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]
The Sri Lankan military was accused of committing human rights violations during Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war.[13] A United Nation's Panel of Experts looking into these alleged violations found "credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed by both the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity".[14] Some activists and politicians also accused the Sri Lankan government which is dominated by Sinhalese people (who predominantly practice Theravada Buddhism) of carrying out a genocide against the minority Sri Lankan Tamil people, who are mostly Hindu, both during and after the war.[15]
In 2009, thousands of Tamils protested against the atrocities in cities all over the world. (See 2009 Tamil diaspora protests.)[21] Various diaspora activists formed a group called Tamils Against Genocide to continue the protest.[22] Legal action against Sri Lankan leaders for alleged genocide has been initiated. Norwegian human rights lawyer Harald Stabell filed a case in Norwegian courts against Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa and other officials.[23]
Politicians in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu also made accusations of genocide.[24] In 2008 and 2009 the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M. Karunanidhi repeatedly appealed to the Indian government to intervene to "stop the genocide of Tamils",[25] while his successor J. Jayalalithaa called on the Indian government to bring Rajapaksa before international courts for genocide.[26]The women's wing of the Communist Party of India, passed a resolution in August 2012 finding that "Systematic sexual violence against Tamil women" by Sri Lankan forces constituted genocide, calling for an "independent international investigation".[27]
In January 2010, a Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT) held in Dublin, Ireland, found Sri Lanka guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but it found insufficient evidence to justify the charge of genocide.[28][29] The tribunal requested a thorough investigation as some of the evidence indicated "possible acts of genocide".[28] Its panel found Sri Lanka guilty of genocide at its 7–10 December 2013 hearings in Berman, Germany. It also found that the US and UK were guilty of complicity. A decision on whether India, and other states, had also acted in complicity was withheld. PPT reported that LTTE could not be accurately characterized as "terrorist", stating that movements classified as "terrorist" because of their rebellion against a state, can become political entities recognized by the international community.[30][31] The International Commission of Jurists stated that the camps used to intern nearly 300,000 Tamils after the war's end may have breached the convention against genocide.[32]
In 2015, Sri Lanka's Tamil majority Northern Provincial Council (NPC) "passed a strongly worded resolution accusing successive governments in the island nation of committing 'genocide' against Tamils".[33] The resolution asserts that "Tamils across Sri Lanka, particularly in the historical Tamil homeland of the NorthEast, have been subject to gross and systematic human rights violations, culminating in the mass atrocities committed in 2009. Sri Lanka's historic violations include over 60 years of state sponsored anti-Tamil pogroms, massacres, sexual violence, and acts of cultural and linguistic destruction perpetrated by the state. These atrocities have been perpetrated with the intent to destroy the Tamil people, and therefore constitute genocide."[34]
The Sri Lankan government denied the allegations of genocide and war crimes.[35]
On 21 April 2019, Easter Sunday, three churches in Sri Lanka and three luxury hotels in the commercial capital, Colombo, were targeted in a series of coordinated Islamic terrorist suicide bombings. Later that day, there were smaller explosions at a housing complex in Dematagoda and a guest house in Dehiwala. A total of 267 people were killed,[36][37] including at least 45 foreign nationals,[38] three police officers, and eight bombers, and at least 500 were injured.[c] The church bombings were carried out during Easterservices in Negombo, Batticaloa and Colombo; the hotels that were bombed were the Shangri-La, Cinnamon Grand, Kingsbury and Tropical Inn.[d] According to the State Intelligence Service, a second wave of attacks was planned, but was stopped as a result of government raids.[48]President of the European ParliamentAntonio Tajani referred to the bombings as an act of genocide.[49][50]
A Russian soldier stands on a mass grave of Chechens in Komsomolskoye, 2000
