Genocide in the World Today

According to Britannica, the term “genocide” was “… coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born jurist who served as an advisor to the U.S. Department of War during World War II.” The Chambers Dictionary defines “genocide” as: “The deliberate extermination of a racial, national, religious or ethnic group.”

When was the first genocide?

“According to Thucydides, for example, the people of Melos were slaughtered after refusing to surrender to the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War,” according to Britannica.

Further, “The massacre of Cathari during the Albigensian Crusade in the 13th century is sometimes cited as the first modern case of genocide.” How “modern” you can really call the 13th century, I’m not sure. Perhaps they mean the method employed. The point is that genocide as a concept is not new.

Modern genocide

In the 20th century, there was the Armenian massacre in 1915, led by the Ottoman Empire. Then there was the genocide of over six million European Jews, as well as the killing of Roma and others by the Nazis in World War II, followed by the genocide of around three million Cambodians in the 1970s by the Khmer Rouge, and then in the 1990s there was the genocide of the Tutsi by the Hutu in Rwanda. Note that these lists of historical genocide are not exhaustive, just examples.

Genocide happening now

Palestine

According to the UN, genocide is being committed in Gaza by Israel. Francesca Albanese said, “Specifically, Israel has committed three acts of genocide with the requisite intent: causing … serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part and imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group.”

Ms Albanese went on to say, “The genocide in Gaza is the most extreme stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure of the native Palestinians.” And the war in Gaza has extended to be another war in the Middle East, if it can be said that it ever really ended, including Iran and Lebanon, for example. Israel say they’re attacking certain groups, but the evidence is mounting against Israel that their campaign is simply against the Palestinians.

Sudan

In Sudan, there is currently a genocidal conflict. Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, said that “many civilians were targeted based on their ethnicity in Sudan’s besieged city of El Fasher”. She went on to say that “the situation is unfolding to a “Rwanda-like” genocide of 1994.”

According to Human Rights Watch, “The Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, [the] warring parties responsible for widespread war crimes and other atrocities in the current conflict in Sudan, have newly acquired modern foreign-made weapons and military equipment”.

Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, senior crisis, conflict, and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, said, “Sudan’s conflict is one of the world’s worst humanitarian and human rights crises.”

Elsewhere

In Myanmar there has been / is the genocide of the Rohingya Muslims, noted by the UN as “textbook ethnic cleansing”, while in China there is the ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs and other largely Muslim groups in “re-education camps” – ie, concentration camps (somewhat like the camps used in North Korea). Make no mistake, this is at least ethnic cleansing and at worst genocide. Is there really much of a difference? Genocide involves murder, while ethnic cleansing can be brutally brainwashing people but not necessarily killing anyone. Although, based on the story of an actual Uyghur survivor, what does happen to those who are dragged off and never seen again? “Never seen again” implies that they must have been killed, surely. The story does sound a lot like what you would imagine a “concentration camp” to be like. The level of inhumanity against the Uyghurs and others is, from the description in the linked article, heinously abhorrent.

Finally…

Of course, all of these people who have committed or are committing genocide against others didn’t or don’t stop to think, “I wouldn’t want genocide to be committed against my people, so why am I doing it to others?” But that’s always how it is. The slaver wouldn’t want to be enslaved. The rapist wouldn’t want to be raped. The thief wouldn’t want to be robbed. So why do to others what you wouldn’t want to have done to you? How evil and cruel.

by J. R. William Marshall