259 - Kenneth Roth: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and How to Shame a Dictator

28:28And I let them go on for a little bit and then finally said, look, you guys, you don't really understand. that we are going to be releasing these findings at a press conference in Cairo in a few days. The journalists are going to ask us, how were your conversations in Tripoli? And I could say they were terrible. All they did was yell at us. Or I can say they were constructive and we discussed reforms. Which should it be? That shot them up. They said, we've got to consult with our superiors. They sent us home for the day, for the night. Next morning, we got a phone call. We went back in. it was like a new government.

29:03There were piles of folders on the desk of all the political prisoner cases we were interested in. They were very welcoming. And we identified some of the 171 political prisoners, and very quickly they were all released. And it showed that, you know, here we had them where we needed them. You know, they wanted to improve their reputation. we were the obstacles of that. They were not going to change, we were not going to change our opinion until they changed their practice. And so that was an example, you know, where it worked. Now, you know, other times it's more complicated. I mean, I give this story in the book about Rwanda's support for the M23 rebel group in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

29:50And this was an incredibly brutal group that, you know, rapes and kills civilians. and Human Rights Watch has an office in Goma in Eastern Congo. And we began documenting the Rwandan military support for the M23. And we put out one report and Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, just denied. He said, you know, we misunderstood. So, you know, a few months later, we put out another report and he denied it again. And by the third report, all the diplomats understood that we were telling the truth, that we had the goods on this. And Kagame was lulling through his teeth. And we were able to get at that stage, John Kerry, who was the U.S.

30:29Secretary of State, and William Hague, who was the British Foreign Secretary, to call Vagami and say, we're going to cut off your aid unless you stop supporting the M-23. And within days, literally, the M-23 crumbled and disappeared. And so that was the good news. You know, for eight years, the people of Eastern Congo were not being preyed upon by this awful rebel group. Today, the M23 is back. And what has happened is that Kagame has spent the intramaturing years trying to make himself indispensable. So his peacekeepers are playing an important role in Northern Mozambique. He hosts conferences in Rwanda.

31:05He does PR efforts like Visit Rwanda that are on the arms of the Arsenal football team, soccer team. He has offered to take asylum seekers from Britain from the United States. and all of this is designed to dissuade the western donors from further conditioning their aid and so this is you know a renewed problem now trump has come in and you know signed a deal that supposedly ended the conflict but it hasn't ended the conflict all he cares about is mining minerals he's not that concerned about the m23 withdrawing and so you know we're in a in a bad situation again so you know what's the lesson from this you know it's good that we were able to stop things for eight years, we didn't stop it permanently.

31:51And one lesson I try to give in the book is that, you know, governments are always tempted to violate human rights. It's the need to push back is incessant. You can't just, you know, win one and go home and say your job's done. You got to keep the pressure up. And so there, you know, one thing you have to recognize if you get into the humanized field is that there's always a need to sustain the pressure. And, you know, you may win today, but you're going to lose tomorrow and then you'll win the next day. So But there's this ongoing battle. And I think the Eastern Congo situation illustrates that well.

32:22Why are governments always tempted to violate human rights? Because it's a way to get things that they want. I mean, often it's just a matter of staying in power. In the case of, you know, Kagame, the Rwandan president of the Eastern Congo, he wants the mineral wealth the Eastern Congo has. You know, Rwanda doesn't have that. You know, across the border, it's there. It's very tempting. He just invades. You know, Congo is a bit chaotic. You can get away with it. He just does it. You know, so whether it's, you know, whether it's wealth or power or some combination, these are temptations for leaders that they succumb to unless there's pressure that they respect human rights.

32:57It is just fascinating and somewhat depressing to think that governments are by their nature immoral or ruthless in some way. And you can always depend on this. Well, I mean, look, obviously a lot depends on the character of the leader. And so it's not, you know, every leader that ignores human rights, but I think it's a temptation that's always there. And we're seeing this in Trump. You know, Trump is just breaching not only norms, but also laws that protect rights of Americans and people around the world. And he could care less, you know, as a way of pursuing his autocratic vision. So it shows that even in a country like the United States with a strong democratic tradition is not immune to these kind of temptations.

