List of genocides

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This list includes all events which have been classified as genocide by significant scholarship. As there are varying definitions of genocide, this list includes events around which there is ongoing scholarly debate over their classification as genocide and is not a list of only events which have a scholarly consensus to recognize them as genocide. This list excludes mass killings which have not been explicitly defined as genocidal.[a] According to the Genocide Convention, genocides have happened in all historical periods.[2]

Concept of genocide

See also: Genocide definitions

Polish–Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term "genocide" in response to world events such as the Armenian genocide and World War II.[3] His initial definition was "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" in which its members were not targeted as individuals, but rather as members of the group. The objectives of genocide "would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups".[4] Lemkin brought his proposal to criminalize genocide to the newly established United Nations in 1946.[5] Opposition to the convention was greater than Lemkin expected due to states' concerns that it would lead their own policies—including treatment of indigenous peoples, European colonialism, racial segregation in the United States, and Soviet nationalities policy—to be labeled genocide. Before the convention was passed, powerful countries (both Western powers and the Soviet Union) secured changes in an attempt to make the convention unenforceable and applicable to their geopolitical rivals' actions but not their own.[6] Few formerly colonized countries were represented and "most states had no interest in empowering their victims– past, present, and future".[7]

The 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as:

... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

  • (a) Killing members of the group;
  • (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  • (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
  • (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
  • (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.[8]

The result severely diluted Lemkin's original concept;[9] he privately considered it a failure.[6] Lemkin's anti-colonial conception of genocide was transformed into one that favored colonial powers.[10][11] Among the violence freed from the stigma of genocide was the destruction of political groups, which the Soviet Union is particularly blamed for blocking.[12][13][9] Although Lemkin credited women's NGOs with securing the passage of the convention, the gendered violence of forced pregnancy, marriage, and divorce was left out.[14] Additionally omitted was the forced migration of populations—which had been carried out by the Soviet Union and its satellites, condoned by the Western Allies, against millions of Germans from central and Eastern Europe.[15]

Many countries have incorporated genocide into their municipal law, varying to a lesser or greater extent from the convention.[16] The convention's definition of genocide was adopted verbatim by the ad hoc international criminal tribunals and by the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC).[17] The crime of genocide also exists in customary international law and is therefore prohibited for non-signatories.[18] Scholarship varies on the definition of genocide employed when analysing whether events are genocidal in nature.[19] The Convention and other definitions are generally regarded by the majority of genocide scholars to have an "intent to destroy" as a requirement for any act to be labelled genocide; there is also growing agreement on the inclusion of the physical destruction criterion.[20] According to Ernesto Verdeja, associate professor of political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, there are three ways to conceptualize genocide other than the legal definition: in academic social science, in international politics and policy, and in colloquial public usage. Many social scientists do not require that intent be proved beyond a reasonable doubt and may include other groups of people in addition to the legally protected ones, such as political groups[21][22] (which can also be termed politicide). The international politics and policy definition centres around prevention policy and intervention and may actually mean "large-scale violence against civilians" when used by governments and international organizations.[21] Lastly, Verdeja says the way the general public colloquially uses "genocide" is usually "as a stand-in term for the greatest evils".[21]

List

The term genocide is contentious and as a result its definition varies. This list only considers acts which are recognized in significant scholarship as genocides.

More information Event, Location ...
List of genocides in reverse chronological order
Event Location Period Estimated killings
From To Lowest Highest
Description Proportion of group killed
Gaza genocide Gaza Strip, Palestine 2023 Present 70,369[b] 335,500[c]

The Gaza genocide is the ongoing systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip by Israel during the Gaza war, carried out with the intent to destroy Gaza's population in whole or in part through extermination,[29] starvation, bombing, blockade, and invasion. Other genocidal acts include destroying civilian infrastructure, killing healthcare workers and aid-seekers, using mass forced displacement, committing sexual violence, and restricting birth.[30] The genocide has been recognized by consensus amongst experts,[31] a United Nations special committee and commission of inquiry;[32][33] humanitarian and human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Human Rights Watch;[34] international law experts;[35][36] and genocide studies scholars,[37] including 86% of voters in the International Association of Genocide Scholars.[38][39]
  • More than 10,000 presumed dead under rubble[40]
Blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh and expulsion of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan 2022 2023
Azerbaijan's blockade and ethnic cleansing of Armenian people through repeated military offensives in Nagorno-Karabakh has been characterized as a genocide in multiple sources.[41][42][43][44][45] 99.99% of Armenians were expelled from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia,[46][47] fleeing through the military checkpoint on the Lachin corridor.
Rohingya genocide Rakhine State, Myanmar 2016 Present 9,000–13,700[48] 43,000[49]
The Rohingya genocide[50] is a series of ongoing persecutions and killings of the Muslim Rohingya people by the military of Myanmar. The genocide has consisted of two phases to date: the first was a military crackdown that occurred from October 2016 to January 2017, and the second has been occurring since August 2017.[51]

The crisis forced over a million Rohingya to flee to other countries. Most fled to Bangladesh, resulting in the creation of the world's largest refugee camp,[52] while others escaped to India, Thailand, Malaysia, and other parts of South and Southeast Asia, where they continue to face persecution. The Rohingya are denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law, and are falsely regarded as Bengali immigrants by much of Myanmar's Bamar majority, to the extent that the government refuses to acknowledge the Rohingya's existence as a valid ethnic group.[53]

