Strife

The Academic Blog of the Department of War Studies, King's College London

You are here: Home / Archives for Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Call for Papers - KSLR-Strife Joint Edition

by

The King’s Student Law Review and Strife are pleased to announce the publication of the third joint, special edition of our journal under the overarching theme of ‘Law and War’.

Submissions must be relevant to the subjects that relate to the intersection between ‘Law and War’. This overarching theme encompasses a vast range of topics such as challenging the effectiveness of ‘Jus in bello‘ (international humanitarian law) in light of the ‘war on terror’, ‘rogue states’, the historical origins of the laws of conventional warfare, or on broader themes such as the legal practice in international human rights, translation of legal norms within war and martial and strategic law. In particular, the editors would be interested in contributions addressing the implications for law and war of the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit, protest movements, space exploration, and big data and AI. For examples of accepted works please see our second joint edition here.

All articles must be between 4,000 and 6,000 words in length. Articles must comply with extension OSCOLA Guidelines (4th edition). Please click here for a conclusive guide. Guidance can be provided to authors unfamiliar with OSCOLA referencing requirements.

If you are interested in submitting an article for this exciting joint publication, please send the full text, as well as the required information (outlined below) to the following email address: [email protected]

 

Required Information

  • Title of the article, set in bold, ranged left and unjustified.
  • Name of the author or authors directly below the title, followed by institution affiliation, if applicable.
  • Five or six keywords.
  • Abstract of around 350 words
  • Article of between 4,000 and 6,000 words

We will be accepting submissions until Monday 3rd August 2020 at 6pm (BST). We look forward to receiving your submissions.

 

The King’s Student Law Review and Strife

For any general enquiries, please contact: [email protected]

If you have any enquiries that are law-related or relate to KSLR’s work in this project or more generally, please contact: [email protected].

If you have any enquiries related to the topic of conflict more broadly or that relate to Strife’s collaboration in this project, please contact: [email protected]

The Killing of Soleimani and its Implications for European Security

by

by William Newland

Major General Qassem Soleimani was targeted and killing by a US drone strike on 3 January 2020 (Image credit: AP)

One will recall the airstrike launched by the United States military that killed Major General Qassem Soleimani in early January 2020. Initially, the response around the world was one of shock but this sentiment quickly shifted to fear as critics warned that the attack could trigger all-out war with Iran. In a press conference the next day, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned the European response, stating that ‘what the American did, saved lives in Europe’ and Soleimani’s death ‘was a good thing for the entire world.’ While this assessment might prove to be correct for the immediate security of a small number of American and European troops, this piece argues that the security of European states has effectively decreased in the short- and long-term. Now, with a few months between us and the incident, it is time to take another look.

In the short-term, European security decreased for primarily two reasons. Firstly, Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes have already threatened the security of European and U.S. soldiers in military bases across the Middle East. It was sheer luck that only Iraqi soldiers were killed, preventing further escalation by the U.S. However, it is likely that Iran and its regional Shi’ite allies will continue to use their political influence to remove U.S. and allied presence from the region. In fact, only a few days after the attack, the Iraqi parliament chose to expel U.S. forces from Iraqi territory in a symbolic vote.

Secondly, Soleimani, in his role as commander of the Quds Force - subsidiary of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - was seen as an adversary by the West because of his role in training Hezbollah in Lebanon and using Shi’ite forces to attack U.S. soldiers during the Iraq War. Soleimani’s position also meant that he had a close relationship with Shi’ite militia groups such as the Popular Mobilisation Force, so much so that he became known to them as a ‘living martyr.’ Iran’s proxy forces have been among the loudest in calling for strong retaliation against the U.S. and its allies. Despite Iran’s close ties with these groups, the state’s lack of complete control over their actions creates the potential for a more dangerous, disproportionate, and prolonged response against allied forces in countries like Iraq.

European leaders have taken both these threats very seriously. Germany ordered the removal of thirty-five service members from Iraq, whilst other NATO member states have moved 500 of their personnel to safer areas in and around Iraq. Although these moves are certainly important for the immediate safety of European troops, they could enable the resurgence of the Islamic State which, in turn, would likely re-spark concerns of significant plans for terror attacks in Europe. If such fears bear fruit, then the consequences of the Trump Administration’s actions would have significantly contributed to European insecurity.

