italicised and blue, my comments are in a different shade of blue, and “good” items are shown in green.

Before I begin the article, here are a few other posts of mine that are of relevance or may be of some interest, and help to set the context of my remarks:

• “The problem of giving in to evil”   https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-problem-of-giving-in-to-evil.html   Monday 12^th December 2022  
  

• “The (partial) European rapid response force”   https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-partial-european-rapid-response.html   Friday 22^nd October 2021   
• “The genocide in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and the dangers of NOT LISTENING [Content Warning - links to news articles on mass atrocities]”   https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-genocide-in-artsakh-nagorno.html   Tuesday 26^th September 2023  
  

• “Inconvenience (and the genocide of the Rohingya)”   https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2020/09/inconvenience.html   (which includes an attempt by me to apply the approach provided in “A Problem from Hell” to the Rohingya genocide)   Friday 4^th September 2020  
  

• “The Timing/Timeliness of Interventions”   https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-timingtimeliness-of-interventions.html   Saturday 21^st March 2020  
  

• “The Crime of Indifference”   https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-crime-of-indifference.html   Wednesday 23^rd January 2019   

• “A thought bubble: sovereignty vs. human rights”   https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-thought-bubble-sovereignty-vs-human.html   Thursday 20^th June 2019   

• I also recommend reading Samantha  Power’s “A Problem from Hell” (Amazon) 
  

This has been a topic of interest to me for many years (decades, actually). 

 

I started contemplating this post when I noticed something from the current war in West Asia - which was started by a brutally savage [Content Warning - graphic results of violence] mass atrocity - considered to be genocidal - event in southern Israel, including mass sexual violence, and all against people of a wide range of ages (including children) by a group (who I refuse to give publicity to by naming) already known to be genocidal against Israel. 

Israel’s response was quick, but as it has continued, the devastation of its attack on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza has become alarming. In fact, the response is now considered  possibly  genocidal (and not without warning - see my weekly “from the news” posts for details - but note the Content Warnings! As an example: “UN Special Adviser ‘horrified’ at suffering of civilians in [West Asia]”   https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/02/1146402 ).

However, governments of Western nations seem to be responding to public pressure (marches, emails, etc) by moving from unqualified support for Israel’s actions in Gaza to a more nuanced stance that includes urging restraint against civilians in Gaza, and not driving Palestinians out of Gaza - although no calls for a ceasefire.

Now, I am sure that at least some of that change would be from people inside those governments, often out of a desire to respect human rights, but the point remains:   there is, in my opinion, a reasonable perception that that the persistent public pressure has had a major influence on an active mass atrocity event. 

To some extent, that also happened during the break up of Yugoslavia during the 1990s (starting in 1991), where (in my opinion), in response to media and public concerns about genocide, mass rape and other mass atrocity crimes during earlier  wars during that sequence of events, indications of further atrocities during a final phase led to a NATO  bombing  campaign in 1999. 

That perception of mine is not reflected in the links provided in the preceding paragraph (possibly because of academic bias?), but as someone alive at the time, there was (a) media reporting on human rights abuses - albeit possibly a bit slow to start, and (b) public disquiet about what was being done - and the photos of skeletal people in concentration camp conditions did much to shock the world out of its complacency, along with reports of the human costs of sieges (e.g., a couple who were killed by snipers [also part of the war in Gaza], the bombing of markets, etc). 

However, it wasn’t until the late 1990s that action was taken to attempt to stop those atrocities, so, in my opinion, that public disquiet took several years for enough pressure to be exerted for the world to attempt to do something.

Now, however, the pressure has been MUCH quicker to have an effect.

That may be due to things like improved connectivity, with smartphones enabling live access to events - including deaths, injuries, and other harm and destruction (and suspicion when access is cut off), but I consider it is also likely because of people generally being more aware and more prepared to be active on human rights issues. That in turn is attributable to a whole range of other matters, but one is the shock of many people when events occur without any effective action in response - events such as the mass atrocities in Cambodia in the 1970s (which was not properly understood for years), but perhaps most tellingly, the Rwandan genocide in 1994 (there were others before and after) - which illustrated graphically the time-critical nature of these events, and the mistakes that Western nations could make. 

By the way, to understand these past and current events better, it is worth reading Samantha  Power’s “A Problem from Hell” (Amazon).

That utter ineptitude in Rwanda (which, as in many other events, may be due to “a lack of imagination”, according to at least one interviewee in “A Problem from Hell” - something which is overcome by better [more accurate, and faster] receipt of information - whether via media, social media, or personal smartphones) also led to a more effective intervention in East Timor in 1999, which had experienced atrocities under Indonesian occupation from 1975 (e.g., this in 1991), and further  violence after voting for independence.

So roughly eight years from commencement of problems to intervention in the former Yugoslavia, and eight years from a widely reported mass atrocity event (that was part of a longer sequence of events) to intervention in East Timor. 

But ... several months in Gaza.

While that is good (although there are flaws in the responses and pressure), it should also be noted that there is still no effective response to the genocide of the Rohingya, after more than six years - although The Gambia has launched a case against Burma/Myanmar for genocide at the ICJ. 

So things are not yet as they should be.

There is another response time to consider here: Israel’s response, commencing within hours, against the brutally savage mass atrocity committed against people (the victims were not only Israeli) on its territory. However, as noted above, Israel is rapidly turning that into a Pyrrhic “victory” ... In fact, how much of the response by nations is due more to actions that US President Biden has described as “over the top” than public pressure?

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

• this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

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Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing, and all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”.

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/