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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 46.212.53.203 (talk) at 14:28, 22 February 2023 (→‎Requested edit: Second and sixth prohibited acts: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Vital article

"Intent to destroy" missing from lede – proposal to add

One of the most common misuses of term genocide in the media is ignorance or amnesia with respect to the "intent" part of the definition. The naive understanding is that, if a genocidal doesn't annihilate a group, that it somehow was "not genocide". For example, someone might believe, "Because there are Native Americans alive today, the United States did not eliminate all the Native American population, therefore the U.S.A. cannot be guilty of genocide against the Native Americans." This logic is incorrect, as the definition shows; the burden of proving genocide is to prove the intent to destroy… which is quite different than total destruction. I move that we should specifically include the word "intent" in the lede, as its a key part of the definition and is probably the most commonly misunderstood aspect of genocide among non-scholars. Objections / dissent? - Jm3 / 13:55, November 17, 2015‎ (UTC)

this is now done. - Jm3 / 01:58, November 26, 2015‎ (UTC)

RfC

Consensus to keep the hatnote the way it is. THE DIAZ talk • contribs 14:23, 12 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The hatnote on this page previously read This article is about the crime. For other uses, see Genocide (disambiguation). The hat note has been changed to This article is about the systematic murder or destruction of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. There is also a page Genocides in history. Should we restore the original hatnote and treat this as a law article? (Talk page discussion is at the end of this section) Seraphim System (talk) 04:09, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A third option, the best imo, is just to remove the wording completely, retaining only the "for other uses see" part. In an earlier talk discussion, Seraphim System was using the fact that the article was tagged "This article is about the crime" as an argument that the content of this article should be about just "the crime". That was an invalid argument because Wikipedia content cannot be used as source for Wikipedia content, and, furthermore, no discussion had ever taken place deciding that the article should be about just "the crime", and no discussion at all had taken place about the content of the "about" (hatnote) tag. I have put "the crime" in inverted commas because it is not clear to me what is meant by "the crime". Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:32, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Let me make it clear - Jorgic is serving a life sentence for a genocide conviction that was upheld by ECHR. The ECHR held universal jurisdiction for the crime genocide, which means any national court can try some for a genocide that was committed outside its territory. It also upheld the broad definition of genocide, in other words, under the ECHR ruling biological-physical destruction is not required. The work of legal scholars should be cited directly to them, or to a general source like Oxford Handbooks, and not represented as part of the Court's holding about an element of a crime (see WP:MOSLAW) Seraphim System (talk) 18:27, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
???What has this to do with this RfC or my above point? It is an off-topic comment, or have you posted the above in the wrong section by mistake. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:40, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Tiptoethrutheminefield: I will summarize my understanding of the discussion with User:Iryna Harpy yesterday, which it seems you did not read before responding. On general pages, such as this one, we do not prefer to use primary sources. WP:MOSLEGAL has certain rules in place for the use of legal primary source material that is consistent with established standards in that field. Since this page does not adhere to those guidelines, we are looking into secondary sources. Seraphim System (talk) 17:54, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Why would imposing a strictly legal interpretation on a widely used concept be thought an improvement? Why would restoring the 'hatnote' be synonymous with treating the subject as though it were solely-legal, this appears to be a false argument used to try to radically alter (and in this case probably distort) an article subject. What on earth has Jorgic got to do with the ostensible subject of the RfC, ie the "hatnote". WP is a general purpose ency, it is not a legal textbook whose purpose, conventions etc may be very different. Pincrete (talk) 19:02, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: Ditto on the comments made by Tiptoe and Pincrete. This article has been about 'Genocide' broadly construed since its inception. Taking a hatnote and trying to turn it into the WP:TITLE is contrary to the subject of the article. If it is understood that a MOS:LAW compliant article should be written explicitly covering the subject of 'genocide' in criminal law, it's a separate question. The subject of this article is, however, 'Genocide', not Genocide (law). Rather than proscribe the article, how about creating a separate article where specialists are required. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:46, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Did I phrase the RfC wrong? This article is full of legal content, which is technical content, that does not adhere to guidelines. There are problems with mixing a significant amount of legal writing into non-technical articles...part of it comes from not following the MOS for this type of article and improperly applied legal citations. If this is not a law article, remove the technical law content (Discussion of cases, applying case law to elements of the crime ... ) Seraphim System (talk) 00:08, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Iryna Harpy I am fine with creating a specialist article. In that case, the legal content on this page should be moved, and in its place a brief and general introduction to the subject should be written, with a link to the main page. If I made a page about Descartes' theorem and then decided for no reason that it wasn't about math, and the information on the page was incorrect, that would obviously not be ok. Seraphim System (talk) 00:02, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Pincrete I consider an accusation that I am trying to distort an article subject to be a personal attack, especially when the article content is exclusively on a technical subject, and you are trying to stop me from correcting errors that distort case law. Seraphim System (talk) 00:05, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Seraphim System: No, I don't think that your wording was wrong. I also understand your intentions to be good, but the article was well sourced using third party and tertiary sources. If there are problems with some of the content, these need to be addressed by exploring and elucidating on sourcing rather than trying to squeeze the content down to fit one aspect of it. If it is understood that a MOS:LAW compliant article should be written explicitly covering the subject of 'genocide' in criminal law, it's a separate question. Firstly, you're not going to find experts in the field who are prepared to develop the article. Really. Unfortunately, asking for any experts in any field (other than medicine) is an excellent method for parring article back to a stub and grinding development to a halt. If the subject only covered genocide in criminal law, it would be another article altogether. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:08, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and the law article would need to be written (in a draft space?) before removing any of the content here. I don't believe that it's standing on the toes of criminal law, rather it's just citing well sourced content. I'm not sure that there's a bright line here, but there's certainly a fine line for distinction between OR and RS. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:13, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I've had formal legal education, I'll write the article. It's not enough for the sources to be good, they must be correctly applied to the proposition. This is part of WP:RS. I don't know if I am not being clear, but there is no POV about this - if you cite a case to an element of the crime you must cite the holding, not what we call dicta (unless you make it clear you are citing dicta with introductory signals) - if a law student reads this article, they should be able to rely on what are considered standard practices in this field. Seraphim System (talk) 00:34, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Please compare the Britannica entry on the subject. I understand what your concerns are, but this article adheres to "Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not a textbook." It is not written for students of law, but is a general overview for the lay person. As editors, it is our job to handle the sources and content as intelligently and neutrally as we can. This means that we don't dismiss reliable sources on the subject because it is inconvenient to our perception of what the article is or is not about. I have a very limited background in law (and certainly none in criminal law), but I'd be happy to assist in developing such an article in as far as my abilities allow me. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:47, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The Britannica entry is a good guideline for this article. Law does require specialized knowledge/education, as much as Python syntax and semantics does, and it is easy to make mistakes. To help avoid this, briefs are available (even for Jorgic) - I am very concerned because currently it is not a correct statement of the law in that jurisdiction (ECHR) - if we are not going to use MOS:LAW citation what I can do is fix the wording, add a basic version of the holding without the technical details, and then cite discussion of physical-biological destruction directly to the scholars that support it (avoiding the need to use introductory signals.) Seraphim System (talk) 01:10, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

*1. Keep the current hatnote. My opinion: Per WP:Hatnote, keep the explanation simple as possible, which I think the current hatnote does. Stating 'the crime"requires prerequisite knowledge to know what is the crime, and also the article is broader than an legal crime.

