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Tag: Genocide

In 2016, Israel Demolished Over 200 West Bank Homes In Illegal Settlement Expansion

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank of Gaza have expanded rapidly over the past year, seriously threatening many Palestinian communities and their farmlands.

“This practice doesn’t just mean expanding into Palestinian land,” journalist Abby Martin explained in an Oct. 31 episode of “The Empire Files.”

When Martin traveled to the region for several weeks in August and September to report on the effects of Israel’s apartheid policies on the indigenous Palestinian population, her movement around Gaza was heavily restricted by Israeli forces.

Martin continued:

From Drone Killings To Hospital Bombings: 15 Years Of Civilian Deaths In The Global War On Terror

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

The recent bombing of a hospital in northwestern Yemen has drawn international outrage and new criticism of the Saudi-led, U.S.-backed forces fighting there, but it’s just the latest in a slew of war crimes committed over the past 15 years in the name of the U.S.-backed global war on terror.

Nineteen people were killed and 24 were injured in the Aug. 15 bombing, which struck Abs Hospital in northwestern Yemen. Among the dead was Abdul Kareem al Hakeemi, a staff member of Doctors Without Borders (frequently referred to by its French name, Médecins sans Frontières, or MSF).

It was the fourth and deadliest bombing of an MSF-supported hospital since the attacks on Yemen began in early 2015, leading the NGO to evacuate its six hospitals in the region three days later.

Myanmar’s Rohingya Genocide Is Aided By Friends In High Places

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

In 2012, after centuries of tension, Myanmar’s Buddhist majority began oppressing the nation’s Muslim minority, forcing them into concentration camps and carrying out widespread murder and genocidal acts.

But more than racism and bigotry have inflamed tensions in this South Asian country, as the United States and its allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel enable the atrocities through their foreign aid and military power.

In June, The Economist called the Rohingya “the most persecuted people on earth,” noting that their suffering has intensified since 2012. That year, “140,000 Rohingyas were forced into squalid refugee camps after the local Buddhists turned on them,” and since then, “their situation has been especially dire.”

Native Americans Have ‘Always Known’: Science Proves Genetic Inheritance Of Trauma

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Many have suspected through the years that extreme stress and trauma leave their mark not just on their victims, but on their descendants as well. Now science is catching up to these beliefs through the developing field of epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the study of how environmental factors can change the expression of a person’s DNA, often in ways which are inheritable by the next generation. This science looks at not just which genes are in a person’s DNA — the genetic “instruction manual” — but also how cells choose to read and interpret that instruction manual throughout a lifetime of development.

Earlier this month, Biological Psychiatry published a new study called “Holocaust exposure induced intergenerational effects on FKBP5 methylation,” in which the authors studied 32 Holocaust survivors and their adult children. All of the older generation of subjects had either been interned in concentration camps or otherwise intimately witnessed the torture and horror of Nazi genocide.

4 Million Muslims Killed In Western Wars: Should We Call It Genocide?

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

It may never be possible to know the true death toll of the modern Western wars on the Middle East, but that figure could be 4 million or higher. Since the vast majority of those killed were of Arab descent, and mostly Muslim, when would it be fair to accuse the United States and its allies of genocide?

A March report by Physicians for Social Responsibility calculates the body count of the Iraq War at around 1.3 million, and possibly as many as 2 million. However, the numbers of those killed in Middle Eastern wars could be much higher. In April, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed argued that the actual death toll could reach as high as 4 million if one includes not just those killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the victims of the sanctions against Iraq, which left about 1.7 million more dead, half of them children, according to figures from the United Nations.

‘We Charge Genocide’: Systematic Murder & Oppression Of Blacks Continues In US

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Genocide is a word which may bring to mind images of large-scale ethnic cleansing and mass graves like those created by German Nazis or Bosnian Serbs. Some acts of genocide, however, are slower, more subtle, and a good deal more insidious, like the acts the United States continues to carry out against its black- and brown-skinned population.

The word “genocide” was defined in the 1940s, as the world struggled to deal with the massive body count from Nazi Germany, whose supporters killed some 6 million Jews and another 5 million from other groups like Roma Gypsies, LGBTQ people, and citizens of Russia and Poland. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, ratified in 1951, defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” This includes not just killing and bodily harm, but also any deliberate acts which make survival difficult or impossible, like the removal of children from their families. While the Nazis were explicit about their policies of racial extermination, the convention admits that in most cases, genocide “must be inferred from a systematic pattern of coordinated acts.”