Genocide

Genocide is defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) Article 2 as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about 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."

Coining of the term genocide

The term "genocide" was coined by Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), a Polish Jewish legal scholar, in 1943, from the roots genos (Greek for family, tribe or race) and -cide (Latin - occidere or cideo - to massacre).

Lemkin said about the definition of genocide in its original adoption for international law at the Geneva Conventions:

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.

Lemkin's original genocide definition was narrow, as it addressed only crimes against "national groups" rather than "groups" in general. At the same time, it was broad in that it included not only physical genocide, but also acts aimed at destroying the culture and livelihood of the group.

Genocide in history

Genocide appears to be a regular and widespread event in the history of civilization. The phrase "never again" or "not on our watch" which is often used in relation to genocide has been contradicted up to the present day.

Determining which historical events constitute genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clear-cut matter. Furthermore, in nearly every case where accusations of genocide have circulated, partisans of various sides have fiercely disputed the interpretation and details of the event, often to the point of promoting wildly different versions of the facts. An accusation of genocide is certainly not taken lightly and will almost always be controversial. Revisionist attempts to deny genocides is, in some countries, penally repressed.

Biblical genocides

A record of several alleged genocides is found in the Bible, although the perceived accuracy and import of these accounts is related to the reader's opinion of the Bible as a whole. To name a few:

The sexual abuse and killing of the Israelites by the Egyptians.

The war and ensuing genocide waged against the Canaanites by the Israelites, in which God gives a commandment to never allow any Canaanite to remain alive. Deuteronomy 20:16-17

The extermination of the Amalekites at the hands of King Saul of Israel at the behest of Samuel. Ibid. 25:19

The conquest and massacre of various Middle Eastern peoples, by the empires of Assyria and Babylon.

Roman Empire

Many campaigns of the Roman Empire can by modern standards be rated as genocide:

Julius Caesar's campaign against the Helvetii (present-day Switzerland): approximately 60% of the tribe was destroyed, and another 20% ran up high deficits.

Julius Caesar's campaign against the Gauls (present-day France) under Vercingetorix: over 1 million (probably 1 in 4 of the Gauls) were killed, another million were enslaved and 800 cities were destroyed. The entire population of city of Avaricum (Bourges) (40,000 in all) was slaughtered.

Carthage: the city was completely destroyed in the Third Punic War, and its people killed or enslaved. Almost a century later, Caesar ordered the city rebuilt.

Jerusalem: the city was burned in the Destruction of Jerusalem and its people killed or enslaved. The Emperor Hadrian rebuilt and repopulated the city, then named it Aelia Capitolina.

The Americas

The indigenous populations of the Americas sharply plummeted following the arrival of Europeans from 1492 onward. Not all the mortality was consciously inflicted: disease, hardship, and the severing of social ties all took their toll, although diseases were also sometimes introduced for the purpose, amounting to biological warfare. The native tribes of the Caribbean were eliminated like the Guanches in the Canary Islands the previous century (Crosby 1986). Central Mexico, with an estimated pre-Conquest population of 25 million, was reduced to a residual population of a million in the 17th century. In 1790, when the first U.S. census was executed, there were 300 Indians left in Pennsylvania, 1500 each in New York and Massachusetts, and still some 10,000 in the Carolinas (Braudel 1984 p 393). See cultural genocide.

The long-term decimation, sometimes by government policy and sometimes not, of the Natives of South and North America by Europeans is estimated to be one of the largest and longest in history.

Various estimates of the pre-contact Native population of the continental U.S. and Canada range from 1.8 to over 12 million. Over the next four centuries, their numbers were reduced to a low of 237,000 by 1900. It has been estimated that the Native population of what is now Mexico was reduced from 30 million to only 3 million over the first four decades of Spanish rule.

European persecution of Natives started with Christopher Columbus' arrival in San Salvador Island in 1492. Native population dropped dramatically over the next few decades. Some were directly exterminated by Europeans. Others died indirectly as a result of contact with introduced diseases for which they had no resistance.

Over the next four centuries, European settlers would systematically displace Native American peoples, from the Arctic to South America. This was accomplished through varying combinations of warfare, the signing of treaties (of which the Natives may not have fully understood the consequences at times), forced relocations to barren lands, destruction of their main food supply — such as the bison — and the spread of European disease, notably smallpox.

