Genocide

Genocide means extermination of people belonging to an ethnic or political group, although alternate definitions abound (see definition of genocide).

Major cases of genocide

Events that are obvious 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 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by 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.

Events commonly called genocide despite the fact they are technically either mass murder or a war crime in whole or part :

• Extermination of ethnic groups by the Soviet communist government.
  • While many of the killings committed by the Soviet government were on political or economic grounds, and thus mass murder not genocide, the Soviets targeted many ethnic or religious groups they considered to be filled with anti-Communists. These groups included: [3],[4]
    • Ukrainians
    • Crimean Tatars
    • Don Cossacks
    • Chechens
    • Volga Germans
    • Kalmyks
    • Meskhetians
    • Lithuanians
    • Latvians
    • Estonians
    • Jews
    • Orthodox priests
    • others

• Genocide by the People's Republic of China
  • 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.

• Japanese genocides before and during World War II (1920s-1945).
  • Nanjing Massacre: approximately 300,000 people killed during the three months following the fall of Nanjing to the Japanese. Genocide targeted at Chinese at other places of China: Manchuria, the Wan Bao Hill Incident, Xiangyang.
  • Genocide also targeted at Koreans, Philippines, Dutch (Netherlands), Vietnamese, Indonesians and Burmese.

• Cambodia (late 1960s-1979)
  • 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)
  • Pol Pot also murdered many other groups as part of a wider campaign of mass murder, such as intellectuals and professionals
  • The genocidal Pol Pot regime was removed by a Vietnamese occupation. However, 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.

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[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