Genocide - The Crime of Group Murder

What is genocide? Genocide is a deliberate and systematic attempt to annihilate or destroy a group of people often based on their race or ethnicity as well as religion and politics. And while many associate this term with the Jewish Holocaust, genocide, sadly, is prevalent at this day and age.

The term genocide was first coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to describe the Jewish Holocaust. The original definition of genocide was narrow in the sense that it was limited only to the mass destruction of national groups such as the Jews and the Armenians of the Armenian massacre in the Ottoman Empire. All the same, it was also broad in that it included any action that destroyed the culture and means of livelihood of the victimized group.

In 1948, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) which contains international laws that defines and forbids genocide as a crime, was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.

CPPCG’s definition of genocide was then incorporated into the national criminal legislation system of many countries. The Rome Statute of International Criminal Court also adopted CPPCG’s definition.

All signatories in the convention are required to prevent and penalize the crime of genocide. However, some signatories signed with the provision that no allegation of genocide can be brought against them in the International Court of Justice without their consent.

Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide describes genocide as any act that is done with the intent to wholly or partly destroy any national, racial, etnic, or religious group.

Aside from killing, the crime of genocide also includes the following actions:

• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to the victims.
• Deliberate infliction on the victims definite conditions of life that are designed to physically destroy the targetted group.
• Implementing birth preventive measures within the victimized group.
• Transferring children of the group to another group by force.

Nevertheless, the exclusion of social and political groups from CPPCG’s definition of genocide has been highly debated and criticized.

Genocide Cases in the 20^th Century

• Bosnia-Herzegovina Genocide: where 3 ethnic groups namely the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in 1992 - 1995 resulted in the death of about 200,000 people.
• Rwanda Genocide: where the war between Hutus and Tutsis in 1994 resulted in about 800,000 deaths.
• Cambodia Genocide: where the attempts of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot to form a Communist peasant farming community from 1974 - 79 ended up killing 2,000,000 people, almost 25% of the country’s population.
• Nazi Holocaust: where the attempts of Adolf Hitler to wipe out the Jewish population from 1938 - 1945 produced a death toll of around 6,000,000.
• The Rape of Nanking: where the Japanese Imperial Army marched into the City of Nanking, China’s capital in 1937 - 38 during World War II and annihilated 300,000 civilians and soldiers, about half of the city’s population.
• Stalin’s Forced Famine: where Joseph Stalin caused forced famine from 1932 - 33 to set upon Ukrainians seeking independence from his rule, killing 7,000,000 people in the process.
• Armenian Genocide: where Armenians in Turkey where removed from their historic homeland through forced deportation and murder from 1915 - 18, leaving 1,500,000 people dead in its wake.

 
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