P-ISSN: 2502-8006 E-ISSN: 2549-8274 DOI: https://doi.org/10.22373/petita.v8i1.167
GENOCIDE: CAUSES BEHIND A GRAVEST STATE CRIME
SYED ENAM AHAMMAD
SOAS, University of London, London, United Kingdom Email: 686529@soas.ac.uk
Abstract: This article will investigate the underlying conditions that make genocide possible, analysing the facts, examining how and why human beings are capable of such criminal action. Throughout the history many intellects including Raphael Lempkin (1944) came up with the definition for the term genocide. Genocide is understood as the gravest crime that is possible to commit against humanity. This is a deliberate action to destroy an ethnic, national, racial or religious group in whole or in part. Genocide is not simply unjust, but it is also evil. It is referred to mass murder that is usually carried out by a state or group, caused by many conflicts and tensions between various sects’ overtime and lead to anxiety that turns into mass murder. The reason for such crime against humanity can vary from people to people - such as, to gain power, greed, political influence, vengeance or religious reasons. It is characteristics, includes the one-sided killing of defenceless civilians. Furthermore, it will explain the unique cases and patterns of genocide along with Stanton’s discussion of the ten stages that lead to a state or an individual to carry out the mass killing. Also, it will discuss the negative propaganda of governments and groups that cause division amongst communities. Finally, it will explore the grounds of genocide where nationalism drives to genocide and its implications in the twenty-first century. However, many scholars do not agree with the interpretations of genocide that is led by various conflicts such as historic, religious, ethnicity and many more. Moreover, it will discuss the functionalist and intentionalist and the connections to the contemporary day that links the origins of genocide. Also, it will annotate the statement of Fein of twentieth-century genocide being the “virtual state crime”. In summary, the article will have encountered the causes of genocide and the reasons for various stages which genocide occurred. It will also be understood that the era of modern technology has a great influence in propagating and transmitting communications amongst states and groups more efficiently.
Key Words: Genocide, Commit Against Humanity, Virtual State Crime, International Law
Abstrak: Artikel ini akan menyelidiki kondisi mendasar yang memungkinkan terjadinya genosida, menganalisis fakta, memeriksa bagaimana dan mengapa manusia mampu melakukan tindakan kejahatan seperti itu. Sepanjang sejarah banyak intelektual termasuk Raphael Lempkin (1944) yang mendefinisikan istilah genosida. Genosida dipahami sebagai kejahatan paling berat yang dilakukan terhadap kemanusiaan. Tindakan ini dilakukan untuk menghancurkan suatu kelompok etnis, bangsa, ras atau agama secara keseluruhan atau sebagian. Genosida bukan hanya tidak adil, tetapi juga jahat. Genosida adalah pembunuhan massal yang biasanya dilakukan oleh suatu negara atau kelompok, disebabkan oleh konflik dan ketegangan antara berbagai aliran yang berlangsung lama dan menimbulkan kecemasan yang berujung pada pembunuhan massal. Alasan tindakan kejahatan terhadap kemanusiaan tersebut bervariasi, dari orang ke orang - seperti, untuk
mendapatkan kekuasaan, keserakahan, pengaruh politik, balas dendam atau alasan agama. karakteristik genosida adalah pembunuhan terhadap warga sipil yang tak berdaya.
Selanjutnya akan dijelaskan kasus dan pola genosida yang unik serta pembahasan Stanton mengenai sepuluh tahapan yang menyebabkan suatu negara atau individu melakukan pembunuhan massal. Juga akan dibahas propaganda negatif pemerintah dan kelompok yang menyebabkan perpecahan di antara masyarakat. Terakhir, artikel ini akan menjelajahi dasar genosida di mana nasionalisme mengarah pada genosida dan implikasinya di abad ke-21. Namun, banyak sarjana tidak setuju dengan interpretasi genosida yang dipicu oleh berbagai konflik seperti sejarah, agama, etnis, dan banyak lagi. Selain itu, ini akan membahas fungsionalis dan intensionalis serta kaitannya dengan zaman kontemporer yang menghubungkan asal-usul genosida. Juga, itu akan disertai dengan keterangan dan pernyataan Fein tentang genosida abad ke-20 sebagai “kejahatan negara virtual”. Terakhir, artikel ini akan membahas penyebab genosida dan alasan berbagai tahapan terjadinya genosida. Juga kaitannya dengan era teknologi modern yang memiliki pengaruh besar dalam menyebarkan dan mentransmisikan komunikasi antar negara dan kelompok secara lebih efisien.
Kata Kunci: Genosida, Komitmen Terhadap Kemanusiaan, Kejahatan Negara Virtual, Hukum Internasional
Introduction
This article will investigate the underlying conditions that make genocide possible, analysing the facts, examining how and why human beings are capable of such criminal action. There has been much discussion about what makes genocide possible. Throughout the history many intellects including Raphael Lempkin in 1944 during the post-world war two, he came up with the definition for the term genocide. Genocide is understood as the gravest crime that is possible to commit against humanity. This is a deliberate action to destroy an ethnic, national, racial or religious group in whole or in part. Genocide is not simply unjust, but it is also evil. It is referred to mass murder that is usually carried out by a state or group, caused by many conflicts and tensions between various sects’
overtime and lead to anxiety that turns into mass murder. The reason for such crime against humanity can vary from people to people such as to, gain power, greed, political influence, vengeance or religious reasons. It is characteristics, includes the one-sided killing of defenceless civilians – babies, children, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, and the injured of both genders, along with their usual female caretakers simply on the basis of their national, religious, ethnic or other political identities1.
