Talk:Genocide/Archive 5

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Archive 1

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Archive 3

Genocide disambiguation page?

Given that Genocide is also the title of a Doctor Who novel, couldn't there be some sort of disambiguation page? I recall linking it to the top of the page but it seems nonexistent now. DrWho42 02:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Autism

I think that Autism rights movement#Opposition_to_eliminating_autism should be mentioned in this article somewhere. --Max 03:51, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't seee the connection —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.70.109.123 (talk) 22:38, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Darfur/ICC

I've moved around the headings re: Darfur and the intro about the ICC. I think this format better makes the distinction between the pre-ICC approach and the current ICC approach, while also deterring the random listing of "genocides" that haven't been officially investigated under international law (eg. User:Philip Baird Shearer's West Papua concerns). Wl219 19:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

first sentence / definition

Since the official definition of genocide allows for the cultural/religious destruction of a people's way of life, the first sentence is somewhat misleading. I think a reading of something like "Genocide is the intentional destruction of a group of people and their way of life ...". I think it is important to emphasize that destruction of culture (such as forcibly deporting/kill all rural members of a ethnic group such as happened with the Kurds) is an intentional part of the definition of genocide. R343L 07:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

gfjdyueryu

Genocide (Doctor Who)

I recently reverted the edit made by 194.80.32.8 since Genocide is also a Doctor Who novel. If anyone disagrees with my revert, please discuss it here. DrWho42 02:15, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with you, and I agree with IP. This word is so "big", it probably pops up a thousand times as an episode title, if we should have one line for every one of those series it would be a big stupid silly mess. I say this despite having failed finding ny more examples, and I know, we have -yet- only this Dr Who episode there, but I felt it is, kind of, out of it's league in this article- this is such a major thing for humanity, a TV-series does not belong here. I am sure anyone looking for the given episode would accept not finding it here, or even a redirect here. It is possible you could build a disambiguation page for it, and then just add "for other meanings of the word Genocide, look here" style, but the Dr Who ref now seems very silly to me. (Or novel. Whatever.)Greswik 15:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Pharos has fixed this, great. Greswik 12:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Theories of Genocide, Prevention Strategies

This article lacks an overview of the theoretical explanations available for genocides, as well as a listing of (suggested or practiced) longer term strategies for genocide prevention (as opposed to the strategies listed in the table with a typical sequence of genocidal events, which really do not represent preventive but reactive measures). Is this really all that genocide research has been able to come up with so far - just classifying and typologizing historical genocides and making them an international crime? If so, that may be a start, but it probably isn´t much of a longterm achievement yet. If there is more ... plz experts add it to the article. --Thewolf37 23:17, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Boer War

How is the murder of one quarter of two independent countries (Tranvaal & Orange Free State) population by Britain not a genocide? They attacked their countries, burned down their houses, killed all their livestock and herded the women and children into concentration camps where they were ill fed and died in the tens of thousands. Please add this atrocity to your article. Worst of all, the perpetrators of this atrocity are still heroes of British history. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 196.14.137.80 (talk) 06:01, 15 March 2007 (UTC).

Stages of Genocide

I'm doing a genocide research project and looking unde stages of genocide. Wtf! Where's stage 3? It's missing! -Anonymous —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shotgun333 (talk • contribs) 12:48, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Genocide in Iraq

Everyday in Iraq lots of muslims and hindus die. Sadly this is not only because of old age or diseases etc. This is because of suicidal attacks all over the country. Churches, Mosques and other buildings are burnt down, or simply bombed and the people behind all this terror blame their religion. In no bible or holy book of any religion doeas it say that you should hurt someone (e.g: Bible : love your neighbour). There are lots of information on this subject all over the web, depending on what you search. Information displayed and contributed by Shotgun333 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shotgun333 (talk • contribs) 12:48, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Lead section

I'd like to add a section on genocide to the death article in tying in with war and acts of murder, but I need a summary version of this article, and the current lead section is still very short. I haven't got time to read through it myself and summarize right now, but if someone involved in editing this article would like to do so it would help a lot. Richard001 06:39, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I added a bit to the lede--a paren indicating that extermination is not necessary in the lede graf. I also added a 2nd graf: "It is important to note that under the various accepted definitions (see below), the act or crime of genocide does not reqire that the subject people actually become extinct or eliminated. In fact, most targets of genocide have managed to continue to exist as a people." I think this is good to have this up top. I was just stunned in an online conversation with someone who should know better who thought that genocide means only that absolute extermination of a people. By that definition almost nothing we think of today as genocide would qualify. So I though it important to make this point clearer near the top--even tho is is already in the entry lower down. (People today have short attn spans!) RUReady2Testify 21:44, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Coining of the term genocide

It isn't clear to me, what needs to be referenced in this para: the narrowness of the definition or that it was mainly based on the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide or that it was narrow because it was based on the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide. What is more the statement about the narrowness of the definition is perhaps misleading. His definition reads: "By 'genocide' we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group." (In 1946 he is even clearer: "Genocide is the crime of destroying national, racial or religious groups.) In the rest of the text he tends to use the word "national group" but the context seems clear that he means both national and ethnic groups. Already in 1933 he defines the "offense of barbarity" as committed against racial, religious, or social collectivities. I suggest editing the para to read as follows:

The term "genocide" was coined by Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), a Polish-Jewish legal scholar, in 1943, from the roots γένος genos (Greek for family, tribe or race) and -cide (Latin - occidere - to massacre) in the context of the Jewish Holocaust. Lemkin's genocide definition was based mainly on the Holocaust and Armenian genocide.^[1] It addressed crimes against "national, racial or religious groups". His definition included not only physical genocide but also acts aimed at destroying the culture and livelihood of the group.^[2]

Finally, I propose deleting the last para of this section as repetitive. Joel Mc 11:33, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

^ Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. pp. 21, 43 in the 2002 London, Flamingo edition
^ Raphael Lemkin, Genocide American Scholar, Volume 15, no. 2 (April 1946), p. 227-230

Genocide

By Ahmet Altan May 9, 2005 http://www.gazetem.net/ahmetaltan.asp Translated by the Zoryan Institute

I would like to ask a very simple, ordinary question.

Would you wish to be an Armenian in 1915?

No, you wouldn't.

Because now you know you would have been killed.

Please stop arguing about the number of murdered or the denials or the attempts to replace pain with statistics.

No one is denying that Armenians were murdered, right?

It may be 300,000, or 500,000, or 1.5 million.

I don't know which number is the truth, or whether anyone knows the true number accurately.

What I do know is the existence of the death and pain beyond these numbers.

I am also aware how we forget that we are talking about human beings when we are passionately debating the numbers.

Those numbers cannot describe the murdered babies, women, the elderly, the teenage boys and girls.

If we leave the numbers aside, and if we allow ourselves to hear the story of only one of these murders, I am sure that even those of us who get enraged when they hear the words "Armenian Genocide" will feel the pain, will have tears in their eyes.

Because they will realize that we are talking about human beings.

When we hear about a baby pulled from a mother's hands to be dashed on the rocks, or a youth shot to death beside a hill, or an old woman throttled by her slender neck, even the hard-hearted among us will be ashamed to say, "Yes, but these people killed the Turks."

Most of these people did not kill anyone.

These people became the innocent victims of a crazed government powered by murder, pitiless but also totally incompetent in governing.

This bloody insanity was a barbarism, not something for us to take pride in or be part of.

This was a slaughter that we should be ashamed of, and, if possible, something that we can sympathize with and share the pain.

I understand that the word "genocide" has a damningly critical meaning, based on the relentless insistence of the Armenians' "Accept the Genocide" argument, or the Turks' "No, it was not a genocide" counterargument, even though the Turks accept the death of hundreds of thousands of Armenians.

And yet, this word is not that important for me, even though it has significance in politics and diplomacy.

What is more important for me is the fact that many innocent people were killed so barbarically.

When I see the shadow of this bloody event on the present world, I see a greater injustice done to the Armenians.

Our crime today is not to allow the present Armenians even to grieve for their cruelly killed relatives and parents.

Which Armenian living in Turkey today can openly grieve and commemorate a murdered grandmother, grandfather or uncle?

I have nothing in common with the terrible sin of the past Ittihadists, but the sin of not allowing grief for the dead belongs to all of us today.

Do you really want to commit this sin?

Is there anyone among us who would not shed tears for a family attacked at home in the middle of the night, or for a little girl left all alone in the desert during the nightmare called "deportation," or for a white-bearded grandfather shot?

