GENOCIDE

The word genocide is relatively new, even though the act of genocide is not. Yet in part because of its twentieth-century origins, genocide is often associated with the use of modern science and technology. The extent to which this is the case is one of the contentious ethical issues associated with the term.

Origins and Controversies

Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin introduced the term genocide in 1944 to describe the widespread killing of civilians that occurred during the first half of the twentieth century. He created the term as an amalgam of the Greek genos, meaning race or kind, and the Latin based suffix -cide, indicating killing (Smith 2002, Hinton 2002). At the time genocide was not a distinct crime, but Lemkin lobbied strongly to get it recognized as such.

The result was the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which 136 countries have ratified. In the convention, genocide is defined as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

As with any legal document, the UN definition of genocide has been scrutinized by scholars and politicians. The current definition, which limits genocide to ethnic, racial, religious, and national identity, describes human characteristics that are inherent to one's person. Race, ethnicity, and to a lesser extent, nationality and religion are determined at birth. Some critics argue that these criteria are too narrow in that they exclude particular social groups, such as political affiliation. Joseph Stalin slaughtered millions in the Soviet Union for largely political reasons, yet his actions do not constitute genocide under the UN definition. Indeed the Soviet Union lobbied the United Nations to remove any reference to political groups that had existed in an earlier draft.

The UN definition also excludes other social groups such as mentally ill or mentally challenged people, of which Nazi Germany exterminated tens of thousands. Homosexuals, bourgeoisie, the educated, and city-dwellers are all social classes that have been victims of genocidal acts although their deaths do not constitute genocide under existing law. Some scholars suggest expanding the definition of genocide to include mass killings in general (Gellately and Kiernan 2003). Others argue that it is beneficial to define mass killings and genocide separately so as to understand the origins of each and learn how to prevent them (Staub 2002). According to Helen Fein, one important component of the UN definition that sets genocide apart from other heinous acts, such as terror, war, oppression or torture, is "the perpetrators' sustained and purposeful attempt to destroy a collectivity" (Hinton 2002, p. 6).

Another phrase related to genocide is ethnic cleansing, and sometimes people conflate the two phrases. But as Paul Mojzes explains, "while every genocide is an ethnic cleansing, not every ethnic cleansing is a genocide. If an ethnic cleansing does not genuinely threaten the existence of a group, it would not qualify as genocide" (Mojzes 2002, p. 54). Genocide is also confused with crimes against humanity, which describes a "widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population" (Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Internet site), including murder, torture, kidnap, rape, and forced expulsion. Another related phrase is war crimes which describes "grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949" such as willful killing, torture, unnecessary destruction of property, and denying prisoners of war the right to a fair trial, among others (Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Internet site). Together genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes all fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

How society defines genocide is more than academic; it is a matter of life and death for millions of people. While the international community may respond with force to stop acts of genocide, it may not respond to ethnic cleansing and probably would not respond to mass killings. Thus it is important to understand the moral and ethical consequences of how genocide and related terms are defined, and to clarify the legal basis of controlling them.

Historical Developments

Historical records are rife with accounts of mass killings and genocidal acts perpetrated against tribes, cities, clans, and races in premodern times. The Romans, after defeating Carthage in the Third Punic War, killed the inhabitants, burned the city, and "sowed the ground with salt to symbolize that it should forevermore remain barren" (Alvarez 2001, p. 28). Greeks, Mongols, Christians, Assyrians, and others all committed such acts, yet at the time such killings were an accepted component of war and conquest and not considered a crime against humanity (Rittner et al. 2002). Although acts of genocide have been perpetrated throughout the ages, it was not until the twentieth century that society began to ask whether genocide was wrong. Two reasons explain this process: the rise of science and technology, which enabled acts of genocide on a massive scale, and the growing appreciation of human rights.

The twentieth century began as a century of promise and hope with an expectation that solutions to human problems could be solved through scientific and technological progress. Sadly the century ended as the deadliest in human history. While most persons commonly think of war as the major source of death, and primarily to young men, it was actually genocide that killed more people in the twentieth century than any other human activity, and most of the victims were civilians (Smith 2002). (Others would point out, of course, that more people also survived in the twentieth century.) Some experts place the number of state-sponsored killings, which includes acts of genocide, at more than 150 million—four times higher than those killed in warfare (Fein 2002).

Science, technology, and the nation-state all contributed to the escalation and scale of genocide. First, the development of more efficient guns, bullets, and bombs enabled perpetrators to kill more people more rapidly. Gun-toting Germans easily slaughtered the Hereros of German Southwest Africa, a primitive culture, in one of the first acts of genocide in the twentieth century (1904–1905). Transportation, improved infrastructure, and bureaucracy enabled Nazi Germany to coordinate and carry out murder more effectively in its attempt to annihilate all Jews (1933–1945). Scientific and technological progress also created new methods of mass killing such as the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Saddam Hussein was the first to use WMDs against his own people (1987–1988), killing thousands of Iraqi Kurds with poison gas. The nation-state, another product of modernity, was very successful at perpetrating genocide on scales that are almost unfathomable. An estimated 20 million civilians died under Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union (1922–1953), and millions more under Mao Zedong (1949–1959) in China and the Pol Pot (1975–1979) regime in Kampuchea. Indeed science, technology, and political institutions of modernity have combined to make genocide possible on a historically unique scale.

Despite efforts by the United Nations and international community to stop genocide, it has not been eliminated. Marginalized groups around the world are increasingly vulnerable, especially with the development of newer and more deadly WMDs. It may be possible in the not-so-distant future to design genetically engineered diseases or poisons that affect only a certain ethnic or racial group that share similar genes. Then again, genocide can also be extremely low-tech, as illustrated in the Rwandan massacres (1994) in which 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by machete-wielding Hutus.

ELIZABETH C. MCNIE

SEE ALSO Holocaust;Human Rights;Race;Weapons of Mass Destruction.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alvarez, Alex. (2001). Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approach. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Fein, Helen. (2002). "States of Genocide and Other States." In Will Genocide Ever End?, ed. Carol Rittner, John K. Roth, and James M. Smith. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House.

Gellately, Robert, and Ben Kiernan. (2003). "The Study of Mass Murder and Genocide." In The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, ed. Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Provides a good overview on the subject of genocide.

Hinton, Alexander Laban. (2002). "The Dark Side of Modernity: Toward an Anthropology of Genocide." In Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide, ed. Alexander Laban Hinton. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Mojzes, Paul. (2002). "Ethnic Cleansings." In Will Genocide Ever End?, ed. Carol Rittner, John K. Roth, and James M. Smith. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House. A good analysis of genocide vs. ethnic cleansing.

Rittner, Carol; John K. Roth; and James M. Smith, eds. (2002). "Chronology." In Will Genocide Ever End?, ed. Carol Rittner, John K. Roth, and James M. Smith. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House. A good place to begin learning about ethics and genocide.

Smith, Roger W. (2002). "As Old as History." In Will Genocide Ever End?, ed. Carol Rittner, John K. Roth, and James M. Smith. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House.

Staub, Earl. (2002). "Understanding Genocide." In Will Genocide Ever End?, ed. Carol Rittner, John K. Roth, and James M. Smith. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House.

INTERNET RESOURCES

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights-United Nations Office at Geneva. Available from http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. International Criminal Court. Available from http://www.un.org/law/icc/statute/99_corr/cstatute.htm.