In the longer term, however, two other factors could further decrease the security of European states. The first is that of international law and norms which the US has prided itself on creating and upholding for over seventy years. Yet, for the international order to be effective and adhered to by others, it needs to be ‘visibly observed’ by its ‘principle and most powerful’ advocate. Here, the Trump administration has struggled to prove that the killing of Soleimani was a response to an “imminent” threat to US personnel, raising serious concerns as to whether it complied with international law. The fact that this killing was carried out by the US and that its legality is ambiguous casts doubts over the legitimacy of those laws and norms that undergird the liberal international order. Furthermore, the airstrike endangers European security because by targeting a high-ranking military official, the US has potentially set a new precedent that allows enemy states to engage in similar activity free from normative constraints. Simply put, adversaries now have an argument for targeting Western officials. We need only look at Russia’s justification for its invasion of Georgia in 2008 to show that states will point to US precedents to support their own actions. If the rules protecting states officials have changed, then the security of European officials has diminished.

The second point is that the Iranians have, in all but name, abandoned their compliance with the nuclear restrictions imposed by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iran has stated that it will no longer adhere to the limits on the number of centrifuges it can install to enrich uranium or the level to which it enriches that heavy metal. This essentially brings Europe and the rest of the world back to the same place that they were ten years ago. Iran can now produce weapons-grade nuclear material and rather than the one-year warning period guaranteed by the JCPOA, the US, Europe, and the rest of the world could have as little as a few months warning of an Iranian nuclear weapon.

The very fact that Iran can once again produce its own nuclear weapons means that European guarantees of security have decreased, but that in itself is not the biggest worry. The greatest source of European insecurity would be caused by a US-Iran war. Despite the fact that both states have indicated a desire for de-escalation, tensions preceding the Soleimani’s death remain high and will only be compounded by the US becoming warier of Iranian nuclear proliferation going forward. Increased tension can increase the chance of the potential flashpoints in Syria, the Golan Heights, Iraq, or Yemen. Each of these separate boiling points can potentially trigger a larger military conflict that could see European citizens fighting alongside the US.

In conclusion, Secretary Pompeo may have been correct in his assertation that a small number of European lives were saved by the killing of Major General Soleimani. However, in the short term, there is an increased threat to NATO troops from proxy forces and an increased chance of a resurgent ISIS that could target European citizens. In the long-term, the US’s actions negatively impact the legitimacy of the international norms and set a dangerous precedent for states such as Russia whilst also increasing the chances of Iranian nuclear proliferation and the potential for a US-Iranian conflict in the future.

William Newland is a Master’s student in National Security Studies at King’s College London. His research focuses on grand strategy, national security, and great power competition, particularly on China’s rise, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, and the potential security implications for the United States, Europe, and NATO.

Book Review: ‘Dying to Serve’

by

by Kamaldeep Singh Sandhu

Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2020. ISBN 978-1-5036-1198-6 Pp. 267. Paperback. £19.41

Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice ...

Are military deaths in an armed conflict avoidable and prodigal or are they a necessary and sacred sacrifice required for the protection of the state and society? Maria Rashid’s new noteworthy book, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army, carries this sensitive and difficult debate forward through a study of the Pakistan military’s relationship with its soldiers and citizens. The Pakistan military’s use of religion and the idea of ‘shahadat’ (martyrdom) as a motivator for training, fighting, and dying for the nation are well established (p. 33). This book is a comparative study of narratives provided by the Pakistani state and military on the one hand and the subject soldier and his family on the other.

Pakistan is one of those states that thrive on a strong military spirit. This militarism establishes war as normal and necessary and, in turn, demands sacrifices from its subjects. Dying to Serve is an attempt to understand the mechanisms through which such sacrifices are made sacred by the military narratives of heroism, and meaningful, glorious, and honourable deaths. This mechanism, in turn, extracts legitimacy and unquestioned support from the citizenry. The book explores this phenomenon through the dead soldiers, considered as heroes, mourned for long periods by communities, and taken as social examples. The author also briefly examines the same through retired and disabled soldiers.

In Rashid’s own words, ‘the book examines the role of affect­—such as grief and its accompanying notions of death, dying and sacrifice as well as feelings of attachment, pride, and fear—in maintaining the military’s hegemony in Pakistan’ (p. 9). The study is based on fieldwork conducted in five villages in the Chakwal district of Punjab over a period of thirteen months where the author interviewed more than one hundred people.

