Mass Violence

The massacre of almost 50 Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 was a turning point in Ukrainian politics and a tipping point in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. This mass killing of the protesters and the mass shooting of the police that preceded it led to the overthrow of the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych and gave a start to a civil war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. A conclusion promoted by the post-Yanukovych governments and the media in Ukraine that the massacre was perpetrated by government snipers and special police units on a Yanukovych order has been nearly universally accepted by the Western governments, the media, and many scholars. The Ukrainian government investigation identified members of the special company of Berkut as responsible for killings of the absolute majority of the protesters, but did not release any evidence in support, with the exception of videos of the massacre.
              The question is which side organized the “snipers’ massacre.” This paper is the first academic study of this crucial case of the mass killing. It uses a theory of rational choice and a Weberian theory of instrumental rationality to examine actions of major actors both from the Yanukovych government, specifically various police and security forces, and the Maidan opposition, specifically its far right and oligarchic elements, during the massacre.
          The paper analyzes a large amount of evidence from different publicly available sources concerning this massacre and killings of specifics protesters. Qualitative content analysis includes the following data: about 1,500 videos and recordings of live internet and TV broadcasts from mass media and social media in different countries(some 150 gigabytes), news reports and social media posts by more than 100 journalists covering the massacre from Kyiv, some 5,000 photos, and nearly 30 gigabytes of publicly available radio intercepts of snipers and commanders from the special Alfa unit of the Security Service of Ukraine and Internal Troops, and Maidan massacre trial recordings. This study also employs field research on site of the massacre, eyewitness reports by both Maidan protesters and government special units commanders, statements by both former and current government officials, estimates of approximate ballistic trajectories, bullets and weapons used, and types of wounds among both protesters and the police. This study establishes a precise timeline for various events of the massacre, the locations of both the shooters and the government snipers, and the specific timeline and locations of nearly 50 protesters’ deaths. It also briefly analyzes other major cases of violence during and after the “Euromaidan.” This study includes two video appendixes.
            This academic investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The various evidence that the protesters were killed from these locations include some 70 testimonies, primarily by Maidan protesters, several videos of “snipers” targeting protesters from these buildings, comparisons of positions of the specific protesters at the time of their killing and their entry wounds, and bullet impact signs. The study uncovered various videos and photos of armed Maidan “snipers” and spotters in many of these buildings. The paper presents implications of these findings for understanding the nature of the change of the government in Ukraine, the civil war in Donbas, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine.

The expression of an Islamic political radicalism in Britain has been one of the most dramatic developments in recent decades. Islamic Radicalism and Multicultural Politics explores the nature of this phenomenon by analysing the origins of Islam and its historical contact with Western Europe and Britain, and the emergence of Islamic political radicalism in the Muslim world and in the West.

Tahir Abbas draws on historical analysis and contemporary case studies to explore the post-war immigration and integration of Muslim groups, the complex relations that exist between a secular liberal Britain and a diverse but multifaceted Islam, and the extent of social and economic inequalities that affect Muslims as individual citizens and in local area communities. He shows how violent extremism among British Muslims is in reality influenced by a range of issues, including the factors of globalisation and contemporary politics, media and culture. Analysing and dissecting public policy, Abbas offers suggestions for tackling the major social, political and economic questions facing British Muslims in the post-7/7 era.

An important contribution to the study of religion, ‘race’ and ethnicity in modern Britain, this accessible work will be of interest to anyone working in the field of Islamic studies, sociology and political radicalism.

Reviews

‘Much of the commentary on Islam today is shrill and one-dimensional which further widens the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims. Because Tahir Abbas’ Islamic Radicalism and Multicultural Politics is reasoned, scholarly and aims to provide historical context it is a powerful corrective. Being both British and Muslim allows him to present us with a truly insider’s account.’ - Professor Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University

‘In the face of so many superficial denunciations of radical Islam in Britain, Tahir Abbas provides an account that is both broad in its historical coverage and profound in its social analysis. In his sweep of several centuries of South Asian Islamic thinking, Abbas includes the conflicts engendered by British colonialism, and the complex processes of immigration and settlement in Britain. He is especially good in his own speciality, the patterns of inequality in education and in the labour market, through which he shows how the global growth in radical thinking can articulate with domestic social disparities. Here is a distinctive voice entering the debate.’ - John R. Bowen, Washington University in St. Louis.