 Before the 2015 refugee crisis, the Rohingya population in Myanmar was around 1.0 to 1.3 million. Since 2015, over 900,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to southeastern Bangladesh alone, and more to other surrounding countries. More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar are confined in camps for internally displaced persons.
Uyghur genocide Xinjiang, China 2016 Present
Widespread human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party against the Uyghur people (a Turkic ethnic group) and other Muslim minorities have often been characterized as genocide.[54] There have been reports of mass arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, family separation, forced labour, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights, including forced sterilization.[55][56] The Uyghur Tribunal concluded that there was "no evidence of mass killings" but that "alleged efforts to prevent births amounted to genocidal intent."[57] Human Rights Watch stated in its 2021 report that the organization "has not documented the existence of the necessary genocidal intent at this time."[55]
  • Birth rates among Uyghurs had fallen by 24% as of 2020 due to Chinese policies.[58]
Ukrainian genocide Ukraine (including Russian-occupied Ukraine) 2014 Present 18,000[N 1] 50,000[61]
Several genocide scholars,[62] commentators, legal experts, human rights organizations and the national parliaments of several countries have declared that Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against Ukrainian civilians during the Russo-Ukrainian war, including mass killings, deliberate attacks on shelters, evacuation routes, and humanitarian corridors, indiscriminate bombardment of residential areas, deliberate and systematic infliction of life-threatening conditions by military sieges, rape and sexual violence amount to genocide and incitement to genocide with intent to destroy the Ukrainian national group.[63][64] This further escalated following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, including through Russia's kidnapping of Ukrainian children from occupied territory, which prompted ICC arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials.
Yazidi genocide Iraq and Syria (within Islamic State territory) 2014 2017 2,100[67] 5,000[68]
The Yazidi genocide was perpetrated by the Islamic State throughout Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017.[69][70][71] It was characterized by massacres, genocidal rape, and forced conversions to Islam. Over a period of three years, Islamic State militants trafficked thousands of Yazidi women and girls and killed thousands of Yazidi men.[72] The United Nations' Commission of Inquiry on Syria officially declared in its report that ISIS was committing genocide against the Yazidis population.[73] It is difficult to assess a precise figure for the killings[74] but it is known that some thousand of Yazidis men and boys were still unaccounted for and ISIS genocidal actions against Yazidis people were still ongoing, as stated by the International Commission in June 2016.
See also: 2007 Yazidi communities bombings
 A study found 3,100 killed and 6,800 were kidnapped, amounting to 2.5% of Yazidis being either killed or kidnapped.[75][76]
By 2015, upwards of 71% of the global Yazidi population was displaced by the genocide, with most Yazidi refugees having fled to Iraq's Kurdistan Region and Syria's Rojava.[77][78]
Darfur genocide (2003–2005) Darfur, Sudan 2003 2005 98,000[79] 500,000[80]
The Darfur genocide is the systematic killing of ethnic Darfuri people which has occurred during the war in Darfur.[81] The genocide, which is being carried out against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups, has led the International Criminal Court to indict several people for crimes against humanity, rape, forced transfer and torture. This includes Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir for his role in the genocide.[82] An estimated 200,000 people were killed between 2003 and 2005.[83] These atrocities have been called the first genocide of the 21st century.[81]
Effacer le tableau North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo 2002 2003 60,000[84][85] 70,000[84]
Effacer le tableau ("erasing the board") was the operational name given to the systematic extermination of the Bambuti pygmies by rebel forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The primary objective of Effacer le tableau was the territorial conquest of the North Kivu province of the DRC and ethnic cleansing of Pygmies from the Congo's eastern region.[85] 40% of the Eastern Congo's Pygmy population killed[N 2]
Massacres of Hutus during the First Congo War Kivu, Zaire 1996 1997 200,000[86] 233,000[86]
During the First Congo War, troops of the Rwanda-backed Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL) conducted mass killings of Rwandan, Congolese, and Burundian Hutu men, women, and children in villages and refugee camps in eastern Zaire (now named the Democratic Republic of the Congo).[87][88] Elements of the AFDL and the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) systematically shelled numerous camps and committed massacres with light weapons. These early attacks killed 6,800–8,000 refugees and forced the repatriation of 500,000 – 700,000 refugees back to Rwanda.[89]
As survivors fled westward, the AFDL units hunted them down killing thousands more.[87]
Rwandan genocide Rwanda 1994 491,000[90] 800,000[91]
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred between 7 April and 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War.[92][90][93] During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. Although the Constitution of Rwanda states that more than 1 million people perished in the genocide, the actual number of fatalities is unclear, and some estimates suggest that the real number killed was likely lower.[93][94][95] The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi deaths.[91] 60–70% of Tutsis in Rwanda killed[90]
7% of Rwanda's total population killed[90]
Bosnian genocide Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992 1995 31,107[96] 62,013[96]
