Genocide is a type of atrocity. In general usage, the term refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, cultural or political group. The word was coined by Polish Jew Raphael Lemkin in 1944 from the roots genos (Greek for tribe or race) and -cide (Latin for killing). Lemkin campaigned for the international outlawing of genocide, which was achieved in 1951.
Definition of Genocide
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1948 and came into effect in January 1951. It contains an internationally-recognized definition of genocide which was incorporated into the national criminal legislation of many countries, and was also adopted by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Convention (in article 2) defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:"
- (a) Killing members of the group;
- (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Common usage also sometimes equates genocide with state-sponsored mass murder, but genocide, as defined above, does not imply mass-murder (or any murder) nor is every instance of mass-murder necessarily genocide. Neither is the involvement of a government required. The word 'genocide' is also sometimes used in a much broader sense, as in "slavery was genocide", but this usage diverges from the legal definition set by the UN.
International law
All signatories to the above mentioned convention are required to prevent and punish acts of genocide, both in peace and wartime, though some barriers make this enforcement difficult. Genocide is dealt with as an international matter, by the UN, and can never be treated as an internal affair of a country. It is commonly accepted that, at least since World War II, genocide has been illegal under customary international law as a peremptory norm, as well as under conventional international law. Acts of genocide are generally difficult to establish, for prosecution, since intent, demonstrating a chain of accountability, has to be established.
Related concepts
Genocide is also called a crime against humanity, though the initial "definition" of that concept; established during the Nuremberg trials, was restricted to acts committed during wartime or directed against the peace and would therefore not have included all acts of genocide. As mentioned above, state-sponsored mass murder is sometimes equated with genocide. Democide has been suggested as a more precise term for this, but it is rarely used. Genocide is a common term referring to deliberate policies promoting mass killing. The term genocide also generally carries an ethnic connotation, though the delineation of ethnic groups is easier to frame as simply 'foreign' to the culprit party.
Cultural genocide refers to the deliberate destruction of a culture, without necessarily attaining to the full criteria of genocide. This term has been criticized as inflammatory; trying to reap political benefit from the accusation of genocide, as issues dealing with genocide are serious and severe.
Determining what historical events constitute a genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clearcut matter. Furthermore, in nearly every case where accusations of genocide have circulated, partisans of various sides have fiercely disputed the interpretation and details of the event, often to the point of promoting wildly different versions of the facts. An accusation of genocide is certainly not taken lightly and will almost always be controversial. The following list of alleged genocides should be understood in this context and not regarded as the final word on these subjects.
Some alleged genocides in history
(Presented in approximate chronological order)France
North America
The Congo
Australia
Scotland
German genocide
German Nazi genocide before and during World War II (1933-1945).
- Holocaust: approximately 11 million people killed, of which 6 million were Jews. [1]
- Genocide also targeted at Gypsies (see Porajmos) and Slavs. Approximately 21 million Soviets, among them 7 million civilians, were killed in "Operation Barbarossa", the invasion of the Soviet Union. Civilians were rounded up and burned or shot in many cities conquered by the Nazis. Since the Slavs were considered "sub-human", this was ethnically targeted mass murder.
- Nazis also killed other groups, such as those suffering from birth defects, mental retardation or insanity; homosexuals, prostitutes and communists, as part of a wider mass murder.
Armenian
(1915-1923) genocide by the Young Turk government- Approximately 0.6-1.5 millions Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were killed [2]. The Turkish government officially denies that there was any genocide, claiming that most of the Armenian deaths resulted from armed conflict, disease and famine during the turmoil of World War.
- See also: Armenian Genocide
Soviet Union
- Ukrainians - Claims of 5 million civilians starved to death for refusing to cooperate with "collective farming" rules.
- Some argue that genocide took the form of man-made famines in 1932-33, particularly in Ukraine. Collectivization led to a drop in the already low productivity of Russian farming, which did not regain the NEP level until 1940, or allowing for the further disasters of World War II, 1950. The dispute includes, if the collectivization was responsible for famine and the actual number of victims.
Japanese
genocide before and during World War II (1920s-1945).
- Nanjing Massacre: Some authorities claimed 300,000 people killed during the three months following the fall of Nanjing to the Japanese. Genocide targeted at Chinese at other places of China: Manchuria, the Wan Bao Hill Incident, Xiangyang, and the Rape of Nanking.
- Unit 731 conducted biological and chemical warfare experiments on living humans
- Smaller scale Genocide also targeted at Koreans, Filipinos, Dutch, Vietnamese, Indonesians and Burmese.
People's Republic of China
- Some political groups, such as the Free Tibet movement, have claimed that the government of the People's Republic of China has committed genocide by killing members of several minority ethnic groups, including Uighurs, Tibetans and others during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Most scholars argue that this is not a case of genocide but simple famine, because while minority ethnic groups died, so did members of the majority Han Chinese, and at no time has the PRC government undertaken policies specifically to kill minority groups. Famine has been a cyclical, reoccurring phenonmenon in Chinese history for thousands of years.
- China states that these charges help to indoctrinate impressionable youths in the Free Tibet movement and other groups with anti-China agendas.
Indonesia
- In 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor with the quiet approval of the USA, and its subjugation of that nation involved the deaths of thousands of civilians which has been estimated to be, in proportionate numbers, worse than the killings committed by the contemporary Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia.
Cambodia
(1975-1979)- Murdered between 900,000 and 2 million of its civilians after the Vietnam War.
- Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge, murdered many other groups as part of a wider campaign of mass murder, such as intellectuals and professionals. Some people view the Western democracies and Communist China as complicit in the encouragemnt and support of the Khmer Rouge.
- Groups that were target of genocide during Pol Pot's rule:
- Chinese (200 thousands)
- Vietnamese (150 thousands)
- Buddhist monks (40-60 thousands)
- Thai (12 thousands)
Sudan
(1983)- The US government's Sudan Peace Act of October 21, 2002 accused Sudan of genocide for killing more than 2 million civilians in the south during an ongoing civil war since 1983.
Iraq
- There exist six major crime periods:
Bosnia
(1992-1995)- Organized ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks throughout the period.
- More than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in July 1995. See also History of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Rwanda
(April 1994)- Roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutus. See History of Rwanda.
Gujarat
(February-March 2002)- About 800 or more than 2000 people (views differ on the numbers of victims), mostly Muslims, were killed throughout Gujarat, a state in India, during the 2002 Gujarat violence. This is considered by some people to satisfy the international legal definition of genocide, with the Sangh Parivar considered responsible for the systematic nature of the killings, while others consider the killings to have been spontaneous and uncontrolled.
[1] Figures from R. J. Rummel, "Death by Government".
[2] Figure from Britannica
Further Reading
External links