Talk:Genocides in history

Americas

Main article: Population history of American indigenous peoples From the 1490s when Christopher Columbus set foot on the Americas to the 1890 massacre of Sioux at Wounded Knee by the United States militia

"militia" should be amended to "military" if this refers to Custer's 7th cavalry

Missing Page

there used to be a page titled "List of Genocides" or something similar, that had the numbers in simple box format, as well as the number of killings under certain dictators. What happened to this page?--74.178.227.242 (talk) 20:18, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

See above under the section Politicide -- PBS (talk) 01:43, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

See also List of wars and disasters by death toll there is a POV list of genocides there. -- PBS (talk) 01:51, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

The list was deleted on Aug 20, 2010 by the user PBS with the explanation "moved list to talk page as most of the list was not about genocides". The list as it was may be seen on this history page. Sctechlaw (talk) 23:41, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Sikh Genocide

Why was the Sikh Genocide removed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.80.46.147 (talk) 19:13, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no mention of the well recorded genocides by Temurlane and Nadir Shah in India, Iran and Afghanistan......but Eric Margolis is quoted as mentioning Mongols as genocidal. Well, Temur and Nadirshah have been historically authenticated as much worse according to contemporaray accounts in the countries they raided. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.30.8.208 (talk) 03:11, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Formatting and linking

I have cleaned up this article again because it seems that a bunch of my edits were incorrectly reverted. Here are my edits:

• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style, for quotations, use only quotation marks (for short quotations) or block quoting (for long ones), not italics.
• remove date links
• remove repeated links (e.g., "genocide") and links to plain English words per WP:REPEATLINK (e.g., nation, disease)
• remove boldface per WP:BOLDFACE
• spell out acronyms (like PKK) on first use per WP:MOS
• use a person's first and last name the first time he/she is mentioned (Tito, Obote, Mao)

Ground Zero (talk) 29 November 2010

I'd like to learn more about Genocide

I think the article is focused too much on the international law and presents examples. Genocide is horrible and so against humanity, however during the known history, people never stopped doing it, so I think there should be something beyond the international law. for example, explain it from different point of view such as anthropology or philosophy may provide more help. I just thought its not enough to say it from international law or simple facts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.73.78.62 (talk) 09:35, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

New suggestion based on Dutch Wikipedia article

The Dutch page http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide#Overzicht_Genocides.5B5.5D lists a genocide committed in the Chatham Islands by the Maori against the Moriori. It doesn't have a source. I suggest that we discuss whether this should be added to the English article. 82.20.0.62 (talk) 13:27, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I have read about it... it should definitely be added. --Yalens (talk) 15:03, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

RFC involving this article

Wikipedia:Content noticeboard#A mess of WP:Content Forks

This article is currently being discussed as part of WP:Request for Comment at the Wikipedia:Content noticeboard under the section heading A mess of WP:Content Forks. The discussion is to decide how this and other closely related articles could be systematically organized to avoid redundancy The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 20:59, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Vietnam War is NOT genocide

Genocide is the deliberate killing of a certain religious, ethnic, or national group. The Vietnam War was never a deliberate and systematic killing of any religious, ethnic or national group. Using Agent Orange is not genocide, because genocide must be deliberate. Agent Orange's purpose was to destroy crops and trees. The human side-effects were not fully understood at the time.

I have removed the Agent Orange part, in addition to this part: "A film called U.S. Techniques of Genocide in Vietnam describes the use of elaborate U.S. weapons against civilian targets in Vietnam such as anti-personnel weapons designed to kill human targets while causing minimal damage to buildings, steel pellet bombs that zigzag in all directions and the internationally banned dum-dum bullet."

