Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people[a] in whole or in part. The term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) of 1948 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's 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]
The preamble to the CPPCG 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", and it also states that "at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity."[1] Genocide is widely considered to be the epitome of human evil,[2] and has been referred to as the "crime of crimes".[3][4][5] The Political Instability Task Force estimated that 43 genocides occurred between 1956 and 2016, resulting in 50million deaths.[6] The UNHCR estimated that a further 50million had been displaced by such episodes of violence.[6]
The debate continues over what legally constitutes genocide. One definition is any conflict that the International Criminal Court has so designated. Mohammed Hassan Kakar argues that the definition should include political groups or any group so defined by the perpetrator.[7] He prefers the definition from Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, which defines genocide as "a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group so defined by the perpetrator."[8]
In literature, some scholars have popularly emphasized the role that the Soviet Union played in excluding political groups from the international definition of genocide, which is contained in the Genocide Convention of 1948,[9] and in particular they have written that Joseph Stalin may have feared greater international scrutiny of the political killings that occurred in the country, such as the Great Purge;[10] however, this claim is not supported by evidence. The Soviet view was shared and supported by many diverse countries, and they were also in line with Raphael Lemkin's original conception,[b] and it was originally promoted by the World Jewish Congress.[12]
After WWII ended in Europe, about 11–12 million[13][14][15]Germans were forced to flee from or were expelled from several countries throughout Eastern and Central Europe, including Russia, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia and the prewar territory of Poland.[16] A large number of them were also displaced when Germany's former eastern provinces either passed to Soviet Russia or became part of Poland in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement (Poland lost some of these territories in various periods over several centuries),[16] regardless of the fact that those lands had been under heavy German ethnic and cultural influence since the German colonization of them in the Late Middle Ages or the 19th century,[17][18][19] and the fact that they had been under German rule since the conquests and expansion of Brandenburg and Prussia. The majority of these expelled and displaced Germans ended up in what remained of Germany, with some of them being sent to West Germany and others being sent to East Germany.[20]
The ethnic cleansing of the Germans was the largest displacement of a single European population in modern history.[13][14] Estimates for the total number of those who died during the removals range from 500,000 to 2,000,000, where the higher figures include "unsolved cases" of persons reported as missing and presumed dead. Many German civilians were sent to internment and labor camps as well, where they often died.[where?] Usually, the events are either classified as a population transfer,[21][22] or they are classified as an ethnic cleansing.[23][24]Felix Ermacora, among a minority of legal scholars, equated ethnic cleansing with genocide,[25][26][pageneeded] and stated that the expulsion of the Germans therefore constituted genocide.[27]
Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs who had co-existed for a millennium attacked each other in what is argued to be a retributive genocide of horrific proportions,[32] accompanied by arson, looting, rape and the abduction of women. The Indian government claimed that 33,000 Hindu and Sikh women were abducted, and the Pakistani government claimed that 50,000 Muslim women were abducted during riots. By 1949, there were governmental claims that 12,000 women had been recovered in India and 6,000 women had been recovered in Pakistan.[33] By 1954 there were 20,728 recovered Muslim women and 9,032 Hindu and Sikh women recovered from Pakistan.[34]
This partition triggered what was one of the world's largest mass migrations in modern history.[35] Around 11.2 million people successfully crossed the India-West Pakistan border, mostly through the Punjab. 6.5 million Muslims migrated from India to West Pakistan and 4.7 million Hindus and Sikhs from West Pakistan arrived in India. However many people went missing.[citation needed]
A study of the total population inflows and outflows in the districts of the Punjab, using the data provided by the 1931 and 1951 Census has led to an estimate of 1.26 million missing Muslims who left western India but did not reach Pakistan.[29] The corresponding number of missing Hindus/Sikhs along the western border is estimated to be approximately 0.84 million.[29] This puts the total number of missing people due to Partition-related migration along the Punjabi border at around 2.23 million.[29]
Nisid Hajari, in Midnight's Furies (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) wrote:[36]
Gangs of killers set whole villages aflame, hacking to death men and children and the aged while carrying off young women to be raped. Some British soldiers and journalists who had witnessed the Nazi death camps claimed Partition's brutalities were worse: pregnant women had their breasts cut off and babies hacked out of their bellies; infants were found literally roasted on spits.
By the time the violence had subsided, Hindus and Sikhs had been completely wiped out of Pakistan's West Punjab and similarly Muslims were completely wiped out of India's East Punjab.[37]
Partition also affected other areas of the subcontinent besides the Punjab. Anti-Hindu riots took place in Hyderabad, Sind. On 6 January anti-Hindu riots broke out in Karachi, leading to an estimate of 1100 casualties.[38] 776,000 Sindhi Hindus fled to India.[39]
Anti-Muslim riots also rocked Delhi. According to Gyanendra Pandey's recent account of the Delhi violence between 20,000 and 25,000 Muslims in the city lost their lives.[40] Tens of thousands of Muslims were driven to refugee camps regardless of their political affiliations and numerous historic sites in Delhi such as the Purana Qila, Idgah and Nizamuddin were transformed into refugee camps. At the culmination of the tensions in Delhi 330,000 Muslims were forced to flee the city to Pakistan. The 1951 Census registered a drop of the Muslim population in Delhi from 33.22% in 1941 to 5.33% in 1951.[41]
The Hyderabad massacres[42] refers to the mass killings and massacre of Hyderabadi Muslims that took place simultaneously with the Indian annexation of Hyderabad (Operation Polo). The killings were perpetrated by local Hindu fanatic militias, and by the Indian Army. The death toll of Muslims massacred in the process has been estimated to be at least 200,000.[43] Apart from mass killings, activists such as Sundarayya mention systematic torture, rapes and lootings by Indian soldiers.[44] The violence was committed by Hindu militias included the desecration of mosques, mass killings, the seizure of houses and land, looting and burning of Muslim shops, as well as the rape and abduction of Muslim women.[45][46][47]
Since 1951
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 necessary 20 countries became parties to the convention, it came into force as international law on 12 January 1951.[1] 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.[48]
In 1964, towards the end of the Zanzibar Revolution—which led to the overthrow of the Sultan of Zanzibar and his mainly Arab government by local African revolutionaries—John Okello claimed in radio speeches to have killed or imprisoned tens of thousands of the Sultan's "enemies and stooges",[49] but estimates of the number of deaths vary greatly, from "hundreds" to 20,000. The New York Times and other Western newspapers gave figures of 2–4,000;[50][51] the higher numbers possibly were inflated by Okello's own broadcasts and exaggerated media reports.[49][52][53] The killing of Arab prisoners and their burial in mass graves was documented by an Italian film crew, filming from a helicopter, in Africa Addio.[54] Many Arabs fled to safety in Oman[52] and by Okello's order no Europeans were harmed.[55] The violence did not spread to Pemba.[53]
These events have been described by some as an act of genocide,[56][57][58] including genocide scholar Leo Kuper.[59]
After Nigeria gained its independence from British rule in 1960, stigma towards the Igbo ethnic group of the east increased. When a supposedly Igbo led coup[60] overthrew and murdered senior government officials, the other ethnic groups of Nigeria, particularly the Hausa, launched a massive anti-Igbo campaign. This campaign began with the 1966 anti-Igbo pogrom and the 1966 Nigerian counter-coup. In the pogrom, Igbo property was destroyed and up to 300,000 Igbos fled the North and sought safety in the East and about 30,000 Igbos were killed. In the counter-coup that followed, Igbo civilians and military personnel were also systematically murdered.[61]
On 30 May 1967, when the Igbos declared their independence from Nigeria and formed the breakaway state of Biafra,[62] the Nigerian and British governments launched a total blockade of Biafra.[63] Initially on the offensive, Biafra began to suffer and its government frequently had to move because the Nigerian army kept on conquering its capital cities. The main cause of death was starvation, which occurred after the middle of the war.[64] Children were often afflicted with Kwashiorkor, a disease caused by malnutrition. The people resorted to cannibalism on many occasions.[65] The documentation of the suffering of the Igbo children is attributed to the work of the French Red Cross and other Christian organisations. There are many estimates for the death toll of the Igbo in the genocide. The number of soldiers who were killed in the war is estimated to be 100,000 and the number of civilians who were also killed ranges from 500,000 to 3.5 million. More than half of those who died in the war were children.[63] Historians, such as Chima Korieh and Apollos Nwauwa, have argued that the pogroms against Igbos and Nigeria's blockade of Biafra constitute acts of genocide.[66]
Currently, Nigeria still suppresses peaceful protests by Biafra independence hopefuls, often by sending soldiers to beat protestors and even to kill them.[67]
Cambodia (1975–1979)
Rooms of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum contain thousands of photos of victims which were taken by the Khmer Rouge.
