Tarek Fatah speaks about persecuted minorities around the world and the need to give them a voice in Canada.

In an uncommon and very welcome move, Toronto City Council recently declared May 10 to be Will to Intervene Day. This move is the result of a joint initiative by the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) and the Canadian Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (CCR2P). Together, these two organization marked today with a series of afternoon speeches in the Trinity College quad at the University of Toronto. From the Sentinel Project team, Elizabeth, Sheldbe, Abhishek, and I all attended the event and I must add that despite the serious subject matter we also enjoyed some beautiful weather. Sitting together in the warm sun, we listened to several speakers explain just why the Will to Intervene, or W2I, is such an important next step in developing the concept of the Responsibility to Protect, known as R2P for short.

The W2I project was co-founded at MIGS by Senator Romeo Dallaire and Professor Frank Chalk. Its goal is to make the Canadian and other governments overcome what is seen as an active avoidance of intervention to prevent atrocities around the world. In order to pursue this goal, the W2I team is seeking to change how Canadians view mass atrocities; going forward, stopping them must be seen not only as a moral imperative also as a national security issue in an interconnected world where massacres on the other side of the planet may very well impact public safety right here in North America. Coming just two weeks after the US government announced its new focus on preventing atrocities, W2I Day could not have been timelier.

Naturally, recent events in the Middle East – particularly the NATO intervention in Libya and the lack of intervention in Syria – loomed large this afternoon. As speakers such as Frank Chalk from MIGS, Martha Hall Findlay from CCR2P, and Tarek Fatah, the founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, explored various issues relating to R2P and W2I, I was still struck by the need for systems of prevention and intervention which are not entirely reliant on government involvement. After all, this is exactly why the Sentinel Project was created, so when we heard Mr. Fatah mentioned the often-ignored persecution of Kurds and Balochs in various countries and how nobody in Canada speaks for these groups which lack influential diasporas, my first thought was that this is where we come in. R2P and W2I are both great initiatives but they still leave room for governments, NATO, and the UN to simply atrocities and to choose to do nothing. Beyond that point, the time has come to start preparing threatened communities to help themselves.

As a growing organization, we’re looking for an enthusiastic and self-motivated volunteer to join the Sentinel Project and take on the role of Volunteer Coordinator. Your role will be to help us recruit talented, experienced, and passionate individuals into our various teams and working groups. The Sentinel Project is entirely volunteer run and volunteer oriented, and finding the right people and keeping them engaged and happy is one of our top priorities. As Volunteer Coordinator, you will seek and recruit new volunteers and match them to the volunteer assignment that fits them best, as well as overseeing volunteer appreciation activities and monitoring and evaluating each volunteer’s effectiveness and satisfaction in their current task. Click here for more details on the position, responsibilities, and what we’re looking for.

Interested? Please let us know at contact@thesentinelproject.org. As always, we respectfully request a resume and, perhaps even more importantly, to hear about your favorite TED Talk.

Learn how tools like Ushahidi have been used around the world to defend human rights.

Over the course of five weeks (two hours of evening class per week) you will meet a great group of people and learn the following together:

• The relationship between technology and human rights
  
• Case studies and lessons learned from Kenya, Iran, and the Arab Spring
  
• Unsuccessful cases and what went wrong
  
• How oppressive regimes abuse technology
  
• Strategy development for using technology

Photo courtesy of: Abhishek Bhatnagar

The act of genocide requires years of preparation since an attempt to wipe out a culture or a group through mass killings can’t be planned over night. Before purchasing the weapons and rounding up the victims, society needs to be persuaded to hate the target population, or at least become ambivalent toward them. This may sound like something that happens organically in certain places around the world but fortunately it isn’t and history has revealed a template of psychological markers and behaviors that precede genocide. The Bahá’ís of Iran have been outcasts from society since the foundation of their religion over one hundred years ago, and psycho-social red flags similar to those from previous genocides – such as the use of derogatory terms like “perverse sect” – have been found in Iranian government documents. Historically, genocidal societies learn to use terms like parasites and cockroaches to describe the victims.