The Bosnian genocide comprised localized massacres, including those in Srebrenica[97] and Žepa, committed by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995, as well as the scattered ethnic cleansing campaign throughout areas controlled by the Army of Republika Srpska[98] during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War.[99] On 31 March 2010, the Serbian Parliament passed a resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre and apologizing to the families of Srebrenica for the deaths of Bosniaks ("Bosnian Muslims").[100] More than 3% of the Bosniak population of Bosnia and Herzegovina died during the Bosnian War.[101]
Isaaq genocide Republic of Somaliland, Somali Democratic Republic 1987 1989 50,000[102][103] 200,000[104]
The Genocide of Isaaqs was the systematic, state-sponsored massacre of Isaaq civilians between 1988 and 1991 by the Somali Democratic Republic under the dictatorship of Siad Barre.[105][106][107] This included the levelling and complete destruction of the second- and third-largest cities in Somalia, Hargeisa (90 per cent destroyed)[108] and Burao (70 per cent destroyed) respectively,[109] and had caused 400,000[110][111] Somalis (primarily of the Isaaq clan) to flee their land and cross the border to Hartasheikh in Ethiopia as refugees,[112] with another 400,000 being internally displaced.[110][113]
In 2001, the United Nations commissioned an investigation on past human rights violations in Somalia,[105] specifically to find out if "crimes of international jurisdiction (i.e. war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide) had been perpetrated during the country's civil war". The investigation was commissioned jointly by the United Nations Co-ordination Unit (UNCU) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The investigation concluded with a report confirming the crime of genocide to have taken place against the Isaaqs in Somalia.[105]
Anfal campaign Kurdistan, Iraqi Republic 1986 1989 50,000[114] 182,000[115]
The Anfal campaign was a counterinsurgency operation which was carried out by Ba'athist Iraq from February to September 1988 during the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted rural Kurds[116] because its purpose was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups and Arabize strategic parts of the Kirkuk Governorate.[117] The Iraqis committed atrocities on the local Kurdish population, mostly civilians.[118] A variety of national governments have passed resolutions recognising the Anfal campaign as a genocide.[119][120][121]
Sabra and Shatila massacre Beirut, Lebanon 1982 460[122] 3,500[123]
The Sabra and Shatila massacre was the 16–18 September 1982 killings of civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias—in the city of Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. It was perpetrated by the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian militias in Lebanon, and supported by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that had surrounded Beirut's Sabra neighbourhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp.[124] Both the United Nations and an independent commission headed by Seán MacBride concluded that the massacre was an act of genocide against the Palestinian people,[125][126] a conclusion concurred with by NGOs such as the Palestinian Return Centre.[127] Human rights scholars Damien Short and Haifa Rashed also described the massacre as genocidal in nature.[128]
Cambodian genocide Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) 1975 1979 1,386,734[129][130] 3,000,000[131][132]
The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot.[133] The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and forced Cambodians to relocate to labour camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labour, physical abuse, malnutrition, and disease were rampant.[134][135] Up to 20,000 mass graves, the infamous Killing Fields, were uncovered, where at least 1,386,734 murdered victims found their final resting place.[136][137] The Khmer Rouge Tribunal found that targeting of Vietnamese and Cham minorities constituted a genocide under the UN Convention.[138][139] 15–33% of total population of Cambodia killed,[140][141] including 99% of Cambodian Viets, 50% of Cambodian Chinese and Cham, 40% of Cambodian Lao and Thai, 25% of Urban Khmer, 16% of Rural Khmer
East Timor genocide East Timor, Indonesia 1974 1999 85,320[142] 196,720[143]
The East Timor genocide refers to the "pacification campaigns" of state terrorism which were waged by the Indonesian New Order government during the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor. Genocide scholars at Oxford University and Yale University acknowledge the Indonesian occupation of East Timor as genocide.[144][145] The truth commission held Indonesian forces responsible for about 70% of the violent killings.[146] 13% to 44% of East Timor's total population killed
(See death toll of East Timor genocide)
Bangladesh genocide East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) 1971 300,000[147] 3,000,000[147][148]
The Bangladesh genocide was the ethnic cleansing of Bengalis, especially Bengali Hindus,[149] residing in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the Bangladesh Liberation War, perpetrated by the Pakistan Armed Forces and the Razakars.[150][151] It began as Operation Searchlight was launched by West Pakistan (now Pakistan) to militarily subdue the Bengali population of East Pakistan; the Bengalis comprised the demographic majority and had been calling for independence. Seeking to curtail the Bengali self-determination movement, Pakistani president Yahya Khan approved a large-scale military deployment, and in the nine-month-long conflict that ensued, Pakistani soldiers and local militias killed between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women in a systematic campaign of mass murder and genocidal sexual violence.[152] 4% of the population of East Pakistan[153]
Nigerian Civil War, particularly the blockade of Biafra Biafra 1967 1970 1,000,000[154] More than 1,000,000[155][156][157]

