Past Genocides

History/Background: The roots of the conflict date back to the late 18th century as Armenian nationalists slowly began to demand greater autonomy, becoming a highly politicized minority within the Ottoman Empire. This resulted in a series of massacres by the Ottoman Sultan from 1894 to 1896 where an estimated 200,000 Armenians perished. In the early 20th century, an uprising by a group known as the Young Turks took over the Ottoman Empire and continued to harass and discriminate against the Christian Armenians. This harrassement led to another massacre in the town of Adana in 1909. The lack of international concern and the outbreak of World War I gave Ottoman officials cover to further harm the Armenians.

Dynamics of the Genocide: The genocide took place in four stages. First, in early 1915, the Ottoman government recruited able-bodied men between ages 20-45 into the army to serve as laborers, where many were later executed. Then, in April 1915, the date when the Armenian community commemorates the genocide, prominent community figures were rounded up and deported or executed. In May, the remaining Armenian population was deported, under the pretext of their resettlement in the desert. After this, during the fourth stage, were ordered to eliminate the remnants of the uprooted population. Up to 1.5 million people out of a prewar population of 1.8 million died as the result of the massacres and deportations. An alleged 100,000 Armenian women were forced to convert to Islam.

After the war, the Allied powers made empty promises to both investigate and prosecute all crimes committed against the Armenians and the government of the newly formed Republic of Turkey allowed the military to conduct a series of court-martials of governmental officials complicit in the genocide. Unfortunately these judicial measures would not deter future atrocities as in 1939, Hitler infamously said, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Audio/Video: “Lessons From the Armenian Genocide and America’s Response,” an interview with Peter Balakian, author of Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response on Jerry Fowler’s Voices on Preventing Genocide; A clip from the feature film Innocents Betrayed, Armgate. The Betrayed: A BBC News Documentary

Feature Films: The Armenian Genocide (Documentary, 2006) Screamers (Documentary, 2006); The Handjian Story: A Road Less Traveled (Documentary, 2002)

Links: History of Armenia; Armenian National Institute; Armenian National Committee of America; Armenian Genocide Museum

Books: Balakian, Peter. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response; Bedoukian, Kerop. Some of Us Survived: the Story of an Armenian Boy; Dadrian, Vahakn. The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflcit from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus; Davis, Leslie A. The Slaughterhouse Province: An American Diplomat’s Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917; Hartunian, H. Abraham. Neither to Laugh nor to Weep: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide; Kalajian, Hannah. Hannah’s Story: Escape from the Genocide in Turkey to Success in America; Ketchian, Bertha A. In the Shadow of the Fortress: the Genocide Remembered; Morgenthau, Henry. Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story; Simpson, Christopher. The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century; Temon, Yves. The Armenians: History of a Genocide.

History/ Background: After Germany's defeat in World War I, the Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to pay huge reparations, which led to massive inflation and economic depression. Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party rose to power in 1933, providing the German people with a scapegoat for the country's woes: the Jews. Hitler instilled the belief that the German Aryan race was superior to all others and the only way to ensure the Aryan’s lebensraum (room for living) was to eliminate all the inferior and undesirable races: the Jews, Slavs, gypsies, political and religious dissidents, homosexuals and the disabled. In 1935, the Nuremburg Laws were passed stripping German Jews of their citizenship and calling for their deportation. The first concentration camps were soon established for Jews, communists, and political prisoners, where inmates were forced to labor under harsh conditions.

Dynamics of the Genocide: Many date the beginning of the Holocaust to Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), November 9 and 10, 1938, when Jewish-owned businesses and synagogues were looted. Massacres and mass deportations to concentration camps began shortly thereafter. Conquests in the early part of World War II brought an even greater number of Jews under German control. These Jews were crammed into ghettos, deprived of rights and property and massacred by killing squads. Within 18 months, approximately 1.3 million Jews in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union were killed. In January 1942, the Nazis formulated "The Final Solution" to exterminate all European Jews. New gassing facilities were constructed in three concentration camps in Poland and two additional death camps were built near the Polish town of Auschwitz. Soon Jews from all over Europe were being forced into cattle cars destined for one of the camps that could gas thousands of Jews a day. Gassing, starvation, or disease killed millions over the next three years. The true magnitude of the genocide, now known as the Holocaust, only became known to the world after the camps were liberated by Allied forces in 1945. Within seven years, 6 million Jews and 5 million “undesirables” lost their lives. In 1946, the Nuremburg Tribunal was established to try the perpetrators of the genocide for their crimes. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which provided a working definition for the newly coined term “genocide” and made it a crime under international law, was adopted in 1948. The Fourth Geneva Convention was enacted in 1949, mandating the protection of civilians, in the hands of an enemy or under foreign occupation, during times of war.

