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Ethnocide is the extermination or destruction of ethnic identities.[1][2][3]Bartolomé Clavero differentiates ethnocide fromgenocide by stating that "Genocide kills people while ethnocide kills social cultures through the killing of individual souls".[4] According toMartin Shaw, ethnocide is a core part of physically violent genocide.[1] Some substitutecultural genocide for ethnocide,[5] and other argue the distinction betweenethnicity andculture.[3]Cultural genocide and ethnocide have been used in different contexts.[6]While the terms "ethnocide" and "ethnic cleansing" are similar, the intentions of their use vary. The term "ethnic cleansing" has been criticized as a euphemism used forgenocide denial, while"ethnocide" tries to facilitate the opposite.[clarification needed][7][8]
Raphael Lemkin, the lawyer who coinedgenocide in 1943 as the union of "the Greek wordgenos (race, tribe) and the Latincide (killing)", also suggestedethnocide as an alternative form representing the same concept, using the Greekethnos (nation) in place ofgenos.[2] However, the term genocide has received much wider adoption than ethnocide.[1]
As early as 1933, the lawyerRaphael Lemkin proposed that genocide had a cultural component, a component which he called "cultural genocide."[9] The term has since acquired rhetorical value as a phrase that is used to protest against the destruction of cultural heritage.
The drafters of the 1948Genocide Convention considered the use of the term, but dropped it from their consideration.[10] The legal definition ofgenocide is left unspecific about the exact nature in which genocide is done, only stating that it is destruction withintent to destroy a racial, religious, ethnic or national group as such.[11]
Article 7 of a 1994 draft of theUnited Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples uses the word "ethnocide" as well as the phrase "cultural genocide" but it does not define what they mean.[12] The complete article reads as follows:
TheUnited Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by theUnited Nations General Assembly during its 62nd session atUN Headquarters inNew York City on 13 September 2007, but only mentions "genocide" in its Article 7, not "cultural genocide." Article 8 in the final document otherwise substantially retains the wording of the draft Article 7, but its first sentence reads "indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture".[13]
InUNESCO's "Declaration of San Jose":[14]
The Declaration of San Jose commits the United States and the nations of Central America to engage in a more in-depth discussion about a broad range of issues. These issues include: strengtheningdemocracy and regional security, building trade and investment, combatingcrime, drugs andcorruption, promoting dialogue onimmigration, and achieving more equitable and sustainable development.[15] In the Declaration of San José, UNESCO also addresses and works to define ethnocide. UNESCO defines the term as follows:
Ethnocide means that an ethnic group is denied the right to enjoy, develop and transmit its ownculture and its ownlanguage, whether collectively or individually. This involves an extreme form of massive violation ofhuman rights and, in particular, the right of ethnic groups to respect for their cultural identity.
The French ethnologistRobert Jaulin (1928-1996) proposed a redefinition of the concept of ethnocide in 1970, to refer not themeans but theends that define ethnocide.[16] Accordingly, the ethnocide would be the systematic destruction of the thought and the way of life of people different from those who carry out this enterprise of destruction. Whereas the genocide assassinates the people in their body, the ethnocide kills them in their spirit.
In Chapter 4 ofThe Archeology of Violence by Pierre Clastres
Ethnocide, unlike genocide, is not based on the destruction of the physical person, but rather on the destruction of a person's culture. Ethnocide exterminates ways of thinking, living, and being from various cultures. It aims to destroy cultural differences, especially focused on the idea of "wrong" differences, that are present in a minority group by transforming the group's population into the culture norm of a certain place. This measuring of differences according to one's own culture is called ethnocentrism. The ethnocentric mind is based on the assumption that there is a hierarchy of superior and inferior cultures. Therefore, ethnocide hopes to raise inferior cultures to the status of superior cultures by any means necessary.[17]
Barry Victor Sautman is a professor with the Division of Social Science at theHong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The "intent that underlies ethnocide is not the same intent as the intent of cultural genocide, for the same reason that it is not tied to physical or biological destruction of a group. The intent is therefore typically aimed at forced assimilation and not on population decimation. Thus the intent that underlies ethnocide is an intentional act resulting in cultural death"[18]
So the idea that ethnocide or 'cultural genocide' is distinct from physically violent genocide is misleading, since cultural genocide can only be the cultural dimensionof genocide, something which is integral to every genocidal attack. ... It is better to refer to cultural suppression as the pre-genocidal denial of culture, because the cultural dimension of genocide or cultural suppression is part of a broader genocidal process, and it is different from unintentional group destruction or destruction which occurs when groups are destroyed bydiseases andfamines which were originally unintended.
The term 'ethnocide' has in the past been used as a replacement for cultural genocide (Palmer 1992; Smith 1991:30-3), with the obvious risk of confusing ethnicity and culture.
Genocide kills people while ethnocide kills social cultures through the killing of individual souls.
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