Biafra attracted a large amount of international attention from mid-1968, when images of starving Biafran children began to appear in the international press.[158][159] Biafran propaganda compared Igbo to Jews and the blockade of Biafra to the Holocaust. Initially, international public opinion was sympathetic to Biafran claims, but shifted after the United Kingdom sent a fact finding mission to Nigeria that reported that genocide was not occurring.[160] Some scholars have criticized the fact finding mission for not properly investigating the genocide claims. The mission only investigated where Nigeria allowed them to investigate. Additionally, the mission dismissed rape by Nigerian soldiers as "enforced marriage".[161] Soon after the civil war ended in 1970, it was largely forgotten outside Nigeria and not much mentioned in the field of genocide studies.[162]

Most of the war casualties were civilians[163] particularly children, who were especially vulnerable to malnutrition.[164][165]

Maya genocide Guatemala 1962 1996 166,000[166] 166,000[167]
The Guatemalan genocide was the massacre of Maya civilians during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996) by successive US-backed Guatemalan military governments.[168][169][170][171] Massacres, forced disappearances, torture and summary executions of guerrillas and especially civilians at the hands of security forces had been widespread since 1965, and was a longstanding policy of the military regime, which US officials were aware of.[172][173] At least an estimated 200,000 persons died by arbitrary executions, forced disappearances and other human rights violations.[174] 83% of those killed were Maya.[175] A quarter of the direct victims of human rights violations and acts of violence were women.[176] 40% of the Maya population (24,000 people) of Guatemala's Ixil and Rabinal regions were killed[citation needed]
Tamil genocide Sri Lanka 1956 2009 154,022 253,818
The Tamil genocide refers to the various systematic acts of physical violence and cultural destruction committed against the Tamil population in Sri Lanka during the Sinhala–Tamil ethnic conflict beginning in 1956, particularly during the Sri Lankan civil war. Various commenters have accused the Sri Lankan state of responsibility for and complicity in a genocide of Tamils, and point to state-sponsored settler colonialism, state-backed pogroms, and mass killings, enforced disappearances and sexual violence by the security forces as examples of genocidal acts.[177][178][179]
Population transfer in the Soviet Union[180] Soviet Union 1941 1949 800,000[181] 1,500,000.[182]
Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, the Soviet Union conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale.[183] It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million people from different ethnic groups were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics.[184] Many deportees died during the journey or due to the harsh climates of Siberia and Kazakhstan, disease, malnutrition, forced labor, and the lack of housing.[185]

It is disputed whether these deportations should be called ethnic cleansing, genocide, or something else. Some historians argue that the Soviet authorities acted with knowledge that the conditions deportees would face would lead to mass casualties. Others argue that no intent to exterminate the repressed people can be identified, and that the main motive of the Soviet authorities was to increase security in disputed border areas.[186] Ethnic groups affected included:

 On average 25 to 35 percent
Siege of Leningrad[195][196][197] Leningrad 1941 1944 1,042,000[198][199] 1,042,000[198][199]
Some historians and the Russian government have classified the siege, in which German and Finnish policies led to the deaths of more than 1 million civilians from starvation, as a genocide.[198]
The Holocaust Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe 1941 1945 5,100,000[200] 7,000,000[201][202]
The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.[203][204][205] Nearly one and half million were killed in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942,[206] the fastest rate of genocidal killing in history.[207] The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps.[208] Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; the term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of these other groups. The Holocaust is considered to be the single largest genocide in history.[209][210][211] Around 2/3 of the Jewish population of Europe.[212][213]
Genocide of Serbs and Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia Independent State of Croatia
(now Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina)		 1941 1945 248,000[214][215][216][N 3] 548,000[214][216][215][N 3]
Genocide of Serbs and Holocaust of Jews and Romani within the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a fascist puppet state that existed during World War II, led by the Ustaše regime, which ruled an occupied area of Yugoslavia. The Genocide of Serbs was conducted in parallel to the Holocaust in the NDH. The Ustaše were the only quisling forces in Yugoslavia who operated their own extermination camps for the purpose of murdering Serbs and other ethnic groups (Jews and Romani).
Genocide of Bosniaks and Croats by the Chetniks Yugoslavia 1941 1945 47,000[217] 68,000[217]
Genocidal massacres and ethnic cleansing of ethnic Muslims and Croats by Yugoslav royalists and nationalists Chetniks across large areas of Occupied Yugoslavia (modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia) during World War II in Yugoslavia, on the basis of creating a post-war Greater Serbia.[218] The Moljević plan ("On Our State and Its Borders") and the 1941 'Instructions' issued by Chetnik leader, Draža Mihailović, advocated for the cleansing of non-Serbs. Death toll by ethnicity is estimated to be between 18,000 and 32,000 Croats and between 29,000 and 33,000 Muslims.[219]
Nazi crimes against the Polish nation[220][221] (part of the Generalplan Ost) German-occupied Europe 1939 1945 1,800,000[222] 3,000,000[223][224]
Crimes against the Polish nation committed by Nazi Germany and Axis collaborationist forces during the invasion of Poland,[225] along with auxiliary battalions during the subsequent occupation of Poland in World War II,[226] included the genocide of millions of Polish people, especially the systematic extermination of Jewish Poles.[d] These mass killings were enacted by the Nazis with further plans that were justified by their racial theories, which regarded Poles and other Slavs, and especially Jews, as racially inferior Untermenschen. From 6% to 10% (1.8 to 3 million) of the total Polish gentile population.[224] In addition, 3 million Polish Jews were killed during the Holocaust in Poland (90% of Polish Jews).[222]
Romani Holocaust German-occupied Europe 1939[228] 1945 130,000[229] 1,500,000[230][231]
The Romani Holocaust was the planned effort by Nazi Germany and its World War II allies and collaborators to commit ethnic cleansing and eventually genocide against European Roma and Sinti peoples during the Holocaust era.[232] A supplementary decree to the Nuremberg Laws issued on 26 November 1935 classified the Romani people as "enemies of the race-based state", thereby placing them in the same category as the Jews. Thus, the fate of the Roma in Europe paralleled that of the Jews in the Holocaust.[233][234] 25% to 80% of Romani people in Europe killed
Parsley massacre Dominican Republic 1937 12,000 40,000[235]
The Parsley massacre was a mass killing of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic's northwestern frontier and in certain parts of the contiguous Cibao region in October 1937. Dominican Army troops from different areas of the country[236] carried out the massacre on the orders of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.[237] Many died while trying to flee to Haiti across the Dajabón River that divides the two countries on the island;[238] the troops followed them into the river to cut them down, causing the river to run with blood and corpses for several days. The massacre claimed the lives of an estimated 14,000 to 40,000 Haitian men, women, and children.[239] Dominican troops interrogated thousands of civilians demanding that each victim say the word "parsley" (perejil). If the accused could not pronounce the word to the interrogators' satisfaction, they were deemed to be Haitians and killed.[240][241] As a result of the massacre, virtually the entire Haitian population in the Dominican frontier was either killed or forced to flee across the border.[242]
Mass operations of the NKVD Soviet Union 1937 1938 247,157[243]
During the Great Purge, people from certain ethnic groups were disproportionately represented as victims of arrest and execution.[244] Although some historians have argued that the victims were targeted mostly because of their ethnicity, historian Andrey Savin writes that "the determinant factors in the choice of the majority of the victims of the national operations were, as a rule, the objective criteria of a "hostile" social past/origin and the subjective criteria of recurrent "anti-Soviet" behaviour".[245] Multiple historians have published opinions describing the Polish operation as genocidal.[246] 22% of the Polish population of the USSR was "sentenced" by the operation (140,000 people)[247]

