Genocides and Alleged Genocides
The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) defines genocide in part as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". Determining what historical events constitute a genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clear-cut matter. In nearly every case where accusations of genocide have circulated, partisans of various sides have disputed the interpretation and details of the event, often to the point of promoting different versions of the facts. An accusation of genocide will almost always be controversial. Determining the number of persons killed in each genocide can be just as difficult, with political, religious and ethnic biases or prejudices often leading to downplayed or exaggerated figures. Some of accounts below may include ancillary causes of death such as malnutrition and disease, which may or may not have been intentionally inflicted.
The following list of genocides and alleged genocides should be understood in this context and not necessarily regarded as the final word on the events in question.
| Lowest estimate |
Highest estimate |
Event | Location | From | To | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 70064194200000000004,194,200 | 700717000000000000017,000,000 | Holocaust | Europe | 1941 | 1945 | With around 6 million Jews murdered as well as the genocide of the Romani: most estimates of Romani deaths are in the 200,000–500,000 range but some estimate more than a million. A broader definition includes political and religious dissenters, 200,000 people with disabilities, 2 to 3 million Soviet POWs, 5,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, 15,000 homosexuals and small numbers of mixed-race children (known as the Rhineland bastards), and millions of Polish and Soviet civilians, bringing the death toll to around 17 million. See Holocaust, Porajmos, Generalplan Ost, Consequences of German Nazism |
| 70062582000000000002,582,000 | 70068000000000000008,000,000. | Holodomor (and Soviet famine of 1932–1933) | Ukrainian SSR | 1932 | 1933 | Holodomor was a famine in Ukraine caused by the government of Joseph Stalin, a part of Soviet famine of 1932–1933. Holodomor is claimed by contemporary Ukrainian government to be a genocide of the Ukrainians.
As of March 2008, Ukraine and nineteen other governments have recognized the actions of the Soviet government as an act of genocide. The joint statement at the United Nations in 2003 has defined the famine as the result of cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime that caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs and other nationalities in the USSR. On 23 October 2008 the European Parliament adopted a resolution that recognized the Holodomor as a crime against humanity. On January 12, 2010, the court of appeals in Kiev opened hearings into the "fact of genocide-famine Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932–33", in May 2009 the Security Service of Ukraine had started a criminal case "in relation to the genocide in Ukraine in 1932–33". In a ruling on January 13, 2010 the court found Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders guilty of genocide against the Ukrainians. |
| 70062000000000000002,000,000 | 7008100000000000000100,000,000 | European colonization of the Americas | Americas | 1492 | 1900 | Although heavily disputed, some historians such as David Stannard and Howard Zinn consider the deaths caused by disease, displacement, and conquest of Native American populations during European settlement of North and South America as constituting an act of genocide (or series of genocides). The alleged genocidal aspects of this event are entwined with loss of life caused by the lack of immunity of Native Americans to diseases carried by European settlers and their livestock (see Population history of American indigenous peoples). Some estimates indicate case fatality rates of 80–90% in Native American populations during smallpox epidemics. According to Noble David Cook, "There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact." Stafford Poole wrote: "There are other terms to describe what happened in the Western Hemisphere, but genocide is not one of them. It is a good propaganda term in an age where slogans and shouting have replaced reflection and learning ..." |
| 70061000000000000001,000,000 | 70063000000000000003,000,000 | Cambodian Genocide | Cambodia | 1975 | 1979 | As of September 2010, no one has been found guilty of participating in this genocide, but on 16 September 2010 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was indicted on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He will face Cambodian and United Nations appointed foreign judges at the special genocide tribunal. |
| 70061200000000000001,200,000 | 70062400000000000002,400,000 | African Holocaust | Atlantic Ocean | 16th century | 19th century | Historian Charles Pete Banner-Haley notes that slavery was "not intentionally genocidal" and "resulted in the creation of a New World Afro-American." African slaves died in large numbers during transportation from Africa. The number could be more accurate if it included deaths during the acquisition of slaves in Africa and subsequent deaths in America. Before the 16th century the principal market for the warring African tribes that enslaved each other's populations was the Islamic world to the east. Gustav Nachtigal, an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on the way. |
