Genocides in history

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."

Determining what historical events constitute a genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clearcut matter. 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. The following list of alleged genocides should be understood in this context and not regarded as the final word on these subjects.

Alternative meanings of genocide

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 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 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, ethnic, 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.

Alleged genocides from 1500 to 1914

In a wider historical perspective, genocide has been common throughout history.

The Americas

See also: Population history of American indigenous peoples

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 Native Americans 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 population reduction, 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 (also the central element of many native religions) — and the spread of European disease, notably smallpox.

Argentina

In the 1880s Argentine President Julio Roca launched a campaign to exterminate the native population of the Pampas and the Patagonia regions, leading to the deaths of some 20,000 native people.

See Conquest of the Desert

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 land 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", i.e. the North American continent) has received international attention from reputable human rights organizations associated with aboriginal rights. Principal 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 for this revisionist, genocide-in-Canada revelation.

From 1755 to 1763, an estimated minimum of ten thousand Acadians were deported from their native "Acadie" (today the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island) on ships to be brought mostly to the Thirteen Colonies, France, and England. Five thousand persons of this neutrally positioned in the Seven Year War colony died of disease, exhaustion, murder, or malnutrinition on the trip alone. Once at destination, most of them had to beg for food on the streets, as many communities taking the "French Speakers" as enemies, refused to offer them employment.

The United States

Throughout the 19th century, Native Americans were driven off their traditional lands to facilitate the installation of settlers (colonists). The explicit US policy of Indian Removal forced or coerced the relocation of major Native American groups in both the Southeast and the Northeast United States, resulting directly and indirectly in the deaths of tens of thousands. The subsequent process of assimilations, though a less active means of an ethnic cleansing, was no less devastating to Native American peoples. Tribes were generally located to reservations on which they could more easily be separated from traditional life and pushed into US society. Some Southern states additionally enacted laws in the 19th century forbidding non-Indian settlement on Indian lands, intending to prevent sympathetic white missionaries from aiding the scattered Indian resistance.

In 1838, Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issued an "Extermination Order" against the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), ordering them to either leave the state or be exterminated.

On some occasions during the Indian Wars, which decimated the Native American population in the United States and are often collectively referred to as genocide, entire villages were massacred by the U.S. Army (see for example Sand Creek Massacre and massacre at Wounded Knee).

The Conestoga (Susquehanna) tribe of the lower Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania was completely annihilated by the "Paxton Boys," Scots-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.

Australia

The Black War refers to a period of conflict between the British colonists and Tasmanian Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) in the early years of the 1800s. The conflict has gained a notorious reputation as a genocide resulting in the almost complete obliteration of the Tasmanian Aboriginal population, though there are presently many thousands of individuals descended of Tasmanian Aborigines.

The "war" was never officially declared and this has led to variations in its dating. Some date the conflict to the very beginning of European settlement on the island in 1803. The conflict was most intense during the 1820s, which is the period most commonly referred to as the Black War. The conflict is generally seen to have ended in the 1830s, after the unsuccessful Black Line and the subsequent relocation of Aborigines to Flinders Island.

This conflict is a subject of the Australian "history wars"; the 2002 publication of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847 by Keith Windschuttle, questioned the historical evidence used to identify the actual number of Aborigines killed. Windschuttle claimed that the evidence was exaggerated, challenging the mainstream view of Tasmanian colonisation, which has been labeled a "black armband view of history" by other critics. Windschuttle's argument has been challenged by a number of authors; for example, see "Contra Windschuttle" by S.G. Foster in Quadrant, March 2003, 47:3.

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: An 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 had his book King Leopold's Ghost published. 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. He does not, however, characterize the deaths as the result of a deliberate policy of genocide, but rather as the result of a brutal system of forced labor. 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.

German South-West Africa

Herero and Namaqua Wars: (1904–1907) in current-day Namibia

The German Imperial forces employed scorched earth policies to combat the guerilla tactics of the Herero (and later the Nama), after they had began to revolt and massacre German civilian populations in the area. They used methodology similar to that of the British in the Boer Wars. The defeated Herero had fled to a region with little water resources, while the German forces guarded or poisoned the sources in areas they controlled. Many lives were lost through war, starvation, and thirst. The responsible German general was Lothar von Trotha, who was removed from his command, and all his orders rescinded, when the heavy-handedness of his measures came to light.

