Genocide Survivors Research Articles

Imagining our foremothers: Memory and evidence of women victims and survivors of the Armenian genocide: A dialogue

Imagining our foremothers: Memory and evidence of women victims and survivors of the Armenian genocide: A dialogue

Long-distance Mourning and Synchronised Memories in a Global Context: Commemorating Srebrenica in Diaspora

This paper discusses annual commemorative activities of July 11 in the Bosnian diaspora communities in Europe, the USA and Australia, a widely embraced grassroots trend commemorating the 1995 Srebrenica genocide that has become an important act of public memorialisation, reassertion of collective identity and a form of political activism among the Bosnian refugees and genocide survivors in different places across the globe where they have settled. In addition to serving as a cohesive factor among the members of the Bosnian diaspora communities and providing them with a social context in which they can collectively mourn their losses, the Srebrenica commemorations in diaspora have been increasingly reaching out to include members and leaders of the mainstream communities; hence becoming distinct, locally situated, global public events about Bosnia and Srebrenica rather than remaining the exclusive Bosnian immigrants' gatherings that they initially tended to be. In conjunction with the public commemorations, Bosnian diaspora organisations and initiatives have successfully lobbied the governments of their adopted countries to pass resolutions recognising the Srebrenica genocide and calling for July 11 to be acknowledged as the Srebrenica Remembrance Day.

Medicalizing violence: victimhood, trauma and corporeality in post-genocide Rwanda

In this work, I argue that among the mental illnesses recognized in Rwanda, post-traumatic stress disorder (or trauma) is uniquely exempted from social stigma due to its inextricable link with the 1994 genocide. As it afflicts only genocide survivors, trauma symptoms validate the recognition of violence and victimhood. Individuals do not occupy a space of moral uncertainty, as they embody the memory of the genocide and the innocence of its victims, and so participate in the creation of a historical past shared by all Rwandans. I investigate the legitimacy of trauma as a lens for understanding the relationship between morality and power. With that purpose in mind, I analyse the context in which trauma becomes a performative aspect of victimhood, disambiguating identities and mapping social relationships. Drawing on ethnographic data, I argue that the moral legitimacy associated with this psychiatric disorder is deeply rooted in its corporeal nature, as the translation of signs into symptoms is linked to, but also prescinds from, any immediate experience of violence. Data suggest that diagnoses of trauma often take into account individuals' ethnic backgrounds, discerning between legitimate and illegitimate forms of memory, and appropriating the former within official historical discourses of the genocide. The production of moral entitlement through the body thus endorses a dichotomous logic that is crucial to the construction of an ideal status of nationhood which is built upon a very exclusivist recognition of suffering.

Unearthing, untangling and re-articulating genocide corpses in Rwanda

This paper is concerned with the mass graves and exhumed bodies of victims of the Rwanda genocide and war of the 1990s. A government-led programme of exhumation of mass burials and individual graves has taken place over the last decade. The exhumation of mass graves has been undertaken, in the main, by Tutsi genocide survivors who work under the supervision of state officials. Post-unearthing, these bodies are unravelled, and the remnants of soft flesh, clothing, personal possessions and bones are separated from each other. Skeletal structures are fully disarticulated and the bones pooled into a vast collective, for placement within memorials. The outcome of these exhumations is that remains almost always lack individual identity at the point of reinterring. A productive analytical comparison is found in examining exhumations of Spanish Civil War graves, where the fates of individual dead are closely entangled with the lives of survivors. Here there is a clear contrast with exhumations in Rwanda, in the possible re-articulation of identities with specific human remains. But a similarity is also critical: in both cases the properties of human remains, as unsettling materials, garner specific ‘affects’, which drive forward national political projects that aim to consolidate particular collective memories of conflict, albeit that this kind of ‘material agency’ is mobilized to very different ends in each case.

Suppressed and Repressed Memories Among Armenian Genocide Survivors

Very few Armenian Genocide survivors are still alive today. What still survives, however, are their values and strength of character through the conveyance of their wisdom to the following generati...

