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-25 points

5 months ago

Yes, I agree that that is a horrific abuse at mass scale but it is also different from systematically killing those children with nowhere to escape.

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disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world

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21 points

5 months ago

By definition, it’s genocide. Genocide doesn’t mean “killing children.” It means attempting to eradicate a nation or culture. This wasn’t a discussion of which horrors are more egregious. It’s about the commenter being upset that Harris didn’t label it genocide.

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-12 points

5 months ago

Yes, I agree that the cultural genocide aspects are very serious and those responsible should be face punishment. My point is not to minimize the cultural genocides but to say that the physical killing of civilians is a tier above the cultural erasure aspect in the awful calculus that were discussing and Gaza is a much more clear-cut case of that than the others.

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disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world

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7 points

5 months ago

Again, the term genocide has nothing to do with severity. Why is it more important to use the term when referring to killing civilian children? Genocide can be committed without killing anyone.

It’s more clear what the atrocities are by referring to innocent women and children being bombed, than it is to simply use the word genocide.

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-13 points

5 months ago

Genocide absolutely has to do with severity even if the technical criteria do not explicitly define said severity. That is why more human right lawyers have about been vocal about a genocide occurring in Gaza than have about one occurring Xinjiang. An assessment has to deem war crimes and human rights abuses to amount to genocide along with intent determined through those actions. I urge you to read the OHCHR’s report on Xinjiang and see how they choose their terms carefully despite having evidence for a array of different human rights abuses: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf

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disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world

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5 points

5 months ago

You misunderstand. I’m saying comparing abducted Ukrainian children to killed Palestinian children is not clarified by the use of the word genocide. They are both genocides. It’s all the more reason that we should be addressing it as the tens of thousands of killed innocent civilian women and children in Gaza.

Are you aware that the Tibetan genocide has been ongoing since 1951? I’ve attended peaceful protests since the 80s on the sinicization of the Tibetan people. They are not recognized as a nation by the UN, so no nations will intervene. Nations around the world just keep buying Chinese products to fund their genocides, and look the other way.

The word genocide describes the intent, not the actions. If the intent is to eradicate a culture or people, regardless of the methods, it is considered genocide. It can be through forced indoctrination of a religion as with Tibetans, through forced adoption of a nationality as with the Ukrainians, through forced sterilization as with the Uyghurs, or through killing people as with Palestinians.

Saying “what’s happening to the Palestinians is worse than what’s happening to Ukrainians, so we should really call that genocide” displays ignorance in both the definition of the word, and comprehension of the events.

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-10 points

5 months ago

You’re the one that compared them to imply that if you call this a genocide but not this a genocide then you are not consistent than proceeded to name 3 cultural genocides (with Ukraine’s having potential to become a full blown genocide depending on how the war plays out in my opinion).

If we can’t agree that a killings-based genocide is worse than a cultural erasure genocide then there’s nothing left to talk about. Unless you believe that if the Chinese began systematically killing Tibetans tomorrow that nothing would fundamentally change in your classification.

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Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM

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4 points

5 months ago

You don’t have to actively kill anyone for it to be genocide. The Trail of Tears was a genocide. They didn’t directly murder the tens of thousands of indigenous American people. They drove them off their land. Many of them died along the way to their forced new homes, but that’s not why it was a genocide.

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