Genocides in history

Template:Totallydisputed Genocide appears to be a regular and widespread feature of the history of civilization. The phrase "never again" often used in relation to genocide has been contradicted up to the present day.

Determining what historical events constitute a genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clearcut matter. Furthermore, 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 alleged genocides should be understood in this context and not regarded as the final word on these subjects.

Ancient/medieval genocides

Biblical genocides

A record of several alleged genocides is found in the Bible, although the perceived accuracy and import of the accounts relates to the reader's opinion of the Bible as a whole. To name a few:

The enslavement and killing of the Israelites by the Egyptians.

The war and ensuing genocide waged against the Canaanite by the Israelites, in which "God" gives a commandment to never allow any Canaanite to remain alive.

The extermination of the Amalekites at the hands of King Saul of Israel at the behest of Samuel.

The conquest and massacre of various middle-eastern peoples, by the empires of Assyria and Babylon.

Roman Empire

Many campaigns of the Roman Empire can by modern standards be rated as genocide:

Caesar's campaign against the Helvetii: approximately 60% of the tribe was killed, and another 20% was taken into slavery.

Carthage: the city was completely destroyed in the Third Punic War, and its people murdered or enslaved.

Jerusalem: the city was burned in the Destruction of Jerusalem and its people murdered or enslaved.

England

From 1066 to 1072, and after, the invading Norman army under William of Normandy pursued a policy of oppressing and destroying the English people. The policy took on many forms, ranging from cultural to physical. The immediate slaughter killed up to 15% of the population of England, but a lesser, non-physical, genocide continued for tens (maybe hundreds) of years.

The English language was forbidden in state business and replaced with Anglo-Norman. Thousands of cultural artifacts were destroyed, including hundreds of buildings, which were demolished. Thousands were sold into slavery abroad and the remaining population was placed under feudalism: a military-economic system of servitude. Opponents of the regime were massacred: in one incident through the winter of 1069-1070, a massacre in Yorkshire (called The Harrowing of the North) took the lives of about 150,000 people.

France

The Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) in France can be considered as a case of genocide. It was carried out against the Cathar people, militarily and by use of the Inquisition, simply because the Cathar had an esoteric view of how Christianity should be interpreted, known as gnosticism.

Genghis Khan and his sons

One of the greatest alleged genocides in terms of raw numbers is the killings that occurred during the formation of the empire of Genghis Khan and his sons. It is estimated that millions of civilians were ruthlessly and systematically killed throughout many parts of Eurasia in the 13th Century.

Mahmud of Ghazni and Hindus

In his 14 invasions of India the Mahmud of Ghazni murdered almost as many Hindus as the 6 million of the Holocaust. Millions more fled the regions and went to parts of Europe and Africa, they are the ancestors of modern day Gypsies. The term 'Kush' means 'killing of' and the valley of Hindu Kush was named such to remind the Hindus of this genocide.

Genocides since 1500

The Americas

The indigenous populations of the Americas sharply plummetted following the arrival of Europeans from 1492 onward. Not all the mortality was consciously inflicted: disease and hardship, and the severing of social ties, all took their toll. The native tribes of the Caribbean were eliminated like the Guanches in the Canary Islands the previous century (Crosby 1986). Central Mexico, with an estimated pre-Conquest population of 25 million, was reduced to a residual population of a million in the 17th century. In 1790, when the first U.S. census was executed, there were 300 Indians left in Pennsylvania, 1500 each in New York and Massachusetts, and still some 10,000 in the Carolinas (Braudel 1984 p 393). See cultural genocide.

The long-term decimation, sometimes by government policy and sometimes not, of the Natives of South and North America by Europeans is estimated to be one of the largest and longest in history. [1]

Various estimates of the pre-contact Native population of the continental U.S. and Canada range from 1.8 to over 12 million. Over the next four centuries, their numbers were reduced to a low of 237,000 by 1900. It has been estimated that the Native population of what is now Mexico was reduced from 30 million to only 3 million over the first four decades of Spanish rule.

