What is genocide?

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [1] drafted in 1948.

Article 2 of the Convention defines it 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;
...Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Examples of Genocide in the Past

1. Armenia [1]
2. Holocaust [1]
3. Cambodia [1]
4. Bosnia [1]
5. Rwanda [1]
6. Presentations on Genocide [1]

1. ArmeniaRead More [1]

History / Background: The roots of the conflict date back to the late 18th century. Inspired by the French Revolution, Armenian nationalists slowly began to demand greater autonomy, becoming a highly politicized religious minority within the Ottoman Empire. This politicization resulted in a series of massacres by the Ottoman Sultan from 1894 to 1896 in which some 200,000 Armenians perished. After the turn of the century, an uprising by a group known as the Young Turks took over the Ottoman Empire, who continued to harass and discriminate against the Christian Armenians. In 1909, another massacre of Armenians took place in the town of Adana. The Ottoman’s genocidal momentum intensified due to the lack of international concern and the outbreak of World War I , which then gave them cause and the cover to further harm the Armenians.

Dynamics of the Genocide: The genocide took place in four stages. Beginning in early 1915, the first stage targeted all able-bodied men between ages 20-45, who were recruited into the army to serve as laborers . Many were later executed. In the next stage, which began in April 1915, prominent figures in the community, including political leaders, intellectuals, and priests, were rounded up and deported to central Iran or executed. In May the Ottomans deported the remaining Armenian population, claiming that they were being resettled in the deserts of Mesopotamia. In the fourth stage, additional massacres 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. The Allied powers made empty promises to both investigate and prosecute all crimes committed against the Armenians. The government of the newly formed Republic of Turkey allowed the military to conduct a series of court-marshal s of governmental officials between 1919 and 1921. In 1939, Hitler infamously said, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Today, the Turkish government still fails to acknowledge the extent of the massacres, and debate about whether or not they constitute genocide continues around the world.

Learn More [1]

Audio/Video:

“Lessons From the Armenian Genocide and America’s Response [2],” 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 [3] from the feature film Innocents Betrayed, Armgate.

Power, Politics and the Armenian Genocide, [4] Simon Payaslian (April 20, 2006).

Feature Films:

The Armenian Genocide (Documentary, 2006)

Screamers (Documentary, 2006)

The Handjian Story: A Road Less Traveled (Documentary, 2002)

Links:

History of Armenia [5]
Armenian National Institute [6]
Armenian National Committee of America [7]

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.

Back to menu of past genocides [7]

2. HolocaustRead More [7]

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 ultimately 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 which stripped the German Jews of their rights of citizenship and called for their deportation. The first concentration camps were soon established for Jews, communists, and prisoners of war, where slave labor was demanded of the inmates under harsh conditions. On September 1, 1939, the German's started World War II by invading Poland

Dynamics of the Genocide: Many date the beginning of the Holocaust to Kristallnact (the night of broken glass), November 9-10, 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 elite killing squads. Within 18 months, approximately 1.3 million Jews in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union had been 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, subsequently called 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.

Learn More [7]

Audio/Video:

Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive [8], United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Feature Films:

Schindler's List (Drama, 2003)

The Pianist (Biography, Drama, 2003)

Escape from Sobibór (Drama, 1987)

Europa, Europa (Drama, 1990)

Shanghai Ghetto (Documentary, 2002)

Links:

Museum of Tolerance Learning Center [9]
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum [10]
USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education [11]
Yad Vashem [12]

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.
Levi, Primo. 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.

Back to menu of past genocides [12]

3. CambodiaRead More [12]

History/ Background: The Khmer Rouge is an offshoot of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), founded in 1951. Early leaders of the Khmer Rouge studied in Paris, where they were influenced of the French Communist Party. The CPK was originally closely allied with the communists in Vietnam but it tried to distance itself from the Vietnamese as the war progressed. During this time, real power of the movement fell into the hands of Cambodians who despised intellectualism, including Saloth Sar (more commonly known as Pol Pot). In 1960, Pol Pot became chairman of the CPK, and, fearful of outside influence, purged thousands of party members believed to be allied with the Vietnamese communists. The Vietnamese communist party was willing to overlook such purges and assist the newly named Khmer Rouge in taking over Cambodia. By 1970, the Khmer Rouge and Vietcong guerrillas had successfully taken over two-thirds of the country. A 1970 coup sent then-Cambodian king, Norodom Sihanouk, into exile and put a pro-American regime in power in the other third of the country. To close off supply routes to the Vietcong on the Cambodian side of the border, the Untied States launched a bombing campaign in Cambodia. Between 1970 and 1973, US forces dropped three times the quantity of explosives on Cambodia that it had dropped on Japan during World War II. By 1975, war had exhausted the Cambodians and made them frustrated with the pro-American government, creating a perfect opportunity for the Khmer Rouge to seize total control. On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge entered the capital, Phenom Penh, declaring April to be 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. Though the Khmer Rouge had been kicked out of the capital, they did not completely disappear. Because of American resentment towards the Vietnamese Communists, the Khmer Rouge remained the legal government of Cambodia for years afterwards and occupied a seat in the UN General Assembly. In 1991, the Khmer Rouge agreed to UN-supervised elections and the disarmament of most of its forces. By 2003, the UN reached a draft agreement with the democratic Cambodian government to establish an international criminal tribunal for former Khmer Rouge leaders. That tribunal's prosecutors identified five potential defendants in July 2007.