Whether you call it genocide or not, hundreds of thousands of human beings were murdered.

Hundreds of thousands of lives snuffed out.

The fact that some Armenian gangs murdered some Turks cannot be an excuse to mask the truth that hundreds of thousands of Armenians were murdered.

A human being of conscience is capable of grieving for the Armenians, as well as the Turks, as well as the Kurds.

We all should.

Babies died; women and old people died.

They died in pain, tormented, terrified.

Is it really so important what religion or race these murdered people had?

Even in these terrifying times there were Turks who risked their lives trying to rescue Armenian children.

We are the children of these rescuers, as well as the children of the murderers.

Instead of justifying and arguing on behalf of the murderers, why don't we praise and defend the rescuers' compassion, honesty, and courage?

There are no more victims left to be rescued today, but there is a grief, a pain, to be shared and supported.

What's the use of a bloody, warmongering dance around a deep pain?

Forget the numbers, forget the Armenians, forget the Turks, just think of the babies, teenagers, and old people with necks broken, bellies slashed, bodies mutilated. Think about these people, one by one.

If nothing moves in you when you hear a baby wail as her mother is murdered, I have nothing to say to you.

Then add my name to the list of "traitors."

Because I am ready to share the grief and pain with the Armenians.

Because I still believe there is something yet to be rescued from all these meaningless and pitiless arguments, and that something is called "humanity."

Tha translation has serious flaws to defend a thesis, Altan recognises the fact that more than 500 thousand Muslims have been murdered by the armenian gangs during the troubled times, as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.109.98.30 (talk) 21:06, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Opening statement on the definition of 'genocide'

The old statement defined genocide as the "mass killing" of a group. This is not an accurate summary either of scholarly consensus or international law. In both the CPPCG and in Raphael Lemkin's original 1944 formulation, mass killing is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for genocide. In the CPPCG definition, for example, one could be guilty of genocide for forcibly removing the children of a national group with an intent to prevent that national group from reproducing itself (as happened to many First Nations groups in Canada, for example; although the Canadian state has not been charged with genocide, in principle it could be). In scholarly and activist literature, some authors defend the association of genocide with mass killing while others insist on a multidimensional conception of genocide. It is more "NPOV", so to speak, to introduce genocide as the "intentional destruction" of a group; this phrase is a bit ambiguous but that ambiguity is proper to the term as it is currently used. -- Christopher Powell 23:15, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I've changed "deliberate and systematic extermination" to substitute "destruction" for extermination and removed the OED citation. The Oxford English Dictionary for once is not authoritative, and in fact wrong. Neither the CPPCG, nor Lemkin's writing, equate genocide with physical extermination. Under the CPPCG, killing does not have to happen at all for genocide to take place. There are many scholars who disagree and define genocide in terms of mass killing, but there are also many who do not. The opening statement should be reasonably inclusive. Christopher Powell 23:18, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I have reverted the change. The legal opinions expressed this year have clearly shown that the legal definition of genocide involves the physical killing of a group (or "part" of a group). See for example the European Court of Human Rights judgement of Jorgic v. Germany on 12 July 2007: As the ICTY has observed, while 'there are obvious similarities between a genocidal policy and the policy commonly known as 'ethnic cleansing' ' (Krstić, IT-98-33-T, Trial Chamber Judgment, 2 August 2001, para. 562), yet '[a] clear distinction must be drawn between physical destruction and mere dissolution of a group. The expulsion of a group or part of a group does not in itself suffice for genocide.(ECHR Paragraph 45, quoting the ICJ (search on "Jorgic v. Germany")). -- Philip Baird Shearer 08:33, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I've undone the revert. Sorry to be stubborn, but this is an important and slippery point. Destruction, even physical destruction, is not the same thing as extermination. At issue is the question of whether genocide is understood as a process the object of which is more than a collection of individuals - a culture, a shared or communal existence, a 'social fact' in the Durkheimian sense - or whether genocide is 'only' the killing of individuals chosen for killing because of their group membership. Raphael Lemkin very clearly understood his own concept in terms of the former sense; the Convention is not inconsistent with such an interpretation; the point continues to be contested among scholars (e.g. Jean-Paul Sartre, Tony Barta, Thompson and Quets, Ward Churchill, Dirk Moses, etc.) and in general use.

This is particularly relevant in debates over genocides against indigenous peoples by settler societies, especially liberal-democratic settler societies that have not consistently sought the total physical extermination of their indigenous populations. I recognize that individualist definitions of genocide that reduce the term to one form or another of mass killing tend to predominate, especially in the U.S. literature, but the question is far from settled and I think that too specific a definition violates NPOV. Christopher Powell 23:07, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings

I don't want to stir up any spirits, but isn't, in respect with the UN definition, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki genocidal? I'm really not trying to make a point here, it really is an honest question. - Amenzix 13:11, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't aimed to target the Japanese people specifically, and in fact many more suffered (Koreans, American POWs), but you should consult reliable sources rather than fellow Wikipedians. In my opinion, it could be considered terrorism (in order to terrify the Japanese government, I am also not trying to make a point here), but certainly not genocide. Colchicum 13:18, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

"Preventive measures"

Some of these "Preventive measures" for the Stages of Genocide sound inconsistent with some of the freedoms expected in a liberal democracy. I mean, "Hate radio stations should be shut down, and hate propaganda banned."? America and alot of other Western developed nations don't ban the Neo-Nazis from spewing their slime. And what exactly is a "hate radio station"? The Genocide Watch link only briefly mentions possible preventive measures against Genocide. The "Preventive measures" column should at the very least be expanded upon with additional sources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.244.101.174 (talk) 23:44, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I've put the list in the context of its presentation. Please have a look at it now and see if it reads better. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:25, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Are identity cards a necessary step for genocides?

I just read that the Soviets required mandatory registration and issued identity cards to prevent Ukrainians from fleeing the Holodomor in December 1932. This reminds me of how the Nazis used identity documents to determine who was Jewish, and the Rwandans used them not just to determine but practically to define who was Hutu and who was Tutsi. The "stages of genocide" document presented describes such steps as classification and organization as general processes in a racist context, but it occurs to me that these processes more typically (though not always) occur first in the ostensibly neutral context of identifying and tracking the population at large, and only later turn out to be very helpful in facilitating mass murder. It follows that the originating source of genocides is not the tiny racist group with its propaganda, but the general social policy that classifies human beings as objects that must be tagged and controlled. Do you suppose this is correct? 70.15.116.59 (talk) 17:19, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I think you'll find more genocide with economic origin than racist. The racism/religious bigotry is merely the vehicle by which the leader manipulates people.202.235.215.33 (talk) 16:48, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Greek and Assyrian Genocide recognised

IAGS Officially Recognizes Greek Genocide (1914-1922) In a groundbreaking move, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has voted overwhelmingly to recognize the genocides inflicted on Assyrian and Greek populations of the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1923.

The resolution passed with the support of fully 83 percent of IAGS members who voted. The resolution (text below) declares that "it is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks." It "calls upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution."

In 1997, the IAGS officially recognized the Armenian genocide. The current resolution notes that while activist and scholarly efforts have resulted in widespread acceptance of the Armenian genocide, there has been "little recognition of the qualitatively similar genocides against other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire ." Assyrians, along with Pontian and Anatolian Greeks, were killed on a scale equivalent in per capita terms to the catastrophe inflicted on the Armenian population of the empire -- and by much the same methods, including mass executions, death marches, and starvation.

IAGS member Adam Jones drafted the resolution, and lobbied for it along with fellow member Thea Halo, whose mother Sano survived the Pontian Greek genocide. In an address to the membership at the IAGS conference in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in July 2007, Jones paid tribute to the efforts of "representatives of the Greek and Assyrian communities ... to publicize and call on the present Turkish government to acknowledge the genocides inflicted on their populations," which had made Asia Minor their home for millennia. The umbrella term "Assyrians" includes Chaldeans, Nestorians, Syriacs, Aramaens, Eastern Orthodox Syrians, and Jacobites.

"The overwhelming backing given to this resolution by the world's leading genocide scholars organization will help to raise consciousness about the Assyrian and Greek genocides," Jones said on December 15. "It will also act as a powerful counter to those, especially in present-day Turkey , who still ignore or deny outright the genocides of the Ottoman Christian minorities."

