Genocides in history

Genocide is the mass killing of a group of people, as defined by Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, 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."

The preamble to the CPPCG not only states that "genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world", but that "at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity".

Determining what historical events constitute a genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behaviour is not a clear-cut 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 genocides and alleged genocides should be understood in this context and cannot be regarded as the final word on these subjects.

Alternative meanings of genocide

See also: genocide definitions

Much of the 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 so defined by the perpetrator."

According to R. J. Rummel, genocide has 3 different meanings. The ordinary meaning is murder by a 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.

Timeline of genocides and alleged genocides

Before 1490

Adam Jones explains, in his book Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, that people throughout history have always had the ability to see other groups as alien, he quotes Chalk and Jonassohn: "Historically and anthropologically peoples have always had a name for themselves. In a great many cases, that name meant 'the people' to set the owners of that name off against all other people who were considered of lesser quality in some way. If the differences between the people and some other society were particularly large in terms of religion, language, manners, customs, and so on, then such others were seen as less than fully human: pagans, savages, or even animals.(Chalk and Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide, p. 28.)"

Jones continues by saying that the less a people have in common with another group the easier it is for the aliens to be defined as less than human and from there it is but a short step to an argument that says if they are a threat, then they should "be eliminated in order that we may live (Them or us)." But after making this assessment Jones continues "The difficulty, as Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn pointed out in their early study, is that such historical records as exist are ambiguous and undependable. While history today is generally written with some fealty to 'objective' facts, most previous accounts aimed rather to praise the writer's patron (normally the leader) and to emphasize the superiority of one's own gods and religious beliefs."

Scholars of antiquity do differentiate between gendercide in which males were killed, but the children (particularly the girls) and women were incorporated into the conqueror's society, Jones notes that "Chalk and Jonassohn provide a wide-ranging selection of historical events such as the Assyrian Empire’s root-and branch depredations in the first half of the first millennium BCE, and the destruction of Melos by Athens during the Peloponnesian War (fifth century BCE), a gendercidal rampage described by Thucydides in his 'Melian Dialogue'."

The Old Testament not only describes the genocides of Amalekites and Midianites but justifies them through references to the word of God. Jones quotes Jerusalem-based Holocaust Studies Professor Yehuda Bauer: "As a Jew, I must live with the fact that the civilization I inherited . . . encompasses the call for genocide in its canon."

Ben Kiernan, a Yale scholar, has labeled the destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War (149–146 BC) "The First Genocide". Quoting Eric Margolis, Jones observes that in the 13^th century the Mongol horsemen of Temüjin Genghis Khan were genocidal killers (génocidaires) who were known to kill whole nations leaving nothing but empty ruins and bones.

1490 to 1914

Americas

From the 1490s when Christopher Columbus set foot on the Americas to the massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee by the United States Army, the indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere may have declined by as many as 100 million. In Brazil alone the indigenous population has declined from a pre-Columbian high of an estimated 3 million to some 300,000 (1997). Estimates of how many people were living in the Americas when Columbus arrived have varied tremendously; 20th century scholarly estimates ranged from a low of 8.4 million to a high of 112.5 million persons. This population debate has often had ideological underpinnings. Robert Royal writes that "estimates of pre-Columbian population figures have become heavily politicized with scholars who are particularly critical of Europe and/or Western civilization often favoring wildly higher figures."

Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives. After first contacts with Europeans and Africans, some believe that the death of 90 to 95% of the native population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases such as smallpox and measles.

Determining how many people died as a direct result of armed conflict between native Americans, and Europeans and their descendants, is difficult as accurate records were not always kept. In the book The Wild Frontier: Atrocities during the American-Indian War from Jamestown Colony to Wounded Knee, amateur historian William M. Osborn sought to tally every recorded atrocity in the area that would eventually become the continental United States, from first contact (1511) to the closing of the frontier (1890), and determined that 9,156 people died from atrocities perpetrated by Native Americans, and 7,193 people died from atrocities perpetrated by Europeans. Osborn defines an atrocity as the murder, torture, or mutilation of civilians, the wounded, and prisoners.