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chechnya declared its independence from the Russian Federation. Russian President Boris Yeltsin refused to accept Chechnya's independence; subsequently, the conflict between Chechnya and the Russian Federation escalated until it reached its climax when Russian troops invaded Chechnya and launched the First Chechen War in December 1994, and in September 1999, they invaded Chechnya again and launched the Second Chechen War. By 2009, Chechen resistance was crushed and the war ended with Russia re-establishing its control over Chechnya. Numerous war crimes were committed during both conflicts.[51]Amnesty International estimated that in the First Chechen War alone, between 20,000 and 30,000 Chechens were killed, mostly in indiscriminate attacks which were launched against them by Russian forces in densely populated areas,[52] and that a further 25,000 civilians died in the Second Chechen War.[53]
Some scholars estimated that the Russian government's brutal attacks against such a small ethnic group amounted to a crime of genocide.[54][55] The German-based NGO Society for Threatened Peoples accused the Russian authorities of genocide in its 2005 report on Chechnya.[56] On 18 October 2022, Ukraine's parliament condemned the "genocide of the Chechen people" during the First and Second Chechen War.[57][58]
During the Congo Civil War (1998–2003), pygmies were hunted down and eaten by both sides in the conflict, who regarded them as subhuman.[63] Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti pygmies, asked the UN Security Council to recognize cannibalism as both a crime against humanity and an act of genocide.[64][65] Minority Rights Group International reported evidence of mass killings, cannibalism and rape. The report, which labeled these events as a campaign of extermination, linked the violence to beliefs about special powers held by the Bambuti.[66] In Ituri district, rebel forces ran an operation code-named "Effacer le tableau" (to wipe the slate clean). The aim of the operation, according to witnesses, was to rid the forest of pygmies.[67]
In particular, critics have highlighted the concentration of Uyghurs in state-sponsored internment camps,[94] suppression of Uyghur religious practices,[97] political indoctrination,[98] severe ill-treatment,[99] and testimonials of alleged human rights abuses including forced sterilization, contraception,[100] and abortion.[103] Chinese government statistics show that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar fell by 84%.[104][105] In the same period, the birth rate of the whole country decreased by 9.69%, from 12.07 to 10.9 per 1,000 people.[106] Chinese authorities acknowledged that birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018 in Xinjiang, but denied reports of forced sterilization and genocide.[107] Birth rates have continued to plummet in Xinjiang, falling nearly 24% in 2019 alone when compared to just 4.2% nationwide.[105]
In July 2020, German anthropologist Adrian Zenz wrote in Foreign Policy that his estimate had increased since November 2019, estimating that a total of 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities had been extrajudicially detained in what he described as "the largest incarceration of an ethnoreligious minority since the Holocaust", arguing that the Chinese Government was engaging in policies in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[108]Ethan Gutmann estimated in December 2020 that 5 to 10% of detainees had died each year in the camps.[109]
Rohingya refugees entering Bangladesh after being driven out of Myanmar, 2017
Myanmar's government has been accused of crimes against the Muslim Rohingya minority that are alleged to amount to genocide. For many years, the Rohingya had been one the primary targets of hate crimes and discrimination in the country, much of which was given tacit encouragement by extremist nationalist Buddhist monks and the military-controlled government. Muslim groups have claimed that they were subjected to genocide, torture, arbitrary detention, and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.[110][111]
On 25 August 2017, the Myanmar military forces and local Buddhist extremists started attacking the Rohingya people and committing atrocities against them in the country's north-west Rakhine State. The atrocities included attacks on Rohingya people and locations, looting and burning down Rohingya villages, mass killing of Rohingya civilians, gang rapes, and other sexual violence.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) estimated in December 2017 that during the persecution, the military and the local Buddhists killed at least 10,000 Rohingya people.[112][113] At least 392 Rohingya villages in Rakhine state were reported as burned down and destroyed,[114] as well as the looting of many Rohingya houses,[115] and widespread gang rapes and other forms of sexual violence against the Rohingya Muslim women and girls.[116][117][118] The military drive also displaced a large number of Rohingya people and made them refugees. According to the United Nations reports, as of September2018[update], over 700,000 Rohingya people had fled or had been driven out of Rakhine state who then took shelter in the neighboring Bangladesh as refugees. In December 2017, two Reuters journalists who had been covering the Inn Din massacre event were arrested and imprisoned.
