What is genocide? –

Genocide is the extermination of a group of people on account of their ethnicity, race, religion or nationality. This concept was developed in the 1940s by a Jewish lawyer who was trying to find an expression to designate what had been accomplished by the Nazis during World War II. This word mentions

Genocide is considered a crime against humanity through a determination made by the UN in 1948. Crimes committed and identified as practices of genocide are currently judged by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, in the Netherlands. O Brazil already had a case of genocide registered in Roraima, in the 1990s.

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Meaning of genocide

O The term “genocide” did not exist until the 1940s.. It was because of the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of Jews during World War II, that such a word was coined. A Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin proposed, in 1943, its use to define the actions carried out by the Nazis against this ethnic group.

Lemkin’s proposal was contained in a book completed in 1943, but published only the following year. The book is called Axis rule in occupied Europe (“Axis Dominion in Occupied Europe”, in free translation), and in it Lemkin proposed that the Nazis used genocide to exterminate Jews, Gypsies, and to achieve other goals.

The word created by Lemkin was the result of combining two others — genos (Greek word meaning “race”) and cide (Latin word meaning «to kill»). So, the joint genos + cide resulted in: genocide. Therefore, the meaning of the word makes mention of coordinated actions with the objective of exterminating people from a certain group.

In this way, genocide is never something related to individuals, but to the group. O extermination of individuals attempts to destroy the totality that group, that is, to extinguish a certain race, culture, religion or nationality.

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genocide currently

the genocide is considered a crime against humanity, and this definition was given after the horrors practiced during the Second World War were confirmed. With the formation of the United Nations, a series of actions were taken to prevent events like the Holocaust from happening again.

Thus, through the General Assembly of the United Nations, on December 9, 1948, Resolution 260 A (III) was approved, which published the “Convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide”. This document defined genocide as a crime against humanity and proposed conditions for international cooperation against this practice.

In that declaration it was decided, in Article 1, that:

The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under the law of peoples, which they hereby undertake to prevent and punish.|1|

That definition concluded that genocide refers to “the acts specified below, committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. The practices that characterize a genocide, in the understanding of the UN, are:

1. Murder of group members;
2. Serious attack on the physical and mental integrity of members of the group;
3. Deliberate submission of the group to conditions of existence that will lead to its physical, total or partial destruction;
4. Measures aimed at preventing births within the group;
5. Forced transfer of children from the group to another group.|1|

You crimes of genocide are currently tried by the International Criminal Court (or International Court of Justice) located in The Hague, Netherlands. The Hague Court is not only responsible for matters relating to the crime of genocide but also for matters relating to international law.

In this way, crimes of genocide can be taken to The Hague, provided that a government is interested in doing so or if it is unable to carry out a trial of this type in its territory. Recent cases of judgments involving genocide refer to acts of this type that took place in Bosnia, during the Bosnian War, in the process of fragmentation of Yugoslavia.

During the processes linked to that war, some names, such as: Slobodan Praljak, Bosnian-Croat general; Radovan Karadzic, president of Serbs in Bosnia; and Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serb general, were convicted of crimes committed against the Bosnian population (Bosnian Muslims) during the conflict.

During that war, genocidal practices were carried out against the Bosnian population by Serbs and Croats, both against the independence of Bosnia. The most symbolic case was the Srebrenica Massacre, in which around eight thousand Bosnians were murdered by Serbian army forces and buried in mass graves.

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Genocides in history

Throughout history, several genocides have been carried out, and, despite the expression having emerged late, today, based on historical knowledge, we can define certain events as genocides. The most symbolic case, and perhaps the best known, was the Holocaust, called by the Jews the Shoah.

In this genocide, the Nazis carried out the extermination of populations of Jews, gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, blacks and homosexuals. It is estimated that, during this barbarism, six million people died in concentration camps and extermination camps, being victims of shootings, gas cameras and other practices of extreme violence.

Another notable event is the genocide of Tutsis, carried out by the Hutu ethnic group, in Rwandaduring the civil war that hit this African country from 1990 to 1994. It is estimated that around 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutu guerrillas throughout Rwanda in 1994 alone.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was the armenian genocide against the population of Armenian origin (they were Christians) that inhabited the territory of the Ottoman Empire. Thousands of people were forced to cross desert regions on foot, and thousands more were executed. It is estimated that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed.

Another case that cannot be forgotten was the Congolese genocide., practiced by the Belgians in their African colony, the Belgian Congo. The Belgians, at the behest of Leopold II, the country’s king, systematically exploited millions of people in their colony through violent practices that included amputations and murder. It is estimated that 10 million Congolese have died as a result of these actions.

There was also the genocide in Cambodia, commanded by Pol Pot, during the period that his party, the Khmer Rouge, dominated the Asian country. An estimated 1.5 million people were killed in the Cambodian genocide.

Other leaders known for practices perceived as genocidal were Stalin and Mao Zedong, both responsible for tens of millions of deaths in the Soviet Union and China, respectively.

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Genocide in Brazil

Brazil already had its own genocide, and this is information that few people know. You historians discuss the idea of ​​genocide indigenoussince centuries of violent practices against indigenous populations resulted in the deaths of millions of people and in the emergence of a culture of prejudice and violence against these populations.

There are discussions among historians and other humanities scholars who talk about black genocide, that is, State practices that systematized the murder of black people in Brazil. The discussion around this issue is mainly part of police violence against the black population, especially those who live in peripheral areas.

Anyway, the Brazil has a case of genocide recognized by law. This case occurred in the 1990s and is related to the Yanomami, indigenous people who were victims of a massacre carried out by prospectors who illegally extracted gold from the Yanomami territory, located in the north of Roraima. The case was taken to court, and the garimpeiros were convicted of the crime of genocide.

The terrible event happened when 22 prospectors, at war with the Yanomami, invaded the indigenous territory and surrounded a village, finding only the elderly, women and children there. The action of the garimpeiros resulted in the death of dozens of people, all killed with great violence. This event became known as Haximu Massacre.

This case went through the courts for many years and sentenced some of the miners to up to 20 years in prison. In 2006, the Federal Supreme Court of our country defined the Haximu Massacre as genocide. This event, in addition to the great repercussion in Brazil, became known internationally, being reported by major newspapers at the time.

Note

|1| Convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. To access, click here.

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Everett Historical and Shutterstock

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By Daniel Neves
History teacher