Genocides in history
Genocide appears to be a regular and widespread feature of the history of civilisation. The phrase 'Never again' often used in relation to genocide is sadly contradicted right up to the present day.
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.
The following list of genocidal incidents is presented in approximate chronological order.
Biblical genocides
A record of several alleged genocides is found in the Bible, although the accuracy of the accounts must be decided by personal opinion. To name a few:
- The conquest and massacre of various middle-eastern peoples, including Israel, by the empires of Assyria and Babylon.
- The destruction of Amalek
Many campaigns of the Roman Empire can by modern standards be rated as genocide:
- Caesar's campaign against the Helvetii: approximately 60% of the tribe was killed, and another 20% was taken into slavery.
- Carthage: the city was completely destroyed, and its people murdered or enslaved.
- Jerusalem: the city was burned and its people murdered or enslaved.
- (Albigensian Crusade 1209–1229) can be considered as a case of genocide. It was carried out against the Cathar people, militarily and by use of the Inquisition.
- Wars of the Vendée: the revolutionary National Convention ordered a pacification of the province, with specific instructions to kill children and women of reproductive age.
Genghis Khan and his sons
- One of the greatest alleged genocides in terms of raw numbers is the killings that occurred during the formation of the empire of Genghis Khan and his sons. It is estimated that millions of civilians were ruthlessly and systematically killed throughout many parts of Eurasia in the 13th Century.
The Congo
- Genocide in the Congo Free State, prior to its being taken over by Belgium to form the Belgian Congo
- Under the rule of King Leopold II, the Congo Free State suffered a great loss of life due to criminal indifference to its native inhabitants in the pursuit of increased rubber production.
- Exploitation of the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, German Southwest Africa, Rhodesia, and South Africa paled in comparison to that in what later became the Belgian Congo. The most infamous example of this is the Congo Free State.
- King Leopold II (of Belgium) was a famed misanthropist, abolitionist, and self-appointed sovereign of the Congo Free State, 76 times larger geographically than Belgium itself.
- His fortunes, and those of the multinational concessionary companies under his auspices, were mainly made on the proceeds of Congolese rubber, which had historically never been mass-produced in surplus quantities.
- Between 1880 and 1920 the population of the Congo halved; over 10 million "indolent natives" unaccustomed to the bourgeois ethos of labor productivity, were the victims of murder, starvation, exhaustion induced by over-work, and disease.
- Mass-murder or genocide in the Congo Free State became a cause celèbre in the last years of the 19th century, and a great embarrassment to not only the King but also to Belgium, which had portrayed itself as progressive and attentive to human rights.
- The Australian Aboriginal Population was decimated when the Caucasian population moved in. Many died from disease introduced by those settlers and some were shot. During the White Australian Policy, it was expected that Australian Aboriginal population will slowly fade out. The removal of Aboriginal children from their families by the Australian government is considered by some to have constituted genocide, using the argument that it falls within the ambit of Art. 2(e) of the Genocide convention. There is also a converse argument that the removal of Aboriginal children was intended to protect, rather than exterminate them. See Stolen Generation and Keith Windschuttle. The relative effects of those and other factors is a subject of strong historical and political debate, including whether they constituted genocide.
- However, in Tasmania, where racially distinct Aboriginal groups existed, Aboriginal population was almost entirely wiped out in the 19th century with only those with mixed blood surviving. It was legal for the settler to shoot natives on the spot and many died from disease introduced by those settlers. The last surviving group was transferred to a colony on a small island and all of its members died out slowly due to neglect. Their languages are entirely lost and most of their cultural heritage are gone, though people of mixed decent still insist on spiritual connection to the land.
- In 1985, the United Nation's Whitaker Report recognized the German attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of Southwest Africa as one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the twentieth century. In total, some 65,000 Herero (80 percent of the total Herero population), and 10,000 Nama (50 percent of the total Nama population) were killed or perished. Characteristic of this genocide was death by starvation and the poisoning of wells for the Herero and Nama populations that were trapped in the Namib desert. The responsible German general was Lothar von Trotha
- Many historians have stressed the historic importance of these atrocities, tracing the evolution from Kaiser Wilhelm II to Hitler, from Southwest Africa to Auschwitz.
- Germany Refuses to Apologize for Herero Holocaust
- Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker - Der Völkermord an den Herero
===Turkey=== (1914–1923) genocides by the Young Turk government
- Approximately 0.6–1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were killed [2] (some sources cite much higher figures). 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.
- Approximately 300,000–600,000 Pontian Greeks in the Ottoman Empire were killed, and several hundred thousand others exiled. The Turkish government denies there was any genocide despite evidence to the contrary, instead blaming the wars with Greece which took place around the same time for the millions of deaths.
- See also: Armenian Genocide, Hellenic Holocaust
====German Nazi genocide before and during World War II==== (1933–1945). (See also Armenian quote.)
- The Holocaust: approximately 11 million people were killed (figure is contested, see [1]) according to the Nazi racist ideology, as some ethnic groups were considered "sub-human". This includes:
- ha-Shoah, ("the Catastrophe" in Hebrew), in which 6 million European Jews, including 1.5 million children, were systematically "exterminated" (the Nazi term) for being Jewish. See also Holocaust denial.
- 6 million Polish citizens (3 million of whom were counted as both Polish and Jew: see possibly Polish Jews).
