Remembering the forgotten

Sabra and Shatila. Kigali. Srebrenica. Ask Princeton students to point to these places on a map, and only a few will be able to do it. Ask what is so important about these places, and you will probably draw blank stares. The residents of Sabra and Shatila, Kigali, and Srebrenica share a common history; they remember together the orgy of death that visited their homelands not too long ago. A human life is so valuable, and so fragile. How many of these lives — of innocent men, women and children — must be lost for us to take notice?

Twenty years ago, Lebanon was mired in a brutal civil war that was inflamed by a destructive Israeli occupation that ended only two years ago. A cocky Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, led the Operation Peace for Galilee that had at its purpose to "cleanse" Lebanon as a base for Palestinian armed resistance. On September 15, 2 weeks after the PLO had been evacuated from Beirut in an agreement with Israelis, Sharon declared that "2,000 terrorists" still remained in West Beirut and the surrounding refugee camps. Subsequently, the Israeli army encircled Sabra and Shatila, installing checkpoints to monitor entry and exit into the refugee camps, effectively sealing them off. On September 16, General Sharon permitted Lebanese Phalangist militias (allied with the Israeli army) into the camps and urged them to "mop up" Sabra and Shatila.

For the next two days, the Israeli army stood outside the camp, sealing it from the outside to journalists and from the inside to Palestinian refugees wanting to leave. At night, the Israelis lit flares to allow the Phalangist militias to continue with their operation. However, it was no operation. Robert Fisk described what he saw when he entered Shatila: "there were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies - blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24-hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition - tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey." (The Independent). On those fateful two days, hundreds of Palestinian refugees were maimed, and slaughtered (estimated dead range from 700 to 3,000). Women were raped. Children were shot. Many men simply disappeared never to be seen again.

Abu Roudeina survived the massacre. His father, pregnant sister, brother-in-law, and so many others did not. Twenty years later, he remembers the dark face of humanity that entered his home that ominous day in September. Does the world remember with him?

Srebrenica, Bosnia and Shatila are 1,200 miles apart but together in spirit. In 1992, the former Yugoslavia submerged into a brutal civil war that pitted Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Serbs against one another. Yet, among some of the soldiers in this war, ethnic hatred ran deep and genocidal lust flowed in their veins. By 1995, Europe had witnessed war crimes that had not been seen since World War II on the continent. Bosnian Muslims were the targets of many of these crimes, and thousands had been made homeless, seeking refuge in several UN safe havens. One such safe haven was Srebrenica, designated as such in 1993, and guarded by UN peacekeeping forces, principally Dutch soldiers. UN commander Morillon told the refugees in March 1993: "I will never abandon you." (BBC News).

History showed something entirely different. On July 11, 1995, Serb forces were surrounding the 'safe haven' guarded by 100 Dutch peacekeepers. Serbian General Mladic met with the lightly armed Dutch soldiers to negotiate entry into the camp. The Dutch peacekeepers eventually stepped aside and abandoned the camp, and even provided the Serbian forces with a registry of men in the camp. What ensued was so abominable, so horrendous, so inhumane, that the majority of Americans do not know a thing about it. The Serbian forces separated the men from the women and children (who were evacuated). In five days, at least 7,500 men were slaughtered, and later buried in mass graves.

Wives left their husbands, who they would never see again. Some of the men tried to run to the nearby forest in an attempt to hide. For most it was in vain. Those who surrendered were assembled in a school gymnasium, and a local football field, among other places, where they were summarily executed. Hasa Selimovic recounted in an interview what she told the general in charge of the Serbian forces: "What did my child ever do to you? What do you want from him? He can't do any harm. 'Just get him off!' Mladic shouted. I started crying, the child was crying. I was crying. My son, Junuz, I pulled him towards me. Mladic pulled him back. He pulled him off. 'Don't cry, mother,' he said. 'He will return.' And I had hope.'" (The Guardian). Junuz did return, like 7,500 other men — in a body bag.

Only one year earlier, before Srebrenica, the world had witnessed genocide in Rwanda, and some of the worst crimes since the Holocaust. In 100 days, there were an estimated 800,000 deaths. Words, and pictures cannot grasp the pure cruelty of this massacre. Imagine that on average, 8,000 people were brutally slaughtered everyday for 100 days. Testifying before Congress, Holly Burkhalter of Physicians for Human Rights, remarked: "We learned about the genocide first hand as we carefully lifted each of 450 victims from the grave: the skull cleaved in two by a machete blow, the baby tied to his dead mother's back, the children with achilles tendons cut so that they couldn't run, the priest in his clerical garb."

Yet the victims of the Rwandan genocide remain nameless, faceless. Will you remember Marie Abimana or Justine Akingeneye or Athanase Akumuntu or Xaverine Ayingeneye or Magnifique Bahati or Beatha Banamwana or Agnes Bareshyabose or Esdras Bazarama or Veronique Kakuze or Deborat Kagwesige or Marie Grace Kagoyire or Gildas Magera? Will you remember the thousands of women gang-raped and sexually mutilated in Rwanda?

As we sit in the relative tranquility of the West, let's not forget the massacres of the recent past. Perhaps by remembering, we will gain perspective on our own grievances. More importantly, by remembering we will learn not to remain on the sidelines next time around. Taufiq Rahim is a Woodrow Wilson School Major from Vancouver, British Columbia. He can be reached at trahim@princeton.edu.