‘Terrorist incidents have created controversy about Islam and Muslims, and British Muslims have been part of this debate. Media and lay people take a very superficial view and blame Islam and Muslims for radicalisation. This book is an in-depth study of the causes of radicalisation of a section of British Muslims. It is a very useful study indeed and all those who want to understand this complex phenomenon should read the book: Dr Abbas has done a good job!’ - Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer, Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, India

‘A remarkable book, well researched, comprehensive in its coverage and highly relevant to contemporary British political concerns.’ - John Rex, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, Warwick University"

If many people were shocked by Donald Trump's 2016 election, many more were stunned when, months later, white supremacists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting "Blood and Soil" and "Jews will not replace us!" Like Trump, the Charlottesville marchers were dismissed as aberrations-crazed extremists who did not represent the real US. It Can Happen Here demonstrates that, rather than being exceptional, such white power extremism and the violent atrocities linked to it are a part of American history. And, alarmingly, they remain a very real threat to the US today. Alexander Hinton explains how murky politics, structural racism, the promotion of American exceptionalism, and a belief that the US has have achieved a color-blind society have diverted attention from the deep roots of white supremacist violence in the US's brutal past. Drawing on his years of research and teaching on mass violence, Hinton details the warning signs of impending genocide and atrocity crimes, the tools used by ideologues to fan the flames of hate, and the shocking ways in which "us" versus "them" violence is supported by inherently racist institutions and policies. It Can Happen Here is an essential new assessment of the dangers of contemporary white power extremism in the United States. While revealing the threat of genocide and atrocity crimes that loom over the country, Hinton offers actions we can take to prevent it from happening, illuminating a hopeful path forward for a nation in crisis.

From the deserts of Sudan to the jungles of Colombia, and from the streets of Belfast to the mountains of Kurdistan, paramilitaries have appeared in violent conflicts in very different settings. Paramilitaries are generally depicted as irregular armed organizations that carry out acts of violence against civilians on behalf of a state. In doing so, they undermine the state's monopoly of legitimate violence, while at the same time creating a breeding ground for criminal activities. Why do governments with functioning police forces and armies use paramilitary groups? This study tackles this question through the prism of the interpenetration of paramilitaries and the state.

The author interprets paramilitarism as the ability of the state to successfully outsource mass political violence against civilians that transforms and traumatizes societies. It analyses how paramilitarism can be understood in global context, and how paramilitarism is connected to transformations of warfare and state-society relations. By comparing a broad range of cases, it looks at how paramilitarism has made a profound impact in a large number of countries that were different, but nevertheless shared a history of pro-government militia activity. A thorough understanding of paramilitarism can clarify the direction and intensity of violence in wartime and peacetime. The volume examines the issues of international involvement, institutional support, organized crime, party politics, and personal ties.

Prevalence rates of multiple homicide are statistically rare and vary across nations, yet such cases create substantial suffering for victims and can generate widespread fear among the general population. Despite extreme rarity, it remains important for forensic experts and professionals to be prepared when extremely violent events occur. This review summarizes contemporary behavioral science of serial and mass murder, then highlights the application of recent leisure research to add new motivational and behavioral insights. Research on the application of leisure science to homicide research is in its infancy, yet in conjunction with other related behavioral science disciplines, appears to hold promise in understanding, and perhaps helping to prevent, future violence.

Psychoanalyst Dori Laub asserts that for camp inmates the Holocaust extinguished
the possibility of “I-thou” interaction. Address and response, the
basis of human subjectivity, became impossible for the prisoner to imagine.
The author of this article uses victims’ descriptions of perpetrators to
investigate this assertion. Do survivors at times conceive of a wartime
assailant as “you”—as an addressable human agent? Comparing two clusters
of testimony by Lithuanian Jews, the author finds that contemporary
language and social context shape the victims’ stance toward Holocaust
perpetration—that is, how they weigh human versus structural wrong. She
also points out various ethical traps inherent in each of the two methods
of remembering wartime aggressors.

