Vocabulary: Genocide

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Ten Stages of Genocide refers to the historical model that has been developed by Dr. Gregory Stanton of GenocideWatch. It highlights patterns that are evident in modern genocides. It is widely taught in classroom instruction on genocide and has helped shape several museum exhibits, particularly the newly remodeled Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum.

Genocide Watch: Ten Stages of Genocide

100 Days refers to the stretch of time from the first week of April to the middle of July 1994, when most of the murders in the Rwandan genocide occurred. In more recent years, this has also been a period of Rwandan national mourning for the approximately 1 million genocide victims.

Nineteen Forty-Eight Genocide Convention refers to The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide at the United Nations General Assembly in that year. Following the coining of the term, genocide, by Holocaust refugee and lawyer, Rafael Lemkin, and his tireless campaigning to see genocide universally recognized as a crime, the UN adopted this human rights treaty in December, 1948. This marks the first international recognition of genocide as a crime. The United States ratified the treaty 40 years later.

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

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Prudence Bushnell refers to the American who served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs at the time of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Bushnell warned of the threat of violence right before the genocide began, though the US government and others did not heed her calls for assistance. Without sufficient backing, she continued to try to intercede on behalf of the victims.

Raoul Peck's 2005 film, Sometimes in April, includes a depiction of Bushnell.

Caliphate refers to a type of historical or proposed Islamic political state that exists under the rule of a single ruler, or caliph. In the 21st century, ISIL/ISIS has perpetrated genocide in the Middle East, ostensibly with the goal of setting up a caliphate. The last years of the Ottoman Caliphate, during and after WWI, brought state-sponsored genocide against much of the Armenian Christian community within the empire. However, it bears noting that caliphates in history have not all pursued genocidal policies.

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William Clinton refers to the 42nd president of the United States, who served in office from 1993 to 2001, when the genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans took place. His administration's reaction to the former has been criticized as inadequate, and to the latter, as too harsh.  It took a long while for the United States to label the mass murder of Tutsis in Rwanda a genocide, and no direct intervention took place to halt the atrocities. By contrast, the United States did intervene in the Balkans to halt the genocide, deploying aircraft to bomb Bosnian Serb targets, and soon thereafter sending peacekeepers. Once out of office, Clinton visited Rwanda and publicly apologized for failing to take sufficient measures to save the victims.

Samantha Power examines these genocides in her Pulitzer Prize-winning 2002 book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. While condemning US policies regarding both genocides, Power argues that Clinton is no more at fault than other sitting US presidents, who in her eyes have similarly neglected to take commensurate actions to prevent or stop the implementation of genocidal policies by foreign governments.

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Gacaca court refers to the traditional Rwandan justice system that was utilized in the early 2000s to heal the country following the genocide on the 1990s. Gacaca involves gathering the local community outdoors as surviving victims bear witness against the accused party, who is expected to seek forgiveness. At a time when the prisons were full and there were many perpetrators walking free, Gacaca was seen as a way to move forward. However, the practice has sometimes been criticized as unjust due to its alleged inability to hold murderers truly accountable for their crimes. Hundreds of thousands were put through the Gacaca court since 2001.

The 2005 HBO film, Sometimes in April (Raoul Peck), includes a brief depiction of a Gacaca court.

Documentary (15 minutes): Gacaca Justice - Rwanda

Genocide refers to any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The term was first coined by the Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, in 1941, after he escaped the Holocaust by fleeing Poland for the United States. Largely due to his persuasive efforts, the United Nations adopted the Genocide Convention in 1948.

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Historical negationism refers to the refusal to accept that a historical event, such as the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide, actually happened. This is more commonly called denial or revisionism, though the latter term is inappropriate in the context. (Quite unlike what Holocaust and genocide deniers engage in, revisionism involves using sound scholarly practices to evaluate and then to call into question what well meaning historians may have traditionally assumed.) Those who claim that the Holocaust or a genocide is a fabrication or an exaggeration are typically well aware of the falsehood of their own assertions, use deceptive means (mistranslations, invented statistics, etc.) to prop up and disseminate them, and are motivated by the same hatred that have fueled persecution and mass murder. Scholars generally advise that debating with deniers is counterproductive, as debate necessitates that both sides are reasonable and mean to uncover the truth. 

Deborah Lipstadt and Alan Berger are among the scholars who have extensively written on the subject of Holocaust denial.

The Genocide Education Project is committed to fighting denial of the Armenian genocide.