The resolution stated that "the denial of genocide is widely recognized as the final stage of genocide, enshrining impunity for the perpetrators of genocide, and demonstrably paving the way for future genocides." The Assyrian population of Iraq , for example, remains highly vulnerable to genocidal attack. Since 2003, Iraqi Assyrians have been exposed to severe persecution and "ethnic cleansing"; it is believed that up to half the Assyrian population has fled the country.

FULL TEXT OF THE IAGS RESOLUTION:

Quote: WHEREAS the denial of genocide is widely recognized as the final stage of genocide, enshrining impunity for the perpetrators of genocide, and demonstrably paving the way for future genocides;

WHEREAS the Ottoman genocide against minority populations during and following the First World War is usually depicted as a genocide against Armenians alone, with little recognition of the qualitatively similar genocides against other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire ;

BE IT RESOLVED that it is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Association calls upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution.

[1]

[2] Megistias (talk) 21:30, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

CORRECTION

No, the information that you claim here is false and merely is a collection of falsified information that you gathered from the web to reflect your personal twisted opinion. The UN definition of genocide and any related decisions only refer to events during WWII and post-WWII. The declarations that you cite here also are neither objective nor from valid institutions. The IAGS is a politically motivated organization that disrespects the history beyond comprehension and lacks the ethical framework to produce valid and reliable resolutions. IAGS is a "weeping wall" if you will, where nations that lost wars seek to recuperate their financial losses and social humiliation by passing resolutions to press the winner nations to secede a portion of their wealth and to publicly apologize. They do not have any scientific credibility and their sources of income is from the very countries that claim their population to have experienced genocide. The conflict of interest alone precludes IAGS from being taken seriously in the international arena, except of course by the countries that pay for the salaries of those scholars. (Armenia, Greece, Armenian and Greek diaspora in France and USA). Before posting next time get your facts straight. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.12.172.8 (talk) 04:37, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Please don't rant and make baseless and un-sourced accusations, particularly when it has no real relation to the article itself. If you really want to prove the IAGS is 'wrong' (I have yet to a single source, valid or otherwise, that says so) for some reason, do so on their article. Thank you. The Myotis (talk) 06:01, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Lead section (intro)

I completely agree with the HTML comment after the lead section. It would be great if it could be rewritten - the legal definition moved into the main part of the article and be replaced with a summary of the rest of the article.

I think that the legal definition is pretty wordy, and doesn't add massively important points to the first sentence; it could be rephrased in a way that's more easy to understand and shorter; the full definition is more specialist and would fit better in the main part (to help towards complete knowledge rather than a summary).

Examples of genocide (etc.) would be great in the intro.

Thanks for all you hard work! Drum guy (talk) 21:01, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree. :S--Thecurran (talk) 08:25, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

A Moral Hierarchy of Evil: The UN's Genocide Loophole

In the references section, I have added Jonah Goldberg's The Genocide Loophole, in which the author states that the bias inherent in the UN's genocide law "leaves the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century — self-described Marxist-Leninists — somewhat off the hook." Indeed, the U.N.-style definition of genocide amounts to "a moral hierarchy of evil, which in effect renders mass murder a second-tier crime if it's done in the name of social progress, modernization or other Enlightenment ideals."

Goldberg adds that this "is dangerous thinking; people perceived to be blocking progress — farmers, aristocrats, reactionaries — can be more forgivably slaughtered than ethnic groups because they're allegedly part of the problem, not the solution. After all, you've got to break some eggs to make an omelet."

"Today, Mao and Stalin aren't in Hitler's class of evil because Hitler wasn't a "modernizer," he was a racist … It's a wrongheaded distinction. Murder is murder, whether the motive is bigotry or the pursuit of allegedly enlightened social planning." Asteriks (talk) 10:33, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

This is rather thought-provoking but I view Stalin as a murderer of 8 million Ukrainians and Mao as a murderer of millions of non-Han Chinese, especially Tibetans. I think the big thing is that a group of farmers that loses a billion can ultimately replenish themselves but an obliterated tribe of a dozen cannot. I wouldn't call mass murder of the type you specify second-tier. I would simply describe it as empty in the dimension of bigotry. :S--Thecurran (talk) 08:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The promotion of creating mixed-race babies is, by definition, genocide

So why does it not say that in the article?--Corpses In Their Mouths (talk) 20:01, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:V Slrubenstein | Talk 21:55, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Classification (Yes).
Symbolization (maybe propagators use somethig?).
Dehumanization (depends. Forcing people to breed might be "bad" treatment -> Yes. Minimizing dementia -> "good" goal -> No?).
Organization (Yes).
Polarization (Yes).
Preparation (Yes).
Extermination (No? Unless You count exterminating unborn non-mixed-race babies :) ).
Denial (of what :) That those kids would / wouldn't be f**ed up otherwise?). 4/8 100% Yes. Even though it's Half-true(tm) I say Hmmm. 8) ---- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.61.232.26 (talk) 16:14, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Multiracial children may carry both parents' languages, cultures, and genes; the children do not destroy these. Cf. Hybrid theory. :(--Thecurran (talk) 08:49, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Ali Hassan al-Majid of Iraq was convicted of genocide

--Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog (talk) 08:16, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Addition 6 Spetember 2008

An IP address |141.150.45.62 added the following to the article (that I have moved here for further discussion):

1) * * * What follows are related observations extracted from my short book (Ludwik Kowalski, "Hell on Earth: Brutality and Violence Under The Stalinist Regime" Wasteland Press, Shelbyville, 2008, ISBN 978-1-60047-232-9). * * *

Extended content

a) Are mass killings avoidable? Hitler's holocaust was based on racism; Stalin's slaughter was based on the concept of class struggle. Can we say that these two ideologies of intolerance are responsible for mass killings? Or should the tragedies be attributed to the evil nature of leaders? The two tyrants were not alone; it is impossible to kill millions without favorable social conditions. Can such conditions be identified? Can they be eliminated? How can this be done? I am not sure how to answer such questions. But I strongly believe that all occurrences of mass genocide should be analyzed and exposed, not hidden or forgotten.

Mass murder occurs when brutal and sadistic criminals, to be found in every society, are promoted to positions of dominance, when propaganda is used to dehumanize the targeted population and when children are inoculated with intolerance and hatred. It occurs when victims ("inferior races" or "class enemies") are excluded from the norms of morality, when ideological totalitarianism is imposed and when freedom is suspended. Fear and violence, the preconditions of genocide, are likely to be found in societies with large numbers of thieves and informants. . . .

b) Is moral sensitivity of people sufficient to protect world societies from mass murderers? Probably not. What else is essential? Elimination of extreme poverty and injustice. How can this be accomplished? Many sociologists have asked this question. Karl Marx was one of them. He believed that the "proletarian dictatorship" was the answer. I suspect that the 20th century will be named after this kind of dictatorship. The idea was tried in many countries and failed. It did not create justice; it replaced old tyrants with more brutal tyrants. Lenin, Stalin and Mao are well known examples.

So where is the answer? I do not know. Is man's inhumanity to man avoidable? Perhaps not, perhaps it should be accepted as part of human nature. If this is accepted then episodes of mass murder can be compared with other calamities, like epidemics, earthquakes and wars. (The black death epidemic did kill about one third of Europe's population in the Middle Ages; the Aids epidemic is rampant today; disasters caused by global warming are predicted, etc.) But scientific understanding of epidemics has often resulted in great improvements. Likewise, constructing less vulnerable buildings, or avoiding certain locations, can minimize consequences of earthquakes. What happened in the Soviet Union should not be attributed only to Stalin's despotic inclinations; it should also be attributed to the ideology he inherited from Lenin.

We do not accept natural disasters passively; we do everything possible to prevent them, or at least to reduce their undesirable consequences. Why should man's inhumanity to man be accepted as unavoidable? Humanity is also part of nature. Most people want justice and deplore suffering. Shouldn't this be the basis for working toward elimination of man-made calamities?

Similar edits have been added to other pages by the same IP address eg this one to Torture promoting the same book by Ludwik Kowalski.

