Hushed Voices

Unlike widely reported genocides, such as those in Nazi Germany, Rwanda and Cambodia, some atrocities remain unacknowledged, are denied and excluded from history textbooks. Yet the buried past is important, not only because perpetrators of gross human rights violations should be held accountable, but also because victims and their descendants warrant recognition. Unacknowledged atrocities breed resentment; they taint the collective identity of a nation and cause divisions when future generations challenge the sanitized versions of history. Official silence about past misdeeds suggests complicity and promotes impunity. Above all, non-acknowledgement prevents learning from past injustices. Hushed Voices analyzes fifteen key cases of forgotten mass political violence from around the world. In Africa these include massacres in Zanzibar, the Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe, Biafra, the Algerian Harkis, and the Mau Mau anti-colonial rebellion; in the Middle East, the Armenian massacre in Turkey, the Palestinian Nakba and the Hama uprising in Syria are examined; in Asia, the book considers Suharto's slaughter of half a million Indonesians, the actions of Imperial Japan and Gujarati Hindu nationalism; in Europe, the Ukrainian Holodomor, the Spanish Civil War, Dresden and the ethnic cleansing of Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia after World War II make up the case studies. Theories of ethnic conflict, reconciliation, truth commissions and post-conflict reconstruction are reviewed in the conclusion.