The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, Ta Mok and other leaders, organized the mass killing of ideologically suspect groups, ethnic minorities such as 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 who were defeated in factional struggles were also liquidated in purges. Man-made famines and slave labor resulted in many hundreds of thousands of deaths.[75] Craig Etcheson suggested that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2million. After 5 years of researching 20,000 grave sites, he concluded that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution."[76] However, some scholars argued that the Khmer Rouge were not racist and they had no intention to exterminate ethnic minorities or the Cambodian people as a whole; in the view of these scholars, the Khmer Rouge's brutality was the product of an extreme version of communist ideology.[77]
On 6 June 2003, the Cambodian government and the United Nations agreed to set up the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), which would exclusively focus on the crimes which were committed by the most senior Khmer Rouge officials during the period of Khmer Rouge rule from 1975 to 1979.[78][79] The judges were sworn in during early July 2006.[80] The investigating judges were presented with the names of five possible suspects by the prosecution on 18 July 2007.[80][81]
Khieu Samphan at a public hearing before the Pre-Trial Cambodia Tribunal on 3 July 2009.
Kang Kek Iew was formally charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity and detained by the Tribunal on 31 July 2007.[82] He was indicted on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity on 12 August 2008.[83] His appeal was rejected on 3 February 2012, and he continued serving a sentence of life imprisonment.[84]Nuon Chea, a former prime minister, was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and several other crimes under Cambodian law on 15 September 2010.[78] He was transferred into the custody of the ECCC on 19 September 2007. His trial began on 27 June 2011.[85][86] On 16 November 2018, he was sentenced to a life in prison for genocide.[87]Khieu Samphan, a former head of state, was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and several other crimes under Cambodian law on 15 September 2010.[78] He was transferred into the custody of the ECCC on 19 September 2007. His trial also began on 27 June 2011.[85][86] On 16 November 2018, he was sentenced to a life in prison for genocide.[87]Ieng Sary, a former foreign minister, was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and several other crimes under Cambodian law on 15 September 2010.[82] He was transferred into the custody of the ECCC on 12 November 2007. His trial began on 27 June 2011.[85][86] He died in March 2013.[88]Ieng Thirith, wife of Ieng Sary and a former minister for social affairs, was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and several other crimes under Cambodian law on 15 September 2010.[82] She was transferred into the custody of the ECCC on 12 November 2007. Proceedings against her have been suspended pending a health evaluation.[86][89]
Some of the international jurists and the Cambodian government disagreed over whether any other people should be tried by the Tribunal.[81]
During the Guatemalan civil war, between 140,000 and 200,000 people are estimated to have died and more than one million people fled their homes and hundreds of villages were destroyed. The officially chartered Historical Clarification Commission attributed more than 93% of all documented human rights violations to U.S.–supported Guatemala's military government; and estimated that MayaIndians accounted for 83% of the victims.[90] Although the war lasted from 1960 to 1996, the Historical Clarification Commission concluded that genocide might have occurred between 1981 and 1983,[91] when the government and guerrilla had the fiercest and bloodiest combats and strategies, especially in the oil-rich area of Ixcán on the northern part of Quiché.[92] The total numbers of killed or "disappeared" was estimated to be around 200,000,[93] although this is an extrapolation that was done by the Historical Clarification Commission based on the cases that they documented, and there were no more than 50,000.[94] The commission also found that U.S. corporations and government officials "exercised pressure to maintain the country's archaic and unjust socio-economic structure", and that the Central Intelligence Agency backed illegal counterinsurgency operations.[95]
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 could exercise universal jurisdiction over war crimes committed during the Guatemalan Civil War.[97] In May 2013, Rios Montt was found guilty of genocide for killing 1,700 indigenous Ixil Mayans during 1982–83 by a Guatemalan court and sentenced to 80 years in prison.[96] However, on 20 May 2013, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala overturned the conviction, voiding all proceedings back to 19 April and ordering that the trial be "reset" to that point, pending a dispute over the recusal of judges.[98][99] Ríos Montt's trial was supposed to resume in January 2015,[100] but it was suspended after a judge was forced to recuse herself.[101] Doctors declared Ríos Montt unfit to stand trial on 8 July 2015, noting that he would be unable to understand the charges brought against him,[102] subsequently dying in 2018. As of 2023,[update] the court cases around the Guatemalan genocide remain in limbo.[103]
Francisco Macías Nguema was the first President of Equatorial Guinea, from 1968 until his overthrow in 1979.[108] 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 his country's chief judge and sentenced thousands of people to death. This led to the death or exile of up to 1/3 of the country's population. From 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 education.[109] Uneasy around educated people, he had killed everyone who wore glasses.[110] All schools were ordered closed in 1975. The economy collapsed and skilled citizens and foreigners emigrated.[111]
On 3 August 1979, he was overthrown by his nephew Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.[112] Macías Nguema was captured and tried for genocide and other crimes along with 10 others. All were found guilty, four received terms of imprisonment and Nguema and the other six were executed on 29 September.[113]
[John B. Quigley] noted at Macías Nguema's trial 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 government) or whether the trial was justified on the claim that the Genocide Convention was part of customary international law. Quigley stated, "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."[114]
In the mid-1960s, hundreds of thousands of leftists and others who were tied to the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) were massacred by the Indonesian military and right-wing paramilitary groups after a failed coup attempt which was blamed on the Communists. At least 500,000 people were killed over a period of several months, and thousands of other people were interned in prisons and concentration camps under extremely inhumane conditions.[115] The violence culminated in the fall of President Sukarno and the commencement of Suharto's thirty-year authoritarian rule. Some scholars have described the killings as genocide,[116][117][pageneeded] including Robert Cribb, Jess Melvin and Joshua Oppenheimer.[118][119][120]
According to scholars and a 2016 international tribunal held in the Hague, Western powers, including Great Britain, Australia and the United States, aided and abetted the mass killings.[121] U.S. Embassy officials provided kill lists to the Indonesian military which contained the names of 5,000 suspected high-ranking members of the PKI.[122][123] Many of those accused of being Communists were journalists, trade union leaders and intellectuals.[124] Historian Geoffrey B. Robinson states that the context of the cold war is crucial in understanding the violence and provided a conducive environment to the perpetration.[125]
Methods of killing included beheading, evisceration, dismemberment and castration.[126] A top-secret CIA report stated that the massacres "rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s."[123] While there is contention in it being considered alongside genocides, Robinson states "there is no doubt that it was one of the largest and swiftest instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century, nor that it meets the legal definition of extermination."[127]
