Genocides in History - Alternative Meanings of Genocide

Alternative Meanings of Genocide

The term genocide has been used in varying contexts to describe modern conflicts, from the Rwanda genocide to the War in Darfur. But the term itself has become a source of conflict, as many look to whether or not governments and leaders recognize and punish genocide. However, while the US has pointed to genocide in Darfur, the United Nations has refrained from using that term to describe the killings in Sudan. Questions on what constitutes genocide are: where do you draw the lines between ‘land conflict’, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and genocide’, and what are the political values of doing so? Or how is an event designated as a genocide? Is it legally-only when the ICC at the Hague says so?

Much of the debate about genocides revolves around the proper definition of the word "genocide". The exclusion of social and political groups as targets of genocide in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide legal definition has been criticized by some historians and sociologists, for example M. Hassan Kakar in his book The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982 argues that the international definition of genocide is too restricted, and that it should include political groups or any group so defined by the perpetrator and quotes Chalk and Jonassohn: "Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group so defined by the perpetrator."

Some critics of the definition of genocide under international law have also argued that the definition was partly influenced by Joseph Stalin, and that this is the reason why it does not include political groups.

According to R. J. Rummel, genocide has 3 different meanings. The ordinary meaning is murder by a government of people due to their national, ethnic, racial, or religious group membership. The legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This also includes actions that are not actually killings but tend to eliminate the group, such as preventing births or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group. A generalized meaning of genocide is similar to the ordinary meaning but also includes government killings of political opponents or otherwise intentional murder. It is to avoid confusion regarding what meaning is intended that Rummel created the term democide for the third meaning.