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Genocide is the mass killing of a group of people, as defined by Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) 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: 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 its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."[1] Significantly, this definition of genocide under international law does not include repression against political or economic groups.
The preamble to the CPPCG not only states that "genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world", but that "at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity".[1]
Determining what historical events constitute a genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behaviour is not a clear-cut matter. 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 genocides and alleged genocides should be understood in this context and cannot be regarded as the final word on these subjects.
Alternative meanings of genocide
- See also: genocide definitions
Much of the debate about genocides revolves around the proper definition of the word "genocide." The exclusion of social and political groups as targets of genocide in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide legal definition has been criticized by some historians and sociologists, for example M. Hassan Kakar in his book The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982[2] argues that the international definition of genocide is too restricted,[3] and that it should include political groups or any group so defined by the perpetrator and quotes Chalk and Jonassohn: "Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group so defined by the perpetrator."[4]
According to R. J. Rummel, genocide has 3 different meanings. The ordinary meaning is murder by a government of people due to their national, ethnic, racial, or religious group membership. The legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This also includes nonkillings that in the end eliminate the group, such as preventing births or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group. A generalized meaning of genocide is similar to the ordinary meaning but also includes government killings of political opponents or otherwise intentional murder. It is to avoid confusion regarding what meaning is intended that Rummel created the term democide for the third meaning.[5]
Timeline of genocides and alleged genocides
Before 1490
Adam Jones explains, in his book Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, that people throughout history have always had the ability to see other groups as alien; he quotes Chalk and Jonassohn: "Historically and anthropologically peoples have always had a name for themselves. In a great many cases, that name meant 'the people' to set the owners of that name off against all other people who were considered of lesser quality in some way. If the differences between the people and some other society were particularly large in terms of religion, language, manners, customs, and so on, then such others were seen as less than fully human: pagans, savages, or even animals. (Chalk and Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide, p. 28.)"[6]
Jones continues by saying that the less a people have in common with another group the easier it is for the aliens to be defined as less than human and from there it is but a short step to an argument that says if they are a threat, then they should "be eliminated in order that we may live (Them or us)."[7] But after making this assessment Jones continues "The difficulty, as Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn pointed out in their early study, is that such historical records as exist are ambiguous and undependable. While history today is generally written with some fealty to 'objective' facts, most previous accounts aimed rather to praise the writer's patron (normally the leader) and to emphasize the superiority of one's own gods and religious beliefs."[8]
Scholars of antiquity differentiate between gendercide in which males were killed, but the children (particularly the girls) and women were incorporated into the conqueror's society, Jones notes that "Chalk and Jonassohn provide a wide-ranging selection of historical events such as the Assyrian Empire’s root-and branch depredations in the first half of the first millennium BCE, and the destruction of Melos by Athens during the Peloponnesian War (fifth century BCE), a gendercidal rampage described by Thucydides in his 'Melian Dialogue'."[9]
The Old Testament not only describes the genocides of Amalekites and Midianites but justifies them through references to the word of God.[6]Adam Jones References p. 3, footnote 4</ref> Jones quotes Jerusalem-based Holocaust Studies Professor Yehuda Bauer: "As a Jew, I must live with the fact that the civilization I inherited ... encompasses the call for genocide in its canon."[10]
Ben Kiernan, a Yale scholar, has labeled the destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War (149–146 BC) "The First Genocide".[9] Quoting Eric Margolis, Jones observes that in the 13th century the Mongol horsemen of Temüjin Genghis Khan were genocidal killers (génocidaires)[6] who were known to kill whole nations leaving nothing but empty ruins and bones.[11]
1490 to 1914
Americas
From the 1490s when Christopher Columbus set foot on the Americas to the massacre of Sioux at Wounded Knee by the United States militia, the indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere may have declined by as many as 100 million.[12] In Brazil alone the indigenous population has declined from a pre-Columbian high of an estimated 3 million to some 300,000 (1997).[13][14] Estimates of how many people were living in the Americas when Columbus arrived have varied tremendously; 20th century scholarly estimates ranged from a low of 8.4 million to a high of 112.5 million persons. This population debate has often had ideological underpinnings. Robert Royal writes that "estimates of pre-Columbian population figures have become heavily politicized with scholars who are particularly critical of Europe and/or Western civilization often favoring wildly higher figures."[15]
Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives.[16] After first contacts with Europeans and Africans, some believe that the death of 90 to 95% of the native population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases such as smallpox and measles.[17]
Determining how many people died as a direct result of armed conflict between native Americans, and Europeans and their descendants, is difficult as accurate records were not always kept.
