Modern-day genocide

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Modern-day genocide

• The past repeats itself

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History of the word Genocide

• In 1944, a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael
  Lemkin coined the term genocide.
• He took the Greek word geno (race or tribe) and
  combined it with the Latin word cide, which
  means killing.
• On December 9th, 1948, the United Nations
  approved the Convention on the Prevention and
  Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
• The UN made it an international crime to commit
  genocide, with all of its member nations agreeing
  to undertake to prevent and punish the crime.

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Definition of the word Genocide

• Genocide is defined as any of the following acts
  committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or
  in part, a national, ethical, 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 intending to prevent births in
  the group
• Forcibly transferring children from the group to
  another group

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CAMBODIA
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Genocide in Cambodia 1975-1979

• In 1975, Pol Pot, a radical communist leader,
  seized control of Cambodia and declared that this
  was year zero. He wanted to establish a society
  set in the past where farming the land was what
  everybody did to benefit the state.
• The use of foreign languages was banned.
  Newspapers and television stations were shut
  down, radios and bicycles confiscated, and mail
  and telephone usage curtailed. Money was
  forbidden. All businesses were shuttered,
  religion banned, education halted, health care
  eliminated, and parental authority revoked.
• He forced all people to evacuate the cities and
  work in the fields. As many as 20,000 people died
  in these evacuations.
• The people were forced to work in these killing
  fields where they existed on one tin of rice per
  person every two days. Their workday began at 4
  am and ended at 10 pm, with only two small
  breaks. Many people died of malnutrition and
  overworking, as well as being shot by Pol Pots
  soldiers.

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Genocide in Cambodia 1975-1979

• Deadly purges were conducted to get rid of people
  from the old society, such as doctors, lawyers,
  teachers, police, the wealthy, monks, and former
  government officials.
• Anyone suspected of disloyalty to Pol Pot was
  either shot or chopped to death with an ax.
• What is rotten must be removed, was the slogan
  of Pol Pot.
• Unsupervised gatherings of more than two people
  were forbidden young people were taken from
  their parents and forced to marry those they had
  never met.
• 212,000 Chinese were murdered, and Muslims were
  forced to eat pork or be shot.
• In 1979, Vietnam invaded and took Pol Pot out of
  power, but not before the death toll in Cambodia
  reached over 2,000,000 people.

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BOSNIA
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Genocide in Bosnia 1992-1995

• In April 1992, Bosnia declared themselves to be
  an independent country from Yugoslavia.
• The president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic,
  who was Serbian, attacked Bosnia, which was made
  up of mostly Muslims, who the Serbs viewed as
  ethnically inferior.
• In the capital of Sarajevo, Serbian snipers
  targeted innocent civilians, including children
  (3, 500).
• While the UN instructed its troops to do nothing,
  the Serbs rounded up Muslims, put the men and
  boys into makeshift concentration camps, and
  raped the women and girls.
• President Bill Clinton eventually brokered a
  peace agreement in 1995, but the Serbs broke it
  when they captured UN troops and forced them to
  watch as they selected and slaughtered 8,000 men
  and boys between the ages of twelve and sixty and
  raped mass numbers of females.
• In August of 1995, NATO stepped in and ended the
  conflict by bombing the Serbs, but not until the
  death toll in Bosnia reached 200,000 Muslims
  killed, 20,000 missing, and more than 2,000,000
  displaced.

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Srebrenica Massacre in Bosnia (http//koz.vianet.c
a/boshis112.htm)
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RWANDA
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Genocide in Rwanda April-July 1994

• The two main ethnic groups in Rwanda are the Hutu
  and the Tutsi. The Tutsi ruled until 1962, even
  though they only comprised ten percent of the
  population.
• The Hutu and the Tutsi agreed to share power in
  1990 after a conflict. However, the Hutu despised
  sharing power with the Tutsis and when the
  President of the country tried to conduct peace
  talks with the Tutsis, they shot his plane down.
• This began a systematic killing campaign where
  they killed all Tutsi leaders and set the Hutu
  population on a mission to rape and kill all
  Tutsi people, regardless of age, usually with
  machetes.
• The UN had troops in Rwanda but forbid them to do
  anything to help the Tutsis. Their only function
  was to get all of the foreign diplomats out the
  country.
• On April 21st, the UN voted to abandon Rwanda and
  pulled out all but 200 troops. Hundreds of
  thousands of people had already been killed.
• Once the UN pulled out, the killings increased in
  number and speed. The radio system in Rwanda was
  used to broadcast propaganda and point out where
  people were hiding.

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Genocide in Rwanda April-July 1994

• Many Tutsis ran to churches and missions to hide,
  thinking that they would be protected there.
  These became the sites of some of the worst
  massacres because they were trapped.
• In many local villages, Hutus were forced to kill
  their Tutsi neighbors or risk death for
  themselves and their families. They also forced
  Tutsis to kill their own families.
• By mid-May, over 500,000 Tutsis had been
  murdered. The UN, under media pressure, agreed to
  send up to 5,000 troops to Rwanda, but never sent
  them in time to stop the massacre.
• The butchering did not stop until July of 1994
  when 200,000 Tutsis from neighboring countries
  invaded and attacked Hutu forces, stopping the
  genocide.
• The total death toll ended at 800,000 people.

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DARFUR
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Genocide in Darfur 2003-present

• Since 2003, the government of Sudan has sent
  their soldiers and their allies, the Janjaweed to
  fight rebels in the western region of Darfur.
• The government has sent the Janjaweed to attack
  civilians in this region who are the same ethnic
  group as the rebels (they have darker skin than
  the main ethnic groups in the Sudan).
• Janjaweed means a man with a gun on a horse.
  They are vicious soldiers allied with the
  government, who hires horse-owning Arab men and
  pays them 116 a month to join the Janjaweed.
• The government denies any association with the
  Janjaweed, even though government-owned military
  helicopters survey and attack villages right
  before the Janjaweed appear.
• The Janjaweed have raped thousands of women in
  the hopes of making them pregnant with
  lighter-skinned babies. They have killed
  thousands of men and boys. Those who dont die in
  the raids leave their homes and try to escape to
  neighboring Chad or stay trapped in make-shift
  towns in Darfur.
• The Janjaweeds main mission is to drive these
  Black African Muslims from their land, never to
  return. They dump human and animal bodies in
  water to contaminate it and burn villages to the
  ground.

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Genocide in Darfur 2003-present

• About 2,500,000 people have been driven from
  their homes and are living in refugee camps in
  Darfur or in neighboring Chad.
• The death toll now exceeds 300,000, with numbers
  rising every day.

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Words without deeds violates the moral and legal
obligation we have under the genocide convention
but, more importantly, violates our sense of
right and wrong and the standards we have as
human beings about looking to care for one
another. -Jon Corzine