Genocide (redirected from Genocidal organization)

genocide, in international law, the intentional and systematic destruction, wholly or in part, by a government of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group. Although the term genocide was first coined in 1944, the crime itself has been committed often in history. It was initially used to describe the systematic campaign for the extermination of peoples carried on by Nazi Germany, in its attempts in the 1930s and 40s to destroy the entire European Jewish community, and to eliminate other national groups in Eastern Europe. In 1945, the charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal listed persecution on racial or religious grounds as a crime for which the victorious Allies would try Nazi offenders. It established the principle of the individual accountability of government officials who carried out the extermination policies. The United Nations, by a convention concluded in 1949, defined in detail the crime of genocide and provided for its punishment by competent national courts of the state on whose territory the crime was committed, or by international tribunal. Charging that the convention violated national sovereignty, especially in its provision for an international tribunal and in the potential liability of an individual citizen, the United States did not ratify it until 37 years later, in 1986. An international tribunal was established to prosecute genocide cases in the aftermath of the slaughter of more than 500,000 Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. In 1995 top civilian and military Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat leaders were charged by an international tribunal with genocide in the killing of thousands of Muslims during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

Bibliography

See studies by I. L. Horowitz (1981), L. Kuper (1982), E. Staub (1989), and S. Power (2001).

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genocide

Deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, religious, political, or ethnic group. The term was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born jurist who served as an adviser to the U.S. Department of War during World War II, to describe the premeditated effort to destroy a population (see Holocaust). In 1946 the UN General Assembly declared genocide a punishable crime. By this declaration, genocide by definition may be committed by an individual, group, or government, against one's own people or another, in peacetime or in wartime. This last point distinguishes genocide from “crimes against humanity,” whose legal definition specifies wartime. Suspects may be tried by a court in the country where the act was committed or by an international court (see International Criminal Court). An example of genocide more recent than the Holocaust is the slaughter of Tutsi people by the Hutu in Rwanda in the 1990s.

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genocide

the policy of deliberately killing a nationality or ethnic group

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Genocide

See also Brutality, Massacre.

Auschwitz

largest Nazi extermination camp; more than 1,000,000 deaths there. [Ger. Hist.: Hitler, 958–959, 970, 1123]

Babi Yar

ravine near Kiev where Nazis slaughtered 10,000 Jews. [Russ. Hist.: Wigoder, 56]

Bergen-Belsen

Nazi slave labor and extermination camp. [Ger. Hist.: Hitler, 1187, 1188]

Buchenwald

showcase of Nazi atrocities. [Ger. Hist.: Hitler, 1055]

Dachau

primarily work camp, experienced share of Nazi horrors. [Ger. Hist.: Hitler, 1055]

Final Solution

Nazi plan decided fate of 6,000,000 Jews. [Ger. Hist.: Hitler, 1037–1061]

Holocaust

Nazi attempt at extermination of European Jewry (1933–1945). [Jew. Hist.: Wigoder, 266–267]

Lublin

Nazi extermination camp. [Ger. Hist.: Hitler, 970]

Majdanek

Nazi extermination camp. [Ger. Hist.: Wigoder, 113]

My Lai

American army division annihilates population of entire Vietnamese hamlet (March 16, 1968). [Am. Hist.: Kane, 450]

Ravensbrueck

women’s concentration camp in Germany. [Ger. Hist.: Shirer, 1275]

Sachsenhausen

Nazi concentration camp. [Ger. Hist.: Shirer, 375]

Six Million Jews

their deaths a testimony to Nazi “Final Solution.” [Eur. Hist.: Hitler, 1123]

Treblinka

Nazi extermination camp. [Ger. Hist.: Hitler, 970]

Wannsee Conference

“Final Solution” plotted and scheduled. [Ger. Hist.: Wigoder, 619]

Zyklon B

hydrogen cyanide; used by Nazis for mass extermination in concentration camps. [Ger. Hist.: Hitler, 970]

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Genocide 

(from Greek génos, clan or tribe, and Latin caedo, I kill), the extermination of individual groups of the population for racial, national, or religious motives; one of the gravest crimes against humanity. Crimes of genocide are organically linked with fascism and similar reactionary “theories” that preach racial and national hatred and intolerance and the rule of so-called superior races over inferior races.

Crimes of genocide were committed on a mass scale by the Hitlerites during World War II (1939-45) in occupied European countries, especially against the Slavic and Jewish population. Millions of people of different nationalities were exterminated in fascist death camps. The ruling circles of several imperialist states flagrantly violate the Conventions of 1948 and 1965, by pursuing a policy of genocide within the country as well as the territories under their rule and using this policy in the struggle against the national liberation movement. A policy of genocide and apartheid has become the state policy in the Republic of South Africa and in Rhodesia.

The punishability of genocide has been established by statutes of international military tribunals (the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals) as well as by the special international Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on Dec. 9, 1948. In the convention genocide means acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, any national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such—namely, killing members of such a group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children from one group to another. The convention also makes punishable conspiracy with intent to commit genocide, incitement and attempt to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide. The convention provides for the prevention and punishment of crimes of physical and biological genocide. During the drafting of the convention the representative from the USSR insisted on also including a prohibition on national and cultural genocide, which expresses itself in measures and acts directed against use of the national language and against the national culture of any group of the population; however, the imperialist powers refused to accept this proposal or to extend the operation of the convention to the colonies, in which crimes of genocide are perpetrated on a mass scale. In 1965 the United Nations adopted a convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, which condemns racism, one of the forms of which is genocide.

In the Soviet Union and the other socialist states any limitation of the rights of citizens or the establishment of any privileges for citizens based on their racial, national, or religious affiliation, as well as the preaching of racial or national discrimination or hatred and neglect, is prohibited and punished by the law.