Survivors of Genocide

The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar has been on-going and intensifying since 2016. In October United Nations investigators unequivocally termed this genocide. We wish our project, Survivors of Genocide, was slowing down and diminishing in scope. Alas, it is not. We are now adding the genocide of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar and the Yazidi minority in Syria and Iraq to our project.

In December we filmed the story of Imran, a Rohingya man who managed to escape Myanmar and is now safely living in the United States after a harrowing, years long journey. His story is the first of a bigger commitment to document not one but two genocides taking place right now in real time. In the coming weeks we will film several Yazidi women who escaped torture and sex slavery at the hands of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

As if these stories were not bad enough we were horrified to learn of Facebook's involvement in furthering the Rohingya genocide. Facebook posts by Myanmar military personnel turned the social network into a(n unwitting) tool for ethnic cleansing according to former military officials, researchers and civilian officials in the country. Since learning of this 3 Generations has shut down our Facebook and Instagram accounts. We are not comfortable using the same networks that bad actors use to foment genocide in our efforts to end crimes against humanity.

More than ever we will rely on trusted platforms like Global Giving to inform our past and future supporters of our activities. Our focus on fighting genocide is not just undiminished,it is gathering strength and purpose. We do this work, telling and sharing the stories of survivors of genocide, as a way to honor the victims and to raise awareness to effect change. We do this for people like Irman, whose photograph we are honored to share today. Watch for his story on our website in the coming weeks.

Survivors of genocide and crimes against humanity live among us. Many of them have the courage to tell their stories. The United States has welcomed survivors and families of the Rohingya (1,500 resettled in Chicago in 2017), the Yazidi, the Bosnian, Rwandan, and Cambodian genocides.

Sadly, the survivors of the Holocaust are dying out. A recent study noted that 41 percent of Americans and 66 percent of millennials do not know that Auschwitz was a Nazi extermination camp. The risk of forgetting is greater than ever before and at a time when minority groups in America are losing basic privileges and some are facing expulsion.

Recently, we celebrated Indigenous People’s Day, commonly known as “Columbus Day”, yet as a nation we forget that at least 50 million indigenous people were killed since his discovery. As Dr. Biron Baker said in the 3 Generations film A Different American Dream, “After Columbus lost himself and found himself here...it has to be considered one of the single biggest crimes against humanity”. However, in most states, Columbus is still hailed as a hero. His story is still taught in schools all over the country and the world. Native Americans continue to live with this trauma.

3 Generations works to make sharing survivors’ stories possible as a reminder of these events. We are now collecting stories about intergenerational trauma and have recently started an inquiry about its effect on successive generations. We plan to have a new film on this subject in 2019.

Genocide leaves its vicious legacy every single day across this nation. It is not a problem from elsewhere. At 3 Generations we continue to make sure that as few people as possible never forget. This is core of our work and has been for the last 10 years.