Does Identification With Rwanda Increase Reconciliation Sentiments Between Genocide Survivors and Non-Victims? The Mediating Roles of Perceived Intergroup Similarity and Self-Esteem During Commemorations

A questionnaire survey (N = 247) investigated the influence of identification with the Rwandan nation on reconciliation sentiments between members of the survivor and of the non-victim groups of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Results showed that, whereas the two groups did not differ in their level of identification with the nation, members of the non-victim group were more willing to reconcile than members of the survivor group. Perceived intergroup similarity mediated the effect of national identification on reconciliation sentiment for both groups, but this effect was stronger among non-victims. Finally, self-esteem during commemorations also mediated this effect, but only among non-victims. We discuss the importance of people’s motivation to reconcile with out-group members in post-genocidal contexts in light of the common in-group identity model (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000) as well as the needs-based model of intergroup reconciliation (Nadler & Schnabel, 2008).

The League of Nations and Armenian Refugees. The Formation of the Armenian Diaspora in Syria

Abstract The League of Nations played an important role in securing the Armenian community after the 1915 genocide of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. Nonetheless, the Armenian Question, which had a definite political accent during the First and Second Assembly of the League of Nations, remained unresolved. Afterwards, the League reformulated its policy towards the Armenian case, which involved an explicit shift from a political to a humanitarian point of view. The humanitarian actions had a number of different aspects: the liberation of the Armenian Genocide survivors from Turkish and Islamic institutions, the provision of Nansen passports to Armenian refugees, the settlement of Armenian refugees in Soviet Armenia and the establishment of Armenian communities in Syria and Lebanon. This article touches upon these initiatives, concentrating on the settlement of the Armenians in Syria. The League of Nations elaborated a massive program for the settlement of Armenian refugees there, which laid a foundation for the establishment of the huge Armenian diaspora in that country.

Posttraumatic growth and religion in Rwanda: individual well-being vs. collective false consciousness

Some scholars include changes in spirituality, such as a greater commitment to their religious beliefs or an enhanced understanding of spiritual matters, in the definition of posttraumatic growth; others conclude that questions of spirituality should be excluded from this definition. This article highlights the fundamental difference of religion to other domains of posttraumatic growth because religions are ideologies (and other domains of growth are not). As ideologies, it is argued that religions can affect different levels of identity in different ways. Based on testimonial evidence from Rwandan genocide survivors, the article demonstrates that although religious beliefs can bring existential comfort at the individual level, they can also lead to a state of false consciousness at the collective level. In Rwanda, the dominant religious ideology facilitated the spiritual and moral climate in which genocide became possible. Today, religious interpretations of the Rwandan Patriotic Front's (RPF) leadership provide spiritual backing to a government which has become increasingly authoritarian.

Negotiating Reconciliation in Rwanda: Popular Challenges to the Official Discourse of Post-Genocide National Unity

Reconciliation is among the most contested terms in current peacebuilding and transitional justice debates. Critics often view reconciliation as romantic—expecting immediate harmony after enormous harm—or imposed on victims by religious groups or governments that prefer the language of ‘moving on’ to addressing systemic causes of conflict. This essay reconsiders the concept of ‘reconciliation’ by drawing on community-level experiences in post-genocide Rwanda. This context highlights nuanced interpretations of reconciliation that, in key respects, respond to critics' concerns and call for reappraisal of reconciliation as a central objective after mass violence. In particular, many Rwandans' participation in the gacaca community courts—which, between 2002 and 2012, prosecuted 400,000 genocide suspects in around 1 million cases in 11,000 jurisdictions overseen by locally elected lay judges—represents a form of negotiated reconciliation. This version emphasizes long-term formal and informal negotiations between antagonistic parties during gacaca hearings but crucially long after trials have ended. In contrast, the transactional reconciliation advocated by the Rwandan government through its discourse of ‘national unity’ views reconciliation as immediate and elite-imposed—a perspective that rightly raises the ire of critics but to which negotiated reconciliation offers an important riposte. This essay is based on more than 650 interviews between 2003 and 2014 with Rwandan genocide suspects, convicted perpetrators, survivors, gacaca judges and policymakers as well as observations of 105 gacaca hearings in 13 communities across Rwanda.

