Genocides in history
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Determining what historical events constitute a genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clearcut matter. Furthermore, in nearly every case where accusations of genocide have circulated, partisans of various sides have fiercely disputed the interpretation and details of the event, often to the point of promoting wildly different versions of the facts. An accusation of genocide is certainly not taken lightly and will almost always be controversial. The following list of alleged genocides should be understood in this context and not regarded as the final word on these subjects.
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Ancient/medieval genocides
Biblical genocides
A record of several alleged genocides is found in the Bible, although the perceived accuracy and import of the accounts relates to the reader's opinion of the Bible as a whole. To name a few:
- The extermination of the Amalekites at the hands of King Saul of Isreal at the behest of Samuel
- The conquest and massacre of various middle-eastern peoples, including Israel, by the empires of Assyria and Babylon.
Roman Empire
Many campaigns of the Roman Empire can by modern standards be rated as genocide:
- Caesar's campaign against the Helvetii: approximately 60% of the tribe was killed, and another 20% was taken into slavery.
- Carthage: the city was completely destroyed in the Third Punic War, and its people murdered or enslaved.
- Jerusalem: the city was burned in the Destruction of Jerusalem and its people murdered or enslaved.
England
From 1066 to 1072, and after, the invading Norman army under William of Normandy pursued a policy of oppressing and destroying the English people. The policy took on many forms, ranging from cultural to physical. The immediate slaughter killed up to 15% of the population of England, but a lesser, non-physical, genocide continued for tens (maybe hundreds) of years.
The English language was forbidden in state business and replaced with Norman French. Thousands of cultural artifacts were destroyed, including hundreds of buildings, which were demolished. Thousands were sold into slavery abroad and the remaining population was placed under feudalism: a military-economic system of servitude. Opponents of the regime were massacred: in one incident through the winter of 1069-70, a pogrom in Yorkshire (called The Harrowing of the North) took the lives of about 150,000 people.
France
The Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) in France can be considered as a case of genocide. It was carried out against the Cathar people, militarily and by use of the Inquisition.
Genghis Khan and his sons
One of the greatest alleged genocides in terms of raw numbers is the killings that occurred during the formation of the empire of Genghis Khan and his sons. It is estimated that millions of civilians were ruthlessly and systematically killed throughout many parts of Eurasia in the 13th Century.
Genocides since 1500
The Americas
The indigenous populations of the Americas sharply plummetted following the arrival of Europeans from 1492 onward. Not all the mortality was consciously inflicted: disease and hardship, and the severing of social ties, all took their toll. The native tribes of the Caribbean were eliminated like the Guanches in the Canary Islands the previous century (Crosby 1986). Central Mexico, with an estimated pre-Conquest population of 25 million, was reduced to a residual population of a million in the 17th century. In 1790, when the first U.S. census was executed, there were 300 Indians left in Pennsylvania, 1500 each in New York and Massachusetts, and still some 10,000 in the Carolinas (Braudel 1984 p 393).
The long-term decimation, sometimes by government policy and sometimes not, of the Natives of South and North America by Europeans is estimated to be one of the largest and longest in history. [1] (http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide5.htm)
Various estimates of the pre-contact Native population of the continental U.S. and Canada range from 1.8 to over 12 million. Over the next four centuries, their numbers were reduced to a low of 237,000 by 1900. It has been estimated that the Native population of what is now Mexico was reduced from 30 million to only 3 million over the first four decades of Spanish rule.
European persecution of Natives started with Christopher Columbus' arrival in San Salvador in 1492. Native population dropped dramatically over the next few decades. Some were directly exterminated by Europeans. Others died indirectly as a result of contact with introduced diseases for which they had no resistance.
Over the next four centuries, European settlers would systematically displace Native American peoples, from the Arctic to South America. This was accomplished through varying combinations of warfare, the signing of treaties (of which the Natives may not have fully understood at times), forced relocations to barren lands, destruction of their main food supply -- such as the bison -- and the spread of European disease, notably smallpox.
Canada
The Beothuk people, an aboriginal group native to the Dominion of Newfoundland, are now completely extinct as a result of extended conflict with European colonists (mostly fishermen who regarded them as thieves), loss of habitat and importation of diseases such as tuberculosis.