A common theme in genocidal violence is a sense of “us” versus “them.” This in-group, out-group conflict can manifest in a couple of different ways. Typically, it’s a sense of nationalist superiority, as seen in Nazi Germany, or ethnically-based superiority, like the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. Such thinking begins with the identification of the in-group followed by reinforcement of in-group superiority. The Nazis believed that Germans were better than all other humans because of their “Aryan blood.” Jewish Germans, even those whose families had lived in Germany for generations, were excluded from the in-group by virtue of their religion. Even physical features were attributed to groups with claims that someone could have the “look of a Jew.” In Iran, Bahá’ís are excluded for the same reason. Thanks to the teachings of the imams, Shi’a society, like Nazi society, is closed so that out-group members cannot join even after living amongst the majority for decades.

Threatening graffiti sprayed onto Bahá’í homes in Semnan, Iran - 15 March 2009.

Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the government has been purposely and publically excluding Bahá’ís from holding government, military, and educational positions. The targeting here is religiously rather than racially or ethnically motivated. Bahá’ís see their faith as a continuation of the Islamic faith but the imams, the religious and political leaders of the Shi’a faith, see them as heretics. Decades of Iranian government propaganda cemented false beliefs about Bahá’í teachings and lifestyles, creating a strong anti-Bahá’í feeling in the Iranian Islamic community.

A Bahá’í cemetery bulldozed by government officials in the city of Najafabad, Iran - September 2007.

A population’s culture can make it to be more likely to engage in genocide. The Iranian people are predominantly Shi’a Muslim and they follow the guidance of the theocratic Supreme Leader, who claims the spiritual and political leadership of Islam. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, as well all current and most previous Iranian leaders, distrusts the Bahá’í. These leaders claim that the religious group is a political party created to undermine Shi’a order on behalf of foreign powers, particularly Israel. In the Shi’a faith, the imams are the people’s connection to God and it is their job to interpret and preach divine law. As far as devout Shi’a Iranians are concerned, an imam’s word is the word of God. A society such as Iran’s, with a disposition to follow strong religious leadership – especially one promoting an exclusionary ideology – could be persuaded to attack non-members, especially when they are seen as a threat to the nation or the faith.

The questions most people ask after hearing of genocide is: How could this have happened? What kind of person could do this?

Psychologists asked the same questions after the Holocaust. Their research found shocking evidence that anyone could be persuaded to participate. Stanley Milgram, a Harvard psychologist, created what became known as the now infamous Milgram Experiment. In this study, a volunteer called “Teacher” asked a series of questions to what they thought was another volunteer but was really a hired actor, called “Learner.” When the learner gave a wrong answer the Teacher was to apply an electric shock to the Learner, increasing the voltage with each incorrect answer. Skinner found that just over 65% of Teachers would give a lethal shock when ordered to. Footage of the participants shows that they were visibly very upset by what was happening but continued to shock the Learner. Other, similar studies reveal that simply being ordered to assist in genocide tends to be enough to convince most people to participate, or at the very least, to refuse to interfere.

With the insight that researchers like Skinner have provided and the examples from the past, it is clear that Bahá’ís are potential targets for genocide. Despite all of this there is no way to know for certain that genocide will occur. Released confidential Iranian government documents reveal that there is not likely a current plan to physically destroy the Bahá’í community, just one to force them out of mainstream society. The social pressures on the Bahá’í have been in place for decades and despite small-scale killings, they have never been the target of large, organized campaign of violence. The evidence discovered indicates that the framework is there and that genocide is possible, but that it is likely that there would have to be some form of shock or threat that would trigger an escalation of Iranian efforts from exclusion to execution.

There are, however, some problems on the horizon likely to spark violence. The European Union accounts for one-fifth of Iranian oil exports, and the coming EU ban on Iranian oil will strain the economy, possibly to the point of collapse. Rising tensions with Israel and the threat of open war will likely lead to more problems for the Bahá’í since for decades the group has been accused of supporting Israel and spying for the West. The Bahá’í community could be targeted as a scapegoat if war breaks out and the Iranian regime is not able to effectively strike back at the external threat.