An intrinsic and material consequence of mass violence is the mass production of human bodies. Depending on each particular instance of mass atrocity, the fate of these bodies can vary: severe mistreatment, mutilation, concealment, destruction, transport, traffic of the corpses are not uncommon occurrences. Drawing from their respective research on human trafficking and on corpses of mass violence, the co-authors of this paper propose to adopt an intersectional approach and legally examine the issue of the trafficking of human remains and organs as one which is highly revealing of both the criminal modus operandi and the perpetrator’s criminal intent.
Yet, international law on the topic is problematically succinct and if the law of human trafficking, as enshrined in the Palermo Protocol (2000), does specify that such trafficking is the deviant obtainment and/or movement of persons for the purpose of exploitation - which does include ‘the removal of organs’ -  it however fails to define both the term ‘persons’ and the term ‘organs’. Perhaps leaving the door open for further ambiguity, the Protocol also falls short of expressly contemplating the trafficking of deceased human bodies. How then is an ‘organ’ to be understood? Would it cover bones and human remains? What use have criminals and traffickers made of organs and human remains? Are the perpetrators of the atrocities and the traffickers the same individuals or is there a chain of criminality? What, if any, legal status, protections and/or rights have been given to bodily parts resulting of atrocities and mass violence?
By raising and addressing these questions, this paper will highlight the features and characteristics of this very particular type of trafficking and will aim at better grasping the inner criminality of trafficking bodies, whether alive or dead.

co-author: Caroline Fournet

François Duvalier (1907–71) ruled Haiti from 1957 until his death in 1971. His regime has often been described as one of the most brutal in the nation’s history. Duvalier was also known then and is remembered today as someone of foreign origin who, for this reason, grew up without kin—save his father and grandfather. Duvalier had no known siblings, cousins, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, or granduncles; almost nothing is known about his own mother. Such a socialization is extraordinary in a society where extended family usually frames one’s identity, socialization, and social position. New, unpublished documents presented in this article prove where Duvalier’s family was actually from. Society created a moral genealogy for Duvalier to distance itself from his brutality; it “othered” its ruler by linking him to alterity.

The post-9/11 US imperial turn is not a reversion to empire, but rather a global strategy of violence in response to a crisis of empire. Orthodox IR theory is unable to grasp this because it largely projects empire and imperial violence, as inexplicable pathologies diverging from geopolitical realities - when it is in fact orthodox IR, not imperialism, which is thus diverging.

Political Marxist theory offers the conceptual tools to mobilise a social theory capable of interrogating the historically-specific socio-political relations by which imperial geopolitical orders are constituted and transformed in the context of strategic violence. Integrating this with Raphael Lemkin's sociological conceptualization of the interconnections between colonization, inter-communal contestations and genocide,
makes it possible to distinguish the differential dynamics of mass violence in different empires based on their distinctive constitutive social relations, exemplified in precapitalist Spain and capitalist England. It also allows for the re-integration of the central role of violence in the formation and re-consolidation of empires at points of crisis.

This revised historical sociology of empires and imperial violence clarifies the evolution of the postwar US liberal imperial system, including the theorization of the post-9/11 'War on Terror' as a radicalized response to a global systemic crisis in the US empire's constitutive social relations, exemplified in the projected depletion of hydrocarbon energy reserves in predominantly Muslim peripheries. This reveals and explains
concurrent tendentially genocidal escalatory logics of Othering targeted principally against Muslim communities.

Convened by:

Dr Navras Jaat Aafreedi, Honorary Executive Director, Youth Outreach Programme, Society for Social Regeneration & Equity (SSRE);
Dr Rohee Dasgupta, Associate Professor, Jindal Centre for Israel Studies, Jindal School of International Affairs, O P Jindal Global University;
Professor P R Kumaraswamy, Honorary Director, Middle East Institute New Delhi.

Organized by:

Society for Social Regeneration & Equity (SSRE),
O P Jindal Global University,
Middle East Institute New Delhi,

in association with
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on

18-19 May, 2016 at
Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India

This article explores how and why deportation and elimination of the Armenians of Antep were carried out during World War One (WWI). In particular, it scrutinizes the political and social context in which local authorities, provincial elites, and ordinary Muslims radicalized their views and policies against Armenians. It highlights the crucial role played by local elites and actors who prospered through acquisition of Armenian property and wealth. In this respect, the article argues that the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)’s genocide and deportation decision enjoyed a certain level of social support through the practice of effective power and control mechanism(s) at the local level.

