The worst cases of Genocides in the history of humanity
When the United Nations passed the Genocide convention in 1948, the world swore an oath to “Never Again”. But the history of the twentieth century instead proved that “Never Again” became “Again and Again”. The promise the United Nations made had broken. Numerous genocides and other forms of mass murder killed more than 170 million people, which was even more than all the international wars of the twentieth century combined. So the twentieth century came to be known as the century of genocides in the history of humanity.
The United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as an internationally recognised crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. These include killing members of a group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of a group, deliberately inflicting of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures to prevent birth within a group or forcibly transferring children of a group to some other group. Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” in the 1940s which combines the Greek word “genos” meaning race or tribe and the Latin word “cide” which means to kill. Lemkin was deeply affected by the Holocaust, which for him signified the return of the enlightened people to barbarism. Since then, the world has seen massacres like the ones in Armenia, Rwanda and the one in our own country known as the Sikh riots of 1984 which was the aftermath of the assassination of Prime Minister Indra Gandhi.
Regarded as one of the biggest genocide in world history, The Holocaust or Shoah was World War II genocide of the European Jews. Between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered some six million Jews which wiped out almost two-thirds of the Jewish population. It was 1921 when Hitler became the leader of the Nazi party. He promoted racism and believed that the Aryan race was superior to others and, to him, Aryan was anyone who was European and not Jewish, Romany or Slavic. He introduced anti-semitic laws which discriminated against the Jews living in the areas which he controlled. The Nazis thought that the Jews were a problem and thought of somehow removing them from society. It was then when he called off for the mass killings and named it “The Final Solution.”
Another significant example of genocide is the Rwanda genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, which was a mass slaughter of Tutsi, Twa and moderate Hutu in Rwanda which took place between April and July in 1994. The scale and the brutality of the massacre shocked worldwide, but no country intervened to stop the killing forcefully. Most of the victims got killed in their villages and towns, many by their neighbours and fellow villagers. The genocide had lasting and profound effects on Rwanda and its neighbouring countries.
Why? Why are there still genocides? Where there are massacres in the world from time to time? These inhumane acts are justified by the idea of purifying the state through tasks that a doctor or a gardener would employ to improve an unhealthy body or garden. Other reasons include severe life conditions like war or economic crisis which the Germans were going through after the first world war. But are these reasons justified? I would say NO!! In my opinion, the reasons why genocides are still committed in the world are lack of international institutions to predict and prevent it, and most importantly, our world leaders don’t have the political will to stop it. In order to prevent genocides, we must first understand it. We must study and compare genocides and develop a working theory about the genocidal process. There are many centres for the study of genocides that are doing vital work in this field, but this is not enough. We also need to create international institutions and political will to prevent it.
The most crucial weapon that we humans have right now is knowledge. Since the media connects the world, people can be made aware of the atrocities in real-time to take real action. Keeping an eye on hotspots and watching areas through social media can be a big step in protecting human rights. In different countries, people can petition their governments to offer assistance to the affected countries, protest or do whatever they can to help them out. After all, genocide is not inevitable, and the international community should never fail again to prevent it.