Throughout the article, it will study the motives behind the previous genocides such as, Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, Belgians and the Congolese, black slave trade, Sudan Darfur, Burundi, Vietnam, Iraq, and many more, by looking at the reasons, patterns and stages that took place during the massacres. These atrocities are branded as the wickedest and taught in every international curriculum so that it is a lesson for future generations and present- day leaders. The article will look at the different claims and historical contents of genocide which motivated for such atrocities. Also, the implication it has for the contemporary world and the future. Firstly, the article will start to outline the term genocide and the arguments by critics such as, Katz, Destexhe and Raphael Lemkin about the definition and the historical atrocities that can be recognised as genocide. Secondly, it will examine the different stages of genocide where the dreadful act raises two questions like, how this was possible and why it happened in a particular state.
Furthermore, it will explain the unique cases and patterns of genocide along with Stanton’s
1 C Card, ‘Genocide and Social Death’ (2003) 18 Hypatia, 64.
discussion of the ten stages that lead to a state or an individual to carry out the mass killing. Also, it will discuss the negative propaganda of governments and groups that cause division amongst communities. Finally, it will explore the grounds of genocide where nationalism drives to genocide and its implications in the twenty-first century. However many scholars do not agree with the interpretations of genocide that is led by various conflicts such as historic, religious, ethnicity and many more. Moreover, it will discuss the functionalist and intentionalist and the connections to the contemporary day that links the origins of genocide. Also, it will annotate the statement of Fein of twentieth-century genocide being the “virtual state crime”. In summary, the article will have encountered the causes of genocide and the reasons for various stages which genocide occurred. It will also be understood how the era of modern technology has a great influence in propagating and transmitting communications amongst states and groups more efficiently.
Outlining Genocide
An attorney and refugee scholar from Poland named Raphael Lemkin whom served the War department in the United State, first coined the term ‘Genocide’ in 1944 by combination of Greek genos for race or tribe with a Latin suffix cide which means killing2. Lemkin defined Genocide as “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves”3. Lemkin campaigned for genocide to be recognised in accordance with international law, which took place eight years later under the United Nation’s Convention on genocide, although it was existed long before the term was invented and defined. United Nations recognised genocide as crime under international law during 1946 by United Nations General Assembly4. Also, it was codified as independent crime on 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Convention was further ratified by the 149 states on January 2018. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) stated that the Convention embodies principles are part of general customary international law regardless the states ratified the genocide convention, which means that all members are bound by law to follow or abide the rule to prohibit genocide as a crime under international law.
To define the genocide it has been remain the subject of complex and sometimes acrimonious debate. Green and Ward (2004) argue according to Katz (1994) and Destexhe (1995) that
‘only the Nazi extermination of Jews, and possibly the 1994 Rwandan genocide, is deemed to qualify5’. However, a range of actions short of deliberate killing constitute genocide under the Genocide Convention 1948, as in the present convention, ‘Genocide’ means any of the following act 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 group6. Moreover, this definition is controversial which
2 ibid, p. 66.
3 See ‘Holocaust Encyclopaedia on United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Website’.
4 “…The punishment of the crime of genocide is a matter of international concern. The General Assembly, therefore, Affirms that genocide is a crime under international law which the civilised world condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices – whether private individuals, public officials or statesmen, and whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds – are punishable…”. See A Fitzmaurice, ‘Genocide Prevention and Responsibility Project’ (United Nations).
5 T Green, P. and Ward, State Crime: Governments, Violence and Corruption (Pluto Press 2004). p. 165.
6 See 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, for attached document at <http://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.html>.
was criticized by Israel Charney (1994) and others for not recognising political groups as a potential target of genocide7.
Harff and Gurr (1998) classified those victims as ‘politicide’ and reserved the term
‘genocide’ and defined both terms are “the promotion, execution, and/or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents – or, in the case of civil war, either of the contending authorities – that are intended to destroy, in whole or part, a communal, political, or politicized ethnic group”8. Nevertheless, to keep both classifications into the context, Green and Ward (2004) adopted a reasonably narrow definition according to Chalk and Jonassohn (1990) and Levene (1994): “genocide is the systematic, one-sided mass killing of persons selected on the basis of their perceived membership of an ethnic or communal group, with the aim either of eliminating the group in its entirety, or of eliminating whatever threat it is perceived to pose”9. However, Harff and Gurr identified seven ‘pure’ genocides between 1945 and 1995 where hundreds of thousands were deliberately murdered including the mass deportation of ethnic minorities in the USSR – which three of them has been excluded in the above definition according to Green and Ward (2004).