In his book American Holocaust, David Stannard argues that the destruction of the aboriginal peoples of the Americas, in a "string of genocide campaigns" by Europeans and their descendants, was the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. While no mainstream historian denies that death and suffering were unjustly inflicted by a number of Europeans upon a great many American natives, most scholars of the subject maintain that genocide, which is a crime of intent, was not the intent of European colonization. Historian Stafford Poole wrote: "There are other terms to describe what happened in the Western Hemisphere, but genocide is not one of them. It is a good propaganda term in an age where slogans and shouting have replaced reflection and learning, but to use it in this context is to cheapen both the word itself and the appalling experiences of the Jews and Armenians, to mention but two of the major victims of this century."

Argentina

Main article: Conquest of the Desert

The Conquest of the Desert was a military campaign directed mainly by General Julio Argentino Roca in the 1870s, which established Argentine dominance over Patagonia, which was inhabited by indigenous peoples.

Jens Andermann has noted that the contemporary sources on that campaign indicate that it was a genocide by the Argentine government against the indigenous tribes. Others perceive the campaign as intending to suppress specifically those groups of aboriginals that refused to submit to the white government and carried out attacks on the white and especially criolla (mixed white and indigenous) civilian settlements. This recent argument – usually summarized as "Civilization or Genocide?"– questions whether the Conquest of the Desert was really intended to exterminate the aboriginals.

Australia

Main article: Australian genocide debate

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 resulted in the almost complete obliteration of the Tasmanian Aboriginal population, though there are presently many thousands of individuals descended from Tasmanian Aborigines. The Tasmanians, estimated at 8,000 people in 1803, were reduced to a population of around 300 by 1833, although much of this has been attributed to the effect of diseases to which they had no natural immunity (including smallpox and syphilis). Estimates of the total number of Tasmanian deaths at the hands of European settlers vary, with some estimates ranging as low as 118 in the period from 1803 until 1847.

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.

Australian historians are split as to whether this was a genocide, this is often to do with if the "the term 'genocide' only applies to cases of deliberate mass killings of Aborigines by European settlers, or whether the term 'genocide' might also apply to instances in which many Aboriginal people were killed by the reckless or unintended actions and omissions of settlers."

France

Reynald Secher, a prominent Traditionalist Catholic historian associated with Action Française, wrote a controversial book entitled A French Genocide: The Vendée in which he argued that the actions of the French republican government during the revolt in the Vendée (1793-1796), a popular uprising by persecuted Catholics against the Republican government during the French Revolution, was the first "modern" genocide.

Initially the Vendee rebels gained the upper hand, so on August 1 1793 the Committee of Public Safety ordered General Jean-Baptiste Carrier to carry out a "pacification" of the region, by complete physical destruction. The Republican army was reinforced and the Vendéan army was eventually defeated. The orders for "pacification" were not carried out immediately, but a steady stream of demands for total destruction continued. Under orders from Committee of Public Safety in February 1794 the Republican forces launched their final "pacification" (the Vendée-Vengé or "'Vendée Avenged") - twelve columns, the colonnes infernales ("infernal columns") under Louis-Marie Turreau, were marched through the Vendée. Unwilling to undertake the massacre of civilians himself, General Turreau inquired about "the fate of the women and children I will encounter in rebel territory", stating that if it was "necessary to pass them all by sword" he would require a decree. In response, the Committe of Public Safety ordered him to "eliminate the brigands to the last man, there is your duty..." .

Conventional wisdom amongst historians has traditionally not ascribed the term or concept of "genocide" to the Revolt in the Vendée, as no specific ethnicity, or religious group was targeted. However, Secher's thesis was supported by Pierre Chaunu, a professor of history at Paris IV-Sorbonne university. Other historians have employed the term "genocide" to describe the massacres made during the civil war in the republican camp, such as Jean Tulard. Stéphane Courtois, a Director of Research at the CNRS who specializes in the history of Communism, who tells of how Lenin compared the people of the Vendée to the Cossacks, and expressed joy at the program of Gracchus Babeuf, "the inventor of modern Communism", of "populicide" in 1795 against the people of the Vendée.