Argentina

In the 1880s Argentine President Julio Roca launched a campaign to exterminate the Indian population of the Pampas and the Patagonia regions. The offensive led to the death of some 20,000 Indians.

Canada

The Beothuk people, an aboriginal group, native to the province of Newfoundland, are now completely extinct as a result of extended low intensity conflict with European colonists (mostly fishermen who regarded them as thieves), loss of habitat and importation of diseases such as tuberculosis. As European settlement grew, the Beothuks withdrew into the interior of the island and starved.

Activities of European colonists and importation of previously-unseen diseases caused many deaths in other Canadian native communities; the Beothuk are unique in Canadian history as having suffered not only genocide but outright extinction. Tragically, their "genocide" is unique in the sense that it appears to have been a drawn out and unintentional exercise founded in mutual distrust and ignorance. It was not a modern "genocide" in the sense there was no intention or even conscious effort to drive them to extinction. The process was the result of complex relationship dynamics and the peculiarly tenuous ecological nature of the island.

Genocide against Aboriginal peoples of Canada (during the conquest of "turtle island" or the North American continent) has received international attention from reputable human rights organizations associated with aboriginal rights. Principle testimonials from thousands of Aboriginals compiled by former United Church Reverend Kevin Annett and his Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada has gained considerable merit to this revisionist, Genocide in Canada revelation.

Paraguay

The War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) almost totally destroyed Paraguay and ended the relative development that took place during its first decades of existence. 300,000 Paraguayans—including a very high proportion of men of military age—were killed.

The United States

Throughout the 19th century, Native Americans were driven off their traditional lands to facilitate the installation of settlers (colonists). On some occasions, entire villages were massacred by the U.S. Army. Tribes were generally relocated to reservations on which they could be more readily pushed toward assimilation into mainstream U.S. society.

The Conestoga (Susquehanna) tribe of the lower Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania was completely annihilated by the "Paxton Boys" Scotch-Irish militias at the end of the French And Indian War in 1763. The last survivors of the tribe sought and were granted refuge in the Lancaster County jail. The Paxton Boys forced their way in and massacred them. The liquidation of the Conestogas is documented by Benjamin Franklin and in "The Light in The Forest" by Conrad Richter.

Congo

Prior to its being taken over by Belgium to form the Belgian Congo, under the rule of King Léopold II, the Congo Free State suffered a great loss of life due to criminal indifference by Europeans to its native inhabitants in the pursuit of increased rubber production.

From 1880 to 1920, the population of the Congo fell precipitously; murder, starvation, exhaustion (due to over-work), and disease were the culprits. Estimates vary on how many died and in what timeframe the deaths occurred. A 1904 report cites 3 million dead between 1888 and 1904; Fredric Wertham's 1966 book "A Sign For Cain: A Exploration of Human Violence" estimates that the population of the Congo dropped from 30 million to 8.5 million in that period.

King Léopold II (of Belgium) was a famed misanthropist, abolitionist, and self-appointed sovereign of the Congo Free State, 76 times larger geographically than Belgium itself. His fortunes, and those of the multinational concessionary companies under his auspices, were built mainly on the proceeds of Congolese rubber, of which there had never been an exploitable surplus.

The mass-deaths in the Congo Free State became a cause celèbre in the last years of the 19th century and a great embarrassment not only to the King but to Belgium, which had portrayed itself as progressive and attentive to human rights. The Congo Reform Movement, which included among its members Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Booker T. Washington, and Bertrand Russell, led a vigorous international movement against the mistreatment of the indigenous population of the Congo.

In 1999 Adam Hochschild published a book called "King Leopold's Ghost". It catalogued a series of crimes committed by King Leopold's regime; made the allegation that 10 million had died; and compared Leopold's misrule to the Nazi Holocaust and Stalin's purges. The Guardian reported in July 2002 that, after initial outrage by Belgian historians, the state-funded Museum of the Belgian Congo would finance an investigation into Hochschild's allegations. The investigatory panel, likely to be headed by Professor Jean-Luc Vellut, was scheduled to report its findings in 2004.

Germany

File:Massdeportations.png

Major deportation routes to the extermination camps in Europe.