The Stages of Genocide
The political and economic factors are different in the agenda of genocide in a particular country. The horror of this action raise two questions in mind, how is this possible and why in that particular state? There is wide range of literature on genocide and on its element, where the scholars are examining specific episodes to discover the historical backgrounds and trying to understand and explore the psychology of the mass killings.
Some of them strictly argued that genocide is so appalling and so strange that each episode needs to be understood as such, and no generalisations can be made. Nonetheless, enormous attempts have been taken in several occasions to recognise common patterns of genocide. According to Harff “all cases have unique properties but also share some discernible patterns with others from which social scientists can identify some common sequences and outcomes10”. Studies explore common cases and attempt to discover some of the common outline across countries – where it distinguishes demographic, socio- economic and political factors. However, Dr Gregory Stanton11 has written the process which develops in ten stages for individuals to become willing and able to kill fellow human beings. These are: (1) Classification, (2) Symbolisation, (3) Discrimination, (4) Dehumanisation, (5) Organisation, (6) Polarisation, (7) Preparation, (8) Persecution, (9) Extermination, and (10) Denial12.
Stanton discusses that all cultures have ethnicity, race, religion and nationality. The people were divided into Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda, where the given names or symbols refers to identifying the classified groups. These groups in a particular society have a certain name, language, type of dress, uniforms or religious symbols. The people from the Eastern zone of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge were required to wear blue scarfs, the yellow star required for Jews under Nazi Germany, and ethnic identity card for Rwandans13. The gap between two or more group was broadened by ‘Symbolisation’ where a certain ethnicity, race or religions were visible and easier to recognise. Stanton argues, ‘Classification’ and
‘Symbolisation’ are universally human and do not necessarily result in genocide unless
7 Card (n 1), p. 69.
8 See ‘“Assessing Risks of Genocide and Politicide”’.
9 Green, P. and Ward (n 5)., p. 166.
10 See William Easterly, ‘Development, Democracy, and Mass Killings’ (2007), p. 132.
11 Dr Stanton is a research professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention. He is the founder and the President of Genocide Watch.
12 G Stanton, ‘The Ten Stages of Genocide’.
13 ibid
they lead to the next stage of ‘Dehumanisation’. But, Stanton found ‘Discrimination’ where social status is dominated by the hierarchies and they exclude the inferior group from their full rights.
In 1933, Jews were fired from all civil service and professorship job by Hitler in Germany, they were forbidden to marry ‘Aryans’ by law (the Nuremberg Laws of 1935), even stripped of their German citizenship14. This act developed into next stage where hierarchies deny the ethnic groups as human beings. This involves negative propaganda campaign such as the Tutsis referred to ‘cockroaches’ by a Rwandan newspaper, the ‘Rohingya’ Muslims in Myanmar has been called ‘illegal immigrants’ and their existence were refused by the government leaders. When the propaganda efforts are successful, the government allows violating the human rights to the targeted groups with the process of ‘Dehumanisation’.
As genocide is an organised crime, generally by a state, thus it employs militias to escape from the responsibility, but it involves both collective action and group identification.
This develops to next stage where the groups are further driven apart by extremist such as terrorist or local militias. The terrorist group target the moderates, because the moderates are the key to prevent genocide – therefore, they are the first to be arrested and killed whist broadcast polarising propaganda. Further, the planning takes place by the perpetrators for the final solution by organising meetings amongst the leaders. They make preparation for mass killings by organising militaries, weapons, and sometimes produce a death list and build a death camp. The people from the targeted groups are segregated in the camp where they are subjected to starvation and disease, imitating the consequences of absolute poverty. According to their ethnic group and religious identity, the victims are separated and forced to wear identifying symbols. This is the ‘Persecution’
stage where in emergency must be declared as Stanton further claimed. It is ‘genocide’
when ‘Extermination’ begins as the killers do not considers that their victims as entirely human. If the killings are supported by state, the armed forces join the militias group to do the killings. Finally, the perpetrators attempt to cover up their crime by digging up the mass graves, burning the bodies, trying to cover up the evidence and by intimidating the witnesses. The state blames the victims for the wrong doing- they deny their committed crime, block the investigation and try to continue to run the state and stay in power unless they are thrown out by force or revolution15.
Grounds Of Genocide
At present, scholars do not accept the unsatisfactory interpretations of genocide that feature its cause to any event trigger or distinct method. For instance, ethnic, historic, and religious hostility amongst groups in a certain region - these factors may deliver a context where objective, structural conditions, which include redistributions of power, a deteriorating economic situation, rising social inequalities, and sudden demographic changes could contribute pressure amongst groups. Nonetheless, the pressures from various groups do not deterministically lead to genocide but these are ever-present and historical elements. Due to the continuity of group tensions accuracy time, space and cultures, one question might be raised with astonishment is that genocide is infrequent.
This reduces the power of knowledge and awareness of genocide. Studies show that the implementers of genocide are driven by pressures and anxieties. Such studies give the current front-runners the importance and “conflict entrepreneurs”16 or compelling leaders who organise groups in places to exclusivists, racist beliefs and who join and address towards a programmatic route for grouped violence and riots. Nevertheless, it is
14 ibid 15 ibid
16 Refer to a group or individual who promotes conflict for profit.
difficult to recognise on why in some situations which turns into big violence that leads to genocide but not in all cases.