In his book American Holocaust, David Stannard argues that the destruction of the aboriginal peoples of the Americas, in a "string of genocide campaigns" by Europeans and their descendants, was the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world.[12][18] While no mainstream historian denies that death and suffering were unjustly inflicted by a number of Europeans upon a great many American natives, most scholars of the subject maintain that genocide, which is a crime of intent, was not the intent of European colonization. Historian Stafford Poole wrote: "There are other terms to describe what happened in the Western Hemisphere, but genocide is not one of them. It is a good propaganda term in an age where slogans and shouting have replaced reflection and learning, but to use it in this context is to cheapen both the word itself and the appalling experiences of the Jews to mention a major victim of this century."[19]
In 2003, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez urged Latin Americans to not celebrate the Columbus Day holiday. Chavez blamed Columbus for leading the way in the mass genocide of the Native Americans by the Spanish.[20]
United States of America
Authors such as the Holocaust expert David Cesarani have argued that the government and policies of the United States of America against certain indigenous peoples constituted genocide. David Cesarani states that "in terms of the sheer numbers killed, the Native American Genocide exceeds that of the Holocaust".[21] He quotes David E. Stannard, author of American Holocaust,[22] who speaks of the "genocidal and racist horrors against the indigenous peoples that have been and are being perpetrated by many nations in the Western Hemisphere, including the United States..."[23] He continues "Stannard was angered by what he perceived as a double standard in the United States towards 'worthy' and 'unworthy' victims. While Americans readily acknowledge the Nazi crimes against the Jews, he wrote, they continued to 'turn their backs on the even more massive genocide that for four grisly centuries... was perpetrated against the "unworthy" natives of the Americas.'"[24] Cesarani also writes of Stannard's and Ward Churchill's suspicion that the "ignorance of the Native American genocide was partly due to the enormous attention devoted to the Holocaust [in the United States]. Added to these cultural and political trends in the United States was the seemingly never-ending crisis in the Middle East... much of the debate over uniqueness, therefore, seems to be an overt product of partisan politics."[25]
Michno estimates 21,586 dead, wounded, and captured civilians and soldiers for the period of 1850–1890 alone.[26]
In God, Greed, and Genocide: The Holocaust Through the Centuries, Grenke quotes Chalk and Jonassohn with regards to the Cherokee Trail of Tears that "an act like the Cherokee deportation would almost certainly be considered an act of genocide today".[27] The Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the Trail of Tears. About 17,000 Cherokees — along with approximately 2,000 black slaves owned by Cherokees — were removed from their homes.[28] The number of people who died as a result of the Trail of Tears has been variously estimated. American doctor and missionary Elizur Butler, who made the journey with one party, estimated 4,000 deaths.[29]
Argentina
The Conquest of the Desert was a military campaign directed mainly by General Julio Argentino Roca in the 1870s, which established Argentine dominance over Patagonia, which was inhabited by indigenous peoples, leaving 1,300 indigenous dead.[30]
Jens Andermann has noted that the contemporary sources on that campaign indicate that it was a genocide by the Argentine government against the indigenous tribes.[31] Others perceive the campaign as intending to suppress specifically those groups of aboriginals that refused to submit to the white government and carried out attacks on the white and mestizo civilian settlements.[32] This recent argument – usually summarized as "Civilization or Genocide?"[33]– questions whether the Conquest of the Desert was really intended to exterminate the aborigines.
Australia
The Black War refers to a period of conflict between the British colonists and Tasmanian Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) in the early years of the 1800s. The conflict resulted in the almost complete obliteration of the Tasmanian Aboriginal population, though there are presently many thousands of individuals descended from Tasmanian Aborigines. The Tasmanians, estimated at 8,000 people in 1803, were reduced to a population of around 300 by 1833, although much of this has been attributed to the effect of diseases to which they had no natural immunity (including smallpox and syphilis).[34] Estimates of the total number of Tasmanian deaths at the hands of European settlers vary, with some estimates ranging as low as 118 in the period from 1803 until 1847.[35]
The "war" was never officially declared and this has led to variations in its dating. Some date the conflict to the very beginning of European settlement on the island in 1803. The conflict was most intense during the 1820s, which is the period most commonly referred to as the Black War. The conflict is generally seen to have ended in the 1830s, after the unsuccessful Black Line and the subsequent relocation of Aborigines to Flinders Island.
