Survivors of the Holocaust emerged from that tragedy committed to ensuring the permanence of Holocaust memory and education. This movement seeks to create a world in which neither Jews nor any other peoples are again targeted for genocide. The voices of the survivor community called for “Never Again.” This led to establishing sites of memorialization and education; founding of global institutions and a code of law that would protect people seeking refuge from state-sponsored persecution; and inspiring people worldwide to work to end this scourge.
A core part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s mission, as a living memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, is to do for victims of genocide today what was not done for the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and ’40s. The Museum’s primary role is education. To help realize the survivors’ dream of a world without genocide, the Museum is also pioneering innovative methods to predict and prevent genocide. How can advances in technology and data analysis help us save lives? The case of Burma (also known as Myanmar) can be instructive.
We know from the Holocaust that once mass killing is underway, the window for prevention is closed and policy response options narrow. The Museum’s Early Warning Project, created in partnership with Dartmouth College, is the culmination of a years-long effort to ensure the international community hears—and heeds—warning signs and takes preventive measures.
On August 25, 2017, Burmese armed forces began attacking a Muslim minority population, known as the Rohingya people, in the country’s western region. The Rohingya had been persecuted for years, but the new attacks were more severe and widespread than ever before. This onset of violence, including mass killing, rape, torture, arson, and arbitrary arrest and detention, resulted in the displacement of more than 700,000 people. The Museum recently determined that there is compelling evidence the Burmese military committed ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and genocide against the Rohingya.
Like all instances of genocide, the crimes committed against the Rohingya were shocking. In this case, however, the risks had been identified well in advance. Long before the current violence, the government of Burma imposed strict restrictions on Rohingya freedom of movement, marriage, childbirth, and other aspects of daily life. The Rohingya were denied equal access to Myanmar citizenship by law since 1982, and the government as well as many others cast the Rohingya as an existential threat to Buddhist culture.
In 2014 and 2015, Burma topped the Museum’s Early Warning Project risk list, which ranks countries at risk for an onset of mass killing each year.
Following these assessments, the Museum travelled to the region on a research mission and published a report detailing early warning signs of genocide against the Rohingya, sounding the alarm about the risk of atrocities.
The Early Warning Project is just one tool to help support policy makers. Its accurate forecasting of this atrocity and the work of the Museum and others to alert the world of devastating crimes of such scale and scope were not enough to prevent violence from occurring. But without this kind of forward-looking analysis of atrocity risks and the ability to galvanize demand for early action to address the warning signs, the world has little chance of preventing the next genocide.
The Nazis were in power for eight years before they began the systematic mass murder of the Jews in 1941. Genocides are never spontaneous; they are always preceded by a range of early warning signs. If these signs are detected, their causes can be addressed, preventing the potential for catastrophic progression.