Speaking the unspeakable: A conversation with the survivors of three genocides

On Friday, April 7, in the Moot Court at the Faculty of Law, Payam Akhavan hosted a panel of survivors from the Holocaust, the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge genocide and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda who shared their experiences. Through their moving and often difficult stories, Hédi Fried, Youk Chhang and Esther Mujawayo sought to answer what it means to be a survivor, how to make sense of radical evil, does human rights discourse adequately capture the gravity of such an experience… is justice possible? All three are advocates who have written extensively about genocide.

Dean Nicholas Kasirer, Her Excellency Ms Ingrid Iremark, Ambassador of Sweden to Canada, and Ms Sabine Nölke, Deputy Director at the UN, gave the opening remarks. The Honourable Irwin Cotler and Professor Colleen Sheppard, director of research at the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, concluded the presentations. In his comments, Irwin Cotler reminded the audience that all genocide victims "were killed one by one. They are not statistics. They were people with names, families… they each were a universe unto themselves."

The speakers and moderator were participants in the 2004 Stockholm International Forum on the Prevention of Genocide, and had just arrived from New York, where this event was also held at the UN. Hédi Fried, Youk Chhang and Esther Mujawayo are currently promoting the book Beyond the 'Never Agains', in which they and others talk about the prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Also: Three voices of genocide (McGill Reporter)
Three genocides, three survivors (URO Newswire)