Ireland

James Mullin reports in an article entitled "Irish Famine Education and the Holocaust 'Straw Man'" in the American Chronicle that Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois wrote to the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education on May 2, 1996, that "Clearly, during [the Irish Potato Famine] years [of] 1845 to 1850 the British government pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland with intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, and racial group commonly known as the Irish People." Mullin continues that in Boyle's legal opinion the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland actions violated sections (a), (b), and (c) of Article 2 of the CPPCG, and therefore "constituted acts of genocide against the Irish People".

Other academics take a different view for example the Belfast-born and Cambridge-educated historian Peter Gray concludes that UK government policy "was not a policy of deliberate genocide", but a dogmatic refusal to admit the policy was wrong and "amounted to a sentence of death to many thousands."; and Professor James S. Donnelly Jr., a historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has written that "... it is also my contention that while genocide was not in fact committed, what happened during and as a result of the clearances had the look of genocide to a great many Irish..."

Tokugawa Japan

During the Tokugawa shogunate, tens of thousands of Christians were murdered. (See Persecution of Christians)

Philippines

Main article: Philippine-American War

The Spanish-American War ended with a US victory. As part of the peace settlement, the US gained control of the Philippines, which declared its independence under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo on June 12, 1898. The McKinley administration declared Aguinaldo an outlaw and claimed to be putting down an insurrection during the Philippine-American War. At least one million civilians perished from outright slaughter, disease, and famine between 1899 and 1913, and American forces burnt large areas of crops and placed many Filipinos in internment camps. Such a massacre happened in the town of Balangiga, where they killed males from ages 8 to 60. This was called the "Kill and Burn" method. General Arthur MacArthur, Jr. boasted that 15 Filipinos were killed for every one wounded.

Russian Empire

Main articles: Circassian ethnic cleansing and Caucasian War

Antero Leitzinger wrote in an article called "The Circassian Genocide", initially published in the Turkistan News, that a genocide committed against the Circassian nation by Czarist Russia in the 1800s has been almost entirely forgotten, and that it was the largest genocide of the nineteenth century.

Alleged genocides from 1915 to 1950

In 1915, during World War I, the concept of Crimes against humanity was introduced into international relations for the first time when the Allied Powers sent a correspondence to the government of the Ottoman Empire, a member of the Central Powers, over massacres the Allies alleged were taking place within the Empire. (For more details see the section Ottoman Empire (Turkey)).

Croatia

Main article: Serbian Genocide

(1941 - 1945) Genocide against Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia. The Croatian Ustasha regime committed genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma (Gypsies) during World War II. They also mass murdered other political opponents.

After the invasion and destruction of the Yugoslav army by the Axis Powers in 1941, they supported the creation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) which was run by the Croatian fascist group the Ustaše. The leader of this state Ante Pavelić put into effect a campaign of persecution and genocide against the Serbs, Jews and Roma.

This policy was set out by Mile Budak, the Minister for Education & Culture who in his speech of 22 July 1941, said that:

The basis for the Ustashe movement is religion. For minorities such as the Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, we have three million bullets. We will kill a part of the Serbs. Others we will deport, and the rest we will force to accept the Roman Catholic Religion. Thus the new Croatia will be rid of all Serbs in its midst in order to be 100% Catholic within 10 years.

The Independent State of Croatia was the only state created by the Axis Powers that ran its own concentration camps independently of Nazi direction, the largest being the Jasenovac concentration camp.

The number of Serbian people killed, deported and converted by the Croat Ustashe between 1941-1945 is more than 1 000 000 and has been debated. Please see Ustaše#Victims and Jasenovac concentration camp for details. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center (citing the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust): "Ustasa terrorists killed 500,000 Serbs, expelled 250,000 and forced 250,000 to convert to Catholicism. They murdered thousands of Jews and Gypsies." Ustashe [1] Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Ustashe"

This Serbian Genocide resulted in elimination of the presence of Serbian people in a large section of Croatia and Bosnia. Independent State of Croatia]] (NDH) occupied a large section of Bosnia and Hercegovina and Serbia/Srem and massacred hundreds of thousands of Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

Nazi Germany and occupied Europe

Main articles: The Holocaust and Racial policy of Nazi Germany

Major deportation routes to the extermination camps in Europe.