33:43Or you can go back to, you know, the George W. Bush administration. I discussed this at length in the book, where, you know, at that time, in the name of national security, in the name of fighting Al-Qaeda, which had just, you know, conducted the 9-11 attacks, the U.S. just ripped up the rules on warfare and counterinsurgency and began torturing people systematically and throwing them without trial forever in Guantanamo. And so, you know, I think we have to recognize that even within the United States, this temptation to violate human rights is very much there. And of course, you see this around the world as well.

34:16That's, you know, why you need a human rights movement to push back, to make that kind of succumbing to that temptation more costly. Speaking of the Guantanamo situation, I took one political philosophy class many, many years ago in undergraduate. So I am probably very wrong here on some level. But I recall, I don't know if it was Hobbes, I think it was Hobbes, maybe, who justified, at least on some level, the state being able to act outside of the law, and in this case, perhaps violate human rights, because people or its enemies are also violating outside of the law. And in order to compete with them, some laws need to be violated.

35:04And I did find this compelling in the sense that we can come up with a thought experiment where you have a criminal who knows the location of the nuclear bomb in New York City, and we can only get it by torturing him. Is it worth violating human rights to save millions and millions of lives? And I'm wondering if you just view human rights as being entirely inviolable. Well, I mean, let me first use your torture example and then also talk about war. The torture example you give is actually what proponents of torture, they always cite that example. It's the ticking time bomb example. And I describe in the book how that rationale was used by Israel in an earlier era to necessitate, you know, torturing somebody because there is this ticking time bomb that's about to go off.

36:03And that was the original rationale. But what quickly happens is it becomes a very expansive metaphor, because if you're going to torture somebody for the time bomb that's ticking, you know, why can't you torture them for a bomb that's going to be placed tomorrow? Or why can't you torture them because they could, you know, locate somebody who might know where the bomb is going to be placed next month? I mean, aren't all these people's lives worth saving? And what you quickly find out, what Israel found out, was that the ban on torture, which is an absolute prohibition that every government has signed on to, it's jettisoned.

36:36It's thrown out the window because this, you know, supposedly narrow exception swallows the entire rule. And so there is something called the Landau Commission, which actually said, this has got to stop. This rationale doesn't work. Now, Israel has, you know, fallen back on torture now. That's among the things that it's doing in fighting the war in Gaza. But there is a universal view that the ban on torture is absolute. and you can't, you know, come up with these law school hypotheticals to justify exceptions to it. Now, the other, you know, factor worth considering here is that, you know, even in time of war, that is to say, you know, even when somebody is attacking your country, you know, bombing it, invading it, whatever, there are clear rules about what cannot be done.

37:22Those are the Geneva Conventions and the Protocols, as known as internationally humanitarian law. And every single government has signed out to these. And the point is to say that, yes, you may be at war. This may be the worst kind of national security threat you're ever going to face. But there's certain things you can't do. You can't deliberately attack civilians. You can't indiscriminately bomb civilian neighborhoods. You can't starve civilians. Basic rules, pretty intuitive. But governments all subscribe to those rules. Now, do they violate them? I mean, yes. Israel, which also subscribes to those rules, is flouting them left and right in Gaza.

38:01It is indiscriminately bombing neighborhoods. It's starving civilians. You know, it is shooting people who are coming up to get food. So, you know, these are severe violations, but nobody's questioning the norms. I mean, you don't even see Israel saying it's okay to shoot people who are seeking food. They always try to justify it with some, you know, vague excuse. So I think it's important to recognize that, you know, this Hobbesian view that you can do anything you want because the world's an ugly place out there is not the moral standard governing the world today as illustrated by these treaties like the Geneva Conventions that every government has accepted, every military assigned onto them.

38:38And these are not rules that, you know, human rights groups have concocted. These are rules written by the major militaries of the world to govern themselves in time the form. I understand that these are laws that all of these countries have signed on to, and it is a good thing that they have signed on to these laws. But still, in this most terrible ticking time bomb case, wouldn't we want our governments to violate human rights? And of course, we're assuming that our government is like this perfect actor. And in this case, they have perfect knowledge. They know that this bomb is there, that it is going to go off.

