Eliminating groups of people for political reasons
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.
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]
For the intentional destruction of a city or nation, seepolicide.
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.[citation needed]
Politicide is used to describe the killing of groups that are not covered by theGenocide Convention.[11]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."[12] Harff studies genocide and politicide, sometimes shortened asgeno-politicide, in order to include the killing of political, economic, ethnic and cultural groups.[13] Manus Midlarsky usespoliticide to describe an arc of large-scale killing from the western parts of the Soviet Union toChina andCambodia.[14] In his bookThe Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Midlarsky raises similarities between the killings perpetrated byJoseph Stalin andPol Pot.[15]
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.[16] It may be a means for and referred to as pacification.[17]
^"About the genocide convention"(PDF).United Nations.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".
^Strandberg Hassellind, Filip (2020)."Groups Defined by Gender and the Genocide Convention".Genocide Studies and Prevention.14 (1):60–75.doi:10.5038/1911-9933.14.1.1679. Retrieved3 July 2024.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."
^abBachman, Jeffrey S. (16 September 2022).The Politics of Genocide: From the Genocide Convention to the Responsibility to Protect. Rutgers University Press. p. 45-46.ISBN978-1-978821-50-7.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.
^abBazyler, Michael J. (2017).Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law: A Quest for Justice in a Post-Holocaust World. Oxford University Press. p. 46-7.ISBN978-0-19-066403-9.
^Jones, Adam (2010).Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (2nd ed.). New York:Routledge. p. 137.ISBN978-0-415-48619-4. According to Jones: "Also unsurprisingly, it was the settler-colonial regimes who were most anxious to exclude cultural genocide from the Genocide Convention, as Raphael Lemkin’s biographer John Cooper points out." pp. 102.
^Schaack, Beth (1997). "The Crime of Political Genocide: Repairing the Genocide Convention's Blind Spot".The Yale Law Journal.106 (7): 2259–2291.doi:10.2307/797169.JSTOR797169.ISSN0044-0094
^Brown, Bartram S. (2011).Research Handbook on International Criminal Law. Edward Elgar Publishing.ISBN978-0-85793-322-5.
^Atsushi, Tago; Wayman, Frank W. (January 2010). "Explaining the Onset of Mass Killing, 1949–87".Journal of Peace Research Online. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.47 (1): 3–13.doi:10.1177/0022343309342944.JSTOR25654524.S2CID145155872.
^Harff, Barbara; Gurr, Ted Robert (September 1988). "Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945".International Studies Quarterly. Wiley on behalf of The International Studies Association.32 (3): 359–371.doi:10.2307/2600447.JSTOR2600447.ISSN0020-8833.
^Harff, Barbara, and Ted Robert Gurr. “Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases Since 1945.” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 3, 1988, pp. 359–71. JSTOR,https://doi.org/10.2307/2600447. Accessed 29 Jan. 2025.
^Wayman, Frank W.; Tago, Atsushi (January 2010). "Explaining the Onset of Mass killing, 1949–87".Journal of Peace Research Online. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.47 (1): 3–13.doi:10.1177/0022343309342944.JSTOR25654524.S2CID145155872.ISSN0022-3433. "The two important scholars who have created datasets related to this are Rummel (1995) and Harff (2003). Harff (sometimes with Gurr) has studied what she terms 'genocide and politicide', defined to be genocide by killing as understood by the Genocide Convention plus the killing of a political or economic group (Harff & Gurr, 1988); the combined list of genocides is sometimes labeled 'geno-politicide' for short. Rummel (1994, 1995) has a very similar concept, 'democide', which includes such genocide and geno-politicide done by the government forces, plus other killing by government forces, such as random killing not targeted at a particular group. As Rummel (1995: 3-4) says, 'Cold-blooded government killing ... extends beyond genocide'; For example, 'shooting political opponents; or murdering by quota'. Hence, 'to cover all such murder as well as genocide and politicide, I use the concept democide. This is the intentional killing of people by government' (Rummel, 1995: 4). So Rummel has a broader concept than geno-politicide, but one that seems to include geno-politicide as a proper subset." Quote at p. 4.
Mesko, Zoltan G. (2003).The Silent Conspiracy: A Communist Model of Political Cleansing at the Slovak University in Bratislava after the Second World War.ISBN0-88033-514-9.
Nersessian, David L. (2010).Genocide and Political Groups. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-159455-7.