Personhood, Violence, and the Moral Work of Memory in Contemporary Rwanda

Why do Rwandan genocide survivors informally remember not only the kin they lost in the 1994 genocide, but also losses suffered by friends and acquaintances? Drawing on one year of ethnographic fieldwork in the Rwandan university town of Butare, I argue that survivors are at pains to reconstitute their personhood in the absence of relations, and informal memory practices are a form of moral work by which they struggle to do so. I show that survivors maintain limited exchange relations with the dead by thinking of them regularly in return for protection and guidance, and that they use their knowledge of others’ losses to stake moral claims to still being “of” Butare. I theorise these narratives using anthropological perspectives on the constitution of personhood through memory and social relationships. The moral demands of remembering the dead give rise to complex predicaments with which survivors of violence must contend as they navigate what it means to dwell in a present that is marred by the absence of significant others.

Epigenetic modification of the glucocorticoid receptor gene is linked to traumatic memory and post-traumatic stress disorder risk in genocide survivors.

Recent evidence suggests that altered expression and epigenetic modification of the glucocorticoid receptor gene (NR3C1) are related to the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The underlying mechanisms, however, remain unknown. Because glucocorticoid receptor signaling is known to regulate emotional memory processes, particularly in men, epigenetic modifications of NR3C1 might affect the strength of traumatic memories. Here, we found that increased DNA methylation at the NGFI-A (nerve growth factor-induced protein A) binding site of the NR3C1 promoter was associated with less intrusive memory of the traumatic event and reduced PTSD risk in male, but not female survivors of the Rwandan genocide. NR3C1 methylation was not significantly related to hyperarousal or avoidance symptoms. We further investigated the relationship between NR3C1 methylation and memory functions in a neuroimaging study in healthy subjects. Increased NR3C1 methylation-which was associated with lower NR3C1 expression-was related to reduced picture recognition in male, but not female subjects. Furthermore, we found methylation-dependent differences in recognition memory-related brain activity in men. Together, these findings indicate that an epigenetic modification of the glucocorticoid receptor gene promoter is linked to interindividual and gender-specific differences in memory functions and PTSD risk.

Everyday suffering outside prison walls: A legacy of community justice in post-genocide Rwanda

Twenty years after the 1994 genocide, Rwanda shows all indications of moving quickly towards socio-economic prosperity. Rwanda's community justice system, Gacaca, was to complement this prosperity by establishing peace and stability through justice, reconciliation and healing. Evaluations of the Gacaca courts' achievements from 2002 to 2012 have had widely differing conclusions. This article adds to previous evaluations by drawing attention to specific forms of relatively neglected suffering (in literature and public space) that have emerged from the Gacaca courts or were amplified by these courts and jeopardize Gacaca's objectives. The ethnographic study that informs the article was conducted in southeastern Rwanda from September 2008–December 2012 among 19 ex-prisoners and 24 women with husbands in prison including their family members, friends and neighbors. Study findings suggest that large scale imprisonment of genocide suspects coupled with Gacaca court proceedings have tainted the suffering of ex-prisoners and women with imprisoned husbands in unique ways, which makes their plight unparalleled in other countries. We argue that the nature and scale of this suffering and the potentially detrimental impact on families and communities require humanitarian action. However, in Rwanda's post-genocide reality, the suffering of these two groups is overwhelmed by that of other vulnerable groups, such as genocide survivors and orphaned children; hence it is rarely acknowledged.

Protecting our Khmer daughters: ghosts of the past, uncertain futures, and the human papillomavirus vaccine

Objectives. The FDA approved the first human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in 2006. Research into parental decision-making and concerns about HPV vaccination highlights questions about parenting and parents' role in the crafting of their daughters' future sexuality. In contrast to much of this literature, we explore narratives from interviews with Cambodian mothers of HPV vaccine-age eligible daughters who experienced genocide and came to the USA as refugees.Design. We conducted in-depth, in-person interviews with 25 Cambodian mothers of HPV vaccine-age eligible daughters. Interviews were conducted in Khmer and translated into English for analysis. We followed standard qualitative analysis techniques including iterative data review, multiple coders, and ‘member checking.’ Five members of the research team reviewed all transcripts and two members independently coded each transcript for concepts and themes.Results. Interview narratives highlight the presence of the past alongside desires for protection from uncertain futures. We turn to Quesada and colleagues' concept structural vulnerability to outline the constraints posed by these women's positionalities as genocide survivors when faced with making decisions in an area with which they have little direct knowledge or background: cervical cancer prevention.Conclusion. Our study sheds light on the prioritization of various protective health practices, including but not exclusive to HPV vaccination, for Khmer mothers, as well as the rationalities informing decision-making regarding their daughters' health.