Learn More [12]

Audio/Video:

Cambodia Khmer Rouge 1975 to 1979 [13]

Note: The following video is slightly graphic and may not be appropriate for young viewers.

Khmer Rouge Video [14]

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. [15]
Digital Archive of Cambodian Holocaust Survivors [16]
Cambodian Genocide Group [17]
From Sideshow to Genocide: Stories of the Cambodian Holocaust [18]
The Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, Inc. [19]

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.

Back to menu of past genocides [19]

4. BosniaRead More [19]

History/ Background:

Due to the modern conflict, Bosnia has been transformed from a peaceful, pluralist society of multiple ethnicities with religious flexibility to a region torn apart by three, distinct ethnic groups: Bosnian-Serbs, Bosnian-Croats, and Bosnian-Muslims. Multiple colonizations and the authoritarian regime of Josip Tito served to aggravate ethnic tensions throughout the development of Bosnia. With the death of Tito and his iron rule over the Bosnian population, the system of checks and balances between the conflicting ethnic groups was dissolved, releasing the pressure cooker for the ethnic conflict. The election of 1990 further polarized the ethnic groups, as nationalist parties began to emerge as leading forces within domestic politics. This surge of nationalism met with the mobilizations of a “Greater Serbia” (led by Slobodan Milosevic) and a “Greater Croatia” in neighboring states and sparked the explosion of a three-sided civil war, especially as Bosnia declared its independence in 1992. Concerned about spillovers to European nations, the European Community held a number of conferences to try and resolve the Bosnian conflict by dividing up the country into different areas, each controlled by a different ethnic group. Unfortunately, these partition strategies only served to aggravate the ethnic groups further. As war broke out, Serb and Croat armies attempted to ethnically cleanse strategic regions of Bosnia to saturate their ethnicity in that area for the purposes of achieving their “Greater Serbia” and “Greater Croatia.” As Milosevic led his Serbian army to join the Bosnian-Serbs and cleanse the Muslim regions of the east that bordered Serbia and Bosnia, over 200,000 were killed by being targeted for their ethnicity.

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 have slaughtered Muslims to an inhumane point. Not only were there brutal murders, but Serbian concentration camps or, more accurately, death camps haunted 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 descended on the town of Srebrenica, a "UN safe area" and laid the town under siege, stripping the 40,000 Muslim inhabitants of food, water and supplies, while shelling housing structures. The UN soldiers safeguarding the town could do little: they were poorly equipped and had no back-up. Up to 7,500 men, and boys over 13 years old, were killed. Thousands of the bodies were buried in mass graves. This was the largest massacre in Europe since World War II.

Learn More [19]

Video:

Bosnia genocide victims buried [20], The Real News Network on YouTube.

Feature Films:

De Enclave (TV Series, Drama, 2002)

Grbavica (Drama, 2006)

Savior (Drama, 1998)

Links:

The Balkans [21], Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies

CNN.com: Milosevic on Trial [22]

Community of Bosnia [23]

BosniaLINK [24]

Genocide- Bosnia, Peace Pledge Union Information [25]

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 M. 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.

Back to menu of past genocides [25]

5. RwandaRead More [25]

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.

Learn More [25]

Audio/Video:

Rwanda: Justice after Genocide [26], 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 [27]
Rwanda on the BBC [28]
Reflections on the Genocide in Rwanda, United Nations [29]
100 Days of Rwanda [30]

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: The Rwanda Genocide and the International Community.

Neuffer, Elizabeth. The Key to My Neighbor’s House.

Rusesabagina, Paul. An Ordinary Man.

Back to menu of past genocides [30]

Presentations on Genocide
a.. Formation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide - A presentation on Raphael Lemkin, the coining of the word "genocide"
b.. The Sword in the Stone: the Genocide Convention - a presentation on the shortfalls and implications of the Genocide Convention. Also download the notes for this presentation.