*2. Do not treat this article as only a law article. My opinion: the article subject is broader than genocide law, a separate law article could be written. CuriousMind01 (talk) 11:48, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

After yesterday's discussion (see below) I also think that a full discussion of the law would overburden an overview page. Certain problematic sections like "intent" could be moved or merged into the draft for the new article, and replaced with a general statement that intent is required (and save discussion of what is and is not enough for intent, mens rea/actus reus, etc. for the law page) - this page should provide a general background of the legal history, similar to the scope of the Britannica entry Iryna Harpy posted above Seraphim System (talk) 17:32, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep the current hatnote. The article is broader than just the law aspect of genocide. We might need something like Genocide (crime) article which would detail the nuances of genocide in law, but that's a different issue. Darwinian Ape talk 08:40, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think there's a point to be made in favor of revising the current hatnote based on what Tiptoethrutheminefield said about Seraphim System's alleged non-sequitur re: Jorgic and the ECHR. Given there are legal definitions of genocide that are different (broader, or without overlap) than how the current hatnote defines it, and given that this article covers the crime, the hatnote will need to be more broad to encompass both concepts. It's too narrow now. It'sAllinthePhrasing (talk) 04:33, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Section on misuse of term

Hi, I added a section on the misuse of term but was reverted ([1]) by Pincrete invoking the essay WP:COATRACK. I don't think my addition constitutes any form of coatracking, to the contrary, as an encyclopedia aiming to provide information in an easily accessible form for everyone, I consider it to be our professional duty to describe, backed up by highly reliable sources, what genocide is and what it is not. I agree that in an ideal world a positive definition would be all that is necessary, but sometimes it is also helpful to explicitly describe what is not covered under a definition to make it impossible to misunderstand a meaning. Given that Putin is prominently misusing the term and that significant portions of the Russian population have difficulties to access neutral and independent media and therefore might actually assume that Putin's use of the term is correct, it is important that we explicitly mark his usage as incorrect. WP:COATRACK mentions that material might be "irrelevant, undue or biased". Given the extensive coverage of Putin's misuse of term in media across the globe (except for in Russia), I think including this example is relevant and appropriate here. I'm open for improved wording or for including additional information, but I think we are not doing some portions of our audience a service if we don't address this explicitly. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 13:48, 10 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I was careful to label your edit as Good Faith. I don't doubt that practically all sources would agree that Putin's 'genocide' claims are somewhere between massive, massive hyperbole and outright lies, but does saying that Putin is currently massively exaggerating/lying (or as you put it "misusing the term") tell anyone anything about what genocide actually is? Or is it a very topical comment on what/who Putin is and what the present instance is really? Would we put on the rape article a topical instance of a false accusation, ditto fraud, robbery, murder etc. I'm not of course implying that genocide is in any way comparable to fraud, but the principle remains that any such content is much more about the current instance (Putin and the invasion) than about the broader subject, which is what I meant by it being COATRACKing. Pincrete (talk) 15:51, 10 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for explaining your reasoning. To answer your question but does saying that Putin is currently massively exaggerating/lying (or as you put it "misusing the term") tell anyone anything about what genocide actually is?, not by itself, but for those who are under the impression that Putin's use of the term is correct (which certainly is a minority on global scale, but not in Russia, where media are censored or blocked), our set of definitions in the article won't help them unless we explicitly tell them that Putin's use of the term is incorrect.
Sure, a lot of people abuse a lot of terms and we don't routinely list them all in corresponding articles (although I have occasionally seen examples in prominent cases - just because I just ran into one: Gaslighting#Excessive_misuse_of_the_term_"gaslighting"). This is a case that is being discussed globally, therefore I think it is relevant enough to be included in the article.
My intention is not to further expand on this in this article (unless other people would find this appropriate), but just to raise a little "caveat" sign there by including this two-liner, so that the target audience who might come here looking up what Putin's "genocide" means, would stop for a moment, start questioning things and ideally go on to educate themselves about the topic in the other articles we have on the topic.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:41, 10 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So, could this convince you to add it to the article? What do other editors think about it?
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 01:19, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My position remains that knowing someone can mis-use the term, or in this instance, frankly, lie in using the term, doesn't really tell anyone anything about what genocide is. Pincrete (talk) 15:19, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
But if someone does not have a good understanding of what genocide is already and has only very limited access to independent sources, then telling them the definition alone does not help much either. If they see Putin using the term and have nothing else to compare with they might even come to the conclusion that he's applying the term correctly - unless someone explicitly tells them that he's not. So, it's not so much about the definition, more about the application. Not an issue for people (like us) with a stable reference system around us based on reliable information, but not necessarily obvious for someone for whom the reference is incomplete, contradictory, or floating.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:16, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The term before WW2

