What is Genocide?

Kirsten FarabiUCD Teacher Candidate

2009

Genocide is defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide drafted in 1948.

Article 2 of the Convention defines it as:Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:Killing members of the group;Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about itsphysical destruction in whole or in part;Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;...Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

What is Genocide?

Genocides in the 20Genocides in the 20thth Century Century

Armenians in Turkey (1915 – 1918) 1,500,000 deaths

Stalin’s forced famine (1932 – 1933) 7,000,000 deaths

Rape of Nanking (1937 – 1938 The forgotten Holocaust of WWII) 300,000 deaths

Nazi Holocaust (1938 – 1945) 6,000,000 deaths

Pol Pot, Cambodia (1975 – 1979) 2,000,000 deaths

Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992 – 1995) 200,000 deaths

Rwanda (1994 – present) 800,000 deaths

Large scale, mass atrocities of a genocidal level occurred when Armenian nationalists began to demand greater autonomy under the Ottoman Empire towards the end of the nineteenth century. Veiled from the international community by the chaos of World War I, the Ottoman government intentionally destroyed over 1 million Armenians from 1915 - 1923.

Armenia

As Adolph Hitler's Nationalist Socialist regime pursued its policies of Aryan racial supremacy, the Nazi regime began to eliminate all "undesirable" races: the Jews, the Slavs, gypsies, political and religious dissidents, homosexuals and the disabled. Businesses were looted, targeted populations were deported en masse to concentration camps and, ultimately, 6 million Jews and 5 million "undesirables" lost their lives in a series of targeted exterminations and massacres that still haunts the minds of survivors today.

TheHolocaust

As Pol Pot came to power in the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge began to take over the majority of Cambodia. Because the United States' bombing campaign during the Vietnam War weakened Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge was eventually able to enter the capital to institute a new, authoritarian regime. All opposition to the regime was exterminated in a genocidal campaign. Between 1975 and 1979, over 2 million Cambodians were targeted for destruction.

Cambodia

With the death of Josip Tito, Bosnia's long time authoritarian dictator, the combination of the emergence of nationalist politics and the militarization of Serbia and Croatia sparked the eruption of a three-sided civil war between the Bosnian-Serbs, Bosnian-Croats, and Bosnian-Muslims. Within this war, Bosnian Serbs attempted to ethnically cleanse strategic regions in Bosnia to accomplish their mission of creating a "Greater Serbia." The scale of atrocities committed against the Muslim populations in various areas of Bosnia by the Serbs was genocidal. Over 200,000 Muslims have been killed or starved and tortured to death in concentration camps between 1992 and 1995.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

My family, the Bisics

Survivors of the Bosnian War

Tensions in Rwanda between the once-dominant minority Tutsis and the majority Hutus periodically erupted in anti-Tutsi violence since the Hutus gained power after independence from Belgium in 1962. After a civil war between exiled Tutsi rebels and the Hutu government ended in a ceasefire and power-sharing agreement, Hutu extremists within and outside the government began to prepare a Tutsi extermination campaign. On April 6, 1994, the Hutu President's plane was shot down, which touched off a genocide that killed 800,000 to 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.

Rwanda

It is still happening today

Democratic Republic of Congo

Sri Lanka

Burma

Baghdad

Somalia

Chad

Central African Republic

Darfur

To prevent genocide from continuing to occur in the twenty-first century, we have a responsibility to protect civilians who are being victimized by countries unwilling or unable to halt ongoing atrocities.

Check out genocideintervention.net