The German operation of the NKVD has also been described as a genocide.[248][page needed]
Dersim massacre Turkey 1937 1938 13,806[249] 70,000[250][page needed]
The Dersim massacre,[251][252] also known as Dersim genocide,[253] was carried out by the Turkish military over the course of three operations in the Dersim Province against Kurdish rebels of Alevi faith, and civilians in 1937 and 1938. Although most Kurds in Dersim remained in their home villages,[254] thousands were killed and many others were expelled to other parts of Turkey.[255][256]
Holodomor Ukraine and the northern Kuban,[257] Soviet Union 1932 1933 3,000,000[258] 5,000,000[258]
The Holodomor also known as the Ukrainian Famine was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union.
While scholars are in consensus that the cause of the famine was man-made,[259] whether or not the Holodomor was intentional and therefore constitutes a genocide under the Genocide Convention is debated by scholars.[260][261]		 10% of Ukraine's population[262]
Over 35% of Ukrainians in Kazakhstan[263]
Libyan genocide Italian Libya 1929 1932 83,000[264] 125,000+[265]
The Libyan genocide was the genocide of Libyan Arabs and the systematic destruction of Libyan culture,[266][267][268] particularly during and after the Second Italo-Senussi War between 1929 and 1934.[269] During this period, between 83,000 and 125,000 Libyans were killed by Italian colonial authorities under Benito Mussolini.[264][265] Italy committed major war crimes during the conflict; including the use of chemical weapons, executing surrendering combatants, and the mass executions of civilians.[264] Italy apologized in 2008 for its killing, destruction and repression of the Libyan people during the period of colonial rule.[270] 25% of Cyrenaican population[271]
Half of the nomadic Bedouin population[272][273][274]
Armenian genocide Ottoman Empire (now Turkey, Syria, and Iraq) 1915 1917 600,000[275] 1,500,000[276]
The Armenian genocide,[277][278] carried out by the Young Turks, included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches, and mass starvation. It occurred concurrently with the Assyrian and Greek genocides; some scholars consider these to form a broader genocide targeting all of the Christians in Anatolia.[279][280] Approximately 90% of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were killed or expelled.[281] The share of Christians in area within Turkey's current borders declined from 20-22% in 1914, or about 3.3.–3.6 million people, to around 3% in 1927.[282]
Sayfo Ottoman Empire (now Turkey, Syria and Iraq) 1915 1919 200,000[283]
The Sayfo (also known as the Seyfo or the Assyrian genocide) was the mass slaughter and deportation of Assyrian/Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan province by Ottoman forces and some Kurdish tribes during World War I. Overall, about 2 million Christians were killed in Anatolia between 1894 and 1924, 40 per cent of the original population.[284]
Greek genocide and Pontic genocide Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) 1914 1922 300,000[285] 1,200,000[286]
The Greek genocide,[287][288] which included the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia which was carried out mainly during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) on the basis of their religion and ethnicity.[289] It was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,[290] against the Greek population of the Empire. The genocide included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches through the Syrian Desert,[291] expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments.[292] At least 25% of Greeks in Anatolia (Turkey) killed[293]
Herero and Nama genocide German South West Africa (now Namibia) 1904 1908 34,000[294] 110,000[295][296]
The Genocide in German South West Africa was the campaign to exterminate the Herero and Nama people that the German Empire undertook in German South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia). It is considered one of the first genocides of the 20th century. 60% (24,000 out of 40,000[294]) to 81.25% (65,000[297][298] out of 80,000[299]) of total Herero and 50%[294] of Nama population killed.
Selknam genocide Tierra del Fuego, Chile, Argentina 1880 1910 2,500[300] 4,000[301]
The Selknam genocide was the systematic extermination of the Selkʼnam people, an indigenous people of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago by a combination of European and South American hunters, ranchers, gold miners, and soldiers.[302][303][301] Historians estimate that the Selkʼnam population fell from approximately 4,000 people during the 1880s to a few hundred by the early 1900s.[300] 84%
The genocide reduced their numbers from around 3,000 to about 500 people.[304][305]
Circassian genocide Circassia, Russian Empire 1864[N 4] 1867 1,000,000[306] 2,000,000[307][308]
The Circassian genocide[309][310] was the Russian Empire's systematic mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and expulsion of the Circassian population, resulting in 1 to 1.5 million deaths[311][e] during the final stages of the Russo-Circassian War.[312][313] The peoples planned for extermination were mainly the Muslim Circassians, but other Muslim peoples of the Caucasus were also affected.[313] Killing methods used by Russian forces during the genocide included impaling and tearing the bellies of pregnant women as means of intimidation of the Circassian population.[312][314] Russian generals such as Grigory Zass described the Circassians as "subhuman filth", and glorified the mass murder of Circassian civilians,[312][315] justified their use in scientific experiments,[316] and allowed their soldiers to rape women.[312] 95%–97% of total Circassian population killed or deported by the forces of Tsarist Russia.[317][318] Only a small percentage who accepted to convert to Christianity, Russify and resettle within the Russian Empire were spared. The remaining Circassian populations who refused were thus forcefully dispersed, deported or killed. Today, most Circassians live in exile.[319]
California genocide California, United States 1846 1873 9,492–16,094[320][321][N 5] 120,000[321][N 6]
The California genocide was a series of systematized killings of thousands of Indigenous peoples of California by United States government agents and private citizens in the 19th century. It began following the American Conquest of California from Mexico, and the influx of settlers due to the California Gold Rush, which accelerated the decline of the Indigenous population of California. Between 1846 and 1873, it is estimated that non-Natives killed between 9,492 and 16,094 California Natives. In addition, between several hundred and several thousand California Natives were starved or worked to death. Acts of enslavement, kidnapping, rape, child separation and forced displacement were widespread. These acts were encouraged, tolerated, and carried out by state authorities and private militias.[322] Amerindian population in California declined by 80% during the period