However, the two major studies of genocide are the functionalist and intentionalist. The link of genocide to the present day requires the connection that associates the roots with the contemporary state. In this way, it gives a structural reason for this source. It is stated by Baumann that there is an “elective affinity” amongst genocide and “modern civilisation,”
that is the turning point of the organizational capacities of the modern bureaucratic state for social engineering17. Furthermore, the link of genocide on the government can be acknowledged by the work of Arendt (1951) where the root cause of totalitarian state in the twentieth century occurrence lies in the ability to reply to modern technology and connections for mass gatherings of society and the role of genocide and terrors is segment of the ideological belief18. Moreover, Fein stated that the twentieth-century genocide “is virtually always a state crime - not a collective outburst, a riot or communal violence”19. To understand the frame of there needs to be an acknowledgement of the motivation of such organisation and the state-of-the-art- techniques. The coercive systemised character channelled and targeted groups to undertake mass murder during the Holocaust, which was organised by the industrial grand project. The Austrian architects and German engineering companies built “death factories” which was termed as the extermination camps by Arendt. Genocide scholars attempt to theorise and develop typologies that have not moved elsewhere, the connection between the state and genocide; it is very closely intended to totalitarian or authoritarian state. For instance, it is stated by Fein that scholars distinguish four types of genocide: such as, retributive, ideological, developmental or despotic genocide20. Nevertheless, Chalk and Jonassohn, (1990) recognised the difference between the groups who look to implement an ideology, or eradicate a threat, gain riches or to spread fear, whereas disputing for a lesser term that involves social and political groups21.
To connect genocide with nationalism requires more depth in history. Mann shifted the explanation from the importance of totalitarian state and the concept of Holocaust as the only form of genocide, through mending the relationship amongst genocide and contemporary state in the nineteenth century. Mann also states that the role of nationalist and the ideologies of democratisation that occurred were largely in the middle of the nineteenth century in making natural ideas of the government and the nation.
Demonstrators with dominant ethnos were tangled by nationalism that leads to democratic nation-state building, which in Mann’s terminology it created a blanket of inter-group violence, also known as the ‘dark side of democracy’. Mann argued “Murderous cleansing modern, because it is the dark side of democracy”22. Some argued Mann’s concept has not revealed democracy but the “dark side” of the nation-state, yet this refracts from Mann’s use of vigorous historical evidence to demonstrate the origins of ideologist such as the nationalist in democratic contemporary state-building. Thus, the role like these is created in the pre-totalitarian time which is created by ideologically driven violence.
17 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Oxford University Press 1989).
18 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt, Brace and Co 1951).
19 H Fein, ‘Denying Genocide. From Armenia to Bosnia’’ (2001).
20 H Fein, ‘Genocide and Gender: The Uses of Women and Group Destiny’ (1999) 1 Journal of Genocide Research 43; Al Khanif, ‘Women, Islam, and Modern Family Construction in the Perspectives of Legal Pluralism in Indonesia’ (2019) Vol.4 Petita : Jurnal Kajian Ilmu Hukum dan Syariah <http://www.
petita.ar-raniry.ac.id/index.php/petita/article/view/24>.
21 K Chalk, F and Jonassohn (ed), The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (Yale University Press 1990), p. 9-10.
22 M Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy. Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge University Press 2005), p. 2.
The formation between genocide and modern state can be retracted by looking into history where it is learned that genocide came about within a small associated group of the state at the beginning of the contemporary revolution in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, such as, England (conquest and settlement of Ireland and other colonies), revolutionary France (the repression of the Vendee revolt), and the USA (extermination of native Americans).
Furthermore, genocides keep various forms such as religious, political, racial and ethnic factors. It is argued by Levene that genocide should be acknowledged as the fundamental process of history in modernising state23. During the age of enlightenment, the start of modern state started with the making of the international system, which started since the treaty of Westphalia of (1648). Competition between states on geopolitical and economic in an international context created a race to modernise which created dispute amongst some countries and lead to genocide citizens as it is seen as an obstacle to their goal for power. The advanced modernising states such as England, France and USA, became successful by established genocide. This impacted other powers to succeed through the process of genocide to modernisation and colonisation, which led to the genocide being the solution to develop.
The present genocides occur in states that experience universal crisis that override ideology that help a radical and speedy revolutionising social change like the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Germany when World War One, Stalinist Russia in the 1930s, stated by Levene. The betrayal minds of a targeted group at present are powerful in crises like the, “stab in the back” by Jews in Germany in 1918-19; the “kulaks’ grain strike” in 1927- 28, the Armenians as an “enemy within” in 1915, and the Tutsi insurgency against Rwanda in 1994. Genocide studies done by others such as Kuper and their concept of modernity of state being the main cause is narrowing. One of the famous saying of Kuper (1981) on genocide was, “the word is new, the crime ancient”24. He further stated that the vital structure of genocide is based on collectively and frequent widespread between sharp divisions. Such societies have a range of synonyms. For example, profoundly divided societies, collectively fragmented societies, multi-ethnic societies, merged societies, segmented societies, internally colonised societies, and more; amongst the strongest historical conflict connections between genocide and plural societies. As for instance, in India on a partition, or in Bangladesh, or in Rwanda and Burundi, these all suggest an interconnected relationship. This does not mean that genocide in the plural society is inevitable, but only organised and challenging as divisions, offers the necessary conditions for domestic genocide. This is due to the existence of a diversity of racial, ethnic or religious groups that are political, economically, socially or culturally distinct.
