ABSTRACT
The Nigerian Government's declaration of 'no victor, no vanquished' after the capitulation of Biafra on 12 January 1970, was applauded as the right step towards reconciliation and transition from war to peace. Despite this declaration and assurance of amnesty, the Nigerian Government and its soldiers still engaged in acts that amounted to retributive justice. They starved and killed innocent Biafran civilians, looted their property and raped their women. Surprisingly, these postwar atrocities committed against former Biafrans have been largely ignored in the historiography of the Nigeria-Biafra War. This paper seeks to fill the gap in the war literature by interrogating Nigerian Government's attitude towards the postwar humanitarian crisis and crimes against humanity in former Biafra. The paper argues that former Biafrans were not fully reintegrated into the Nigerian society and that the Nigerian Government deliberately neglected them to die in large numbers, thereby making it difficult for the war victims to recover from the hardships of the conflict.
Subject(s)
Ethnic Cleansing/history , Genocide/history , Government/history , Vulnerable Populations , History, 20th Century , Humans , Nigeria , Rape , Starvation/history , WarfareABSTRACT
The Nazi doctors committed crimes in the camp of Auschwitz which constitute the darkest page in the history of medicine of the twentieth century. They were largely directly involved in the murder of the 1.1 million Jewish majority and about 21,000 gypsies who were transported from all over Europe. How can we explain the intellectual journey of those men who had embraced the medical career to relieve their neighbors? How could these cultivated and refined men, from the most prestigious faculties of medicine, have been able to achieve activities ethically unacceptable? Eight factors help to explain the crimes committed by these educated and cultivated SS doctors: indoctrination fervent to Nazism, adherence to racial hygiene, a false sense of participation in a "public health enterprise", virulent anti-Semitism, unreserved obedience to orders, the opportunity to avoid the danger of fighting areas, the ambition to carry out medical research and the desire to improve surgical knowledge.
Subject(s)
Crime , National Socialism/history , Physician's Role , Physicians/history , Ethnic Cleansing/history , Ethnic Cleansing/psychology , Germany , History, 20th Century , Humans , Motivation , Physician's Role/history , Physicians/psychologyABSTRACT
In 1949, federal parliamentarians were indignant when asked to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (hereafter, UNGC). We could not in any way be associated with 'the unthinkable' crime, senior members claimed, because we are 'a moral people' with a 'clean record'. This essay assesses the 'decent' Australian democrats who, as the indelible records show, set out to kill the Aboriginal people they deemed 'vermin' and then later, decided to engage in a eugenicist fantasy to rid Australia of Aborigines by intermarriage or, failing that, forcibly removing their children in large numbers. The colonial frontier killings were justified as 'dispersing kangaroos'. Child removals were done 'in their best interests'. This essay attempts to gain an insight into the mindset of those who did commit 'the unthinkable' crime of genocide: killing, removal of children, and 'causing serious bodily and mental harm'. Subsequent policies infantalised the Aboriginal and Islander population and denied them basic human rights.