Nevertheless, the great majority of authorities on modern French history have have rejected the characterization of genocide, including the assertion of commonality between the functions of the Republican government and Communist totalitarianism, and pointed to a clear polemical bias and flawed methodology on Secher's part. An incomplete list of preeminent scholars who have published against Secher and refused to accept the title of genocide include: Australian Peter McPhee, Professor at the University of Melbourne; Welshman Julian Jackson, Professor of history modern at the university of Londres; American Timothy Tackett, Professor at the University of California; Irishman Hugh Gough, Professor at University College Dublin; and French professors of modern history and related fields François Lebrun of the University of High-Brittany-Rennes II, and of the University of Paris, I-Pantheon-Sorbonne, Claude Langlois of the Institute of History of the French Revolution, Paul Tallonneau Claude Petitfrère , and Jean-Clément Martin.

An equally controversial claim of genocide has been made in a book entitled Le Crime De Napoleon by Claude Ribbe, a French historian of Caribbean heritage. Ribb claims that Napoleon ordered the extermination of all black people over the age of 12 in Haiti during a rebellion there in the early 19th century by using sulphur dioxide from volcanos and ships as makeshift gas chambers to kill 100,000 people or more.

German South-West Africa

Main article: Herero and Namaqua Genocide

The Herero and Namaqua Genocide in German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) in 1904–1907 is clearly the first organized state genocide as the UN Whitaker report (1985) concluded, the Herero were also the first ethnic group to be subjected to genocide in the 20th century. 80 percent of the total Herero population and 50 percent of the total Nama population were killed in a brutal scorched earth campaign led by German General Lothar von Trotha.

British Ireland

Main article: Great Irish Famine

During the years of the Irish Famine, Ireland produced enough food, flax and wool not only to feed and clothe its nine million people, but enough for eighteen million. In this sense the famine was artificial, not caused by a shortage of food but by the British government's choice not to close the ports as had been done in previous Irish crop blights; as John Mitchell put it, "The Almighty sent the potato blight...but the English created the famine."

Noted professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Francis A. Boyle, finding that the British violated sections (a), (b), and (c) of Article 2 of the CPPCG and committed genocide, issued a formal legal opinion to the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education on May 2, 1996, stating 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." Prominent international law professor Charles E. Rice of Notre Dame likewise issued a formal opinion, also based on Article 2, that the British had committed genocide.

Contesting claims of genocide, 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 that the policy was wrong which "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..."

Records show that Ireland exported food, even increasing some food exports during the worst years of the Famine. When Ireland experienced a famine in 1782-83, ports were closed to keep Irish-grown food in Ireland to feed the Irish. Local food prices promptly dropped. Merchants lobbied against the export ban, but the government of the 1780s overrode their protests; that export ban did not exist in the 1840s.

File:Starving Irish family during the potato famine.JPG

Starving Irish family during the potato famine

Cecil Woodham-Smith, an authority on the Irish Famine, wrote in The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845-1849 that, "...no issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two countries (England and Ireland) as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation." Ireland remained a net exporter of food throughout most of the five-year famine.

Peaking around 8-9 million in the early 19th century, Ireland's population fell to around 4 million during the Famine, because of emigration and starvation. Modern historians and statisticians estimate that between 500,000 and 2,000,000 died.

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.

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)).

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 and the term, that had been coined the year before by Raphael Lemkin, appeared in the indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders, Count 3, stated that all the defendants had "conducted deliberate and systematic genocide – namely, the extermination of racial and national groups..."

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 Slavs (Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Serbs, and others), Roma (see Porajmos), mentally ill (see T-4 Euthanasia Program), Homosexuals and sexual deviants, and political opponents. In all, 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.

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 articles: Armenian Genocide, Assyrian Genocide, and Pontic Greek 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.

According to various sources the direct or indirect death toll of Greeks in Anatolia ranges from 300,000 to 360,000 men, women and children. The Assyro-Chaldean National Council stated in a December 4, 1922, memorandum that the total death toll is unknown, but it estimates that about 275,000 "Assyro-Chaldeans" died between 1914–1918.

Soviet Union

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

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.

In 1932-1933 confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities caused a famine which affected more than 40 million people, especially in the south on the Don and Kuban areas and in Ukraine, where up to ten million starved to death. The nations hit in a disproportionate manner 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.