Australian historians are split as to whether this was a genocide, this is often to do with if the "the term 'genocide' only applies to cases of deliberate mass killings of Aborigines by European settlers, or whether the term 'genocide' might also apply to instances in which many Aboriginal people were killed by the reckless or unintended actions and omissions of settlers."[36]
China
During the mid-nineteenth century, the Muslims and the Miao people of China revolted against the Qing Dynasty, most notably in the Dungan revolt (1862-1877) and the Panthay rebellion 1856-1873) in Yunnan. The Manchu government committed genocide to suppress these little known revolts,[37][38][39] killing a million people in the Panthay rebellion,[40][41] several million in the Dungan revolt[41] and five million in the suppression of Miao people in Guizhou.[41] A "washing off the Muslims"(洗回 (xi Hui)) policy had been long advocated by officials in the Manchu government.[42]
France
In 1986 Reynald Secher wrote a controversial book entitled: A French Genocide: The Vendée, in which he argued that the actions of the French republican government during the revolt in the Vendée (1793–1796), a popular Royalist uprising against the Republican government during the French Revolution, was the first "modern" genocide.[43] Secher's claims, in addition to his political and religious affiliations, caused a minor uproar in France amongst scholars of modern French history, as mainstream authorities on the period—both French and foreign—published articles refuting Secher's claims (see below). In the rebellion, initially the Vendée rebels gained the upper hand, so on August 1, 1793 the Committee of Public Safety ordered General Jean-Baptiste Carrier to carry out a pacification of the region. The Republican army was reinforced and the Vendéan army was eventually defeated. Under orders from Committee of Public Safety in February 1794 the Republican forces launched their final "pacification" (the Vendée-Vengé or "Vendée Avenged")—twelve columns, the colonnes infernales ("infernal columns") under Louis-Marie Turreau, were marched through the Vendée, and, according to Secher, killed both rebels and civilians indiscriminately.[44][45] When the campaign dragged to an end in March 1796 the estimated dead, both Republican and Royalist, numbered between 117,000 and 500,000, out of a population of around 800,000.[46][47][48]
Secher's allegation of genocide, Claude Langlois (of the Institute of History of the French Revolution) derides as "quasi-mythological".[49] Timothy Tackett of the University of California summarizes the case as such: "In reality... the Vendée was a tragic civil war with endless horrors committed by both sides—initiated, in fact, by the rebels themselves. The Vendéeans were no more blameless than were the republicans. The use of the word genocide is wholly inaccurate and inappropriate."[50] Hugh Gough (Professor of history at University College Dublin,) considers Secher's book an attempt at historical revisionism that is unlikely to have any lasting impact.[51] Peter McPhee roundly criticizes Secher, including the assertion of commonality between the functions of the Republican government and Communist totalitarianism. McPhee does this by pointing to what he considers to be a number of dubious assumptions and flawed methodology on Secher's part.[52] Other scholars who have published against Secher's thesis include: Julian Jackson (professor of history modern at the University of London),[53] and professors of modern history and related fields François Lebrun of the University of High-Brittany-Rennes II,[54] and of the University of Paris, I-Pantheon-Sorbonne, Paul Tallonneau[55] Claude Petitfrère,[56] and Jean-Clément Martin.[57]
Peter McPhee says that the pacification the Vendée does not fit either the United Nations' CPPCG definition of genocide or that of Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn ("Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator") because the events happened in a civil war. So it was not a one-sided mass killing and the Committee of Public Safety did not intend to exterminate the whole population of Vendée as parts of the population were allied to the revolutionary government.[52] However in Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations Kurt Jonassohn writes "The reason we consider this a case of genocide is that exterminatory intent was clearly stated in the orders of several generals as well as in the several decrees passed by the government".[58] Further support for Secher come from Adam Jones, who wrote in Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction a summary of the Vendée uprising, citing Secher and others, supporting the view that it was a genocide,[59] and Pierre Chaunu, a professor of history at Paris IV-Sorbonne university.citation needed Other historians have employed the term "genocide" to describe the massacres made during the civil war in the republican camp, such as Jean Tulard.[60] Stéphane Courtois, a Director of Research at the CNRS who specializes in the history of Communism, tells of how Lenin compared the people of Vendée to the Cossacks, and expressed joy at subjecting them to the program Gracchus Babeuf, "the inventor of modern Communism", characterized as "populicide" in 1795 against the people of the Vendée.[61] British historian Ruth Scurr states that the actions of the revolutionaries, such as mass executions by grapeshot fired from cannons and group drownings in the Vendée, constitute crimes against humanity that they would today be held accountable for under the European human rights legislation they themselves pioneered.[62]
Secher attracted further controversy in 1991 with his publication Jews and Vendeans: From One Genocide to Another, comparing the fate of Royalist Vendeans with Jews in Nazi Germany.[63]
Philippines
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In an article, We Charge Genocide: A Brief History of US in the Philippines, appearing in the December, 2005 issue of Political Affairs (an online magazine which bills itself "Marxist Thought Online"), E. San Juan, Jr., director of the Philippines Cultural Studies Center, Connecticut, argued that during the Philippine-American War (1899-1902) and pacification campaign (1902-1913), the operations launched by the U.S. against the Filipinos, an integral part of its pacification program, which claimed the lives of over a million Filipinos, constituted genocide.[64]
In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger reported:"The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog...."[65]
Gore Vidal, in an exchange of letters in the New York Review of Books about the Philippines campaign says, discussing General Bell's own reporting that American troops were responsible for 600,000 dead men, women, and children on the island of Luzon alone, "If this is not a policy of genocide (no dumb letters on the dictionary meaning of the word), it will do until the real thing comes along."[66]
It should be noted that total Filipino casualties was at the time and still is a highly-debated, argued, and politicized number. A discussion and analysis of this is contained in John M. Gates, “War-Related Deaths in the Philippines”, Pacific Historical Review.[67] It is estimated that some 34,000 Filipino soldiers lost their lives and as many as 200,000 civilians may have died directly or indirectly as a result of the war, most due to a major cholera epidemic that broke out near its end.[68]Another estimate is that between 200,000 and 600,000 Filipinos died during the war with fewer than 5,000 American deaths. More deaths occurred during the pacification program (1902-1913) following the declaration of victory in the war.[69]One estimate of total Filipino deaths is as high as 1.4 million.[64]
German South-West Africa
The Herero and Namaqua Genocide in German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) in 1904–1907 is clearly the first organized state genocide as the UN Whitaker report (1985) concluded, the Herero were also the first ethnic group to be subjected to genocide in the 20th century.[70] Eighty percent of the total Herero population and 50 percent of the total Nama population were killed in a brutal scorched earth campaign led by German General Lothar von Trotha.