Because the universal acceptance of international laws, defining and forbidding genocide was achieved in 1948, with the promulgation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), those criminals who were prosecuted after the war in international courts, for taking part in the Holocaust were found guilty of crimes against humanity and other more specific crimes like murder. Nevertheless the Holocaust is universally recognized to have been a genocide.

The main targets of the Holocaust were the Jews of Europe, of whom between five and seven 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 Roma (see Porajmos), mentally ill (see T-4 Euthanasia Program), Homosexuals and sexual deviants, Poles and some Soviets, and political opponents. In all, upwards of 11 million people were systematically "exterminated" (a Nazi term) by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust.

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 confined in ghettos before being transported to concentration camps and extermination camps where they were killed.

Ottoman Empire (Turkey)

Armenian civilians, being deported during the Armenian Genocide.

Main article: Armenian genocide

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 a 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 Ottoman 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 Republic of Turkey 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 Ottoman Empire, 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.

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." On 12 October 2006, French lawmakers "approved a bill making it a crime to deny that mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during and after World War I amounted to genocide. Turkey quickly objected, with its Foreign Ministry saying that the decision "dealt a heavy blow" to Turkish-French relations and 'created great disappointment in our country.'"

Other genocides allegedly committed by the Ottoman Empire include the Pontian Greek Genocide and the Assyrian Genocide.

Soviet Union

Main articles: Human rights in the Soviet Union, Population transfer in the Soviet Union, and Famines in Russia and USSR

There are several documented instances of large-scale unnatural death occurring in the Soviet Union, mostly in the 1930s. In legal terms, the word "genocide" may not be appropriate, because there was no proven intent to destroy a specific national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Nevertheless, the term genocide is used by many respected historians, especially with respect to the Holodomor. This usage is often motivated by the fact that, e.g., ethnicity-targeted population transfer in the Soviet Union, while arguably lacking genocidal purposes, led to millions of deaths due to inflicted hardships. It has been estimated that over 20 million people were killed.

The 1932–1933 famine that affected peasantry living in the USSR is considered a genocide by many scholars. The nations disporportionally hit by the famine were the Kazakhs and the Ukrainians. See the Holodomor article for the details of the Famine in Ukraine, particularly, the section where the applicability of the term the Genocide is discussed.

Alleged genocides from 1951 to 1990

Universal acceptance of international laws, defining and forbidding genocide was achieved in 1948, with the promulgation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide(CPPCG). 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 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, which caused the Convention to languish for over four decades.

Bangladesh War of 1971

Main articles: 1971 Bangladesh atrocities and Operation Searchlight

In 1997 R. J. Rummel published a book which is on the web called "Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900", In Chapter 8 called "Statistics Of Pakistan's Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources" In it he looks at the 1971 Bangladesh War. Rummel wrote:

In East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) [The President of Pakistan, General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, and his top generals] also planned to murder its Bengali intellectual, cultural, and political elite. They also planned to indiscriminately murder hundreds of thousands of its Hindus and drive the rest into India. And they planned to destroy its economic base to insure that it would be subordinate to West Pakistan for at least a generation to come. This despicable and cutthroat plan was outright genocide.

Rummel goes on to collate the what considers the most credible estimates published by others into what he calls democide. He writes that "Consolidating both ranges, I give a final estimate of Pakistan's democide to be 300,000 to 3,000,000, or a prudent 1,500,000." Other authors like Anthony Mascarenhas and Donald W. Beachler have cited a figure ranging between 1 - 3 million civilians killed by Pakistan Army; Bleacher states that both Pakistan and its primary ally USA have denied Genocide allegations.

A case was filed in the Federal Court of Australia on 20 September 2006 for alleged crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during 1971 by the Pakistani Armed Forces and its collaborators:

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 [alledged] 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.