| 7005500000000000000500,000 | 70061000000000000001,000,000 | Rwandan genocide | Rwanda | 1994 | 1994 | Hutu killed unarmed men, women and children. Some 50 perpetrators of the genocide have been found guilty by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, but most others have not been charged due to no witness accounts. Another 120,000 were arrested by Rwanda; of these, 60,000 were tried and convicted in the gacaca court system. Genocidaires who fled into Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo) were used as a justification when Rwanda and Uganda invaded Zaire (First and Second Congo Wars). |
| 7005500000000000000500,000 | 70063000000000000003,000,000 | Expulsion of Germans after World War II | Europe | 1945 | 1950 |
With at least 12 million Germans directly involved, it was the largest movement or transfer of any single ethnic population in modern history and largest among the post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe (which displaced more than twenty million people in total). The events have been usually classified as population transfer, or as ethnic cleansing. Martin Shaw (2007) and W.D. Rubinstein (2004) describe the expulsions as genocide. Felix Ermacora writing in 1991, (in line with a minority of legal scholars) considered ethnic cleansing to be genocide and stated that the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans was genocide. |
| 7005480000000000000480,000 | 7005600000000000000600,000 | Massacres in Zunghar Khanate | Western China, Kazakhstan, northern Kyrgyzstan, southern Siberia | 1755 | 1758 | Qianlong emperor moved the remaining Zunghar people to the mainland and ordered the generals to kill all the men in Barkol or Suzhou, and divided their wives and children to Qing soldiers. In an account of the war, Wei Yuan wrote that about 40% of the Zunghar households were killed by smallpox, 20% fled to Russia or the Kazakh Khanate, and 30% were killed by the army, leaving no yurts in an area of several thousands of li except those of the surrendered. Clarke wrote 80%, or between 480,000 and 600,000 people, were killed between 1755 and 1758 in what "amounted to the complete destruction of not only the Zunghar state but of the Zunghars as a people." Historian Peter Perdue has shown that the decimation of the Dzungars was the result of an explicit policy of extermination launched by Qianlong. Although this "deliberate use of massacre" has been largely ignored by modern scholars, Mark Levene, a historian whose recent research interests focus on genocide, has stated that the extermination of the Dzungars was "arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence." |
| 7005400000000000000400,000 | 7005400000000000000400,000 | Russian conquest of the Caucasus | Caucasus | 1817 | 1864 | During the last decade or so, especially after the two First and Second Chechen Wars, pro-Chechen groups started to investigate the history of the Caucasian War and came to label the Caucasian exodus as a "Circassian ethnic cleansing", although the term had not been in use in the 19th century. They point out that the exodus was not really voluntary but rather was a matter of what is today called ethnic cleansing – the systematic emptying of villages by Russian soldiers and was accompanied by Russian colonisation. They estimate that some 90 percent of the Circassians estimated at more than three million had relocated from the territories conquered by Russia. During these events, and the preceding Caucasian War, at least tens of thousands of Circassians perished in a "programme of forced expulsion, deportation and massacre at the hands of the Russian government". See also: Muhajir (Caucasus) |
| 7005300000000000000300,000 | 70061500000000000001,500,000 | Armenian Genocide | Anatolia | 1915 | 1923 | Usually called the First Genocide of the 20th century. Despite recognition by some twenty one countries as a genocide, Turkey disputes genocide by the Ottoman Empire. |
| 7005300000000000000300,000 | 7005500000000000000500,000 | Decossackization | Don River area, Soviet Union | 1919 | 1920 | In the Russian Civil War that followed the October Revolution, the Cossacks found themselves on both sides of the conflict. Many officers and experienced Cossacks fought for the White Army, and some for the Red Army. Following the defeat of the White Army, a policy of Decossackization (Raskazachivaniye) took place on the surviving Cossacks and their homelands since they were viewed as a potential threat to the new regime. This mostly involved dividing their territory amongst other divisions and giving it to new autonomous republics of minorities, and then actively encouraging settlement of these territories with those peoples. This was especially true for the Terek Cossacks land. According to Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 3 million, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 Cossacks". |
| 7005275000000000000275,000 | 7005750000000000000750,000 | Assyrian genocide | Anatolia | 1915 | 1918 | Disputed by Turkey, but considered a genocide. |
| 7005270000000000000270,000 | 7005655000000000000655,000 | Ustashe massacres of Serbs, Jews, Roma and Croats | Croatia | 1941 | 1945 | Genocide during period of Independent State of Croatia, with official policy of extermination similar to that of Nazi Germany. See also The Holocaust in Croatia. |
| 7005200000000000000200,000 | 70061000000000000001,000,000 | Greek genocide | Anatolia | 1915 | 1918 | Disputed by Turkey, but considered a genocide. |
| 7005178258000000000178,258 | 7005400000000000000400,000 | Darfur conflict | Sudan | 2003 | 2010 | See International response to the Darfur conflict |
| 7005150000000000000150,000 | 7005500000000000000500,000 | Mass killings, Genocide | Ethiopia | 1974 | 1991 | Former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam was found guilty of genocide and was sentenced to death in absentia by Ethiopia's High Court. |
| 7005100000000000000100,000 | 7005200000000000000200,000 | Massacres of Mayan Indians | Guatemala | 1962 | 1996 | Genocide according to the Historical Clarification Commission. |