British Ireland
War of the Three Kingdoms
- See also: Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and Cromwellian Plantation
Towards the end of the War of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1651) the English Rump Parliament sent the New Model Army to Ireland to pacify the country and to prevent Royalists loyal to Charles II from using Ireland as a base to threaten England. Initially under the command of Oliver Cromwell and later under other parliamentary generals, the New Model army set about the task with ruthless efficiency. Coupled to the war aim of securing the country for the English Parliament were several other interrelated objectives. Punitive confiscation of the lands of Irish families involved in fighting the parliamentary forces was implemented (there was a similar policy against Royalists in England who fought in the Second English Civil War). This became a continuation of the Elizabethan policy of encouraging Protestant settlement of Ireland, because New Model army soldiers—Protestant to a man and who were owed considerable back pay—could be paid in confiscated Irish lands rather than in cash raised through English parliamentary taxes.[71]
During the Interregnum (1651–1660), this policy was enhanced with the passing of the Act of Settlement of Ireland in 1652 whose goal was a further transfer of land from Irish to English hands.[71] The immediate war aims and the longer term policies of the English Parliamentarians resulted in an attempt by the English to transfer the native Irish Catholic population to the western fringes of Ireland to make way for Protestant settlers. This policy has been summed up by a phrase attributed to Cromwell "To Hell or to Connaught" and has been seen by some historians as a form of ethnic cleansing, if not genocide.[72]
Great Irish Famine
During the years of the Irish Famine, Ireland produced enough food, flax and wool not only to feed and clothe its nine million people, but enough for eighteen million.[73] In this sense the famine was artificial, not caused by a shortage of food but by the British government's choice not to close the ports as had been done in previous Irish crop blights; as John Mitchell put it, "The Almighty sent the potato blight...but the English created the famine.".[73]
Francis A. Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, finding that the British violated sections (a), (b), and (c) of Article 2 of the CPPCG and committed genocide, issued a formal legal opinion to the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education on May 2, 1996, stating that "Clearly, during [the Irish Potato Famine years [of] 1845 to 1850 the British government pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland with intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, and racial group commonly known as the Irish People."[74][75] Law professor Charles E. Rice of Notre Dame likewise issued a formal opinion, also based on Article 2, that the British had committed genocide.[76]
Contesting claims of genocide, Belfast-born and Cambridge-educated historian Peter Gray concludes that UK government policy "was not a policy of deliberate genocide", but a dogmatic refusal to admit that the policy was wrong which "amounted to a sentence of death to many thousands."; and Professor James S. Donnelly Jr., a historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has written that "... it is also my contention that while genocide was not in fact committed, what happened during and as a result of the clearances had the look of genocide to a great many Irish..."[77]
Records show that Ireland exported food, even increasing some food exports during the worst years of the Famine.citation needed When Ireland experienced a famine in 1782-83, ports were closed to keep Irish-grown food in Ireland to feed the Irish. Local food prices promptly dropped. Merchants lobbied against the export ban, but the government of the 1780s overrode their protests; that export ban did not exist in the 1840s.citation needed
Cecil Woodham-Smith, an authority on the Irish Famine, wrote in The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845-1849 that, "...no issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two countries (England and Ireland) as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation."citation needed Ireland remained a net exporter of food throughout most of the five-year famine. However, Woodham-Smith does not accept that the famine amounted to genocide: "These misfortunes were not part of a plan to destroy the Irish nation; they fell on the people because the government of Lord John Russell was afflicted with an extraordinary inability to foresee consequences. It has been frequently declared that the parsimony of the British Government during the famine was the main cause of the sufferings of the people, and parsimony was certainly carried to remarkable lengths; but obtuseness, short-sightedness and ignorance probably contributed more."citation needed However Irish meteorologist Austin Bourke, in The use of the potato crop in pre-famine Ireland disputes some of Woodham-Smith's calculations, and notes that during December 1846 imports almost doubled.citation needed He opines that "it is beyond question that the deficiency arising from the loss of the potato crop in 1846 could not have been met by the simple expedient of prohibiting the export of grain from Ireland."citation needed
Irish historian Cormac O' Grada disagrees with the claim that the famine was genocide on two grounds: firstly, he writes, "genocide includes murderous intent and it must be said that not even the most bigoted and racist commentators of the day sought the extermination of the Irish"citation needed and that most people in Whitehall "hoped for better times in Ireland"citation needed and secondly accusations of genocide overlook or ignore "the enormous challenges facing relief efforts, both central, local, public and private".citation needed Cormac views that a case of neglect is easier to sustain than that of genocide.[78]
Peaking around 8-9 million in the early 19th century, Ireland's population fell to around 4 million during the Famine, because of emigration and starvation.[79]
Genocide scholar W.D. Rubinstein seems to agree with Cormac. In his book Genocide he wrote that: "The Irish Famine cannot in truth be described as an example of genocide, but nor, in truth, was it nineteenth- century Britain's finest hour."citation needed
Russian Empire
Antero Leitzinger wrote in an article called "The Circassian Genocide", initially published in the Turkistan News, that a genocide committed against the Circassian nation by Czarist Russia in the 1800s has been almost entirely forgotten, and that it was the largest genocide of the nineteenth century.[80]
1915 to 1950
In 1915, during World War I, the concept of Crimes against humanity was introduced into international relations for the first time when the Allied Powers sent a correspondence to the government of the Ottoman Empire, a member of the Central Powers, over massacres the Allies alleged were taking place within the Empire.[81] (For more details see the section Ottoman Empire (Turkey)).