Burundi 1972

Main article: Burundi genocide

Between April and September 1972 between 100,000 and 150,000 Burundian Hutus were massacred. The massacres were in response to a Hutu rebellion earlier that year. At one point the rate of deaths reached 1,000 per day. Educated Hutus, specifically those with or who were achieving a high school education, were hunted down by the ruling Tutsi minority. (Power p.82-4)

Cambodia

The Khmer Rouge, or more formally, the Communist Party of Kampuchea, led by Pol Pot, Ta Mok and other leaders, organized the mass killing of ideologically suspect groups, ethnic minorities like the 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 defeated in factional struggles were also liquidated in purges. The number of the victims is estimated at approximately 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975-1979, including deaths from slave labour.

See also: Democratic Kampuchea

East Timor under Indonesian occupation

East Timor was occupied by Indonesia from 1975 to 1999 as annexed territory with Indonesian provincial status. Death tolls reported during the occupation varied from 60,000 to 200,000. A detailed statistical report prepared for the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor cited a lower range of 102,800 conflict-related deaths in the period 1974-1999, namely, approximately 18,600 killings and 84,200 'excess' deaths from hunger and illness.

Most of these killings took place in the years 1975-1979. According to Sian Powell writing in The Australian, a UN report states that the Indonesian military used starvation as a weapon to exterminate the East Timorese, along with Napalm and chemical weapons, obtained from the United States, which poisoned the food and water supply. Ben Kiernan has written in War, Genocide, and Resistance in East Timor, 1975–99: Comparative Reflections on Cambodia that "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 used by most scholars of the phenomenon, who see 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—along with their relatives, as we shall see—but also most members of the twenty-thousand strong ethnic Chinese minority prominent in the towns of East Timor, whom Indonesian forces singled out for destruction, apparently because of their ethnicity 'as such.'" As may be noted from the title, Ben Kiernan draws a comparison with the Khmer Rouge Cambodian genocide, accusing the west of hypocrisy in ignoring one whilst protesting about the other.

On August 30, 1999, a United Nations-supervised popular referendum was held. The East Timorese voted for full independence from Indonesia, but violent clashes, instigated primarily by the Indonesian military (see Scorched Earth Operation) and aided by Timorese pro-Indonesia militias, led by Eurico Guiterres, broke out soon afterwards. A peacekeeping force (INTERFET, led by Australia) intervened to restore order.

Sabra-Shatila

Main article: Sabra and Shatila massacre

The Sabra and Shatila massacre (or Sabra and Chatila massacre) was carried out in September 1982 by Lebanese Maronite Christian militias against Palestinians in refugee camps. The number of victims of the massacre is estimated at 700-3500. The camps were externally surrounded by Israeli Defence Forces throughout the incident, although the Israeli military personnel who were there stated that they had no idea of what was going on inside. On December 16, 1982, the United Nations General Assembly condemned the massacre and declared it to be an act of genocide.

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

M. Hassan Kakar presents an argument in a chapter called Genocide Throughout the Country in his book The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982 that the international definition of genocide is too restricted, and that it should include political groups or any group so defined by the perpetrator as described by 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.”

Having established a broader definition of Genocide Kakar goes on to claim that during the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989), "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. Thus, the mass killing was political."

Iraq

See also 1988 Anfal campaign

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.

Tibet

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 that

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;

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".

West New Guinea / West Papua

In 2004 the Yale University Law School published "Indonesian Human Rights Abuses in West Papua: Application of the Law of Genocide to the History of Indonesian Control", a 75 page report detailing the applicability of Indonesian control to each of the genocide conventions. During 2005 Sydney University Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies published "Genocide in West Papua? The role of the Indonesian state apparatus and a current needs assessment of the Papuan people", a report on the current conditions of the territory.

The United Nations has yet to respond to NGO requests during 2006 for the United Nations to resume its decolonization obligations under UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 and to return the territory's name to the United Nations list of Non Self-Governoring Territories.

International prosecution of genocide (ad hoc tribunals)

In 1951 only two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) were parties to the CPPCG: France and the Republic of China. The CPPCG was ratified by the Soviet Union 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. So it was only in the 1990s that the international law on the crime of genocide began to be enforced.

