Euphemism and metaphor

[Celso Alvarez Caccamo]

zmaalej wrote:

> To Thomas,
> The reason I invoked the Pinochet case was because Celso was trying
> in his post to show how what was happening in Kosovo is different
> from what caused the collapse and extradition of General Pinochet,
> namely, "ethnic cleansing" vs. "genocide." And I persist in
> thinking that "ethnic cleansing" is a euphemism for "genocide."

Well, I didn't mean to say exactly that. Particularly, I didn't mean to
compare actual atrocities by states' military elites, but their
respective discursive treatments by the Western press. What I meant
is that Western propaganda discourse in general didn't frame the
brutalities committed by the Yugoslav military regime in terms of
"genocide" probably because a case for it couldn't be soundly built.
First, in international law, "genocide" is defined as the deliberate
extermination of/attempt to exterminate a large group of people
because of their ethnic origin, race, religion, or -- I'm not sure
-- gender. How massive the extermination must be, I don't know, but,
if "genocide" were applied to Kosovo, by the same legal criteria
undoubtedly it should be applied to Kurdistan, or to Timor-Leste,
and that's probably something hard to swallow for Western powers.

My second point is that difficulties about the definition of
"genocide" applied precisely to Pinochet's case. Spanish Judge
Baltasar Garzon, who issued the extradition request to the UK
government, charged Pinochet with "genocide" against
a selected segment of Chile's population, namely political
adversaries, progressive forces, and working groups. But I believe
Garzon's argument didn't hold, precisely because of the quite
restricted definition of genocide in international law,
which doesn't explicitly include the extermination of groups by
ideological or class issues. Thus, the only charges accepted
against Pinochet are something like "conspiracy to torture
and kidnapping" in a few, well-documented cases. By the way,
those crimes didn't "cause the collapse and extradition" of
Pinochet, who enjoyed the support of many Western democratic
regimes during his dictatorship.

Current charges against Milosevic and collaborators in the
International Court for Crimes in the ex-Yugoslavia also include
"genocide", I believe, but, if you notice, the discursive emphasis
is being placed on "crimes against humankind", which is a vaguer
notion. It is indeed very hard to convict Milosevic of "genocide"
(even if intended, which may not be the case), as the chain of
responsibilities in killings in Kosovo spreads down to particular
groups of militiamen who probably never received direct orders
even from military officers.

In my book, when genocide is defined in absolute quantitative
terms -- sheer number of bodies buried in common graves or
torched to death -- this shows that something macabre about the
power of numbers has invaded the human mind and human ethics. If
you and I live in the same house, and you kill me because I'm
shorter, or taller -- that's genocide. Or if I'm robbing a
house and a cop comes in and kills me, that's genocide,
too. The systematic killing of women by their husbands,
ex-husbands, lovers, ex-lovers or rapists all around the world is
genocide too. And now some Albanians are also genociding Serbs
and Gypsies. This should also be explicitly recognized by those
who rightfully repudiate the crimes committed against ethnic
Albanians.

But it's interesting to see the different labels for (im)morally
comparable acts: "hate crime", "killing a robber", "passional
crime", "ethnic revenge", "genocide"... "death penalty".

--
Celso Alvarez Cáccamo              Tel. +34 981 167000 ext. 1888
Linguística Geral, Faculdade de Filologia     FAX +34 981 167151
Universidade da Corunha                          lxalvarz at udc.es
15071 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha)   http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac