Nutty Grandad
10th February 2008, 11:24
This Genocide Watch is to raise an alert concerning the number of Boer farmers slain since the end of apartheid in South Africa. The threat of destruction of a group must not be ignored because its numbers are small or its members disfavoured because they have acted in discriminatory ways in the past. A critical factor in this analysis is the total remaining number of Boer farmers. The total number of ethno-European farmers in South Africa has been estimated at approximately 40,000 to 45,000. The majority of ethno-European farmers are Boers. In world context, this may seem to be a small number of people. But such absolute numbers are biased against recognition of threats to the survival of minorities. The smaller the minority the more severe this bias.
It may indeed be possible to exterminate a specific group over an extended period of time while the absolute number killed each year decreases, paradoxically creating a false impression of a diminishing annihilation – decreasing in annual numbers but resulting in undetected genocide. Pogroms against Jews in Europe diminished after the Enlightenment but prior to the Holocaust, and massacres of Tutsis slowed in Rwanda before 1990. The slow decimation of the Ache in Paraguay and of other native American groups in Brazil, while set in quite different historic and cultural contexts, present disturbing parallels.
The agricultural department of a bank in South Africa has calculated the per capita murder rate of ethno-European farmers to be four (4) times greater than the average murder rate for the population of South Africa. This comparative trend analysis of murder rates for specific ethnic groups is troubling. If the per capita murder rate of the population as a whole has decreased over recent years as the South African government claims, but at the same time the per capita murder rate of a specific group (in this case Boer farmers) has increased, it is reason for alarm.
This Genocide Watch will present evidence of the increasing murder rate against Boer farmers. Additional issues of concern that remain to be further developed are the possible manipulation of farm murder statistics following a temporary moratorium on the release of crime data by the government, government regulation of the national internet domain, and the President’s release of farm murderers from jail.
Sources: Genocide Watch (http://www.genocidewatch.org/BoersSlain01.htm)
It may indeed be possible to exterminate a specific group over an extended period of time while the absolute number killed each year decreases, paradoxically creating a false impression of a diminishing annihilation – decreasing in annual numbers but resulting in undetected genocide. Pogroms against Jews in Europe diminished after the Enlightenment but prior to the Holocaust, and massacres of Tutsis slowed in Rwanda before 1990. The slow decimation of the Ache in Paraguay and of other native American groups in Brazil, while set in quite different historic and cultural contexts, present disturbing parallels.
The agricultural department of a bank in South Africa has calculated the per capita murder rate of ethno-European farmers to be four (4) times greater than the average murder rate for the population of South Africa. This comparative trend analysis of murder rates for specific ethnic groups is troubling. If the per capita murder rate of the population as a whole has decreased over recent years as the South African government claims, but at the same time the per capita murder rate of a specific group (in this case Boer farmers) has increased, it is reason for alarm.
This Genocide Watch will present evidence of the increasing murder rate against Boer farmers. Additional issues of concern that remain to be further developed are the possible manipulation of farm murder statistics following a temporary moratorium on the release of crime data by the government, government regulation of the national internet domain, and the President’s release of farm murderers from jail.
Sources: Genocide Watch (http://www.genocidewatch.org/BoersSlain01.htm)