Bosnia

Main article Bosnian Genocide

(1992–1995) The Bosnian Genocide or Bosnia Genocide was an organized killing of Bosnians, predominantly Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) during the war between 1992 and 1995 by authorities of Republika Srpska and its Army.

The Bosnian Genocide has been proven at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) through the court case entitled Prosecutor vs Krstic (see Srebrenica Massacre). Thus far the Srebrenica massacre has been the only case which the UN Hague tribunal has officially defined as genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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 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.

International prosecution of genocide (International Criminal Court)

Darfur

See also Darfur conflict

The United States government's Sudan Peace Act of October 21, 2002 accused Sudan of genocide in an ongoing civil war which has cost more than 2,000,000 lives and has displaced more than 4,000,000 people since the war started in 1983.

In 2004 it became widely known that there was an organised campaign by Janjaweed militias (nomadic Arab shepherds with the support of Sudanese government and troops) to get rid of 80 black African groups from the Darfur region of western Sudan. These peoples include the Fur, Zaghawa and Massalit.

Mukesh Kapila (United Nations humanitarian coordinator) is quoted as saying: "This is more than just a conflict. It is an organised attempt [by Khartoum] to do away with a group of people. The only difference between Rwanda [in 1994] and Darfur now is the numbers of dead, murdered, tortured and raped involved"

On September 9, 2004 United States Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that the actions of the armed Muslim Arab Janjaweed organization in Darfur, conducted with the tacit approval, if not active support, of the Government of Sudan, constitute genocide. Powell stated before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility."

A number of articles are available on the website of the Embassy of the Republic of Sudan in Washington D.C. including one by Jonathan Steele originally published in The Guardian on 7 October 2005 in which he says that Colin Powell's declaration that the conflict in the western region of Darfur was as "genocide" was "a sop to the Christian right and anti-Islamist neocons" in the USA, as having made the claim the U.S. administration did "nothing, or at least no more than many other states, including Britain, which did not want the genocide label to be lightly used, and so devalued." The article concludes "Grim though it has been, this was not genocide or classic ethnic cleansing. Many of the displaced moved to camps a few kilometres from their homes. Professionals and intellectuals were not targeted, as in Rwanda. Darfur was, and is, the outgrowth of a struggle between farmers and nomads rather than a Balkan-style fight for the same piece of land."

Western countries are as yet undecided on whether to intervene directly, while at present millions of people are displaced, had their family separated and property destroyed. There is a risk of famine and epidemic because of overcrowding in camps, the destruction of agriculture, and poor supplies of medicine and food. To support the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed by the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement on January 9, 2005, to perform certain functions relating to humanitarian assistance, protection, promotion of human rights, and to support AMIS, the UN Security Council established the United Nations Mission In Sudan (UNMIS) under Resolution 1590 on March 24, 2005 because the Security Council deemed the situation in Darfur to be a "threat to peace and international security.". The UN investigation found the Muslim-controlled Sudanese government had committed mass murder, rape and other human rights violations against approximately 100,000 non-Muslim civilians. In addition vast numbers of villages were burnt and pillaged resulting in a total of about 1.85 million displaced non-Muslim African tribespeople.

In January 2005, an International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, authorized by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1564 of 2004, issued a report to the Secretary-General stating that "the Government of the Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide." Nevertheless, the Commission cautioned that "The conclusion that no genocidal policy has been pursued and implemented in Darfur by the Government authorities, directly or through the militias under their control, should not be taken in any way as detracting from the gravity of the crimes perpetrated in that region. International offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide."

In March 2005, the Security Council formally referred the situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, taking into account the Commission report but without mentioning any specific crimes. Two permanent members of the Security Council, the United States and China, abstained from the vote on the referral resolution. As of his fourth report to the Security Council, the Prosecutor, Mr. Luis Moreno Ocampo, has found "reasonable grounds to believe that the individuals identified [in the UN Security Council Resolution 1593] have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes," but did not find sufficient evidence to prosecute for genocide.

