Contrary to the common promise of the UN Charter, mass atrocities continue to be committed as the wars in Yemen and South Sudan or the fate of the Rohingya in Myanmar demonstrate. Using Germany as an example, this article examines the thesis that mass atrocity situations are silenced which inhibits their politicisation. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature on silencing and theoretical approaches (agenda-setting, desecuritisation, discourse-bound identity theory) a working definition of silencing in foreign policy is proposed. Silencing appears to be a structural feature of ‘identity mismatch’ characterised by three modes: non-mentioning, trivialisation and framing. A rhetoric-analysis of speech acts by the German chancellor, foreign ministers and leaders of the parliamentary groups on the aforementioned cases shows in which way the German political elite in fact silences mass atrocities.

与《联合国宪章》的共同承诺相反，随着也门和南苏丹的战争或缅甸罗兴亚人的命运表明，大规模暴行仍在继续发生。本文以德国为例，研究了大规模暴行情况被压制的论点，从而抑制了它们的政治化。借鉴关于沉默和理论方法（议程设置、去安全化、话语约束身份理论）的跨学科文献，提出了外交政策中沉默的工作定义。沉默似乎是“身份不匹配”的结构特征，其特征在于三种模式：不提及、琐碎化和框架化。德国总理对言语行为的修辞分析，