An estimated 100,000+ Papuans have died since Indonesia took control of West New Guinea from the Dutch Government in 1963.[128] An academic report published by Yale Law School alleged that "contemporary evidence set out [in this report] suggests that the Indonesian government has committed proscribed acts with the intent to destroy the West Papuans as such, in violation of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the customary international law prohibition this Convention embodies."[129] Historian Geoffrey Robinson highlights Indonesian policies of assimilation forced onto West Papuans which have been described as cultural genocide.[130]
According to Sian Powell, a UN report confirmed that the Indonesian military used starvation as a weapon and employed Napalm and chemical weapons, which poisoned the food and water supply.[135] Ben Kiernan wrote:
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... [with] 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... but also most members of the twenty-thousand strong ethnic Chinese minority.[139][140]
Immediately after the Bangladesh independence war of 1971, those Biharis who were still living in Bangladesh were accused of being "pro-Pakistani" "traitors" by the Bengalis, and an estimated 1,000 to 150,000 Biharis were killed by Bengali mobs in what has been described as a "Retributive Genocide".[141][142]Mukti Bahini has been accused of crimes against minority Biharis by the Government of Pakistan. According to a white paper released by the Pakistani government, the Awami League killed 30,000 Biharis and West Pakistanis. Bengali mobs were often armed, sometimes with machetes and bamboo staffs.[143] 300 Biharis were killed by Bengali mobs in Chittagong. The massacre was used by the Pakistani Army as a justification to launch Operation Searchlight against the Bengali nationalist movement.[144] Biharis were massacred in Jessore, Panchabibi and Khulna (where, in March 1972, 300 to 1,000 Biharis were killed and their bodies were thrown into a nearby river).[145][146][147] Having generated unrest among Bengalis,[148] Biharis became the target of retaliation. The Minorities at Risk project puts the number of Biharis killed during the war at 1,000;[149] however, political scientist and statitician R. J. Rummel cites a "likely" figure of 150,000.[150]
An academic consensus holds that the events that took place during the Bangladesh Liberation War constituted genocide.[151] During the nine-month-long conflict an estimated 300,000 to 3 million people were killed and the Pakistani armed forces raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bangladeshi women and girls in an act of genocidal rape.[152]
A 2008 study estimated that up to 269,000 civilians died in the conflict; the authors of the study noted that this estimate is far higher than two earlier estimates.[153] Although Bangladesh is an officially secular country,[154] professor of political scientist Donald Beachler argues that the events leading up to East Pakistan's secession amounted to religious and ethnic genocide.[155]
2013 Shahbag protests demanding the death penalty for the war criminals of the 1971 war
A case was filed in the Federal Court of Australia on 20 September 2006 for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide during 1971 by the Pakistani Armed Forces and its collaborators:[156]
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, the case was discontinued.[157]
In Bangladesh the persecution of the indigenous tribes of the Chittagong Hill Tracts such as the Chakma, Marma, Tripura and others, who are mainly Buddhists, has been described as genocidal.[158] There are also accusations of Chakmas being forced to leave their religion, many of them children who have been abducted for this purpose. The conflict started soon after Bangladeshi independence in 1971, when the Constitution imposed Bengali as the only sole language and a military coup happened in 1975. Subsequently, the government encouraged and sponsored the massive settlement of Bangladeshis in the region,[159] which changed the indigenous population's demographics from 98 percent in 1971 to fifty percent by 2000.[160] The Bangladeshi government sent one third of its military forces to the region to support the settlers, sparking a protracted guerilla war between Hill tribes and the military.[161] During this conflict, which officially ended in 1997, and during the subsequent period, a large number of human rights violations against the indigenous peoples have been reported, with violence against indigenous women being particularly extreme.[162]
Bengali soldiers and some fundamentalist settlers were also accused of raping native Jumma (Chakma) women "with impunity", with the Bangladeshi security forces doing little or nothing to protect the Jummas and instead assisting the rapists and settlers.[163][164]
In 1975 the Pathet Lao was able to win the Laotian Civil War, they abolished the constitutional monarchy and established a Marxist–Leninist state. Many ethnic Hmong fought for the CIA-backed Secret Army against the Pathet Lao during the civil war,[165] and have fought an insurgency against the Laotian government since 1975, as a result ethnic Hmong in Laos have been subject to human rights abuses and persecution.[166][167][168] Some have labelled this persecution as genocide.[169][170]Vang Pobzeb of the Lao Human Rights Council estimated that 300,000 Hmong and Lao people have been killed by the Vietnamese and Laotian governments between 1975 and 2002, claiming that the Laotian government engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide.[171]
Argentina
Commemoration in Argentina
In September 2006, Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, who had been the police commissioner of the province of Buenos Aires during the Dirty War (1976–1983), was found guilty of six counts of murder, six counts of unlawful imprisonment and seven counts of torture in a federal court. The judge who presided over the case, Carlos Rozanski, described the offences as part of a systematic attack that was intended to destroy parts of society that the victims represented and as such was genocide. Rozanski noted that CPPCG does not include the elimination of political groups (because that group was removed at the behest of Stalin),[172] but instead based his findings on 11 December 1946 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96 barring acts of genocide "when racial, religious, political and other groups have been destroyed, entirely or in part" (which passed unanimously), because he considered the original UN definition to be more legitimate than the politically compromised CPPCG definition.[173]
Ethiopia's former Soviet-backed MarxistdictatorMengistu Haile Mariam was tried in an Ethiopian court, in absentia, for his role in mass killings. Mengistu's charge sheet and evidence list covered 8,000 pages. The evidence against him included signed execution orders, videos of torture sessions, and personal testimonies.[174] The trial began in 1994 and on 12 December 2006 Mengistu was found guilty of genocide and other offences. He was sentenced to life in prison in January 2007.[175][176] Ethiopian law includes attempts to annihilate political groups in its definition of genocide.[177] Including Mengistu, 55 Derg officials were found guilty of genocide during the trials.[178] Several former Derg members have been sentenced to death.[179]Zimbabwe refused to respond to Ethiopia's extradition request for Mengistu, which permitted him to avoid a life sentence. Mengistu supported Robert Mugabe, the former long-standing President of Zimbabwe, during his leadership of Ethiopia.[180]
Michael Clough, a US attorney and a longtime Ethiopia observer, told Voice of America in a statement released on 13 December 2006,[181]
The biggest problem with prosecuting Mengistu for genocide is that his actions did not necessarily target a particular group. They were directed against anybody who was opposing his government, and they were generally much more political than based on any ethnic targeting. In contrast, the irony is the Ethiopian government itself has been accused of genocide based on atrocities committed in Gambella. I'm not sure that they qualify as genocide either. But in Gambella, the incidents, which were well documented in a human rights report of about 2 years ago, were clearly directed at a particular group, the tribal group, the Anuak.
