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From notes@igc.apc.org Sun Aug 6 05:15:49 1995 Received: from cdp.igc.apc.org (192.82.108.1) by MediaFilter.org with SMTP (MailShare 1.0b10); Sun, 6 Aug 1995 05:15:50 -0500 Received: (from notes) by cdp.igc.apc.org (8.6.12/Revision: 1.203 ) id BAA01578 for "conf-zamir.chat"; Sun, 6 Aug 1995 01:45:27 -0700 Date: 06 Aug 1995 01:39:39 Reply-To: Conference "zamir.chat"From: jbennett@eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de Subject: A Spade Is a Spade To: Recipients of zamir-chat-l Message-ID: X-Gateway: conf2mail@igc.apc.org Errors-To: owner-zamir-chat-l@igc.apc.org Precedence: bulk Lines: 45 From: Robert John Bennett Dear Mr. President: The Sueddeutsche Zeitung - one of Germany's equivalents of the New York Times or the Washington Post - ran an editorial this weekend that reminded me of a question I've wondered about for a long time. Why do the media in the English-speaking world insist on using the term "ethnic cleansing" when describing Serb actions in Bosnia? Three or four years ago the words were expressed in English with a certain ironic twist, but they have since gained a kind of legitimacy, as though this were some sort of normal, acceptable action that any political entity might carry out from time to time, much as a person might do the housework on a regular basis. The editorial in the Sueddeutsche also reminded me of something I learned some time ago: all Germans today - with perhaps a few negligible exceptions - have such an abhorrence of the Nazi past, that they avoid using even those innocent words that the Nazis perverted for their own purposes. Certainly no German would ever dream of using a euphemism like "ethnische Saeuberung" - ethnic cleansing - to describe what the Serbs have been doing in Bosnia. The Germans, knowing from experience what such evasive terminology can lead to, call "ethnic cleansing" what it is. In its editorial, the Sueddeutsche uses the term, "Vertreibungsfeldzuege," or "campaigns of (human) expulsion." Why don't the media in the English-speaking world do something similar? Or does a euphemism like "ethnic cleansing" make it a little easier for us all to overlook what it is that the Serbs have really been doing in Bosnia? Sincerely yours, Robert J. Bennett Munich