IDENTIFICATION OF GENOCIDE . M.M.Mbanaja Though the term genocide was not coined until 1944, acts of genocide have been committed throughout history. In ancient times, it was common practice for victors in war to slaughter the men of a population they conquered. Arguably the first modern genocide took place in the 13th century, when heretics in medieval Europe were massacred during the Albigensian Crusade. In 1945, thanks in no small part to Lemkin’s efforts, the term genocide was included in the charter of the International Military Tribunal set up by the victorious Allied powers in Nuremburg, Germany. The tribunal indicted and tried top Nazi officials for “crimes against humanity,” which included persecution on racial, religious or political grounds as well as inhumane acts committed against civilians (including genocide). After the Nuremburg trials revealed the horrible extent of Nazi crimes, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution in 1946 making the crime of genocide punishable under international law. “Genocide,” a term used to describe violence against members of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group with the intent to destroy the entire group, came into general usage only after World War II, when the full extent of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime against the Jews of Europe during that conflict became known. In 1948, the United Nations declared genocide to be an international crime; the term would later be applied to the horrific acts of violence committed during conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and in the African country of Rwanda in the 1990s. An international treaty signed by some 120 countries in 1998 established the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has jurisdiction to prosecute crimes of genocide. The deliberate destruction of an entire race or nation. The Holocaust conducted by the Nazis in Germany,the Nigerian attempt to exterminate the South Eastern people of Biafra between 1966-1970. The Biafran example of genocide came in different forms that was only witnessed in the starvation of the populace through the denial of their farmland that systematically starved millions of Ukrainians to death in Ukraine, civilian air bombardment, village massacre of unarmed civilian population and complete starvation as a weapon of war which is unlawful under the Geneva convention and the Rwandan genocide are examples of attempts at genocide. EVENTS OF THE 1990S In 1992, the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia, and Bosnian Serb leaders targeted both Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Croatian civilians for atrocious crimes resulting in the deaths of some 100,000 people by 1995. In 1993, the U.N. Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, in the Netherlands; it was the first international tribunal since Nuremburg and the first to have a mandate to prosecute the crime of genocide. Steps to genocide starts with the identification of victims victims based on their ethnic, racial, national or religious identities. Victims may not necessarily think of themselves in these terms. However, as a matter of identifying targets for murder. Example, in the case of Nigeria, the Strangers quarter is Sabon Gari, Igbos live in this area, secondly, victims are given names to mimic them, like in the case of Rwanda, victims were tagged cockroach and in Nigeria victims are termed Inyamiri , just this week, a Northern leader called Bareje , a former house member and an Islamic sholar,has claimed that because the North has the greatest land mass in the entity called Nigeria, the oil or mineral resources found in any part of the country belongs to the North, this type of inciting statement has a genocidal tendency and as Asari Dokubo has shouted, if not checkmated, Nigeria should be ready for yet another Genocide. Finally, the most dangerous type of genocide is a group sponsored terrorist systematic elimination targeted at a particular ethnic group like we have today in Boko Haram. From April to mid-July 1994, members of the Hutu majority in Rwanda murdered some 500,000 to 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority, with horrifying brutality and speed. As with the former Yugoslavia, the international community did little to stop the crimes while they were occurring, but that fall the U.N. expanded the mandate of the ICTY to include the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), located in Tanzania. The Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals helped clarify exactly what types of actions could be classified as genocidal, as well as how criminal responsibility for these actions should be established. In 1998, the ICTR set the important precedent that systematic rape is in fact a crime of genocide; it also handed down the first conviction for genocide after a trial, that of the mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba. THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT (ICC) An international statute signed in Rome in 1998 expanded the CCPG’s definition of genocide and applied it to times of both war and peace. The statute also established the International Criminal Court (ICC), which began sittings in 2002 at The Hague (without the participation of the U.S., China or Russia). Since then, the ICC has dealt with cases against leaders in the Congo and in Sudan, where brutal acts committed by the janjawid militia against civilians in the western region of Darfur have been condemned by numerous international officials (including former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell) as genocide. There is no doubt that every person or group of persons , in life or on death, must one day face legal action according to the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 .
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 17:06:44 +0000
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