What is genocide? Meaning explained

GENOCIDE was coined by Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to describe the mass killings of European Jews during World War II, also known as the Holocaust.

Here is how these reported mass killings draw comparisons with other atrocities - and how genocide is defined.

What does genocide mean?

Genocide is defined as an act which is committed with intent to destroy, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

It is the worst crime against humanity.

The term was coined in 1944 by a Jewish-Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin and combines the Greek word "genos" (race or tribe) and the Latin word "cide" (to kill).

He campaigned for genocide to be recognised under international law, which happened eight years later under the UN Convention on Genocide.

Under the convention, all 147 UN states have a duty to "prevent and punish" genocide.

Countries are obligated to stop "genocide" by military force if necessary, which some claim has made states shy away from classing cases - such as Rohingya - as genocide.

In his book Rwanda and Genocide in the 20th Century, Alain Destexhe, former secretary-general of international aid charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, said genocide has lost its initial meaning.

He said: "Genocide is a crime on a different scale to all other crimes against humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group.

"Genocide is therefore both the gravest and greatest of the crimes against humanity."

When does it become a genocide?

Genocide is not just any large scale violence, or any violent act that becomes particularly gruesome.

There has to be intent by the perpetrators to destroy the group.

Killings are not the only form by definition, attempts to diminish a group, by placing them in harsh conditions of life, such as starving is also considered.

What atrocities have been classed as genocide?

It is said that there have been three genocides under the 1948 convention.

Armenian genocide

The first, recognised by 29 countries, was the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks between 1915 and 1920.

It is claimed that this happened during and after World War One in which Turkey and Germany fought against the British Empire, France and the United States.

Up to 270 Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople, now Istanbul, were rounded up, arrested and deported to the Turkish region of Ankara and many were murdered.

The Holocaust

The Holocaust in World War Two saw the systematic murder of six million European Jews by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.

Originally, the plan was simply to get Jews to leave Germany, but emigration was not an easy task.

Jews were asked to give up their homes, livelihoods, and businesses, charged exorbitant fees, and had few little places they could go to escape.

The Nazi policy then shifted to direct violence against Jews and their property.

Rwanda

The mass slaughter of up to one million Tutsi people in Rwanda in 1994 has also been classed as genocide.

It occurred between April 7 and July 15 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War and saw the minority ethnics groups of the Tutsi, some Hutu and Twa groups slaughtered by armed militias.

This genocide lasted a period of around 100 days.

Srebrenica

In Bosnia, the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica has been ruled to be genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

More than 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks, mainly men and boys, were killed around the town of Srebrenica.

Ratko Mladic, a former Bosnian Serb army commander, has been jailed for life by a UN court after being found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The 74-year-old former Bosnian Serb's brutish leadership during the country's 1990s conflict was blamed for the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II.

The 1992-1995 war killed 100,000 people and displaced 2.2million as ethnic rivalries tore apart Yugoslavia.

Mladic came to symbolise a barbaric plan to rid multi-ethnic Bosnia of Croats and Muslims, fuelled by the desire for a "Greater Serbia" that would create an ethnically pure state.

The charges he faced related to the infamous massacre of Bosniaks in Srebrenica and the killing of civilians in Sarajevo.

He was also accused of having a hand in the forcible deportation of Bosniaks, Bosnian Croats or other non-Serbs and terror attacks against civilians.

Rohingya Muslims

Rohingya Muslims are an ethnic group that make up a large minority of the population of Myanmar, also known as Burma.

They have been classed as immigrants in the country and denied basic rights.

Whole villages have been burned down and families driven from their homes following a savage crackdown over the past three years.

Nearly a million Rohinya refugees fled to neighbouring Bangladesh — and between 600 to 1,000 are thought to have been killed.

The crisis has not been officially classed as genocide but a UN report has said top military figures in the country should be investigated for crimes against humanity.

It has called or the case to be referred to the International Criminal Court.

Ukraine

Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, had an initial aim to overrun Ukraine and depose its government, to end its desire to join the Western defensive alliance Nato.

As he failed to capture the capital Kyiv, he has shifted his ambitions.

On February 24, 2022, he launched an invasion into Ukraine and told the Russian people his goal was to "demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine", to protect the people of Russia.

As Russia continue to invade the North and South of Ukraine, many are saying that the civilian killings in Bucha constitute as genocide.

However, legal experts say it is too early to determine whether genocide has occurred in Ukraine, but stress it's important for them to investigate and that the situation should not be ignored.