Audio/Video: Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Living Histories: Seven Voices from the Holocaust, USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education.

Feature Films: Schindler's List; The Pianist; Escape from Sobibór; Europa, Europa; Shanghai Ghetto

Links: Museum of Tolerance Learning Center; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education; Yad Vashem

Books: Berenbau, Michael. The World Must Know; Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland; Frank, Anne. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Kovaly, Heda. Under a Cruel Star; Levi, Primo. If This is a Man and Survival in Auschwitz; Lowry, Lois. Number the Stars; Matas, Carol. Daniel’s Story; Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History and Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: and Here My Troubles Began; Trunk, Isaiah. Lodz Ghetto: a History; Wiesel, Elie. Night; Yolen, Jane. The Devil’s Arithmetic.

History/ Background: In 1970, a military coup resulted in the overthrowing of Prince Sihanouk and the instauration of a right-wing government led by lieutenant-general Lon Nol. Under Prince Sihanouk, Cambodia managed to preserve its neutrality in neighboring Vietnam's civil war by making concessions to both sides. The new government, however, sided with the United States and allowed US forces to openly enter and bombard parts of Cambodia in its efforts to defeat the Vietcong. This collaboration with the United States led to growing dissatisfaction among the Cambodian population, strengthening the left-wing Khmer Rouge movement. By 1975, the war had exhausted the Cambodian government and the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, were able to seize control of the capital, Phenom Penh, and declare the beginning of a new era: Year Zero.

Dynamics of the Genocide: After seizing power the Khmer Rouge outlawed the family, education, religion, books, healthcare, holidays, art, music, markets, and technology. Hundreds of thousands of individuals were ordered to evacuate the cities because the Khmer Rouge saw urban dwellers as the enemy of the peasant-oriented society that it intended to create. Newly resettled into the countryside, Cambodians were ordered to produce an impossible 1 ton of grain per acre. Rice paddies became known as “killing fields” because of the strenuous working conditions. Expendable citizens were forced to work 12 hour days without adequate food or rest. Those who could not keep up with the Khmer Rouge's demands were forced to dig their own graves and then executed. Political prisoners were held in special detention centers and tortured till they gave elaborate, false confessions with electric shocks, hot metal prods, and knives before being killed. Between 1975 and 1979, nearly 2 million Cambodians died. Ethnic tensions increased between Vietnam and Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge's reign, culminating in the expulsion of ethnic Vietnamese from Cambodia. On Christmas Day 1978, 100,000 Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia in response to the Khmer Rouge's treatment of its Vietnamese citizens. The Vietnamese army reached Phnom Penh by January 7, 1979, installing a new pro-Vietnamese government, ending the most brutal portions of the genocide. In 2003, the UN reached a draft agreement with the Cambodian government to establish an international criminal tribunal for former Khmer Rouge leaders. That tribunal's prosecutors identified five potential defendants in July 2007.

Audio/Video: Cambodia Khmer Rouge 1975 to 1979 Note: The following video is slightly graphic and may not be appropriate for young viewers. Khmer Rouge Video

Feature Films: The Killing Fields (Drama, 1984) The Rice People (Drama, 1994) S21 The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (Documentary, 2002)

Links: Cambodian Genocide Program, Yale University; Digital Archive of Cambodian Holocaust Survivors Cambodian Genocide Group From Sideshow to Genocide: Stories of the Cambodian Holocaust The Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, Inc.

Books: Chandler, David. Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot; Etcheson, Craig. After the Killing Fields: lessons from the Cambodian Genocide; Fifield, Adam. A Blessing Over Ashes: The Remarkable Odyssey of My Unlikely Brother; Him, Chanrithy. When The Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge; Jarvis, Helen and Tom Fawthrop. Getting Away with Genocide: Cambodia’s Long Struggle Against the Khmer Rouge; Kiernan, Ben. Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: the Khmer Rouge, the United Nations, and the International Community; Kiernan, Ben. The Pol Pot Regime; Maguire, Peter. Facing Death in Cambodia; Oeur, U. Sam. Sacred Vows; Pran, Dith. Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors; Ung, Loung. First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.