Jewish Youth in the Minsk Ghetto: How Age and Gender Mattered

When Sonia Zalesskaia returned from summer camp to her family in Minsk in June 1941, she found her mother incapable of caring for herself and four children--Sonia, Tsilia, Abram, and Roza: She had a nervous breakdown when the Germans came; she was completely indifferent, paralyzed. When we had to move to the ghetto, I had to organize everything. I was the oldest sister. When they moved us to the ghetto, Mother did not know what was going on.... I found a peasant who drove our belongings to the ghetto on his cart. I figured I had to give him something, so I gave him our sewing machine and some fabric. That meant we had nothing left to trade with. (1) Zalesskaia gives a sense of the multiple dimensions of breakdown that Soviet Jews experienced when German troops occupied the capital of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) and, within a few weeks, established a segregated residential district for Jews surrounded by barbed wire. Zalesskaia also highlights the role of age and gender for the subsequent period of violence, displacement, and starvation. Many adults were paralyzed by the speedy invasion and regime of terror-as were the Soviet authorities; many were arrested or immediately killed. Adolescents often found themselves in charge of supplying whole families with food and other necessities. In the Minsk ghetto, Soviet Jewish adolescents thus faced profound scarcity and violence alongside the breakdown of familiar relationships of support and care. The narratives of child survivors of the Nazi genocide in the German-occupied USSR help us better understand the distinct features of ghettos in the area that were killing sites rather than transitional spaces of internment. Their accounts draw special attention to the diversity of experience of the Nazi genocide, to how age and gender determined the ways in which people lived under conditions of violence and displacement. Among the 800,000 Belorussian Jews killed by Germans and their collaborators were parents, grandparents, and other relatives of thousands of young Jews who thus became orphans and struggled for survival on their own. (2) This situation, however, often goes unacknowledged in studies of the Nazi ghettos, the so-called Jewish districts established by the German Wehrmacht or occupation administrations in Nazi-occupied countries. Deborah Dwork's 1991 study is the only significant monograph focusing specifically on the lives of children and adolescents in the Nazi ghettos, but it omits ghettos in the occupied Soviet Union. (3) Leonid Smilovitskii is one of the few who devote a chapter-length study to children in Belorussian ghettos. (4) Yet age did matter for everyday life within the ghetto. Adolescents were the most vulnerable group in the Nazi ghettos, suffering unduly from hunger, violence, and the psychological impact of terror. They were also highly mobile within the ghetto and able to maintain relationships with peers and adults--such as classmates and teachers-outside the ghetto, suggesting that they were an especially resourceful group. Gender was an additional factor that affected individual survival strategies under German occupation. Specific skills resulting from gendered socialization, access to various forms of employment due to ascribed gender roles, or vulnerability to forms of sexualized violence determined how Soviet Jewish youths were able to respond to discrimination and violence, how they accessed food and related to people in positions of power. War, terror, and pogroms often destroyed familial bonds, putting children and adolescents in the positions of guardians or breadwinners for remaining parents, grandparents, and siblings. Everyday life in the ghetto thus redefined roles that children as well as women and men took on within families. The ways in which these distinct groups were able to fulfill their tasks largely depended on their age; youths over the age of 14 (male) and 16 (female) were considered employable and thus had access to daily food rations, meager as they were, but younger ones had to find other means of subsistence. …

Sorrow is Turned to Joy: A Play about the 1909 Adana Massacres, Staged by Armenian Genocide Survivors in Greece

In April 1924, a group of Armenian women genocide survivors in the care of a Danish missionary organization in Thessaloniki staged a play; Sorrow is Turned to Joy, based on the 1909 Adana massacres. The article briefly explores the framework and context of the missionary organization, the actors, and the theatrical performance, followed by a translation of the entire play from Danish into English.