In November 2006 the BBC reported that "Ukraine is now trying to get this mass starvation recognised by the United Nations as an act of genocide". This move is opposed by both the Russian government and many members of the Ukrainian parliament. The Russians, while agreeing that the famine took place, deny that it was attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation. During that month at a remembrance ceremony held in Kyiv, a big board listed ten other countries that recognised the Holodomor as a genocide: Australia, Argentina, Georgia, Estonia, Italy, Canada, Lithuania, Poland, USA, Hungary.

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.

Australia 1900-1969

Main articles: Stolen Generation and History wars

Sir Ronald Wilson, former president of Australia's Human Rights Commission thinks that Australia's "Stolen Generation" — where from 1900 to 1970, 20,000 to 25,000 Aboriginal children were forcibly separated from their natural families (see the Bringing Them Home report) — "was clearly was attempted genocide ... [because it] was believed that the Aboriginal people would die out". However the nature and extent of the removals have been disputed within Australia, with some commentators questioning the findings contained in the report and asserting that the Stolen Generation has been exaggerated. Not only has the number of children removed from their parents been questioned, but also the intent and effects of the government policy.

Guatemala 1968-1996

Main article: Guatemalan civil war

During the Guatemalan civil war, some 200,000 people died. More than one million people were forced to flee their homes and hundreds of villages were destroyed. The officially chartered Historical Clarification Commission attributed more than 93% of documented violations of human rights; and that Maya Indians accounted for 83% of the victims. It concluded in 1999 that state actions constituted genocide.

In 1999, Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchú brought a case against the military leadership in a Spanish Court. Six officials, among them Efraín Ríos Montt and Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores, were formally charged on 7 July 2006 to appear in the Spanish National Court after Spain's Constitutional Court ruled in 2005 that Spanish courts can exercise universal jurisdiction over war crimes committed during the Guatemalan Civil War

Bangladesh War of 1971

Main articles: 1971 Bangladesh atrocities, Operation Searchlight, and Bangladesh Liberation War

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 Liberation 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 [alleged] 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.

The Guinness Book of Records lists the Bengali atrocities as one of the top 5 genocides in the 20th century.

Burundi 1972 and 1993

Main article: Burundi genocide

Since Burundi's independence in 1962, there have been two events called genocides in the country. The 1972 mass-killings of Hutu by the Tutsi army, and the 1993 killing of Tutsi by the Hutu population that is recognised as a genocide in the final report of the International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi presented to the United Nations Security Council in 2002.

Cambodia

See also: Autogenocide, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and Democratic Kampuchea

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.

This episode is widely seen as a genocide. For example "since 1994, the award-winning Cambodian Genocide Program" has been included as part of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University's MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and in 2003 Khieu Samphan, the Cambodian head of state under the Khmer Rouge, was quoted as saying "I have found it so difficult to believe what people told me of what happened under the Khmer Rouge regime, but today, I am very clear that there was genocide"

In 1997 the Cambodian Government asked the United Nations assistance in setting up a genocide tribunal. It took nine years to agree to shape and structure of the court — a hybrid of Cambodia and international laws — before in 2006 the judges were sworn in. The investigating judges were presented with the names of five possible suspects by the prosecution on 18 July 2007. On 19 September 2007 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and the its most senior surviving member, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He will face Cambodian and foreign judges at the special genocide tribunal.

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, Lebanon

Main article: Sabra and Shatila massacre

The Sabra and Shatila massacre was carried out in September 1982 against Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Lebanese Maronite Christian/Phalange militias, and under the vigilance of several Israel officials, near the beginning of the 1982–2000 South Lebanon conflict. The number of victims of the massacre is estimated at 700-3500. Responsibility for the massacre has been attributed to the Phalangists as direct perpetrators, and to Israel as the occupying army.

On December 16, 1982, the United Nations General Assembly condemned the massacre and declared it to be an act of genocide. Paragraph 2, which "resolved that the massacre was an act of genocide", was adopted by ninety-eight votes to nineteen, with twenty-three abstentions: All Western democracies abstained from voting.