The alt-right is an online subculture marked by its devotion to the execution of a racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic politics through trolling, pranking, meme-making, and mass murder. It is this devotion to far-right politics through the discordant conjunction of humor and suicidal violence this article seeks to explain by situating the movement for the first time within its constitutive online relationships. This article adds to the existing literature by viewing the online relationships of the alt-right through the genealogy of propaganda. Through situating the alt-right alongside the genealogy of propaganda, the article offers new insights into the social isolation, increasingly extreme social and political positions, nihilism, and violence that have emerged within the alt-right. The article concludes by applying the lessons of the alt-right for online organizing across the political spectrum and argues that a class-based politics of the left is an important part of countering the rise of the alt-right.

This article recognizes the gap in existing literature, regarding the capability of social groups in resistance to mass violence. The basic assumption of this article is that social groups as networks could serve as platforms of resistance to mass violence, regardless of their organizational goals and objectives. In order to explore this fundamental assumption, one research question was formulated: what is the utility of social groups in resisting mass violence? In a bid to provide an answer to this question, the article analyses the religious affiliation, geographical location and spread, ethnic stock and dynamics of selected social groups in Nigeria. The article is based on a review of academic articles, published newspaper reports and articles, and commonly used reports from the human rights circle. The article notes the linkage between social groups, on one hand, and prejudices, fears, and identities within societies, on the other. It recommends empowerment, which would allow social group members to find paths towards the solution to the problem of mass violence.

The 2019 publication of Steven T. Katz’s two-volume study on New World Slavery and the Holocaust, exactly twenty-five years
after his global comparison between the Holocaust and cases of pre-modern mass violence, provides an excellent opportunity to take stock
and engage with comparative perspectives about genocide, mass violence, and war crimes. Comparative and critical genocide studies have
certainly dismissed the “uniqueness” thesis, which claimed that the Holocaust differs from all other events, and discovered processes of
ethnic and racial nation-building, state and non-state actors, imperial competition, and settler colonialism. Embracing and building on these
collective efforts to highlight the global dimensions of mass atrocities and genocide, I argue that engaging with Katz’s comparison can
sharpen our research tools on two levels. Although genocide studies have been fundamentally comparative since their inception, one of the
challenges still consists of moving beyond the ideal-type of the nation-state, which a closer examination of New World Slavery can help
overcome. Moreover, building on Katz’s innovative focus on women and children, this reflection contends that much common ground exists
between these two distinct historiographies — not only regarding their politics of knowledge production, archival governance, and
relationship to public discourse but also on the intellectual implications of concepts, such as “agency” and “dehumanization,” that stem from
Western societies, having turned equally genocidal.

This article explores a range of photographs taken in the aftermath of the Battle of Omdurman on 2 September 1898, the final and decisive battle of the Anglo-Egyptian Reconquest of the Sudan (1896-98). This campaign was particularly controversial for the methods that were used against the Mahdia, which included the massacring of the enemy wounded and those trying to surrender. The photographs under examination are relevant to considerations of the ensuing controversies of the campaign in which Kitchener was obliged to write directly to Queen Victoria to explain his actions, notably in relation to the bombing of the Mahdi' s tomb and the treatment of his remains. As historians have previously noted, the events in Omdurman constituted a massacre rather than a battle, and areas of dispute include whether Emirs were specifically targeted for destruction in the campaign. The photographs in question contribute to this debate. This article addresses the photographs in the wider context of violence throughout the British Empire and in the context of other images of British violence. That such photographs are not commonly viewed and discussed speaks to wider issues regarding popular perceptions of the ' benevolent' British Empire, particularly in comparison to its European counterparts.

Destruction and human remains investigates a crucial question frequently neglected in academic debate in the fields of mass violence and genocide studies: what is done to the bodies of the victims after they are killed? In the context of mass violence, death does not constitute the end of the executors’ work. Their victims’ remains are often treated and manipulated in very specific ways, amounting in some cases to true social engineering, often with remarkable ingenuity. To address these seldom-documented phenomena, this volume includes chapters based on extensive primary and archival research to explore why, how and by whom these acts have been committed through recent history.