Queensland Aboriginal genocide Queensland 1840 1897 10,000[323] 65,180[324]
Queensland represents the single bloodiest colonial frontier in Australia. Thus the records of Queensland document the most frequent reports of shootings and massacres of indigenous people, the three deadliest massacres on white settlers, the most disreputable frontier police force, and the highest number of white victims to frontier violence on record in any Australian colony.[325] Thus some sources have characterized these events as a Queensland Aboriginal genocide.[326][323] 3.3% to over 50% of the aboriginal population was killed
(10,000[323] to 65,180[324] killed out of 125,600)[clarification needed]
Moriori genocide Chatham Islands, New Zealand 1835 1863 1,900[327][328] 1,900
The genocide of the Moriori began in 1836. The invasion of the Chatham Islands by New Zealand Maori left the Moriori people and their culture to die off. Those who survived were kept as slaves and were not sanctioned to marry other Moriori or have children within their race. This caused their people and their language to be endangered. According to Moriori elders, a total of 1,561 Moriori died between the invasion in 1835 and the end of the group's slavery in 1863, with others dying of diseases transmitted by Europeans.[329] The Moriori population was reduced from 2,000 to only 101 in 1863.[330] 95% of the Moriori population was eradicated by the invasion from Taranaki, a group of people from the Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama iwi.[331][332] All were enslaved and many were cannibalized.[333] The Moriori language is now extinct.[330][334]
Trail of Tears Southeastern United States 1830 1850 12,000[335] 16,000[335]
The Trail of Tears was the forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850, and the additional thousands of Native Americans within that were ethnically cleansed by the United States government.[336] A variety of scholars have classified the Trail of Tears as either a genocide in and of itself,[N 7] or as a genocidal act within the broader genocide of Native Americans.[343][N 8] Figures for the number of deaths per Native American group that was forcibly relocated can be found at Trail of Tears § Statistics.
Black War (genocide of Aboriginal Tasmanians) Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) 1825 1832 400[358] 1,000[358]
The extinction of Aboriginal Tasmanians was called an archetypal case of genocide by Rafael Lemkin[359] among other historians, a view supported by more recent genocide scholars like Ben Kiernan who covered it in his book Blood and Soil: A History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. This extinction also includes the Black War, which would make the war an act of genocide.[360] Historians like Keith Windschuttle among other historians disagree with this interpretation in discourse known as the History wars. ~100%[360]
1804 Haitian massacre Haiti 1804 3,000[361] 5,000[361]
The 1804 Haitian massacre is considered to be a genocide by some scholars,[362][363] as it was intended to destroy the Franco-Haitian population following the Haitian Revolution. The massacre was ordered by King Jean-Jacques Dessalines to remove the remainder of the white population from Haiti, and lasted from January to 22 April 1804. During the massacre, entire families were tortured and killed, and by the end of it, Haiti's white population was virtually non-existent.[364][365]
Cape San genocide Dutch Cape Colony and British Cape Colony (modern day South Africa) 1760s–90s[f] 1828–1880[g]
The Cape San people were subjected to massacres known as "Bushmen hunting"[369] land expropriation,[366] forced labor,[366] and child abduction[367] at the hands of Dutch settlers and the paramilitary groups that they formed, leading to "the virtual extinction of the Cape San peoples".[370]
Dzungar genocide Dzungaria, Qing dynasty China 1755 1758 480,000[371] 600,000[371]
The Dzungar genocide was the mass extermination of the Mongol Dzungar people by the Qing dynasty.[372][373] The Qianlong Emperor ordered the genocide after the rebellion in 1755 by Dzungar leader Amursana against Qing rule, after the dynasty first conquered the Dzungar Khanate with Amursana's support. The genocide was perpetrated by Manchu generals of the Qing army, supported by Turkic oasis dwellers (now known as Uyghurs) who rebelled against Dzungar rule. 80% of 600,000 Zungharian Oirats killed[h]
Iroquois Wars North America 1640 1763
As part of the broader Beaver Wars, among the Indigenous peoples in Canada, the Iroquois conducted a genocidal war against the Huron people[378] and other Iroquoian and non-Iroquoian peoples.[379] Settlements were burned, and of the 30,000 Hurons, a few thousand were able to flee and avoid becoming victims of the ethnic genocide.[380][381] Ned Blackhawk, in analysing the war between the Iroquois and Huron, found that the Iroquois committed all five acts described in the 1948 Genocide Convention.[382]
Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands Banda Islands (now Indonesia) 1620 1621 3000[383] 4000[383]
The Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands is widely considered to have amounted to genocide.[384][385] Following Bandanese Islanders' refusal to abide by treaties to sell nutmeg and mace exclusively to the VOC for less in exchange, Jan Pieterszoon Coen led a campaign to depopulate the islands through a combination of massacres and starvation, with some Bandanese taken as prisoners. Many drowned attempting to flee. The VOC subsequently imported enslaved peoples to work on their plantations.[386][387] Estimated that 23% were killed or starved, 13% taken prisoner, 34% fled, and 30% drowned.[383]
Taíno genocide Hispaniola 1492 1514 68,000[388] 968,000[388]
The Taíno genocide refers to the extermination of the indigenous population of Hispaniola due to forced labour and exploitation by the Spanish. Andrés Reséndez argues that even though disease was a factor, the native population would have rebounded the same way Europeans did during the Black Death if it were not for their constant enslavement in the island's gold and silver mines.[389][390] According to anthropologist Jason Hickel, a third of Arawak workers died every six months from lethal forced labour in the mines.[391] 68% to over 96% of the Taíno population perished under Spanish rule.[388]
Albigensian Crusade (Cathar genocide) Languedoc (now France) 1209 1229 200,000[392] 1,000,000[393]
The Albigensian Crusade was a 20-year military campaign initiated by Pope Innocent III to eliminate Catharism, a Christian sect, in Languedoc, in southern France. The Catholic Church considered them heretics and ordered that they should be completely eradicated.[394] Raphael Lemkin referred to the Albigensian Crusade as "one of the most conclusive cases of genocide in religious history".[395] Kurt Jonassohn and Karin Solveig Björnson describe it as "the first ideological genocide."[396]
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See also