In August 2018, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, reporting the findings of their investigation into the August–September 2017 events, declared that the Myanmar military—the Tatmadaw, and several of its commanders (including Commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing)—should face charges in the International Criminal Court for "crimes against humanity", including acts of "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide", particularly for the August–September 2017 attacks on the Rohingya.[127]
During the South Sudanese Civil War there were ethnic undertones to the conflict between the South Sudan People's Defence Forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, which has been accused of being dominated by the Dinka ethnic group. A Dinka lobbying group known as the "Jieng Council of Elders" was often accused of being behind hardline SPLM policies.[128][129] While the army used to attract men who were members of different tribes, during the war, a large number of the SPLA's soldiers were from the Dinka stronghold of Bahr el Ghazal,[130] and within the country the army was often referred to as "the Dinka army".[131] Many of the atrocities committed are blamed on a group known as "Dot Ke Beny" (Rescue the President) or "Mathiang Anyoor" (Brown caterpillar), while the SPLA claim that it is just another battalion.[132][131] Immediately after the alleged coup in 2013, Dinka troops, and particularly Mathiang Anyoor,[132][133] were accused of carrying out pogroms, assisted by guides, in house to house searches of Nuer suburbs,[134] while similar door to door searches of Nuers were reported in government held Malakal.[135] About 240 Nuer men were killed at a police station in Juba's Gudele neighborhood.[136][137] During the fighting in 2016–17 in the Upper Nile region between the SPLA and the SPLA-IO allied Upper Nile faction of Uliny, Shilluk in Wau Shilluk were forced from their homes and Yasmin Sooka, chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, claimed that the government was engaging in "social engineering" after it transported 2,000 mostly Dinka people to the abandoned areas.[138] The king of the Shilluk Kingdom, Kwongo Dak Padiet, claimed his people were at risk of physical and cultural extinction.[139] In the Equatoria region, Dinka soldiers were accused of targeting civilians on ethnic lines against the dozens of ethnic groups among the Equatorians, with much of the atrocities being blamed on Mathiang Anyoor.[131]Adama Dieng, the U.N.'s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, warned of genocide after visiting areas of fighting in Yei.[140] Khalid Boutros of the Cobra faction as well as officials of the Murle led Boma State accuse the SPLA of aiding attacks by Dinka from Jonglei state against Boma state,[141][142] and soldiers from Jonglei captured Kotchar in Boma in 2017.[143] In 2010, Dennis Blair, the United States Director of National Intelligence, issued a warning that "over the next five years,... a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in southern Sudan."[144][145] In April 2017, Priti Patel, the Secretary of the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, declared the violence in South Sudan as genocide.[146]
ISIL or ISIS compels people who live in the areas that it controls to live according to its interpretation of sharia law.[147][148] There have been many reports of the group's use of death threats, torture and mutilation in order to compel people to convert to Islam,[147][148] as well as reports of clerics being killed for refusing to pledge allegiance to the so-called "Islamic State".[149] ISIL commits violence against Shia Muslims, Alawites, Assyrian and Armenian Christians, Yazidis, Druze, Shabaks and Mandeans in particular.[150] Among the known killings of civilians who were members of religious and other minority groups which were carried out by ISIL were those killings which were committed in the villages and towns of Quiniyeh (70–90 Yazidis killed), Hardan (60 Yazidis killed), Sinjar (500–2,000 Yazidis killed), Ramadi Jabal (60–70 Yazidis killed), Dhola (50 Yazidis killed), Khana Sor (100 Yazidis killed), Hardan area (250–300 Yazidis killed), al-Shimal (dozens of Yazidis killed), Khocho (400 Yazidis killed and 1,000 abducted), Jadala (14 Yazidis killed)[151] and Beshir (700 Shia Turkmen killed),[citation needed] and others committed near Mosul (670 Shia inmates of the Badush prison killed),[citation needed] and in Tal Afar prison, Iraq (200 Yazidis killed for refusing conversion).[151] The UN estimated that 5,000 Yazidis were killed by ISIL during the takeover of parts of northern Iraq in August 2014.[citation needed] In late May 2014, 150 Kurdish boys from Kobani aged 14–16 were abducted and subjected to torture and abuse, according to Human Rights Watch.[152] In the Syrian towns of Ghraneij, Abu Haman and Kashkiyeh 700 members of the Sunni Al-Shaitat tribe were killed for attempting to launch an uprising against ISIL rule.[153][154] The UN reported that in June 2014 ISIL had killed a number of Sunni Islamic clerics who refused to pledge allegiance to it.[149] By 2014, a U.N. Humans Rights commission counted that 9,347[155] civilians had been murdered by ISIL in Iraq, then however; by 2016 a second report by the United Nations estimated 18,802[156] deaths. The Sinjar massacre in 2014 resulted in the killings of between 2,000[157][158] and 5,000[159] civilians.