Lemkin is credited with popularizing the term and making it an actionable legal concept, but he was not the first to actually use the term. In March 1917, Hjalmar Branting, leader of the Social Democrat party of Sweden (and a few years later, prime minister) used the term "folkmord" ('murder of a people/nation') in a speech on the Ottoman-run genocide of Armenians, Kurds and other peoples in Anatolia and Syria. The speech was made during an indoor public meeting to raise awareness of what was happening, at Norra Bantorget in central Stockholm (a square in which Branting himself would be honoured with a monument some years after his death in 1925). Both the word "folkmord" and the meaning implied by Branting are essentially the same as those used by Lemkin a quarter of a century later, and "folkmord" is still the word for genocide in Swedish to this day. I don't know whether Branting had borrowed the term from someone else, presumably a German speaker, but he was certainly the first one to use the word in the Nordic countries and far ahead of Lemkin.

Source: a document from a multi-party proposal at the Swedish parliament in 2008, aiming to recognize the acts of 1915 as a genocide: https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/motion/folkmordet-1915-pa-armenier_GW02U332

I'll translate the relevant bit, it's about two-thirds down the page. After quoting a number of cables and documents by Swedish diplomats (P G A Anckarswärd and Einar af Wirsén, both of them posted to Constantinople) dating to 1915/16, documents that clearly characterize the ongoing actions as ethnic cleansing, ethnically based extermination, and even quoting a 1942 memoir by Wirsén that uses the actual word "folkmord", the text goes on:

"Beyond these there are many eyewitness accounts published, by missionaries and field workers such as Alma Johansson, Maria Anholm, Lars Erik Högberg, E. John Larson, Olga Moberg, Per Pehrsson and others. Hjalmar Branting was the very first person to use the term genocide, long before Raphael Lemkin used this concept, in a speech on March 26, 1917, calling the persecution of the Armenians "a well organized and systematic genocide. worse than anything ever seen in this vein in Europe".

The fact that Branting highlighted this and actually called it a genocide in public is attested in many books and research articles about him, and obviously notable. Strausszek (talk) 01:29, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The article already says "Before the term genocide was coined, there were various ways of describing such events. Some languages already had words for such killings, including German (Völkermord, lit. 'murder of a people') and Polish (ludobójstwo, lit. 'killing of a people or nation')." How is this term different and not already covered? Secondly, do WP:RS specifically say anything about Branting's use before Lemkin? One of the sources you give above says the opposite ... that Lemkin coined the term. This sounds like WP:SYNTH at the moment. I don't think anyone doubts that there have been various ways historically to refer to mass ethnic murders, but the term itself and its initial legal definition is usually credited to Lemkin. Pincrete (talk) 08:29, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's a difference between coining a term and actually being the first to use it. "Punk rock" for instance existed as a vague slang term in the late 1960s, close to what we now call rough garage rock/surfer rock, Nuggets-type bands, but it was the later punk movement, launched in 1976/77, that actually made it a widespread term, therefore that coined the term and gave it broad currency. Lemkin made "genocide" an established legal concept, but the word and essentials of the concept itself clearly exiated before him. "Folkmord" in Swedish is practically a cognate of Lemkin's later Latin-Greek term genocide: both terms literally read out "people/racial group - murder".
The article here is about the term and the history of the concept, not about Lemkin personally. If the term existed with much the same sense in a different language, and referring to the same events (the 1915 persecutions), a quarter of a century before Lemkin began using it in print, then that's certainly notable.
The text I linked to and translated should certainly suffice as a reliable source; it discusses the history of the term in the context of growing awareness of genocide, and it was written by a group of parliamentarians and published as official print. It doesn't get much more established than that (and Branting himself is a well-known figure to historians, even outside of Sweden). The speech was reported by newspapers right away and it is attested and quoted in several places online. If you're going to insist that all sources used by the English Wikipedia have to be in English, then I can inform you that lots of articles would have been impossible to write, badly depleted or littered with misunderstandings if that was the rule. The fact is that not all that's important in history is well served by English books and English sources. Strausszek (talk) 22:53, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I just checked with the article on Wiki-De (in German) and it says that Lemkin's term was likely a direct translation from the Polish term, for a draft law proposal written by him in 1943 on behalf of the Polish government-in-exile in London. To give it more weight, he based his rendering on Latin and Greek words, but the sense and structure of his word are the same as the Polish and Swedish terms. Where the Polish term came from, how long it had been around and whether it too was a translated term we simply don't know. Strausszek (talk) 23:11, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The article is about genocide itself, rather than the history or origins of the term, which we cover only briefly. We acknowledge already that similar European terms preceded Lemkin's and give two examples, which have similar literal meanings. I don't see how the Swedish term (which of course in turn probably has its own 'back-story') is especially notable. It would need stronger sources than this IMO to make any argument other than that other ways of describing such events existed before Lemkin. Many people (including Hitler I believe) had written about instances of mass ethnic murder before Lemkin, including East European pogroms and also about the killing of Armenians. That isn't sufficient proof of growing awareness of genocide, though Lemkin probably was aware of Branting's writings and the Swedish term as he was aware of those of other commentators and other terms. Do WP:RS in general credit Branting with any role? If not any addition would be undue IMO. Pincrete (talk) 07:15, 11 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Add alternative definitions based on gender, sexual orientation, and especially sexual identity

