Political cleansing of a population is the elimination of categories of people in specific areas for political reasons. The means may vary and includeforced migration,ethnic cleansing andpopulation transfers. Political cleansing has been used in manydictatorships.
Under theGenocide Convention,political groups are not a protected group if they are targeted with an intent to destroy the political group even if they share an ethnic, national or religious identity.[1][2][3]
Raphael Lemkin personally insisted against the inclusion of political groups in the Convention.[4] Lemkin wrote in his autobiography: "We in Latin America make revolutions from time to time, which involves the destruction of political opponents. Then we reconcile and live in peace. Later the group in power is thrown out in another revolution. Why should this be classified as the crime of genocide?"[3]
Protection of political groups was eliminated from theUnited Nations resolution after a second vote because many states, including Stalin'sSoviet Union,[5] anticipated that clause to apply unneeded limitations to their right to suppress internal disturbances.[6][7] The reason given was that the protected groups were immutable, which scholars point out is unlikely, since religious and national affiliation are not immutable.[4]
Efforts to have political groups added to the Convention have been unsuccessful.[8]
Scholarly study of genocide usually acknowledges the United Nations omission ofeconomic and political groups, and uses mass political killing datasets ofdemocide, and genocide and politicide, or geno-politicide.[9] Killings by theKhmer Rouge inDemocratic Kampuchea have been labelled genocide orautogenocide, and the deaths underLeninism andStalinism in the Soviet Union, andMaoism inCommunist China have been controversially investigated as possible cases; theSoviet famine of 1932–1933 and theGreat Chinese Famine during theGreat Leap Forward have been controversially "depicted as instances of mass killing underpinned bygenocidal intent"[10]. In addition to those, also themassacres ofIndonesian communists, that caused between 500,000 and 3 million deaths, are considered, controversially, by many as a genocide.
Politicide is the deliberate physical destruction or elimination of a group whose members oppose a regime or share the main characteristic of belonging to apolitical movement. It is a type ofpolitical repression and one of the means used to politically cleanse populations, another beingforced migration. It may be compared togenocide orethnic cleansing, both of which involve the killing of people based on their membership in a particularracial orethnic group rather than their adherence to a particularideology.[11]
Politicide is used to describe the killing of groups that are not covered by theGenocide Convention.[12]Social scientistsTed Robert Gurr andBarbara Harff usepoliticide to describe the killing of groups of people who are targeted not because of their shared ethnic or communal traits, but because of "their hierarchical position or political opposition to the regime and dominant groups."[13] Harff studies genocide and politicide, sometimes shortened asgeno-politicide, in order to include the killing of political, economic, ethnic and cultural groups.[14] Manus Midlarsky usespoliticide to describe an arc of large-scale killing from the western parts of the Soviet Union toChina andCambodia.[15] In his bookThe Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Midlarsky raises similarities between the killings perpetrated byJoseph Stalin andPol Pot.[16]
Some groups attempt to eliminate the base of support forpolitical opponents such as insurgents. This happens in many countries with high levels ofinsurgency such asColombia.[17] It may be a means for and referred to as pacification.[18]
The definition contained in Article II of the Convention describes genocide as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. It does not include political groups or so called "cultural genocide".
Thus, interpreting the crime as a departure from a "formalist" interpretation of the provision, genocide cannot be committed towards groups defined by gender. The victims, moreover, must be chosen based on their membership to such a collective with the intent to destroy the group "in whole or in part."
Through the inclusion of some groups and the omission of others, the convention is limited in its application to only those guilty acts committed with genocidal intent against the groups it specifies...Not only are political groups unprotected by the convention, but their omission from the treaty also creates a blind spot in its coverage into which those groups that are protected can be pushed.