History/ Background: In the late 1980's and early 1990's Bosnia and Herzegovina turned from a peaceful, pluralist society to one split between three, distinct ethnic groups: Bosnian-Serbs, Bosnian-Croats, and Bosnian-Muslims. A long history of outside colonization and a rise in nationalist political parties further polarized ethnic groups. This surge of nationalism led to the ideas of a “Greater Serbia” and a “Greater Croatia” and sparked the explosion of a three-sided civil war, particularly as Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence in 1992. Concerned about spillovers of violence, the European Community held a number of conferences to resolve the conflict by dividing up the country into different areas, controlled by a different ethnic group. Unfortunately, these strategies only aggravated tensions further. As war broke out, Serb and Croat armies attempted to ethnically cleanse strategic regions of Bosnia for the purposes of achieving their “Greater Serbia” and “Greater Croatia.”

Dynamics of the Genocide: Though many argue that atrocities of Bosnian Croats against Muslims also can qualify as genocidal, it is widely agreed upon that Bosnian Serbs particularly targeted Muslim Bosniaks. Not only were there brutal murders, but Serbian concentration camps targeted the Muslim and Croat populations. Torture, rape, and other human rights violations were committed on a daily basis. One incident in particular exemplifies the scale of ethnic hatred that characterized the Bosnian genocide. In July 1995, Serb troops besieged the town of Srebrenica, a "UN safe area," limiting the access of 40,000 Muslim inhabitants to food, water and supplies, while repeatedly shelling the city. The UN soldiers safeguarding the town could do little: they were poorly equipped and had no back-up. After the Bosnian Serbs took control of Srebrenica, up to 7,500 men, and boys over 13 years old, were killed. Thousands of the bodies were buried in mass graves.

Video: Bosnia genocide victims buried, The Real News Network on YouTube.

Feature Films: De Enclave (TV Series, Drama, 2002) Grbavica (Drama, 2006) Savior (Drama, 1998)

Links: The Balkans, Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies; International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia; Genocide- Bosnia, Peace Pledge Union Information.

Books: Anzulovic, Branimir. Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide; Bass, Gary J. Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals; Gallagher, Tom. The Balkans after the Cold War: from tyranny to tragedy; Koff, Clea. The Bone Woman; Mestrovic, Stjepan. Genocide after Emotion: The Postemotional Balkan War; Mills, Nicolaus and Kira Brunner. The New Killing Fields; Naimark, Norman Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe; Neuffer, Elizabeth. The Key to My Neighbor’s House; Ron, James. Frontiers and ghettos: state violence in Serbia and Israel; Sadkovich, James J. The US Media and Yugoslavia, 1991-1995; Scharf, Michael P. Slobadon Milosevic on trial: a companion; Thomas, Raju C.G. Yugoslavia unraveled: sovereignty, self-determination, intervention; Vulliamy, Ed. Middle Managers of Genocide; Stone, Marla. Bosnia’s Untenable Peace.