39:22And we're just hoping that it doesn't become a slippery slope. We don't want to give them tacit permission to violate the conventions whenever they want to. But when it's really clear that New York City is on the line. Yeah. I mean, this is the problem with trying to govern by law school hypothetical. The ticking time-time thing just never happens in real life. That's a TV show. And instead, what you get are these metaphorical allusions to it where, you know, okay, there might be a ticking bomb tomorrow or this terrorist threat is posing something down the road, you know, and therefore, we need to torture people to prevent that.

39:59I mean, it is the slippery slope that becomes an enormous exception to the ban on torture. So it's why you don't legislate through law school hypotheticals. You focus on what happens in the real world. And it's absolutely clear you don't want to open the door even a crack to permitting torture. I accept that. I mean, it makes sense to me. I understand the huge danger in practice. Earlier, you mentioned that one of the crucial things that law school doesn't teach you for operating in the real world is strategizing. And HRW has to do so many things beyond just strategizing. There's also the fact finding and the analysis that comes before it and the publicity that comes afterward.

40:45And this operation is huge. I mean, spanning investigations across the globe. I'm wondering if we can talk a bit about just the logistics of how it's put together and what are these very many different tasks that are going on in the organization at any given time? Okay. Well, maybe starting with the law school example. I mean, law school tends to just, you know, teach you what the law is. What it doesn't teach very well, at least, is the importance of facts. And I learned the importance of facts in my first few years of practice. And initially for a judge I worked for who really, you know, believed that the facts dictate what's right and wrong.

41:27And the law provides broad guidance, but it's really the facts that tell you what to do. And then in my stint in private practice, very briefly, in my longer time as a prosecutor, I saw the power of facts, that it's facts that move people. And if, you know, once you describe a situation, if people don't think it's wrong, citing some law is not going to change their mind. You know, so this public sense of light and wand is critical to generating pressure on governments to behave better. Now, Human Rights Watch does that. In fact, I mean, the work of Human Rights Watch really begins with investigations in the field.

42:05We have people we call researchers who operate in about 100 countries around the world. And these are people who could be lawyers, they could be journalists, they could be academics. I mean, they have a bunch of different backgrounds. their job is if they aren't already then to become one of the world's leading experts on human rights in their country or on their issue and they do this by you know conducting very detailed investigations on the ground they go to the site of the crime they they speak to the victims to the eyewitnesses to the government anybody who has firsthand information they collect physical evidence they take photographs and what they do is they put together an irrefutable account of what happened.

42:46And that is published. So that is really the foundation for the work of Human Rights Watch. That publication is what leads to the media attention that shames governments. That publication is what persuades influential governments to use their clout on behalf of the human rights cause. So, you know, it is that investigative and reporting work that is the heart of Human Rights Watch. Then once, you know, once a publication is out, we have teams that try to put into media that operate in different capitals around the world to try to enlist influential governance on our behalf. So that's the essence of Human Rights Watch.

43:22These journalists, academics, and lawyers, are they, your researchers, are they volunteers largely? Oh, no, no. This is a staff. I mean, you know, when I left, the staff was about 550 people. The annual budget was 100 million US. And no, you need full-time staff because this is a full-time job. You know, to really become, you know, one of the world's experts on an issue and then to have the time to, you know, do the investigation, to publicize your findings, to generate pressure on the target government to change, that's more than a full-time job. I mean, these are very intense jobs. So, you know, no, you can't do that as a volunteer.

44:03It's not something you dabble in. And indeed, you know, one thing that really motivated me as a fundraiser was that I recognized that if I could raise the money to hire another researcher, I was, you know, hiring the capacity to enlist this expertise, to enlist this information as a way to force governments to behave better. So it was a huge incentive for me to fundraise. But that's what it's about. You know, you need a professional staff because this is a very sophisticated endeavor. If these people had been volunteers, and it makes tons of sense why they aren't, this would have strengthened the question I'm about to ask much more.