References

• Pfitzner, Wolfgang, The Unknown Famine Holocaust - About the Causes of Mass Starvation in Britain's Colony of India 1942-1945, The Revisionist 1(1) (2003).
• Braudel, Fernand, The Perspective of the World, vol. III of Civilization and Capitalism 1984 (in French 1979).
• Cronon, William, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England 1983 ISBN 0-8090-1634-6
• Crosby, Alfred W., Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986 ISBN 0-521-45690-8
• McCarthy, Justin., Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, (Darwin Press, 1995)

Further reading

General

• Charny, Israel W.; Encyclopedia of Genocide, ABC-Clio Inc, 720 pages, ISBN 0-87436-928-2 (December 1, 1999); Entries on the Armenian Genocide by Rouben Paul Adalian, displayed on the website of the Armenian National Institute.
• Courtois, Stephane, et al; The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression Harvard University Press 1999, 858 pages. ISBN 0-674-07608-7
• Gendercide Watch home page. GW "seeks to confront acts of gender-selective mass killing around the world."
• Harff, Barbara (Principal Investigator United States Naval Academy). Genocides and Politicide the site includes descriptions of 39 historical cases of genocide and politicide from 1955 to 2002; the data used to estimate models of the risks of genocide as published by Harff in "No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955 American Political Science Review 97.1 (February 2003): 57-73.
• Power, Samantha, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, Basic Books, 640 pages, ISBN 0-465-06150-8 (hardcover, 2002), ISBN 0-06-054164-4 (paperback, 2003), 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction
• Totten, Samuel; Parsons, William S.; and Charny Israel W.; eds; Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, Second Edition, Routledge Press, 507 pages, ISBN 0-415-94429-5 (hardcover, 2004), ISBN 0-415-94430-9 (paperback, 2004)
• U.N. Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide
• WarCrimes.info Documents and Resources on War, War Crimes and Genocide. (WarCrimes.info is an independent website owned by War Crimes Limited (UK)).
• Woolf, Linda; Holocaust, Genocides and Human Rights

Armenia

• Armeniapedia The Armenian Genocide
• h2g2 The Armenian Genocide

Asia

• Becker, Elizabeth, When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution, Public Affairs, 1986, 1998, paperback, 519 pages, ISBN 1-891620-00-2
• Brundige, Elizabeth; et al. Indonesian Human Rights Abuses in West Papua: Application of the Law of Genocide to the History of Indonesian Control(PDF) A paper prepared for the Indonesia Human Rights Network by the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic Yale Law School
• Elst, Koenraad, Chapter 2: Negationism in India
• Farooq, Mohammad Omar; Genocide 1971 in Bangladesh (former East Pakistan)
• Gendercide Watch Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971
• Kiernan, Ben, Ed., Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the U.N., and the International Community, 335 pp. (1993). ISBN 0-938692-49-6
• Pran, Dith; The Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project Cambodia

Darfur

• Protect Darfur UK-based lobbying organisation
• 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
• Stop Genocide Now Global community to change the way the world responds to genocide. Daily video feeds from the ground in Darfur/Chad border.
• 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
• Save Darfur Coalition Alliance of over 160 humanitarian, advocacy, human rights, and faith-based organizations united to end the genocide in Darfur.

Eastern Europe

• Leonas Cerskus Crimes of Soviet Communists — Wide collection of sources and links
• Yaeoslav Bilinsky Was the Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) of 1932-1933 Genocide? originally published in the Journal of Genocide Research (1999), 1(2), 147-156
• Kistler-Ritso Estonian Foundation Museum of occupations of Estonia
• The Occupation museum of Latvia
• Alfred Erich Senn What Happened in Lithuania in 1940?(PDF)
• Oksana Zakydalsky Commemorations of 1943 events in Volyn: perspective of Ukrainians in Poland first published in The Ukrainian Weekly, June 8, 2003, No. 23, Vol. LXXI
• Findings of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine (Holodomor) Source: U. S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, Report to Congress. Adopted by the Commission, April 19, 1988. Submitted to Congress April 22. 1988. Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1988. 524p

Other

• Kevin Annett The Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada
• Map of Occurrences of Genocide Throughout History (open for additions by anyone)
• Colin Tatz. Genocide in Australia. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
• Survivors Fund/ Representing survivors of the Rwandan genocide