An estimated 150,000 university students, intellectuals, and politicians were killed during Mengistu's rule.[182]Amnesty International estimates that up to 500,000 people were killed during the Ethiopian Red Terror[183]Human Rights Watch described the Red Terror as "one of the most systematic uses of mass murder by a state ever witnessed in Africa".[174] During his reign it was not uncommon to see students, suspected government critics or rebel sympathisers hanging from lampposts. Mengistu himself is alleged to have murdered opponents by garroting or shooting them, saying that he was leading by example.[184]
After Idi Amin Dada overthrew the regime of Milton Obote in 1971, he declared that the Acholi and Lango tribes were his enemies, because Obote was a Lango and Amin saw their domination of the army as a threat to his rule.[188] In January 1972, Amin issued an order to the Ugandan army which commanded it to assemble and kill all Acholi and Lango soldiers, and then, he ordered the Ugandan army to round up all Acholi and Lango soldiers and confine them within army barracks, there, they were either slaughtered by the Ugandan army or they were killed when the Ugandan air force bombed the barracks.[188]
In August of that same year, Amin ordered the mass expulsion of the Indian community.[189][190] Amin declared God had spoken to him in a dream and told him not only to expel all Indian residents, but also to take revenge on the United Kingdom. Indian-Ugandans were given 90 days to leave the country, with many willingly doing so in fearing the same fate as the Acholi and Lango peoples months before. During this time, Ugandan soldiers engaged in theft and physical and sexual assault against Indians in the country.[191][bettersourceneeded] Amin cloaked the actions in black nationalist rhetoric, portraying the acts as necessary for transferring economic control into the hands of black Ugandans.[192] Indian refugees were largely accepted by the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, and India, with smaller numbers going to different countries. By 1979, the Indian community of Uganda was rumoured to be no more than 50 people, and there is no longer any identifiable "Indian-Ugandan" community anywhere in the world.[193]
Bush War (1981–1985)
The genocide under Amin would later lead to reprisals by Milton Obote's regime during the Ugandan Bush War, resulting in widespread human rights abuses which primarily targeted the Baganda people.[188] These abuses included the forced removal of 750,000 civilians from the area of the then Luweero District, including present-day Kiboga, Kyankwanzi, Nakaseke, and others. They were moved into refugee camps controlled by the military. Many civilians outside the camps, in what came to be known as the "Luweero triangle", were continuously abused as "guerrilla sympathizers". The International Committee of the Red Cross has estimated that by July 1985, the Obote regime had been responsible for more than 300,000 civilian deaths across Uganda.[194][195]
The regime of Saddam Hussein has been accused of committing multiple mass killings and genocides. According to Human Rights Watch, 290,000 Iraqis were killed or disappeared by Saddam's regime:
The estimate of 290,000 "disappeared" and presumed killed includes the following: more than 100,000 Kurds killed during the 1987-88 Anfal campaign and lead-up to it; between 50,000 and 70,000 Shi`a arrested in the 1980s and held indefinitely without charge, who remain unaccounted for today; an estimated 8,000 males of the Barzani clan removed from resettlement camps in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1983; 10,000 or more males separated from FeyliKurdish families and deported to Iran in the 1980s; an estimated 50,000 opposition activists, including Communists and other leftists, Kurds and other minorities, and out-of-favor Ba`thists, arrested and "disappeared" in the 1980s and 1990s; some 30,000 Iraqi Shi`a men rounded up after the abortive March 1991 uprising and not heard from since; hundreds of Shi`a clerics and their students arrested and "disappeared" after 1991; several thousand marsh Arabs who disappeared after being taken into custody during military operations in the southern marshlands; and those executed in detention-in some years several thousand-in so-called "prison cleansing" campaigns.[196]
On 23 December 2005, a Dutch court delivered its ruling in a case which was brought against Frans van Anraat, who had previously supplied chemicals to Iraq. The court ruled that "[it] thinks and considers it legally and convincingly proven that the Kurdish population meets the requirement under the genocide convention as an ethnic group. The court has no other conclusion than that these attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq." Because van Anraat supplied the chemicals before 16 March 1988, the date of the Halabja poison gas attack he was guilty of a war crime but he was not guilty of complicity in genocide.[197][198]
In the 1990s, the Mesopotamian Marshes of Iraq were drained for political motives, namely to force the Ahwaris out of the area and to punish them for their role in the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein's government.[199] However, the government's stated reasoning was to reclaim land for agriculture and exterminate breeding grounds for mosquitoes.[200] The displacement of more than 200,000 of the Ahwaris, and the associated state-sponsored campaign of violence against them, has led the United States and others to describe the draining of the marshes as ecocide, ethnic cleansing,[201][202] or genocide.[203]
On 5 June 1959, Shri Purshottam Trikamdas, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India, presented a report on Tibet to the International Commission of Jurists (an NGO). The press conference address on the report states in paragraph 26:
From the facts stated above the following conclusions may be drawn:... (e) To examine all such evidence obtained by this Committee and from other sources and to take appropriate action thereon and in particular to determine whether the crime of Genocide—for which already there is strong presumption—is established and, in that case, to initiate such action as envisaged by the Genocide Convention of 1948 and by the Charter of the United Nations for suppression of these acts and appropriate redress;[204]
The report by the International Commission of Jurists (1960) claimed that there was only a "cultural" genocide. ICJ Report (1960) page 346: "The committee found that acts of genocide had been committed in Tibet in an attempt to destroy the Tibetans as a religious group, and its report also stated that independent of any conventional obligation, such acts are acts of genocide. The committee did not find that there was sufficient proof of the destruction of Tibetans as a race, nation or ethnic group as such by methods that can be regarded as genocide in international law."