Main article: Outline of genocide studies

Political extermination campaigns

Notes

  1. [1]
    3,404 killed between 2014–2022,[59] and 14,755 killed since the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine[60]
  2. [2]
    Eastern Pygmy population was reduced to 90,000 after a campaign that killed 60,000[84] implying a 40% decline
  3. [3]
    Total number of Serbs, Jews and Roma killed. Excluding the Jews sent to the German extermination camps.
  4. [4]
    Although ethnic cleansings and massacres began in the early 1800s, particularly under the command of the Tsarist Russian general Grigory Zass, the mass deportations, mass murders and extermination operations — where most deaths occurred — started in 1864.
  5. [5]
    Only the range of deaths caused by massacred
  6. [6]
    The total population decline of the period overall
  7. [7]
    • Genocide education scholar Thomas Keefe – "The preparation (Stage 7) for genocide, specifically the transfer of population that "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" as stated in Article II of the UNCPPCG is clear in the Trail of Tears and other deportations of Native American populations from land seized for the benefit of European-American populations."[337]
    • Muscogee Nation Historic and Cultural Preservation Manager Rae Lynn Butler – "really was about extinguishing a race of people"; Archivist at the Cherokee Heritage Center Jerrid Miller – "The Trail of Tears was outright genocide".[338]
    • Sociologist and historian Vahakn Dadrian lists the expulsion of the Cherokee as an example of utilitarian genocide, stating "the expulsion and decimation of the Cherokee Indians from the territories of the State of Georgia is symbolic of the pattern of perpetration inflicted upon the American Indian by Whites in North America."[339]
    • Genocide scholar Adam Jones – "Forced relocations of Indian populations often took the form of genocidal death marches, most infamously the "Trails of Tears" of the Cherokee and Navajo nations, which killed between 20 and 40 per cent of the targeted populations en route. The barren "tribal reservations" to which survivors were consigned exacted their own grievous toll through malnutrition and disease."[340]
    • Cherokee politician Bill John Baker – "this ruthless [Indian Removal Act] policy subjected 46,000 Indians—to a forced migration under punishing conditions […] amounted to genocide, the ethnic cleansing of men, women and children, motivated by racial hatred and greed, and carried out through sadism and violence."[341]
    • Sociologist James V. Fenelon and historian Clifford E. Trafzer – "Instead the national government and its leaders have offered a systemic denial of genocide, the occurrence of which would be contrary to the principles of a democratic and just society. "Denial of massive death counts is common among those whose forefathers were the perpetrators of the genocide" (Stannard, 1992, p. 152) with motives of protecting "the moral reputations of those people and that country responsible," including some scholars. It took 50 years of scholarly debate for the academy to recognize well-documented genocides of the Indian removals in the 1830s, including the Cherokee Trail of Tears, as with other nations of the "Five Civilized" southeastern tribes."[342]
  8. [8]
    • Political scientist Michael Rogin – "To face responsibility for specific killings might have led to efforts to stop it; to avoid individual deaths turned Indian removal into a theory of genocide."[344]
    • Indigenous studies scholar Nicky Michael and historian Beverly Jean Smith – "Over one-fourth died on the forced death marches of the 1830s. By any United Nations standard, these actions can be equated with genocide and ethnic cleansing."[345]
    • Historian Jim Piecuch argues that the Trail of Tears constitutes one tool in the genocide of Native Americans over the three centuries since the beginning of colonization in north America.[346]
    • Political scientist Andrew R. Basso – "The Cherokee Trail of Tears should be understood within the context of colonial genocide in the Americas. This is yet another chapter of colonial forces acting against an indigenous group in order to secure rich and fertile lands, resources, and living spaces."[347]
    • Political scientist Barbara Harff – "One of the most enduring and abhorrent problems of the world is genocide, which is neither particular to a specific race, class, or nation, nor rooted in any one ethnocentric view of the world. […] Often democratic institutions are cited as safeguards against mass excesses. In view of the treatment of Amerindians by agents of the U.S. government, this view is unwarranted. For example, the thousands of Cherokees who died during the Trail of Tears (Cherokee Indians were forced to march in 1838–1839 from Appalachia to Oklahoma) testify that even a democratic system may tum against its people."[348]
    • Legal scholar Rennard Strickland – "There were, of course, great and tragic Indian massacres and bitter exoduses, illegal even under the laws of war. We know these acts of genocide by place names – Sand Creek, the Battle of Washita, Wounded Knee – and by their tragic poetic codes – the Trail of Tears, the Long Walk, the Cheyenne Autumn. But ... genocidal objectives have been carried out under color of law – in de Tocqueville's phrase, "legally, philanthropically, without shedding blood, and without violating a single great principle of morality in the eyes of the word." These were legally enacted policies whereby a way of life, a culture, was deliberately obliterated. As the great Indian orator Dragging Canoe concluded, "Whole Indian Nations have melted away like balls of snow in the sun leaving scarcely a name except as imperfectly recorded by their destroyers"."[349]