An Iranian submarine patrols the Strait of Hormuz. This strategic passage is one of many potential flashpoints between Iran and other countries. Open conflict could severely worsen internal repression within Iran.

To forecast whether there likely to be a campaign of violence against Iranian Bahá’ís in the next 3-5 years, we can use the Eight Stages of Genocide to analyze the situation. Classification is the first of these and it is clear that Bahá’ís have been identified and forced out of society. The next two steps – symbolization and dehumanization – are not currently as severe as that seen in past cases of genocide. For instance, the language referring to the Bahá’í is offensive but being called a perverse sect does not constitute dehumanization, at least from our current perspective.

Steps four and five – organization and polarization – are present but it is unclear how prevalent their influence is. As stated above, the Supreme Leader has control over the country’s primary religion and can theoretically command the people to fight against any declared enemy but what we don’t know, and hopefully won’t find out, is if he would actually order genocidal violence and whether citizens would actually obey. The military and police – who are the most likely perpetrators of genocide – are loyal to the state and if the Supreme Leader gives the order, they are likely to obey.

Preparation, the sixth step, is partially in effect. Bahá’í leaders have been imprisoned and the police and intelligence agencies have been ordered to identify and monitor Bahá’í community members. There have also been instances when property has been destroyed and vandalized, as well as seized through questionable legal actions, but that does not mean that anyone in Iran is ready to kill tens of thousands of people. The final two stages – extermination and denial – are fortunately not happening at this point. Although the nature of genocide is difficult to predict, it is unlikely that in the next six to twelve months the Bahá’í will be killed en masse. This is the point of the research that our team from the Mercyhurst University Chapter of the Sentinel Project is conducting and our forthcoming report will address the likelihood that the Iranian government will attempt genocide on the Bahá’í over the next 3-5 years. Over the next ten weeks, we will be sharing our key findings and methods of assessing this issue, so watch this space!

During the summit, I led the breakout session on “Crisis Mapping and Early Warning Systems for Genocide Prevention” which is the core of our work here at the Sentinel Project: building an early warning system to identify communities at risk of genocide by identifying and characterizing genocidal risk factors and monitoring indicators that increase or decrease the vulnerability of a communty’s risk of genocide. Learning from past genocides in Germany, Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and Darfur, we have not only come to an academic understanding of how genocide is likely to unfold through Gregory Stanton’s Eight Stages, but we have also come to a greater understanding that genocide is both preventable and predictable. I explained the Sentinel Project’s comprehensive framework that combines genocide research, information technology, and risk management into a single framework for genocide prevention.

Henry Dambanemuya, Research and Technology Analyst speaking at the 2012 Global Solutions Genocide Prevention Summit in Indiana, USA.

A lot of people appreciated how information communication technologies (ICTs) are incorporated into our genocide prevention framework through our current Threatwiki system and Ground Information Network. GIN is a creative ICT tool that we are currently developing in order to gather eyewitness accounts, analyze, verify, forecast, and broadcast the vulnerability of a community’s risk to genocide during the early stages before genocide begins. This way, we hope to promote and improve efforts to protect civilians by engaging and empowering threatened communities with effective non-violent prevention and mitigation strategies so that they can be able to prevent their own genocides from happening. I also explained how engaging local communities in affected regions is key to our framework because even though we heavily depend on ICTs, they are only a small part of the solution. The major part to our solution are vulnerable civilians in the affected regions, hence our need to work through local community leaders and organizations such as Sisi Ni Amani in order to implement awareness and education programs.

“People on the ground need to know how the system works, what it can and cannot do, what to expect and what not to expect from the system.” – Christopher Tuckwood, Co-founder.

