What is Genocide?
Photo Courtesy: United Nations
Genocide is, no doubt, a heinous crime. Must be prevented and punished. But in the present day world of unrestraint and irresponsible social media, full of fake, outright lies and motivated speech, Genocide has come to be used as a fashion. Any killing of a few is termed as genocide.
What is genocide? Let’s briefly understand.
According to Dictionary.com: Genocide is the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.
According to Merriam -Webster Dictionary: Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.
According to Cambridge Dictionary: Genocide is the murder of a whole group of people, especially a whole nation, race, or religious group.
According to Collins Dictionary: Genocide is the deliberate murder of a whole community or race.
The most comprehensive description and definition are available on United nations webpages. (https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml)
United Nation’s Definition of Genocide
“Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- 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;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Elements of the crime
There are two elements of Genocide:
- A mental element: the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”; and
- A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
- Killing members of the group
- 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
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
“Importantly, the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted – not randomly – because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups protected under the Convention (which excludes political groups, for example). This means that the target of destruction must be the group, as such, and not its members as individuals. Genocide can also be committed against only a part of the group, as long as that part is identifiable (including within a geographically limited area) and “substantial.”
In view of the above, you can readily see for yourself the ‘Claimed’ Genocides- actually were or were not!
Two simple tests:
Was it ‘Deliberate and Systematic’.
Was it intended ‘extermination of the whole national, ethnical, racial or religious group’.
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