printI watched Amanpour’s CNN’s program on genocide. No mention was made of the genocide of Boers by the British during the Second Boer War. Fifteen percent of the Afrikaner population was rounded up, interned, and starved to death–27,000 women and children.
Apparently after some controversy, Amanoour even mentioned the poor Armenians whose wholesale slaughter is usually denied because the slaughterers, our “allies” the Turks, demand the denial of that Holocaust. National interest and all that stuff.
Here is a rather common image from the annals of the Second Boer War (1899-1902). The caption follows, below.
“The young Lizzie van Zyl who died in the Bloemfontein concentration camp: She was a frail, weak little child in desperate need of good care. Yet, because her mother was one of the “undesirables” due to the fact that her father neither surrendered nor betrayed his people, Lizzie was placed on the lowest rations and so perished with hunger that, after a month in the camp, she was transferred to the new small hospital. Here she was treated harshly. The English disposed doctor and his nurses did not understand her language and, as she could not speak English, labeled her an idiot although she was mentally fit and normal. One day she dejectedly started calling for her mother, when a Mrs Botha walked over to her to console her. She was just telling the child that she would soon see her mother again, when she was brusquely interrupted by one of the nurses who told her not to interfere with the child as she was a nuisance.”
Update: JP’s heartfelt comment hereunder with respect to how Afrikaners were treated warrants mention of another aspect of genocide, salient in the plight of the Afrikaners, then as now: demonization. The British liked the Bantu; and hated the Boer. They demonized the Boers as retarded and stupid and would hang notices around the necks of Afrikaner kids caught speaking Afrikaans at school: “I am a donkey.” (Source: The White Tribe of Africa: South Africa In Perspective by David Harrison, p. 48) Need I mention the Bantu’s “Kill the Boer” slogans?
How can one NOT demand revenge when one sees your own people dying in this horrible manner? Are we no more than dogs that this was allowed to happen? Are we still no more than dogs that the world ignores us when we again face annihilation? I tell you what: Let them come. It wouldn’t be the first time I would have to defend my family and myself and I have become exceptional at it. I don’t care if it is considered “bad manners” or “racist” to defend oneself against an attacker from another culture.
[You have my full support, for what it’s worth.–IM]
I haven’t seen the Amanpour program. It would be interesting to know if the program mentioned the Indonesian genocide against the East Timorese (1975-1999), one of the greatest atrocities of the postwar era. Out of an East Timorese population of approximately 425,000, at least 145,000 (and according to a book called TIMOR by James Dunn, 200,000) were killed.
Meanwhile, for some light relief, here is Andrew Roberts’s rationalizing of the Boer concentration camps, on page 31 of his HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES SINCE 1900:
“The ‘war crime’ [writes Roberts] for which the British have been most commonly held responsible during the Boer War was the supposed [sic!] ill treatment of Afrikaans women and children in camps there. In fact, these ‘concentration’ camps – the term had no pejorative implication until the Nazi era – were set up for the Boers’ protection off the veldt, and were run as efficiently and humanely as possible … A civilian surgeon Dr Alec Kay, writing in 1901, gave a further reason why the death rates were so high: ‘The Boers in the camps often depend on home remedies, with deplorable results’.”
And while we’re at it, let’s not forget an earlier feat of statesmanship by our Indonesian friends: the cold-blooded slaughter of between 500,000 and one million of their own people in the mid-1960s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366
Chalk up another moral triumph for the “religion of peace”, Indonesia-style.
I would like to comment on Roberts’ “justification” of the concentration camps.
a) The Boers have been living in the “the veld” since 1836 when Piet Retief led the first “trek boers” out of the Cape Colony, b) they were not “living like animals” in the veld, they actualy set up farms, towns and houses, c) if these women and children indeed had to live in the “veld” (as opposed to living in homes on their farms) it was because of the English’s “scorched earth policy” whereby they would burn down the Boers’ farms and all their possessions, d) and lastly, if these women and children were kept in the camps for their protection alone, then why were they not allowed to came and go as they pleased?
Robert’s argument is falacious. The real reason for the concentration camps was that it was the only way to subdue the Boers (none of whom were professionaly trained soldiers).
