Past Genocides

The Armenian Genocide: 1915-1923
Believed to be the first genocide of the 20th century, the Armenian Genocide claimed an estimated 1.5 million Armenian lives between 1915 and 1923, totaling 1/3 of the total population. Apart from the hundreds of thousands that were methodically murdered, many died of starvation, exhaustion, and illness that ran rampant in the concentration camps. The Committee of Union and Progress, also known as the Young Turks, carried out the genocide under the leadership and order of three Ottoman Turkish government figures: Mehmet Talaat, Ismail Enver, and Ahmed Jemal. After joining the war in alliance with Germany, Talaat conveyed that there was no room for Christians in Turkey and began targeting the Armenians. The Young Turks justified the deportation and deaths of Armenian Turks by claiming that the Armenians were a threat to the country’s security and they needed to suppress Armenian revolts. The Armenian Genocide was planned and systematically carried out during WWI between 1915 and 1918, and again between 1920 and 1923.

The Turkish government has refused to acknowledge the massacre of Armenians between 1915 and 1923 and has consistently frustrated efforts to pass a U.S. resolution officially recognizing the Armenian genocide.

The Holocaust: 1939-1945
During World War II, Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered approximately six million Jews as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the National Socialist regime in Germany led by Adolf Hitler. The Holocaust is the name used to refer to this systematic, bureaucratic, and state-sponsored campaign of persecution and murder. Beginning with racially discriminatory laws in Germany, the Nazi campaign expanded to the mass murder of all European Jews

The Nazis also targeted other groups because of their perceived “racial inferiority”: Gypsies, people with disabilities, and some of the Slavic peoples. Other groups were persecuted on political and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals. The persecution and genocide were accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. Jews were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of miles by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Germany’s bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called “a genocidal nation.”

Cambodia: 1975-1979
Under the Khmer Rouge, the extremist Communist party that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, an estimated 1.5 million people died as a result of murder, starvation, displacement, and forced labor. With the intent to create a “New People”, the Khmer Rouge isolated the country from foreign influence and forced Cambodian citizens to evacuate their homes in the city to go work in collective farms. In reference to civilian Cambodians, the Khmer Rouge’s motto was, “To keep you is no benefit. To lose you is no loss.” The government executed anyone whom they believed to be “enemies of the state” and buried them in mass graves. Among their “enemies” were Cambodian Christians and Muslims, ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese, the Buddhist Monkhood, professionals and intellectuals, and anyone with ties to the former government. The killing ended in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge was removed from power and a Vietnamese regime took over the government.

Iraq: 1986-1989
Kurds used to make up more than 4 million of Iraq’s population, and Kurdish rebel groups were viewed by Hussein as a threat because they wanted to secede and govern themselves independently. From 1986 to 1989, forces led by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime executed nearly 100,000 Iraqi Kurds. Led by Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hasan al-Majid, the Anfal Campaign destroyed thousands of villages, displaced over a million Kurds, and killed unarmed civilians with chemical gassing. The campaign also included concentration camps, firing squads, ground offensives, and aerial bombing.

Kurds continue to be targets of sectarian violence, even in parts of Iraq such as Kirkuk, a northern town in Iraq where Kurds represent a majority in the process of establishing a power sharing government.

Bosnia & Srebrenica: 1992-1995
Bosnia, one of the countries that emerged from the break-up of Yugoslavia, declared its independence in 1992. Tension between the three main ethnic groups in Bosnia, the Serbians, the Croats, and the Muslims, broke out into violence leading to Bosnian Serbs committing genocide against the Bosnian Muslims. Under the leadership of Slobodan Milesovic, the Serbians systematically rounded up Muslims and executed them or placed them in concentration camps. Bosnian Muslim women and girls were raped and families were forced to leave their homes. On July 11, 1995 Bosnian Serb forces seized the safe area of Srebrenica, where over 40,000 Muslims resided. Ratko Mladic, commander of the Serb army, ordered and carried out the slaughter of 7,000 Muslim men. This was the largest massacre in Europe since World War II. With the help of NATO, a peace accord was declared in November of 1995 and the killing ceased. However, by this time, over 200,000 Muslims had been murdered, 20,000 were missing, and 2,000,000 were refugees.

Rwanda: 1994
Tensions between the Tutsis and the Hutus broke out on April 6, 1994 when an airplane carrying the Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Hutu president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down, killing both men. Over a period of 100 days, April to mid-July 1994, extremist Hutu militia groups executed over 500,000 Tutsis and thousands of moderate Hutus. The United Nations entered Rwanda as a peacekeeping force, but did not authorize UNAMIR to use force to stop the killing. The genocide ended when the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a Tutsi rebel movement, overthrew the Hutu government and seized power. The international community has been greatly criticized for their inaction during the Rwandan genocide. Former President Clinton has stated that he considers Rwanda to be the greatest regret of his administration.

Kosovo: 1998-1999
Residual tensions between Serbians and Albanians, resulting from the continued Serbian oppression of Albanians within Bosnia, led to conflict eruption in Kosovo. Slobodan Milosevic’s campaign of aggression in Kosovo from 1998 to 1999 targeted ethnic Albanians in systematic executions, rapes, and other crimes against humanity. In the spring of 1999, NATO launched a 78 day aerial bombing campaign to force Milosevic to withdraw his forces from Kosovo. In June of 1999, Milosevic agreed to withdraw. About 10,000-12,000 ethnic Albanians were killed and over 2,500 missing. Mass graves were also later found.