The Central Tibetan Administration and other Tibetans who work in the exile media have claimed that approximately 1.2million Tibetans have died of starvation, violence, or other indirect causes since 1950.[207] White states that "In all, over one million Tibetans, a fifth of Tibet's total population, had died as a result of the Chinese occupation right up until the end of the Cultural Revolution."[208] This figure has been refuted by Patrick French, the former Director of the Free Tibet Campaign in London.[209]
Jones argued that the struggle sessions which were held after the crushing of the 1959 Tibetan uprising may be considered acts of genocide, based on the claim that the conflict resulted in 92,000 deaths.[210] However, according to tibetologist Tom Grunfeld, "the veracity of such a claim is difficult to verify."[211]
Between 1956 and 1989, while Paraguay was under the military rule of General Alfredo Stroessner, the indigenous population of Paraguay lost more of its territory through confiscations than it ever lost during any other period in Paraguay's history and it was also subjected to systematic human rights abuses. In 1971, Mark Münzel, a German anthropologist, accused Stroessner of attempting to commit a genocide against the indigenous peoples of Paraguay[212] and Bartomeu Melià, a Jesuit anthropologist stated that the forced relocations of the indigenous peoples was an ethnocide.[213] In the early 1970s, the Stroessner regime was charged with being complicit in genocide by international human rights groups. However, because of the repressive actions which were undertaken against them by the state, the indigenous tribes politically organized themselves and as a result, they played a major role in bringing about the end of the military dictatorship and they also played a major role in Paraguay's eventual transition to democracy.[214][213][215]
The Aché of Eastern Paraguay were hardest-hit by the Stroessner regime's policies. Under Stroessner, the Paraguayan government promoted the exploitation of Aché territory for its natural resources by multinational corporations. During the 1960s and 1970s, 85 percent of the Aché tribe died, many of the Aché were hacked to death with machetes so room could be made for the timber industry, mining, farming and ranchers.[216] One estimate posits this amounts to 900 deaths.[217]
The Helmet massacre of the Tikuna people which occurred in 1988 was initially labeled a homicide. During the massacre four people died, nineteen were wounded, and ten disappeared. Since 1994, Brazilian courts have labeled the episode a genocide.[218] Thirteen men were convicted of genocide in 2001. In November 2004, after an appeal was filed before Brazil's federal court, the man initially found guilty of hiring men to carry out the genocide was acquitted, and the killers had their initial sentences of 15–25 years reduced to 12 years.[219]"
In November 2005, during an investigation which was code-named Operation Rio Pardo, Mario Lucio Avelar, a Brazilian public prosecutor in Cuiabá, told Survival International that he believed that there were sufficient grounds to prosecute the perpetrators of the genocide of the Rio Pardo Indians. In November 2006 twenty-nine people were arrested and others were implicated, such as a former police commander and the governor of Mato Grosso state.[220]
In 2006 the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court unanimously reaffirmed its ruling that the crime which is known as the Haximu massacre (perpetrated against the Yanomami people in 1993)[221] was a genocide and ruled that the decision of a federal court to sentence miners to 19 years in prison for genocide in connection with other offenses, such as smuggling and illegal mining, was valid.[221][222]
Zimbabwe
The Gukurahundi was a series of massacres of Ndebele civilians which were carried out by the Zimbabwe National Army from early 1983 to late 1987. Its name is derived from a Shona language term which reads "the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains" when it is loosely translated into English.[223] During the Rhodesian Bush War two rival nationalist parties, Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), had emerged in order to challenge Rhodesia's predominantly white government.[224] ZANU initially defined Gukurahundi as an ideological strategy which was aimed at carrying the war into major settlements and individual homesteads.[225] Following Mugabe's ascension to power, his government remained threatened by "dissidents"—disgruntled former guerrillas and supporters of ZAPU.[226] ZANU mainly recruited from the majority Shona people, whereas ZAPU received its greatest amount of support among the minority Ndebele. In early 1983, the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade, an infantrybrigade of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA), launched a crackdown against dissidents in Matabeleland North Province, a homeland of the Ndebele. Over the following two years, thousands of Ndebele were either detained by government forces and marched to re-education camps or they were summarily executed. Although there are different estimates, the consensus of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) is that more than 20,000 people were killed. The IAGS has classified the massacres as a genocide.[227]
What followed the April coup of 1978 was severe repression of a kind previously unknown in Afghanistan. American journalist and CNAS member Robert D. Kaplan argued that, while Afghanistan had been "poor" and "underdeveloped", it was a "relatively civilized" country that "had never known very much political repression" until 1978.[238] Political scientist Barnett Rubin wrote, "Khalq used mass arrests, torture, and secret executions on a scale Afghanistan had not seen since the time of Abdul Rahman Khan, and probably not even then".[239] After gaining power, the Khalqists unleashed a campaign of "red terror", killing more than 27,000 people in the Pul-e-Charkhi prison, prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.[238]
After Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, deposing and killing Hafizullah Amin in Operation Storm-333 and installing Babrak Karmal as General Secretary, the brutality of communists intensified. The army of the Soviet Union killed large numbers of Afghans, attempting to suppress resistance from the Afghan mujahideen.[240] Numerous mass murders were perpetrated by the Soviet Army during the summer of 1980. Soviet forces also launched chemical attacks against civilian populations.[241] During the 1980s, the communist PDPA regime also killed and tortured thousands of individuals in the Pul-e-Charkhi prison.[242]
One notorious atrocity was the Laghman massacre in April 1985 in the villages of Kas-Aziz-Khan, Charbagh, Bala Bagh, Sabzabad, Mamdrawer, Haider Khan and Pul-i-Joghi[243] in the Laghman Province. At least 500 civilians were killed.[244] In the Kulchabat, Bala Karz and Mushkizi massacre which was committed on 12 October 1983, the Red Army gathered 360 people at the village square and shot them, including 20 girls and over a dozen older people.[245][246][247] The Rauzdi massacre and Padkhwab-e Shana massacre were also documented.[248] Approximately 2 million Afghan civilians were killed by the Soviet military and its proxies during the Soviet invasion and occupation.[249]
Soviet Air Forces perpetrated scorched-earth strategy during its bombing campaigns, which consisted of carpet bombing of cities and indiscriminate attacks that destroyed entire villages. Millions of land-mines (often camouflaged as kids' playthings) were planted by Soviet military across Afghanistan. Around 90% of Kandahar's inhabitants were forcibly expelled, as a result of Soviet atrocities during the war.[250] Everything was the target in the country, from cities, villages, up to schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, factories and orchards. Soviet tactics included targeting areas which showed support for the Afghan resistance, and forcing the populace to flee the rural regions where the communists had no territorial control. Half of Afghanistan's 24,000 villages and most of the rural facilities were destroyed by the end of the war.[251][252] During the Soviet invasion and occupation between 1979 and 1992, more than 20% of the Afghan population were focibly displaced as refugees.[252][253]
Historians, academics and scholars have widely described the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan as a genocide. These include American professor Samuel Totten,[254] Australian professor Paul R. Bartrop,[254] political scientist Anthony James Joyce,[255] scholars from Yale Law School including W. Michael Reisman and Charles Norchi,[256] writer and journalist Rosanne Klass,[257] Canadian professor Adam Jones[258] and historian Mohammed Kakar.[259] American anthropologistLouis Dupree stated that Afghans were victims of "migratory genocide" implemented by Soviet military.[250]
Massacres of Hazaras and other groups by the Taliban