Don Kraus, the president of Global Solutions, gave the keynote address on “Preventing the Crime of Genocide” and expressed the need for a “global 911 system” for genocide prevention. Nora Basha from the Syrian-American Council recounted the current situation in Syria and Kizito “Z” Kalima, shared his testimony as a Rwandan genocide survivor and human rights activist. The Conflict-Free Campus Initiative student director, Ellie Hamrick, discussed the link between our consumer electronics products, natural resources, sexual violence, and mass atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo and how students on college campuses can raise hope for Congo. Also present was Claude Gatebuke, another Rwandan genocide survivor and 2010 Carl Wilkens Fellow, who shared the lessons learned from the anti-apatheid movement and how non-violent strategies such as global pressure can help end mass-atrocities around the world.

Overall, the summit was a great success! It was an honor to have the Sentinel Project represented at Indiana’s first-ever genocide prevention summit. We got a lot of contacts and people interested in the work we do in preventing genocide and mass atrocities. This was a great outcome as we are constantly searching for volunteers, subject matter experts, advisors, and partners to network with. We hope to continue expanding our network as we strive to achieve our mission to end genocide.

With me on stage were Shahram Negari, a former student of the BIHE, Shahrzad Mojab, a professor of education, and Gerald Filson from the Bahá’í Community of Canada. Together, we fielded several insightful questions and comments from the audience but overall a common theme throughout the discussion was the question of how to help Bahá’ís in Iran. Personally, I argue that there should be three aspects to any campaign aiming to prevent genocide in Iran:

1. Raising the profile of anti-Bahá’í persecution – Anyone who knows me knows that I’m definitely not a fan of awareness raising for the sake of awareness raising. This sort of public education should only be the first step which prepares the ground for later action. In this case, it can have a positive effect if used to ensure that Bahá’í rights – and in fact all human rights – in Iran come into consideration when the international community is dealing with higher-profile issues such as nuclear proliferation.
2. Help Bahá’ís continue communal self-help programs such as BIHE – Services like education are essential for the development and survival of any community. One great way to support the Bahá’í community in Iran is to identify initiatives like BIHE or even other needs that aren’t being met and provide whatever assistance they need.
3. Prepare the Bahá’í community for increased persecution - This may be unpleasant to consider but it is absolutely essential to help any community at risk of genocide prepare for the day when their situation may get much, much worse. We have already seen an escalation in abuses over the past year and the fact is that the more we prepare now, the more lives we can save if the worst case scenario unfolds. If there is one thing that I’ve learned from studying disaster management, it’s that as much as you may hope to prevent a destructive event, preparation to mitigate the damage if it does happen is absolutely essential.

Films like Education Under Fire are extremely important for showing people what is happening in potentially genocidal situations like that in Iran. I sincerely hope that we can participate in more of them in the future. What I really want though is to ensure that we don’t stop after watching a film or having a discussion. Awareness is just the first step when it comes to genocide prevention. Everything that comes after that needs to be concrete, goal-oriented action.

The recent escalation of international pressure on Iran has coincided with the potentially related escalation of harassment, arrests, and intimidation of Bahá’ís throughout the country. As a result, there is now an urgent need for international attention and action to safeguard the Bahá’í community.

One of the hardships that Iranian Bahá’ís face is the exclusion of their young people from universities, a common warning sign in the early stages of past genocides. Thus, it is with great pride then that we lend our support to the upcoming screening of Education Under Fire.

This internationally acclaimed documentary profiles the growth, struggle and spirit of the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education, an underground university set up to educate young Bahá’ís. Co-sponsored by Amnesty International, and produced by Single Arrow Productions, the documentary shines a bright spotlight on the struggle by the Iranian Bahá’í community to access the education which the Iranian state has forbidden to them. Despite raids, arrests, and the risk of personal harm, the Institute’s volunteer teachers, administrators, and students persevere.

With state-sponsored anti-Bahá’í propaganda continuing to marginalize the group, and with the population facing increasing persecution, Education Under Fire is a most timely of documentaries. It transcends the issues of the Iranian situation to ask a very global question – what if you were forbidden to learn?

We hope you join us at its Toronto screening this Thursday.

What: Education Under Fire
When: March 29, 2012
6:00 PM
Where: University of Toronto
252 Bloor St. West,
Toronto, Ontario

More information about the screening can be obtained at www.educationunderfire.com or by contacting info@educationunderfire.com

We hope to see you there.