Genocide Throughout History: A Selection of Horrendous Events That Must Not Be Forgotten

Dear readers,

here you may find the stories of the Holocaust, the Rwanda Genocide as well as the Rape of Nanjing.

Trigger Warning: Please mind that a lot of the events mentioned below are rather graphic including violence, murder, sexual assault.

Genocide (definition; noun)

The deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group (or a group with other common characteristic) with the aim of destroying that nation or group.

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

• Approved and proposed for ratification by the General Assembly of 9 December 1948, entry into force on 12 January 1951.

• Prompted by the events of World War II

A short extract from the Convention (paraphrased)

The Contracting Parties agree that genocide committed at any time is a crime under international law, which they undertake to prevent and punish.

Article II

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article III

The following acts are punishable:

1. Genocide;

2. Conspiracy to commit genocide;

3. Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

4. Attempt to commit genocide;

5. Complicity in genocide.

Article IV

No one has immunity to punishment for committing crimes of Article III.

Historical Events Considered Genocide

The Holocaust; Hebrew Shoʾah (“Catastrophe”)

Might be the most well-known case of genocide in the history of humankind. The Holocaust was the mass extermination of Jewish, Roma, homosexual and communist people, in a systematic way by members of the Nazi Party (predominantly).

Ever since Nazis came into power in 1933 in Germany, they openly displayed their antisemitism. After the economic crash in 1929, the Nazis used the complicated situation to antagonise Jews. In Mein Kampf (1925-27), Hitler developed his fundamentally flawed theory labelling Jews as parasites and mistakenly declaring the Aryan “race” to be superior and deserving of lebensraum - living space for all Germans (Aryans). After acquiring complete power and becoming the de facto dictator of the Third Reich, the antisemitic ideology was pushed even more.

In 1935 a set of infamously racist Nuremberg Laws was passed by the Nazi party further excluding Jews from society.

In 1942 the Wannsee Conference was held, resulting in the “Final Solution” - rounding up all Jews throughout Europe, transporting them eastward (mostly to

Poland), and organising them into labour camps. The work and living conditions would be sufficiently cruel to eliminate large numbers by “natural diminution”; those that survived would be killed in cold blood (most often shot or killed in gas chambers).

In total the Holocaust resulted in killing around 6 million Jewish people, 7 million Soviet civilians, 500 000 Roma people and millions of others.

The Rwandan Genocide.

Planned mass murder in Rwanda that occurred over the course of 100 days in 1994. The victims were primarily the Tutsi - ethnic minority in Rwanda executed by the Hutu (the ethnic majority, in power at the time).

The tension between the two ethnic groups was not the result of recent conflict. It’s been present since before World War I. German and later Belgian anti-Hutu propaganda led to segregation of the two ethnic groups. It is important to mention that the two groups are actually incredibly similar in terms of culture, language and appearance. Only that the Tutsi had a slightly fairer complexion and a taller frame due to their more comfortable and indoor-focused lifestyle.

After multiple conflict on a smaller scale than the genocide, Hutu assumed the rule of the country thus making Tutsi the outcasts. A few decades later, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) led by the Tutsi invaded Hutu-controlled Rwanda. Though a cease -fire was signed, anti-Tutsi propaganda was still heavily disseminated among the people, making the Tutsi hatred stronger than ever before.

In April of 1994, a plane carrying the then Rwandan president Habyarimana was shot down. To this day the identity of the individuals responsible has not been uncovered. However there were many allegations ranging from Hutu extremists to RPF leaders. Shortly after that the organised killings of Tutsi and moderate Hutu began, led by Hutu extremists.

The methods of murder were meant to be as brutal and cruel as possible. Rape was also used a weapon as well as HIV/AIDS infected persons carrying out these horrendous assaults to infect many Tutsi women with HIV or AIDS.

The Rape of Nanjing.

It was during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 that soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army (JIA) seized the city of Nanjing in China and began the horrors that lasted for two months. Starting December 1937 the soldiers commenced a mass killing resulting in 100 000 to over 300 000 victims. The people killed were capitulated Chinese soldiers tricked into giving up with the false pretence of safety and less cruelty, noncombatant citizens of Nanjing - children, women and men. No one was spared.

The general commanding the Japanese Central Front Army was Matsui Iwane. His direct orders resulted in the atrocities we now call the Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing.

Tens of thousands of women were brutally raped and assaulted by the soldiers of the JIA . The city was burnt, broken down, the streets lined with bodies dead or dying. The soldiers engaged in heinous physical and mental torture, forcing the still alive people on Nanjing to sodomise the already dead, offering false hope of salvation, only to be murdered later anyway. It is impossible to fit all the disgusting acts and the tragedy into words.

Resources You Might Want to Check Out

• https://sfi.usc.edu/collections/nanjing-massacre

• https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust

• https://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/rwanda/historical-background.shtml

• https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf

* Please note that at no point in this blog am I providing legal advice or claiming to be a professional. These blogs are for entertainment and educational purposes only.*