Nazi genocide before and during World War II, The Holocaust (1933–1945). Upwards of 11 million people were systematically exterminated by the Nazis and their collaborators. The main targets of the Holocaust were the Jews of Europe, of whom between five and six million were killed , including 1.5 million children, in what was called by the Nazis the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". Other targets of the Holocaust included Poles, Roma ,Serbians,(see Porajmos), Slavs, homosexuals, and political opponents such as communists.

The resources of a major industrial power, Germany, were harnessed to industrialize mass murder. Jews and other victims were massacred in massive open air shootings by the organized killing squads called Einsatzgruppen, or they were confined in ghettos before being transported to extermination camps where they were killed.

Ottoman Empire (Turkey)

On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, Britain, France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing "a crime against humanity". This joint statement stated:

"[i]n view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres"..

On 15 September 2005 an United States Congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide "Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes." found that:

• "The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland."
• "The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders involved" and that "officials of the Young Turk Regime were tried and convicted, as charged, for organizing and executing massacres against the Armenian people". The chief organizers were "Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal were all condemned to death for their crimes, however, the verdicts of the courts were not enforced."
• and "The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial failures are documented with overwhelming evidence in the national archives of Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States, the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast body of evidence attests to the same facts, the same events, and the same consequences."

The BBC reported that in on 16 December, 2003, "The Swiss lower house of parliament has voted to describe the mass killings of Armenians during the last years of the Ottoman Empire as genocide. ... Fifteen countries have now agreed to label the killings as genocide. They include France in 2001, Argentina and Russia."

The Turkish Government disputes this interpretation of events and maintains that crucial documents supporting the genocide thesis are actually falsifications . Seen as historical revisionism by many historians, the topic is virtually taboo in Turkey. Laws like Article 301 are used to bring charges against people like the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who had stated that "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it" . However, Turkish authorities do acknowledge that the issue should be left to the historians and in an open letter by Prime Minister Erdogan to the U.S. President dated 10 April 2005, extended an "invitation to your country to establish a joint group consisting of historians and other experts from our two countries to study the developments and events of 1915 not only in the archives of Turkey and Armenia but also in the archives of all relevant third countries and to share their findings with the international public". Furthermore, in spite of vehement resistance by nationalist groups, an academic conference was held on September 24, 2005 in Istanbul to discuss the early 20th century massacre of Armenians.

Rwanda

Main article Rwandan Genocide

During a period of 100 days in 1994, officially 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutus in Rwanda. The rate at which people were killed far exceeded any other genocide in history. Bodies of those slain were left in the streets. Bodies were left wherever they were slain, mostly in the streets and their homes. The method of killing was done mostly with machetes. See also History of Rwanda.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is a court under the auspices of the United Nations for the prosecution of offenses committed in Rwanda during the genocide which occurred there during April and May, 1994, commencing on April 6. The ICTR was created on November 8, 1994 by the Security Council of the United Nations in order to judge those people responsible for the acts of genocide and other serious violations of the international law performed in the territory of Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states, between January 1 and December 31, 1994.

So far, the ICTR has finished nineteen trials and convicted twenty five accused persons. Another twenty five persons are still on trial. Nineteen are awaiting trial in detention. Ten are still at large. The first trial, of Jean-Paul Akayesu, began in 1997. Jean Kambanda, interim Prime Minister, plead guilty .

Genocide as a crime under domestic law

Belgium

In 1993 Belgium had adopted universal jurisdiction, allowing prosecution of genocide, committed by anybody in the world. The practice was widely applauded by many human rights groups, because it made legal action possible to perpetrators who did not have a direct link with Belgium, and whose victims were not Belgian citizens or residents. Ten years later in 2003, Belgium repealed the law on universal jurisdiction. However, some cases which had already started continued. These incuded those concerning the Rwandan genocide, and complaints filed against the Chadian ex-President Hissène Habré.

Finland

Genocide has been criminalized as a separate crime in Finland since 1995 and carries a penalty from 4 years to life sentence. Attempted genocide or planning it are punishable. Genocide, as a number of other crimes of international nature is inside Finnish universal jurisdiction, but under Chapter 1, Section 12 of the Penal Code, incidents of it abroad may not be investigated unless the Prosecutor General gives an order to do this.