| 700460000000000000060,000 | 7005174000000000000174,000 | Communist purges in Serbia in 1944–1945 | Serbia | 1944 | 1945 | The Communist purges in Serbia in 1944–1945 were purges committed by members of the Yugoslav Partisan Movement and post-war communist authorities after they gained control over Serbia in 1944. Most of these purges were committed from October, 1944 to May, 1945. During this time, several tens of thousands of citizens of Serbia were executed. Victims of these executions were of different ethnic backgrounds and included Serbs, Germans, Hungarians, and other ethnicities. Different sources provided different estimations about number of victims. According to one estimation, at least 80,000 people was executed in whole of Serbia, while other estimation claims that number of victims is larger than 100,000. |
| 700450000000000000050,000 | 7005200000000000000200,000 | Al-Anfal Campaign | Iraq | 1986 | 1989 | Ba'athist Iraq destroys over 2,000 villages and commits genocide on their Kurdish population. |
| 700450000000000000050,000 | 7005100000000000000100,000 | Massacres of Hutus | Burundi | 1972 | 1972 | Tutsi government massacres of Hutu, part of the Burundi genocide. |
| 700426000000000000026,000 | 70063000000000000003,000,000 | 1971 Bangladesh atrocities | East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) | 1971 | 1971 | Atrocities in East Pakistan by the Pakistani Armed Forces, leading to the Bangladesh Liberation War and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, are widely regarded as a genocide against Bengali people, but to date no one has yet been indicted for such a crime. |
| 700424000000000000024,000 | 700475000000000000075,000 | Herero and Namaqua genocide | Namibia | 1904 | 1908 | Generally accepted. See also Imperial Germany |
| 700420000000000000020,000 | 700480000000000000080,000 | Dictatorship and political repression in Equatorial Guinea | Equatorial Guinea | 1969 | 1979 | Francisco Macías Nguema led a brutal dictatorship in his country, most notably against the minority of Bubi. It is estimated that his regime killed at least 20,000 people, while around 100,000 (one third of the population) fled the country. On a trial, Nguema was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. He was executed in 1979. |
| 700418600000000000018,600 | 7005183000000000000183,000 | Political repression of East Timorese | East Timor | 1975 | 1990s | Referred to as genocide by some scholars. |
| 700413160000000000013,160 | 700470000000000000070,000 | Dersim Massacre | Dersim, Turkey | 1937 | 1938 | Tens of thousands of Kurds were killed and thousands more forced into exile, depopulating the province. |
| 70032500000000000002,500 | 700450000000000000050,000 | Samar Massacre | Samar, Philippines | 1901 | 1902 | General Smith of the United States Army instructed Major Littleton Waller, the commanding officer of the Marines assigned to cleanup the island of Samar, of the methods he was to employ: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the better it will please me." He directed that Samar be converted into a "howling wilderness." All persons who have not surrendered and were capable of carrying arms were to be shot. Who was capable? Anyone over ten years of age, according to Smith. At this point he became better known as Jake "Howling" Smith. What followed was a sustained and widespread killing of Filipino civilians. |
| 70037500000000000007,500 | 70038000000000000008,000 | Srebrenica massacre | Srebrenica, Bosnia | 1995 | 1995 | A genocidal massacre according to the ICTY. Currently, it is the last genocide committed in modern Europe after World War II. On 31 March 2010, the Serbian Parliament passed a resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre and apologizing to the families of Srebrenica for the deaths of Bosniaks. See also: War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian genocide. |
| 70032000000000000002,000 | 700470000000000000070,000 | Persecution of Falun Gong | China | 1999 | ongoing | A campaign by the Chinese government against the Falun Gong spiritual practice. It is estimated that since 1999, at least 2,000 Falun Gong adherents have died as a result of the suppression. Some courts and observers have likened the crackdown to genocide. |
| 70068000000000000008,000,000 | 700710000000000000010,000,000 | Tropical diseases, including sleeping sickness and smallpox, and the exploitation of the Congo Free State under the rule of King Leopold II of Belgium | Congo Free State | 1885 | 1908 | Numbers disputed. In 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium created his own privately owned state that included today's Democratic Republic of the Congo. His goal was to enrich himself by exploiting the country's natural resources like ivory and rubber. Adam Hochschild estimates that the population of the Congo region had been halved during Leopold’s rule, but determining precisely how many people died is next to impossible as no accurate records exist. Louis and Stengers state that population figures at the start of Leopold's control are only "wild guesses", while E.D. Morel's attempt and others at coming to a figure for population losses were "but figments of the imagination". |
| Unknown | Unknown | Massacres of Pygmies | Democratic Republic of the Congo | 1998 | ongoing | During the Congo Civil War, Pygmies were killed and eaten by both sides of the war, who regarded them as subhuman. Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti pygmies, asked the UN Security Council to recognise cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide. |
Read more about this topic: List Of Wars And Anthropogenic Disasters By Death Toll
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