44:40But obviously, the objectivity of this fact-generating research is extremely important, because if it gets out that your stories are twisted, they're not real, that really undermines your credibility. And if these people were volunteers, you would assume that, okay, they're very strongly biased toward making a difference and finding and reporting on human rights violations, even if maybe things aren't as bad as are being reported. And I'm just wondering how it is that you maintain objectivity in the investigations. So that's a very good question. And I mean, I should say, you know, whether volunteer or professional, I mean, you know, people want to work for Human Rights Watch.

45:30When we hit an opening for a researcher, we get, you know, 300 applications, we get incredibly exceptional candidates, you know, we could really pick who we wanted. And so step one in answering your question is in the hiring process. You know, we look for people who have the capacity to maintain objectivity, even in very partisan circumstances, even in the midst of a war or, you know, a huge political conflict. And so that's a temperament we look for. We then train them. You know, they don't just go off in the field on their own. They go off with more experienced researchers. They're taught how to do these investigations and how rigorous they have to be, how they have to look at all sides.

46:08And we then don't just publish the findings. We have a whole review process internally before anything goes out. And so things are scrutinized for accuracy, for objectivity, for appropriate use of international law, adherence to human rights watches policies. And so, you know, by the end of this process, you can be pretty sure that what we publish is right. And, you know, the testament to that, I suppose, is that we've never had to withdraw any major finding. You know, like any newspaper, we make, you know, minor errors here and there and have to issue corrections, but nothing major. You know, and that speaks to really the professionalism and integrity of the research staff.

46:52As this war in Israel and Gaza has gone on, maybe it's echo chambers I'm in, but I've been seeing less and less, I'd say, debate over what's happening there than I was at the beginning of the war. And in the beginning, I was hearing lots of claims to the effect that, oh, things aren't nearly as bad as they appear. Israel's really like warning all of the Gazans before it drops bombs. And I don't think that that's as much the case now. But I do still see, maybe it's because it's on Twitter, lots of people will post clips of starving children and they'll say, but how come this child isn't starved?

47:40This is the only famine in history that selectively like starves children and not parents. And what I'm wondering, though, more broadly, when you're dealing with cases like this, when governments block access, like battlefield zones, for instance, in this case, and how is it that you verify and make sure that you're getting really good data in these places? Like, are you using satellites, supply chain data, interviews with people who are escaping? What are the tools in the toolkit? I mean, this comes up all the time because governments, you know, always try to block access. And sometimes it's too dangerous to go to.

48:25That's the other fact. And in those situations, you have to do remote investigations. But there are tried and true methods to do that. And some of them are pretty straightforward because, you know, the key is to speak to eyewitnesses. So ideally you go to the scene of the crime, but if that's not possible, you can talk to people who have left, you know, recent refugees. You can call people on the phone or WhatsApp or whatever, you know. You can talk to people who are on the ground who can do, you know, some investigations. We, Human Rights Watch has a partnership with something called Planet Labs in San Francisco, which sends up these microsatellites and takes a picture of the entire world every single day.

49:06And so we can call them and say, give us, you know, the images for this particular location for the last five days and get them. There's something called open source analysis where people post visuals on social media, which you can scrape. You have to verify all of that, you know, because it can be concocted. You match it against satellite imagery and the like. But there are ways that that becomes evidence too, if you can verify it. So there are a bunch of tools that can be used. Human Rights Watch does have one advantage in that we don't have to publish if we don't know. So if there's uncertainty, we just don't publish.

49:42you know, and we wait until we know. And so, you know, there are various tools, but a physical lack of access, it's, you know, it makes it more difficult, but it's not an impediment ultimately to repug. How have you of late in HRW been handling the case of famine and starvation in Gaza, investigating it, reporting on it, using it as a publicity point. Yeah. I mean, looking at this point, obviously I'm not running Human Rights Watch anymore, so I have to speak more for myself. But, you know, I think that although Netanyahu continues to deny that there's starvation, it's pretty obvious that there is.

