What is Genocide? Definitions and Conceptions

Question 1

What are the origins of the word genocide?

Answer 1

Greek:
genes – race nation tribe

Cide – killing

• Murder of the Jews became the ‘paradigm case’ of genocide and underlies the word’s origins
• Framework which ended up defining term

Question 2

Who was Raphael Lemkin? and what did he contribute towards the debate?

Answer 2

• Largely ignored until 15 - 18 years ago
• Brought genocide into the political and legal domain

Inspired by Armenia:

• horrified by Turkish attempts to wipe out Armenians
• physical acts of revenge he witnessed
• He advocated for arrest and trying of ringleaders, however, no law or court for this
• Man as a myth… he became much more post-mortem than he was

Question 3

What was the Madrid Conference?

Answer 3

1933 - 5th Conference for the Unification of Penal Law
- Experts from 37 countries

Lemkin submitted a paper

• Need for recognised crime which recognised the actions in Armenia
  e. g. annihilation of religious and ethnic groups
  e. g.2 destruction or vandalisation of culture
• Extend international recognition
• Any offender should be punished regardless of country of origin

NOT ACCEPTED

Question 4

Why weren’t Lemkin’s proposals in Madrid accepted?

Answer 4

Countries concerned that it would lead to a loss of soverignty

Soviet Union and Germany were most critical - shock

Question 5

What was ‘Axis Ruled in Occupied Europe’? and what did involve?

Answer 5

1944 book written by Lemkin going further than the Madrid proposals

• Collected evidence, used at Nuremburg trials, to prove need for new kind of crime
• Coins the term genocide - mass murder and sterilisation not sufficient
• Touched on erasure through cultural genocide - said sterilisation could be part of genocidal campaign
• By destroying identity –> easier to destroy physical bodies

Question 6

How did Lemkin describe the coordinated plan of actions in ‘Axis Ruled in Occupied Europe’?
did he describe techniques?

Answer 6

2 phases:

1. destruction of national pattern of oppressed group
2. Imposition of national pattern of dominant group

using the jewish case as a paradigm one Lemkin described the techniques that would flag up genocide:

Political – street names, family names, german admin

Social – social structures, take away legal system  decline of independence

Cultural – no school, language, license for law

Economic – businesses closed, take away trade

Biological – lower birth rate by preventing marriage, ration food, withhold firewood and blankets in winter

Physical – kill people

Religious - ban/control/restrict practices

Moral - pornographic imposed to morally subdue, alcohol for same reason

HAD TO BE AGAINST A GROUP

Question 7

What was Churchill’s quote? when did he say it?

Answer 7

1941 - “We are in the presence of a crime without a name”

Question 8

Is there an important difference between genocide?

Answer 8

systematic

directed at group

intention to destroy

genocide cannot be indiscriminate - in genocide people cannot be able to leave that group

importance of eventual end whereas mass murder can be one off

genocide can have different faces of attack - mass murder is one form of genocide

genocide is a process

Question 9

What makes genocide a powerful term?

Answer 9

• Connotations
• Images
• Scale
• Capability of man – look at ourselves
• Disturbing
• Genocide and holocaust is inseparable
• Because it’s so impersonal
  o 6m breaks down individuality of group
  o Perpetrators wanted us to see that as fragments without identity
• Status in international law + responsibility
  o Legally powerful term

Question 10

1. When was the Nuremberg Trials?
2. what happened there?
3. what were the implications from the judgements?

Answer 10

1. 1945
2. 12 members of the Nazi party put on trial for crimes against humanity
   - Accused of intention to annihilate groups by taking away needs of that group e.g. language, health, family etc –> Jews, poles, Gypsies, russians
   - Lemkin wanted the word ‘genocide’ included for magnitude –> it was omitted because too contentious
3. court and judgement was only for crimes during war
   - punishment of peace time acts would have really set a precedent
   - makes it look like acts only occur in war –> lies, 3rd Reich started before the war

Question 11

what was the UN Convention of 1946? what happened? what were the fears?

Answer 11

A meeting of the UN to discuss the definition and appliance of the word genocide

Decided that genocide did not relate to political groups or to culture –> thought this was too weak (USSR?)

Desire for consensus –> reduced initial concept to physical and biological forms

Fears that could cause international tensions with anyone accusing anyone –> BUT needed universal term otherwise confusion

Question 12

When was the UN Genocide Convention and what happened?

Answer 12

9th December 1948

It defined genocide and advised all participating members to PREVENT and PUNISH actions of genocide in war AND peacetime

Question 13

What did article 2 say?

Answer 13

Defined genocide as:

any of the following acts 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 group.

Question 14

what did article 3 say?

Answer 14

Defined the crimes that can be punished under the convention:

(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.

Question 15

What were the issues with ratification

Answer 15

USSR didn’t ratify until 1954 –> it preferred the terms crimes against humanity and crimes against peace

USA - threatened by fears of communism - did not ratify until 1988

Got 24 sig (20 req.) but sig weakened without largest powers

Lemkin lobbied for ratification incl. letter to Truman but convention lost tract down years because weak and ineffective, littered with frailties

Question 16

What are the problems with the genocide convention?

