"Oppression" is dangerous terminology to use when no actual physical intimidation is taking place. When peacetime gets labeled "oppressive", people begin to see wartime with a different set of eyes, and the country gets thrown into a cycle of violence from which it is difficult to get out of.
That's a good point, which I'll have to think about. Clearly not all violence is physical violence. But it's also very easy to use that as a carte blanche for revenge - as in "you're oppressing me this much, so I can do this much violence to you in return".
I'm sorry, but I will have to again disagree with this, even more so than regarding oppression. I am entirely with the WHO definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence). I believe this is very important. Otherwise peace gets labeled war, war gets labeled peace, free speech is deemed violence, and violence is deemed free speech.
Example. If you look at history, violence in the Balkans began with the spread of nationalism into the highly fragmented populations living under the Ottoman empire. While the Ottoman regime was quite far from what we know as a liberal democracy, certain power balance was maintained, and certain groups (Jews for example) enjoyed more freedom in the Ottoman empire than in the neighboring European countries. With the fall of the empire, the newly prominent ideologues of nationalism claimed that an ethnic (as opposed to administrative, economic, social, etc) group of individuals has a right to self-determination. They relabeled the lack of ethnic self-determination as a condition that could only arise under violence. By postulating this "ghost" of centuries-old violence, they justified violence on their part against all other ethnic groups that seemed to lie in the way to ethnic self-determination. Instead of learning how to live with each other (actually they already knew how to live with each other, before they unlearned it that is), various groups took up arms, and the region that could potentially be as prosperous as the Scandinavian countries remains to this day the poorest region of Europe.
What I meant to say with that long story was that as soon as we have a situation where there is no violence being done to individuals, yet a large group claims to be violated, there is a potentially explosive situation on our hands. When there is violence done to individuals already, then the situation is already bad of course, and not as likely to get worse.
> By postulating this "ghost" of centuries-old violence, they justified violence on their part against all other ethnic groups that seemed to lie in the way to ethnic self-determination.
Definitions aside, this seems to be where it all broke down. Using an oppressive situation to justify physical violence was clearly not helpful here.
Yes. That's because the concept of oppression as used by the nationalist ideologues in the early 20th century was largely an invention designed to serve the goals of populist propaganda; it continues to be used in a very similar way by Marxian post-colonialist thought (which is not very surprising given that both nationalism and Marxian thought, opposed as they are, can be traced back to the Romanticist ideals which were in large part an overly bitter critique of logic/reason that developed initially as a reaction to the Enlightenment ideas and was later distilled/intensified during Napoleon's occupation of German states). (Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hegel-and-Napoleon-in-Jena...).
Since most people agree that the only thing that can justify violence is initiation of violence on someone else's part (which turns violence into just self-defense and actually helps maintain peace), it is very important that people make it explicit what they consider as violence and how it is initiated.
