Genocide: “The systematic destruction of a national or ethnic group, specifically by means of execution or murder

Geography

Technology and Media

Alienation

Charismatic Leaders

Genocide often occurs in territorial interiors (underdeveloped, small, economically and politically unstable countries) rather than cosmopolitan and urban countries

Also occurs in super powers like the US and Canada: the genocide of the aboriginal peoples

Examples of underdeveloped countries that have gone through genocide: Haiti, Rwanda, Vietnam, Afghanistan

Lebensraum

Ethnic cleansing: a “brutal rending of the deep ties between a targeted community and its environment”

the land or territory that a country's leaders believe it requires in order to grow and flourish

  • especially associated with Nazi Germany ( Hitler believed that eastern Europe had to be conquered to create a vast German empire for more physical space, a greater population, and new territory to supply food and raw materials.)
  • settler colonialism

Spatiality

  • Local and regional conditions affect the purpose of genocide
  • Often villages and small neighbourhoods are targeted bc they are easier to pick on

genocide and other exterminatory policies are conducted through a spatially oriented framework, or geographic imagination”

Spatial practices of sovereignty impact a population's physical existence by letting it live, killing it, or “letting it die”

Climate Change

Famine & starvation

Drought

Climate change and lack of resources for people causes conflicts between people as everyone is trying to survive, especially in dry countries in africa and the middle east

The lives of the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed will be the first to be turned upside down by climate change motivated genocide

Theories of Social Change

Tradition

  • Destroys families
  • Destroys cultures bc of the killing of many people in that culture
  • Many times genocide occurs bc of the oppression of certain cultures, religion and traditions (ex. Sikh genocide, the Holocaust, genocide of kurds, Muslims in russian empire)
  • Climate change -> genocide -> destruction of traditions

The UN has contributed by aiding victims of genocide who require humanitarian assistance from genocidal events and climate change

Adolf Hitler
Germany
Death toll: 17 million to 20 million
Years in power: 11 (1934-1945)
Worst offense: The Holocaust
Type of regime: Fascist
Cause of death: Suicide

Saddam Hussein
Iraq
Death toll: 2 million
Years in power: 34 (1969-2003)
Worst offense: Kurdish genocide
Type of regime: Authoritarian
Cause of death: Executed

Yahya Khan
Pakistan
Death toll: 2 million to 12 million
Years in power: 2 (1969-1971)
Worst offense: Bangladesh genocide
Type of regime: Military
Cause of death: Unknown

Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, a Hollerith machine which is a calculating engine and a predecessor to the modern computer made by Herman Hollerith, is on display as one of the mechanisms through which the Nazis tracked the Jewish populations and accumulated information regarding the process of the Genocide.

Research was conducted in Tare, which is a community in southwestern Rwanda in 2009 by Omar Shahabudin McDoom. In April 1994, the population was about 6% Tutsi. Then militant Hutus organized the mass slaughter and genocide of the Tutsi people. Three months later, slightly more than 60% of Tutsi in Tare were dead, and about a 25% of the community's Hutu men had participated in the genocide.

McDoom surveyed 116 Hutu men in Tare; 37 who participated in the genocide and 79 who did not. Each of the men who participated in genocide had, on average, 20 social ties. Men who did participate smaller networks, with an average of 13 connections each.

“Having relatives who were involved in the killing increased the odds that any given man would have participated himself.”

Social networks in Tare were tools for recruiting killers. Organizers of the genocide used their social networks to find men for the genocide.

Money or material gain was the most common motivation. As one of his subjects put it: "In the first few days people went by force. But later they went willingly because they saw they could get property like roofing tiles and mattresses."

Cognitive Consistency Theory: conflicting religions and viewpoints of the victims of genocide and the instigators of genocide lead to the mass killings

External Factors

Conformity

During the holocaust most of Germany conformed to exterminate all jews. As with Rwanda, many citizens also killed jews in fear of the Nazi party.