According to William Schabas, director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, "the term genocide (…) had obviously been chosen to embarrass Israel rather than out of any concern with legal precision”. This opinion is a reflection of the comments made by some of the delegates who took part in the debate. While all acknowledged that it was a massacre, the claim that it was a genocide was disputed, for example the delegate for Canada stated "[t]he term genocide cannot, in our view, be applied to this particular inhuman act". The delegate of Singapore added that "[his] delegation regret[ted] the use of the term "an act of genocide" (…) [as] the term 'genocide' is used to mean acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group". and that "[he] also question[ned] whether the General Assembly ha[d] the competence to make such determination", and the United States commented that "[w]hile the criminality of the massacre was beyond question, it was a serious and reckless misuse of language to label this tragedy genocide as defined in the 1948 Convention (…)".

Citing Sabra and Shatila as an example, Leo Kuper notes the reluctance of the United Nations to respond or take action in actual cases of genocide for most egregious violators, but its willingness to charge "certain vilified states, and notably Israel", with genocide. In his view:

This availability of a scapegoat state in the UN restores members with a record of murderous violence against their subjects a self-righteous sense of moral purpose as principled members of 'the community of nations'... Estimates of the numbers killed in the Sabra-Shatila massacres range from about four hundred to eight hundred - a minor catastrophe in the contemporary statistics of mass murder. Yet a carefully planned UN campaign found Israel guilty of genocide, without reference to the role of the Phalangists in perpetrating the massacres on their own initiative. The procedures were unique in the annals of the United Nations.

In a Belgium court case lodged on 18 June 2001 by 23 survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres, the prosecution alleged that Ariel Sharon, former Israeli defense minister (and Israel's Prime Minister in 2001–2006), as well as other Israelis committed a number of crimes including genocide, because "all the constituent elements of the crime of genocide, as defined in the 1948 Convention and as reproduced in article 6 of the ICC Statute and in article 1§1 of the law of 16 June 1993,29 are present". This allegation was not tested in Belgium court because on 12 February 2003 the Court of Cassation (Belgian Supreme Court) ruled that under international customary law, acting heads of state and government can not become the object of proceedings before criminal tribunals in foreign state (although for the crime of genocide they could be the subject of proceedings of an international tribunal). This ruling was a reiteration of a decision made a year earlier by the International Court of Justice on 14 February, 2002. Following these ruling in June 2003 the Belgian Justice Ministry decided to start a procedure to transfer the case to Israel, so to date the accusation that the massacres in Sabra and Shatila were a genocide has not been tested in any court.

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."

Ethiopia

Ethiopia's former Soviet-backed Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam was tried in an Ethiopian court, in absentia, for his role in mass killings during the Red Terror. Mengistu's charge sheet and evidence list was 8,000 pages long. The evidence against him included signed execution orders, videos of torture sessions and personal testimonies. The trial began in 1994 and on 12 December 2006 Mengistu was found guilty of genocide and other offences. He was sentenced to life in prison in January 2007. It should be noted that Ethiopia defines genocide as intent to wipe out political and not just ethnic groups. 106 Derg officials were accused of genocide during the trials, but only 36 of them were present in the court. Several former members of the Derg have been sentenced to death. Zimbabwe has refused to respond to Ethiopia's request that Mengistu be extradited, which has permitted Mengistu to avoid his Ethiopian life imprisonment sentence. Mengistu supported Robert Mugabe, the long-standing President of Zimbabwe, during his leadership of Ethiopia.

Some experts have estimated that 150,000 university students, intellectuals and politicians were killed during Mengistu's rule. Amnesty International estimates that up to 500,000 people were killed during the Red Terror of 1977 and 1978 Human Rights Watch describes the Red Terror as “one of the most systematic uses of mass murder by a state ever witnessed in Africa.” During his reign it was not uncommon to see students, suspected government critics or rebel sympathisers hanging from lampposts each morning. Mengistu himself is alleged to have murdered opponents by garroting or shooting them, saying that he was leading by example.

Iraqi Kurds

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".

Brazil

The Helmet Massacre of the Tikuna people took place in 1988, and was initially treated as homicide. Since 1994 it has been treated by the Brazillian courts as a genocide. Thirteen men were convicted of genocide in 2001. In November 2004 at the appeal before Brazil's federal court, the man initially found guilty of hiring men to carry out the genocide was acquitted, and the other men had their initial sentences of 15-25 years reduced to 12 years.