We clearly can not leave it in as it is, as we have no way of knowing if the author has given permission for copyright material to appear in this article under GFDL, and even if the author has is there anything in the text that adds value to this particular article? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 21:40, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

List of known genocides

Hello, I think it would be very good if somebody has the knowledge and the will to make a wikipage regarding a list of known genocide's in history and currently. Just an idea. Thx. --HappyInGeneral (talk) 21:47, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe there is such a list, just I did not find it, in which case please do kindly point me to it. Thank You! --HappyInGeneral (talk) 21:48, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

So far I found the Genocide category as a starting point, is there any other, better structured, better documented? Like the Book burning page? Thank you! --HappyInGeneral (talk) 21:51, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Please see Genocides in history. The Myotis (talk) 22:09, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Colombia

Dear Wikipedians: I have noticed that among all countries included in the genocide article Colombia does not appear. It seems to me that the situation in that country has been overlooked. The paramilitaries have been systematically killing peasants in northern Colombia and in the Antioquia Department. This killings are believed to reach already 10.000 innocent civilians, killed and tortured by means of machetes and chainsaws. Shouldn't it be considered a genocide? Camilo Sanchez (talk) 09:05, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the entry please see the article genocide in history and add it there if you have reliable sources that claim a genocide took place. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 11:45, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Areas overlooked, left out: theoretical explanations, post-genocidal states, etc

Hello all. I have taken a look at this article and it appears, as aforementioned, that it lacks some areas of discussion that are fairly critical to the topic. First, why is 90% of this article centered around genocide as defined by law? This approach is rather narrow and looks at genocide from a viewpoint that fails to take into account the breadth of the violent acts involved. When a user commented on miscegenation as genocidal, it was turned away because it did not fit the proper legal definition. But you would be hard pressed to not call rape on a mass scale (given certain preconditions) genocidal. I also think that academia has a better grasp of this concept than what is written into law. After all, General Dallaire asserted that a meager few thousand troops would be able to halt the genocide in Rwanda as it reached its peak in 1994, yet the UN failed to acknowledge these crimes. Now nearly a million are dead. Why base an article on an institution that has failed miserably (or not even tried) to enforce its laws? Maybe I'm just pushing an agenda here, but it doesn't really make sense to me. This legal definition seems to have left a few genocides out of the list. The killing of Armenians by Young Turks, Ukrainians by the USSR, those by the Khmer Rouge, and the murdering of the indigenous peoples of Guatamalan by the counterinsurgency there, which was also aided by the United States. Speaking of the United States, how has the murder of Native Americans fallen outside of the scope of genocide? This article disgusts me. You should make this addition: that people won't recognize genocide if it is not large-scale, or if it doesn't show overt mass-killings, or if it is perpetrated by the Western world.

This leads me to my second question, which was mentioned by another user. Where are the theoretical explanations of genocide? One of the prominent theories is openly disputed, wrongly, by the introduction. The U.N. states that genocide occurred throughout history? What history? Where is the citation for this? Because it's plain bullshit. There is little evidence of genocide occurring in history; it's a modern event. This is fairly established in the academic world, by those who actually study war, violence, and its forms. I don't see why this article lacks reference to Goldhagen or Zygmunt Bauman. Genocide is a modern event only made possible by modernity which represents the purest form of humanity in its modern form.

Third, there is a weak reference to some sort of genocidal prevention rubric, which is nonsense, yet there is no mention of the study of post-genocidal states?

Sorry for the way I put these points across, and looking over them now I will not make edits. This article is unimpressive. I don't expect any wikipedia article to cover the whole scope of any concept, but the article about Jay Cutler is more extensive. And he's only been in the NFL for 2.3 seasons. --Mtoyama (talk) 23:33, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you didn't see the linked articles like Genocides in history and Definitions of genocide? Rmhermen (talk) 01:45, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

On the specific question that "The U.N. states that genocide occurred throughout history? What history?", I have added a citation to the article.[3] --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 11:42, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Ack, well, editing wikipedia while in tired and in a bad mood is not a good idea. Thanks for the citation, I will check that out when I have time. That history looks fairly extensive, but I would still like to see a theory section on the main genocide article. I will review all of this when I have a bit of time. Sorry for the childish approach in my original writeup. --Mtoyama (talk) 18:05, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Am I blind or where is the Armenian genocide?

This is weird that I cannot find anything in the article about genocide anything about the Armenian genocide of 1915. This makes the article at least inacurate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.194.122.175 (talk) 07:38, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

See the section "Coining of the term genocide", but also see the article genocides in history --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 08:56, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Experts on genocide have written that genocide denial is an extension of (and often integral to) the actual genocide: thus the Armenian Genocide could be seen as an ongoing event due to the continuing denial of it at state level by Turkey. I'll try to add something about this into the article at some future date. BTW, I hope the above editor will not see this as a reason to archive this discussion. Meowy 17:09, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Former Yugoslavia

I have updated the relevant info on Karadžić, but I think someone should check my English and find a better way to phrase that... BytEfLUSh (talk) 02:16, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Blanking and tag

I don't understand the "dubious" tag on the Spanish judicial definition of genocide, nor the blanking of the explanation of the in-built political limitations on the UN Security Council's efficacy in preventing or even ameliorating genocide.

Lapsed Pacifist (talk) 18:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

The Spanish source is several years out of date. It may well be true but a much more up to date source is needed because by now some of the arguments will have been discussed in depth. I did a quick search but all the sources I looked at were as old as the one listed. In the next day or so I'll see if I can find a more up to date one.

The position of the UN Security council is a bit more complicated than the sentence added implies. It is not that they have a veto, it is also that without the active support of some of the permanent members, it is very unlikely that the UN has the strength to do anything (even if the permanent members do not use their veto). Although this is well known it is OR without a source. I think a better option is to mention how the ICC can only investigate the situation in a country if invited to do so by the state (as has happened in Uganda) or if the Security Council requests the ICC to do so under Article 13.b of the Rome Statute. The Security Council has done this for the first time over the situation in Darfur which may be a big step forward in Genocide prevention. (see Darfur conflict#International Criminal Court). --PBS (talk) 21:57, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. Lapsed Pacifist (talk) 22:05, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

With the situation in Spain, here is a 2003 reference Argentine Military Officers Face Trial in Spanish Courts by Richard J. Wilson which describes some of the details of this. But these from March 2008 also makes interesting reading Spain to extradite "Dirty War" Argentine officer by Reuters and Spain authorizes Cavallo's extradition to Argentina.

I have found a reference to the Spanish law on genocide and it covers the same four groups as the Genocide Convention not politicide see footnote 14 in "Spanish Criminal Prosecutions Use International Human Rights Law to Battle Impunity in Chile and Argentina" by Richard Wilson. --PBS (talk) 22:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

My mistake, it was a judge of the Argentine Federal Court (The Shock Doctrine, pages 100-102) who put the strongest case for it being genocide, outside of the four groups criteria. Lapsed Pacifist (talk) 23:16, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I would guess that the Spanish argument was that the "in part" requirement of a national group was met (ie a protected group under their law). I think that Carlos Rozanski's has built an elaborate argument, but notice that Ricardo Miguel Cavallo has been extradited from Spain to Argentina for crimes against humanity not genocide, and Rozanski sent Miguel Etchecolatz down for crimes against humanity not for the crime of genocide. What is more useful if you wish to progress this line of argument (although because Rozanski recognised it to be controversial, it should be attributed to him "Carlos Rozanski's has stated ...") is the last paragraph and in particular the footnote on page 101. But I think the place to put it is in the section as a stand alone paragraph in the "Criticisms of the CPPCG and other definitions of genocide" section after the Barbara Harff paragraph and before the Rummel paragraph, not in the lead. Also I think that there should be an entry in the Genocides in history page for this point of view. --PBS (talk) 00:04, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. Lapsed Pacifist (talk) 09:00, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Just for the record I have now added a section to the Genocides in history article on the Dirty war.[4] I have also added the countries mentioned in the source for having genocide under their municipal law broader than that of CPPCG.[5] --PBS (talk) 14:22, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Add this inter wiki link

ta:இனவழிப்பு —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.198.191 (talk) 01:27, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Catholic inquisition

Men in white robes (? organisation) came. Prepared as much as gallows (preparation) to do their job. Mob shouted "Witches!" (classification). "Burn them"(extermination).

Tortured (dehumanitazion) women crept inside of crowd. Satanic marks (symbolization) burned on their bruised naked breasts (polarization) (? just a wild guess, certainly not crosses :) - but 5-star was "that" symbol.). They we're found guilty and burned to death.