Activities of European colonists and importation of previously-unseen diseases (including in some cases the distribution of disease-contaminated blankets) caused many deaths in other Canadian native communities; the Beothuk are unique in Canadian history as having suffered not only genocide but outright extinction.
In a metaphorical sense, many native cultures suffered "genocide" when the Catholic church forcely converted many natives throughout Canada.
United States
Throughout the 19th century, Native Americans were driven off their traditional lands to facilitate the installation of settlers (colonists). On some occasions, entire villages were massacred by the U.S. Army. Tribes were generally relocated to reservations on which they could be more readily pushed toward assimilation into mainstream U.S. society.
See cultural genocide.
Guatemala
During the Civil War in Guatemala, an extraproportional large number of Maya Native Americans were killed. Under the rule of Efraín Ríos Montt (1982–1983) 75,000 Mayas were killed.
Africa
The Congo
Genocide in the Congo Free State, prior to its being taken over by Belgium to form the Belgian Congo. Under the rule of King Leopold II, the Congo Free State suffered a great loss of life due to criminal indifference to its native inhabitants in the pursuit of increased rubber production.
Exploitation of the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, German Southwest Africa, Rhodesia, and South Africa paled in comparison to that in what later became the Belgian Congo. The most infamous example of this is the Congo Free State.
King Leopold II (of Belgium) was a famed misanthropist, abolitionist, and self-appointed sovereign of the Congo Free State, 76 times larger geographically than Belgium itself.
His fortunes, and those of the multinational concessionary companies under his auspices, were mainly made on the proceeds of Congolese rubber, which had historically never been mass-produced in surplus quantities.
Between 1880 and 1920 the population of the Congo halved; over 10 million "indolent natives" unaccustomed to the bourgeois ethos of labor productivity, were the victims of murder, starvation, exhaustion induced by over-work, and disease.
Mass-murder or genocide in the Congo Free State became a cause celčbre in the last years of the 19th century, and a great embarrassment to not only the King but also to Belgium, which had portrayed itself as progressive and attentive to human rights.
- Belgium exhumes its colonial demons (http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4460659-103681,00.html)
Boer Wars
In South Africa (1880–1881 and 1899–1902)
Boer (not Afrikaner) and other historians feel that the second war of the British Empire against the Boer Republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State amounted to genocide, because the Boers protested against British plans to annex the Boer Republics and they declared war against the British.
The British rounded up Boer civilians, placing them in concentration camps. Until the Boers surrendered in May 1902, at least 27,000 Boer civilians had been killed. These figures are more accurately reflected as follows; 24,000 Boer Children, nearly half of the Boer child population had died. 3,000 Boer women also died.
German South-West Africa
(1904–1907) in current-day Namibia
In 1985, the United Nations Whitaker Report recognized the German attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of Southwest Africa as one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the twentieth century. In total, some 65,000 Herero (80 percent of the total Herero population), and 10,000 Nama (50 percent of the total Nama population) were killed or perished. Characteristic of this genocide was death by starvation and the poisoning of wells for the Herero and Nama populations that were trapped in the Namib desert. The responsible German general was Lothar von Trotha
- Germany Refuses to Apologize for Herero Holocaust (http://www.africana.com/articles/daily/index_20021014.asp) (2002)
- Germany admits Namibia genocide (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3565938.stm) (2004)
- Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker - Der Völkermord an den Herero (http://www.gfbv.de/voelker/afrika/herero.htm)
Rwanda
(April 1994) Officially 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutus. See History of Rwanda, Rwandan Genocide.
Sudan
1983 - present The United States government's Sudan Peace Act of October 21, 2002 accused Sudan of genocide for killing more than 2 million civilians in the south during an ongoing civil war since 1983.
In 2004 it became widely known that there was an organised campaign by Janjaweed militias (nomadic Arab shepherds with the support of Sudanese government and troops) to get rid of 80 black African groups from the Darfur region of western Sudan. These peoples include the Fur, Zaghawa and Massalit.
