10 - CONCLUSIONS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
Summary
Antidotes for Euphoria
If someday you find yourself suffering from euphoria, you can cure it quickly by stacking up authoritative recent reports on the world's condition and dipping into them at random. Try a combination of the annual Human Rights Watch World Report, the Freedom House Freedom in the World, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute SIPRI Yearbook, the United Nations Development Program Human Development Report, and – for a little less gloom – the World Bank World Development Report. You will encounter vicious violence galore.
Consider these pithy excerpts from the Human Rights report for the year 1999:
Sierra Leone: The January offensive brought to the capital the same atrocities witnessed in Sierra Leone's rural provinces over the last eight years, as the RUF [Revolutionary United Front] murdered at least two thousand civilians. Victims were usually chosen at random, though there was some targeting of particular groups, such as Nigerian nationals, unarmed police officers, journalists, and church workers. The horrific practice of mutilation and, in particular amputation of hands, arms, lips, legs and other parts of the body was widespread until the signing of the Lome peace accord. In January, the rebels cut off the limbs of some one hundred civilians, including twenty-six double arm amputations. An unknown number died before being able to receive medical attention. The rebel attacks around Masiaka and Port Loko produced at least another forty-four victims of mutilation, including seven double arm amputations. In a village near Masiaka, fifty-seven civilians were burned alive in late April. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Politics of Collective Violence , pp. 221 - 238Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003