1000 years later. "We did it in good faith" (denial) said Church. Let me guess, people tend to forget? :) Was this Inquisition inquisition genocide? If not, why? Thanks ---- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.61.232.26 (talk) 16:04, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Intervention

I have removed the following under WP:V because there are no citations:

A country which recognizes that what another country does is genocide, may take action and intervene. However, there is no well-accepted doctrine of 'humanitarian intervention' in international law, and such forcible intervention may infringe the prohibition on the use of force. The Genocide Convention only provides that the State on whose territory the crime of genocide is committed, or an international penal tribunal, may prosecute the perpetrators of genocide. Other States do not have an obligation to prosecute them, but may do so under their domestic penal laws. Indeed, each Contracting Party to the Genocide Convention must enact legislation in order to criminalise and punish acts of genocide. States are of course able to bring the matter before the Security Council, which is empowered to take forcible enforcement measures in accordance with international law in order to stop genocidal acts.(my emphasis)

Using the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; December 9, 1948 I see that there are several article which have a bearing on this:

Article 3: The definition
Article 5:The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3.
Article 6:Persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction.
Article 7: Says that a party to the convention will grant extradition in accordance with their laws and treaties in force.

AFAICT none of the above has the implication that the first two sentences of the article paragraph implies. I think the author(s) of the sentences was/were confused by Article 8 which says:

Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3.

This is far from take action and intervene as understood by the second sentence of the paragraph. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:41, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

The paragraph grew from this initial edit Revision as of 14:55, 16 May 2006 by the IP number Special:Contributions/219.78.35.222. So there is no way to ask the original author for the source of the statment --Philip Baird Shearer 10:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

In the early vision of how the UN was supposed to function (before the Cold War and its effects on international relations had become obvious) there was a provision that the UN would be able to muster a "UN Armed Forces" to which most all member states would contribute. This temporary military branch would be stronger than any one member state, including the Superpowers, and so it would be able to enforce the wishes of the UN community. that was an illusion, of course. After 1948 it became clear that the UN would not be able to rival any major national power in battle by itself, and never in the heat of a crisis that directly involved the two superpwers. During the same era (around 1950) the idea of an international court - a continuation of Nuremberg - was quietly dropped. It simply wasn't practical, and it would clearly become a latent threat to any of the leading UN powers. Strausszek (talk) 22:05, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Where are the Native Americans?

Why is it so difficult to find the words "Native American" or "Indian" in combination with "genocide" or "holocaust" at this so-called "encyclopedia"? There is clearly a concerted effort to prevent anyone from telling the truth about the systematic eradication (genocidal ethnic-cleansing holocaust) of the native peoples from the Americas by the European invaders. And don't point me to Indian massacre, because that so-called "article" is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Somebody needs to work the truth into this article and not let the historical revisionism (denialism) continue. Not Genocides in history or some other backwater article, but this article, the main article on genocide. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.105.246.237 (talk) 17:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit. We just wait for the people with knowledge to come along and add it. SO, you seem to know and care, that makes it your responsibility. Do the research, add to the article, just make sure you follow our core policies of WP:NPOV WP:V and WP:NOR. It is up to YOU! Slrubenstein | Talk 21:34, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I can't be a serious editor anymore. I was broken by the WP system years ago. The gatekeepers always find a way to block the truth, regardless of the subject. Whether they gang up on you with sock/meat-puppets to revert all your additions without your being able to defend your edits in kind (or risk a block), or whether they police the references to find problems with any that sources what they don't want sourced, or whether it's some other form of policy-gaming, they'll be manning those gates, around the clock. I'm only one person. I could perhaps join a group of like-minded people to wage counter attacks, but that would only legitimize their tactics, and besides, I believe it was Sun Tzu who said, "He who has the admin bit, mans the gates." Or something. Anyway all I want is for a sympathetic admin to do the right thing. I learned long ago that the admins write WP, whether directly or indirectly. To get the truth about the US atrocities into this US-centric wiki would require admin approval. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.105.246.237 (talk) 02:47, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

If you fear you work will be reverted, write a paragraph or two of NPOV, NOR text, with verifiabl reliable sources, on the US and SPanish Genocides of Native Americans, and we can disuss and improve it on this page before adding it to the article Slrubenstein | Talk 15:19, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Like I said, I know better than to try anymore. I invite you to take a look at the edits to this article by User:Philip_Baird_Shearer for some examples of what I mean (I only checked the first page). When powerful people are determined to keep certain information out of an article, then it won't be added, even if the consensus among common editors was to add it. The powerful stick together and back one another up. Again, the administrators write Wikipedia. Common editors are allowed to do janitorial duty, but are not allowed to do any serious content work. I came to discuss this with the hope that a sympathetic admin sees it and does the right thing, but that's all I can do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.105.246.237 (talk) 00:06, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

You are wrong. Administrators have nothing to do with this, they simply perform routine maintenance functons; everyone is an editor. Editors do all the serous content work (as long as they are collaborative and comply with policy). Wikipedia works because people write the articles they want to write. Obviously you just do not ant to do squat, and want to tell other people to do the work you are too lazy to do. You want to write something, go ahead and write it. Don't tell me to write it. Who the hell made you my boss? Slrubenstein | Talk 01:02, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not too lazy. I just know, after nearly 7 years of editing and observing this site, that the cabal is very much real and biases are strictly enforced. If I thought for a moment that I could sneak it past the gatekeepers, I'd write an article-long piece on the native American genocide and invite others to cannibalize it for whatever the consensus found worthy of inclusion. But I swore to never put my heart into this project ever again after having undergone that very process in the past and seen all my efforts dashed by admins -- who iced the cake by blocking me for complaining about their abuse. So, no, I think I'll just continue raising a stink and voicing complaints that I know others share. One of these days, we're going to get some changes on this site. Oh, and I haven't asked you personally to do anything. You're welcome to take a hike.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.105.246.237 (talk • contribs) 05:55, 25 May 2009

I have to agree that any mention or attempt to mention Native American or American Indian and genocide in the same article is a strict no-no on wiki. I have tried. Please take a look at edits and reverts that have plagued me on the "Population history of American indigenous peoples". The title should be your first clue. It was originally titled Native American Genocide, but since then has been turned into the meaningless title above. Read the talk page and it soon becomes clear that anything written that even implies that Native Americans were the victim of genocide, including items carefully documented and sourced will soon be taken off by a band of folks who refuse to allow anything less than their own view of events. Here at New Mexico State University Indian Studies we are working on a study of wiki regarding the ongoing racism displayed toward American Indians. The study will be published in the fall. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.155.13.8 (talk) 22:25, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

See Genocides in history#Americas, and Population history of American indigenous peoples#Genocide debate. While there is no reason why historical genocides should not be used here to explain or illustrate a point, there is no reason to list historical genocides and alleged historical genocides here because to do so without listing all the events listed in historical genocides, would be biased (and hence breach WP:NPOV). As this articles is already close to twice the recommended size of articles, and the article genocides in history is more than four times the recommended size, a combined article would be much too large. --PBS (talk) 15:47, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I understand that a comprehensive list is not feasible but the genocide of the American Indians and the Australian Aborigines are the two most total and geographically widespread in human history. The genocide of the Tasmanian Aborigines is even mentioned in the introduction of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds as an example of total obliteration. Ignoring the near annihilation of entire continents is beyond belief. :(--Thecurran (talk) 08:27, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Genocide as described in this article is based on the common usage which is based on the Genocide Convention. The debate about America and Tasmania depends in part on using other definitions of genocide. In the the section "Rival Paradigms of Genocide" in Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History By A. Dirk Moses, Berghahn Books, 2004 ISBN 1571814116, 9781571814111, Moss makes a distinction between "Intentionalists" (intentional genocide like the Holocaust) and "structuralists" (structural genocide which "averts the issue of perpetrator agency and intention by highlighting anonymous 'genocidal processes' of cultural and physical destruction.") Moss goes on to say that "The dominant approach has been the Intentionalist one, because until recently genocide studies has been virtually monopolized by North American social scientists. [Which] ... frames the Holocaust as the prototypical genocide" ... "The intentionalist view has lost ground among genocide scholars, but still suffuses the popular imagination" (he footnotes this as 123 which can be found on page 45 and cites 5 papers). The trouble with this last comment is while it may be true among comparative genocide scholars, legal scholars' definition of the crime of genocide has been going the other way (tightening up the definition) thanks to the trials of the monsters involved in the Bosnian and Rwanda genocides (see Bosnian Genocide article).

