Watch a recording of the solidarity Iftar held on 4 May 2020
Genocide
The period of Nazi power, from 1933-1945, was calamitous for Europe’s Jews.
Hitler’s overt anti-Semitism had won him the votes and admiration of millions in Germany and in many of the countries it occupied such as Poland. He rapidly reintroduced discriminatory policies against the Jews, then planned and put into effect the ‘Final Solution’, a dramatic attempt to answer the ‘Jewish Question’ first posed during the French Revolution. The result was slave labour, detention in concentration camps and catastrophic loss of life. Over six million Jews, as well as many other undesirable üntermenschen were murdered, including LGBT, disabled, and 500,000 Romani Gypsies.
How could the Nazis get so close to success in their plans for genocide?
Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the word ‘genocide’, was able, using his library of Nazi documents, to describe the process:
The first step was denationalisation, making individuals stateless by severing the link of nationality between Jews and the state, so as to limit the protection of the law.
This was followed by dehumanisation, removing legal rights from members of the targeted group.
The third step was to kill the nation ‘in a spiritual and cultural sense.’ Jews were forced to register, wear a distinctive badge, then move into designated areas, ghettos.
Seizure of property, the fourth step, rendered the group ‘destitute’ and ‘dependent on rationing’. Decrees limited rations of carbohydrates and proteins, reducing the members of the group to ‘living corpses’.
Spirits broken, individuals became ‘apathetic to their own lives’, subjected to forced labour that cause many deaths, and to further measures of dehumanization and disintegration as they were left to await the ‘hour of execution’.
(from Philippe Sand’s summary of Raphael Lemkin’s analysis of Nazi Method, East-West Street (2017))
Campaign Updates:
China’s systematic oppression of Uyghur Women
René Cassin Briefing Paper – May 2020 Close to three million Muslim Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic communities in East Turkistan, the Chinese North western region of Xinjiang, are forced […]
Call for action: this is what you can do for the Uyghurs
Support a Legal Challenge to Govt Decision to Allow Huawei 5G Network Access through this link. The legal challenge by two UK Muslims (Rahima Mahmut and Dr. Enver Tothi) to […]
‘No More Business as Usual’: Global supply chains tainted by forced Uyghur labour in China.
As the Coronavirus pandemic brings the rest of the world to a halt, China, several months after it declared a global pandemic, has begun to ease its lockdown restrictions. The […]
Huawei and the internment of three million Muslim Uyghurs
by Sheldon Stone The UK government’s decision (28 January 2020) on future of Huawei, as a leading telecommunications provider in the country, undermines the UK’s long and celebrated tradition of […]
China’s Xinjiang camps are eerily familiar
Policy is “designed to wipe the Uyghurs off the face of the earth”
The Uyghur Crisis – briefing paper (January 2020)
It is estimated that close to two million Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are being detained indefinitely in ‘re-education’ camps in China’s western Xinjiang Region, where they are forced to deny their religion and culture as ‘backwards and dangerous.
Holocaust Memorial Day – standing together to say ‘Never again!’
China must stop its brutal repression of Uyghur Muslims
Marking the anniversary of the UN Convention Against Genocide – 9 December 2019
Today marks 71st anniversary of the signing of the UN Convention against Genocide and World Genocide Day, established by the UN, to commemorate and honour the victims of genocides and […]
Vote for Human Rights!
Key questions to put to anyone asking for your vote on 12 December
In China, “never again” is happening again
René Cassin Submission to Parliamentary inquiry into freedom of religion and human rights defenders
Jewish Action Against Persecution of Uyghurs
Inspired to act? Here’s what you can do to oppose the persecution of Uyghurs.
Never Again? A Jewish response to the Uyghur crisis
This René Cassin event examines religious persecution in China – Thursday 9 May, 7-8.30pm
What do the Manifestos say about Human Rights?
The key questions to ask your candidates
Sudan Update: Bashir Sweeps Election
Bashir Sweeps Sudanese Elections Omar al-Bashir has extended his quarter-century rule of Sudan after a dubiously run election that saw him win 94 percent of the presidential vote, and his […]
Holocaust Memorial Day
Today, 27 January 2015, is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
René Cassin believes that one of the most critical legacies of the Holocaust is the understanding that the fight against human rights violations will never end, and that we as a society must be vigilant to any erosion of our human rights …
