Genocide

Recommendations for further understanding around the subject / theme:

Film:

Srebrenica: Autopsy of a Massacre (52 mins) Amazon prime

French Police Investigator, Jean-Rene Ruez.

Lost Images (28 mins) Amazon Prime

Journalist, Zoran Petrovic – missing frames from his film footage.

Filmmaker Sabina Vajraca documents her Bosnian Muslim family’s return to their home of Banja Luka, Bosnia, to recover their stolen belongings many years after being forced to flee to the United States. In Bosnia, they witness the devastation of the city, visit war crimes sites, and confront the family that has been living in their former apartment — with all their furnishings — for a decade.

Behind the Walls of S21 – Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Cambodia (29 mins)

After five years of waging civil war, Cambodian communist forces known as the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. They immediately began forcibly evacuating the residents of the capital and other cities, displacing more than two million people to the countryside.

I’ll be in-conversation with Dr Rob Watson, DeCentered Media at 12.45 on Sunday 3rd May – we will be discussing our 2018 visit to advise the staff team on how to utilise social media and how to push resist the Disney-fication of these traumatic memories.

Extract from report written on our return:

“After a tour of the museum with Hang Nisay as our guide, we spent some time observing visitors and watching how people use the spaces and the different areas of the site. Nisay graciously allowed us to record his account as we toured the museum and to share the files for education purposes on our return to the UK”…….

Click here for 2 audio recordings of our Tuol Sleng guided tour

We donated two books to the S21 Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum ……Julian Harrison’s ‘Suspended Disbelief’ (Holocaust) and Zinthiya Ganeshpanchan’s ‘Bodies As Sites Of War’ (Sri Lanka Civil War)

Holocaust: The Man Who Saw Too Much – BBCiPlayer (63 mins)

The Man Who Saw Too Much tells the story of 106-year-old Boris Pahor, believed to be the oldest known survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. He was sent to Dachau, Dora, Harzungen, Bergen-Belsen and Natzweiler – one of the Nazis’ least known but most deadly camps. Twenty years after the war, Pahor wrote an extraordinary book about his experiences called Necropolis – City of the Dead.

Return to Belsen – ITV Hub (60 mins)

Jonathan Dimbleby travels to Belsen with survivors, liberators and locals, following in the footsteps of his father Richard Dimbleby, whose 1945 radio report shocked the world and unmasked the true horror of the concentration camps.

Rwanda: Chronicle of a Genocide Foretold (63 mins)

The cornerstone of The Rwanda Series, this volume in three parts recounts a horrifying crime that could have been prevented by the international community and international law. Shot over three years, Chronicle of a Genocide Foretold follows several Rwandans before, during and after the genocide.

Photography:

When the World Turned Its Back: James Nachtwey’s Reflections on the Rwandan Genocide

A Hutu man who did not support the genocide had been imprisoned in the concentration camp, starved and attacked with machetes. He managed to survive after he was freed and was placed in the care of the Red Cross, Rwanda, 1994.

Audio:

Richard Dimbleby reports from Belsen (50 secs)

After the German surrender in 1945, Richard Dimbleby threatened to quit if the BBC did not put out his report on the horrors of Belsen. As it was, the Corporation delayed the broadcast for a day while it considered the impact.

New Media:

Suspended Disbelief – Book by Julian Harrison

I’ll be in-conversation with Julian at 12.00 midday on Sunday 3rd May – we shall be discussing this book and also reviewing the Holocaust documentary ‘The Man Who Saw Too Much’ mentioned above.

Book Review: “I imagine people not close to the Holocaust subject or with much literary experience always imagine it to reflect graphic accounts capturing this period of history but Suspended Disbelief offered a well-constructed fresh approach. I found the book to be rounded and an in depth study of many aspects of the Holocaust and was a philosophical examination that went from the past to the present that asked questions and offered variation from National Socialism to Jewish and German culture and its inheritance.” By Stuart Corley.

Facebook hate speech exploded in Myanmar during Rohingya crisis

(The Guardian 3^rd April 2018)

Evidence of the spike emerged after the platform was accused of playing a key role in the spread of hate speech in Myanmar at a time when 650,000 Rohingya refugees were forced to flee to Bangladesh following persecution.

Should gamers be accountable for in-game war crimes? Guardian article (2013)

This is quite an old article …… still relevant for understanding peoples actions in these kind of situations that do play out for real.

Remembering Srebrenica – 25^th anniversary on 11^th July 2020

Fifty years after the world said “Never Again” to the horrors of the Holocaust, genocide took place on European soil.

The name Srebrenica has become synonymous with those dark days in July 1995 when, in the first ever United Nations declared safe area, thousands of men and boys were systematically murdered and buried in mass graves. The victims, predominantly Muslim, were selected for death on the basis of their identity. This was the worst atrocity on European soil since the Second World War.

www.srebrenica.org.uk