Modern-day genocide

The past repeats itself

History of the word “Genocide”

• In 1944, a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide.

• He took the Greek word “geno” (race or tribe) and combined it with the Latin word “cide”, which means killing.

• On December 9th, 1948, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

• The UN made it an international crime to commit genocide, with all of its member nations agreeing to “undertake to prevent and punish” the crime.

Definition of the word “Genocide”Genocide is defined as any of the following

acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, 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 intending to prevent births in the group

E. Forcibly transferring children from the group to another group

BOSNIA

Genocide in Bosnia 1992-1995• In April 1992, Bosnia declared themselves to be an

independent country from Yugoslavia. • The president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, who was

Serbian, attacked Bosnia, which was made up of mostly Muslims, who the Serbs viewed as ethnically inferior.

• In the capital of Sarajevo, Serbian snipers targeted innocent civilians, including children (3, 500).

• While the UN instructed its troops to do nothing, the Serbs rounded up Muslims, put the men and boys into makeshift concentration camps, and raped the women and girls.

• President Bill Clinton eventually brokered a peace agreement in 1995, but the Serbs broke it when they captured UN troops and forced them to watch as they selected and slaughtered 8,000 men and boys between the ages of twelve and sixty and raped mass numbers of females.

• In August of 1995, NATO stepped in and ended the conflict by bombing the Serbs, but not until the death toll in Bosnia reached 200,000 Muslims killed, 20,000 missing, and more than 2,000,000 displaced.

Srebrenica Massacre in Bosnia (http://koz.vianet.ca/boshis112.htm)

Words without deeds violates the moral and legal obligation we have under the genocide convention but, more importantly, violates our sense of right and wrong and the standards we have as human beings about looking to care for one another.

-Jon Corzine

• “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

-Edmund Burke