Genocides in history
Genocide appears to be a regular and widespread feature of the history of civilisation. The phrase 'Never again' often used in relation to genocide is sadly contradicted right 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.
Biblical genocides
A record of several alleged genocides is found in the Bible, although the accuracy of the accounts must be decided by personal opinion. To name a few:
- The conquest and massacre of various middle-eastern peoples, including Israel, by the empires of Assyria and Babylon.
- The destruction of Amalek
Many campaigns of the Roman Empire can by modern standards be rated as genocide:
- Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul: the war cost the lives of more than a million Gauls, and a million further were enslaved.
- 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, and its people murdered or enslaved.
- Jerusalem: the city was burned and its people murdered or enslaved.
- (Albigensian Crusade 1209–1229) can be considered as a case of genocide. It was carried out against the Cathar people, militarily and by use of the Inquisition.
- Wars of the Vendée: the revolutionary National Convention ordered a pacification of the province, with specific instructions to kill children and women of reproductive age.
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.
===England=== (1553-1558)
- As part of her attempt to remake England into a Roman Catholic kingdom, Queen Mary I of England executed around 300 Protestants.
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 Leopold 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 Leopold 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.
- Australian Aboriginal Population were decimated when the white population moved in. Many died from disease introduced by those settlers and some were shot. During the White Australian Policy, it was expected that Australian Aboriginal will be slowly fade out. 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 a small island and all of its members died out slowly due to neglect. Their languages are entirely lost and most of their cultural heritage are gone, though people of mixed decent still insist on spiritual connection to the land.
- The Great Hunger (also known as the 'Irish Potato Famine') occurred between 1845–1850 when a disease struck the potato crop and many people starved to death. With very little relief effort made by Parliament, approximately one million Irish men, women and children died of starvation and disease. The English occupiers actually exported other fruit and vegetables from Ireland during the famine, as potatoes were the only crop affected by the famine.
- One and a half million more would be evicted by their landlords and forced to leave Ireland for Great Britain (mainly Liverpool, Glasgow, and London), the United States, Canada, and Australia. Conditions aboard the ships transporting poor Irishmen and women to new homes were horrendous: one quarter of all emigrants would die within a year of leaving Ireland. The Great Hunger resulted in the near destruction of the Irish language and the old Irish Aristocracy.
- Those who argue that the definition of genocide is inappropriate for the Great Hunger insist that this is because it did not amount to a deliberate policy of extermination on the part of the British government. General consensus among Irish historians today regards the Great Famine as the culmination of the ill effects of laissez faire economic policy, not from a deliberate desire to kill the Irish people.
- Genocide in the Highland Clearances. From about 1792, the Highland population, for the most part Gaels leading a subsistence agricultural way of life, were 'encouraged', sometimes forcibly, to move off the land, which was then given over to sheep farming. The people were accommodated in poor crofts or small farms in coastal areas where the farming or fishing could not sustain the communities, or directly put on emigration ships. Together with a failure of the potato crop in the 19th century, this policy resulted in starvation, deaths, and a secondary clearance, when Scots either migrated voluntarily or were forcibly evicted. In many areas there were small and large scale massacres and violence towards the indigenous people.
- There are conflicting views about whether the process of change was genocide: there were social and historical factors at work, including the onset of industrialisation, development of a rational approach to economics, and moves to larger scale agriculture. The Clearances could be argued to be an inevitable collision between the economics of "improved" land use and an almost feudal way of life.
- Other people feel that what developed does meet the central definition of genocide. They feel that it was the calculated destruction for economic as well as political reasons of groups leading a way of life which no longer "fitted in". (See Eric Richard The Highland Clearances Barlinn Books (2000), for an acknowledgement of both sides of this argument, and see the main article on the Highland Clearances.)
===United States=== (1838-1839)
- The forced removal of the Cherokee Amerindian tribe at the behest of Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin van Buren, in violation of the ruling of John Marshall's Supreme Court, led to the deaths of 1/4--or about 4,000 to 8,000--of said tribe during the march from Georgia to Oklahoma. See Trail of Tears.
- 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 (not Afrikaner) Republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State were a definite form of genocide: because the Boers protested English plans to annex their Boer Republics, they declared war against the British.
- The English rounded up Boer civilians, placing them in concentration camps. Until the Boers surrendered in May 1902, at least 27,000 Boer (not Afrikaner) 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.
- In 1985, the United Nation's Whitaker Report recognized the German attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama 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
- Many historians have stressed the historic importance of these atrocities, tracing the evolution from Kaiser Wilhelm II to Hitler, from Southwest Africa to Auschwitz.