The pressure group "Falun Dafa in Europe" on their website report that in 2003 "the Finnish human right lawyer Mr. Erkki Kannsto filed a criminal lawsuit against Luo Gan with the National Criminal Prosecutor Office and the Police Department in Helsinki on September 11 2003, on the charges of “cruel torture” and “genocide.” ... The Finnish Office of the Prosecutor General and the Police Department immediately carried out an investigation into the case after accepting the lawsuit". However, Luo Gan returned to China before any further action was taken by Finnish authorities.

Netherlands

Dutch law restricts prosecutions for genocide to its nationals. On December 23 2005 a Dutch court ruled in a case brought against Frans van Anraat for supplying chemicals to Iraq, that "[it] thinks and considers legally and convincingly proven that the Kurdish population meets the requirement under the genocide conventions as an ethnic group. The court has no other conclusion that these attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq." and because he supplied the chemicals before 16 March 1988, the date of the Halabja poison gas attack, he is guilty of a war crime but not guilty of complicity in genocide.

Spain

Under Spanish law, judges have the right to try foreigners suspected of genocidal acts that have taken place outside Spain. In June 2003 Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón jailed Ricardo Miguel Cavallo, (also known as Miguel Angel Cavallo), a former Argentine naval officer, extradited from Mexico to Spain pending his trial on charges of genocide and terrorism relating to the years of Argentina's military dictatorship.

On 11 January 2006 it was reported that the Spanish High Court will investigate whether seven former Chinese officials, including the former President of China Jiang Zemin and former Prime Minister Li Peng participated in a genocide in Tibet. This investigation follows a Spanish Constitutional Court (26 September 2005) ruling that Spanish courts could try genocide cases even if they did not involve Spanish nationals.The court proceedings in the case brought by the Madrid-based Committee to Support Tibet against several former Chinese officials was opened by the Judge on 6 June, 2006, and on the same day China denounced the Spanish court's investigation into claims of genocide in Tibet as an interference in its internal affairs and dismissed the allegations as "sheer fabrication".

Sweden

In Sweden genocide was criminalized in 1964. According to the Swedish law any act intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such, and which is punished according to the criminal act is punished as genocide and carries a penalty from 4 years to life sentence. The Swedish legislation simply noticed that any severe common crime which is comitted in order to destroy an ethnic group can be considered genocide, no matter what specific crime it is. Also intent, preparation or conspiring to genocide, and also failure to reveal such a crime is punishable as specified in penal code chapter 23, which is applicable to all crimes.

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has incorporated the International Criminal Court Act into domestic law. It is not retroactive so it only applies to events after May 2001 and genocide charges can only be filed against British nationals and residents. According to Peter Carter QC, chairman of the Bar's human rights committee "It means that British mercenaries who support regimes that commit war crimes can expect prosecution".

Genocide as a crime under international law

In the wake of the so-called Holocaust committed by the Nazis, Lemkin successfully campaigned for the universal acceptance of international laws, defining and forbidding genocide. This was achieved in 1948, with the promulgation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The CPPCG was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951 (Resolution 260 (III)). It contains an internationally-recognized definition of genocide which was incorporated into the national criminal legislation of many countries, and was also adopted by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Convention (in article 2) defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:"

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The first draft of the Convention included political killings but the USSR did not accept that actions against groups identified as holding similar political opinion or social status, that would constitute genocide if carried out against an ethnic group, was genocide. So they were removed in a political and diplomatic compromise.

After the minimum 20 countries became parties to the Convention, it came into force as international law on 12 January 1951. At that time however, only two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) were parties to the treaty: France and the Republic of China. Eventually the Soviet Union ratified in 1954, the United Kingdom in 1970, the People's Republic of China in 1983 (having replaced the Taiwan-based Republic of China on the UNSC in 1971), and the United States in 1988. This long delay in support for the Genocide Convention by the world's most powerful nations caused the Convention to languish for over four decades. Only in the 1990s did the international law on the crime of genocide begin to be enforced.

International prosecution of genocide

All signatories to the CPPCG are required to prevent and punish acts of genocide, during both war and peace, though some barriers make this enforcement difficult. In particular, some of the signatories — namely, Bahrain, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, the United States, Vietnam, Yemen, and Yugoslavia — signed with the proviso that no claim of genocide could be brought against them at the International Court of Justice without their consent. Despite official protests from other signatories (notably Cyprus and Norway) on the ethics and legal standing of these reservations, the immunity from prosecution they grant has been invoked from time to time, as when the United States refused to allow a charge of genocide brought against it by Yugoslavia following the 1999 Kosovo War.

