It’s so frustrating that we are living through an active genocide (again) and doing absolutely nothing (again). In my youth, when there wasn’t yet a 24 hour news cycle and I learned about the genocide in Rwanda as a teenager, it was my naive belief at the time that a lack of knowledge was the main reason for the general indifference in “the West”. A year later the genocide in Bosnia, especially the massacre at Srebrenica, was headline news in my home country of the Netherlands and yet people seemed to collectively just shrug that off just as quickly as it happened. Now, many years later, I’ve become much more cynical. If you want people to care about unjustified murder you should either make sure to have your country located really really close to “the West”, but even that is just of limited use to Ukraine, or make sure that the killing happens to take place at the hands of mostly Jewish people, although most Palestinians can attest to the fact that while media attention is good, action is still lacking.
That’s a very sad point, if true. I’m old enough to remember coverage of that event on the evening news. How can a clear and obvious case of ethnic cleansing be downplayed?
People claim it was blown out of proportion (with inflated numbers) or that it was presented selectively (without mentioning Bosniak and Croatian atrocities). This is a relatively frequent idea among American leftists, at least the more radical circles which are common on Lemmy.
Similar to Ukraine, tbh. Basically, nothing has to be “clear and obvious” if you don’t want it to be.
It’s so frustrating that we are living through an active genocide (again) and doing absolutely nothing (again). In my youth, when there wasn’t yet a 24 hour news cycle and I learned about the genocide in Rwanda as a teenager, it was my naive belief at the time that a lack of knowledge was the main reason for the general indifference in “the West”. A year later the genocide in Bosnia, especially the massacre at Srebrenica, was headline news in my home country of the Netherlands and yet people seemed to collectively just shrug that off just as quickly as it happened. Now, many years later, I’ve become much more cynical. If you want people to care about unjustified murder you should either make sure to have your country located really really close to “the West”, but even that is just of limited use to Ukraine, or make sure that the killing happens to take place at the hands of mostly Jewish people, although most Palestinians can attest to the fact that while media attention is good, action is still lacking.
Keep in mind you’re on a site where a solid number of users might downplay or relativise Srebrenica.
That’s a very sad point, if true. I’m old enough to remember coverage of that event on the evening news. How can a clear and obvious case of ethnic cleansing be downplayed?
People claim it was blown out of proportion (with inflated numbers) or that it was presented selectively (without mentioning Bosniak and Croatian atrocities). This is a relatively frequent idea among American leftists, at least the more radical circles which are common on Lemmy.
Similar to Ukraine, tbh. Basically, nothing has to be “clear and obvious” if you don’t want it to be.