In November 2005 during an investigation by the Brazilian authorities, codenamed Operation Rio Pardo, Mario Lucio Avelar, a Brazilian public prosecutor in the city of Cuiabá, told Survival International that he believed there were sufficient grounds to prosecute for genocide of the Rio Pardo Indians. In November 2006 twenty-nine people were held in custody for the alleged genocide with others such as a former police commander and the governor of Mato Grosso state implicated in the alleged.

In a news letter published on 7 August 2006 the Indianist Missionary Council reported that: "In a plenary session, the [Brizillian] Supreme Federal Court (STF) reaffirmed that the crime known as the Haximu Massacre [perpetrated on the Yanomami Indians in 1993] was a genocide and that the decision of a federal court to sentence miners to 19 years in prison for genocide in connection with other offenses, such as smuggling and illegal mining, is valid. It was a unanimous decision made during the judgment of Extraordinary Appeal (RE) 351487 today, the 3rd, in the morning by justices of the Supreme Court". Commenting on the case the NGO Survival International said "The UN convention on genocide, ratified by Brazil, states that the killing 'with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group' is genocide. The Supreme Court's ruling is highly significant and sends an important warning to those who continue to commit crimes against indigenous peoples in Brazil."

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.

Amnesty International has estimated more than 100,000 Papuans, one-sixth of the population, have died as a result of government-sponsored violence against West Papuans, while others had previously specified much higher death tolls.

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 and Herzegovina 1992-1995

In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found General Krstic guilty of genocide for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, thereby making it the first ever legally determined act of genocide by an international tribunal. This judgement was upheld by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its February 2007 ruling in the case of Bosnia vs Serbia. However, contrary to the claim made by Bosnia, the ICJ did not find that any genocide had been committed on the wider territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war, limiting genocide to the Srebrenica massacre. Before this ruling the term Bosnian Genocide had been used by some academics, and human rights officials.

German courts have handed down several convictions for genocide during the Bosnian War. Novislav Djajic was indicted for participation in genocide, but the Higher Regional Court failed to find that there was sufficient certainty, for a criminal conviction, that he had intended to commit genocide. Nevertheless Djajic was found guilty of 14 cases of murder and one case of attempted murder. At Djajic's appeal on 23 May 1997, the Bavarian Appeals Chamber found that acts of genocide were committed in June 1992, confined within the administrative district of Foca. The Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) of Dusseldorf, in September 1997, handed down a genocide conviction against Nikola Jorgic, a Bosnian Serb from the Doboj region who was the leader of a paramilitary group located in the Doboj region. He was sentenced to four terms of life imprisonment for his involvement in genocidal actions that took place in regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, other than Srebrenica; and "On 29 November 1999, the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) of Dusseldorf condemned Maksim Sokolovic to 9 years in prison for aiding and abetting the crime of genocide and for grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions".

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 Criminal Court

Sudan

See also Second Sudanese Civil War, 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 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 a "genocide" was "a sop to the Christian right and anti-Islamist neocons" in the USA, making the claim that 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, their family separated and their property destroyed. There is a risk of famine and epidemics 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, the promotion of human rights, and to support the 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 that 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." 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.

See also

• Command responsibility
• Crime against humanity
• Human rights
• International humanitarian law
• International law

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
• Jones, Adam. Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction , Routledge/Taylor & Francis Publishers, 2006. ISBN 0-415-35385-8. Chapter 1: Genocide in prehistory, antiquity, and early modernity
• 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.
• Powers, Samantha, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide Harper Perennial (2003) paperback, 656 pages ISBN 0-06-054164-4
• 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
• Matthew White; Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century and Detailed death tolls for the major bloodlettings of the 20th Century
• Arthur Hu; War Index of Disaster and Genocide

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

• Map of Occurrences of Genocide Throughout History (open for additions by anyone)
• Tatz, Colin. Genocide in Australia. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
• Survivors Fund/ Representing survivors of the Rwandan genocide
• Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq’s minority communities since 2003 London, Minority Rights Group, 2007