The author begins the book by examining the Youm-e-Shuhada (Martyrs’ Memorial) and Youm-e-Difah (Defence Day) ceremonies, described as ‘spectacles of mourning’ (p. 23) that define the narrative and valorise military service. The story proceeds by comparing the narrative of Chakwal as the ‘land of the valiant’, a name the district has earned through its martial tradition since colonial times, versus its location in the Salt Range of Northern Punjab that lends it to an economic dependency on the armed forces for providing the main source of employment. The district is located between the valleys of Indus and Jhelum Rivers and its terrain is partly covered with scrub forest, featuring plains interrupted by dry rock. Approx. 96 per cent of agricultural demand for water is met by rainwater, which naturally leads to ‘gurbat’ (poverty) and ‘bhukh’ (hunger) amongst the inhabitants. It is from this economic deprivation that the author questions the authenticity of the ‘martial tradition’ narrative.

The author begins with the process of military training, where the bonds of kinship are broken to develop affective relationships with fellow soldiers, who signify their new family, and group leaders who stand in for father figures (p. 97). The affection thus sculpted by love and loyalty for the regiment and determination to uphold its honour prepares them to kill or die in combat. It highlights the depersonalisation that soldiers experience along with a sense of emotional distancing, a silencing from others who can no longer understand or relate to what soldiering is about (p. 106). The story also highlights how the military commands the right to ask you to die or kill in its name as a response of love, loyalty, and attachment of familial connections reimagined according to the concerns of the state (p. 207).

Rashid talks of the families of the dead soldiers gripped with grief, guilt, and regret who, yet, have to put on the mask of a social reality scripted with the themes of ‘pride in the act of sacrifice for the motherland and a belief in eternal life’ in order to make sense of the death of their loved ones. They must also accept the money and benefits offered because, after all, it was for material needs that the tribute to the nation was risked in the first place (p. 138). It explores the mechanisms through which a violent and preventable death is transformed into a necessary, honourable, and meaningful sacrifice (p. 149).

One chapter, in particular, brings out the hollowness of this narrative. Describing the disabled soldiers as ‘the bodies left behind’, Rashid argues that although in reality the maiming is socially induced as a result of modern war and armed conflict, it is managed by the military within some perfunctory and feeble attempts at promoting narratives of empowerment, pride in resilience, and sacrifice for the nation (p. 169). The author argues that the military’s ability to depict service and sacrifice as noble and draw foot soldiers from society will be sustained as long as ‘war’ is imagined to be glorious, and the dead to be heroes; whereas in reality, it is merely a viable source of ‘pakki naukri’ (permanent employment) (p. 217).

The author has articulated militarism and its effect accurately in the context of the Pakistan Army. It is a must-read for all, especially those who once believed in the narrative of militarism and the sanctity of military deaths but were confused when the layers of this social construct began to peel off. While Rashid provides a new humbling and soothing perspective on this issue, the one place the book falls short is in providing definitive answers or an equally acceptable alternative belief system.

Despite being a case study on the Pakistan Army, which has played a dominant role in state formation over the years, the arguments made here are applicable to the phenomenon of militarism across the globe. Hardly any society collectively calls its military deaths avoidable or unnecessary.

When viewed through Charles Tilly’s famous cyclic aphorism ‘war made state, and the state made war’ the comparison of narratives highlighted in the book holds firm within the context of ‘state makes war’. However, as this axiom shows that war is inevitable and ultimately perpetuated through the imperfection of human thoughts, whether the same arguments still hold when the ‘war makes state’ and the state merely takes advantages or is victim of its inevitability, remains debatable.

Kamaldeep Singh Sandhu is a PhD Candidate in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London. His research interests include South Asian security, military culture, and defence diplomacy. An alumnus of National Defence Academy, Pune, Army War College, Mhow and The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he has served as an Officer with the Indian army’s Parachute Regiment for ten years and currently serves as an Officer in the Reserve Army, UK. You can find him on Twitter at kamal_sandhu78.

Religion as an Impediment for Social Distancing in Bangladesh

by

by Shuva Das

Thousands of Bangladeshi Muslims gather for the funeral of a popular Islamic preacher on Saturday, April 18, 2020. (Image credit: CNN)

For a few months now, countries from across the globe sustained lockdowns in various forms to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus known as the SARS-CoV-2. This development exposed a clash between some requirements of the prescribed measures for social distancing and the traditions of major religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. In the world’s eighth-most populous country, Bangladesh, as elsewhere, the pandemic keeps the entire nation at high risk with a persistent rise of cases from 8 March 2020 onwards. In April, the United Nations issued a warning to Bangladesh, arguing that the country could face two million deaths from the fatal virus.

