21 January 2024
Genocide is a rare case of a word where we know exactly who coined it and when. It is also an example of the not-so-rare case where the legal definition of a term is narrower than the general conception of what the term means. Legal or technical definitions are frequently narrower than those used by the general public. That does not mean the more general definitions are incorrect, just that they do not apply in the specific technical or legal context. In this case, when prosecuting a group or individual for genocide, the legal definition applies. In other contexts, the more general sense may be more appropriate.
The Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis in the 1940s is the prototypical example of genocide and the event that prompted the word’s coining, but many other events, before and since, have been classified as genocide, including the attempted extermination of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines, the mass killings of Armenians by the Turks in 1915, the actions of the Khmer Rouge government of Cambodia in the 1970s, the mass killings in Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s, the mass killings in Darfur in the opening years of the twenty-first century, and the Israeli war in Gaza in 2023–present. The application of the term to any particular case is usually controversial to some degree, with some claiming the acts do not fall within the scope of the legal definition or do not rise to the level of genocide.
Genocide was coined by Raphaël Lemkin in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Lemkin formed the word from the Greek word γένος (genos, race or tribe) and the Latin root -cide (killing). His definition was rather expansive, although the examples he gives in parentheses are specific to what the Nazis were doing to Jews and other groups in Germany and occupied Europe. In the book’s preface, Lemkin writes:
Genocide is effected through a synchronized attack on different aspects of life of the captive peoples: in the political field (by destroying the institutions of self-government and imposing a German pattern of administration, and through colonization by Germans); in the social field (by disrupting the social cohesion of the nation involved and killing or removing elements such as the intelligentsia, which provide spiritual leadership—according to Hitler’s statement in Mein Kampf, “the greatest of spirits can be liquidated if its bearer is beaten to death with a rubber truncheon”); in the cultural field (by prohibiting or destroying cultural institutions and cultural activities; by substituting vocational education for education in the liberal arts, in order to prevent humanistic thinking, which the occupant considers dangerous because it promotes national thinking); in the economic field (by shifting the wealth to Germans and by prohibiting the exercise of trades and occupations by people who do not promote Germanism “without reservations”); in the biological field (by a policy of depopulation and by promoting procreation by Germans in the occupied countries); in the field of physical existence (by introducing a starvation rationing system for non-Germans and by mass killings, mainly of Jews, Poles, Slovenes, and Russians); in the religious field (by interfering with the activities of the Church, which in many countries provides not only spiritual but also national leadership); in the field of morality (by attempts to create an atmosphere of moral debasement through promoting pornographic publications and motion pictures, and the excessive consumption of alcohol).
And chapter 9 of his book, which focuses on genocide, opens with the following:
New conceptions require new terms. By “genocide” we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing), thus corresponding in its formation to such words as tyrannicide, homicide, infanticide, etc.* Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.
In the footnote, Lemkin also coins the term ethnocide as a synonym for genocide. The note reads:
* Another term could be used for the same idea, namely, ethnocide, consisting of the Greek “ethnos”—nation—and the Latin word “cide.”
Unlike genocide, which quickly entered into widespread use, no one else picked up on Lemkin’s coinage of ethnocide. That term would be recoined two decades later with a somewhat different meaning.
The United Nations General Assembly declared genocide to be a crime under international law on 11 December 1946. In resolution A/RES96(1) it gave a rather general definition of “a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups.” While it did declare genocide to be a “crime,” this resolution was more a general statement of principle than a criminal statute. Two years later, the UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide would give a more precise definition, and one that was considerably narrower than that of either Lemkin’s concept or the earlier resolution. The text of the convention, which was finalized on 9 December 1948, defines it thusly:
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.
The original draft of the convention, however, defined genocide more broadly, including what was labeled as cultural genocide. From the 11 June 1947 New York Times description of the draft convention:
For the first time it establishes three different categories of genocide, all of which would be considered international crimes.
[…]
Cultural genocide, the third category, is described as the deliberate obliteration of the spiritual or cultural life of a people. As an example, the convention cites the stealing of children for the purposes of indoctrinating them in a different cultural pattern. It also condemns the deliberate stamping out of prevailing customs and ideas by destroying works of art, museums, libraries and churches, and removing the spiritual and intellectual leaders of the community.
Only the clause about transferring children made it into the final text of the convention. The inclusion of cultural genocide in the legal definition of the crime appears to have been at the instigation of, or at least supported by, the Soviet Union. It was the United States and others who pushed for the narrower definition. From the Times of London on 28 August 1948:
The Soviet delegation and its Polish and White Russian supporters desired to include in the provisions of the convention the crime of “cultural genocide.” But it was generally agreed by the rest of the Council that this would extend the provisions unduly and perhaps render the convention so vague as to open the door to diversity of interpretation and to legal controversy.
And as the convention text was finalized, a 9 December 1948 wire service report from the International News Service gives more detail about the US-Soviet dispute over the definition:
Russia demanded that the United States be forced to abolish the Ku Klux Klan as part of the international convention. Russian Delegate Kuzma Kisselev said:
“The United States shows an amazing tolerance of such organizations (as the klan). Governments should not allow organizations to exist whose teachings may result in genocide.”
[…]
Other Soviet amendments introduced by Morosov would demand the immediate disbanding of all organizations preaching racial or religious hatred, and would make “cultural genocide”—such as the destruction of libraries or the banning of a language—also an international crime.
The term ethnocide would reappear two decades later, this time as a synonym for cultural genocide. From a letter to Washington Post published on 23 January 1968 about the impact of the war in Vietnam:
The profound disruption of the tradition-rooted matrix of Vietnamese culture can only lead to a cultural and national erosion that might be called “ethnocide,” the end result of our bungling attempt to do a “neat” form of political surgery.
And later that year, a description of the meeting of the International Congress of Americanists, held on 11–18 August 1968 was published in the Latin American Research Review. The description distinguishes ethnocide from genocide, presumably considering the former to be a synonym for cultural genocide:
A round table on "The Politics of Indigenous Affairs: Ethnocide and Genocide" was organized at the Congress and one of the results was the formation of a strong resolution deprecating the persecution of Indian groups in Brazil (exposed a few months ago) and calling for all governments to exercise utmost regard for indigenous peoples. In a programmed round table on the destruction of Maya monuments, another resolution was formulated calling upon museums to desist from acquiring prehistoric monuments clandestinely.
While cultural genocide/ethnocide may not fall within the definition of genocide used in the Genocide Convention, many of the acts that constitute cultural genocide are prohibited in other treaties and agreements, such as the laws of war. They are, in other words, still crimes, if not legally, then morally.
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