Because it is not notable in any way; just because a film says it is genocide does not make it so. The citation isn't working either. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.147.56.170 (talk) 08:54, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Though I personally agree that Vietnam was not an act of genocide, the standard for inclusion here seems to be that one or more notable people said it was. So Jean Paul Sartre calling Vietnam a genocide may be enough. However, you were correct to remove the two references. The Agent Orange material is classic synthesis where a mental operation of the reader is necessary to relate it to the topic. It was also sourced to a blog, but the writer has been published by third party sources on this topic so it probably passes WP:SPS. The other link is dead and the film turns out to be a production of the North Vietnamese army in 1968 with minimal Google hits. At most it might be a reliable source for the assertion that in 1968, the North Vietnamese accused the Americans of committing genocide in their country.Jonathanwallace (talk) 11:37, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree lets make it at least two independent scholars state it was a genocide. I have just removed two entries based on one source which says that something was a genocidal massacre. genocidal massacres are very nasty but they are not genocide. -- PBS (talk) 11:51, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

The existing Sartre ref was a washout--probably non-reliable self published page which made no reference to genocide. I found that Sartre did publish an essay arguing that US intervention in Vietnam = genocide, so have changed the text accordingly and added the reference. Jonathanwallace (talk) 12:14, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

China under Mao should be excluded

Vietnam isn't the only questionable candidate for deletion. Who in the world placed Mao Zedong's rule in China as Genocide?!! True, tens of millions of people were killed, but due to mismanagement, not due to deliberate killings. The famine during the Great Leap Forward, for instance, was an accident, not a deliberate destruction of peasants. Why in the world would Zedong have any interest in destroying loyal peasants? What's next, adding an earthquake as Genocide? --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 11:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

It seems also to raise the question of how something can be a genocide if the killers and victims are the same ethnicity. Jonathanwallace (talk) 13:03, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

That would seem to be WP:OR, there is no impediment to the contention that one can commit genocide against one's own people. As for @Justice and Arbitration, "mismanagement?" Scholars are increasingly viewing genocide for its fundamental nature and acts involved--as opposed to the convention which was passed which stripped murder for political/et al. reasons to acquiesce the Soviet Union--and including both Stalin and Mao, considered "canonical cases" of genocide. Nor is culpable negligence to be dismissed out of hand (to the question of "mismanagement" if it were that to begin with). PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 13:12, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Huh? The definition given in the lede is "Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group." Examples which would fit within this are Germans-Jews, Hutu-Tutsi, Americans-Vietnamese, etc. But not Chinese-Chinese. You seem to be using "genocide" as a synonym for "mass killings by states" (which has its own series of controversial articles). Jonathanwallace (talk) 14:03, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. In numerous cases, it was not Zedong's intent to destroy, but actually to improve the status of Chinese citizens. The fact that some of his ideas were so ill-considered that they actually resulted in the opposite doesn't really change the question of "deliberate destruction". As already mentioned, the goal of Great Leap Forward was to boost steel production, not kill people. Famine was just a side effect of bad planning. In the end, Zedong was the one who canceled the plan and returned the situation back to normal by importing food from overseas. Compare that to Holodomor which shows signs of a deliberately caused famine by increasing the quota for crops of the Ukranian peasants. Zedong's Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries on the other hand, was deliberate, but is closer to democide. Tibet could be categorized as Genocide, but that is already in the article, and thus Mao's section should be deleted.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 16:41, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Deleted sections

PBS--not sure I agree with your changes (which I am not reverting, you being an admin and all). Wouldn't we need consensus on this page as to the "two reference" rule? Also, I am not sure the "genocidal massacre" distinction vs. "genocide" is that clear. The term "genocidal massacre" seems to be used very loosely, to mean either "incident of one ethnic group rising up against another" as during the partition of India, or "one of a series of genocidal actions carried out by the state against its people". The latter definition at least belongs in this article, and at least one of the sections you deleted, concerned Ugandan state action against tribes. Jonathanwallace (talk) 12:22, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Administrative rights gives me no special status for editing the content of an article. I would never and no administrator ought to use administrative tools over a content dispute in which they are involved. If they do so then they should be reported to WP:ANI.