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Intellectuals (Cambodia) refers to one of the main victim groups in the Cambodian genocide. Blaming Western influences, the Khmer Rouge implemented the campaign to starve, beat, and/or shoot the literate and educated. This pursuit went so far as to target anyone who wore eyeglasses.

Former UN Ambassador Sichan Siv's 2008 survivor memoir, Golden Bones, describes the author's captivity at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, including his need to hide his college education and ability to read.

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Justice and Equality Movement, sometimes known as Justice/Equality Movement, refers to the insurgent group seeking to overthrow Omar al-Bashir's genocidal regime in Sudan. Headed by Gibril Ibrahim, the Justice and Equality Movement seeks to establish a democratic state that grants rights and better governmental representation to the nation's various ethnic minorities and regions. Since the early twenty-first century, it has employed violent resistance in many cities and towns, including Khartoum.

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Samantha Power refers to the author, journalist, and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Power's 2002 book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, argues that the US government's response to genocides has consistently amounted to an ethical and political failure due to each administration's unwillingness to commit to humanitarian intervention. The book won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Appointed by President Obama, Power served as UN Ambassador from 2013-2017. Her tenure saw the continuation of genocide in Darfur, as well as genocides in Iraq and Syria. The Armenian genocide remained unrecognized by the US.

Power is prominently featured in Edet Belzberg's 2014 documentary film, Watchers of the Sky.

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William Proxmire (1915-2005) refers to the United States Senator from Wisconsin who regularly campaigned for US ratification of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Beginning in 1967 and ending in 1986 with the ratification, he gave a speech in support every day that the Senate was in session, a total of over 3000 times.

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The Rome Statute refers to the 1998 treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and defined four categories of crimes: aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The United States is among the countries that are not party to the treaty.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

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Khieu Sampan refers to the Khmer Rouge official who served as head of state for Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) and helped implement the Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979. For his role in the genocide he was finally convicted of crimes against humanity in 2014, with charges specifically referring to the mass murder of Vietnamese. Having received a term of life imprisonment, he is one of the last surviving members of the Khmer Rouge leadership. He has never admitted to or apologized for his role in shaping genocidal policies.

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Sinn  Sisamouth (c. 1935-c. 1976) refers to the Cambodian singer-songwriter who was murdered by the Khmer Rouge in its genocidal campaign to eradicate from society any artists, beginning with those who were deemed too westernized. Sisamouth bears the epithet, "King of Cambodian Music" and has frequently been compared to Elvis Presley.

The 2014 documentary film, Don't Think I've Forgotten (John Pirozzi), tells of the targeting of Sisamouth and other rock and roll musicians in the genocide.

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Gregory Stanton refers to the scholar in genocide studies, founder and president of Genocide Watch, and creator of the widely taught 10 Stages of Genocide historical model.

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Brian Steidle refers to the American Marine Corps Captain who went on to work for the African Union as a military observer in Darfur. Forbidden to intervene to stop attacks, he kept to his assignment of photographing genocidal atrocities by the Janjaweed and including the images in his submitted reports. Eventually, he realized that his reports were not prompting governments to apply more pressure to Sudan to halt the genocide. He resigned from his position and in frustration returned to the United States, where he brought attention to the genocide by sharing his gruesome photographs in The New York Times.

His story is the subject of the 2007 documentary film, The Devil Came on Horseback (Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg), which is adapted from his memoir of the same name.

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Year Zero refers to the Khmer Rouge’s attempt to begin a new calendar on April 17, 1975. This date marked the beginning of the Party’s rule over the newly renamed Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia), and the designation of Year Zero signaled the government-sponsored effort to erase awareness of Cambodian history. The resettlement of people from cities to slave labor camps, as well as a genocidal program of mass murder, also distinguished Year Zero from previous years.

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Yugoslavia refers to the multi-ethnic country that was established after WWI. By the early 1990s, the fall of the USSR and rising nationalistic sentiments helped bring tensions to a boiling point between ethnic and religious groups in Yugoslavia. As several nations broke off by declaring newfound independence, civil war erupted when Bosnia and Herzegovina attempted to do so. Serbian nationalists perpetrated a genocide against the Bosniaks, including the massacre at Srebrenica.

THGAAC Overview on Genocide in Bosnia

The Zaghawa people refers to a Muslim ethnic group (also known as the Beri) of nomadic herders in Africa that has been among the targeted victims of the Darfur genocide in the 21st century.