Yemeni capital Sanaa after Saudi-led airstrikes in October 2015
In 2015, coalition forces led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, intervened in the already ongoing Yemeni Civil War on behalf of the government forces. The intervention has been described as a genocide against Yemenis by some commentators due to war crimes and its role in the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.[160] The Saudi-led campaign had a dramatic worsening effect on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen[161] by contributing to the famine in Yemen. Over 78% of the population, 20 million people, were in need of humanitarian assistance in 2015 according to the UN. The intervention also contributed to the outbreak of cholera which has infected hundreds of thousands.[162][163][164] The blockade of Yemen by Saudi warships which began in 2015 also worsened the situation, leaving the many in without access to food, water and medical aid.[165][166][167] Aid to Yemen to relieve the situation was often delayed by the Saudi blockade, leading to further deaths.[168] On 1 July 2015, the UN declared for Yemen a "level-three" emergency—the highest UN emergency level—for a period of six months.[169][170] By December 2015, 2.5 million Yemeni people were internally displaced by the fighting,[171] and 1 million more fled the country.[172]
The coalition forces have been accused of war crimes, including deliberately targeting civilian areas,[173][174]including hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and public infrastructure.[175] The entire Saada Governorate was declared a military target by the coalition in May 2015; Human Rights Watch (HRW) later expressed concern that the bombing was causing unnecessarily harming civilians.[176][177]Cluster munitions,[178][179][180] and white phosphorus munitions were reportedly used on multiple occasions by the coalition.[181] In March 2017, HRW reported that "Since the start of the current conflict, at least 4,773 civilians had been killed and 8,272 wounded, the majority by coalition airstrikes.... Human Rights Watch has documented 62 apparently unlawful coalition airstrikes, some of which may amount to war crimes, that have killed nearly 900 civilians, and documented seven indiscriminate attacks by Houthi-Saleh forces in Aden and Taizz that killed 139 people, including at least eight children."[182]
As of late 2022, the combined impact of wartime violence, famine and a lack of medical access had killed an estimated 385,000-600,000 people,[188] with other reported estimates reaching numbers as high as 700,000-800,000 killed.[189]
On 24 February 2022, Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Following months of massive war crimes against Ukrainians, several scholars assumed that a genocide was being committed in Ukraine. The Siege of Mariupol, the Bucha massacre, and the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia so they could be forcibly adopted by Russian families were all classified as genocidal acts, while the words of Putin's officials, such as "There is no Ukraine", have been cited as examples of genocidal intent.[190] Historian Alexander Etkind wrote that the genocidal aspects of Russian war crimes in Ukraine did not just include mass murder and deportation, they also included the intentional destruction of Ukrainian cultural sites, and he also wrote that Putin framed his genocide as the "victim's revenge" for the previous one.[191] Political scientist Scott Straus declared that "genocide may be an appropriate term to describe the violence" following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[192]
Russian social media users and state media pundits demonized Ukrainians, describing them as "vermin", "rats", "unpeople", "diseased", and they also wrote that Ukraine itself must be "erased".[193] On 6 April 2022, an op-ed article which was written by Timofey Sergeytsev, What Russia Should Do with Ukraine,[194] was published by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti.[195] It called for the full destruction of Ukraine as a state and the full destruction of the Ukrainian people's national identity.[196] American historian Timothy D. Snyder cited it as an example to illustrate Russia's genocidal intent.[197]
