Talk:Genocides in history/Archive 5

Iraq sanctions

Why aren't the Iraqi sanctions listed here? Isn't it the case that two UN Assistant SG's, Dennis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, both resigned from their positions and denounced the sanctions as "genocide"? Gatoclass 21:14, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Dennis Halliday has called the sanctions genocide.[1][2] -- Why not write up a section? But a quick trawl of the Internet and I could not find an article that states that Hans von Sponeck used the term. BTW is Hans von Sponeck a relation of Hans Graf von Sponeck? --Philip Baird Shearer 22:51, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

And here is a POV for Dennis Halliday genocide comment

Some legal experts are sceptical about or even against using such terminology. “People who talk like that don’t know anything about law,” retorts Mario Bettati, who invented the notion of “the right of humanitarian intervention”. “The embargo has certainly affected the Iraqi people badly, but that’s not at all a crime against humanity or genocide.”[3]

--Philip Baird Shearer 23:00, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

The Rape of Nanking

This incident, in which the Japanese Army in 1937 was released on the Chinese city of Nanking and directed to annihilate 300,000 Chinese civilians over the period of a few weeks, is considered a genocide. See Nanking Massacre article for sources.Jimhoward72 14:02, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe the entire holocaust of the Asians by the japanese, from the late 1800s to 1945, including the Koreans, Chinese and Southeast Asians should be mentioned. Or at least a link to japanese war crimes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.66.184.238 (talk) 17:30, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Kashmir

From the edit history of the article:

11:40, 5 September 2007 202.163.92.135: The Indian forces genocide against the Kashmiris should be added to the article.

See archives Talk:Genocides in history/Archive 1#Kashmir, Talk:Genocides in history/Archive 2#Kashmir --Philip Baird Shearer 12:03, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Any reason for Bangladesh photo removal?

I find that the photo depecting a "racial cleansing" in action with a Pak army checking the private parts of a Bengali has been removed. Is there any particular reason why it was removed by user philip? Thanks.--Idleguy 02:27, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The picture was removed with this comment in the history:

11:40, 5 September 2007 202.163.92.135 (The Indian forces genocide against the Kashmiris should be added to the article.)

I have no opinion on the photo. --Philip Baird Shearer 16:28, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

American Holocaust?

Why is there no mention of the +100 million Native Americans that were killed by the Europeans? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Asach (talk • contribs) 14:27, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Joshua's genocide of canaan people

why aren't there any statements about his genocide in canaan?YODAFON 06:33, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Hispanola

The genocide in Hispanola is mentioned but I find the figure of eight million to be highly questionable. I do not believe this island was capable of supporting such a large population to begin with. While I do agree with the contention that Columbus exterminated virtually the entire population, I think this figure needs to be revised. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.215.57.156 (talk) 07:20, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The section on Hispaniola does not contain a claim that it was genocide. Unless one is provided I intend to remove this section. --Philip Baird Shearer 23:59, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Looking through the source given for the quote in the Hispanola section, (Prologue and Pestilence and Genocide excerpts from the book American Holocaust by David Stannard, Oxford University Press, 1992) I think a better quotes to use are:

"During the course of four centuries - from the 1490s to the 1890s - Europeans and white Americans engaged in an unbroken string of genocide campaigns against the native peoples of the Americas." (p.147) * "[It] was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world."(Prologue)

American Holocaust The Conquest of the New World A review on the website of the Oxford University Press (the publishers). --Philip Baird Shearer 00:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Americas

This section seems awfully long for a subject that most scholars do not consider to have been a genocide. I know it was previously deleted altogether, which would be acceptable to me, but I know some editors think it should be included. I suggest it be reduced to two modest paragraphs at most. All the info about the deaths by disease seems superfluous (a simple statement that most of the deaths were by disease and a cite or two should be enough). Mamalujo 18:42, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Slave Trade

Hello, I added this paragraph under "Americas" but it was removed:

Slave Trade

The human toll resulting from the Atlantic slave trade (which includes the conflicts and forced procurement of slaves in Africa and deaths resulting from the trip also known as the Middle Passage is estimated at between 8 and 16 million people.

I am wondering why it was removed? While some may see the loss of slaves as as "losses in inventory" others view it as a holocaust. I am quoting from the wikipedia article Atlantic slave trade: "The slave-trade is sometimes called the Maafa by African and African-American scholars, meaning "holocaust" or "great disaster" in Swahili."

