Genocide
The word genocide, from the Greek genos (race) and the Latin -cide (killing), was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to mean "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" (see also mass murder).
In many cases the popular usage of the term genocide deviates from the technically correct legal definition and is used to describe Mass murders of political dissenters or other members of the perpetrators' own ethnic group or war crimes or other crimes against humanity. Some of the examples here fall in whole or part into those categories although they are popularly spoken of as genocide.
Dictionary definitions
The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. (American Heritage Dictionary)
the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary)
Definitions in international law
The common usage roughly corresponds with the various legal definitions, such as that written by Lemkin, Vespasien V. Pella of Romania and Donnedieu de Vabres and adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1946 (see below). The original definition of genocide includes both killing of members of a group, but also other measures undertaken to end the group's collective existence, such as forced sterillization of group members or the removal of the group's children to be raised in other groups, which need not involve any killings at all.
In more recent years, however, some have taken to expand the meaning of the term to include killings on grounds other than those included in the original definition. Many would argue that such an expansion is incorrect; R. J. Rummel has proposed the term democide. In some cases, such as cultural genocide (more commonly known as ethnocide, the term has been used in a context where no one has been physically eliminated. This is not generally accepted usage, although the legal definition does not require physical elimination.
UN Definition of Genocide
The legal definition of genocide is contained in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. This definition is used in the national criminal legislation of many countries, and in 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.
The first draft of the Convention included political killings but that language was removed at the insistance of the Soviet Union.
Some legal opinion holds that as well as being illegal under conventional international law, genocide is a crime under customary international law as well, and has been since some time during World War II or possibly earlier.
Major cases of genocide
- Nazi genocides during World War II (1933-1945).
- Holocaust: approximately 6 million people killed. [1] Genocide targeted at Jews.
- Genocide also targeted at Slavs, Gypsies and Jehovahs Witnesses. Ca. 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.
- Rwanda (April 1994)
- Roughly 800,000 Christian Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Muslim Hutus. See Rwanda/History.
- Armenian (1915-1923) genocide by the Young Turk government
- Approximately 0.6-1.5 millions Armenians in Ottoman Empire were killed [2]. However, the Turkish government rejects that position, maintaining it was the Ottoman policy toward the Armenians that was genocidal and that most of the Armenian deaths resulted from armed conflict, disease and famine during the turmoils of World War.
Extermination of ethnic groups by the Soviet communist government
- The Soviets targeted many ethnic or religious groups they considered to be filled with anti-Communists. (Some advocates have argued that since many of the killings committed by the Soviet government were on political or economic grounds, these acts of mass murder do not fit the definition of genocide.) These groups included: [3],[4]
Genocide by the People's Republic of China
- Mao's regime killed between 20 million and 60 million people, depending on which sources are accepted. The Chinese goverment accepts the lower figure.
- Some have argued that the government of the People's Republic of China has committed genocide by killing members of many minority ethnic groups, including Uighurs, Tibetans and others during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Others argue that this is not a case of genocide but mass murder because while minority ethnic groups were killed so were members of the majority Han Chinese and at no time has the PRC government undertaken policies specifically to kill minority groups.
Other genocides
- Cambodia (late 1960s-1979) murdered between 900,000 and 2 million of its civilians after the Vietnam War.
- "Between 1 million and 2 million people were massacred on the “killing fields” of Cambodia or worked to death through forced labor. Pol Pot's radical vision of transforming the country into a Marxist agrarian society led to the virtual extermination of the country's professional and technical class." [1] "2 million Cambodians represented approximately 30% of the Cambodian population during that time." [2]
- 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)
- The genocidal Pol Pot regime was removed by a Vietnamese occupation. (According to some writers, during the 1980s and 1990s, Pol Pot's guerilla group was supported by the UK and the US as his genocidal history was considered preferable to the Vietnamese occupation.)
- Bosnia (1992-1995)
- Organized ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (Muslims) througout the period.
- More than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in July 1995. See also History of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- North America
- Lord Jeffrey Amherst approved spreading smallpox among Native Americans intentionally during Pontiacs Rebellion by distributing infected blankets. See http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html.
- Indian Removal resulted in the death of many thousands of Native Americans.
- See Indian Massacres, Trail of Tears, Extermination of the Pequots in 1637.
- Australia
- Genocide of Tasmanian Aborigines.
- Many argue that the removal of Aboriginal children from their families by the Australian government constituted genocide; see Stolen Generation
- Lebanon
- Sabra and Shatila massacre, committed by Lebanese Christians, in an area surrounded by Israeli forces. The United Nations delcared it to be an act of genocide. Some claim that this declaration was political, the proper classification of the event being a massacre, since no party in the conflict implemented a systematic policy of exterminating Palestinians.
[1] Figures from R.J. Rummel, "Death by Government".
[2] Figure from Britannica
Further Reading
- Problem from Hell America's Failure to Prevent Genocide, Samantha Power, Basic Books, 2002, hardcover, 640 pages, ISBN 0465061508
See also : Crime against humanity