If this type of distinction is made then it is possible to discuss structural genocides, like the Tasmanian genocide as Benjamin Madley does using the term "Frontier Genocide ("Patterns of frontier genocide 1803–1910: the Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia" by Benjamin Madley in the Journal of Genocide Research (2004), 6(2), June, 167–192). I do not think that we should go into this branch of Genocide studies in this article vecause, (1) as it is not mainstream and there is no general agreement among scholars, (2) this article is already large enouth and as we have another article Genocides in history which lists other genocides where this type of debate can be summarised and linked to other more detailed articles which can be written if editors are consider it desirable. --PBS (talk) 13:46, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Until there is a page on structural genocide as you put it, we are leaving out the widest genocides in history. You already noted that scholars are leaning away from "intentional genocide" anyway. All across Wikipedia, Aboriginal languages and language families are listed as moribund or extinct. Unless, you want to prove each of them wrong, I suggest you allow room for them in the article on genocide. ::|--Thecurran (talk) 05:44, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

We have an article that includes structural genocides (not my term but Benjamin Madley's) it is called Genocides in history where we include any event which reliable sources claim is a genocide and in there you will find mention of the Americas (including Argentina and the recent cases in Brazil) and Australia.

See the paragraph in this article that starts "Writing in 1998 Kurt Jonassohn and Karin Björnson ... non of these alternative definitions have gained widespread support for various reasons." There is no widespread agreement that the events in America or Australia were genocides (because one has to use an alternative definition to the Genocide Convention which does not include "intent". We have an article in which we list genocides and events that some describe as genocides. In this article we have restricted the listed entries to those which have been found to be genocides in an international court of law, as few dispute that those are genocides. One could argue that the the Holocaust should not be listed, but men and women were found guilty in national and international courts of law for crimes against humanity and the German successor state acknowledges that the actions carried out in the name of the state was a genocide, so I think it should be included. Nearly all other genocides are disputed either by many scholars or by states, and as such are better listed discussed in detail in other articles rather than here, particularly as to single out just a few of the genocides listed in the genocides in history can be seen as creating a biased list contrary to WP:NPOV. --PBS (talk) 11:10, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

How do you excuse the perpetrators of the Stolen Generation of genocidal intent? They intended to damage Aboriginal language and culture by destroying its continuity. The Australian prime minister apologized for those actions this year.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Thecurran (talk • contribs) 20:07, 9 August 2009

I have to defer to PBS and anyone else who has reliable sources, but the distinction between intentional and structural genocide strikes me as fishy. It was not until relatively late in the Nazi regime that the Nazi's settled on the systematic annihalation of Jews as policy ... a good deal of the Jews killed (maybe a third?) that occured during the invasion of Russia in territories between Germany and the German/Russian lines could by the definition given be called "structural genocide" and from what I have seen the genocide of Tasmanians was most definitely intentional. I think this article should take a broader view and if need be use diferent trends in Genocide studies as well as Native American studies and other scholars, in history or anthropology, who are not called scholars of Genocide studies and do not publish in journals of genocid studies but who nevertheless write about victims of genocide - I think we have to accept these scholars as reliable too. Yes, we should distinguish betweeen mainstream, majority, and minority views but what is the majority view can vary from one discipline to another, and also there sometimes is a long ways between a minority view and a fringe view, and in such cases minority views must be represented. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:34, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

We try to present all views on events that some or most have called genocides in the article Genocides in history but a review of talk page and archives there will show that this is a very contentions area, see for example Talk:Genocides in history#Azerbaijani Khojaly.

The Tasmanian extinction is a much more complicated example than it first appears, and as it happens it is comparative genocide scholars who tend to view it as a genocide while Australian historians who specialise in Tasmanian history do not. How to present this is being hotly debated by a few Wikipedia editors at the moment in an article called history wars. Tasmania is not a one off example, the article genocides in history list several others, and one a with very similar profile of comparative genocide scholars suggesting it is, and historians suggesting it is not, is the War in the Vendée. As I said above legal scholars also have a view on what is and is not genocide on this and it is clear from the the cases heard in the Hague over Bosnia that "intent" and what constitutes a significant part of a protected group, are the keys to the difference between a crime against humanity and genocide (see the Bosnian Genocide#International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia section and the ruling on the crimes of Momcilo Krajisnik). It seems that the devil is in the details. In the long run I suspect it is the international legal definition which will prevail as the common definition of genocide -- one only has to look at the new reports on the court cases in Bosnia to see this happening (Wartime Leader of Bosnian Serbs Receives 27-Year Sentence NYT September 28, 2006). --PBS (talk) 23:11, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Simply put genocide is the murder of genera. If one calls the Yiddish community a single genus, then the examples in the Americas and Oceania comprise the murder of super-super-super-genera. Should we decide to move this article to one named, "Definitely intentional genocide", then PBS's notes of shying away from areas of some grayness are well-founded. Would a peaceful compromise be the re-insertion of my original paragraph under the title, "Structural Genocide", as a subsection of "Genocide in history"? :S--Thecurran (talk) 08:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

"Simply put genocide is the murder of genera" You may think that, but it is up to the experts in the field to define what genocide is. The legal definition which is also the most common is the CPPCG, but there are many other genocide definitions. See my comments in the next section as to why I have removed your reinsertion of your paragraph. --PBS (talk) 08:29, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Why is it that PBS gets to shut everyone down? Does he own this article?

"[I]t is up to the experts in the field to define what genocide is." Ridiculous. The leading experts on genocide are dead; the next-best authorities on the subject are dancing on their graves, reaping the rewards of their deaths, and helping to advance the careers of the "experts" you cite. I don't think it takes a diploma issued by the ruling class to spot the genocides they commit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.241.218.107 (talk) 20:50, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

While I do agree with you, the invasion of Americas and all of the murders that have happened do mean a genocide, is it really so hard for you to find a few relevant links? Wikipedia has policies for a reason, and you should stick by them. If you don't want to - you don't have to - have a nice day, g'bye. If you really want to help, just find some damn sources and edit that article. For all I see, you are just ranting about pro-Americanism on the talk page... BytEfLUSh (talk) 23:55, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I think pro-Americanism is completely a side issue. I've stood by the US through heck and high water. I have suffered anti-American abuse outside of my birth country since 2001-09-11. Beyond that, I have had my life threatened on grounds of my being an American. It is also true that my American ancestors were less racist than most and my father's blood runs with indigenous genes, so I am merely trying to push this article towards the ultimate goal of WP:NPOV.

I'd like to see some citation behind user:PBS's statement "...it is comparative genocide scholars who tend to view it as a genocide while Australian historians who specialise in Tasmanian history do not." I attended public government high school in Australia where the Tasmanian genocide is an essential curricular concept. Even if there were some fringe people who published in accordance with that statement, I would also like to see some evidence that it is not a minority view like that of Holocaust deniers. :|--Thecurran (talk) 01:40, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Buchenwald picture on Genocide Intro

The term genocide was coined for the WWI massacres by the Turks, Kurds, and Germans of the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Lebanese, and Jews. Wouldn't a picture of WWI genocide be more appropriate, especially when The Holocaust is devoted to the German genocide of the Jews? :(--Thecurran (talk) 08:13, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

After the HOLOCAUST it's hard to understand, but during WW1 the German occupied Jew communities in Eastern Europe saw the German soldiers widely as liberators from the czarist regime with its numerous pogroms! No genocide at all! The situation was totally different to WW2!

This doesn't mean, that there was no anti-Semitism among the non-Jewish German soldiers at that time. Religious prejudices had unimmunized for the massive propaganda of the next decades.