The 1990s saw major developments within the Kurdish movement in Turkey, both politically and militarily. The Turkish state responded with a new repertoire of violence, characterized by irregular warfare methods. This article situates the phenomenon of enforced disappearance, employed by the state as part of its asymmetric strategy, within the broader context of memory space and everyday experience. For this, I follow the trajectory of the sittings of Saturday Mothers as performances, focusing on the case of Cizre. First, the phenomenon of enforced disappearance is situated within the historical background of the Kurdish conflict in the 1990s. Then, the Cizre and Istanbul Saturday Mothers’ sittings are compared in terms of memory making and the politico-symbolic sites they produce scrutinized as memory knots (nœuds de mémoire), tying the past to present and personal to political. Finally, I endorse the introduction of a novel term, cultural aphasia, to broaden and deepen the memory debate. Thus, through a focus on human and social relations, emotions and experiences, forms of state violence are revealed as continuously reproducing specific political subjectivities and struggles in everyday life.

This study is grounded in extensive online ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with 22 people who expressed a deep interest in school shootings. Such people form a global online subculture; they share common interests and find the same cultural objects important. Media accounts of school shootings have fueled this subculture; its members participate in the recreation and circulation of online media content and give new meanings to that content. We found that people deeply interested in school shootings do not form a homogenous group, and they are divided into four subgroups within the subculture based on members' focus and interest: researchers, fan girls, Columbiners, and copycats. Out of these, copycats are the only subgroup explicitly interested in replicating the acts, although subgroup membership can overlap, and members can move from one subgroup to another. Beyond copycats, other subgroups also participate in giving perpetrators fame and circulate reasons for the shootings. These accounts may influence future perpetrators.

The academic discourse of the mass violence that took place during the Partition/Independence of India and Pakistan has acquired certain maturity over the decades. The corpus of literature generated has been insightful and path-breaking. In the backdrop of this scholarship, the current article attempts to engage with the experiences of witnessing and emphasize upon transformative potential of such encounters. With few Partition-based Hindi films, this study also looks at the landscape of the Partition on the celluloid, where the screen converges with history and where the memory of trauma generates guilt. Mobilising the fieldwork conducted seventeen–eighteen years ago in Delhi, Ajmer and Jammu along with the cinematic representations and written corpus on the Partition, an engagement with the figure of a witness in this article will hopefully allow us to engage with memory, archive and the mass violence with fresh questions and perspectives.

Key words:

Partition violence, Hindi films, trauma, witnessing, mourning, cinematic memory, guilt

This article is a theoretical examination of the applicability of Nils
Christie’s criminological notion of the ‘ideal victim’ in cases of
mass violence and scenarios of mass victimisation. The article
documents Christie’s theoretical constellation and valid criticisms
towards victim status and reviews modern academic discourses
influenced by Christie’s original theorisation which further
illustrate the intricacies and complexities that arise regarding victim
identity. After analysing the ways under which structural forces,
such as the mass-media and politics, influence the process of
victimhood, the article continues by focusing on the intertwined
relationship between victim identity and institutionalised
mechanisms of victimisation. Furthermore, the article documents
the ways under which Christie’s notion of the ‘ideal victim’ has
been adapted in order to be incorporated in the criminological
research of mass-violence. At last, by transitioning from instances
of micro-level victimisation to theatres of mass-violence the article
theoretically tests the applicability of ‘ideal victim’ theory in cases
of extensive victimisation. The article concludes that the integration
of concepts such as Christie’s ‘ideal victim’ is quintessential for a
criminology of mass-violence which aspires to be both theoretically
informed and practically engaged with the issue of victimisation.

Scholarly and public commentators frequently discuss the ideological backdrop of atrocity crimes, yet the actual role of ideology in such campaigns of violence remains a key source of disagreement between scholars. This chapter first briefly discusses the variation in contemporary theoretical perspectives on ideology’s relevance to the perpetration of atrocity crimes, and identifies some key shortcomings in most prevailing accounts. It presents the author’s ‘neo-ideological’ approach, which emphasizes ideology’s key role, but departs from some of the cruder, vaguer, or more compartmentalized characterizations of that role found in many existing accounts. It contends that the neo-ideological approach integrates a broad range of key findings from contemporary research on mass atrocities, and explicates the explanatory significance of ideology in the behaviour of various types of perpetrators. It illustrates the plausibility and value of the approach by briefly applying it to the case ...

