Defining Genocide


The term “genocide” did not exist during the events in Armenia from1915-1923. In fact, thewordwas coined in the year 1944 by a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin who lost 49members of his family during the Holocaust.


In 1918 an Armenian gunman, part of an underground vigilante group calledOperationNemesis, shot and killed one of the Ottoman leaders responsible for the Armenian massacres on a street in Berlin in broad daylight. It was the evidence presented in defense of this gunman that drewthe attention ofMr. Lemkin to this issue.


Lemkin did not think thatmassmurderwas an adequateway of describing the crimes of the Armenian Genocide or the Holocaust because “it does not connote themotivation of the crime, especially when the motivation is based upon racial,


It is known that Raphael Lemkin, who


coined the term ‘genocide,’ wanted to define a phenomenon that differed from the concept that found its way into the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)…Lemkin understood genocide not only as a single act, but alternatively as a series of connected acts, a process that unfolded over


time…In contrast, the Genocide


national or religious considerations” (Raphael Lemkin, American Scholar, “Genocide,”April 1946).Hewanted to find a way of describing the systematic activities of the Nazis during the Holocaust and the Turks during the Armenian Genocide. The word genocide is a combination of the Greek word geno,meaning “tribe” or “race,” and the Latinword cide, whichmeans “killing.” Itwas used as a legal term for the first time by the United Nations in 1948, when it approved the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” a doctrinewhich declares that “genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world.” The day the doctrine was approved, December 9, 1948, reporters found Lemkin in the darkened Assembly hall, “weeping as if his heart would break” (A.M. Rosenthal, NY Times, “AMan Called Lemkin,” October 18, 1988).


According to the officialU.N. convention, genocide is any act or combination of acts intended to eliminate part or all of a national, religious, racial or ethnic group.Acts that fall under this definition include killing or causing physical harmtomembers of the group directly or circumstantially, using systematicmethods to prevent the birth of new group members, or even forcibly transferring children from the persecuted group to another. TheUnited States in particular responded positively to the convention and implementedmethods of ensuring that people would never forget the crimes of the Holocaust, including building memorials and museums across the country.


Dr. Raphael Lemkin at the


signing of the U.N. Convention on Genocide with the U.N. Secretary- General, the Assistant Secretary-General and


representatives fromfour countries involved in the negotiations.


Convention of 1948 enshrined a narrower concept of genocide as a unitary event or act that resulted in the immediate destruction of a ‘national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.’ After the broader concept of genocide as a prolonged process slipped into oblivion, all subsequent debate revolved around whether a given episode of mass violence conformed to the U.N. definition of genocide and therefore could be qualified as such. This was an unfortunate consequence of the adoption of genocide as a concept of criminal law.


Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity, 2012.


9


http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/un.php


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17