European persecution of Natives started with Christopher Columbus' arrival in San Salvador in 1492. Native population dropped dramatically over the next few decades. Some were directly exterminated by Europeans. Others died indirectly as a result of contact with introduced diseases for which they had no resistance.

Over the next four centuries, European settlers would systematically displace Native American peoples, from the Arctic to South America. This was accomplished through varying combinations of warfare, the signing of treaties (of which the Natives may not have fully understood at times), forced relocations to barren lands, destruction of their main food supply -- such as the bison -- and the spread of European disease, notably smallpox.

Canada

The Beothuk people, an aboriginal group native to the Dominion of Newfoundland, are now completely extinct as a result of extended conflict with European colonists (mostly fishermen who regarded them as thieves), loss of habitat and importation of diseases such as tuberculosis.

Activities of European colonists and importation of previously-unseen diseases caused many deaths in other Canadian native communities; the Beothuk are unique in Canadian history as having suffered not only genocide but outright extinction.

United States

Throughout the 19th century, Native Americans were driven off their traditional lands to facilitate the installation of settlers (colonists). On some occasions, entire villages were massacred by the U.S. Army. Tribes were generally relocated to reservations on which they could be more readily pushed toward assimilation into mainstream U.S. society.

Guatemala

During the Civil War in Guatemala, an extraproportional large number of Maya Native Americans were killed. Under the rule of Efraín Ríos Montt (1982–1983) 75,000 Mayas were killed.

Africa

Algeria

Substantial evidence implicates France in Algerian genocide during 1954-62 war of independence in which 200,000 (french figures) to 1.5 million (algerian figures) Muslims were systematically annihilated. Senior French officers who fought in Algeria have recently confessed that torture and summary executions were routine grisly instruments of French warfare. President Chirac and Prime Minister Jospin, however, have fiercely opposed a parliamentary inquiry into the genocide as exploring a subject best left to historians. Algerian archives have been deported to France and french archives of that period are off limits to historians conducting genocide research.

The Congo

Genocide in the Congo Free State, prior to its being taken over by Belgium to form the Belgian Congo. Under the rule of King Léopold II, the Congo Free State suffered a great loss of life due to criminal indifference to its native inhabitants in the pursuit of increased rubber production.

Exploitation of the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, German Southwest Africa, Rhodesia, and South Africa paled in comparison to that in what later became the Belgian Congo. The most infamous example of this is the Congo Free State.

King Léopold II (of Belgium) was a famed misanthropist, abolitionist, and self-appointed sovereign of the Congo Free State, 76 times larger geographically than Belgium itself.

His fortunes, and those of the multinational concessionary companies under his auspices, were mainly made on the proceeds of Congolese rubber, which had historically never been mass-produced in surplus quantities.

Between 1880 and 1920 the population of the Congo halved; over 10 million "indolent natives" unaccustomed to the bourgeois ethos of labor productivity, were the victims of murder, starvation, exhaustion induced by over-work, and disease.

Mass-murder or genocide in the Congo Free State became a cause celèbre in the last years of the 19th century, and a great embarrassment to not only the King but also to Belgium, which had portrayed itself as progressive and attentive to human rights.

• Belgium exhumes its colonial demons

Boer Wars

In South Africa (1880–1881 and 1899–1902)

Boer (not Afrikaner) and other historians feel that the second war of the British Empire against the Boer Republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State amounted to genocide, because the Boers protested against British plans to annex the Boer Republics and they declared war against the British.

The British rounded up Boer civilians, placing them in concentration camps. Until the Boers surrendered in May 1902, at least 27,000 Boer civilians had been killed. These figures are more accurately reflected as follows; 24,000 Boer Children, nearly half of the Boer child population had died. 3,000 Boer women also died.