Ottoman Empire (Turkey)
On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers (Britain, France, and Russia) jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing "a crime against humanity" in reference to that regime's persecution of its Christian minorities including Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks among others.[82] Contrary to popular conception, the Armenians were not the only ethnic minority to suffer as the Ottoman Empire dissolved. Assyrians and Greeks also suffered the genocidal depredations of the Young Turks. Many researches consider these events to be part of the same policy of planned ethnoreligious purification of the Turkish state followed by the Young Turks.[83]
.. This joint statement stated:
- "[i]n view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres".[81]
Armenian Genocide
On 15 September 2005 a United States Congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide "Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes." found that:
- "The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland."[84]
The BBC reported that 16 December 2003, "The Swiss lower house of parliament has voted to describe the mass killings of Armenians during the last years of the Ottoman Empire as genocide. [...] Fifteen countries have now agreed to label the killings as genocide. They include France [in 2001], Argentina and Russia."[85] On 12 October 2006, French lawmakers "approved a bill making it a crime to deny that mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during and after World War I amounted to genocide. Turkey quickly objected, with its Foreign Ministry saying that the decision "dealt a heavy blow" to Turkish-French relations and 'created great disappointment in our country.'"[86]
Assyrian Genocide
The Assyrian Genocide (also known as Sayfo or Seyfo; Aramaic: ܩܛܠܐ ܕܥܡܐ ܐܬܘܪܝܐ or ܣܝܦܐ, Turkish: Süryani Soykırımı) was committed against the Assyrian population of the Ottoman Empire near the end of the First World War by the Young Turks.[87] The Assyrian/Syriac population of northern Mesopotamia (Tur Abdin, Hakkari, Van, Siirt region in modern-day southeastern Turkey and Urmia region in northwestern Iran) was forcibly relocated and massacred by Ottoman (Turkish and Kurdish) forces between 1914 and 1920 under the regime of the Young Turks.[88] This genocide is considered to be a part of the same policy of extermination as the Armenian Genocide and Pontic Greek Genocide.The Assyro-Chaldean National Council stated in a December 4, 1922, memorandum that the total death toll is unknown, but it estimates that about 275,000 "Assyro-Chaldeans" died between 1914–1918.[89]
Greek Genocide
Pontic Greek Genocide[90][91][92][93][94][95] is a term used to refer to the fate of the Pontic Greek population of the Ottoman Empire during and in the aftermath of World War I. It is used to refer to the determined persecutions, massacres, expulsions, and death marches of Pontic Greek populations in the historical region of Pontus, the southeastern Black Sea provinces of the Ottoman Empire, during the early 20th century by the Young Turk administration. G.W. Rendel of the British Foreign Office noted the massacres of Greeks in Pontus and elsewhere during the Turkish national movement,[96][97][93] which was organized against Greece's invasion of western Anatolia.[98] According to various sources the direct or indirect death toll of Greeks in Anatolia ranges from 300,000 to 360,000 men, women and children.
Turkish Denial
The Republic of Turkey government disputes this interpretation of events and maintains that crucial documents supporting the genocide thesis are actually falsifications.[99] Seen as historical revisionism by many historians, the topic is virtually taboo in Turkey. Laws like Article 301, which is amended recently, are used to bring charges against people like the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who had stated that "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it".[100] However, Turkish authorities do acknowledge that the issue should be left to the historians[101] and in an open letter by Prime Minister Erdogan to the U.S. President dated 10 April 2005, extended an "invitation to your country to establish a joint group consisting of historians and other experts from our two countries to study the developments and events of 1915 not only in the archives of Ottoman Empire, Turkey and Armenia but also in the archives of all relevant third countries and to share their findings with the international public".[102] Furthermore, in spite of vehement resistance by nationalist groups, an academic conference was held on September 24, 2005 in Istanbul to discuss the early 20th century massacre of Armenians.[103] In their book Negotiating the Sacred: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society, Elizabeth Burns Coleman and Kevin White present a list of reasons explaining Turkey's inability to admit the genocides committed by the Young Turks[104]
Soviet Union
There are several documented instances of unnatural mass death occurring in the Soviet Union. These include the Soviet-wide famines in early 1920s and early 1930s and deportations of ethnic minorities.