National parliaments, including those of Poland, Ukraine, Canada, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Republic of Ireland declared that a genocide was taking place in Ukraine.[198] On 27 May 2022, a report by the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights concluded that there were reasonable grounds to infer that Russia breached two articles of the 1948 Genocide Convention, by publicly inciting genocide through its denial of Ukraine's right to exist as a state and its denial of the Ukrainian people's right to exist as a nation, as well as through its forcible transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia, which is a genocidal act under article II of the convention.[199] A Foreign Policy article acknowledged that Putin's goal was to "erase Ukraine as a political and national entity and Russify its inhabitants", warning that Russia's war could become a genocide.[200]
In September 2023, human rights organizations and experts in genocide prevention issued alerts stating that the indigenous Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh was at risk of genocide,[e] while others stated that Azerbaijan was already carrying out such actions.[201][202][203]
Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups committed numerous war crimes during the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel.[211] According to over 100 international experts, because these acts appeared to have been carried out with an "intent to destroy, in whole or in part" a national group in line with the explicit goals of Hamas, these acts likely amounted to genocide.[212]
Prevention of future genocides
Helen Clark, Michael Lapsley and David Alton, writing in The Guardian, stated that the reasons for the Rwandan genocide and crimes such as the Bosnian genocide of the Yugoslav Wars had been analysed in depth and they also stated that methods to prevent future genocides had been extensively discussed. They described the analyses as producing "reams of paper [that] were dedicated to analysing the past and pledging to heed warning signs and prevent genocide".[213] A group of 34 non-governmental organizations and 31 individuals, calling themselves African Citizens, referred to the Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide report prepared by a panel headed by former Botswana president Quett Masire for the Organisation of African Unity.[214][f]African Citizens highlighted the sentences, "Indisputably, the most important truth that emerges from our investigation is that the Rwandan genocide could have been prevented by those in the international community who had the position and means to do so. ... The world failed Rwanda. ... [The United Nations] simply did not care enough about Rwanda to intervene appropriately."[215]Chidi Odinkalu, former head of the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria, was one of the African Citizens.[216]
↑ 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]
Historically strained, Myanmar's foreign relations, particularly with Western nations, have improved since 2012. Relations became strained once more in 2017 with the Rohingya genocide and due to the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état. Myanmar has generally maintained warmer relations with near states and is a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as foreign nationals. Together with war crimes, genocide, and the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity are one of the core crimes of international criminal law and, like other crimes against international law, have no temporal or jurisdictional limitations on prosecution.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or the Genocide Convention, is an international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to pursue the enforcement of its prohibition. It was the first legal instrument to codify genocide as a crime, and the first human rights treaty unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, on 9 December 1948, during the third session of the United Nations General Assembly. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951 and has 153 state parties as of June 2024.
The Sri Lankan civil war was a civil war fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam led by Velupillai Prabhakaran. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka government.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is a United Nations body whose mission is to promote and protect human rights around the world. The Council has 47 members elected for staggered three-year terms on a regional group basis. The headquarters of the Council are at the United Nations Office at Geneva in Switzerland.
Human rights in Myanmar under its military regime have long been regarded as among the worst in the world. In 2022, Freedom House rated Myanmar’s human rights at 9 out 100.