Comorbid Mental and Physical Health and Health Access in Cambodian Refugees in the US

Little research has been conducted on the prevalence of physical health problems in Cambodian refugees and the relationship between their mental and physical health. We identified the relationship between mental and physical health problems and barriers to healthcare access in Cambodian refugee adults. We used a cross-sectional survey design with a snowball sample of 136 Cambodian refugee adult residents of Connecticut and Western Massachusetts. 61% reported being diagnosed with three or more physical conditions and 73% with depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or both. Language and transportation problems were the primary barriers to accessing care. Participants with probable comorbid PTSD and depression had 1.850 times more physical health problems than those without either condition (p > .001; CI 1.334-2.566). Age moderated this relationship. Participants who had been diagnosed with both depression and PTSD reported a consistent number of health conditions across the age span while those who had no mental health conditions or only one of the two reported fewer health conditions when they were younger and more when they were older. These two groups were significantly different from the group reporting both. There is a significant relationship between chronic comorbid mental and physical health diseases affecting Cambodian refugees resettled in the US Having comorbid depression and PTSD puts Cambodian refugees at risk for physical health problems no matter their age. It is vital that those treating Cambodian genocide survivors identify and treat their prevalent comorbid health conditions. Language and transportation barriers must be addressed to improve access to mental and physical health care in this population.

The protective function of belief in personal change among genocide survivors in Rwanda

The current cross-sectional study investigated the protective function of a measure of belief in personal change—personal growth initiative (PGI; Robitschek, 1998)—on physical and mental health outcomes in a genocide-affected population in Rwanda. Specifically, we examined whether an individual’s belief in their ability to change and develop had an adaptive role in managing symptoms of distress. Prior research has demonstrated that high levels of PGI are associated with psychological well-being (Robitschek & Keyes, 2009), and lower levels of depression and anxiety (Robitschek & Kashubeck, 1999). We found that genocide survivors who reported high levels of depression and low levels of PGI experienced greater physical impairment in their day-to-day life, and identified fewer positive personality changes as a result of their experience (i.e., posttraumatic growth; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996). The results suggest that PGI might be an important psychological factor in enhancing recovery and well-being in the aftermath of adversity.

THOUGHT FIELD THERAPY EFFICACY FOLLOWING LARGE SCALE TRAUMATIC EVENTS

Thought Field Therapy Efficacy Following Large Scale Traumatic Events: Description of Four Studies Thought Field Therapy (TFT) has been shown to reduce symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress (PTS) with trauma survivors in four studies in Africa. In a 2006 preliminary study, orphaned Rwandan adolescents, who reported ongoing trauma symptoms since the 1994 genocide, were treated with TFT. A 2008 Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) examined the efficacy of TFT treatments facilitated by Rwandan Community leaders in reducing PTS symptoms in adult survivors of the 1994 genocide. Results of the 2008 study were replicated in a second RCT in Rwanda in 2009. A fourth RCT in Uganda (in preparation for submission) demonstrated significant differences in a third community leader-administered TFT treatment. The studies described here suggest that one-time, community leader-facilitated TFT interventions may be beneficial with protracted PTS in genocide survivors.

The Collective Dynamics of Genocidal Violence in Cambodia, 1975–1979

While previous research conceptualizes genocide as an outcome of complex interactions between multiple social factors, the specific ways in which these factors interact and combine with each other, and how their individual effects may be mediated through such interaction, remain to be empirically specified. Using historical accounts given by survivors of the Cambodian genocide, and drawing from insights in the collective action literature, this study presents a configurational and comparative analysis of the collective dynamics of genocidal violence. The analysis focuses on how changing local patterns of relational and cognitive collective mechanisms created distinctly local patterns of violence, affecting both levels of victimization and the targeting of different groups over time. While the expansion and consolidation of central state power accounts for a generalized increase in violence, official framing practices mediated how groups became targeted. These findings confirm and extend the insights of other meso-level studies of genocide, and demonstrate the utility of comparative configurational methods for further inquiry.

State of Denial: Cultural Diversity as a Resource for Alternative Globalization

Rahul Varma discusses his choice to write a fictional script, State of Denial, rather than create a verbatim performance, as part of his work on the Oral History and Performance Working Group of the Montreal Life Stories Oral History Project. He underlines the importance of recognizing Canada’s cultural diversity as a resource for developing alternative approaches to globalization. Varma’s play, State of Denial, tells the story of Odette, a Rwandan-born Canadian filmmaker, who goes to Turkey to investigate stories of genocide. She meets Sahana, an old Turkish woman, who has devoted her life to helping Armenian survivors of genocide. On her deathbed, Sahana reveals a long-kept secret to Odette, asking her to make it public; Odette promises to do so. On a mission to make Sahana’s secret public, Odette ends up revealing her own. A state of denial ends and a new life begins.