Yet the measures that Bangladesh adopted so far to maintain social distancing in its ongoing lockdown have remained ineffective at best. Several reasons stand out, yet chief among these are daily shopping, financial considerations, and religious commitments. In the densely populated country, daily gatherings of people effectively emasculated the social distancing measures, with crowds coming together in markets without virtually any caution. Besides, since scores of people live hand to mouth, the allegedly corrupted government system for relief distribution and the uncooperative stance of many private industries including the monumental garment sector further aggravated the poor implementation of the lockdown; and with it, the plight of the country’s citizens. Thus, people of this economic line cannot but attend to their work.

Moreover, religion also appeared as a significant hurdle and concern for social distancing measures in the majority Muslim country because of certain sensitive issues pertaining to the (observation of) religion. In this article, I will explain this particular aspect.

Islamic preachers of Bangladesh in Waz Mahfils (instructive and explanatory Islamic discussion) presented outlandish divine conspiracy theories for the outbreak of coronavirus. Their coronavirus-related speeches are widely shared sensations on social media pages of Bengali speaking people around the world. Over the eruption of the coronavirus in China, Kazi Ibrahim, a prominent Islamic preacher, claimed that an Italian Muslim resident held a heavenly conversation with the virus in his dream. According to Ibrahim, the coronavirus told the dreamer that the almighty Allah sent it as soldier to attack the Chinese for repressing and harassing the Uyghur Muslim population.

Another popular Islamic scholar Tarek Monowar told in a speech that a singer execrating Azan (prayer) has lately visited Bangladesh and performed at a stadium. Monowar then vented the coronavirus was looking for enemies of Islam to terminate them. Another cleric came up with an idea that except for adherents of Islam, the rest of the world would soon be infected by the virus. Other similarly invented tricky statements after the virus spread in Iran and also other Muslim countries including Bangladesh. Iran is supposedly paying dearly for its presumed distortion of the Islamic faith, while Muslims of other countries must not be pious enough to be saved.

Such kind of remarks by these so-called religious scholars injects blind faith among the laity and was lambasted by renowned atheist scholars like Richard Dawkin and Christopher Hitchens for long. A professor of Islamic Studies at Dhaka University, Bangladesh, said to the New Age, a national daily newspaper, those spurious speeches of the clerics ─ who, without any expertise nor knowledge about the disease gave an expert opinion on the matter ─ wrongfully represented Islam, a religion of peace and harmony.

What the Islamic pundits of Bangladesh try to establish through their lectures filled with manipulation and bigotry is to erroneously show the superiority of Islam and to increase their followers. In this regard, there is an indirectly substantial resemblance between Bangladeshi Islamic scholars and India’s Hindu nationalists belonging to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the present ruling party of India. Some leaders of the BJP have prescribed cow urine and dung for the prevention and remedy of the coronavirus. Not surprisingly, cow urine drinking party was arranged by Hindu hardliners on 14 March 2020, to seek divine intervention against the scourge of the virus. Also, they boast that the traditional greeting system with “Namaste”, vegetarian eating culture, and traditional treatment of medicine (Ayurveda) of Hinduism have protected India from any epidemic.

In reality, India, however, experienced several pandemics, namely cholera, dengue fever, and malaria. Through such false, irrational narratives, the messages of Indian Hindu nationalists are generating intolerance and religious hatred among Hindus against the Muslim minority in the country. Similarly, the Muslim preachers of Bangladesh can breed the same bigotry sentiments among Muslims to the other religious groups. Such groundless statements by the Bangladeshi Islamic scholars are a looming threat to the social distancing measures of the country. Its population has a very tender mindset and they are highly gullible to religious teachings by the clerics. In so doing, social distancing measures are ignored by a vast number of Muslims, with many people prioritising their religious practices above safety measures against the virus to score more “points” in securing their ticket to Paradise.

On 18 April 2020, after defying the lockdown order of government, around 100,000 people participated in the funeral of a famous Islamic preacher in eastern Bangladesh, this against the backdrop of the ongoing outbreak in the country. The swarmed event caught the attention of the international media and rightfully drew a lot of criticism. The police could not do anything to prevent the unexpected flood of the mass. In turn, the government immediately tried to exonerate themselves by withdrawing several important police officers from the region. It is a method similarly used by the authoritarian Chinese government to uphold their positive image during a bad situation, by blaming or suspending responsible government officials.