A genocidal massacre is not genocide. They have different definitions and this is an article about genocides in history not genocidal massacres in history, or any of the other related event such as forced mass migrations. It simple really all we list here are events that without giving undue weight to minority views (of fringe views eg killing seals is genocide).

The reason for two independent view can be easily justified under WP:UNDUE this is a very contentions area and often book sales are helped by making controversial statements. If something is widely seen to be a genocide then it is trivial to find two or more sources to back that up. There is clear cases were two sources are not needed if the one source is for example a judicial finding (or the findings of an official international body such as the UN), this is because we are not reporting that an incident was a genocide but that a court found it to be so. See for example the sections "Dirty War in Argentina" and the section immediately following it.

It does not matter if you or I think that what the Ugandan government is or is not genocide. If it actions are widely seen to be genocide (and not just a civil war and barbarity) then it will be easy to find several independent reliable weighty sources to back it up.

The thing that I think that confuses some editors is that they seem to believe that we should be constructing a list of genocides. We are not (and should not), we are constructing a list of events that some notable people (often genocide scholars) or reputable organisations describe as genocide and if there is dissent by notable people or reputable organisations then for NPOV reasons we shoudl mention them as well (for example the sections "Sabra-Shatila, Lebanon")

The current section on the Greek genocide is a good example of how not to do it, it does not mention who considers it to be a genocide instead it describes the events and the opinions from the time and by its position on this page leads the casual reader to infer the by its location the implication that Wikiepdia considers those events to be a genocide. Yet a look at the introduction of the article Greek genocide would furnish all the information needed to turn the section into a factual statement of what happened, who considers it to be a genocide and who does not.

I used to actively edit this article but have backed off, as it was always a chore and never a pleasure to police it and knock sections into shape so that they briefly describe the facts and who thinks it a genocide, or delete the section if few notable sources consider it to be a genocide. I just wish someone would go through the list section by section now because this article is in need of it. -- PBS (talk) 01:01, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Why has British genocide been excluded? Kenya and South Africa?

Why has this article not covered the British genocidal actions in South Africa at the turn of the century (where "concentration camps" where invented by Kitchener), and more recently in Kenya in the 1950s? I quote the following article: "Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkin. The massacre of some 300,000 Kikuyu by British forces in the 1950s is arguably the least known mass slaughter of the 20th century".

All genocides must be mentioned, giving all victims a chance to be treated equally with the dignity and respect they deserve, and not be "airbrushed" out of history. We must be thorough and comprehensive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.25.191.159 (talk) 00:48, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I doubt it has been purposely excluded, why don't you add both of those to the list? Wikipedia is important because everyone can edit it so give it a shot!--Profitoftruth85 (talk) 17:58, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Before they can be included there has to be reliable sources that state that the events were genocides. -- PBS (talk) 23:07, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Boer Genocide

1. Cooper, Allan D. (2009). The geography of genocide. University Press of America. pp. 13, 152–153. ISBN 9780761840978. Retrieved 12 March 2011.
2. Heidenrich, John G. (2001). How to prevent genocide: a guide for policymakers, scholars, and the concerned citizen. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 5. ISBN 9780275969875. Retrieved 12 March 2011.
3. Levene, Mark (2005). Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: The rise of the West and the coming of genocide. I.B.Tauris. pp. 208–. ISBN 9781845110574. Retrieved 12 March 2011.

Kikuyu Genocide

1. Bloxham, Donald; Moses, A. Dirk (2010-05-26). The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. Oxford University Press US. pp. 359–. ISBN 9780199232116. Retrieved 12 March 2011.

1. Horvitz, Leslie Alan; Catherwood, Christopher (2006-06). Encyclopedia of war crimes and genocide. Infobase Publishing. pp. 291–. ISBN 9780816060016. Retrieved 12 March 2011. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. Cooper, Allan D. (2009). The geography of genocide. University Press of America. pp. 13–. ISBN 9780761840978. Retrieved 12 March 2011.

