Genocide

Genocide involves the calculated targeting and killing of a specific ethnic group, or any huge deliberate killing of civilians carried out as a consequence of government policy. The worst of these were carried out by Communist governments in the USSR and China.

The United Nations Genocide Convention has attempted to define "genocide":

Article 2 In the present Convention, genocide means 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.

Article 3 The following acts shall be punishable: (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide.

20th century examples include:

• 1916-1917: The Turkish genocide of the Armenians
• 1939-1945: The Holocaust
• 1979-1981: The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia
• 1991-1995: The former Yugoslavia, involving the killing of Bosnian Muslims
• 1995: Hutu genocide of the Tutsi population in Rwanda

Despite this lip service the United Nations has failed to recognize the events in the Darfur region of Sudan as genocide. Amnesty International, and the African Union likewise only acknowledge the "tragedy" in Darfur but refuse to characterize the situation as genocide. The so-called "humanitarian" organization Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) director Jean-Hervé Bradol called the term genocide "inappropriate" and its deputy emergency director Dr. Mercedes Taty said, "I don't think that we should be using the word 'genocide' to describe this conflict."

The European Union and the United States government both officially recognize Darfur as genocide.

The term applies mostly to mass killings since the beginning of the 20th century, although throughout history there have been many cases of bloodshed like this. Even in the Bible, there was the Israelite conquest of Canaan, where God instructed them "...do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them...as the Lord your God has commanded you..." (Deuteronomy 20:16).