- Germany Refuses to Apologize for Herero Holocaust
- Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker - Der Völkermord an den Herero
===Turkey=== (1914–1923) genocides by the Young Turk government
- Approximately 0.6–1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were killed [2] (some sources cite much higher figures). The Turkish government officially denies that there was any genocide, claiming that most of the Armenian deaths resulted from armed conflict, disease and famine during the turmoil of World War.
- Approximately 300,000–600,000 Pontian Greeks in the Ottoman Empire were killed, and several hundred thousand others exiled. The Turkish government denies there was any genocide despite evidence to the contrary, instead blaming the wars with Greece which took place around the same time for the millions of deaths.
- See also: Armenian Genocide, Hellenic Holocaust
- Ukrainians - Claims of 5 million civilians starved to death for refusing to cooperate with "collective farming" rules.
- Some argue that genocide took the form of man-made famines in 1932-33, particularly in Ukraine. Collectivization led to a drop in the already low productivity of Russian farming, which did not regain the NEP level until 1940, or allowing for the further disasters of World War II, 1950. The dispute includes, if the collectivization was responsible for famine and the actual number of victims.
- Soviets also targeted the following groups: Polish minority in Soviet Union, Crimean Tatars, Don Cossacks, Chechens, Volga Germans, Kalmyks, Meskhetians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Orthodox priests, kulaks, regardless nationality.
- Some have claimed that Stalin was planning a purge of elite Jews following the so-called "Doctors' plot". These claims, though well publicized, have never been proven.
- Note: Many historians dismiss reports of Soviet genocide, as in Ukraine, as anti-soviet propaganda. Some historians have argued that the millions of civilian killings done by the Soviet government should not be called "genocide" since the motivation for the murders is outside of the legal definition of genocide. No ethnic groups or classes, they argue, were targeted in particular. Sometimes the term politicide is instead used to describe targeted Soviet killings of particular ideological and political groups.
====German Nazi genocide before and during World War II==== (1933–1945). (See also Armenian quote.)
- The Holocaust: approximately 11 million people were killed (figure is contested, see [1]) according to the Nazi racist ideology, as some ethnic groups were considered "sub-human". This includes:
- ha-Shoah, ("the Catastrophe" in Hebrew), in which 6 million European Jews, including 1.5 million children, were systematically "exterminated" (the Nazi term) for being Jewish. See also Holocaust denial.
- 6 million Polish citizens (3 million of whom were counted as both Polish and Jew: see possibly Polish Jews).
- 7.5 million Soviet civilians and 3.2 million Soviet POWs. This number includes 2 million Soviet Jews mainly in the areas of former Eastern Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia proper, many of whom were killed by squads of Nazi collaborators formed among Ukrainians, Latvians, Russians and Lithuanians. The Jews of Eastern Poland were doubly counted also among victims in Poland.
- The Nazis also killed other (non-ethnic) groups, such as those suffering from birth defects, learning disability or insanity; homosexuals, prostitutes and communists, as part of eugenics.
Allied genocide during WWII
Allies during WWII: 3 to 5 million German civilians killed, 10 to 15 million expelled from their homes.
- Bombing of Dresden in World War II: allied bombers dropped 3.4 kilotons of incendiaries (napalm) on Dresden, specifically targeting a civilian population (the city was packed with refugees), and creating a firestorm which killed an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 civilians.
- Bombing of Hamburg: one third of the city destroyed, 60,000 to 100,000 civilian deaths.
- Allied bombers attacked known refugee bunkers in many western and eastern German cities, attempting to "demoralize" the Germans.
- Attacks on German refugees during the World War II evacuation and expulsion
- Refugee ships in the Baltic Sea were targeted by allied war ships and submarines and sunk, no survivors were rescued and rescue ships were also sunk. (Earlier in the War German ships had refused to rescue survivors of ships sunk by their submarines: Germans were tried for this at Nuremberg)
- The dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in order to force a Japanese surrender (at a time when some Japanese were willing to negotiate a peace).
Soviet genocide during WWII
- German POW: At least 1 million out of 5 million POWs died in labor camps.
- The German population of East Prussia was systematically eliminated, see Evacuation of East Prussia for details.
- Convoys of German refugees running for their lives from East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, eastern Brandenburg and other eastern German lands were targeted by bombers and attack airplanes.
- Polish soldiers were led to labor camps, where the officers were summarily executed and thousands died from exhaustion, sickness, and the elements before Stalin released the Polish captives.
- See also Katyn Massacre.
Japanese Genocide during WWII
Japanese genocide before and during World War II (1920s–1945)
- Nanjing Massacre: Some authorities claimed 300,000 people killed during the three months following the fall of Nanjing to the Japanese. Genocide targeted at Chinese at other places of China: Manchuria, the Wan Bao Hill Incident, Xiangyang, and the Rape of Nanking.