    • Legal scholars Christopher Turner and Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond reiterate Strickland's assessment.[350]
    • Attorney Maria Conversa – "The theft of ancestral tribal lands, the genocide of tribal members, public hostility towards Native peoples, and irreversible oppression--these are the realities that every indigenous person has had to face because of colonization. By recognizing and respecting the Muscogee Creek Nation's authority to criminally sentence its own members, the United States Supreme Court could have taken a small step towards righting these wrongs."[351]
    • Historian David Stannard and ethnic studies scholar Ward Churchill have both identified the trail of tears as part of the United States history of genocidal actions against indigenous nations.[352][353]
    • Sociologist Benjamin P. Bowser, psychologist Carol O. Word, and Kate Shaw – "There was a pattern to Indian genocide. One-by-one, each Native state was defeated militarily; successive Native generations fought and were defeated as well. As settlers became more numerous and stronger militarily, Indians became fewer and weaker militarily. In one Indian nation after the other, resistance eventually collapsed due to the death toll from violence. Then, survivors were displaced from their ancestral lands, which had sustained them for generations. […] Starting in 1830, surviving Native people, mostly Cherokee, in the Eastern US were ordered by President Andrew Jackson to march up to two thousand miles and to cross the Mississippi River to settle in Oklahoma. Thousands died on the Trail of Tears. This pattern of defeat, displacement, and victimization repeated itself in the American West. From this history, Native Americans were victims of all five Lemkin specified genocidal acts."[354]
    • Sociologist and psychologist Laurence French wrote that the trail of tears was at least a campaign of cultural genocide.[355]
    • Cultural studies scholar Melissa Slocum – "Rarely is the conversation about the impact of genocide on today's generations or the overall steps that lead to genocide. As well, most curricula in the education system, from kindergarten up through to college, does not discuss in detail American Indian genocide beyond possibly a quick one-day mention of the Cherokee Trail of Tears."[356]
    • English and literary scholar Thir Bahadur Budhathoki – "On the basis of the basic concept of genocide as propounded by Rephael Lemkin, the definitions of the UN Convention and other genocide scholars, sociological perspective of genocide-modernity nexus and the philosophical understanding of such crime as an evil in its worst possible form, the fictional representation of the entire process of Cherokee removal including its antecedents and consequences represented in these novels, is genocidal in nature. However, the American government, that mostly represents the perpetrators of the process, and the Euro-American culture of the United States considered as the mainstream culture, have not acknowledged the Native American tragedy as genocide."[357]
  1. [a]
    eg. Thirty Years' War (4.5 to 8 million deaths), Japanese war crimes (30 million deaths), the Red Terror (50,000 to 200,000 deaths), the Great Purge (0.7 to 1.2 million deaths), the Great Leap Forward and the famine which followed it (15 to 55 million deaths).[1]
  2. [b]
    Per the Gaza Health Ministry and Government Information Office,[23] which has previously been deemed reliable by prominent and independent organizations.[24][25] In the same period at least 700 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank.[26]
  3. [c]
    Using methods described in The Lancet,[27] Devi Sridhar, the chair of global health at the University of Edinburgh, wrote in a September 2024 editorial that "the total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total [by the end of 2024]".[28]
  4. [d]
    Quote: "To conclude: the Germans committed genocide against the Polish population. The very term genocide comes from the 1944 book of the Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin, whose study of Nazi-occupied Europe focused on the German attack on the Poles. Not only did the Nazis seek ultimately to eliminate the Polish nation 'as such', but they engaged in each of the acts identified by the 1949 Genocide Convention as signifiers of the 'intent to destroy'"[227]
  5. [e]
    "In the 1860s Russia killed 1.5 million Circassians, half of their population, and expelled the other half from their lands." Ahmed 2013, p. 357
  6. [f]
    Variously specified as 1770,[366] "c. 1770"[367] or 1795)[368]
  7. [g]
    Variously specified as 1828,[368] 1830,[367] or 1880.[366]
  8. [h]
    In an account of the war, Wei Yuan wrote that about 40% of the Dzungar households were killed by smallpox, 20% fled to Russia or the Kazakh Khanate, and 30% were killed by the army, leaving no yurts in an area of several thousands of Chinese miles except those of the surrendered.[371][374][375] Clarke wrote 80%, or between 480,000 and 600,000 people, were killed between 1755 and 1758 in what "amounted to the complete destruction of not only the Zunghar state but of the Zunghars as a people."[371][376] Historian Peter Perdue has shown that the extermination of the Dzungars was the result of an explicit policy of extermination launched by the Qianlong Emperor.[371] Although this "deliberate use of massacre" has been largely ignored by modern scholars,[371] Mark Levene, a historian whose recent research interests focus on genocide, has stated that the extermination of the Dzungars was "arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence".[377]

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