Genocide Theory

Question 1

Bloxham on Genocide

BLOXHAM

Answer 1

• More a ‘legal’ than a ‘historical’ term

- recognising genocide as a crime should be a ‘by product’ not a

Question 2

What is the ‘crisis of representation’

WINTERS

Answer 2

our language is unsuitable to discuss genocide

Question 3

Bauer on the genocide convention

Answer 3

one of the most problematic documents in international relations

we need sharper analytical tools than the ones provided to us by the 1948 Convention to call a genocide a genocide when we see it.

Question 4

Bauer on genocide and race

Answer 4

By now we know that all humans originate from a group of Homo sapiens who developed some half a million years ago in East Africa.

Race should not be included in a definition of genocide; racial prejudice should, because people have it and it causes mass murder.

Question 5

BAUER on political groups in the definition of genocide

Answer 5

However, in general, group changes of ethnicity are extremely difficult. The difference between them and religious groups is obvious. But there is no logic in including religious but not political groups in definitions of genocide, because in principle—again, not necessarily in practice—you can change your political allegiances.

Question 6

Rummel’s estimations of civillians killed in political violence, and by genocide

Answer 6

Rudolph J. Rummel estimated the number of civilian victims of governments and political movements in the first eighty-seven years of the twentieth century at 169 million

Thirty-eight million of the 169 million civilians died in genocides,

Question 7

Bauer’s four genocidal events

Answer 7

one, genocides according to the Convention’s definition;

two, politicides, that is mass murders with political, economic, and social motivations;

three, ethnic cleansing when the purpose is to eliminate an ethnic group as such;

four, global genocidal ideologies that preach murderous propaganda and practice mass murder, such as Radical Islam.

Question 8

Helen Fein’s preconditions for genocide?

Answer 8

1. there was a sustained attack on continuity of attacks by the perpetrator to physically destroy group members;
2. the perpetrator was a collective or organized actor (usually the state) or commander of organized actors;
3. the victims were selected because they were members of the collectivity;
4. the victims were defenseless or were killed regardless of whether they
   surrendered or resisted; and
5. the destruction of group members was undertaken with intent to kill and
   murder was sanctioned by the perpetrator.1

Question 9

Peiter Drost on ommissions in the convention?

Answer 9

Pieter Drost, a Dutch professor of law, in 1959 argued that the omission of groups formed on the basis of political affiliation from the Convention might permit states to exploit this loophole