German South-West Africa

(1904–1907) in current-day Namibia

In 1985, the United Nations Whitaker Report recognized the German attempt to exterminate the Herero and Namaqua peoples of Southwest Africa as one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the twentieth century. In total, some 65,000 Herero (80 percent of the total Herero population), and 10,000 Nama (50 percent of the total Nama population) were killed or perished. Characteristic of this genocide was death by starvation and the poisoning of wells for the Herero and Nama populations that were trapped in the Namib desert. The responsible German general was Lothar von Trotha

• Germany Refuses to Apologize for Herero Holocaust (2002)
• Germany admits Namibia genocide (2004)
• Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker - Der Völkermord an den Herero

Rwanda

(April 1994) Officially 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutus. See History of Rwanda, Rwandan Genocide.

Sudan

1983 - present The United States government's Sudan Peace Act of October 21, 2002 accused Sudan of genocide for killing more than 2 million civilians in the south during an ongoing civil war since 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 and 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: "The vicious war in Darfur has led to violations on a scale comparable in character with Rwanda in 1994. All the warning signs are there."

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."[2]

Western countries are as yet undecided how or whether to intervene, while at present millions of people are displaced, had their family separated and property destroyed. There is a risk of famine and epidemic because of overcrowding in camps, the destruction of agriculture, and poor supplies of medicine and food.

Australia

The Australian Aboriginal population was decimated following European settlement. Many died from disease introduced by those settlers and some were shot. During the White Australian Policy, it was expected that aborigines would slowly "assimilate" into the mainly white population. The removal of Aboriginal children from their families by the Australian government is considered by some to have constituted genocide, using the argument that it falls within the ambit of Art. 2(e) of the Genocide convention. There is also a converse argument that the removal of Aboriginal children was intended to protect, rather than exterminate them. See Stolen Generation and Keith Windschuttle. The relative effects of those and other factors is a subject of strong historical and political debate, including whether they constituted genocide.

However, in Tasmania, where racially distinct Aboriginal groups existed, Aboriginal population was almost entirely wiped out in the 19th century with only those with mixed blood surviving. It was legal for the settler to shoot natives on the spot and many died from disease introduced by those settlers. The last surviving group was transferred to a colony on Flinders Island and all of its members died out slowly due to neglect. Their languages are entirely lost and most of their cultural heritage is gone, though people of mixed descent still insist on spiritual connection to the land.

Middle East

Iraq

Al-Anfal Campaign against Iran-aligned Kurdish populations - ethnic cleansing, and in cases bordering on genocide. Chemical weapons attacks on Kurds 1986-88 (Saddam Hussein's forces used Sarin to kill the population of a Kurd village. See Halabja poison gas attack for a full discussion) and on Iranians. Attacks on and ethnic-cleansing against rival ethnic groups in the South (Shia Muslims) and North (Kurds) of Iraq after the Persian Gulf War.

Turkey

(1914–1923) massacres by the Young Turk government Approximately 500,000–750,000 Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire were killed. The Turkish government still denies that there was any genocide.

Between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire died. Armenians and most Western historians believe the deaths constituted genocide. The Turkish government denies the allegations of genocide.

Between 300,000 and 600,000 Pontian Greeks in the Ottoman Empire were killed, and several hundred thousand others exiled. The Turkish government denies there was any genocide, instead blaming the wars with Greece which took place around the same time.

See also: Pontian Greek Genocide, Armenian Genocide and Assyrian Genocide

Europe

Bosnia

(1992–1995) The Bosnian Genocide or Bosnia Genocide was an organized killing of Bosnians, predominantly Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) during the war between 1992 and 1995 by authorities of Republika Srpska and its Army.

The Bosnian Genocide has been proven at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) through the court case entitled Prosecutor vs Krstic (see Srebrenica Massacre). Thus far the Srebrenica massacre has been the only case which the UN Hague tribunal has officially defined as genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The presentation of evidence implicating the killing of at least 8,000 persons, predominantly Bosniaks, has been made. The government of Republika Srpska has admitted to 7,779 deaths at Srebrenica in July 1995. Bosnian-Herzegovinian Commission for Missing Persons claims that the number of killings is much greater than has been currently represented at the tribunal. Statement by Radovan Karadžić co-founder of Republika Srpska and its first president, alluded to the origins of this ideology on March 4, 1992 to the Bosnian Parliament:

..."the road to which you want to take Bosnia and Herzegovina is the same highway of hell which Slovenia and Croatia took. Don't think you won't take Bosnia and Herzegovina to hell and the Muslims into annihilation... Muslims can't defend themselves if there is war here"...