The Rohingya people are a stateless ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar. Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an estimated 1.4 million Rohingya lived in Myanmar. Described by journalists and news outlets as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, the Rohingya are denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law. There are also restrictions on their freedom of movement, access to state education and civil service jobs. The legal conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been compared to apartheid by some academics, analysts and political figures, including Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, a South African anti-apartheid activist. The most recent mass displacement of Rohingya in 2017 led the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes against humanity, and the International Court of Justice to investigate genocide.
Maung Zarni is a Burmese educator, academic, and human rights activist. He is noted for his opposition to the violence in Rakhine State and the Rohingya genocide. Zarni is a co-founder of several activist platforms, including the Free Burma Coalition (1995-2004), the Free Rohingya Coalition (2018-present), and Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia (2018). He is also a Fellow at the Documentation Center - Cambodia, specializing in genocide, and serves as an advisor to Genocide Watch.
There is a history of persecution of Muslims in Myanmar that continues to the present day. Myanmar is a Buddhist majority country, with significant Christian and Muslim minorities. While Muslims served in the government of Prime Minister U Nu (1948–63), the situation changed with the 1962 Burmese coup d'état. While a few continued to serve, most Christians and Muslims were excluded from positions in the government and army. In 1982, the government introduced regulations that denied citizenship to anyone who could not prove Burmese ancestry from before 1823. This disenfranchised many Muslims in Myanmar, even though they had lived in Myanmar for several generations.
The war was waged for over a quarter of a century, with an estimated 70,000 killed by 2007. Immediately following the end of war, on 20 May 2009, the UN estimated a total of 80,000–100,000 deaths. However, in 2011, referring to the final phase of the war in 2009, the Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka stated, "A number of credible sources have estimated that there could have been as many as 40,000 civilian deaths." The large majority of these civilian deaths in the final phase of the war were said to have been caused by indiscriminate shelling of a formerly designated 'No Fire Zone' by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.
War crimes during the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil war are war crimes and crimes against humanity which the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been accused of committing during the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009. The war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by both sides; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; sexual violence by the Sri Lankan military; the systematic denial of food, medicine, and clean water by the government to civilians trapped in the war zone; child recruitment, hostage taking, use of military equipment in the proximity of civilians and use of forced labor by the Tamil Tigers.
The Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka was a 2011 report produced by a panel of experts appointed by United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The report is referred to by some as the Darusman Report, after the name of the chairman of the panel.
The Tamil genocide refers to the various systematic acts of physical violence and cultural destruction committed against the Tamil population in Sri Lanka during the Sinhala–Tamil ethnic conflict beginning in 1956, particularly during the Sri Lankan civil war. Various commenters have accused the Sri Lankan state of responsibility for and complicity in a genocide of Tamils, and point to state-sponsored settler colonialism, state-backed pogroms, and mass killings, enforced disappearances and sexual violence by the security forces as examples of genocidal acts.
Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day is a remembrance day observed by Sri Lankan Tamils to remember those who were killed during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War. It is held each year on 18 May, the date on which the civil war ended in 2009, and is named after Mullivaikkal, a village on the northeastern coast of Sri Lanka which was the scene of the final battle of the civil war and the site of the Mullivaikkal massacre.
The Rohingya genocide is a series of ongoing persecutions and killings of the Muslim Rohingya people by the military of Myanmar. The genocide has consisted of two phases to date: the first was a military crackdown that occurred from October 2016 to January 2017, and the second has been occurring since August 2017. The crisis forced over a million Rohingya to flee to other countries. Most fled to Bangladesh, resulting in the creation of the world's largest refugee camp, while others escaped to India, Thailand, Malaysia, and other parts of South and Southeast Asia, where they continue to face persecution. Several countries consider these events ethnic cleansing.
The Rohingya genocide is a term applied to the persecution—including mass killings, mass rapes, village-burnings, deprivations, ethnic cleansing, and internments—of the Rohingya people of western Myanmar.