Between 1996 and 2001, 15 massacres were committed by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda; the United Nations stated: "These are the same types of war crimes as those which were committed in Bosnia and they should be prosecuted in international courts"[260] Following the 1997 massacre of 3,000 Taliban prisoners by Abdul Malik Pahlawan in Mazar-i-Sharif[261] (which the Hazaras did not commit[262]) thousands of Hazara men and boys were massacred by other Taliban members in the same city in August 1998.[263] After the attack, Mullah Niazi, the commander of the attackers and the new governor of Mazar, made the following declaration when he made separate speeches at several mosques in the city:
Last year you rebelled against us and killed us. From all your homes you shot at us. Now we are here to deal with you. ... Hazaras are not Muslim, they are Shia. They are kofr (infidels). The Hazaras killed our force here, and now we have to kill Hazaras.... If you do not show your loyalty, we will burn your houses, and we will kill you. You either accept to be Muslims or leave Afghanistan.... [W]herever you [Hazaras] go we will catch you. If you go up, we will pull you down by your feet; if you hide below, we will pull you up by your hair.... If anyone is hiding Hazaras in his house he too will be taken away. What [Hizb-i] Wahdat and the Hazaras did to the Talibs, we did worse... as many as they killed, we killed more.[264]
In these killings 2,000[265][262] to 5,000,[262] or perhaps up to 20,000[266] Hazara were systematically executed across the city.[262][266] Niamatullah Ibrahimi described the killings as "an act of genocide at full ferocity".[267] The Taliban searched for combat age males by conducting door to door searches of Hazara households,[262] shooting them and slitting their throats right in front of their families.[262]Human rights organizations reported that the dead were lying on the streets for weeks before the Taliban allowed their burial due to stench and fear of epidemics. There were also reports of Hazara women being abducted and kept as sex slaves.[265] The Hazara claim the Taliban executed 15,000 of their people in their campaign through northern and central Afghanistan.;[268] the United Nation investigated three mass graves allegedly containing the victims in 2002.[268] The persecution of Hazaras has been called genocide by media outlets.[269]
Exhumed mass grave of Srebrenica massacre victims in 2007
In July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces killed more than 8,000[270][271]Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), mainly men and boys, both in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War. The killing was perpetrated by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) which were under the command of General Ratko Mladić. The Secretary-General of the United Nations described the mass murder as the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War.[272][273] A paramilitary unit from Serbia known as the Scorpions, officially a part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991, participated in the massacre,[274][275] along with several hundred Russian and Greek volunteers.[276]
In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) delivered its first conviction for the crime of genocide, against General Krstić for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre (on appeal he was found not guilty of genocide but was instead found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide).[277]
In February 2007 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) returned a judgement in the Bosnian Genocide Case. It upheld the ICTY's findings that genocide had been committed in and around Srebrenica but did not find that genocide had been committed on the wider territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war. The ICJ also ruled that Serbia was not responsible for the genocide nor was it responsible for "aiding and abetting it", although it ruled that Serbia could have done more to prevent the genocide and Serbia failed to punish the perpetrators of it.[278] Before this ruling the term Bosnian Genocide had been used by some academics[279] and human rights officials.[280]
In 2010, Vujadin Popović, Lieutenant Colonel and the Chief of Security of the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army, and Ljubiša Beara, Colonel and Chief of Security of the same army, were convicted of genocide, extermination, murder and persecution by the ICTY for their role in the Srebrenica massacre and were each sentenced to life in prison.[281] In 2016 and 2017, Radovan Karadžić[282] and Ratko Mladić were sentenced for genocide.[283]
German courts handed down convictions for genocide during the Bosnian War. Novislav Djajic was indicted for his participation in the genocide, but the Higher Regional Court failed to find that there was sufficient certainty for a criminal conviction for genocide. Nevertheless, Djajic was found guilty of 14 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.[284] At Djajic's appeal on 23 May 1997, the Bavarian Appeals Chamber found that acts of genocide were committed in June 1992, confined within the administrative district of Foca.[285] The Oberlandesgericht (higher regional court) of Düsseldorf, in September 1997, handed down a genocide conviction against Nikola Jorgic, a Bosnian Serb from the Doboj region who was the leader of a paramilitary group located in the Doboj region.[286] He was sentenced to four terms of life imprisonment for his involvement in genocidal actions that took place in regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, other than Srebrenica;[287] and "On 29 November 1999, the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) of Düsseldorf condemned Maksim Sokolović to 9 years in prison for aiding and abetting the crime of genocide and for grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions."[288]
Rwanda
Tutsis
Over 5,000 people who were seeking refuge in the Ntarama church were killed by grenade, machete or rifle, or they were burnt alive.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is a court under the auspices of the United Nations for the prosecution of offences[289] which were committed in Rwanda during the genocide which occurred there during April and July 1994, commencing on 6 April and coinciding with the end of the Rwandan Civil War.[290] The ICTR was created by the UN Security Council on 8 November 1994 in order to resolve claims which were made in Rwanda, and claims which were made by Rwandan citizens who were living in nearby states, between 1 January and 31 December 1994. For approximately 100 days from the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana on 6 April through mid-July, at least 800,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate.[291]
As of mid-2011, the ICTR had convicted 57 people and acquitted 8 others. Another ten persons were still on trial and one is still awaiting trial. Nine other persons remain at large.[292] The first trial, of Jean-Paul Akayesu, ended in 1998 with his conviction for genocide and crimes against humanity.[293] This was the world's first conviction for genocide, as defined by the 1948 Convention. Jean Kambanda, interim Prime Minister during the genocide, pleaded guilty.[294]
In 2010 a report accused Rwanda's Tutsi-led army of committing genocide against ethnic Hutus. The report accused the Rwandan Army and allied Congolese rebels of killing tens of thousands of ethnic Hutu refugees from Rwanda and locals in systematic attacks which were committed between 1996 and 1997. The government of Rwanda rejected the accusation.[295][296]
Alberto Fujimori's Plan Verde included a campaign to forcibly sterilize vulnerable groups through the Programa Nacional de Población (PNSRPF), a campaign that has been variably described as an ethnic cleansing or a genocidal operation.[307][308][309][310] According to Back and Zavala, the plan was an example of ethnic cleansing as it targeted indigenous and rural women.[307] Jocelyn E. Getgen of Cornell University wrote that the systemic nature of sterilizations and the mens rea of officials who drafted the plan proved an act of genocide.[308] The Centro Amazónico de Antropología y Aplicación Práctica non-profit stated that the act "was the largest genocide since [Peru's] colonization".[310] At least 300,000 Peruvians were victims of forced sterilization in the 1990s, with the majority being affected by the PNSRPF.[311]
↑ By 1951, Lemkin was saying that the Soviet Union was the only state that could be indicted for genocide; his concept of genocide, as it was outlined in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, covered Stalinist deportations as genocide by default, and differed from the adopted Genocide Convention in many ways. From a 21st-century perspective, its coverage was very broad, and as a result, it would classify any gross human rights violation as a genocide, and many events that were deemed genocidal by Lemkin did not amount to genocide. As the Cold War began, this change was the result of Lemkin's turn to anti-communism in an attempt to convince the United States to ratify the Genocide Convention.[11]
Related Research Articles
Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people.
