Genocide

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The word genocide, from the Greek genos (race) and the Latin -cide (killing), was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to mean "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group". This is also roughly the legal defintion adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1946 (see below). The original definition of genocide includes both killing of members of a group, but also other measures undertaken to end the group's collective existence, such as forced sterillization of group members or the removal of the group's children to be raised in other groups, which need not involve any killings at all.

In more recent years, however, some have taken to expand the meaning of the term to include killings on grounds other than those included in the original defintion, such as political killings. Many would argue that such an expansion is incorrect, and that other terms, such as democide, should be used instead. In some cases, such as cultural genocide, the term has been used in a context where no one has been physically eliminated. Some would argue that this usage in improper.

Genocide has occurred many times throughout human history.

Genocide is a crime under international law, under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, when it enters into force. The Convention (in article 2) defines genocide as:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, 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.

Genocide is generally recognized to be a crime of universal jurisdiction.

As well as being illegal under conventional international law, it is generally recognized that it genocide is a crime under customary international law as well, and has been since some time during World War II or possibly earlier.

The definition does not include actions against a political or economic group or social class. It is generally agreed that a definition of genocide which included those groups would have been unacceptable to the Soviet Union and its allies in 1945 as it would have made some of their actions taken in the 1930's and 1940's into a crime against international law.


Major cases of genocide

See also list of major cases of democide, which includes other cases of mass government killing.

  • Genocide by the People's Republic of China
    • Some have argued that the government of the People's Republic of China has committed genocide by killing members of many minority ethnic groups, including Uighurs, Tibetans and others during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Others argue that this is not a case of genocide because while minority ethnic groups were killed so were members of the majority Han Chinese and at no time has the PRC government undertaken policies specifically to kill minority groups.
    • It has also been argued especially by the Government of Tibet in Exile that the PRC is commiting cultural genocide by attempting to eradicate Tibetan culture by encouraging mass settlement of Han Chinese in Tibet, and by banning Tibetan religious activities. Supports of the PRC government respond first that the using genocide to refer to cultural changes within Tibet is a misuse of the term, an while the PRC government does take action against activities which promote secession, the PRC government also promotes Tibetan culture by activities such as promoting the Tibetan language.
  • Cambodia (1975-1979)
    • Groups that were target of genocide during Pol Pot's rule:
      • City dwellers
      • Chinese (200 thousands)
      • Vietnamese (150 thousands)
      • Buddhist monks (40-60 thousands)
      • Thai (12 thousands)
    • Pol Pot also murdered many other groups as part of a wider campaign of democide, such as intellectuals and professionals
  • Rwanda (April 1994)
    • Roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutus. See Rwanda/History.
  • Australia
    • Genocide of Tasmanian Aborigines.
    • Many argue that the removal of Aboriginal children from their families by the Australian government constituted genocide; see Stolen Generation


  • Lebanon
    • During the Lebanon civil war, in response to attacks by Palestinian militants, Lebanese Christian militiamen massacred a camp of Palestinians. The area was surrounded by Israeli troups and an Israeli investigation later criticized Israeli leadership, including Ariel Sharon. Over a thousand Palestinian men, women and children died. There was no attempt by the miltiamen, or by the army of any government in the world, to exterminate the Palestinian people, thus this event can not qualify as genocide by the definition used in this entry; rather it was a massacre. However the United Nations defined the Sabra and Chatila Massacre as genocide, though it is not clear upon whom the blame should land for it.
  • Israel
    • The massacre in Hebron of Jews in 1929 and Palestinians in 1994.
    • During the 1948 and 1967 wars in Israel, multiple Arab governments declared that they would "Push the Jews into the sea". Both of these attempts at genocide were repelled by the Israel Defense Forces.
  • Palestine
    • During the fighting between Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian militants in Jenin in 2002, Palestinian spokespeople claimed that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians, and were mass murdering Arab civilians by the thousands. However, Human Rights Watch denied in a report allegations of genocide but also stated that "Israeli forces committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, some amounting prima facie to war crimes". Although Israel did not allow a full international investigations, some International monitors claim to have found less than only 60 Arabs died. IDF forces claim to have videotaped Palestinians faking funerals.
  • Freestate Prussia Germans east of the Oder-Neisse line
    • In the last months before the end of WW II and at the Potsdam Conference
    • the Soviet Union, USA and Great Britain governments took over the German emergency government under Karl Doenitz. The Allied Control Council was formed, which acted as military occupation government for the defeated Germany. At Potsdam the Big Three made decisions and pacts to 'resettle' more than 15,000,000 Germans and ethnic Germans from their homelands east of the Oder and Neisse rivers. The legal Freestate Prussia (Freistaat Preussen) government had been overtaken and removed out of office in Berlin by the Hitler dictatorship and gone into exile. Requests after the end of the war to the military occupiers for re-installation were denied. Instead in 1947 the Allied Control Council abolished Prussia. The decision to put the Freestate Prussia and all land east of the Oder-Neisse Line out of German control plus the decision to 'resettle' millions of people resulted in the death of millions. It almost totally wiped out Prussians.


[1] Figures from R.J. Rummel, "Death by Government".
[2] Figure from Britannica
[3] Museum of Communism FAQ http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/comfaq.htm
[4] The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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