I've add a paragraph at end of the Other Definitions section, supported by about a dozen sources, mostly academic, a few news sources. There's much more to add, which might be done in the article on Definitions of genocide. But I think this brief discussion is warranted by the scholarship and attention to the issue. ProfGray (talk) 17:49, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Gray - This was sorely needed. I went ahead and updated your references to citation templates and linked to the articles wherever possible. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/they)Talk to Me! 01:10, 22 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

grammar error

If i'm not mistaken, as i'm not a native speaker, in the first sentence it should read group instead of 'a people' but i cant correct it. Maybe someone could do that or tell me if its correct. Robert Sonter (talk) 11:39, 12 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A people is correct - an imperfect term but usually meaning a substantial human group linked by ethnicity. Pincrete (talk) 20:35, 12 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

History

Genocide 41.182.135.150 (talk) 11:42, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move for Amhara genocide

People who edit here may be interested in Talk:Amhara genocide#Requested move 13 January 2023. Boud (talk) 18:19, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As a label, it is contentious because it is moralizing,[13] and has been used as a type of moral category since the late 1990S

Kind of an ... loaded orphan statement ... a section missing from the article?? 2600:1700:CDA0:1060:C9BD:D334:7295:541A (talk) 02:23, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect etymology

The article states that Raphael Lemkin combined "..the Greek word γένος (genos, 'race, people') with the Latin suffix -caedo ('act of killing')" to create the word genocide. However, in the source given for this, Lemkin is said to have combined "genos" and "cide". I looked up the etymology of genocide in a few different dictionaries and they told me the same thing. The suffix -cide comes from Middle French, which comes from the Latin suffix -cīda, meaning "killer", which itself comes from the Latin word caedere, meaning "to kill". Nordtman (talk) 11:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I see what you mean. I suspect that this is a case of immediate/ultimate root of the second part. Lemkin would hardly have needed to go back to Latin anyhow, since 'cide' was already well established as an English suffix (homicide, matricide, fratricide, regicide etc) and his own text suggests he went no further back than utilising this existing suffix (even if he was aware of the Latin root). I'm not sure at present how to rephrase, we are currently implying that Lemkin did something more complicated than he actually did. Pincrete (talk) 12:26, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Requested edit: Second and sixth prohibited acts

Under "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" the text reads "The final prohibited act is the only prohibited act that does not lead to physical or biological destruction..." but under "Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group Article II(b)" the text says this act "can encompass a wide range of non-fatal genocidal acts."

Surely non-fatal acts do not lead to physical destruction. I would change the aforementioned text to "Along with the second, the final prohibited act does not necessarily lead to physical or biological destruction..." -- 46.212.53.203 (talk) 14:28, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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