GENOCIDE

Definition:
the deliberate killing of a large group of people especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation

Background

• After the Holocaust, the United Nations created a new term- genocide
• 1944- polish Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin sought to create this new term to describe Nazi policies of the systematic murder of Jewish people
• genos- Greek word meaning race/tribe
• cide- Latin word that meant to kill

http://endgenocide.org/learn/what-is-genocide/

Examples of Genocide..

1915 Armenia

• ethnic group that lived in the Ottoman Empire
• 2 million Armenians were rounded up, deported and executed
• massacres, forced deportation marches, and deaths due to disease in concentration camps estimated to have killed more than 1 million Armenians
• the mandate to annihilate Armenians came directly from young Turks began on the evening of April 24, 1915
• including 300 Armenian intellectuals, political leaders, educators, writers, and religious leaders
• 1985 the U.S. named this day "National Day of Remembrance of Man's inhumanity to Man"

1933 The Holocaust

• Germany's Nazi Party did a highly unorganized strategy of persecution and murder aimed at ethnically "purifying" Germany
• A plan Hitler called "Final Solution"
• 6 million slaves, the disables, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, political and relgious dissendents were killed during this

1994 Rwanda

• Rwandas population of seven million was composed of three ethnic groups: Hutu (85%), Tutsi (14%), Twa (1%)
• Hutus had conflict with the Tutsis population increasing social, economic, and political pressures
• Hutus also blamed Tutsi civilians to be supporting a dominated rebel group named Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)
• A plane carrying President Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down
• Violence bagan immediately after that
• Hutu extremists launched their plans to destroy the entire Tutsi civilian populatio

cont.

• In the weeks after April 6, 1994: 800,000 men, women, and children perished in the Rwandan genocide(3 quarters of the Tutsi population)
• Rwandan genocide ended when the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) took over
• RPF- well trained military group consisting of Tutsis who had been exiled in earlier years, where most of them lived in Uganda
• When RPF had full control the genocide ended in the middle of July of 1994

Work cited

• endgenocide.org
• unitedhumanrights.org