Use these sources from books.google.com as a start, but also try looking in you local libraryProfitoftruth85 (talk) 00:31, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe this page actually used to have a section dealing with the Boers a time back. I could be mistaken though.... there is info on it elsewhere in wikipedia, so it wouldn't be hard to transfer it. --Yalens (talk) 15:03, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I have only looked at the first source the pages 152–153 can be discounted, Page (12),13 hardly makes this a main stream view:

Again this may be true in most cases, but it does not explain why Abraham Lincoln permitted genocide against white southerners in America, or why the British sought to destroy the Boers, or most obviously how Hitler turned an electoral victory into one of the most egregious genocides in history. Other anomalies include the American genocide against the Japanese, the Africans against Africans, British against the Kikuyu, and India's actions against the Gujarat Muslimns.

Particularly when he states on page 6 "Consequently they [Charny and most other respected scholars who have addressed addressed the question of genocide] fail to understand that a genocide can occur without anyone being killed". In this Allen Cooper is far away from what is generally considered to be genocide not only among the scholars, but also in international law. --PBS (talk) 19:01, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Well that is definitely a nondesireable source. But that doesn't mean you can label the view (correct or not, as this page includes "alleged genocides") as fringe just because one person who supports also supports some other, somewhat unrelated, odd idea... at least in the case of the Boers, I strongly suggest we use sources from other pages with regard to the incidents in the Second Boer War. Articles to borrow from include Emily Hobhouse (who exposed what the British apparently called "concentration camps" at the time....) and Second Boer War to list a couple...--Yalens (talk) 19:49, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I have now reviewed the two other sources mentioned and with the pages available to preview on line, they do not appear to support the view that what happened to the Boers was a genocide. The nearest I could find was on searching Levene for "Boer" was: Levene (2005) page 270 mentioning that the Boers thought they were subject to extermination, not that Levene thought it a genocide.

The point is, that if it had been a genocide as the British won the war why did the British not exterminate all of the Boer population or at the very least "ethnically cleans" the two states territories which now had diamond and gold fields of the Boers? Instead when peace was agreed, the British allowed the interned Boers to go back to their farms and towns. The peace proved to be an enduring one, with the Boers fighting with the British in the two World Wars, the first of which started only 10 years after the end of the Boer War and for which only a small minority of Boers supporting the Maritz Rebellion.

We include in the article two alleged genocides one carried out by the English and one carried out by the British. In those cases there are a number of sources that express the opinion that these were genocides. To date no one has produced any reliable sources that state that what happened in the camps was a genocide. The major link seems to be that the British called their camps "concentration camps", which was used by the Third Reich as a euphemism for their death camps, which is why states since then have used other euphemistic terms for concentration camps such as "fortified villages" (British term Malaya) "strategic hamlets" (American term Vietnam) etc. -- PBS (talk) 10:10, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Those were just some quick sources that I pulled from google books, but much of the scholarship on the Boer Wars describes them as a genocide. Someone just needs to visit a library and get some books on the subject.--Profitoftruth85 (talk) 16:37, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Azerbaijan

Main articles: March Days, Khojaly Massacre, Agdaban massacre, Garadaghly Massacre, Malibeyli and Gushchular Massacre, and Guba mass grave

Azerbaijani victims of March Days

The government of Azerbaijan claims that Armenian forces performed acts of genocide against Azerbaijani civilians on several occasions throughout the 20th century. The claims center on Azeri massacres in 1918) as well as the massacres during Nagorno-Karabakh War. Human Rights Watch described the events in the Khojaly Massacre as "the largest massacre to date in the conflict", Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, recognized the "massacres perpetrated by the Armenians against the Azeri population from the beginning of the 19th Century" as genocide. The description of the events as 'genocide' has been criticized by genocide scholar Donald Bloxham.

Genocide carried out against Azeris was removed by some users here there are enough reliable sources to include Azerbaijan in the article.--193.140.194.102 (talk) 21:09, 22 March 2011 (UTC)