During the Russian Civil War the Bolsheviks engaged in a campaign of genocide against the Don Cossacks.[105][106][107][108][109] The most reliable estimates indicate that out of a population of three million, between 300,000 and 500,000 were killed or deported in 1919–20.[110]
The 1933 famine that affected Ukraine, some densely populated of Russia and the Kazakhstan has a special connotation in Ukraine where it is called the Holodomor. The famine was caused by the confiscation of the whole 1933 harvest in Ukraine and in Kazakhstan, the North Caucasus, and other parts of Russia leaving the peasants too little to feed themselves as a result 6 million died Soviet-wide, including 2.6 to 3.5 million Ukrainians and 1.3 to 1.5 million Kazakhs. Ukraine is attempting to have the latter recognised as an act of genocide."[111] This move is opposed by the Russian government and some members of the Ukrainian parliament. Officially Moscow recognises that the famine took place, but refuses to class it as an ethnic genocide.[111] During November 2006 a remembrance ceremony held in Kiev, a big board listed ten other countries that recognised the Holodomor as a genocide: Australia, Argentina, Georgia, Estonia, Italy, Canada, Lithuania, Poland, U.S., Hungary.[112]
Croatia
The Ustaše (also known as Ustashas or Ustashi) was a Croatian fascist movement that ruled Nazi puppet Independent State of Croatia after Axis Powers occupation of Yugoslavia during World War II. The Ustaše enacted race laws patterned after those of the Third Reich aimed at removing Jews, Roma, Croatian anti-fascists, and in particular Serbs. Victims were interned in concentration camps, the largest of which was the Jasenovac complex. Death toll estimates for the Independent State of Croatia is between 330,000 [113] and more of 600,000,[114] with the vast majority of victims being ethnic Serbs.
Nazi Germany and occupied Europe
Because the universal acceptance of international laws, defining and forbidding genocide was achieved in 1948, with the promulgation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), those criminals who were prosecuted after the war in international courts, for taking part in the Holocaust were found guilty of crimes against humanity and other more specific crimes like murder. Nevertheless the Holocaust is universally recognized to have been a genocide and the term, that had been coined the year before by Raphael Lemkin,[115] appeared in the indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders, Count 3, stated that all the defendants had "conducted deliberate and systematic genocide – namely, the extermination of racial and national groups..."[116]
The term "the Holocaust" is generally used to describe the killing of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the National Socialist German Workers Party in Germany led by Adolf Hitler.[117] A majority of scholars do not include other groups in the definition of the Holocaust, reserving the term to refer only to the genocide of the Jews,[118] or what the Nazis called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."
The Holocaust was accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings.[119] Jews and Roma were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of miles by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal nation."[120]
Other targets of the Nazi mass murder or "Nazi genocidal policy",[121] included Slavs (Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Serbs, and others), Roma (see Porajmos), mentally ill (see T-4 Euthanasia Program), Homosexuals and "sexual deviants", Jehovah Witnesses, and political opponents. R. J. Rummel estimates that 16,315,000 people died as a result of genocide, just over 10.5 million Slavs, just under 5.3 million Jews, 258,000 Roma and 220,000 homosexuals.[122][123] Donald Niewyk suggests that the broadest definition would produce a death toll of 17 million.[124] A figure of 26 million is given in Service d'Information des Crimes de Guerre: Crimes contre la Personne Humain, Camps de Concentration. Paris, 1946, p. 197.
Partition of India, 1947
Massive population exchanges occurred between the two newly-formed states in the months immediately following Partition. Once the lines were established, about 14.5 million people crossed the borders to what they hoped was the relative safety of religious majority. Based on 1951 Census of displaced persons, 7,226,000 Muslims went to Pakistan from India while 7,249,000 Hindus and Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan immediately after partition.
The newly formed governments were completely unequipped to deal with migrations of such staggering magnitude, and massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the border. Estimates of the number of deaths range around roughly 500,000, with low estimates at 200,000 and high estimates at 1,000,000.[125]
1951 to 2000
Universal acceptance of international laws, defining and forbidding genocide was achieved in 1948, with the promulgation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). The CPPCG was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951 (Resolution 260 (III)). After the minimum 20 countries became parties to the Convention, it came into force as international law on 12 January 1951. At that time however, only two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) were parties to the treaty, which caused the Convention to languish for over four decades.