- 7.5 million Soviet civilians and 3.2 million Soviet POWs. This number includes 2 million Soviet Jews mainly in the areas of former Eastern Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia proper, many of whom were killed by squads of Nazi collaborators formed among Ukrainians, Latvians, Russians and Lithuanians. The Jews of Eastern Poland were doubly counted also among victims in Poland.
- The Nazis also killed other (non-ethnic) groups, such as those suffering from birth defects, learning disability or insanity; homosexuals, prostitutes and communists, as part of eugenics.
Soviet genocide during WWII
- The German population of East Prussia was systematically eliminated, see Evacuation of East Prussia for details.
Israel-Palestine
(1948-ongoing)
- Claims and counterclaims of genocide involving the Israelis and Palestinians in the current state of Israel and its disputed territories date back at least as far as the founding of Israel itself. Though there is by no means consensus on whether ethnic cleansing and/or genocide has occurred or is occurring in this region, much less by which party or parties, there are certainly events and movements on both sides of the dispute for which claims of genocide could be legitimately debated. For detailed information about this region, see Arab-Israeli conflict, in which the competing views of this conflict are very comprehensively discussed, and its many related articles.
- In general, supporters of the Palestinians point to the creation of Israel itself as an act of ethnic cleansing, whereby members of one ethnic group were forcibly removed from their land to make way for exclusive habitation by another ethnic group. Other acts and policies of the Israeli government have also been seen by the Palestinian side as promoting ethnic cleansing and/or genocide:
- Opposition to Palestinian right of return, often specifically for the purpose of preserving Israel as a homogenously Jewish state.
- Collective punishment of Palestinians, e.g., punishment of family members of alleged terrorists, or general restrictions on all Palestinians as a response to violence committed by individuals.
- Establishment of settlements in disputed territories, which have been denounced as illegal by the UN Security Council (see settlements article for details and Israel's response). Opponents of settlements consider them to be a "land grab" or outright ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from captured areas.
- Supporters of Israel generally point to what they claim to be regional anti-Semitism and the historical hostility of its neighbors to its existence as a state. Other actions by Palestinian organizations and neighboring Arab nations are subject to accusations of anti-Semitism and therefore genocide:
- The attack on Israel which became its 1948 war of independence, with the attackers' explicitly stated goal being the destruction of the newly-formed state.
- Continuing rhetoric by neighboring states claiming the illegitimacy of Israel and calling for its destruction.
- Ongoing intifadas by Palestinian groups, particularly the targeting of Israeli civilians by suicide bombers. Prominent figures within the Palestinian Authority, including Yasser Arafat, have made public statements on the PA State-Controlled Television calling for the destruction of Jews, strengthening claims of ethnic motivation and genocide in these attacks.
- Killed approximately 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975-1979.
- The Khmer Rouge, or more formally, the Communist Party of Kampuchea, led by Pol Pot, Ta Mok, Duch and other leaders, organized the mass killing of ideologically suspect groups, ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese or Sino-Khmers, ethnic Chams, ethnic Thais, former civil servants, demobilized soldiers, Buddhist monks, secular intellectuals and professionals, and refugees. Khmer Rouge cadres defeated in factional struggles were also liquidated in purges.
See also: Democratic Kampuchea
1983 - present (... as of 2004)
- 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.
- In 2004 it became widely known that there was an organised campaign by Janjaweed militias (nomadic Arab shepherds with the support of Sudanese government and troops) to rid 80 black African groupsfrom the Darfur region of western Sudan. These peoples include the Fur, Zaghawa and Massalit.
- Mukesh Kapila (United Nations humanitarian coordinator) is quoted as saying: "The vicious war in Darfur has led to violations on a scale comparable in character with Rwanda in 1994. All the warning signs are there."
- On September 9, 2004 United States Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that the actions of the armed Muslim Arab Janjaweed organization in Darfur, conducted with the tacit approval, if not active support, of the Government of Sudan, constitute genocide. Powell stated before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility."[1]
- Western countries are as yet undecided how or whether to intervene, while at present millions of people are displaced, had their family separated and property destroyed. There is a risk of famine and epidemic because of overcrowding in camps, the destruction of agriculture, and poor supplies of medicine and food.
1973 - Present
- Since the end of the Vietnam War hostilities against the Degar by the Vietnamese government have been widespread. After the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam at the close of this war, the Vietnamese government retaliated against the tribes who had helped the U.S. Nearly two thirds of the Degars have died since 1973, including more than half the male population. These reprisals continue at present (2003) and are considered by many to fit the definition of genocide.
- Anfal campaign against Iran-aligned Kurdish populations - ethnic cleansing, and in cases bordering on genocide. Chemical weapons attacks on Kurds 1986-88 (Saddam Hussein's forces used Sarin to kill the population of a Kurd village. See Halabja poison gas attack for a full discussion) and on Iranians.
- Attacks on rival ethnic groups in the South (Shia Muslims) and North (Kurds) of Iraq after the Persian Gulf War. These attacks involved allegedly deliberate destruction of the living habitats of these peoples, e.g. through over drainage of the southern wetlands.
- Saddam Hussein, the alleged perpetrator, has been charged in 2004 with crimes of genocide by the newly constituted government of the country.
- Organized ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbs against Croats, gypsies,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)
- Officially 937,000 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.