50:25You know, and you see this just from, you know, the humanitarian workers who are in Gaza who are reporting it. You know, we're speaking today when the leading UN agency just formally declared a famine in Gaza City and surrounding areas, you know, is uncontested that the Israeli government blocked any food from getting in for 11 weeks starting in March. Since then is allowed in really drips and drabs of aid in these expensive, ineffectual, dangerous airdrops that, you know, get little bits of people, food to people who are strong enough to get there. These handful of points set up by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, where hundreds of Palestinians had been shot and killed by showing up.

51:09You know, all of this in lieu of the UN delivery system that was bringing food to people where they were living and was very effective. You know, but Netanyahu stopped that. So I think that the basics are actually no longer contested. This is, you know, clearly a starvation strategy. This is what the International Criminal Court charged both Netanyahu and the former Defense Minister Gallant with the war crime of starving Palestinian civilians. It is a key element of the, I think, quite appropriate charge of genocide today. And so I don't think, you know, the facts are really contested anymore, even though there still was denial by the Israeli government.

51:50There still is denial by the Israeli government, by Netanyahu. And you used Viktor Orban as an earlier example of somebody who he's not going to be shamed about mistreating migrants because for him, that's his platform. But I don't think Netanyahu's platform is let's starve the Gazans. What is the tactic that you take to shame somebody like this? But the difficulty with Netanyahu is that his primary concern is staying in power and avoiding these pending corruption charges against him. And to do that, he needs to placate the two far-right ministers of his government, Ben Giver and Smokovic, who have been very open about their goal here, which is to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

52:43And that's the main point of what's going on today. You know, there's talk about, you know, pressuring Hamas for a better deal, but you're not allowed to starve civilians to pressure Hamas, just like you're not allowed to kill civilians to pressure Hamas. Those are war crimes. what I think is really going on here is simply an effort to kill enough Palestinians but more to the point create conditions that are so unconducive to life that in the end Palestinians feel they have no choice but to leave and this will be a one-way ticket it'll be another Nakba they'll leave and they'll never be let back and that is the at this point stated goal of these far-right ministers and since Trump talked about creating a Gaza Riviera, it's the stated goal of Netanyahu too.

53:31So that's what's happening here. You know, and I think that the fight against Hamas, which has, you know, been decimated at this stage. I mean, there still is Hamas there, but, you know, does it really pose a threat to Israel? I mean, nothing compared to what Israel is doing to Gaza. And I think this is an effort to, you know, ultimately remove 2 million Palestinians from the demographic balance sheet between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. And if they get away with that in Gaza, they will then move to the West Bank, where already there is, you know, ethnic cleansing of so-called Area Sea, the 60 % of the West Bank where all the settlements are.

54:09And I think over time, we would see ethnic cleansing of other regions as well, you know, all with the aim of solving, if that's the term, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by getting rid of the Palestinians. And, you know, this is, the government is, you know, the Israeli government is openly talking about this now, just send them to South Sudan. You know, this would be a massive crime against humanity. It'd be utterly wrong, but they're doing it because they're getting away with it. And even though they've totally lost the battle for global public opinion, there is only one person's opinion they care about anymore, and that is Trump.

54:47Because Trump is the guy who can turn on or off the U.S. military aid and the arms sales that enable this genocide to go forward. And so this is a battle for Trump's conscience. And it is, you know, it is a real battle because even though Trump presumptively gives a green light to anything the Israeli government wants to do, he has been slowly distancing himself from Netanyahu. And you can see this in a series of decisions he's made in the Middle East in the several months that he's been president. You know, he lifted sanctions against the Syrian government when Netanyahu preferred chaos in Syria.

55:26He negotiated directly with Hamas and with Iran when that was anathema. He cut a deal with the Houthis that involved an end to attacks on shipping, but not an end to attacks on Israel. You know, he has twice forced Netanyahu to agree to temporary ceasefires. He has repudiated Netanyahu's false denial that starvation has taken place. So in a number of ways, Trump has just had it with Netanyahu. I think there's no love lost between the two. But for the time being, he's keeping the arms and the military aid flowing. He claims, Trump claims to be, you know, moved by the starvation of the Palestinian civilians.