Mukesh Kapila (United Nations humanitarian coordinator) is quoted as saying: "The vicious war in Darfur has led to violations on a scale comparable in character with Rwanda in 1994. All the warning signs are there."
On September 9, 2004 United States Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that the actions of the armed Muslim Arab Janjaweed organization in Darfur, conducted with the tacit approval, if not active support, of the Government of Sudan, constitute genocide. Powell stated before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility."[2] (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/09/09/sudan.powell/index.html)
Western countries are as yet undecided how or whether to intervene, while at present millions of people are displaced, had their family separated and property destroyed. There is a risk of famine and epidemic because of overcrowding in camps, the destruction of agriculture, and poor supplies of medicine and food.
Australia
The Australian Aboriginal population was decimated following European settlement. Many died from disease introduced by those settlers and some were shot. During the White Australian Policy, it was expected that aborigines would slowly "assimilate" into the mainly white population. The removal of Aboriginal children from their families by the Australian government is considered by some to have constituted genocide, using the argument that it falls within the ambit of Art. 2(e) of the Genocide convention. There is also a converse argument that the removal of Aboriginal children was intended to protect, rather than exterminate them. See Stolen Generation and Keith Windschuttle. The relative effects of those and other factors is a subject of strong historical and political debate, including whether they constituted genocide.
However, in Tasmania, where racially distinct Aboriginal groups existed, Aboriginal population was almost entirely wiped out in the 19th century with only those with mixed blood surviving. It was legal for the settler to shoot natives on the spot and many died from disease introduced by those settlers. The last surviving group was transferred to a colony on Flinders Island and all of its members died out slowly due to neglect. Their languages are entirely lost and most of their cultural heritage is gone, though people of mixed descent still insist on spiritual connection to the land.
Middle East
Iraq
Al-Anfal Campaign against Iran-aligned Kurdish populations - ethnic cleansing, and in cases bordering on genocide. Chemical weapons attacks on Kurds 1986-88 (Saddam Hussein's forces used Sarin to kill the population of a Kurd village. See Halabja poison gas attack for a full discussion) and on Iranians. Attacks on and ethnic-cleansing against rival ethnic groups in the South (Shia Muslims) and North (Kurds) of Iraq after the Persian Gulf War.
Turkey
(1914–1923) massacres by the Young Turk government Approximately 500,000–750,000 Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire were killed. The Turkish government still denies that there was any genocide.
Between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire died. Armenians and most historians believe the deaths constituted genocide. The Turkish government denies allegations of genocide.
Between 300,000 and 600,000 Pontian Greeks in the Ottoman Empire were killed, and several hundred thousand others exiled. The Turkish government denies there was any genocide, instead blaming the wars with Greece which took place around the same time.
See also: Pontian Greek Genocide, Armenian Genocide and Assyrian Genocide
Europe
Bosnia
(1992–1995) Bosnian Genocide was an organized murder of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), during the Bosnian War, where authorities of Republika Srpska and its Army targeted for extinction a wide group of Bosnian Muslims.
Statement by Radovan Karadžić co-founder of Republika Srpska and its first president, alluded to the origins of this ideology on March 4, 1992 to the Bosnian Parliament:
..."the road to which you want to take Bosnia and Herzegovina is the same highway of hell which Slovenia and Croatia took. Don't think you won't take Bosnia and Herzegovina to hell and the Muslims into annihilation... Muslims can't defend themselves if there is war here"...
It also included organized ethnic cleansing carried out by Republika Srpska against Croats, Roma, and Bosniaks throughout the period displacing nearly a 1 million people. More than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in July 1995 alone. Total numbers of killed in Bosnian Genocide are still being determined but they range anywhere between 100,000 and 250,000. See also History of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Croatia
(1941 - 1945) Croatia Ustasa Regime Genocide against Serbs, Jews and others during WWII took place after the invasion and destruction of the Yugoslav army by Hitler in 1941, he supported the creation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) which was run by the extreme Croatian fascists called the Ustasa. The leader of this state Ante Pavelić put into effect a campaign of persecution and genocide against the Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. Simon_Wiesenthal's organization give data that about 600,000 mostly Serbian citizens were killed in Jasenovac Concentration Camps during WWII. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum provide information that at least 270,000 mostly Serbs died in Jasenovac Concentration Camps, but some data goes up to 700,000 victims.
