The Culture of Violence
Globalisation has left in its wake a trail of
bloodshed and violence. Armed conflicts have been occurring world-wide;
from 1989 to 1998, data from the University of Uppsala, Sweden showed
that there were 108 armed conflicts in 73 different locations. The
majority of these i.e. 92 of the 108 took place within the boundaries of
a single country. With the exception of Kosovo, all armed conflicts
during 1999 took place in the Third World: Asia and Africa were the two
regions with the highest number of armed conflicts. Wars in Sudan and
Afghanistan have left millions dead. They are followed by Rwanda
(500,000 - 1,000,000 million), Angola (more than half a million),
Algeria, Burundi, Congo (Zaire) and Sri Lanka (100, 000 - 200,000 each).
(Sollenburg 1998). Since 1990, these conflicts have claimed civilian
lives which comprised 90 percent of deaths (WorldWatch,
March/April 2000) as a result of war induced famine, genocide, and
social upheaval. Today’s wars are fought between warlords, ethnic
militias, private armies, and criminal organisations, and some 300,000
child soldiers (in at least 20 countries) are conscripted as cannon
fodder world-wide. According to Canadian research, the violence and
social chaos which results is an indication of the breakdown of state
institutions and its failure ‘to create or maintain conditions
conducive to the welfare of their populations’. (Project Ploughshares
1999).
In Africa, the reasons for this breakdown has its
roots in the economic crisis; SAPs, mounting deficits, debt servicing,
and corrupt regimes have led to social breakdown, political instability,
conflict over resources, hopelessness and despair; whilst the fall out
from the Cold War has helped to fuel the civil wars that beset the
continent. In a recent Conference on African Conflicts, analysts
attributed the role SAPs played in destroying the political patronage
system used by the elite to keep themselves in power. With the end of
the Cold War and super power rivalry (as client governments and proxies
were not needed), these regimes lost their source of protection and
largese and corporate interests (especially mining) filled the vacuum.
When ethnic and religions conflicts flared in the
region, it spawned a lucrative private security industry; and the major
powers today contract their foreign military policy to military advisory
and training companies. The end of the apartheid regime and the
disbandment of its special forces have helped swell the ranks of
mercenary groups. These military companies are involved in the armed
conflicts in Angola, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Congo (Zaire), Namibia,
Rwanda, Sudan and the People’s Republic of Congo. Mercenaries and
militias, have become the alternative in law and order situations as
governments no longer have state monopoly over coercive violence. In
fact the prevailing view in the North is that the solution to the
security problem in Africa is to use mercenaries. Military companies are
sponsored and funded by the mining corporations especially the $42
billion diamond trade. In fact these companies operate in areas where
they target at reclaiming strategic resources and service the commercial
interests of mining companies (Koomson Jan/Feb 2000).
The economic and human costs of these wars have been
devastating. Its main victims are the weak and the vulnerable and the
burden of war invariably falls on women who lose husbands, sons,
children and family support on top of being the specific targets as
victims of rape, sexual abuse, coercion and as war booty. In Mozambique
the 16 year armed conflict that ended in 1992, killed one million
Mozambicans, 60 percent of them children. Some 120,000 child soldiers
are believed to be fighting in Africa: in Mozambique, children were
kidnapped from their homes, given basic training and sent to fight
against the Frelimo government. In Sierra Leone the more than eight year
civil war (1991-8) saw thousands of children’s lives irreparably
damaged: many were forced to take up arms and to commit atrocities;
others had their hands hacked off by soldiers (Lee 2000). Antipersonnel
mines have made daily tasks like fetching food and water a mortal
hazard; thousands of civilians including children have been killed,
maimed and blinded. Some 280 million people are at risk. In Angola alone
the number of antipersonnel mines in existence is said to be 12 million
(World Health Forum, Vol 19, 1998). Conflicts in Mozambique and
Angola are responsible for 50,000 and 20,000 amputees respectively,
largely civilians (Werner & Sanders 1997:100). Landmines kill or
maim more than 24,000 persons each year (UNDP 1998), many
children; yet mines are laid 25 times faster than they are removed with
up to 2 million new mines planted each year (Renner 1994).
Economic reforms and SAPs have been responsible for
the disintegration of civil society in Russia and the dismemberment of
Yugoslavia. Economic growth has stagnated; between1989 - 96 inequality
doubled, wages fell by 48 percent and serious human deprivation has
resulted. Homicides, illegal drug trafficking has increased, and illegal
human trafficking is a major social problem; some 500,000 women are
trafficked each year for sexual exploitation from Eastern Europe and the
Commonwealth of Independent States to Western Europe; an estimated
15,000 Russians and Eastern Europeans work in Germany’s red light
districts; in the Netherlands 57 percent of the trafficked women are
under 21 years of age. The slave trade in women is run by organised
crime syndicates; their global enterprises have been estimated to be
worth $1.5 trillion a year. With their power and money they have been
able to influence politics and government. Economic collapse and war
have created the victims, which are readily exploited by the criminal
syndicate (UNDP 1999:43,85).
In South Asia, rampant poverty has spurred the slave
traffic both within states and across countries; women and children have
been trafficked for forced prostitution, forced marriage, bonded labour
and the organ trade. Children end up as camel jockeys in circuses, in
the slave trade, in the organ trade and prostitution (Akhter 1999). A UN
report states that child prostitution is a global business. “Chidlren
are abducted, drugged, coerced by gangs and syndicates into prostitution
both locally and across frontiers. They may be killed or maimed in the
process. The tragedy is aggravated by AIDS’ (Lee 2000). Ever since the
financial crisis struck, Indonesia has been plagued with ethnic and
religious violence. Some 4000 people have died in 18 months of violence
in the Malukus and the violence has been spreading to other islands like
Sulawesi (Associated Press 17 July, 2000).
As can be seen globalisation and its effects have led
to violence, crime and armed conflict in many Third World societies. A
free market system that concentrates power and wealth and operates
according to its own laws can only yield values like unaccountability
and contempt of life.
This in turn has bred violence in all its myriad
forms and violence in the world today is pandemic and a major public
health concern. Corporate crime and violence is perpetrated against
Third World communities and indigenous peoples in the form of toxic
dumping; pollution of their lands, waters and other resources; poisoning
of their children and future generations with chemicals and nuclear
wastes; hazardous products and technologies at the workplace e.g. the
electronics industry which is endangering the lives of thousands
especially women in the Third World; defective cars promoted as speed
machines that kill and maim; and tobacco which kills four million people
annually world-wide. Through the corporate global media, Third World
children are exposed to a culture that glamorises and glorifies killing
and crime and denigrates women. Globalised culture desensitises and
conditions viewers to accept violence against the weak, the old, women,
people of colour and other cultures and religions. Even animals are not
spared: they are tortured and killed for experimental purposes and
testing procedures in the production of weapons, chemicals, cosmetics,
and the like, while commercial farming inflicts cruelty on poultry,
cows, pigs and others.
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