It is commonly accepted that, at least since World War II, genocide has been illegal under customary international law as a peremptory norm, as well as under conventional international law. Acts of genocide are generally difficult to establish for prosecution due to the face that intent, or demonstrating a chain of accountability, must be established. International criminal courts and tribunals function primarily because the states involved are incapable or unwilling to prosecute crimes of this magnitude themselves.

To date all international prosecutions for genocide have been brought in specially convened international tribunals. Since 2002, the International Criminal Court can exercise its jurisdiction if national courts are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute genocide, thus being a "court of last resort," leaving the primary responsibility to exercise jurisdiction over alleged criminals to individual states. Due to the United States concerns over the ICC, the United States prefers to continue to use specially convened international tribunals for such investigations and potential prosecutions.

Armenian Genocide Trials

The post-Ottomon Turkish government convicted several Ottoman Turkish leaders for their orchestration of the Armenian Genocide. Most of these leaders were allowed to leave for Europe. The lack of an international effort to prosecute the Ottomans played a significant role in motivating Adolf Hitler and the Nazi's to seek "the final solution of the Jewish problem". Hitler is known to have stated "Whom even remembers the Armenians" .

Nuremberg Trials

"The Nuremberg Trials" is the general name for two sets of trials of Nazis involved in World War II and the Holocaust. The trials were held in the German city of Nuremberg from 1945 to 1949 at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice . The first and more famous of these trials was the Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal or IMT, which tried 24 of the most important captured (or still believed to be alive) leaders of Nazi Germany. It was held from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946.

Former Yugoslavia

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is a court under the auspices of the United Nations for the prosecution of genocide and certain other types of crime committed in former Yugoslavia since 1991. The tribunal functions as an ad-hoc court and is located in The Hague. It was established by Resolution 827 of the UN Security Council, which was passed on May 25, 1993.

Some of those found guilty of Genocide or crimes against humanity are:

• Milan Babić (deceased), Krajina Serb , prime minister of Republika Srpska Krajina (Serb self proclaimed entity in Croatia); sentenced to thirteen years for his part in ethnic cleansing.
• Vidoje Blagojevic, Bosnian Serb, a Bosnian Serb Army officer, sentenced to 18 years for involvement in the Srebrenica massacre.
• Dragan Jokic, Bosnian Serb, sentenced to 9 years for involvement in Srebrenica massacre.
• Radislav Krstic, Bosnian Serb, Bosnian Serb Army general; sentenced to thirty-five years (originally forty-six years) for genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war.

Rwanda

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is a court under the auspices of the United Nations for the prosecution of offenses committed in Rwanda during the genocide which occurred there during April, 1994, commencing on April 6. The ICTR was created on November 8, 1994 by the Security Council of the United Nations in order to judge those people responsible for the acts of genocide and other serious violations of the international law performed in the territory of Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states, between January 1 and December 31, 1994.

So far, the ICTR has finished nineteen trials and convicted twenty five accused persons. Another twenty five persons are still on trial. Nineteen are awaiting trial in detention. Ten are still at large. The first trial, of Jean-Paul Akayesu, began in 1997. Jean Kambanda, interim Prime Minister, pleaded guilty.

In December 2005 despite attempts by the French Defence Ministry to stop him, Jacques Baillet the prosecutor at the army tribunal, has begun an investigation into the role of the French army during the genocide in Rwanda. The 2,500 member French peace keeping force, that was sent to Rwanda in 1994 by François Mitterrand who was the French President at the time, is accused not only of not stopping the genocide, but of actively participating in it. The allegations of participation are brought by two witnesses who the prosecutor thinks are credible enough to warrant an inquiry. Aurea Mukakalisa says she saw Hutu militia enter a camp set up by the French army and designated Tutsis who were forced to leave the camp by French soldiers. She says that she saw militia kill the Tutsis who left the camp and that some Tutsis were killed by French soldiers. A second witness Innocent Gisanura says that French soldiers remained in their vehicles and did not intervene in the killing of Tutsis by members of the Hutu militia in the Biserero forests.