56:06he hasn't acted on that yet. But I don't think it's out of the question that he would, particularly as even U.S. public opinion is shifting, you know, predictably Democrats. But even Republicans and even MAGA Republicans are beginning to be outraged by what the Israeli government is doing. And, you know, Trump, who foremost is concerned about himself, can turn on Israel at some stage. And so I think it is foreseeable that that will happen. I just hope it happens sooner rather than later, because this is a matter of lives being lost every single day. I've just pulled up your article from July 2025.

56:37I mean, why the reluctance to recognize Israel's genocide in Gaza. And I mean, I'm just looking at this first picture of a woman looks like she's crying over a dead child. And it does seem like it's a very, very little time remaining. I last interviewed Norman Finkelstein about this in March or so. And the sort of tagline that he said a number of times was Gaza. There's nothing left of Gaza. It's just like rubble now. And is the hope then that you can or those who are putting pressure on Trump can do so just like very soon? Because I don't I don't see how or what there is left for this conflict.

57:28There's just, Gaza just really isn't there. No, I mean, Gaza has been physically destroyed. The vast majority of people are living in tents. So if the conflict ends, there will be a huge rebuilding that is required, which it's conceivable the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Qataris would help to pay for, but only on the condition that it be part of a movement toward a Palestinian state. They're not going to just rebuild, so Netanyahu can bomb it again. And this is, you know, something that Netanyahu has spent his entire political career opposing. So this too is an area where Trump is going to have to exert his pressure.

58:06And if Trump wants an Abraham Accord that includes the Saudis, if he wants really to end this conflict, it's not going to be enough just to get a ceasefire. You know, that would just, you know, maintain a horrible situation. If he really wants to move forward, he's going to have to start making progress in a Palestinian state. This again is not Trump's instinct, but, you know, Trump's primary concern is himself. And if he realizes that if he wants the accolades for really solving this problem, it's going to have to be through a Palestinian state. It's not going to be through ethnic cleansing. It's not going to be through unveiling apartheid.

58:42It's going to be through, you know, finally giving Palestinians the state that they deserve. You mentioned a few minutes ago, I didn't catch the names, but these two leading politicians for the far right parties that Netanyahu is beholden to. Ben Ufer and Smokinich, yes. Yes. Openly called for ethnic cleansing in Gaza. I know you don't have the quotes in front of you, but do you recall what their language is like? Well, I mean, they talk about voluntary departure. You know, they're smart enough to know they don't talk about forced deportation. They talk about voluntary departure. And they're not talking about genocide.

59:24They don't use the term genocide. No. But what they basically are saying is, you know, implicitly, let's make things so awful that people voluntarily leave. And Netanyahu has adopted the same language since Trump began talking about a Gaza Riviera, where he too talked about, no more Palestinians. Now, Trump has given up that language. Netanyahu has continued it. So, you know, do they use the term genocide? No, they deny that they're committing genocide. They do talk openly about their aim being so-called voluntary dislocation. And the entire practice of this starvation is aimed at creating those conditions where Palestinians feel they have no choice but to flee.

1:00:07Who is it that this article is directed toward that you think is most problematically not accepting that this is genocide? Well, in the article, what I explained is that the public conception of genocide is very much colored by the Holocaust and to some extent by the Rwandan genocide. And those are both cases where at a certain point the aim became, you know, for the Nazis to kill every Jew they could find, for the Hutu extremists in Rwandan to kill every Jutsi they could find. These were genocides aimed at destroying a group in whole, to use the terminology of the Genocide Convention. But the Genocide Convention also defines genocide as being an intent to destroy a group in part, either through killing or through creating conditions unsuitable to life or other things as well.

1:01:03And I said that that's really the way to understand the genocide in Gaza. It is genocide not as the end, but genocide as a means for forced deportation. And the analogy I use, just to take it out of the Gaza situation for a moment, is what the Myanmar army did with the Rohingya, where they went in in 2017 and killed roughly 10 ,000 Rohingya with the aim of forcing 730 ,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. So this was genocide for the ends of African cleansing. It was genocide as a means. Now, that's not typically how people think about genocide because they think about it as intending to destroy a group and whole, but that's not what the treaty says.