In Cambodia conformity is seen as the foreseeable end result. His senseless killing was made with the vision of a fully conformed, communist future for his state

in some cases victims are forced to conform to save their own lives

Racial discrimination

Armenian race was not pure

Armenians were hunted down, abused, tortured placed in deserts with no food and resources and massacred

The Armenian Genocide: was done because the Turkish government wanted an all Turkish state

Influence and fear of outside powers like other countries who have opposing views

Economic Crisis

  • The Holocaust was primarily made upon economic downfall of the past world war
  • Scapegoat was created from the Jews, leading them to be blamed for the economic debt Germany faced

Due to the death of a politician originating from the Hutu (majority race), the Tutsi (minority race) were subsequently blamed for the murder and were hunted down

Rwandan Genocide: main driving force was economic duress and lack of resources

War

  • Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot, massacred millions to create a communist Utopia
  • United States later bombed Cambodia leading to increased hatred for the west and democracy
  • Nobody was exempt from punishment and any whom were presumed to be allied with the right wing were subsequently killed as well
  • However during most if not all of these genocides international aid was not present as well
  • United nations peacekeepers were stationed in Rwanda but did not do anything to prevent the massacres

Armenian Genocide

The Holocaust

  • The first set of killing was in 1894; leaving 8 000 Armenians dead
    • By 1896 an estimated 80 000 plus Armenians were killed

The impact of the Young Turks

  • Death marches killed around 1.5 million Armenians
  • Turks took over everything & destroyed any residues of the Armenian culture or anything related to it

Mass murder of the Armenian people has been recognized as genocide by many nations – Sweden, U.S., The Allied Powers – except Turkey itself who are denying the whole event

Final Solution

  • 6 million Jews and 5 million Slavs, Roma, disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and political and religious dissidents were killed

Nuremberg Trials & pledge by the US to ensure that history does not repeat itself

Acculturation -> Directed Change -dominance of one culture over another, forcing the defeated to change aspects of its culture or the whole culture (Armenian Genocide)

Sociology: the rate and direction of change. Genocide speeds up change in a negative fashion

Genocide can either be exogenous or endogenous

Mass Culture: when a large proportion of the population participates in cultural activities (The Holocaust)

Born on April 28, 1937, in Tikrit, Iraq, Saddam Hussein was a secularist who rose through the Baath political party to assume a dictatorial presidency. Under his rule, segments of the populace enjoyed the benefits of oil wealth, while those in opposition faced torture and execution. After military conflicts with U.S.-led armed forces, Hussein was captured in 2003. He was later executed.

An Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party. Hitler was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. He was at the centre of the founding of Nazism, the start of World War II, and the Holocaust. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun. On 30 April 1945, less than two days later, the two committed suicide to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned. Adolf Hitler, military and political leader of Germany 1933 - 1945, launched World War Two and bears responsibility for the deaths of millions, including six million Jewish people in the Nazi genocide.

Yahya Khan, as President as well as the Commander-in-Chief of Pakistan Army, failed to plan the war. This ultimately resulted in the defeat of Pakistan, dismemberment of the country and imprisonment of more than 90,000 Pakistanis. Surrender of Pakistani forces without any resistance and the fall of Dhaka made Yahya Khan the greatest villain in the country. People from all walks of life started criticizing him and thus he was left with no other option but to hand over the power to the leader of the most popular party of the remaining part of Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, on December 20, 1971. Later Bhutto placed Yahya Khan under house arrest in 1972.


Yahya Khan died on August 10, 1980, in Rawalpindi.

Exogenous: "colonialism created an awful starting position for Rwanda in the first place, and decisions related to the lives of Rwandan people were made not in Rwanda but in the cities of their former colonizers."

Conformity: In Rwanda people were killed for being a Tutsi and they were also killed for helping people from the Tutsi race, thus people murdered others for fear of standing out and becoming a target

Bosnia

  • President Josip Broz Tito wanted a dictatorship
    • When he died, everyone was fighting for power
    • Slovenia and Croatia declared independence
    • Yugoslav army was mostly Serbian

Mass executions
Concentration camps
Rape
Sexual violence
Forced displacement
Snipers would hide and kill civilians when they tried to get food and water

United to End Genocide: "We believe the only way to prevent mass atrocities and to end genocide once and for all, is to build a large and powerful activist movement that will sound the alarm, shine a spotlight on those who cause or enable genocide or mass atrocities, and demand action by our elected leaders and anyone who has the power to protect those who face the threat of genocide or mass atrocity, anywhere in the world."

United to End Genocide bring together End Genocide leaders, faith leaders and leaders from their survivors network and students.