The above-mentioned gathering was a follow-up of a recent mass prayer in Bangladesh where an estimated thirty thousand Muslims attended to seek holy intercession against the virus. Two big consecutive failures of the government to prevent the mass religious gatherings indicate not only their haplessness but a form of appeasement policy to Islamic groups. Yet it is an old pain. Every ruling government of Bangladesh maintains such a policy in order to secure Muslim votes and regime support.

In addition, though the Bangladesh Islamic Foundation, a government organisation affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, urged people not to take prayer in mosques with more than five to ten people. This specific order has been breached in many places, even with several violent incidents. One person has recently died and several others got injured in a violent clash over who could pray at the mosque. Here, it is important to mention that general people of the country have seemingly nothing but God for their mental gratification and their battle against the pandemic.

As per Islamic instructions, if any persons including the sick could get affected by a risk of death or epidemic, it is allowed to pray at home. The Prophet Muhammad also gave clear instructions to Muslims in quarantine: ‘If you hear of an outbreak of plague in a land, do not enter it; if the plague breaks out in a place while you are in it, do not leave that place’. Islamic instructions like this ought to be reiterated by religious scholars; to prevent a massive number of people from attending a funeral, a religious gathering, or prayer places amid the epidemic.

The failure of the Bangladesh government to address religious gatherings, fanaticism, propaganda, and religious manipulation led to an ineffective implementation of social distancing measures. It was reported earlier that unchecked religious practices triggered infection considerably in some countries: in Korea by Shincheonji Church; in India by Tablighi Jamaat; in Israel by Ultra-Orthodox Communities; and so on. Bangladeshi people and its government ought to learn from these countries. The government should also counter those lockdown-disrupting clerics by legal decrees and establish a strong monitoring system to filter out any misinformation from social media. As always, it will remain true that ‘religion is for individuals while the pandemic can be for all’.

Shuva Das holds a BSS (Hons) degree in International Relations from Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Science and Technology University in Gopalganj, Dhaka, Bangladesh. His articles have appeared in Synergy: The Journal of Contemporary Asian Studies and in The Oxford University Politics Blog, among others.

 

Genocide and its Relevance Today (Part IV): When does Genocide end?

by

by Mariana Boujikian

Denial of genocide sustains the pain, rather than resolving it (Jennifer Hu/Daily Bruin)

Man-made catastrophes such as genocides and other crimes against humanity impact people for many generations to come. Indeed, it is often the case that children of the survivors and their children, in turn, remain affected by that original sin. This intergenerational pain engages with one of the great issues that permeate the study of genocides and other atrocities: when does the process end? Can we say that after a few decades, genocides and their aftermaths are effectively over and dealt with? Above all, one can ask the question of whether this type of violence works with an expiration date, after which its effects completely dissipate?

In addition to extreme human loss, among the most immediate consequences of mass atrocities, a process of deterritorialisation and the creation of a diaspora takes place in which the survivors migrate to a new land where they can be free of persecution. This step is often accompanied by a state of silencing over the recently lived trauma. For the survivors, there is immense difficulty in verbalising and publicising the violence experienced. Marcio Seligmann-Silva, for example, argues that the survivor needs to elaborate a narrative and build “a bridge between himself and society”. Otherwise, he will be stuck between two worlds: the one in which he lived before, a place of horrors; and the one that he inhabits now, where most people around him do not know of his experience. The literature on other cases of gross violations of human rights shows that many survivors do not wish to build this narrative and prefer silence as a way of trying to spare subsequent generations of suffering. This attitude can also occur when victims feel that words are not enough to express their experience. As Fiona Ross, who studied the testimonies of women in post-Apartheid South Africa, points out: “Sometimes the voice escapes from experience.”

In this context, the promotion of spaces that provide public address on the subject are essential to provide healing for the ones who were traumatised by the violence and loss. Laura Moutinho identifies how South Africa’s experience of reconstruction after Apartheid was centred on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sought to “produce a clearly therapeutic effect in the elaboration of losses, traumas, and suffering”. Without this kind of reparative action and public dialogue after events of extreme violence, victims hardly feel welcomed and supported in their grief. As a result, the concealment of tragic events can become the very tonic of their family’s memory. Therefore, the lack of an official or otherwise process for transitional justice, an erasure of collective memory around the period of violence can occur. This silencing scenario can be further exacerbated when associated with denialism and state-sponsored strategies of erasure, as in the case of the Armenian Genocide.