This policy was set out by Mile Budak, the Minister for Education & Culture who in his speech of 22nd July 1941, said that:
The basis for the Ustashe movement is religion. For minorities such as the Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, we have three million bullets. We will kill a part of the Serbs. Others we will deport, and the rest we will force to accept the Roman Catholic Religion. Thus the new Croatia will be rid of all Serbs in its midst in order to be 100% Catholic within 10 years.
The number of people killed by the Ustashe between 1941-1945 is uncertain and has been debated, but in total over 700,000 people, mostly Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, but also some communist Croats and Bosnians were killed in areas under Ustaša control. Much lower and much higher numbers have been in circulation, but without much actual backing. [3] (http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/gallery/pg19/pg5/pg19533.html)
The Independent State of Croatia was the only state created by the Axis Powers that ran its own concentration camps independently of Nazi direction, the largest being the Jasenovac concentration camp, in fact a collection of camps that covered tens of square kilometres, where most were killed. [4] (http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x11/xm1103.html)
France
Wars of the Vendée: the revolutionary National Convention ordered a pacification of the province, with specific instructions to kill children and women of reproductive age.
Germany
Nazi genocide before and during World War II (also known as: the Final Solution, the Holocaust) (1933–1945).
The Holocaust: 6 to 11 million people were killed (figure is contested, according to the Nazi racist ideology, as some ethnic groups were considered "sub-human"). This includes the ha-Shoah, ("the Catastrophe" in Hebrew), in which 6 million European Jews (3 million of whom were counted as both Polish and Jew), including 1.5 million children, were systematically "exterminated" (the Nazi term) for being Jewish. See also Holocaust denial.
6 million Polish citizens (3 million of whom were counted as both Polish and Jew: see possibly Polish Jews). (See also Armenian quote.)
Genocide also targeted Gypsies (see Porajmos) and Slavs.
7.5 million Soviet civilians and 3.2 million Soviet POWs. This number includes 2 million Soviet Jews mainly in the areas of former Eastern Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia proper, many of whom were killed by squads of Nazi collaborators formed among Russians, Latvians, Ukrainians (See the controversy to this subject http://www.dpcamps.org/dpcamps/jewsVsUkrainians.html) and Lithuanians. Some Jews also collaborated in collecting Jewish victims and moving them onto trains that would ship them to the death camps. The Jews of Eastern Poland were doubly counted also among victims in Poland.
The Nazis also targeted members of other (non-ethnic) groups, such as those suffering from birth defects, learning disability or insanity; homosexuals, prostitutes and communists, as part of eugenics.
Genocide was also practiced against the Germans with the post-WW2 expulsion of the 15 million Germans living in its eastern territories that were annexed by Poland and Russia. Over 2 million were killed or missing.
USSR
(1932–1933) Holodomor (deliberate famine): By various estimates 2,000,000 - 7,000,000 people, mostly Ukrainians, died in the famine in Ukrainian SSR. Some maintain that this was an act of genocide by Soviet powers against the Ukrainian people, although this claim is contested by the fact that the famine struck the area significantly larger than Ukraine.
Asia
Cambodia
(1975–1979) Killed approximately 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975-1979. The Khmer Rouge, or more formally, the Communist Party of Kampuchea, led by Pol Pot, Ta Mok, Duch and other leaders, organized the mass killing of ideologically suspect groups, ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese or Sino-Khmers, ethnic Chams, ethnic Thais, former civil servants, demobilized soldiers, Buddhist monks, secular intellectuals and professionals, and refugees. Khmer Rouge cadres defeated in factional struggles were also liquidated in purges. The number of the victims is disputed.
See also: Democratic Kampuchea
Indonesia
(1965-today) Organised Indonesian occupation of western New Guinea, providing training and finance of Indonesian troops conducting the genocide, and a number of U.S. companies such as Freeport-McMoRan have been accused of directly paying TNI troops to continue military actions against the native landowners.