History/ Background: When the Belgians took control of Rwanda from Germany after World War I, they found a centrally organized, highly stratified society divided into two main groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. The Tutsi are a minority group of predominantly upper-class cattle owners and the Hutu are the predominantly lower-class, farming majority. The Belgians decided to utilize the ruling structure which was already in place, giving Tutsis power, education and wealth. To distinguish between the groups, the Belgians issued identity cards for the first time. Hutu resentment began to boil in the 1950s as they issued a manifesto calling for a change in the power structure and formed political parties. In 1959, inter-ethnic violence exploded forcing thousands of Tutsis, including the king, into exile in Uganda where they formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Rwanda became independent in 1962 with a Hutu as president which caused more Tutsis to leave the country. After Tutsi rebels entered the country in 1963, 20,000 Tutsis were killed in the start of a string of anti-Tutsi violence. Juvenal Habyarimana took over Rwanda in a 1973 coup. In 1990, the RPF invaded from Uganda, sparking a six month civil war which was settled by a 1991 ceasefire, the Arusha Accords. Despite the accords, animosities grew deeper between the ethnic groups. A power-sharing agreement was signed between the government and the RPF in 1993 and the UN deployed a small mission, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) to supervise it. The mission, under a Chapter VI mandate, was not allowed to use force. Hutu extremists within and outside the government had nothing to gain from sharing power with the RPF and feared that, once in power, the Tutsis might retaliate as the Hutu had in the 1960s. In late 1993 and early 1994, two Hutu radical political parties—the National Republican Movement for Democracy (MRND) and the Coalition for Defense of the Republic (CRD)—aggressively recruited unemployed young men to fill the ranks of their militias. The militias imported arms from South Africa, Egypt and solicited advice from the French military mission. An estimated 581,000 machetes were sent to Rwanda, enough for every third Hutu male. In January 1994, a Hutu informant came to the commander of UNAMIR, Romeo Dallaire, with information about the arming and training of Hutu militias, their orders to register all Tutsis in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, and a plan to force Belgian troops in UNAMIR to withdraw. The informant also said the militias could kill up to 1,000 Tutsis in 20 minutes. Dallaire sent this information to UN Headquarters in what became known as the “Genocide Fax” calling for immediate action based on the informant’s information, but Headquarters, fearing for the lives of UN troops, told him not to do anything.

Dynamics of the Genocide: On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying the Hutu President Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart was shot down by a rocket. The assassination was the spark the militias had been waiting for. The military took over the government and extremist Hutu militias called the interhamewe took to the radios, calling for Hutus to start killing the Tutsi “cockroaches”. With assistance from the Presidential Guard, an elite army unit, roadblocks were set up all around Kigali where those carrying a Tutsi identity card were systematically slaughtered as they attempted to flee. The prime minister of the unity government agreed to in the 1993 power-sharing accord along with all other moderate politicians were hunted down and killed during the first few hours of the genocide. The 12 Belgian UN soldiers sent to guard the prime minister were also killed, prompting Belgium to withdraw its 400-man peacekeeping force, the backbone of UNAMIR. Militias soon took to the countryside and, with the help of local Hutu officials and radio broadcasters, were directed to homes, schools or churches where Tutsis had sought refuge. Rape was widely used to torment female victims before they were murdered. In late June, French troops arrived and set themselves up in the southwest of the country. During the first days of the genocide, the Hutu military restarted the civil war with the RPF who, under the command of Paul Kagame, began to make major advances. By July 4, 1994, Kigali was under RPF control, causing almost 2 million Hutu soldiers and civilians alike to flee to the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Tanzania under cover from the French, old allies of the Hutu regime. On July 18, 1994 the RPF, who had now taken control of the entire country, declared the war to be over. A day later they inaugurated their own government of national unity. Between 800,000 and 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been slaughtered in just 100 days. In November 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was created in Arusha, Tanzania. Justice has been painfully slow, but has determined that rape is both an act of torture and genocide. Rwandan authorities have arrested thousands of suspected individuals, but lacking the capacity to try them all, have resorted to either gacaca courts (group courts) or releasing prisoners.

Audio/Video: Rwanda: Justice after Genocide, video by Internews.

Feature Films: Hotel Rwanda (Drama, 2004) Beyond the Gates (Drama, 2007) Ghosts of Rwanda (Documentary, 2005) Keepers of Memory: Survivor’s Accounts of the Rwandan Genocide (Documentary, 2005) Sometimes in April (Drama, 2005) Rwanda: Living Forgiveness (Documentary, 2005)

Links: Rwanda: The Wake of a Genocide; Rwanda on the BBC; Reflections on the Genocide in Rwanda, United Nations.

Books: Barnett, Michael. Eyewitness to a Genocide; Chretien, Jean-Pierre. The Great lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History; Dallaire, Romeo. Shake Hands with the Devil; des Forges, Allison Liebhafsky. Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda; Gourevitch, Phillip. We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Shall be Killed with Our Families; Keane, Fergal. Seasons of Blood: A Rwandan Journey; Hatzfeld, Jean. Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak; Melvern, Linda. A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide and Conspiracy to Murder; Neuffer, Elizabeth. The Key to My Neighbor’s House; Rusesabagina, Paul. An Ordinary Man.