This course takes two approaches to the anthropology of war and genocide. First, anthropology is the study of culture-the practices, the customs, sensibilities and attitudes-that constitute societies and groups as such in their particularities. When societies break down and engage in war, the question of culture comes up. How has a convivial society with certain cultural practices turned to extreme violence? After war and genocide, a related question comes up: "can cultural practices help reconciliation, justice, truth finding and aid in overcoming trauma and violent memories?" Second, anthropology is also the study of the species human in its social and political environment. What kind of political and social environment do war and genocide create? How does that change preconceived notions of the human and humanity? This course starts with a theoretical overview of how anthropologists have approached war historically, and genocide in the recent decades. By doing so, it will also interrogate the changed definition of genocide and the workings of war. By providing ethnographic case studies, from Uganda, Bosnia, and Rwanda, this course lends analytical clarity and empirical tools to a range of issues, including solidarity, kinship, charity, "religious wars," "ethnic conflict," and notions of native, settler and citizen in warring contexts. Further, it interrogates truth-finding, social and political reconstruction of communities and memory in post-genocidal spaces. As the course will take social practices as its main lens, it will do so by combining larger frames of modernity, globalization, securitization as well as violence and terror in war and postwar contexts. Building on several other intellectual developments such as state theory, colonialism, nationalism, globalization, and the question of human life therein, this course seeks to provide students with a deeper understanding of how societies function, or become dysfunctional, during and after war.

Historians have overwhelmingly relied on official sources and foreign witnesses’ (diplomats, missionaries) accounts in reconstructing the history of the Armenian genocide. They have tended to distrust and neglect victims’ testimonies, even though some of them had been publicised in the midst of the First World War. This article provides an account of the three main corpuses of survivor testimony which were gathered during the immediate post-war years in Transcaucasia, Constantinople, as well as in Aleppo and Paris. Various Armenian organisations created such archival collections as a means of lending support to national political claims and interests in the context of the ensuing peace negotiations and anticipated trials. This article also examines the longstanding reluctance of historians to integrate victims’ testimonies into their analyses. Focusing on the collection of testimonies compiled by Aram Andonian, the authors call attention to the important contribution of these sources to the history of the Armenian genocide.

This report is the first by an organization that specializes in indigenous rights. It provides verbatim the accounts of Rohingya refugees interviewed in March of 2018.  1. The 2017 crisis should not be isolated, but placed in the context of a long-lasting series of conflicts that have been occurring since the 40s.  2. From the 25th of August 2017, the Burmese army (Tatmadaw) sought to clear out the townships of (1) Maungdaw and of (2) Buthidaung (both in the Maungdaw District), as well as a (3) micro-region of Rathedaung (Sittwe District) that is adjacent to Maungdaw of their majority Muslim populations. It conducted a campaign of terror that included group executions, rape, atrocities, and at least two massacres. 3. The modus operandi for the violence generally follows a pattern: (1) the army enters into a village, shoots at the villagers, sets areas afire, and sometimes commits atrocities; (2) the villagers then flee and hide themselves in one or several muro (forests, mountains) for several days; (3) the army does not follow them; (4) finally, the villagers set off walking, sometimes for many days, to the Bangladeshi border. 4. The campaign of terror's main targets have been men; young men between 20 and 30 years of age are disproportionately the main victims of this mass violence. Eliticide is another dimension of the repression. 5. The lack of representation, leadership, and interlocution from the Rohingya is a significant anthropological fact that is politically detrimental to them under current circumstances.

This article analyses the relation between history and memory through the case of the massive violence of the Spanish context after the coup of 1936, the Spanish Civil War and the first years of Franco’s regime. It analyses the process of transformation of the sites of violence in sites of memory during Francoism, and in the current democracy that was born in the transition. The present article argues that in the Spanish case this transformation meant the creation of places of denial, like a previous step to its conversion in places of oblivion and impunity.