Australia 1900-1969
Sir Ronald Wilson, former president of Australia's Human Rights Commission thinks that Australia's "Stolen Generation" — where from 1900 to 1970, 20,000 to 25,000 Aboriginal children were forcibly separated from their natural families (see the Bringing Them Home report)[126] — "It clearly was attempted genocide ... [because it] was believed that the Aboriginal people would die out".[127] However the nature and extent of the removals have been disputed within Australia, with some commentators questioning the findings contained in the report and asserting that the Stolen Generation has been exaggerated. Not only has the number of children removed from their parents been questioned, but also the intent and effects of the government policy.[126]
Guatemala 1968-1996
During the Guatemalan civil war, some 200,000 people died. More than one million people were forced to flee their homes and hundreds of villages were destroyed. The officially chartered Historical Clarification Commission attributed more than 93% of documented violations of human rights; and that Maya Indians accounted for 83% of the victims. It concluded in 1999 that state actions constituted genocide.[128][129]
In 1999, Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchú brought a case against the military leadership in a Spanish Court. Six officials, among them Efraín Ríos Montt and Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores, were formally charged on 7 July 2006 to appear in the Spanish National Court after Spain's Constitutional Court ruled in 2005 that Spanish courts can exercise universal jurisdiction over war crimes committed during the Guatemalan Civil War[130]
Bangladesh War of 1971
In 1997 R. J. Rummel published a book which is on the web called "Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900", In Chapter 8 called "Statistics Of Pakistan's Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources" In it he looks at the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Rummel wrote:
- In East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) [The President of Pakistan, General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, and his top generals] also planned to murder its Bengali intellectual, cultural, and political elite. They also planned to indiscriminately murder hundreds of thousands of its Hindus and drive the rest into India. And they planned to destroy its economic base to insure that it would be subordinate to West Pakistan for at least a generation to come. This plan may be perceived as genocide.[91]
Rummel goes on to collate the what considers the most credible estimates published by others into what he calls democide. He writes that "Consolidating both ranges, I give a final estimate of Pakistan's democide to be 300,000 to 3,000,000, or a prudent 1,500,000." Other authors like Anthony Mascarenhas and Donald W. Beachler have cited a figure ranging between 1 - 3 million civilians killed by Pakistan Army;[131] Bleacher states that both Pakistan and its primary ally USA have denied Genocide allegations.[132] National Geographic and the Guinness Book of World Records state that 3 million were killed. <citation>
A case was filed in the Federal Court of Australia on 20 September 2006 for alleged crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during 1971 by the Pakistani Armed Forces and its collaborators:[133]
| “ | We are glad to announce that a case has been filed in the Federal Magistrate's Court of Australia today under the Genocide Conventions Act 1949 and War Crimes Act. This is the first time in history that someone is attending a court proceeding in relation to the [alleged] crimes of Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during 1971 by the Pakistani Armed Forces and its collaborators. The Proceeding number is SYG 2672 of 2006. On 25 October 2006, a direction hearing will take place in the Federal Magistrates Court of Australia, Sydney registry before Federal Magistrate His Honor Nicholls. | ” |
On 21 May 2007, at the request of the applicant "Leave is granted to the applicant to discontinue his application filed on 20 September 2006." (FILE NO: (P)SYG2672/2006)[134]
The Guinness Book of Records lists the atrocities in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) as one of the top 5 genocides in the 20th century.[135]
Burundi 1972 and 1993
Since Burundi's independence in 1962, there have been two events called genocides in the country. The 1972 mass-killings of Hutu by the Tutsi army,[136] and the 1993 killing of Tutsi by the Hutu population that is recognised as a genocide in the final report of the International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi presented to the United Nations Security Council in 2002.[137]
Equatorial Guinea
Francisco Macias Nguema was the first President of Equatorial Guinea, from 1968 until his overthrow in 1979.[138] During his presidency, his country was nicknamed "the Auschwitz of Africa". Nguema’s regime was characterized by its abandonment of all government functions except internal security, which was accomplished by terror; he acted as chief judge and sentenced thousands to death. This led to the death or exile of up to 1/3 of the country's population. Out of a population of 300,000, an estimated 80,000 had been killed, in particular those of the Bubi ethnic minority on Bioko associated with relative wealth and intellectualism.[139][140] Uneasy around educated people, he had killed everyone who wore spectacles. All schools were ordered closed in 1975. The economy collapsed, and skilled citizens and foreigners left.[141]
On August 3, 1979, he was overthrown by Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.[142] Macias Nguema was captured, tried for genocide and other crimes along with 10 others. All of them were found guilty, four received terms of imprisonment, while Nguema and the other six were executed a few weeks later on September 29.[143][144]
John B. Quigley in The Genocide Convention: An International Law Analysis points out that at Macias Nguema's trial for genocide that Equatorial Guinea had not ratified the Genocide convention and that records of the court proceedings show that there was some confusion over whether Nguema and his co-defendants were tried under the laws of Spain (the former colonial power), or whether the trial was justified on the claim that the Genocide Convention was part of customary international law. Quigley states that "The Macias case stands out as the most confusing of domestic genocide prosecutions from the standpoint of the applicable law. The Macias conviction is also problematic from the standpoint of the identity of the protected group."[145]
Cambodia
- See also: Autogenocide, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and Democratic Kampuchea
The Khmer Rouge, or more formally, the Communist Party of Kampuchea, led by Pol Pot, Ta Mok and other leaders, organized the mass killing of ideologically suspect groups, ethnic minorities like the ethnic Vietnamese, Chinese (or Sino-Khmers), Chams and Thais, former civil servants, former government soldiers, Buddhist monks, secular intellectuals and professionals, and former city dwellers. Khmer Rouge cadres defeated in factional struggles were also liquidated in purges. The number of the victims is estimated at approximately 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975-1979, including deaths from slave labour.[146]