It also included organized ethnic cleansing carried out by Republika Srpska against Croats and Bosniaks over the wider region controled by Republika Srpska displacing nearly a 1 million people.

Some claim that masacre in Srebrenica is a revenge for killing of Serbian people in villages around Srebrenica led by Naser Oric (Muslim military leader). Same sources claim that Serbs were also killed by Muslim Mujahedins who have come to Bosnia from Arab countries and they worked as paramilitary Muslim formations in Bosnia. It is doubtfull however that those crimes could be characterized in the line with genocide as there are no indictments of genocide over Serbs raised at the ICTY or any other Legal institution.

Croatia

(1941 - 1945)

The Ustasha regime committed genocide against Serbs, Jews and Gypsies during World War II. They also mass murdered other political opponents.

After the invasion and destruction of the Yugoslav army by the Axis Powers in 1941, they supported the creation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) which was run by the Croatian fascist group the Ustaše. The leader of this state Ante Pavelić put into effect a campaign of persecution and genocide against the Serbs, Jews and Roma.

This policy was set out by Mile Budak, the Minister for Education & Culture who in his speech of 22nd July 1941, said that:

The basis for the Ustashe movement is religion. For minorities such as the Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, we have three million bullets. We will kill a part of the Serbs. Others we will deport, and the rest we will force to accept the Roman Catholic Religion. Thus the new Croatia will be rid of all Serbs in its midst in order to be 100% Catholic within 10 years.

The Independent State of Croatia was the only state created by the Axis Powers that ran its own concentration camps independently of Nazi direction, the largest being the Jasenovac concentration camp.

The number of people killed by the Ustashe between 1941-1945 is uncertain and has been debated. Please see Ustaše#Victims and Jasenovac concentration camp for details.

Germany

Major deportation routes to the extermination camps in Europe.

Nazi genocide before and during World War II, The Holocaust (1933–1945). Upwards of 11 million people were systematically exterminated by the Nazis and their collaborators. The main targets of the Holocaust were the Jews of Europe, of whom approximately 6 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 Poles, Roma (see Porajmos), Slavs, homosexuals, and political opponents such as communists.

The Holocaust differed from previous genocides in several features, including its premeditation, scale, efficiency, and cruelty. 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 they were confined in ghettos before being transported to extermination camps where they were killed.

USSR

(1932–1933) Holodomor : By various estimates 6,000,000 to 10,000,000 people, mostly Ukrainians, died. The proponents of the "Holodomor" term maintain that the famine was an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people engineered by the Soviet government. This opinion is contested on the ground that the famine struck the area significantly larger than Ukraine alone.

Asia

Cambodia

(1975–1979) Killed approximately 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975-1979. The Khmer Rouge, or more formally, the Communist Party of Kampuchea, led by Pol Pot, Ta Mok, Duch and other leaders, organized the mass killing of ideologically suspect groups, ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese or Sino-Khmers, ethnic Chams, ethnic Thais, former civil servants, demobilized soldiers, Buddhist monks, secular intellectuals and professionals, and refugees. Khmer Rouge cadres defeated in factional struggles were also liquidated in purges. The number of the victims is disputed.

See also: Democratic Kampuchea

Tibet

After the annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China, the Red Army indulged in excesses during the Great Leap Forward. Nearly 400,000 tibetians are thought to have perished during the late 1950s and 1960s, though Tibetians claim the figure is more than a million. Culturally too the tibetians witnessed many of the architectures being vandalised during the period and local way of life being threatened by the new settlers in what is termed as "cultural genocide".