1:01:53and the the one practical difficulty is that the international court of justice i think also influenced by this holocaust view of the genocide of what genocide is has said that if you need to infer intent from conduct that you can only infer genocidal intent if that's the only inference that is possible which doesn't actually make sense when genocide is used as a needs, because almost by definition, there's an alternative intent, the intent to ethically cleanse. And they made this ruling in a case of Croatia versus Serbia, you know, over a decade ago. And I think that they are going to need to revisit that.

1:02:36Initially, it will be in the Myanmar case, because that's coming before them first, but then in the Gaza case. And I think the fair interpretation would be that there could be dual intent, that as long as you prove the intent to destroy a group adequately, you can demonstrate genocide even if genocide is for another purpose, even if there's an intent to commit another crime with the genocide. So that's, you know, what I argued in the Guardian piece is the way that we should understand what's going on in Gaza, but that's also the jurisprudential shift that the International Court of Justice will have to make.

1:03:11I think this has been a very important segment of the conversation because that is the counter-argument to genocide that I think I hear most often. It's not meant to be an extermination as an end in itself, the way that maybe the Holocaust was. It's just trying to get Gossams to flee. They just don't want them there anymore. And this means it's not genocide. Well, yeah, I mean, that's the counter-argument, but it really kind of begs the question of what means are being used. And if the means used intend to destroy a significant part of the Palestinian civilian population, either by indiscriminately bombing them or targeting them or by starving enough of them, that can be genocide as a means, even though it is serving another criminal purpose of forced deportation.

1:04:03And it would be ironic, frankly, if the Inter-F Court of Justice were to say that a huge war crime, a crime against humanity of forced deportation is a defense to genocide. And it doesn't even make sense. But that is what their current jurisprudence suggests, which is why I think they have to change that, that you can have, you know, forced deportation being a motive for genocide. It shouldn't be a defense to genocide. I'd like to make sure that we cover a few scattered topics, just some questions that I wanted to ask. One brings us closer to the United States or to the United States, closer to home.

1:04:42What are the current biggest human rights violations that the United States is a party to, if not that it's directly causing, but at least contributing to? Well, I mean, obviously, the big one is one we've been discussing where, you know, they're aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza. So that's a big one. Um, the, I mean, in terms of domestic policy, Human Rights Watch spent a lot of its time, and I described this in the book, looking at, um, especially racial discrimination that infected the criminal justice system. And the reason Human Rights Watch felt that we had a role to play there is because, you know, while any individual criminal suspect could reasonably expect a fair trial, it's difficult for any single defendant to raise systematic issues.

1:05:40And you really needed the kind of investigative and reporting methodology of Human Rights Watch to demonstrate the patterns of discrimination that may exist in the deployment of police or in decisions about charges by prosecutors, decisions about setting bail, things of that sort that Human Rights Watch spent a lot of time on. So that discriminatory angle of the criminal justice system is something that affects many, many people. I mean, today what everybody is focused on is immigration. And here, I think the law is behind people's moral judgments. In that, I think it's fair for Trump to come in and say, I have a mandate to reinforce the U.S.-Mexican border.

1:06:31I don't think there's been a lot of pushback as he tries to do that. He is ripping up the white to seek asylum, which is illegal. But the idea that, you know, Americans don't want, you know, migrants just freely floating across the border, I think is kind of where the public is today. But the public is not in favor of these random ICE raids that are taking place in neighborhoods and workplaces where it is presumed that undocumented migrants live. And the reason is that, you know, although Trump talks about, you know, all these migrants being criminals and violent rapists and the like, in fact, the people being picked up are completely law-abiding in every way but their lack of legal papers to be in the United States.

1:07:17You know, these typically are people who have U.S. citizen spouses, U.S. citizen children. They have jobs. They pay taxes. They're members of the community. They really are Americans in all but legal status. And there, I think, is a broad public distaste at the random roundup of these people and the deportation of them. And I think where the law has to go, it hasn't taken the step yet, is that we need to develop something like a statute of limitations for deportation. If you think about it in the criminal realm, most crimes, if you're not charged within five years, the government forgets it. You can't be prosecuted after that.

