Genocide Essay Research Paper IntroductionGenocideThe UN convention

Genocide Essay, Research Paper

Introduction

Genocide

The U.N convention defines genocide as all acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.1

What are the motives behind genocide. There lies within humans a potential to commit genocide. The dark side of human nature awakens when a combination of economic catastrophes, political disasters and social upheaval makes a segment of a population desperate for change. Then, a regime’s propaganda can successfully motivate it’s citizens to commit genocide on a certain identifiable group or “victim”.

There are 4 motives for genocide. Number one: elimination of a threat. Number two: economic gain. Number three: creation of terror amongst surrounding people. Number four: fulfillment of a theory or belief system.2

There are six major early warning signs that indicate a genocide is very near. Number one: hate propaganda, showing the future victim group as a lethal danger to the survival of society. Number two: the preparation of death lists and the killing of the people on the list. Number three: the introduction of restrictions, not allowing journalists to travel freely in the country. Number four: the use of code words to plan killings. Number five: the creation of training of special murder units. Number six: the murder of military or police officers who are against genocide.3

This paper will examine three Genocides committed in the twentieth century–Armenia, Nazi Germany and Rwanda.

Turkey 1890-1915

Muslim Armenians and Christian Turks lived in peace in the Ottoman Empire for centuries. Things began to slowly change. Nationalism, a new force in the world came to be. The Turks started to love their country so much that they would die to defend it. As well as this time every nationality in Europe wanted their “own” country, not to live under the rulings of an Empire. As a result, the Ottoman Empire began to fall apart. The only thing holding it together was the European powers lack of agreement on how to split it up into different nations. Some Armenians began to call for independence like the Greeks, while some Turks began to see a new Pan-Turkish empire spreading all the way to Central Asia. Armenians were the only ethnic group living in Turkey.4

In the 1890’s hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in pogroms ordered by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in order to rid Turkey of these ethnic people. In 1908 extreme Turkish nationalists took complete dictatorial control of Turkey. This was just a step closer towards completing the Turkish dream of an Armerian-free Turkey.

World War One gave the Turk government the cover and the excuse to carry out their plan.. On April 24th 1915, hundreds of Armenian leaders were murdered in Istanbul after being summoned and gathered there. The attack on ordinary Armenian citizens was to follow and mass murder of innocent Armenian men, women, and children took place from village to village.5

After this episode of extermination the Armenian people hoped that the nightmare of terror was over, but in reality it had only just began. The Turkish people wanted to create a new kind of Turkic state, eliminating those people who were different from the “ideal” type of Turkish citizens. The government planed to “relocate” the Armenians, “for their own good”. First the Armenians were asked to turn in their hunting weapons, for the war effort. The government later claimed that these weapons were proof that the Armenians were planning to rebel. Young and healthy Armenian men were then “drafted” into the army as a second part of the government’s plan. They were immediately killed or worked to death in labour camps. Part three of the plan involved gathering the remaining Armenian residents including doctors, lawyers, politicians and authors, relocating them in a remote desert. Unable to fight back, or protest the Armenians, were gathered up, and escorted by Turkish soldiers in death marches to the desert, Dier-El-Zolv. There the Armenians were tortured, starved, raped and murdered.

More than 1.5 million innocent ethnic Armenian people were murdered in this genocide.

The Turkish government held criminal trials, but after months the guilty Turkish leaders, such as Tehlirian were acquitted. Following this many Armenians assassinated government leaders and army personnel who committed this genocide.

Turkey agreed to let the United States draw a new border between the new Republic of Armenia and the Turkish government. The Turkish government still denies that a genocide ever occurred.

“Those who forget or ignore the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them”.

Nazi Germany, 1939-1945

After the Jewish emancipation in the late 1800’s the Jews of Germany were recognized as citizens of the state. They became extremely involved in many aspects of German society, they constituted a high proportion of doctors, lawyers, accountants, judges, etc. Never before has such a group of people risen so high in German society in such a short period of time. This resulted in the Germans developing a strong hatred and envy against the Jews.6 Not only did they rise to high society, but the Germans believed that they stole jobs away from them, the “pure Germans”. The Germans lost World War One and were forced to sign a treaty with

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