Answer 16

The two most powerful nations did not ratify

Cultural and political factors left out - it mainly focused on murder

Nothing to oblige countries to act or prevent genocide - it is essentially a powerless document

Ambiguity of the term ‘in part’

No preventative machinery

Not explicit enough about what constitutes a genocidal act e.g. ‘mental harm’

No central body to define genocide?

Question 17

Who are the main theorists of genocide?

Answer 17

Roger Smith
Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn
Israel Chamy
Leo Kuper
Helen Fein
Jean-Paul Satre
Greg Stanton

Question 18

What does Roger Smith say?

Answer 18

Calls for calculation not passions

5 forms of genocide:
Revenge - retribution (form of passion?)

Conquest - spread terror to show off power and prevent retribution (mainly pre-modern)

Gain (utilitarian) - with colonisation –> natives killed in name of progress

• ethnocentrism
• driven by greed

Power - monopolistic

Purification - ideological

• main differences between modern and premodern
• dehumanisation of victims

Question 19

What did Chalk and Jonassohn say

Answer 19

• Nuance how we classify genocide
• Focus on intent
• It must be classed as something different
• Not just victim part of group but that group defined by the perpetrator - imaged victim groups

Question 20

What did Israel Chamy say?

Answer 20

Quite a generalised theory

Argued destructive drive in humans caused by fear of death
- to survive groups will kill other groups

Happens to non-miltary people who are powerless and helpless to oppressors
- Stresses imp of power balance

Question 21

Why does Leo Kuper disagree with Chamy’s theory?

Answer 21

Argues that under such terms every nation would commit genocide, which simply hasn’t happened

Question 22

What does Helen Fein say?

Answer 22

Identifies 2 prime motives in pre-modern genocide:
1. the desire to get rid of religious adversaries

2. to get rid of tribes that cannot be assimilated

She points to criteria when judging whether a genocide: 
- means to kill group
- How long actions continued 
- How was it organised
- was it the state?
Did the state stand behind the perpetrators?
were victims pre-selcted?
- did victims resist?

Question 23

what does Jean-Paul Satre say?

Answer 23

He emphasised the economic factors

Pointed to the colonized countries where indigenous were seen as an obstacle to progress e.g. markets

Recognises the othering of victim groups, endlessly defined by the oppressor as less than them

Question 24

What did Leo Kuper argue?

Answer 24

He argued for the comparison of genocides so as to define the term

Identified 3 types of genocide:
1.
2. Colonisation
3. Plural societies 
- plural societies are closely related to outbreaks of genocide

Said there were 5 catalysts towards genocide:

1. Manufactured cultural and occupational differences
2. Disparity between political participation –> imbalance of political power
3. Difference in religion, community or organisation. BUT relationships at different levels cut across basic dividing lines
4. A history of conflict between groups
5. Attempt to create an overall identity based on race, ethnicity or religion

When 5 factors come together there is a tendency for violence

Question 25

What did Greg Stanton say?

Answer 25

He said there were 8 stages of genocide which have to be in order

Classification – people divided into ‘us’ and ‘them’

Symbolization – Badges, stereotype, lists, names

Dehumanisation – equated as sub-humans e.g. animals, vermin, insects, diseases

Organisation – special army units, militas, training and arming

Polarization – e.g. propoganda

Preparation – identification, separation based on ethnicity or religion

Extermination – start to try to kill all members

Denial

Question 26

Question

Answer 26

Do you agree that the legacy of the Genocide Convention has been scholarly debate, not action on the ground?

Lemkins role in history of genocide? Overstated? Deserve to be forgotten?

The convention – effective? Or not?

What’s the point of all this debate? Why so many theories? Who cares?

Where does this debate come from?

Given problems of term, given inefficiency of convention – do we need the term genocide itself?

Question 27

What does Mark Levene say in reading on genocide?

Answer 27

187m deaths in 20th
1 genocide a year since 1945

Form of genocide is not the primary issue whereas framework is
o Need context of each individual genocide
o Giddens – “nation states only exist in systematic relations with other nation states

argues that “genocide occurs where a state, perceiving the integrity of its agenda to be threatened by an aggregate population - defined by the state in collective or communal terms - seeks to remedy the situation by the systematic, en masse physical elimination of that aggregate, in toto, or until it is no longer perceived to represent a threat.

discrepancy between an actual threat - where it exists at all - and what the perpetrator claims to be a threat is at the very heart of what one might call the genocide conundrum.

The genocidal mentality, in other words, is closely linked with agendas aimed at accelerated or force-paced social and economic change in the interests of “catching up” or alternatively avoiding, or circumventing, the rules of the system leaders.

Question 28

What are Lemkin’s 3 types of warfar?

Answer 28

1. between powerful sovereign states
   - Lots of non-combatants killed e.g. Dresden + Hiroshima
   - Not genocide?
2. powerful against ‘illegitimate’
   - e.g. Brit vs Boer
   - Racism invariably confirms this judgmental verdict. In the circumstances, all “necessary” measures for the liquidation of resistance are allowable
3. involves genocide
   - when the enemy is no longer a perceived “illegitimate” state but a perceived “illegitimate” community within the territorial definition or imperial framework of the perpetrator state.

Question 29

what types of theories does Levene touch on?

Answer 29

Marxist theory - class struggle
Psychopathological theory - leader madness
Elite theory - racial e.g. tutsi
Functional - standing in way of economic development
Sociological - destructiveness from biological nature of man e.g. Lorenz and Fromm