Because of the number of trips over a number of decades one could say that the traders expected and planned for the losses of life they incurred. While it wasn't intentional extermination (the slaves were part of a business venture after all) one must say that the losses, if they weren't expected on the very first trip across, were factored into the "costs" of later trips. If the traders were willing to accept the costs of millions of deaths... I think that counts as a genocide. 71.252.124.129 23:51, 11 October 2007 (UTC)Mark Cimino 7:50 PM Oct 11, 2007

To whoever did it, thank you for putting "Slave Trade" back. However, now that I reflect on it, should there be a separate section called "Africa/Atlantic Slave Trade" since the slavery process extended from Africa to the Americas? According to the Atlantic slave trade wikipedia article one estimate is that half the deaths took place in Africa. Also, perhaps there should be a note explaining why this counts as a genocide -- that the business of slavery included the decimation of African villages and the expected attrition of lives in the middle passage. 71.252.124.129 01:14, 12 October 2007 (UTC)Mark Cimino 9:14 October 11, 2007

This is an article about recorded genocides, unless a reliable source third party source claims that an action was a genocide it should not be included on this page. Please read the genocide article, as you say "it wasn't intentional extermination" then if can not have been a genocide because the legal definition of genocide includes the phrase "with intent to destroy" and it only relates to certain types of groups. --Philip Baird Shearer 12:08, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

A bad sentence

---

David Hiskiyahu, 12-Oct-2007 ----

This is a bad sentence: ' .. upwards of 11 million people (excluding Jews) were systematically "exterminated" (a Nazi term) by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust, of which over 10 millions were Slavs.[45] ..'

One may think that 10 million of collaborators were Slavs, while the intention of the article is to say that 10 million out of 11 million people killed, in this given context, were Slavs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.207.101.112 (talk) 11:52, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Croatia

I have moved this section here because neither the main article or this text has any sources -- let alone a reliable source -- claiming that this was a genocide. Several sentences have had {{fact}} on them since June and there is a quote without a citation (see WP:POINT) --Philip Baird Shearer 08:34, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

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 people killed, deported and converted by the Croat Ustashe between 1941-1945 could be more than 1 000 000.. 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."

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.

India

I removed the following recent addition stating in the edit history that the source does not use the word genocide:

A recent (as of August 2007) book by Amaresh Misra estimates that the number of people murdered by the British in retaliation for the Indian Rebellion of 1857 was 10 million. His calculations are based on triangulation of several different sets of records. If Misra's estimate is proved correct, this was the greatest genocide in history, worse than the Holocaust or Stalin's purges. Other historians have questioned these figures suggesting that the total includes refugees (as the figures are based on regional depopulation figures) and famine (a not uncommon occurrence in India at the time).(Guardian August 24, 2007 India's secret history: a holocaust)

However I am aware that some might argue that holocaust and genocide are interchangeable and that the Guardian use the word holocaust. But there are several other points on this particular entry:

• To be a genocide there has to be intent to commit genocide, and the proportion killed must meet the "in part" requirement.
• WP:Undue weight: One historian publishing a book on such a controversial issue, does not provide evidence that a consensus is emerging among historians to revise the historical consensus. If over the next few months more historians publish works supporting him then this may well become an event that I would support adding to this page, even if the majority view is still that it was not a genocide.
• Also the sentence "If Misra's estimate... is unsourced and is WP:OR until sourced.

--Philip Baird Shearer 09:59, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Soviet Union genocides

I don't understand why somebody claims following "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."

The good example is Soviet extermination of Poles 1937-1938. We have documented the whole operation directed for the ethnic group selected due to nationality. We have documented number of victims. What else is needed to remove this false statement?? Cautious 09:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

To be included in this page a there needs to be a claim in a WP:RS source that an event was a genocide.

It is sometimes not easy to make the distinction between mass murder, genocide and ethnic cleansing. For example before the recent international court cases many people thought that ethnic cleansing in Bosnia was a form of genocide because it was argued the it was done with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national/ethnical/religious group, but the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Jorgic v. Germany noted in its findings that in the case of Prosecutor v. Krstic (2 August 2001) the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ruled "customary international law limits the definition of genocide to those acts seeking the physical or biological destruction of all or part of the group. Hence, an enterprise attacking only the cultural or sociological characteristics of a human group in order to annihilate these elements which give to that group its own identity distinct from the rest of the community would not fall under the definition of genocide." (ECHR Jorgic v. Germany. § 42 citing Prosecutor v. Krstic, IT-98-33-T, judgment of 2 August 2001, §§ 580). See also ICJ Bosnian Genocide Case (February 26, 2007) --Philip Baird Shearer 10:30, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

1. I don't understand why this criteria is not used in the discussing article regarding other alleged genocides. Why it should be applied only in case of Polish peasants decimated by NKVD and not in other cases? 2. Please apply above criteria to specific case of Polish minority in USSR.

a) the group was targeted because of their nationality

b) the significant part was killed

Cautious 11:56, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Our conversation is now split over two pages Please see talk:Polish operation of the NKVD#Mass murder for more on this specific "operation". To be included in this page a there needs to be a claim in a reliable source that an event was a genocide. --Philip Baird Shearer 12:53, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

We mention that a number of the actions of the SU targeted specific ethnic groups and many of them lead to a large number of deaths. As I understand it, the reason why there is some dispute of the genocide label is the same as for many of the other examples, e.g. Australia, Americas, Ireland. It's generally taken that genocide requires the intention to kill a large number of people from a specific ethnic group. In many (although perhaps not all) cases of the SU, it's not clear the intention is there. Bad policy, reckless indifference and targetting groups for harsh living conditions without the intention to kill is often not considered genocide even if mass death of targeted individuals is the end result. Nil Einne 12:41, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

