There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Another undeniable authority, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, reminds us:

On December 9, 1948, in the shadow of the Holocaust and in no small part due to the tireless efforts of [a Polish-Jewish lawyer, Raphael] Lemkin, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This convention establishes “genocide” as an international crime, which signatory nations “undertake to prevent and punish.” It defines genocide as:

“[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a)Killing members of the group;

(b)Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c)Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d)Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e)Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Source: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?moduleId-10007043.

The Arguments

1. The American Jewish Congress suggests that compounding this overwhelming evidence, according to the Biafrans, is:

The Federal government has refused to discuss peace . . . unless and until Biafran leaders renounce their proclamation of secession. Biafrans have refused this demand because they believe they can gain their aims through conventional or guerrilla warfare, and also because they are convinced that Nigerian military commanders intend to perpetuate genocide against the Ibos [sic] people.

Source: Baum, American Jewish Congress, “Memorandum,” December 27, 1968.

2. Ibid.

3. Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, The Biafra War: Nigeria and the Aftermath (Lampeter, Ceredigion, UK: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991). As quoted in “The Violations of Human and Civil Rights of Ndi Igbo in the Federation of Nigeria (1966–1999),” October 1999.

4. Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations.

5. Ibid.

6. Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Dynamics of World Power: A Documentary History of U.S. Foreign Policy, 1945–1973, Volume 1 (New York: Chelsea House, 1983).

7. Ibid.

8. Baum, American Jewish Congress, “Memorandum,” December 27, 1968.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11.Biafra, BBC documentary (1995).

12. Ibid.

The Case Against the Nigerian Government

1. Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations.

2. With just the right kind of inflection bound to mesmerize his admirers, Gowon played that role to the hilt, quoting Lincoln in speech after speech and talking about “binding up the nation’s wounds.”

Source: Luce, “General Gowon.”

3.

Nigerian leader Allison Ayida produced his viewpoint on starving children . . . : “Starvation is a legitimate weapon of war, and we have every intention of using it on the rebels.”