What is Genocide?

April is Genocide Awareness Month. According to the United Nations, genocide is "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a. killing members of the group; b. causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c. deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d. imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e. forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." Any genocide, whether committed in times of peace or times of war, is considered a crime under international law.

While genocide has been a defining feature of the twentieth century, it is by no means only a twentieth century phenomenon. Genocides have existed since early in human history, although they have not always been perceived as crimes. Many early societies saw nothing wrong with the massacre and extermination of other peoples.

The Roman Empire destroyed entire tribes and cultures in Europe and Africa; Ghengis Khan and his successors wiped out entire populations in Asia.

The African continent, too, saw its share of pre-twentieth century extermination. The rise of the Zulu nation in the southern part of the continent was accompanied by the extermination of many tribes and clans that posed a threat to the new Zulu empire. Tribes fleeing inland from the Zulu onslaught themselves then began a ten year period of destruction known in African history as the crushing – estimates place the dead at somewhere between one and two million.

European colonization brought genocide to other areas, as well. The Russian expansion into Siberia and Alaska led to deliberate attempts to destroy native tribes such as the Kamchadals, Yukaghir and Koryaks. European colonization of north, central and south America brought with it the destruction of entire civilizations, cultures, and tribes. How many Aztecs and Incas are left today?

In the twentieth century, the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the Cambodian Genocide and the Rwanda Genocide are just some of the better-known examples of the continued slaughter of innocent human beings. In addition to these, we can, if we wish, add Stalin’s "Great Terror" in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, when some twenty million enemies of the state were exterminated. We have also had Iraq’s campaign against the Kurds: the destruction of the Herrero people in south west Africa, and the extermination of numerous indigenous peoples in south and central America.

Those of us who live in countries where genocide is not occurring have no right to feel morally superior. There are too many accounts of people screaming for help in our own cities while bystanders turn away. The willingness to turn aside while violence happens to another is clearly not unique to a genocidal society.

The world community is also often a bystander to genocide. In today’s world of instant media coverage, we see what happens elsewhere almost as soon as it occurs. We watch, and then we turn off the TV.

In 1993, then President Clinton gave a speech at the dedication of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. While he was giving this speech about the failure of the allies to prevent or slow down the Holocaust, the Serbian campaign against the Bosnian Muslims was in full swing.

Clinton said in his speech:  "The nations of the west must live forever with this knowledge: even as our fragmentary awareness of these crimes grew into indisputable facts, we did far too little. Before the war started, doors to liberty were slammed shut. And even after we attacked Germany, rail lines to the camps, within miles of significant targets, were left undisturbed. Most deaths were left to occur, enshrouded in our denial…the evil represented in this museum is incontestable. It is absolute. As we are its witness, so we must remain its adversary. We owe that much to the dead, as we owe it to our consciences and our children. So we must stop the fabricators of history and the bullies as well. Left unchallenged, they would still prey upon the powerless, and we cannot permit this to happen again."

Those are nice words, but they ring hollow when we realize that Clinton and his administration were fully aware of the scope of the slaughter occurring in Bosnia. And they will ring more hollow still when we consider the complete and utter lack of action by the United States and the west in the face of the genocide that was about to break out in Rwanda the following year.