--Henrig (talk) 23:58, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

The Genocide Treaty came into existence as a result of the atrocities committed during the second word War. In a diplomatic compromise involving Turky, the wording of a 2007 UN exhibition on "Lessons from Rwanda", stated "In 1933, the lawyer Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew, urged the League of Nations to recognize mass atrocities against a particular group as an international crime. He cited mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman empire in World War I and other mass killings in history. He was ignored."[6] So I think a picture of the Holocaust is appropriate. --PBS (talk) 10:49, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Henrig, you are referring to the treatment of Jews in Eastern Europe. I concur with your view. I should have specified that I was referring to the Jews in Palestine with such events as the Ottoman expulsion of the Jews of Tel Aviv and such. Many genocidal acts by the Ottomans were under the auspices of, with support by, or with the complicity of the Germans. The WWII Holocaust was made possible by German observation of the Armenian Genocide. Hitler even said, "After all, who today speaks of the Armenians." when propounding his "Final Solution". My point though was that this article is "genocide", not "antisemitism". :(--Thecurran (talk) 07:24, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Say what, PBS? Is this article about "genocide" or "The Genocide Treaty"? I completely understand such a Buchenwald photo prefacing an article on the Genocide Treaty but Holocaust Studies is a mammoth subject with museums globally dedicated to it. Focussing on antisemitism and the Holocaust in this context narrows the point-of-view the audience is exposed to. We are doing them a great disservice if the articles of all hate crimes, and such, pictorally focus on the same set of victims. I am genetically, spiritually, and financially deeply enmeshed in the Ashkenazic Diaspora. This year alone I privately prayed in and donated to the Holocaust section of the Auckland Museum, donated to and openly wept in the Washington Holocaust Museum, and am preparing to visit Jerusalem. The Holocaust is an immensely important subject that cannot be ignored globally, or in this article, but we must not focus on this alone. Ottoman Armenia begat the study of genocide and also coincidentally warranted one of the earliest "New York Times" mentions of the word, "holocaust". I am not saying that we must show a picture of Armenians being marched nude across deadly terrain but that this Buchenwald photo is probably not the most balanced one in our repertoire. :(--Thecurran (talk) 07:49, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The term genocide came into common usage because of the events in World War II. The amount of space in this article devoted to the Holocaust is not as great as the space given over to the the events in former Yugoslavia so I am not sure why you write "Focussing on antisemitism and the Holocaust in this context narrows the point-of-view the audience is exposed to." If there is to be one picture near the start of the article then one which portrays the Holocaust is suitable. I am removing your paragraph again. Even if it were content was suitable for this article and I do not think that it is, (for example what has "With the rise of Caucasian mercantilism in the seventeenth century came mass enslavement, which severed Sub-Saharan Africans, South Asians, and others from their cultural heritages." do you have a source that links this to genocide?) I would remove it as it does not carry one even one citation (See WP:PROVEIT). Please do not reinsert the paragraph unless you can show that there is consensus to do so. --PBS (talk) 08:22, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I can understand, when Armenians throughout the world claim, to remember their history. The same should be accepted for all ethnic groups, who once were targets of such terrible incidents.

But concerning the picture, I'd say, the best picture would be a picture, that refers to a current threat of a genocide! It's unbelievable, that few years ago such terrible thing as the Rwandan Genocide could occur, by reason that the world public wasn't aware of it.

For instance, a picture with Africans as victims of former slave hunters would be convenient, if there would be such a threat today. But such or a similar threat doesn't exist. Does it? But what about War in Darfur ? Some people even fear a genocide there. Is this a real danger?

--Henrig (talk) 22:08, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Holocaust is the most widely known form of genocide so far. Since we're talking about encyclopedia here, why would you want to replace that picture with something else? It doesn't matter who started it, who was the worst at it, or who was the one that was ignored... Image is encyclopedic, therefore it should be kept. BytEfLUSh (talk) 00:03, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Holocaust is not only the most widely known form of genocide! It was the only time, that someone used the means of industrialization for effective mass murder. But a picture of Buchenwald doesn't typifies this. Before the end of 1944 Buchenwald for the most time was the hell on earth with high death rates too, but predominantly it was used, to torment all kinds of political prisoners and was no death factory for mass murder like Auschwitz. A picture of Auschwitz would be more convenient, to clarify this!

Such a picture refers to the possible extend of a genocide and should be in this article too. But in the case of a real danger of a genocide today, a convenient picture about could clarify the actuality of a danger!

--Henrig (talk) 21:48, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I concur with User:Henrig. The industrialization of genocide as typified in Auschwitz took genocide to a level somewhat beyond that of tying a dozen naked Armenians together and saving bullets by shooting just one so that all would drown by his dead weight or forcing an entire Armenian village into a cave known to have only the one aperature and then starting a blaze at the entrance to suffocate them all to death in WWI gas chambers. As such, a picture of the suffering at Auschwitz might be effective to highlight the deadly efficiency that might be brought back to genocide. Similarly more recent photos in living colour and high definition would keep the novices in the audience from misinterpreting genocide as a thing merely of the past. It is paramount to indicate that the "never again" has never ended.

I'm just re-reading user:Philip Baird Shearer's first response here. After his reference on Raphael Lemkin, he seems to indicate that he believes because the Armenians after WWI weren't as effective as the Jews after WWII at highlighting their genocide to stop future genocides, the Armenian massacres were somehow unimportant. I'd like to remind him that the League of Nations failed not only to prevent genocide but also to entice US congress to ratify and join and also to prevent WWII from occurring. It hardly seems a fair comparison. Though the Genocide Treaty was a magnificent milestone, it didn't prevent genocidal murder in Yugoslavia right within Europe. Neither did it abolish the Jim Crow laws of the US that were shown in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka to severely impede the basic education of African-Americans, one of the best known means to sustain a community, increasing its ability to provide for itself, which one might argue were:

(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;

The treaty didn't even stop Australia from counting Aborigines as not only non-citizens but as fauna. Just as a discussion of democracy should include but not limit its scope to one great document like the Magna Carta, which helped on the path to the devolution of powers but saw more growth through the Declaration of Independence and Lafayette's wars, we must not contain our scope of genocide merely within the confines of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and its immediate causes and effects despite its instrumental importance historically. :|--Thecurran (talk) 02:35, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I think the Buchenwald photo quite out of place. It doesn't show anyone being killed or having been killed. There's a picture of corpses being burnt, generally considered to come from Auschwitz, which would be far more appropriate, if it is available. The idea that the terrible conditions in concentration camps, found by advancing Americans, are evidence of mass murder planned by top Nazis is misleading and has served to confuse Nazi Holocaust studies ever since. Better no picture than an inappropriate one. Lockstone (talk) 10:29, 19 December 2009 (UTC) Lockstone

weblink

Richard Albrecht, Genocidal Policy Within 20th Century - Description, Analysis, and Prevention: Armenocide, Serbocide, Holocaust As Basic Genocidal Events During the World Wars (2009); this piece is completely free of charge / a copyeft version is to be found -> http://ricalb.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/murdering-people.pdf 80.136.70.30 (talk) 13:36, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Armenian Genocide.

Im quite surprised that nobody has included any information on Armenian Genocide. All I saw in the page was one sentence that had the word "Armenian" in it. With that said, we can commence working on that topic as it meets all the criteria of Gregory Stantons steps of the genocide and Lempkins full definition of the word Genocide. --ArmenianPhD (talk) 21:15, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Genocide of the Chinese people by the japanese

I noticed that this section, or something similiar has been completely removed. Why is this so? I am refering to events during the second sino-japanese war ie. world war 2, in all the Asian countries. Could someone please put a section back in? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.208.209 (talk) 22:56, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

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) 20:15, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Genocide disguised as crime

Example: Violent Crime in SA

The violent crime in SA against whites is actively encouraged, endorsed, supported and perpetuated by the ANC terrorist regime as nothing less than retribution for apartheid.

The senior ANC terrorists are as complicit in each and every atrocity committed against the white minority as their free-agents on the ground who are clearly perpetrating such atrocities on expressed or implied instruction from the ANC terrorist hierarchy as part of the broader, ongoing strategy of the genocide of whites which has been cunningly disguised by liberals as crime.

This is not crime, it is a suburban war and a genocide against the white minority in South Africa. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.59.112.221 (talk) 05:34, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ArmenianPhD (talk • contribs) 22:58, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Genocide in the western hemisphere

"Another major criticism is that the definition excludes current and past mass atrocities committed by western nations. Many use the atrocities during conquest of the Americas as an example, which included the deliberate murder and mass deportation of native Americans. Many agrue whether this can be classified as genocide as it was never officially stated that they where deported with the intent to kill, only relocate. Many others claim it can be classified as genocide, as the United States government carried these actions out on an entire ethnic populations and had to be aware that deportations would result in the massive of deaths."

Is this the extent of the discussion on the native populations? This looks like "weasel words" since there is no source, though it isn't totally bad [[7]] How do editors plan to address what took place in the western hemphere? [[8]] Numerous scholars have described the killings for land as "genocide". Yes the legal definitions can be a bit complicated, but it's not just a matter of terminology. Ebanony (talk) 01:17, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

See: Category:Native American genocide Acts of genocide against the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, in the United States and other American countries.