In a communal society, individuals are systematically characterised by discrimination, segregation and inequalities. These systematic segregation causes conflict within the society paving the way for power and dominance for certain groups, as they acknowledge that their voice and presence are not valued. This generates a conflict that follow inequality and cleavages that creates zero-sum politics which can generalise universal challenges.
These situations can lead to genocide due to being framed or targeted for mass violence against communities which permits the whole of the society to become the enemy and get targeted for annihilation. Studies stress that the intentionalist position of fundamentalist, radical, which is generally Apocalyptic ideologies that form into genocidal.
For genocide to come about the intention of a group must be organised and systematic, not by an individual, their intentions must be to annihilate a collection group of populaces
23 M Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State Vol. 1: The Meaning of Genocide (IB Tauris 2005).
24 L Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (Penguin 1981).
which is can be extremely treacherous as it can result in unfair stereotyping. It is stated that ideologies of genocidal intention are linked to identity, security and purity25. These ideologies are a racial superiority which is grounded on building conflict between
‘us versus them’ also known as an antagonistic relationship amongst groups with the concept of outsiders and insiders that carry a devastating paranoid fantasy to carry out mass murder, which conspiracy theorists call the “other” as the “enemies within”. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there were developments in arts and sciences where research was carried out on what caused the diseases such as vermin, contamination, bacteria and bacilli thus the worry of connection to national character in history which lead to the upraise of nationalist ideas and jittered the original concept of the government, people, culture and territory.
The phenomenon is specified by Stone, (2008) as “Biopower”. In the developing urban centres, it was a time of great waves. Amongst the racist’s ideologies, they have a fascination to find a scapegoat and upholding their ethnic legitimacy and denouncing “mixing” to defend against contagion from “outsiders” to the group and made wide phobias around society26. Nevertheless, this would be unfair and misleading to link and degrade and frames inherent in genocide to a specific historical time. Regardless of the era and context of dehumanising a group of society imposes the use of non-human inscriptive labels such as the Nazi extermination of Jewish “vermin”, Soviet “liquidation” of “kulak spiders”, Pol Pot’s crushing of “worms”, the Hutu killing of “cockroaches.”27
It is suggested through past that it is not only building or a crisis and wartime circumstance that makes the existence of genocide but also due to appealing leadership. The genocide committed by certain leaders throughout history that was so epidemic and gruesome it became essential for people to name the leaders for their historic genocide such as,
“Hitler’s Holocaust”, Stalin’s Great terror”. Genocide is also orchestrated to design and rebuild a society, state and the wider world not only filled with ‘Apocalyptic’ terrors. Some motivations are coming from knowledgeable leaders for example, Cato’s persistence plea for Rome to destroy the enemy Carthage “Carthago delenda est”, the romanticizing of Anatolian Turks as the genuine ethnic regeneration by Gokalp’s. It is a hand of a leader whom is misled by a mission to change the nation stated by Cromwell. Hitler, along with revolutionary leaders determined on rapid social revolution – Stalin’s “Year of the Great Turn”, Pol Pot’s “Year Zero”, also, it might reflect a wider privileged racism and planned fears. For instance, Jefferson’s and Jackson are outlining Native Americans as problems to US expansion, and US counter-communism during the Cold War.
The whole society also had participated in created further disputes. The cause of planning to exterminate and deport six million Jews, one million Sinti and Roma and hundreds of thousands of other targeted groups such as homosexuals, communists, trade unionists that needed societal engagement on a large scale by the Nazis during the 1939 and 1945.
The Jews genocide was branded by cruel mass murder, particularly in Eastern Europe such as Latvia, Poland, Belorussia and Ukraine but not any different to the machete-wielding goriness of Rwanda genocide in 1994. By learning about the genocide process it gives us knowledge of the various forms of involvement and to distinguish the types of violence and barbarity that led to genocide. Some studies such as, Holocaust by Goldhagen28 or
25 J Semelin, Purify and Destroy. The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide (Columbia University Press 2007).
26 D Stone, ‘Biopower and Modern Genocide’, Empire, Colony, Genocide. Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History Oxford (Berghahn 2008), p. 162-179.
27 J Hughes, ‘Genocide and Ethnic Conflict’ in S Cordell, K and Wolf (ed), The Rutledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict (Routledge Publishing 2016), p 130.
28 Daniel J Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners (Knopf 1996).
Rwanda by Prunier29 (1995) have shown that whether genocide was perpetrated by modern technology like in Nazi Germany or underdeveloped country like Rwanda, there’s need to be a large organisation. It is the influence of large ordinary populace who come together and connect by involving through assistance within the state in the process of identification, dehumanization, exclusion and extermination. Likewise, it shouldn’t be overlooked by envy, greed, resentment that is rooted in genocide since the gross study of Jews murder in Jedwabne carried out by the Polish neighbours in 1941 which brings back the remembrance of the tragic event, stated by Gross.30
Occasionally during the Nazi Germany some citizens were protected from the main killings, whilst Rwanda’s case was one of the large killings carried out by the masses.