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings including genocide or ethnic cleansing, the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction. Both the definition and charge of ethnic cleansing is often disputed, with some researchers including and others excluding coercive assimilation or mass killings as a means of depopulating an area of a particular group.
Homicide is an act in which a person causes the death of another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act, or an omission, that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no intent to cause harm. It is separate from suicide.
The Bosnian genocide took place during the Bosnian War of 1992–1995 and included both the Srebrenica massacre and the wider crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing campaign perpetrated throughout areas controlled by the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). The events in Srebrenica in 1995 included the killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, as well as the mass expulsion of another 25000–30000 Bosniak civilians by VRS units under the command of General Ratko Mladić.
Political cleansing of a population is the elimination of categories of people in specific areas for political reasons. The means may vary and include forced migration, ethnic cleansing and population transfers.
Several scholars have accused the United States of involvement in state terrorism. They have written about the US and other liberal democracies' use of state terrorism, particularly in relation to the Cold War. According to them, state terrorism is used to protect the interest of capitalist elites, and the U.S. organized a neo-colonial system of client states, co-operating with regional elites to rule through terror.
Large-scale killings and civil unrest primarily targeting members and supposed sympathizers of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) were carried out in Indonesia from 1965 to 1966. Other affected groups included alleged communist sympathisers, Gerwani women, trade unionists, ethnic Javanese Abangan, ethnic Chinese, atheists, so-called "unbelievers", and alleged leftists in general. According to the most widely published estimates at least 500,000 to 1 million people were killed, with some estimates going as high as two to three million. The atrocities, sometimes described as a genocide or a politicide, were instigated by the Indonesian Army under Suharto. Research and declassified documents demonstrate the Indonesian authorities received support from foreign countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom.
Mass killings under communist regimes occurred through a variety of means during the 20th century, including executions, famine, deaths through forced labour, deportation, starvation, and imprisonment. Some of these events have been classified as genocides or crimes against humanity. Other terms have been used to describe these events, including classicide, democide, red holocaust, and politicide. The mass killings have been studied by authors and academics and several of them have postulated the potential causes of these killings along with the factors which were associated with them. Some authors have tabulated a total death toll, consisting of all of the excess deaths which cumulatively occurred under the rule of communist states, but these death toll estimates have been criticised. Most frequently, the states and events which are studied and included in death toll estimates are the Holodomor and the Great Purge in the Soviet Union, the Great Chinese Famine and the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China, and the Cambodian genocide in Democratic Kampuchea. Estimates of individuals killed range from a low of 10–20 million to as high as 148 million.
Anti-communist mass killings are the politically motivated mass killings of communists, alleged communists, or their alleged supporters which were committed by anti-communists and political organizations or governments which opposed communism. The communist movement has faced opposition since it was founded and the opposition to it has often been organized and violent. Many anti-communist mass killing campaigns waged during the Cold War were supported and backed by the United States and its Western Bloc allies. Some U.S.-supported mass killings, including the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 and the killings by the Guatemalan military during the Guatemalan Civil War, are considered acts of genocide,
The Hazaras have long been the subjects of persecution in Afghanistan. The Hazaras are mostly from Afghanistan, primarily from the central regions of Afghanistan, known as Hazarajat. Significant communities of Hazara people also live in Quetta, Pakistan and in Mashad, Iran, as part of the Hazara and Afghan diasporas.
The genocide of indigenous peoples, colonial genocide, or settler genocide is the elimination of indigenous peoples as a part of the process of colonialism.
The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot. It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly 25% of Cambodia's population in 1975.
Genocide justification is the claim that a genocide is morally excusable/defensible, necessary, and/or sanctioned by law. Genocide justification differs from genocide denial, which is an attempt to reject the occurrence of genocide. Perpetrators often claim that genocide victims presented a serious threat, justifying their actions by stating it was legitimate self-defense of a nation or state. According to modern international criminal law, there can be no excuse for genocide. Genocide is often camouflaged as military activity against combatants, and the distinction between denial and justification is often blurred.
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. The term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) of 1948 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's 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."
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. The term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) of 1948 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's 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."
War crimes in Afghanistan covers the period of conflict from 1979 to the present. Starting with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, 40 years of civil war in various forms has wracked Afghanistan. War crimes have been committed by all sides.
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. The term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) of 1948 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's 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."
↑ Towner 2011, pp.625–638; Lang 2005, pp.5–17: "On any ranking of crimes or atrocities, it would be difficult to name an act or event regarded as more heinous. Genocide arguably appears now as the most serious offense in humanity's lengthy—and, we recognize, still growing—list of moral or legal violations."; Gerlach 2010, p.6: "Genocide is an action-oriented model designed for moral condemnation, prevention, intervention or punishment. In other words, genocide is a normative, action-oriented concept made for the political struggle, but in order to be operational it leads to simplification, with a focus on government policies."; Hollander 2012, pp.149–189: "... genocide has become the yardstick, the gold standard for identifying and measuring political evil in our times. The label 'genocide' confers moral distinction on its victims and indisputable condemnation on its perpetrators."
↑ Schabas 2009, p.160: "Rigorous examination of the travaux fails to confirm a popular impression in the literature that the opposition to the inclusion of political genocide was some Soviet machination. The Soviet views were also shared by a number of other States for whom it is difficult to establish any geographic or social common denominator: Lebanon, Sweden, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Iran, Egypt, Belgium, and Uruguay. The exclusion of political groups was originally promoted by a non-governmental organization, the World Jewish Congress, and it corresponded to Raphael Lemkin's vision of the nature of the crime of genocide."
↑ Schuck, Peter H.; Münz, Rainer (1997). Paths to Inclusion: The Integration of Migrants in the United States and Germany. Berghahn Books. p.156. ISBN1-57181-092-7.
Eberhardt, Piotr; Owsinski, Jan (2003). Ethnic Groups and Population Changes in Twentieth-century Central-Eastern Europe: History, Data, Analysis. M.E. Sharpe. p.456. ISBN0-7656-0665-8.
Diner, Dan; Gross, Raphael; Weiss, Yfaat (2006). Jüdische Geschichte als allgemeine Geschichte[Jewish history as general history] (in German). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. p.163. ISBN978-3-525-36288-4.
↑ Noorani, A. G. (3–16 March 2001). "Of a massacre untold". The Hindu. Frontline. Vol.18, no.5. Archived from the original on 30 May 2023. Retrieved 8 September 2014. The lowest estimates, even those offered privately by apologists of the military government, came to at least ten times the number of murders with which previously the Razakars were officially accused...
↑ International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi: Final Report(PDF) (Report). 2002. Archived from the original(PDF) on 16 July 2009. Source Name: United Nations Security Council, S/1996/682; received from Ambassador Thomas Ndikumana, Burundi Ambassador to the United States, Date received: 7 June 2002. Paragraph 496.