Vietnam
1973 - Present Since the end of the Vietnam War hostilities against the Degar (Montagnard) by the Vietnamese government have been widespread. After the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam at the close of this war, the Vietnamese government retaliated against the tribes who had helped the U.S. Nearly two thirds of the Degars have died since 1973, including more than half the male population. These reprisals continue at present (2003) and are considered by many to fit the definition of genocide.
Indian subcontinent
Partition of India
Massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the border during the Partition — leading to the deaths of as many as five million people—as the newly formed governments were completely unequipped to deal with migrations of such staggering magnitude. In 1947, Muslim League attacks and massacres on Sikhs and Hindus occured in the Punjab. [5] (http://allaboutsikhs.com/books/gst/index.htm)
British General Dyer: Jallianwala Bagh
Soon after Dyer's arrival, on the afternoon of April 13, 1919, some 10,000 or more unarmed men, women, and children gathered in Amritsar's Jallianwala Bagh (bagh, "garden"; but before 1919 it had become a public square) to attend a protest meeting, despite a ban on public assemblies. It was a Sunday, and many neighbouring village peasants also came to Amritsar to celebrate the Hindu Baisakhi Spring Festival. Dyer positioned his men at the sole, narrow passageway of the Bagh, which was otherwise entirely enclosed by the backs of abutted brick buildings. Giving no word of warning, he ordered 50 soldiers to fire into the gathering, and for 10 to 15 minutes 1,650 rounds of ammunition were unloaded into the crowd, some of whom were trampled by those trying to escape. According to official estimates, nearly 400 civilians were killed, and another 1,200 were left wounded with no medical attention. Dyer, who argued his action was necessary to produce a "moral and widespread effect," admitted that the firing would have continued had more ammunition been available.
This incident was the culmination of a campaign of furtively-organized trouble against the British authorities. There is information that the crowd were in an aggressive state and well armed with sticks and stones.
Indian National Congress Party genocide of Sikhs
1984 More than 4,000 Sikh men, women and children were slaughtered by Congress Party hoodlums in November 1984. In Delhi alone, 2,733 Sikhs were burned alive, butchered or beaten to death. For three days and nights the killing and pillaging continued without the police, the civil administration and the Union government, which was then in direct charge of Delhi, lifting a finger in admonishment. The Congress was in power, and senior Congress leaders like HKL Bhagat and Jagadish Tytler, led from the front directing their thugs, while the entire council of ministers twiddled their thumbs. Rajiv Gandhi, having ensconced himself as prime minister, later sought to justify the terror unleashed by his party. Addressing a rally at Delhi's Boat Club to celebrate his mother's birth anniversary, he thundered: 'When a big tree falls, the earth will shake.'
Jammu and Kashmir
(1989 - present) After Kashmiri uprising began since late 1980s Hindu civilians as well as military have been killed and over half a million Hindus have been driven away from their homes by cross-border terrorists in India's Jammu and Kashmir regions.
Bangladesh Liberation War
During the Bangladesh Liberation War, over a period of just under nine months (267 days), 3 million Bangladeshis were killed by Pakistan Army. On average, 11,235 people were killed each day. It was the first time in history so many civilian Muslims were killed by a Muslim Army. Around 200,000 women aged between 8 years and 60 years were raped. Several thousands children (war-babies) were born, most of them were taken by families in Canada and countries in Western Europe (mainly France and Sweden). Some were taken to Mother Teresa, Calcutta.
Reference
- Braudel, Fernand, The Perspective of the World, vol. III of Civilization and Capitalism 1984 (in French 1979).
- Cronon, William, Changes in the Land : Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England 1983 ISBN 0809016346
- Crosby, Alfred W., Ecological Imperialism : The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986 ISBN 0521456908
- Elst, Koenraad, Negationism in India: Concealing the record of Islam (http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/books/negaind/ch2.htm) ISBN 8185990018
External links
- India: Hate speeches on the violence in Gujarat must be stopped (http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engASA200192002)
- India's lawmen offered little protection against Hindu gangs massacring Muslim neighbours (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,660969,00.html)
- Medieval Genocide of Hindus (http://www.geocities.com/hindoo_humanist/medieval.html#Gaznavi)
