When there are no gas chambers, no barbed wire, and no concentration camps, many don't recognize the perpetration of new genocides and other targeted mass atrocity crimes because they may not look the same.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The biggest road block to action on genocide and other human rights crimes is ignorance. Most people just don't know that such things are happening, and often, if they have a vague idea they are happening, there is a feeling that there is nothing that can be done to stop these crimes.
Some argue that recognition of the genocide has become even more problematic now, when the world is at war with terrorism and the United States cannot afford to offend the sensibility of our Turkish ally.
For us, genocide was the gas chamber - what happened in Germany. We were not able to realize that with the machete you can create a genocide.
Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination.
Yet, only years after the Nazi-era, millions were sent to their deaths in places such as Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda, and the world once again took too long to act.
A genocide in Africa has not received the same attention that genocide in Europe or genocide in Turkey or genocide in other part of the world. There is still this kind of basic discrimination against the African people and the African problems.
We know that often holding those who have carried out mass atrocities accountable is at times our best tool to prevent future atrocities.
What I'm trying to say is the Holocaust was a horrific crime against humanity and frankly, I would never want to see that repeated.
Nearly 60 years ago, the international community made a commitment to put an end to the crime of genocide by ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
We demand that people don't deny the Holocaust, and we can't ignore the tragedy of another nation.