Nevertheless, the fifty years gap and the interval of modernity, the rate of the killings in previous Rwanda has increased exceeding the peak period of Nazis industrial annihilation process that (estimated to 500,000-800,000 Rwandan Tutsi whom was killed for over three and half months during April-July 1994, in comparison to some 400,000 Hungarian Jews murdered in Auschwitz in April to June in 1944). The twentieth century features a distinct form of genocide through the process of mass connection which gives a swift and direct translation of leadership ideology to influence big populaces which makes the controlling process effortless. The capacity to rapidly repeat propaganda of competition enables the distinct features of genocide more possible. Even though Rwanda was underdeveloped the process of propaganda spread through the radio amongst the communities. During the late twentieth century technology has made a huge impact in aiding communications and spreading propaganda which is the main cause of the genocide and also critical to disclosures. The use of publicity through the media has brought attention of the genocide to the present populaces so that they may be aware of the preventions and punishments, such as the case of Balkans, Rwanda and Darfur. The procedure and convenient of the technology has enabled to internationally track, lock up and build a case against suspected offenders.
Yet one might ask, how fruitful is it to dog deep into history and retrace the study of genocide? Yet, according to the contemporary state criteria genocide does not establish as a modern phenomenon and there is no logical reason to determine it. Many critiques’
has stated throughout this essay that there are good reasons to acknowledge the motives of genocide which happened during a certain time in historical era. There are no specific connections amongst genocide and the twentieth century, but there are no particular reasons to exclude modern cases from the prehistoric era in a modern definition of genocide.
for instance, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth century’s Mongol massacres across Eurasia, Caesar’s destruction of “barbaric” Gallic civilization and the Roman Republic’s destruction of Carthage. The past is a valuable lesson for the present state. Since, a dialogue made by Thucydides’ Melian concerning the Athenian Empire’s genocidal annihilation of Melos in 416 B.C- a case that is different to that of Srebrenica which commonly mentioned in the contemporary trainings in US and UK military on War crimes and genocide. This shows that genocide is a persistence feature of war.
Genocide shows us those wars that were characterised by the “laws and norms” that was refuted by one group or the other. In order to refute an enemy during a war regardless of it being an inter-state or internal armed conflict the validity and safety carried out by laws and customs of war is normally planned, which is mostly formed by divisions, inequalities, and discrimination. Often these types of discrimination such as, racism and
29 G Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, History of a Genocide 1959–1994 (Columbia University Press 1995).
30 T Gross, Jan, Neighbors, The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. (Princeton University Press 2001).
religious zeal are common by various other parties in creating conflict this is obvious on a large scale from Hitler’s response indirect approach of race war against Slavs in Eastern Europe and the Japan genocide acts in south-East Asia. Historically there are many cases where anticolonial resistance like the, guerrilla wars and insurgencies they were refused by the states in identifying and legitimizing the armed resistance and further denied acting with combatant and non-combatant differences by the use of force, this led to annihilation and war crimes where many civilians were killed in the process indiscriminately. Nevertheless this decision can also come about from the deliberate reactions to resist, military frustrations, rape and plunder through a siege of the city for example in the UK the army Badajoz in 1812 was sacked, in Japan the army’s “raping of Nanking” in 1937, the Wehrmacht’s obliteration of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, the assault by the Russian military and the assault and destruction of Grozny by aerial bombing in late 1994-early1995, and many others.
Genocide in the light of military culture has been studied many times for the case of Germany. The displacement of the German empire and the annihilation of the Herero and Nama peoples in the start of the twentieth century 1904-07, known today as Namibia where mostly recognised as the first modern genocide. For Hull it is the intention of complete destruction amongst the growing logic of the German military culture which invigorated the concept in a strategic genocide for the military to obtain the military compulsion to be victorious through human cost by extreme solutions. The idea built the foundations to become a world war where in world war two there was a fast and uncontrolled killing against the opponent, regardless of attacking ordinary citizens or soldiers. This unjust killing was leading to mass murder and genocide with piles of unidentified corpses31. Nonetheless, some people were killed by starvation and denial of concentration camp than being killed directly. This begs the question on how vicious was the characteristic of the military culture of Germany? United States’ tyranny of the Philippines revolution from 1899 to 1902 equally could be drawn with further contemporary episodes of systematic mass killing by militaries.
