Unit 5 Flashcards
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious
group:
1) Killing members of a group;
2) Causing serious bodily harm or mental harm to members of a group;
3) Deliberately inflicting on the group’s conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part thereof;
4) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within group;
5) Forcibly transferring children of a group to another group.
Key definitional elements of genocide
▪ Destroy
1) Modern international courts and tribunals’ focus has limited ‘destruction’ to physical or biological destruction of the group
2) Legal application of genocide remains confined to physical or biological
destruction
3) Dissolution of [the group’s] unit and/or collective identity’ was also part of genocide
Groups
1) National, ethnical, racial and religious
2) Limit targeted groups to ‘stable and permanent’
groups
3) Collection of people with a particular group identity
4) Status of a group subjectively determined
5) Definitions of each group category
Specific conduct
1) Killing members of the group equates to the crime of murder, which occurs when death has been caused due to an act or omission
2) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. This harm must be intentionally inflicted harm.
3) Serious bodily or mental harm does not necessarily have to be permanent or
irremediable
Intent
1) Genocide also requires the special intent: the intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part
2) Intent may be inferred, and does not have to be based on express statements
Ethnic cleansing
1) It is carried out in the name of misguided nationalism, historic
grievances and a powerful driving force for revenge.
2) Ethic cleansing has been carried out through murder, torture,
arbitrary arrest, detention, extrajudicial executions, rape
Second degree genocide
1) Mental element is missing (unintentional genocide)
2) Committed typically under conditions of war
First degree genocide
1) Includes three requirements- mental element , material element and destruction of a
human group.
2) Also known as absolute genocide or intentional genocide
3) Ethnic cleansing constitute intentional genocide
4) Example Rwandan genocide.
Third degree genocide.
1) Lacks both mental and material elements
2) Occurs as a by-product of reckless or negligent policies
3) Outcome of mass-death inducing acts and policies lacking intent & knowledge and direct genocidal acts
4) Can be called genocidal mass death
Ideological genocide/politicides
1) Aim at achieving utopia
2) Divided into progressive and reactionary
Progressive
1) Head towards a classless society in the totalitarian Marxist-Leninist tradition, most commonly, to secure results of a revolution
- E.g. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime
Reactionary
1) Strive for a “racially pure” nation-state or establishing capitalist economic regime at any cost
2) E.g. killing of Jews by the Nazi empire in Germany
Pragmatic genocide
- Three types:
1) Developmental
2)Retributive
3) Hegemonic
Pragmatic genocide
1) Developmental genocide is a situation in which political leadership
aims to eliminate “backward” people and their cultures.
2.1) When an ethnic minority or politically oppressed group seeks revenge of past injustice, the genocide is said to be retributive.
2.2) Retributive genocide is demonstrated by the Rwandan genocide in April-July 1994.
3) Hegemonic – seizing and maintaining political power
Factors leading to genocide:
1) Ethnicity, nationality, religion.
2) Economic dependency, destitution.;
3) Limited physical resources.
4) Usurpation of political power, marginalization.
5) Quelling of insurgencies or threat of coup d’etat.
6) Earlier genocide.
7) Colonial and alien administrative systems.
8) Artificial national and subnational boundaries.
9) Role of colonial powers and world superpowers