Robinson 2018, p.203: "a US Embassy official in Jakarta, Robert Martens, had supplied the Indonesian Army with lists containing the names of thousands of PKI officials in the months after the alleged coup attempt. According to the journalist Kathy Kadane, "As many as 5,000 names were furnished over a period of months to the Army there, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured." Despite Martens later denials of any such intent, these actions almost certainly aided in the death or detention of many innocent people. They also sent a powerful message that the US government agreed with and supported the army's campaign against the PKI, even as that campaign took its terrible toll in human lives."
↑ The Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission (2000). 'Life Is Not Ours': Land and Human Rights in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh - Update 4 (Report). International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. p.20.
↑ Stuart-Fox, M., ed. (1982). "Minority Policies and the Hmong in Laos". Contemporary Laos: Studies in the Politics and Society of the Lao People's Democratic Republic. St.Lucia: University of Queensland Press. pp.199–219.
↑ Cooper, Allan D. (2009). The Geography of Genocide. University Press of America. p.169. ISBN978-0761840978. On August 4, 1972, President Amin ordered the 70,000 Asians in his country to leave within 90 days. He claimed the expulsion was an order from God that had come to him during a dream. A number of countries cooperated in taking in these Asians; about 23,000 went to Britain, 5,000 to India, and others ended up in Australia, Canada, Malawi, and various European countries. Asians who were unable to leave the country were deported from cities to the countryside. On April 11, 1979, Tanzania invaded Uganda to put an end to Amin's dictatorial reign. Amin eventually was granted asylum in Saudi Arabia where he died in 2003. By itself, a mass expulsion of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group does not necessarily constitute genocide. Mass expulsions certainly have occurred in other places at other times throughout history. In this case, no one was executed, no measures were imposed to prevent births within the group, and no children were forcibly transferred from one group to another. But as with the case of the French Acadians, the Asians of Uganda were confronted with specific policies that led to the direct destruction of their community even if individual members survived and were given the opportunity to adapt to new political environments elsewhere. There is no coherent Ugandan Asian community existing anywhere on the planet today; thus it is clear that a genocide took place even though no blood was spilled in the process.
Seftel, Adam, ed. (2010) [1994]. Uganda: The Bloodstained Pearl of Africa and Its Struggle for Peace. From the Pages of Drum. Kampala: Fountain Publishers. ISBN978-9970-02-036-2..
↑ Kakar 1997:[pageneeded] "The Afghans are among the latest victims of genocide by a superpower."
↑ Reisman, W. Michael; Norchi, Charles H. "Genocide and the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 26 October 2016. Retrieved 7 January 2017. According to widely reported accounts, substantial programmes of depopulation have been conducted in these Afghan provinces: Ghazni, Nagarhar, Lagham, Qandahar, Zabul, Badakhshan, Lowgar, Paktia, Paktika and Kunar...There is considerable evidence that genocide has been committed against the Afghan people by the combined forces of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.
↑ Kakar 1997:[pageneeded] "The Afghans are among the latest victims of genocide by a superpower. Large numbers of Afghans were killed to suppress resistance to the army of the Soviet Union, which wished to vindicate its client regime and realize its goal in Afghanistan."
↑ Kakar 1997:[pageneeded] "Incidents of the mass killing of noncombatant civilians were observed in the summer of 1980...the Soviets felt it necessary to suppress defenseless civilians by killing them indiscriminately, by compelling them to flee abroad, and by destroying their crops and means of irrigation, the basis of their livelihood. The dropping of booby traps from the air, the planting of mines, and the use of chemical substances, though not on a wide scale, were also meant to serve the same purpose...they undertook military operations in an effort to ensure speedy submission: hence the wide use of aerial weapons, in particular helicopter gunships or the kind of inaccurate weapons that cannot discriminate between combatants and noncombatants."
↑ Klass, Rosanne (1994). The Widening Circle of Genocide. Transaction Publishers. p.129. ISBN9781412839655. During the intervening fourteen years of Communist rule, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Afghan civilians were killed by Soviet forces and their proxies- the four Communist regimes in Kabul, and the East Germans, Bulgarians, Czechs, Cubans, Palestinians, Indians and others who assisted them. These were not battle casualties or the unavoidable civilian victims of warfare. Soviet and local Communist forces seldom attacked the scattered guerrilla bands of the Afghan Resistance except, in a few strategic locales like the Panjsher valley. Instead they deliberately targeted the civilian population, primarily in the rural areas.
1 2 Borshchevskaya, Anna (2022). "2: The Soviet Union in the Middle East and the Afghanistan Intervention". Putin's War in Syria. London, UK: I. B. Tauris. p.24. ISBN978-0-7556-3463-7.
1 2 Back, Michele; Zavala, Virginia (2018). Racialization and Language: Interdisciplinary Perspectives From Perú. Routledge. pp.286–291. Retrieved 4 August 2021. At the end of the 1980s, a group of military elites secretly developed an analysis of Peruvian society called El cuaderno verde. This analysis established the policies that the following government would have to carry out in order to defeat Shining Path and rescue the Peruvian economy from the deep crisis in which it found itself. El cuaderno verde was passed onto the national press in 1993, after some of these policies were enacted by President Fujimori. ... It was a program that resulted in the forced sterilization of Quechua-speaking women belonging to rural Andean communities. This is an example of 'ethnic cleansing' justified by the state, which claimed that a properly controlled birth rate would improve the distribution of national resources and thus reduce poverty levels. ... The Peruvian state decided to control the bodies of 'culturally backward' women, since they were considered a source of poverty and the seeds of subversive groups
1 2 Getgen, Jocelyn E. (Winter 2009). "Untold Truths: The Exclusion of Enforced Sterilizations from the Peruvian Truth Commission's Final Report". Third World Journal. 29 (1): 1–34 [1, 26]. This Article argues that these systematic reproductive injustices constitute an act of genocide ... those individuals responsible for orchestrating enforced sterilizations against indigenous Quechua women arguably acted with the necessary mens rea to commit genocide since they knew or should have known that these coercive sterilizations would destroy, in whole or in part, the Quechua people. Highly probative evidence with which one could infer genocidal intent would include the Family Planning Program's specific targeting of poor indigenous women and the systematic nature of its quota system, articulated in the 1989 Plan for a Government of National Reconstruction, or 'Plan Verde.' ... The Plan continued by arguing ... the targeted areas possessed 'incorrigble characters' and lacked resources, all that was left was their 'total extermination.'
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Horst, Rene Detlef (2003). "Consciousness and Contradiction". In Langer, Erick Detlef; Muñoz, Elena (eds.). Contemporary Indigenous Movements in Latin America. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN978-0842026802.
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Mayersan, Deborah (2013). "'Never Again' or Again and Again". In Mayersen, Deborah; Pohlman, Annie (eds.). Genocide and Mass Atrocities in Asia: Legacies and Prevention. Routledge. ISBN978-0-415-64511-9.
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