During the “Boer war” from 1899 to 1902, the British and the civil authorities have certainly neglected the murders of tens and thousands of Boer civilians in concentration camps during the war. To explain the different levels of cruelty or control and the deathly outcome was a clear vital point of a race. The US colonial race war was due to the fact the Herero and Nama being black, whilst Filipinos were also looked at inhumanely due to the similarities with the blacks and Native American in the US32. The harsh military of the US crushed the resistance within the Philippines differed slightly from the German military except that the portion was larger – some half a million war victims, and maybe as several more perished through sickness and neglect. Furthermore, the US army’s policy had experiences in the genocide movements opposing Native American people. In distinction, the British restraint during the war of Boer was an exceptional one due to the fact that the Boers were white descendent of Europeans. Identifying a cruel exceptionalism in German military culture is intolerant. Military behaviour can be of befittingly disaggregated into
31 Isabel V Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Cornell University Press 2005); Qonita Royani Salpina, Rusjdi Ali Muhammad and Yenny Sriwahyuni,
‘Kedudukan Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) Helsinki Dalam Pembentukan Undang-Undang Nomor 11 Tahun 2006 Tentang Pemerintahan Aceh’ (2018) 3 Petita : Jurnal Kajian Ilmu Hukum dan Syariah <http://petita.ar-raniry.ac.id/index.php/petita/article/view/34>; Obikwu, ‘The Federal Constitution, National- Ethnic Minority Groups and the Creation of States: The Post–Colonial Nigerian Experience’ (2017) 2 PETITA: JURNAL KAJIAN ILMU HUKUM DAN SYARIAH <http://petita.ar-raniry.
ac.id/index.php/petita/article/view/56>.
32 Paul A Kramer, The Blood of Government. Race, Empire, the United States and the Philippines (The University of North Carolina Press 2006).
forms that usually settle for the rules and standards of war, and people that don’t in order to combat anticolonial resistance, they established army drills within the nineteenth and early twentieth century along with entire population concentrated camps, relocation and displacement of peoples, land seizures, which entirely was done by massacres and infrequently putting to death or comprise the latter categories.
This divergence of continuing military culture is apparent within the military inventory which in the twentieth century was termed as “counterinsurgency”. The racism and violence of British military policy against the Mau-Mau rebellion in the Republic of Kenya and the Chinese communism, insurgency in Malaya, French policy against Algerian revolt, and later American policy in Vietnam which constructed on lessons learned within the nineteenth century33. An identical pattern is clear additionally in another European colonial power like Russia. It is unstartling that Russian military vehicles within the military campaigns in the Chechen Republic in 1994-6 and 1999-2004 typically bore the legend “Urology”, for General Ermolov’s genocidal campaigns against the peoples of the North Caucasus within the decade work well at intervals the general pattern of practices of military conquest established by alternative European colonial powers. The advancement of a culture of non-restraint and non-discrimination in German military workforce without question funded to German participation in the Armenian racial extermination in 1915-18 within which one million of Armenians were dead, starved or died from neglect and compelled marches in an exceedingly in a very campaign of deportation and extinction followed by the Ittihadist Turkish military regime determined to create an exclusivist Turkish nation from the failing Ottoman empire.34
The Armenian case is maybe the simplest, however off from being the sole, the illustration of the state implemented collective obliviousness, and self-censorship, that continuously surrounds putting to death. Historically states hardly support the narrative of their origins and growth that gives light to the study of genocide. the only exception to this rule in Germany after the world war two, since the study of the Holocaust, includes importantly in the curriculum at an early age, thus in order to commemorate and compensate the victims the German state has a huge effort in applying this. In distinction, many other European countries have yet to undergo and coming to terms with the colonial past notably, Britain, Spain, Portugal and Netherlands, as prevalent in Germany post-war. However, Turkey has reached the censoring the past to a new measure where those who are recognized as the Armenian genocide face consequences of prosecution, forced exile even career threats and death. Yet the term for this atrocity is not known as genocide as it brings shame, so the successful leader of the Turkish government has stressed the foreign states including the European states and the USA to use the term tragic events of 1915 as an alternative word to eclipse the word genocide due to censorship of the assassinations. Also, it is not unusual for the criminals to use synonyms and metaphors to disguise the genocide and this is due to the reflection of shame. The Nazis prepared a final solution for the Jewish situation in the minutes of the Wannsee conference during 1942, which stated the emigration and transportation to the East. This shutting out the Kulaks was termed by Stalin as “class”.
Likewise, the atom bomb that dropped on Japan was started by Truman as “rain of ruin”
whilst British Bomber Command termed as “dehousing”35 on mass killing in Germany in
33 David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (Phoenix 2005).
34 G Karlsson, Klas, ‘The Armenian Genocide- The Archetype of Modern Atrocities’, In The Times of Genocide: 1915-2015’ (2015).
35 The British Government’s chief scientific adviser Professor Frederick Lindemann sent a memorandum to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on 30 May 1943, which was accepted by the cabinet and known as “Dehousing” paper which was about the most effective use of nation’s resources in
World War Two.
Consequently, the cause of the genocide has mainly focused on the problem of threat, perception or “security dilemma” termed by realists and whether the dominant ethnic or states influence majorities or minorities, recognised by parties or communities as to be a threat that necessitates large extinction of that group. Moreover, the threat is mostly claimed to be posted at the state-building projects and the state building group are anxious because of the power of its state being targeted by an aggressive group, and these are interdependent and existential threats and the solution to this is to thrash this group. The state is the main analysis by concentrating on this method, the Importance of subtleties and motivation for mass murder can be overlooked. The threat perception may additionally be racial, ethnic, or religious and assume multinational forms. The development of an universal “globalized” kind of Islamist ideology since the mid1990s, as most clearly voiced by the militant Salafism of Al Qaeda, has used claims of “massacres”
against Muslims in numerous places together with Lebanon, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chechnya, Kashmir, Somalia, Burma et al. to legitimate an armed struggle against the
“Judeo Christian alliance” of the USA, Israel, and the “West”36.
