“You can run, but you can’t hide,” declared the former world heavyweight champion, Joe Louis. You can, but not forever. The long arm of the law will eventually catch up with you. Such has been the fate of many notorious war criminals and rogue characters that have blazed the pages of history. This was the common destiny of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of Holocaust who was captured in Argentina by the Mossad in 1960; Dr. Joseph Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death, who did macabre death experiments among the prisoners at the Auschwitz camp and drowned off the Brazilian coast while eluding arrest; and Radovan Karadzic, former president of the self-declared autonomous Bosnian Serb Republic, who was found guilty of ethnic cleansing by killing tens of thousands of Bosniaks and Croats during the Bosnian war. Now the latest is Rwandan genocide suspect, Felicien Kabuga, who was arrested last weekend outside Paris.
Kabuga is his country’s most wanted man who had long been sought by Rwandan authorities for the alleged massacre of more than 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus, two ethnic groups in Rwanda who were persecuted by the ruling ethnic class. Kabuga is a prosperous businessman who used his vast wealth to bankroll the killing spree in his own country. He financed the training and mobilization of the private armies to commit the genocide. He imported half a million machetes to slaughter the minority ethnic groups. He set up a radio station to broadcast hate propaganda against the Tutsis. The Human Rights Watch stated that the arrest of Kabuga “is a huge day for Rwanda. Felicien Kabuga is one of the big fish. He is one of the remaining individuals still out there who is alleged to have had a planning purpose with regards to the Rwanda genocide.”
Mankind has seen cases of genocides and foremost among which are the Holocaust in Europe, the Ukrainian genocide, the Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot, the crimes against Bosniaks and Croats committed by the Chetniks. The Holocaust, which refers to the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime against the European Jews, cost an estimated 6 million lives. The Khmer Rouge regime under Polpot killed some 1.7 million people in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.
Genocide is a serious crime against humanity. It’s senseless killing of people based on racial, political, religious or cultural ground to bring about their total or partial extermination. The term “genocide” was minted by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, who wanted to describe Nazi crimes against the Jews and placed it in the statutes and penal laws. He combined a Greek word “genos” which means race, with the Latin suffix “cide,” to kill. At the Nuremberg trial, thanks to Lemkin, the crime of genocide was included among the crimes against humanity. Eventually, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution declaring genocide punishable under international law.
The case of Kabuga once more demonstrates that scoundrels and despots may sow reigns of terror against their fellow human beings. They may rule unchallenged for a while and even for years, commit unspeakable crimes and instill fear in the hearts of the population, but not forever.
Mahatma Gandhi reminded us: “Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.” In the words of one Filipino political leader, “there will be a reckoning….”
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IF you complained about the lockdown extension in our country, let’s talk about Zimbabwe whose leader has imposed an indefinite lockdown. This drastic move was triggered in part by the admission of doctors and experts that the country has ill-equipped medical services, which could hardly cope with the spread of the coronavirus. In his address to his countrymen, President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared that the lockdown would be enforced for an indefinite period since the “country needs to ease out of the lockdown in a strategic and gradual manner.” With confirmed cases of only 44 and 4 related deaths so far, the WHO recognized that Zimbabwe has a low number of cases and the transmission of the disease merely sporadic yet its government had decided to take a more restrictive measure. This move by Zimbabwe bears watching. In our case, we have not yet flattened the curve. In fact, we have yet to establish that the rate of increase for both the number of confirmed cases and Covid-related deaths have slowed down after we have instituted social distancing, sanitation measures and quarantine. We have only resorted to expanded targeted testing, and not mass testing due to limited funds. Can we expect that our new strategy of easing restrictions with modified enhanced community quarantine being implemented now in the National Capital Region and in two other areas will not spike our numbers? If the results within the next couple of weeks will show encouraging results, we may consider further opening up businesses and lifting more restrictions. Otherwise, the Zimbabwe model is the way to go. We should be ready to bite the bullet.