Indonesia

(1965-today) Organised Indonesian occupation of western New Guinea, providing training and finance of Indonesian troops conducting the genocide, and a number of U.S. companies such as Freeport-McMoRan have been accused of directly paying TNI troops to continue military actions against the native landowners.

Vietnam

1973 - Present Since the end of the Vietnam War hostilities against the Degar (Montagnard) by the Vietnamese government have been widespread. After the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam at the close of this war, the Vietnamese government retaliated against the tribes who had helped the U.S. Nearly two thirds of the Degars have died since 1973, including more than half the male population. These reprisals continue at present (2003) and are considered by many to fit the definition of genocide.

Indian subcontinent

Partition of India

Massive violence and slaughter occurred during the Partition of India — leading to the deaths of as many as five million people — as the newly formed governments were completely unequipped to deal with migrations of such staggering magnitude. The idea of a partition itself was at first frowned upon by the British. Lord Mountbatten the last British Viceroy of India, who was given the task of facilitating the transition to independance, eventually realized that Jinnah and the Muslim League were serious and would have to be given their own separate land. Gandhi who was the most opposed to the partition was also brought around in the end. Many Muslim, Hindu and other populations involved were killed as a result of these events. An example of a cross-border partition attack was in 1947, where attacks and massacres on Sikhs and Hindus occurred in the Punjab region. [3]

British General Dyer: Jallianwala Bagh

Soon after Dyer's arrival, on the afternoon of April 13, 1919, some 10,000 or more unarmed men, women, and children gathered in Amritsar's Jallianwala Bagh (bagh, "garden"; but before 1919 it had become a public square) to attend a protest meeting, despite a ban on public assemblies. It was a Sunday, and many neighbouring village peasants also came to Amritsar to celebrate the Hindu Baisakhi Spring Festival. Dyer positioned his men at the sole, narrow passageway of the Bagh, which was otherwise entirely enclosed by the backs of abutted brick buildings. Giving no word of warning, he ordered 50 soldiers to fire into the gathering, and for 10 to 15 minutes 1,650 rounds of ammunition were unloaded into the crowd, some of whom were trampled by those trying to escape. According to official estimates, nearly 400 civilians were killed, and another 1,200 were left wounded with no medical attention. Dyer, who argued his action was necessary to produce a "moral and widespread effect," admitted that the firing would have continued had more ammunition been available.

This incident was the culmination of a campaign of furtively-organized trouble against the British authorities. There is information that the crowd were in an aggressive state and well armed with sticks and stones.

Jammu and Kashmir

(1989 - present) After Kashmiri uprising began since late 1980s mainly Muslim and some Hindu civilians have been killed and over half a million people have been driven away from their homes. Most of the war crimes including rape, torture and massacre are blamed on Indian army personnel in the region, mostly by Human rights groups. The conflict has claimed over 100,000 Kashmiri lives to date.

Bangladesh Liberation War

During the Bangladesh Liberation War, over a period of just under nine months (267 days), 3 million Bangladeshis were killed by Pakistan Army. On average, 11,235 people were killed each day. It was the first time in history so many civilian Muslims were killed by a Muslim Army. Around 200,000 women aged between 8 years and 60 years were raped. Even as the Military of Pakistan faced an imminent defeat within a fortnight, they indulged in Operation Searchlight - a plan to systematically eliminate intelligensia and suspected rebels. Nearly 50,000 people are believed to have been murdered just days before the army surrendered to the allied forces (Mitro Bahini) headed by the Indian Army. Several thousands children (war-babies) were born, most of them were taken by families in Canada and countries in Western Europe (mainly France and Sweden). Some were taken to Mother Teresa, Calcutta.

References

• 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 0809016346
• Crosby, Alfred W., Ecological Imperialism : The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986 ISBN 0521456908
• Elst, Koenraad, Negationism in India: Concealing the record of Islam ISBN 8185990018

External links

• India: Hate speeches on the violence in Gujarat must be stopped