In addition, the explanation for putting to death can be typically quite narrow and express – land greed, conquest and required arrest, and settler colonialism. Recent scholarship on genocide has a lot of systematically and strictly analysed and highlighted Lemkin’s interest within the association between killing and exploitation37. A convincing case of the modern concept of genocide has been created for the colonial “land grabbing” origins. A shape of murder has historically followed in places where land greed has become infused with religious intolerance, and where the racist and religious ideologies of coercive colonial conquest mix with settler colonialism38. There were debates since the sixteenth century by the European philosophers on the morality of colonial occupation and atrocity, together with the physical and “cultural” genocides of indigenous societies versus their rights – which was all directed beneath the introduction of the mission civilise article39. The colonists and settlers drive for dehumanization and displacements of populaces which is known as genocide is historically aggregated by the mentality of force acquisition, greed and power. The connection of religious interests for settlers to colonise is enlightening since the element is equally the fundamental reason for overriding the ideology of state such as the US concept of “providence” and also known as “manifest destiny” also, Zionist Biblically-rooted claim for land in Palestine. In such cases the main motive behind the atrocities being carried out is to terrorize and clear the population and take over the resources of the land, whilst diving the community in the process to make it easier to control the areas. However, the leaders of states have attempted many times to cover the motives of racism and religious prejudice at intervals amongst genuine moral security or state concern, most of the time it’s only the exceptional leaders who openly state the clearness of genocide intention.
waging war on Germany.
36 Osama Ben Laden, ‘A Declaration of Jihad against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Sanctuaries’ in Bruce Lawrence (ed), Messages to the World. The Statements of Osama Bin Laden (Verso 1996), p. 23-30.
37 A Dirk Moses, Empire, Colony, Genocide. Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance, World History Oxford (Berghahn 2008).
38 B Kiernan, Blood and Soil. A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (Yale University Press 2007).
39 A Fitzmaurice, ‘Anti-Colonialism in Western Political Thought: The Colonial Origins of the Concept of Genocide’ in A Dirk Moses (ed), Empire, Colony, Genocide. Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History Oxford (Berghahn 2008), p. 55-80.
The attribution of the slogan “to hell or Connaught” captures the logic of Cromwell’s policy;
this was due to his view of the massacre of a people as a “judgement of God” on Papists”.
The ideological result for the Germans by Hitler was to secure a good living standard for Eastern Germany so in return they destroy the “Jewish Bolshevization”. Consequently, democrats can express extremely the genocidal instincts. Jefferson Memorial would have looked different if it was engraved by his damnation of native Americans, to “pursue them to annihilation”40. Some comments were unwillingly made after the massacres of the settlers by native Americans and in contrast to several of his social group, it is understood that the killing people was a part of the Anglo culture of colonial occupation from the era of Asia. In both Darfur and Rwanda genocide scholars debate that the ethnic competition for land was a main element for mass killings. The threats and security dilemmas nevertheless distracts us from the role of state determinations and material interest. The overstress of a threat that is done by the Elites intentionally to offer disclosure and to legitimize acts that has a hidden motive whether it is from a fabricated source or to seize and colonize lands from another group or state, for imposing their ideas as in racial divisions or for communist ideology.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this article firstly explored the definition of genocide and stated the arguments by various critics such as, Katz, Destexhe and Raphael Lemkin on the definition and the historical atrocities that may be recognised as genocide. It is also understood that there have been many genocides throughout history which are briefly stated, that had an immense impact on the states, citizens and foreign countries. Secondly, the article has outlined the different stages of genocide that raises two questions in mind on, how this was possible and why it happened in a particular state. The motives for such crimes vary and the main goal, which is to conquer and overrule for political, religious, ethnic and resource authority. Furthermore, it has explained the unique cases and patterns of genocide along with Stanton’s discussion of the ten stages that lead to a state or an individual to carry out the mass killing. The article also defined the discussion of negative propaganda by governments and groups that cause division amongst communities. In the final part of the article, it probed the grounds of genocide where nationalism drove to massacre and its implications in the twenty-first century. What is more is that many intellectuals do not agree with the interpretations of genocide due to the vastness of the crimes. Furthermore, it has discussed the functionalist and intentionalist and the connections to the contemporary day that links to the roots of genocide along with Fein’s statement about the twentieth-century genocide being a “virtual state crime”. Finally, this article has focused on many scholars and outlined the brief and intense study on various reasons what makes genocide possible. It is important to understand since it is the key lesson to learn from and to prevent it happening in future so that humans can coexist in a society and feel a sense of safety as a citizen within a nation. Also, the study of genocide and knowing the roots of it is significant in the contemporary world as it is important, since in the past people were deprived of many rights such as black slaves, women and religious sect were underprivileged and denied to get an education, work, freedom of speech, religious intolerance and many more, so that such groups cannot gain power or control.
40 Hughes (n 27), p 134.
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