Not to mention the Americas genocides in this article is an omission of pertinent fact. The intentional acts of extermination are well-documented and leaving them out because it doesn't meet some strict definition of genocide is just not appropriate for an unbiased Wiki article. There are many references in Wiki using the term genocide to describe the horrible atrocities throughout. 76.239.19.21 (talk) 12:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Jean-Paul Akayesu

This article states that Akayesu was exectuted. AFAIK, he is serving life in prison, but is alive and well? Anyone care to correct me?--89.242.108.131 (talk) 12:21, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can tell you are correct, and the article has an error. I have corrected the relevant section. 86.66.141.207 (talk) 18:13, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Julius Malema to face genocide charge

Julius Malema may be facing a genocide charge at the international court of Justice in Hague, in the Netherlands. A farmer in Rustenburg has a laid a charge at the court against Malema for his song ” kill the boer.” The farmer says that the song is “inciting genocide against Afrikaans Boers.” [9]

Johannesburg - ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema is facing a possible genocide charge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Beeld newspaper reported on Tuesday. An unidentified Rustenburg farmer and his family left South Africa last week for safety fears after deciding to lay the charge against Malema. Their lawyer, Fanie van der Walt, said the accusations against Malema were sent in writing to the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands on Monday. The charges relate to Malema singing "shoot the boer", which the Rustenburg farmer interpreted as inciting youth league supporters to commit genocide against Afrikaans farmers. Shortly after being rebuked by the ANC, Malema changed the words to "kiss the boer". [10] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.169.234.2 (talk) 01:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Ethnocide

Ethnocide section, copied from the article

Ethnocide is a concept related to genocide. Primarily, the term, close to cultural genocide, is used to describe the destruction of a culture of a people, as opposed to the people themselves. It may involve a linguicide, phenomenons of acculturation, etc. Furthermore, by contrast with a genocide, an ethnocide is not necessarily intentional. However, unlike genocide, which has entered into international law, ethnocide remains primarily the province of ethnologists, who have not yet settled on a single cohesive meaning for the term.

Raphael Lemkin, the linguist and lawyer who coined genocide in 1943 as the union of "the Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing)", also suggested ethnocide as an alternative form representing the same concept, using the Greek ethnos (nation) in place of genos.^[1] It does not appear to have entered into wide usage at the time. Subsequently, ethnocide has been used by some ethnologists to refer to a sub-type of genocide. While the United Nations' 1951 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as acts committed against "national, ethnical, racial or religious" groups, ethnocide, taken in this context, would refer only to crimes motivated by ethnicity.

Another definition in use in some writings suggests that ethnocide could refer to actions which do not lead directly to death or harm of living members of a group, but instead have the long-term effect of reducing birthrates, interfering with education or transmission of culture to future generations of a group, or erasing the group's existence or practices from the historical record. This usage is commonly found in discussions of oppressed indigenous peoples and is sometimes referred to as culturecide. Under the UN Convention, some of these practices could also overlap with legal definitions of genocide, such as prevention of births within a group or forcibly transferring the children of one ethnic group to another group.

Although international genocide law focuses primarily on direct violent and repressive actions, Lemkin, in his writings, considered genocide to be a crime above all others not only because of the numbers of persons killed or injured, but because genocide carried with it the intent to render entire, irreplaceable cultures extinct. The broader definition of ethnocide may be useful in addressing perceived shortcomings and restrictions of genocide law and in identifying cultural destruction when it occurs by less violent and less visible means.

The French ethnologist Robert Jaulin (1928–1996) redefined the concept of ethnocide in 1970 with his ground-breaking La paix blanche : introduction à l’ethnocide ("White Peace: Introduction to Ethnocide"). This capital work, which remains to be translated into English, gives a detailed account of the ethnocide-in-motion suffered by the Bari, a Native American people living on the border between Venezuela and Colombia, in the second half of the sixties, as witnessed by Robert Jaulin himself. Whether conflicting or collaborating among themselves, multiple vectors of ethnocide in place (the Catholic Church and other Christian confessions, the Venezuelan and the Colombian armies, the US petroleum company Colpet, and all the “little colonists” as Jaulin calls them) converged to the relentless disavowal and destruction of Bari’s culture and society.

In Jaulin’s understanding of the notion, it is not the means but the ends that define ethnocide. Accordingly, the ethnocide would be the systematic destruction of the thought and the way of life of people different from those who carry out this enterprise of destruction. Whereas the genocide assassinates the people in their body, the ethnocide kills them in their spirit.

Collective and arbitrary murder, systematic abduction of children to raise them away from their parent’s culture, active and degrading religious propaganda, forced work, expulsion from the homeland or compulsory abandonment of cultural habits and social structure, all these practices, described by Jaulin, have in common a deep despise for the other man and woman as representatives of a different cultural world.

Along with a detailed description and analysis of Bari’s case, La paix blanche is also a broad reflection on Western civilization’s tendency to ignore, lower and destroy other cultural worlds as it comes in touch with them, while extending its own domain, bringing the focus of the discussion back from the frontiers of Western civilization to its core and its history. As he takes his inquiry back in time, Jaulin shows that the way the West relates to other civilizations is a continuation of the way it has always related to its own inner cultural diversity, from the monotheistic exclusion of the representatives of different and differing cultural spaces (the “other” gods, divinities, entities, etc.) to its reinstatement under the successive garments of Reason, Revolution, Progress or Science.

A long reflection on the dynamics that led to worldwide ethnocide, its different “masks”, its history and, according to him, one of its earliest manifestations, monotheism, led Jaulin to a complete reappraisal of the phenomenal and conceptual fields polarized by the notion of ethnocide.

This reassessment took its final shape in the 1995’s work, L’univers des totalitarismes : Essai d’ethnologie du “non-être” (in free translation: "The Universe of Totalitarianisms: An Ethnological Essay on “Non-Being”"). In this book, the notion of “totalitarianism” (which should not be mistaken for Hannah Arendt’s concept of totalitarianism) depicts the underlying dynamics of which ethnocide becomes a manifestation among others.

Jaulin defines totalitarianism as an abstract scheme or machine of non-relation to cultural otherness characterized by the expansion of "oneself " ("soi") through an election/exclusion logic. The totalitarian machine operates by splitting the universe into its own “agents” on the one side, and its “objects” on the other, whether they be individuals, families, groups, societies or whole civilizations. It proceeds by depriving the later of their quality of cultural subjects through the erosion and finally the suppression of their space of tradition and cultural invention, which mediates their relation with themselves, i.e. their reflexivity. With the mutilation of their “field of cultural potentialities”, as Jaulin calls it, the totalitarian dynamics transforms its “objects” into new “agents” of expansion, reduced to a mock self-relation defined by the horizon of a potential election. However, to become actual this election needs to articulate with a pole of exclusion; thus the need of a new expansion of this universe of non-relation, the universe of totalitarianisms, by definition an endlessly expanding universe whose theoretical limits paradoxically coincide with its own self-destruction.

The election/exclusion logics works by means of pairs of contradictory and, therefore, mutually exclusive terms. Their content may be as varied as the different semantic domains invested by the totalitarian machine: chosen/doomed, religion/magic, truth/falseness, literate/illiterate, savage/civilized, subject/object, intellectual/manual, proletarians/capitalists, science/illusion, subjectivity/objectivity, etc. In all these contradictory pairs, one of the poles “means” to occupy the whole field; but at the same time, its own meaning and “existence” depends on the virtually excluded pole.

According to Jaulin, the asymmetrical relation portrayed by these pairs is but the starting point of totalitarian movement, its static and temporary position. Its dynamics derives from the “wished for” or prospective inversion of the relation between its two poles. This may happen through the totalitarian pair defining the pre-existing situation, the design of a new one or, more often, through recovery and adaptation of old formulas.

The recovery of the Marxist proletarian/capitalistic contradictory pair or the even older monotheistic chosen/doomed couple by many independence or charismatic movements in the former European colonies as a means of inverting the pre-existing totalitarian field is an instance of the shifts through which the “totalitarian trajectory” reinvents itself. This example also shows the place of ethnocide within the overall totalitarian dynamics as the dialectical alternate to totalitarian inversion.

Such an inexorable and elementary logic, with its ability to migrate to, pervade and finally destroy ever-differing cultural and social worlds, accounts for the endlessly restarted trajectory of totalitarianism’s two-pole field through time and space.

I have moved the section "Ethnocide" from article space to here because the section carries only one minor citation and seems to be OR. If not, then according to the first sentence of the section, it should be merged into Cultural genocide rather than this article. -- PBS (talk) 10:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

^ Lemkin, Raphael. Acts Constituting a General (Transnational) Danger Considered as Offences Against the Law of Nations. Published 14 October 1933. Accessed 21 May 2007.

[1] Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. pp. 21, 43 in the 2002 London, Flamingo edition

[2] Raphael Lemkin, Genocide American Scholar, Volume 15, no. 2 (April 1946), p. 227-230

[3] Lemkin, Raphael. Acts Constituting a General (Transnational) Danger Considered as Offences Against the Law of Nations. Published 14 October 1933. Accessed 21 May 2007.

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