One last point of interest, and these figures may not be 100% accurate, I’ll have to check, the Boers never had more that 40 000 “soldiers” in the field at any one time, whereas the English at their peak had between 400 000 – 500 000 professionaly trained soldiers.
Regarding our classification as “Stupid”:
It is interesting to note that while the national average IQ in South Africa among the fair skinned is around 100 (Let’s not mention the 70 average achieved by our gracious captors), the 3 schools I attended (1 primary and 2 high schools) all had scores closer to 110, which puts us ahead of the British and propels us into the ranks of the Asians, Russians and Jews.
[This was ethnic hatred, no doubt.
On the Bell Curve Matter, however: At 115, Ashkenazi Jews score highest, an average of one standard deviation (15 points) above Anglo-Americans, I believe. East Asians (not all Asians) are next at 105, I think, and Anglo-Americans at 100. (All aggregates only, of course.)–IM]
Listing which genocides Amanpour omitted in her show misses the point; the purpose of the show was to legitimize the American Empire as a hegemon that fights “genocide” worldwide – the role Amanpour and her fellow “journalists” helped shape with claims of genocide (fabricated and false) in Bosnia and Serbia (Kosovo). With the Obama cabinet looking like a convention of Clintonites brought back from political undeath, why should there be any surprise that they are bringing back the Clintonian justification for imperialism (“saving people from genocide”) to replace the Bushian (“because we can”)? It won’t make the slightest bit of difference to people getting bombed to smithereens, but it’s supposed to make the rest of the world tolerate it more.
[You make a good point, see “Classical Liberalism and State Schemes.” However, although our discussion was narrow, your point and the focus of the post are by no means mutually exclusive.–IM]
The Afrikaners mauled the Brits in the field. Their only solutions was to murder women and children.
“God en die Mauser!”
They were riflemen one and all.
You can round up civilians in a counter-insurgency war; there’s nothing illegal or necessarily immoral about it. [In some criminal states, it may be legal b/c the state often acts as a legalized criminal entity. It is certainly immoral. Please read “Interment Chic.“–IM] But when you do, you become responsible for their health and welfare. I imagine the Boers were as sanitary as they needed to be on their farms. I imagine too they were as sanitary as they needed to be on the treks, where you leave your waste behind you and no one the worse for it. Even small, spread out townships are not that hard to keep clean. None of these experiences, however, would have remotely prepared them for living in cramped camps that never moved. It was the moral responsibility of the British to provide instruction in camp sanitation and enforcement of proper regulations. If they failed, and they did, the responsibility is on their heads.
The purpose of the camps in the Boer war was probably threefold. One was certainly to terrorize the Boers still in the field into surrender. Another may have been (and I vaguely recall it being given as a justification at the time) to protect them from depredations of troops on both sides. But a third, and a legitimate one, was to cut off the commandos still out there from the material support they received from their families, and all sympathetic families, by removing them from the area. In the only year in which the Viet Cong ever admitted we were winning, we did much the same thing in Vietnam, as the Brits did in Malaya. As an alternative to losing, and surrendering the people to communism, it seems to me to have been much the better option in those cases.
Whether the Brits had jus ad bellum one begs leave to doubt. And the camps, as run, certainly lacked jus in bello. But they could have been done properly.
[This is a classical liberal blog, so I don’t publish neoconservative-style Un-Just War theory. But maybe Mr. Reeve, who has an interest in justice–and knows something of neoconservatism–will reply. Then something good will have come of my relenting.–IM
I’m actually not a neo-con, by the way, if that was your implication, nor even necessarily a defender of Just War Theory, though clearly some wars are more just than others. I merely observe that there is a theory, both as to going to war and right conduct in war, and reference the law of war as it exists.
Tom Kratman writes: “In the only year in which the Viet Cong ever admitted we were winning, we did much the same thing in Vietnam, as the Brits did in Malaya.”
Very well; and certainly neither Vietnam nor Malaya were venues for sissies. But did the rounding up of civilian women and children in Vietnam and Malaya, by Americans and British respectively, result in anything like so great a death toll as occurred in the Boer camps? I greatly doubt it. If it had, we would have heard about it by now from pro-communist sources.
Andrew Roberts, it is fair to say, seems temperamentally unable to admit that Brits, in particular, have ever committed any crimes at all. According to Roberts, they seem to have escaped even Original Sin!