What is a Genocide?

The word “genocide” is used in many places, in multiple different contexts, so much so that people typically do not really understand what it exactly means, and what is or is not a Genocide. It is important to understand the complete scope of the word, and what it means as per the definitions of law. Many people often argue for or against certain crimes being classified as a “genocide.” Hence, it is extremely important to first be clear on what is a genocide.

“Genocide, the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race.”

Encyclopedia Britannica

In his work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (1944), Lemkin noted that a key component of genocide was the

“criminal intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group. The acts are directed against groups as such, and individuals are selected for destruction only because they belong to these groups.”

The Nürnberg Charter And The Genocide Convention

As per international law, the crime of genocide is a part of “crimes against humanity” defined by the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, also known as the Nürnberg Charter. The UN approved the text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the first UN human rights treaty. The convention, which entered into force in 1951, has been ratified by more than 130 countries. As per Article 2 of this convention, a 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.”

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

One of the objections raised to the clause of “intent to destroy” is that this intent can be difficult to establish in the complexities of economic, social and demographic conflicts of the modern day. Moreover, most perpetrators do not accept or acknowledge this intent openly. The Ottomans claimed that the Armenians killed were casualties of war. Nazis carried out atrocities on Jews without publicizing it. Hence, in answer to these objections,

“In response, defenders of the intentionality clause have argued that “a pattern of purposeful action” leading to the destruction of a significant part of the targeted group is enough to establish genocidal intent, irrespective of the reasons the perpetrator regime offers for its actions.”

The UN Security Council established separate tribunals, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) which further investigate into means of a genocide.

The Rwandan tribunal, for example, stated that genocide included “subjecting a group of people to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes and the reduction of essential medical services below minimum requirement.” It also ruled that “rape and sexual violence constitute genocide…as long as they were committed with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular group, targeted as such.”

Encyclopedia Brittanica

The Yugoslav tribunal also ruled that genocidal intent can be manifest in the persecution of small groups of people as well as large ones. According to the tribunal, such intent

May consist of desiring the extermination of a very large number of the members of the group, in which case it would constitute an intention to destroy a group en masse. However, it may also consist of the desired destruction of a more limited number of persons selected for the impact that their disappearance would have upon the survival of the group as such. This would then constitute an intention to destroy the group “selectively.”

Yugoslav Tribunal

In his book “Death by Government–Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900”, R. J. Rummel has distinguished between different types of mass murders by defining them as below:

Genocide: among other things, the killing of people by a government because of their indelible group membership (race, ethnicity, religion, language).

Politicide: the murder of any person or people by a government because of their politics or for political purposes.

Mass Murder: the indiscriminate killing of any person or people by a government.

Democide: The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.

Death by Government–Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900″, R. J. Rummel

His definition and analysis crystallizes the conceptual and practical difference between any mass killing, especially by government, and the targeted killing of people based on their race, ethnicity and/or religion.

This understanding of what constitutes a “genocide” is important to address misplaced arguments which contend that crimes like forcing a group of people to flee, rape, forced conversions are not genocide.

It is clear that anything which aims at wiping out the very identity and existence of a group of people, by killing, rape, abductions, forced marriages into other religions, mass conversions, atrocities, destruction of living places, and any other means that are deceitful and damage the ethnic fabric of Hindus, is a Hindu genocide.

Originally published on March 2, 2019 as a part of Hindu Genocide Vs Jewish Genocide, Armenian Genocide – A Comparative Study. Updated on 31 Aug, 2021.