This episode is widely seen as a genocide. For example "since 1994, the award-winning Cambodian Genocide Program"[146] has been included as part of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University's MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and in 2003 Khieu Samphan, the Cambodian head of state under the Khmer Rouge, was quoted as saying "I have found it so difficult to believe what people told me of what happened under the Khmer Rouge regime, but today, I am very clear that there was genocide"[147]
The killings of Cambodia's Muslim Cham population by the Khmer rouge is also considered genocide. During the massacres by the government, a disproportionate number of Chams were killed compared with ethnic Khmers. Ysa Osman, a researcher at the Documentation Center of Cambodia concludes,"Perhaps as many as 500,000 died. They were considered the Khmer Rouge's No. 1 enemy. The plan was to exterminate them all" because "they stood out. They worshiped their own god. Their diet was different. Their names and language were different. They lived by different rules. The Khmer Rouge wanted everyone to be equal, and when the Chams practiced Islam they did not appear to be equal. So they were punished."[148]
In 1997 the Cambodian Government asked the United Nations assistance in setting up a genocide tribunal. It took nine years to agree to shape and structure of the court — a hybrid of Cambodia and international laws — before in 2006 the judges were sworn in.[149][150][151] The investigating judges were presented with the names of five possible suspects by the prosecution on 18 July 2007.[149] On 19 September 2007 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He will face Cambodian and foreign judges at the special genocide tribunal.[152]
East Timor under Indonesian occupation
East Timor was occupied by Indonesia from 1975 to 1999 as annexed territory with Indonesian provincial status. A detailed statistical report prepared for the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor cited a lower range of 102,800 conflict-related deaths in the period 1974-1999, namely, approximately 18,600 killings and 84,200 'excess' deaths from hunger and illness, most of which occurred during the Indonesian occupation.[153] Earlier estimates of deaths during the occupation range from 60,000 to 200,000.[154]
According to Sian Powell writing in The Australian, a UN report states that the Indonesian military used starvation as a weapon to exterminate the East Timorese, along with Napalm and chemical weapons, obtained from the United States, which poisoned the food and water supply.[155] Ben Kiernan has written in War, Genocide, and Resistance in East Timor, 1975–99: Comparative Reflections on Cambodia that "the crimes committed ... in East Timor, with a toll of 150,000 in a population of 650,000, clearly meet a range of sociological definitions of genocide used by most scholars of the phenomenon, who see both political and ethnic groups as possible victims of genocide. The victims in East Timor included not only that substantial 'part' of the Timorese 'national group' targeted for destruction because of their resistance to Indonesian annexation—along with their relatives, as we shall see—but also most members of the twenty-thousand strong ethnic Chinese minority prominent in the towns of East Timor, whom Indonesian forces singled out for destruction, apparently because of their ethnicity 'as such.'"[156][157] As may be noted from the title, Ben Kiernan draws a comparison with the Khmer Rouge Cambodian genocide, accusing the west of hypocrisy in ignoring one whilst protesting about the other.
On August 30, 1999, a United Nations-supervised popular referendum was held. The East Timorese voted for full independence from Indonesia, but violent clashes, instigated primarily by the Indonesian military and aided by Timorese pro-Indonesia militias, the most notable being led by Eurico Guterres, broke out soon afterwards. A peacekeeping force (INTERFET, led by Australia) intervened to restore order.
Sabra-Shatila, Lebanon
The Sabra and Shatila massacre was carried out in September 1982 against Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Lebanese Maronite Christian/Phalange militias, near the beginning of the 1982–2000 South Lebanon conflict. The number of victims of the massacre is estimated at 700-3500. Responsibility for the massacre has been attributed to the Phalangists as the perpetrators, and indirectly to Israel as the occupying army.[158]
On December 16, 1982, the United Nations General Assembly condemned the massacre and declared it to be an act of genocide.[159] Paragraph 2, which "resolved that the massacre was an act of genocide", was adopted by ninety-eight votes to nineteen, with twenty-three abstentions: All Western democracies abstained from voting.[160][161]
According to William Schabas, director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland,[162] "the term genocide (...) had obviously been chosen to embarrass Israel rather than out of any concern with legal precision”.[161] This opinion is a reflection of the comments made by some of the delegates who took part in the debate. While all acknowledged that it was a massacre, the claim that it was a genocide was disputed, for example the delegate for Canada stated "[t]he term genocide cannot, in our view, be applied to this particular inhuman act".[161] The delegate of Singapore added that "[his] delegation regret[ted] the use of the term "an act of genocide" (...) [as] the term 'genocide' is used to mean acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group".[161] and that "[he] also question[ned] whether the General Assembly ha[d] the competence to make such determination",[161] and the United States commented that "[w]hile the criminality of the massacre was beyond question, it was a serious and reckless misuse of language to label this tragedy genocide as defined in the 1948 Convention (...)".[161]
Citing Sabra and Shatila as an example, Leo Kuper notes the reluctance of the United Nations to respond or take action in actual cases of genocide for most egregious violators, but its willingness to charge "certain vilified states, and notably Israel", with genocide. In his view:
This availability of a scapegoat state in the UN restores members with a record of murderous violence against their subjects a self-righteous sense of moral purpose as principled members of 'the community of nations'... Estimates of the numbers killed in the Sabra-Shatila massacres range from about four hundred to eight hundred - a minor catastrophe in the contemporary statistics of mass murder. Yet a carefully planned UN campaign found Israel guilty of genocide, without reference to the role of the Phalangists in perpetrating the massacres on their own initiative. The procedures were unique in the annals of the United Nations.[163]
In a Belgium court case lodged on 18 June 2001 by 23 survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres, the prosecution alleged that Ariel Sharon, former Israeli defense minister (and Israel's Prime Minister in 2001–2006), as well as other Israelis committed a number of crimes including genocide,[164] because "all the constituent elements of the crime of genocide, as defined in the 1948 Convention and as reproduced in article 6 of the ICC Statute and in article 1§1 of the law of 16 June 1993,29 are present".[165] This allegation was not tested in Belgium court because on 12 F