The blood shed yesterday and today

“The first genocide of the 20th century”: Pope Francis quoted from the Joint Statement signed by John Paul II and Karekin II in Etchmiadzin on September 27 2001, to remember the first of “three massive and unprecedented tragedies” “our human family has lived through in the past century”. The first “struck the Armenian people”, when “Bishops and priests, religious, women and men, the elderly and even defenceless children and the infirm were murdered”. “The remaining two were perpetrated by Nazism and Stalinism”. Memory and open wounds. From St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, where on April 12 he celebrated Mass for the centenary of the Armenian “martyrdom” (Metz Yeghern) the Pope remembered also “the mass killings in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi and Bosnia”. Not before having mentioned “the muffled and forgotten cry of so many of our defenceless brothers and sisters who, on account of their faith in Christ or their ethnic origin, are publicly and ruthlessly put to death – decapitated, crucified, burned alive – or forced to leave their homeland”. “Today too”, the Pope went on, “we are experiencing a sort of genocide created by general and collective indifference, by the complicit silence of Cain who says: ‘What do I care?'” For the Pontiff, remembering genocides and mass exterminations is “necessary, and indeed a duty, to honour their memory, for whenever memory fades, it means that evil allows wounds to fester. Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it!” Armenian genocide (1915-1923). It occurred in the framework of the first world conflict (1914-1918), carried out by the government of the “Young Turks”, in power since 1908, that in this way intended to exterminate the Armenian ethnic group, most of whom were Christians, present in the area of Anatolia since the 7th century B.C. According to research carried out by experts and historians, 1.5 million people were deported and exterminated: a slaughter with the characteristics of a genocide that Turkey has always denied. For the country of the Crescent Moon, the Armenian victims amount to approximately 300 thousand. To the words of remembrance and denunciation of Pope Bergoglio, backed by countless voices of the international community, Ankara responded by denying the reality of the facts and accusing the Pope to exploit the story. Cambodia (1975-1978). Former French colony, Cambodia gained independence in 1953 thanks to Prince Norodom Sihanouk, overthrown in 1970 with a coup d’ètat carried out by general Lol Non, with the support of the US. In 1975, the power passed in the hands of the Khmer Rouge, a group of Leninist popular background, present especially in rural areas of the north. Their leader, Pol Pot, proclaimed the establishment of the Republic of Democratic Kampuchea. To create the new “Socialist man” the dictator evacuated all cities of Cambodia, transferring the population to re-education camps. Cambodia became, in fact, a huge forced labour camp where, according to estimates, from a minimum of 800 thousand to a maximum of 3.3 million Cambodians lost their lives. The Vietnamese put an end to the killings in 1979. Rwanda (1994). From 6 April to 16 July 1994 in Rwanda, State of Central Africa, the Great Lakes region, Hutu Power extremists and members of the Akazuwas group committed the genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus extremists. The madness was sparked off by a mysterious plane crash in Kigali (Rwanda’s capital), on April 6, 1994, that killed President Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi both Hutu. Out of a population of 7.3 million people, of which 84% Hutu, 15% Tutsi and 1% Twa, 1.174 million were killed with machetes and sticks in just 100 days (10 thousand deaths a day, 400 every hour, 7 per minute). Among them about 20% were Hutu. The Tutsi survivors of the genocide are estimated at 300 thousand. Bosnia (1990-1999). It developed in the broader context of the dissolution of Yugoslavia’s federal president Tito (six republics of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia) and two autonomous regions combined with Serbia (Kosovo and Vojvodina). In the period 1990-1999 the parties in conflict carried several times ethnic cleansing to prevail. The motivation lies in the extreme nationalism cultivated by all parties involved. The figures of the extermination are still to be ascertained. On 11 July this year Bosnia commemorates the twentieth anniversary of the massacre of Srebrenica (1995), a Muslim enclave in the eastern part of the country. Here about 8 thousand Bosnian men and teenagers, were killed by Serbian forces in Bosnia.