The absence of justice and reparation measures at the end of the period of persecution against the Armenian population - who lived as an ethnic and religious minority in the Turkish-Ottoman Empire - led to a process of mourning that was forged outside legal and institutional processes. Jones summarises, after the end of the war “the stage was set for the rebirth of Turkish nationalism and resuscitation of Turkish statehood”. The perpetrators were not blamed, and Turkish society was reborn in the Kemalist rise, which prevented any formal recognition of the crimes committed by the Empire from which it inherited its structures. After this process, Jones explains that when “denied formal justice, Armenian militants settled on a vigilante version” - referring to the Operation Nemesis, which hunted down the main Turkish perpetrators and assassinated them as vengeance for what had happened during the period of 1915-1923.

The killing of the men responsible for planning the massacres and deportations was a desperate attempt to get payback and draw international attention to the tragedy. However, the mission only provided a sense of revenge, for the official recognition of the genocidal process by the Turkish state or other world powers has not occurred until this day. The case of the Armenian Genocide continued to be marked by a blatant negation of the past, and public mentions of the events are still punishable inside Turkey. The mere acknowledgment of the act has resulted in the punishment of various Turkish intellectuals, such as Orhan Pamuk, Taner Akça, and Ragip Zarakolu. Even more than a century after the events, the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians remains one of the biggest cases of denialism.

Through denial - considered by Stanton as the final stage of genocide - the topic remains an open wound. When analysing the testimonials of descendants of survivors in the diaspora it becomes clear that the topic is still very much alive among the community. One descendant defined the continued denialism as a prolonged pain: “What the Armenian people struggle today is for recognition. Because it will not change anything. Nothing goes back, nothing will change, the suffering continues. But I think people want to breathe, you understand? Take a deep sigh?”

From an anthropological perspective, the social or cultural life of the community has also marked this major event: 24 April commemorations of the genocide take place in Armenian churches, schools, clubs, and other social spaces. Those who were not alive in 1915 are aware that their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents experienced situations of tremendous violence and deprivation. Some women who descend from survivors shared complete narratives about the trajectory of their relatives and what they suffered along the way. The stories seem to pass from generation to generation through testimonies and extremely violent images, such as beheadings, the difficulties of crossing the desert, the path full of bodies, etc. As one of the respondents described: “(…) my mother said that my grandmother reported that it was like this: rivers of blood in the way they were going.”

Others, for their part, did not know the events that led their relatives to migrate, and reported having heard only fragments related to the flight of their relatives. In those cases, minutiae or details of what happened before seemed lost in time. The cities or regions of origin within their ancestral land are not even remembered, and subsequent generations seem bothered by the lack of this important information. As one Armenian woman stated: “They said they came [to Brazil] running away from the war. That’s what we all know about. That they came, the story of coming on the ship, these things. And sometimes they let out a little something like that”. She completed with a sigh: “I’d like to know more, I really would”

These discoveries are consistent with what Dr. Volhardt and Dr. Nair found on their research with group victims of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and other people who lived in refugee camps, in which “groups oscillate between silence and transmission of victim narratives”.

Another participant, a third-generation descendent from Armenia, only learned about her family’s past when she became a teenager and started living with her Armenian grandmother. She mentioned feeling in her life marks of something she had not lived:

“I think we come with a deep mark because we are torn from our lands … to be plucked from the ground and with no prospect of returning, I think this goes through generations, I usually say that I have a melancholy that is very Armenian, and that it is very much the result of genocide. It’s something I always felt in my grandmother, in my aunts, an eternal longing for a place they did not even know.”

In the subject of transgenerational trauma and the transmission of the events, research indicates that descendants who were born after the events - distanced in a temporal and geographic sense from the mass violence - can feel symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or other side effects often seen in people who lived through those episodes. This perpetuity of the past demonstrates the force with which events like genocides are disseminated throughout the decades, in a way that even those who have not been subjected to trauma feel their effects.

Through denialism, the effects of this tremendous violence are often reactivated. Such obstruction of the reconstruction of public memory can forestall the healing process. Without the acknowledgment of the events and the pain they caused, recovery is an even harder task for victims and their descendants. These persons are put in a position of having to prove their own suffering instead of being able to move forward. As such, we can conclude that although many of the known cases of genocide occurred during a specific time frame and are often studied based on what happened during that period, it is safe to say that genocide it is not over when the last death occurred, or when wars and conflicts are resolved, for its consequences can linger and travel through time and space, crossing generations.

Mariana Boujikian holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences from the University of Sao Paulo (USP) - Brazil. She is part of the Social Anthropology Masters Program of the same institution, specialising in studies of genocide and diaspora, with a focus on the aftermaths of the Armenian Genocide.