We mention them because there are cited sources to those genocides or alleged genocides. To date entries for the Soviet union with the exception of the Holodomor have not bee added with cited sources. For those sections that are already in this list we need some objective way of assessing if we are giving undue weight to them. Does anyone have any suggestions of how we could go about finding that information. --Philip Baird Shearer 13:54, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Polish state officialy considers Katyn Massacre to be a Soviet genocide, just for the record. If needed I can find references.--Molobo 01:55, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Primitive genocides

We seem to have missed the primitive genocides. ex. The Erie tribe of the Americas was exterminated by their fellow American Indians so recently we have the written records from Western observers. Just noting there is a LONG way to go to make this an acceptable page.67.161.166.20 22:45, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to remove section titled "France"

The contention that the suppression of the Revolt in the Vendée constituted a case of genocide is a marginal one, indeed it only has several published supporters in the whole academic world, and the expert/scholarly consensus is that it was not a case of genocide. Therefore I propose that the section be removed wholesale, and the content transferred to the appropriate article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_in_the_Vend%C3%A9e#Claims_of_genocide (I have already copied and pasted much of the content to the latter article).

With regards to the case of Napolean and Haiti, although very controversial in itself (and having only one published, highly polemical source), I don't object to keeping it in the article per se - although there is a question of weighting, and whether this incident should stand on the same foot as the other sections on instances of genocide. I perhaps think it should be kept, but an appropriatethe title, such as "Napolean and Haiti" or something similar...

Please comment. Ledenierhomme 10:35, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

It is sourced and an opposing POV is given. I think it should stay. --Philip Baird Shearer 11:13, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Why would you want to keep a claim, in an encyclopedia, that is in deference to the overwhelming majority of scholarly opinion? Really... why? Ledenierhomme 04:38, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

"Dresden Bombings were acts of Genocide. "Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, wrote: Nazi Holocaust was among the most evil genocides in history. But the Allies' firebombing of Dresden and nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also war crimes and, as Leo Kuper and Eric Markusen have argued, also acts of genocide." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II ("How we can prevent genocide" by Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, president of Genocide Watch and "The History and Sociology of Genocide" by Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, p. 24.)

Now, I don't agree with this characterization, in fact I think it is ridiculous and devalues the sufferers of genuine genocide (war crimes certainly, not genocide). However, Stanton is probably a more reliable source than Secher, so ought we to include the Dresden bombings in this article? I think not. Ledenierhomme 05:25, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

The following is in the Bombing of Dresden in World War II#Debate over the bombing of Dresden article/section your quote was not quite right:

Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, wrote: Nazi Holocaust was among the most evil genocides in history. But the Allies' firebombing of Dresden and nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also war crimes and, as Leo Kuper and Eric Markusen have argued, also acts of genocide.[59] Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn write in their book "The History and Sociology of Genocide" (page 24) that [the] definition of genocide also excludes civilian victims of aerial bombardment in belligerent states. In this we differ from Jean-Paul Sartre and Leo Kuper.

If someone wishes to include it here (with the balanced POV) I would not object. I think you have to have a look at the history of this article to see how far it has come: 1 January 2007 , 1 January 2006, 2 January 2005, 20 September 2004. I am very pleased that you are asking these questions, because people often come here and put in their favourite victims' claim that such and such was a genocide, without producing any sources. It is difficult to keep the article anywhere near balanced apart from demanding that any claim is sourced. (At the moment see the Talk:Bosnian Genocide for such a debate). As I wrote above on 20 October "For those sections that are already in this list we need some objective way of assessing if we are giving undue weight to them. Does anyone have any suggestions of how we could go about finding that information?" -- Philip Baird Shearer 08:35, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to remove section titled "Tibet"

For similar reasons. To create sections on cases where certain governments or regimes are simply accused of committing genocide, in an article entitled "Genocides in history", I think is both dishonest and dangerous. Ledenierhomme 09:40, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

In this example there is the opinion of a jurist of some repute and an ongoing court case so I do not think that it should be removed.--Philip Baird Shearer 11:18, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Which court? The Supreme Court of India - host-nation of the Dalai Lama. We really need to hold to some kind of objectivity in articles such as these, throwing around unproven accusations of such a serious nature is, as I say, dishonest, misleading, and dangerous. Not to mention offensive. As someone who has visited sites of recent genocide (Bosnia) and Tibet, I find it grossly offensive that Tibet's supposed "cultural genocide" is in this article mentioned in the same breath as mass graves in the Balkans. Ledenierhomme 04:43, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

What would you suggest as a measure of "objectivity in articles such as these"? which is within the content policies of Wikipedia. One can insist that POVs are sourcesd WP:V one can insist that there is a balance in the POVs WP:NPOV, and one can insist on WP:UNDUE, but this last one is the most difficult to quantify and enforce because it is so open to different individuals points of views. --Philip Baird Shearer 08:44, 26 October 2007 (UTC)