Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The Argument
- 2 Ethnic Cleansing in Former Times
- 3 Two Versions of “We, the People”
- 4 Genocidal Democracies in the New World
- 5 Armenia, I: Into the Danger Zone
- 6 Armenia, II: Genocide
- 7 Nazis, I: Radicalization
- 8 Nazis, II: Fifteen Hundred Perpetrators
- 9 Nazis, III: Genocidal Careers
- 10 Germany's Allies and Auxiliaries
- 11 Communist Cleansing: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot
- 12 Yugoslavia, I: Into the Danger Zone
- 13 Yugoslavia, II: Murderous Cleansing
- 14 Rwanda, I: Into the Danger Zone
- 15 Rwanda, II: Genocide
- 16 Counterfactual Cases: India and Indonesia
- 17 Combating Ethnic Cleansing in the World Today
- Works Cited
- Index
1 - The Argument
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The Argument
- 2 Ethnic Cleansing in Former Times
- 3 Two Versions of “We, the People”
- 4 Genocidal Democracies in the New World
- 5 Armenia, I: Into the Danger Zone
- 6 Armenia, II: Genocide
- 7 Nazis, I: Radicalization
- 8 Nazis, II: Fifteen Hundred Perpetrators
- 9 Nazis, III: Genocidal Careers
- 10 Germany's Allies and Auxiliaries
- 11 Communist Cleansing: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot
- 12 Yugoslavia, I: Into the Danger Zone
- 13 Yugoslavia, II: Murderous Cleansing
- 14 Rwanda, I: Into the Danger Zone
- 15 Rwanda, II: Genocide
- 16 Counterfactual Cases: India and Indonesia
- 17 Combating Ethnic Cleansing in the World Today
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
74-year-old Batisha Hoxha was sitting in her kitchen with her 77-year-old husband, Izet, staying warm by the stove. They had heard explosions but did not realize that Serbian troops had already entered the town. The next thing she knew, five or six soldiers had burst through the front door and were demanding “Where are your children?”
The soldiers began beating Izet, “so hard that he fell to the floor,” she said. While they were kicking him, the soldiers demanded money and information on the whereabouts of the couple's sons. Then, while Izet was still on the floor looking up at them, they killed him. “They shot him three times in the chest,” recalled Batisha. With her husband dying before her, the soldiers pulled the wedding ring off her finger.
“I can still feel the pain,” she said. They fired shots … and finally they kicked Batisha and a 10-year-old boy who was staying with them and told them to get out.
“I was not even outside the gate when they burned it.” … Her husband's body was in the flames. In that moment she was paralyzed. She was standing on the street in the rain with no house, no husband, no possessions but the clothes she was wearing. Finally, strangers passed in a tractor and bundled her into their wagon. Batisha's daughter later found her in a refugee camp in northern Albania. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Dark Side of DemocracyExplaining Ethnic Cleansing, pp. 1 - 33Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004