Criticisms of the CPPCG

Much debate about genocides revolves around the proper definition of the word "genocide." The exclusion of social and political groups as targets of genocide in the CPPCG legal definition has been criticized by some historians and sociologists, for example M. Hassan Kakar in his book The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982 argues that the international definition of genocide is too restricted , and that it should include political groups or any group so defined by the perpetrator and quotes Chalk and Jonassohn: “Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator.”

According to R. J. Rummel, genocide has 3 different meanings. The ordinary meaning is murder by government of people due to their national, ethnical, racial, or religious group membership. The legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This also includes nonkillings that in the end eliminate the group, such as preventing births or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group. A generalized meaning of genocide is similar to the ordinary meaning but also includes government killings of political opponents or otherwise intentional murder. It is to avoid confusion regarding what meaning is intended that Rummel created the term democide for the third meaning.

A major criticism of the international community's response to the Rwandan Genocide was that it was reactive, not proactive. The international community has developed a mechanism for prosecuting the perpetrators of genocide but has not developed the will or the mechanisms for intervening in a genocide as it happens. Critics point to the Darfur conflict and suggest that if anyone is found guilty of genocide after the conflict either by prosecutions brought in the International Criminal Court or in an ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal, this will confirm this perception.

Bibliography

• Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies, Yale University Press, 1990
• Israel W. Charny, Encyclopedia of Genocide, ABC-Clio Inc, 720 pages, ISBN 0874369282 (December 1, 1999)
• Barbara Harff, Early Warning of Communal Conflict and Genocide: Linking Empirical Research to International Responses, Westview Press, August 2003, paperback, 256 pages, ISBN 0813398401
• (French) LeCour Grandmaison, Olivier, Coloniser, Exterminer - Sur la guerre et l'Etat colonial, Fayard, 2005, ISBN 35251692005 (Table of contents)
• Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide Harper Perennial (2003) paperback, 656 pages ISBN 0060541644
• R.J. Rummel, Death By Government, Transaction Publishers, 496 pages, ISBN 1560009276 (March 1997)
• Lyal S. Sunga, The Emerging System of International Criminal Law: Developments in Codification and Implementation , Kluwer (1997) 508 p. (ISBN 9041104720)
• Lyal S. Sunga, Individual Responsibility in International Law for Serious Human Rights Violations, Nijhoff (1992) 252 p. (ISBN 0792314530)
• Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny, Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, 2nd edition, Routledge, 2004
• Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century, Cornell University Press, 2004

External links

Overviews

• BBC on defining genocide
• Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Responding to Threats of Genocide
• Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide at Law-Ref.org - fully indexed and crosslinked with other documents
• Documents and Resources on War, War Crimes and Genocide
• Genocide Intervention Network
• Genocide Watch stages of genocide
• Institute for the Study of Genocide/International Association of Genocide Scholars
• Never Again International youth genocide prevention organization; organized the 2004 Rwanda Forum at the Imperial War Museum in London.
• Never Again Wiki
• OneWorld Perspectives Magazine: Preventing Genocide (April/May 2006) - global human rights and development network looks at genocide from a variety of perspectives
• Prevent Genocide International

Darfur

• Genocide Intervention Network Building the first permanent anti-genocide constituency
• Africa Action Africa advocacy organization seeking 400,000 signatures on petition demanding US action to stop genocide in Darfur
• International Solidarity Fast for Darfur
• Photographs from the Sudan genocide
• Stop Genocide Now Global community to change the way the world responds to genocide>
• Students Taking Action Now: Darfur Student movement to end the genocide in Darfur with over 75 chapters in the US and Canada
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Voices on Genocide Prevention Podcast Stay up-to-date on the crisis in Darfur and the continuing challenge or preventing and responding to genocide

Research Programs

• Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota
• Genocide Studies Program, Yale University
• Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies, Concordia University
• Historical and Investigative Research

Other

• Genocide 1971 in Bangladesh (former East Pakistan)
• Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971
• Genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka
• Armenian Genocide
• International Campaign to Stop South African Genocide
• Genocide'83 of Tamils in Sri Lanka
• Map of Occurrences of Genocide Throughout History (open for additions by anyone)
• Hellenic Genocide
• Hellenic Genocide:Horton's "Blight of Asia"
• What is Genocide
• The Roman genocide of the Jews in the First Century

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Genocide  ^history
• Genocides_in_history  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Genocide"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.