Tejshree Thapa was a Nepalese human rights lawyer. She was recognized for her role in investigating and documenting human rights violations, including widespread sexual violence and other atrocities committed during the Yugoslav Wars, the Sri Lanka Civil War, and the Nepal Civil War.
The Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Myanmar is a special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations created in 2018 to respond to the Rohingya genocide starting in August 2017 and its effects in Myanmar. According to the mandate established by the UN General Assembly in its resolution 72/248 in 2017, the Special Envoy "works in close partnership with all stakeholders including local communities and civil society, and regional partners, notably the Government of Bangladesh and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), regional countries, and the broader membership of the United Nations."
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."
↑ Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany (10 February 2021). "Norway's youth parties call for end to China free trade talks". Axios. Archived from the original on 10 February 2021. Retrieved 14 June 2022. [O]pposition to China's Uyghur genocide is gaining momentum in Norway, where some politicians are fearful of jeopardizing ties with Beijing.
↑ Congressional Research Service (18 June 2019). "Uyghurs in China"(PDF). Congressional Research Service. Archived(PDF) from the original on 18 December 2020. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
Bachman, Jeff (13 December 2018). "Genocide in Yemen?". World Peace Foundation, Tufts University. Archived from the original on 28 October 2021. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
↑ McKernan, Bethan (7 November 2018). "Battle rages in Yemen's vital port as showdown looms". The Guardian. The port has been blockaded by the Saudi-led coalition for the past three years, a decision aid organizations say has been the main contributing factor to the famine that threatens to engulf half of Yemen's 28 million population.
1 2 "Risk Factors and Indicators of the Crime of Genocide in the Republic of Artsakh: Applying the UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes to the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict"(PDF). Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. 19 September 2023. Archived(PDF) from the original on 20 September 2023. Retrieved 19 September 2023. President Aliyev's intention to commit genocide against the Armenian of Nagorno-Karabakh "should be deduced from his informed, voluntary and antagonistic decisions with full disregard of the International Court of Justice orders." ... President Aliyev's public statements, coupled with his government's openly Armenophobic practices, clearly display the Azerbaijani regime's goal to completely eliminate the ethnic Armenian community residing in Artsakh, striving to eradicate any Armenian presence from the region. These verbalized aspirations, frequently translated into legal measures and manifested through the cited criminal acts detailed in this report, meet the criteria for the essential intent necessary for classifying these actions as genocidal.
↑ "Top International Lawyer Calls Azerbaijani Blockade Of Nagorno-Karabakh Genocide". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 9 August 2023. Archived from the original on 11 August 2023. Retrieved 22 September 2023. '...there is reasonable basis to believe that President Aliyev has Genocidal intentions: he has knowingly, willingly and voluntarily blockaded the Lachin Corridor even after having been placed on notice regarding the consequences of his actions by the ICJ's provisional orders,' the founding prosecutor of the International Criminal Court wrote in his conclusion.
↑ "Public Statement: Scholars Warn of Potential Genocide in Gaza". Third World Approaches to International Law Review. 17 October 2023. Archived from the original on 17 November 2023. Statements of Israeli officials since 7 October 2023 suggest that beyond the killings and restriction of basic conditions for life perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza, there are also indications that the ongoing and imminent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip are being conducted with potentially genocidal intent. Language used by Israeli political and military figures appears to reproduce rhetoric and tropes associated with genocide and incitement to genocide. Dehumanising descriptions of Palestinians have been prevalent. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared on 9 October that "we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly". He subsequently announced that Israel was moving to "a full-scale response" and he also announced that he had "removed every restriction" on Israeli forces, as well as stating: "Gaza won't return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything." On 10 October, the head of the Israeli army's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, directly addressed a message to Gaza residents: "Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell". The same day, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged the wanton and intentionally destructive nature of Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza: "The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy."
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