1:08:01That's what the statute of limitations says. Essentially, there's this assumption you can be able to get on with your life. You know, we're not going to hold you responsible for something that happened a long time ago. In the realm of deportation, though, a statute of limitations doesn't exist. And I think it should, particularly because the longer people are in the United States, the more they build lives here, the more there are equities attached with their remaining in the United States. and that should weigh against the U.S. government's, you know, legitimate interest in controlling who becomes a lawful American resident.

1:08:34And so I think there is a need to introduce this concept of a statute of limitations. You know, sadly, the U.S. Congress is so stymied by partisan jockeying that, you know, it's been impossible to get legislation through. But this could be done in a sense, even just through presidential de facto policy. And in a sense, you saw, you know, Biden and Obama doing that by directing their deportation efforts to the border, to new arrivals, and not raiding neighborhoods and workplaces. That Trump is now changing that practice is generating a lot of backlash. And it's, you know, you can't say it's a violation of law.

1:09:19That's not what the law says, but it does violate people's sense of right and wrong. And I think that Trump is going to feel that heat if he continues proceeding with these raids in significant numbers. Well, I would love to follow up on that, but I want to make sure that I ask this final question before we say goodbye. And you have mentioned and we've discussed some of the very high profile human rights cases right now, like Gaza and immigration. I'm wondering what you think are the biggest human rights violations going on right now around the world that people, at least people in the United States, where most of our listeners will be, aren't aware of.

1:10:04Yeah, look, I mean, by far and away, the biggest case that we haven't discussed yet and gets very little media attention is what's happening in Sudan, where in Sudan today, that is the world's worst humanitarian crisis. There are more displaced people there than in Ukraine and Gaza to bind. And, you know, whenever you have a conflict in Africa, there's a tendency for the Western media to ignore it unless you, you know, add two or three zeros to the death toll. What, you know, in the case of Sudan, people don't really know how to resolve it. I think one particularly fruitful angle. Well, before you go on, because people don't really know about this case, what is the, and just briefly, the origin of it that makes it so hard to resolve?

1:10:51Well, the, in Sudan, the longtime dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir was overthrown, I forget now, three or four years ago. And I guess maybe five years ago. And he was replaced by a military-dominated government that had a significant civilian component to it. Then the two key forces in the military split apart. One, basically the Sudanese army. The other, a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, which 20 years ago was called the Janjoui, which actually committed a genocide in Darfur. This is the current incarnation of that force. And so these two forces have been fighting it out with disastrous consequences for Sudanese civilians.

1:11:50And I think it's fair to say that the worst offender by far has been the Rapid Support Forces, which has in a sense resumed a genocide against Black African ethnic groups in Darfur. The Rapid Support Forces is more an Arab force. And the RSF is actually armed by the United Arab Emirates, which is a source of leverage. This is the way that we can make a difference because the United Arab Emirates presents itself as a respectable, you know, leading, wealthy Arab state. You know, this is where Dubai is supposed to be a playground for the Middle East. This is where Emirates Airlines goes. You know, so there are a lot of parts about the UAE that pretend to be respectable.

1:12:37At the same time, they are arming and underwriting this incredibly brutal genocidal force in Sudan with enormous consequences. So I think that, you know, that is the neglected conflict. And that also suggests how it could be resolved, which is putting pressure on the United Arab Emirates to stop their arming and support for this brutal paramilitary force. And presumably you would be, your first choice would be to follow those two tactics we talked about earlier, shaming and then finding allied governments that would put pressure on them. Yeah, I mean, the shaming of the RSF I don't think is terribly viable.

1:13:17I don't think they care that much, but they obviously need their ongoing arms supplies. So I think pressure on the UAE to stop the arms could make a big difference. Right, right. I meant the way that you put pressure on the UAE was through shaming or finding... Absolutely, yes. Yes. Well, Ken, I know you're on vacation, so thank you so much for making this time to talk with me, And I'm sure that our listeners will enjoy this as much as I did. So thanks again. Okay. Thanks very much for having me.