- Unit 731 conducted biological and chemical warfare experiments on living humans.
- Sook Ching Massacre: When British Malaya fell to the Japanese Imperial Forces in February 1942, ethnic Chinese in Singapore were systematically exterminated on the pretext of eliminating "anti-Japanese" elements. The death toll range from 5,000 to 100,000.
- Smaller scale Genocide also targeted at Koreans, Filipinos, Dutch, Vietnamese, Indonesians and Burmese.
- 1947-49 It is alleged (see Palestinian exodus) that there was genocide against the established Arab population in the area which was to become Israel. This is disputed by the Israelis, who claim that some casualties and repatriation is inevitable in a time of military conflict. Others quote the Haganah Plan Dalet (planning by what was to become the Isreli army), which explicitly advocated: 'Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously. ... Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population expelled outside the borders of the state.' Haganah Plan Dalet 1947-48
- Some political groups, such as the Free Tibet movement, have claimed that the government of the People's Republic of China has committed genocide by killing members of several minority ethnic groups, including Uighurs, Tibetans and others during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Most scholars argue that this is not a case of genocide but simple famine, because while minority ethnic groups died, so did members of the majority Han Chinese, and at no time has the PRC government undertaken policies specifically to kill minority groups. Famine has been a cyclical, recurring phenomenon in Chinese history for thousands of years. The PRC states that these charges help to indoctrinate impressionable youths in the Free Tibet movement and other groups with anti-China agendas.
- In 1961, Indonesia invaded West Papua with the assistance of the USA. Its continuing subjugation of that nation has involved the deaths of hundreds of thousands civilians, the extinction of unique cultures and languages, and the government transmigration of over 1.2 million Javanese into West Papua while under a military occupation. This does not violate the Fourth Geneva Convention as Indonesia is not a signatory to these conventions.
- In 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor with the quiet approval of the USA, and its subjugation of that nation involved the deaths of thousands of civilians which has been estimated to be, in proportionate numbers, worse than the killings committed by the contemporary Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia.
- The killing of thousands of political and social activists began with the USA-supported destabilization of the democratic government of Marxist Salvador Allende, and the military coup d'état by Augusto Pinochet.
- Chile was part of Operación Cóndor, which coordinated the killings in Argentina, Uruguay and other countries of South America.
- 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.
See also: Democratic Kampuchea
- The military dictatorship led by Jorge Rafael Videla and others killed or made disappear around 6,000 people. Many of these were political and social activists, union leaders, or common people that just did not agree with the military government. All were accused of being terrorists. They did not have fair process and could not defend themselves. Many of the desaparecidos ended in illegal detention camps like the ESMA, the Navy's School of Mechanics, which has been turned into a museum by Argentine president Néstor Kirchner in 2004.
- Moreover, the militaries had a plan for changing the identity of those babies that were born in captivity. Instead of being returned to their families, these babies were given in illegal adoption to families in the armed forces and the police.
- Videla and other militaries were condemned to life-time prison by Argentine justice, but later were pardoned by Argentine president Carlos Saúl Menem. Now they are in custody while they are being judged for the illegal adoptions plan.
1982 - Mayan villages
1983 - present (... as of 2004)
- The US 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. Organised campaign by Janjaweed militias (nomadic Arab shepherds with the support of Sudanese government and troops) to rid 80 black African tribes from the Darfur region of western Sudan. 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."[1]
1973 - Present
- Since the end of the Vietnam War hostilities against the Degar 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.
- 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 rival ethnic groups in the South (Shia Muslims) and North (Kurds) of Iraq after the Desert Storm war. These attacks involved allegedly deliberate destruction of the living habitats of these peoples, e.g. through over drainage of the southern wetlands.
- Sadam Hussein, the alleged perpetrator, has been charged in 2004 with crimes of genocide by the newly constituted government of the country.
- Organized ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbs, Croats, gypsies,and Bosniaks throughout the period.
- More than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in July 1995. See also History of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
===Rwanda=== (April 1994)
- Officially 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutus. See History of Rwanda.
===Gujarat=== (February–March 2002)
- About 800 or more than 2000 people (views differ on the numbers of victims), mostly Muslims, were killed throughout Gujarat, a state in India, during the 2002 Gujarat violence. This is considered by some people to satisfy the international legal definition of genocide, with the Sangh Parivar considered responsible for the systematic nature of the killings, while others consider the killings to have been spontaneous and uncontrolled.
===Sudan===(2004)
- It is alleged that the Ganjaweed, with Government support, carried out massacres and destruction of houses and agriculture in the region.