A basic definition of genocide could be: mass-murder on a huge scale; the planned and systematic elimination of an entire racial, ethnic, religious, cultural or national group.
A rather longer legal definition is that adopted by the United Nations: “Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The above is pretty broad, so pinning down exactly what we mean by genocide is half the battle in this area. At heart, the act – and intent – of genocide has existed for millennia, ever since tribal groups of humans first started hacking each other apart to assert dominance over each other and making sure the defeated party didn’t come back for vengeance later. However, the concept wasn’t defined, and didn’t have a name, until the mid-20th Century. Continue reading Chapter 36: Genocide
