Irish Genocide Denial
In The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History 1845-52 Editors R. Dudley Edwards and T. Desmond Williams write: "The political commentator, the ballad singer and the unknown maker of folk-tales have all spoken about the Great famine, but is there more to be said? If man, the prisoner of time, acts in conformity with the conventions of society into which he is born, it is difficult to judge him with irrevocable harshness. So it is with the men of the famine era. Human limitations and timidity dominate the story of the Great Famine, but of great and deliberately imposed evil in high positions of responsibility there is little evidence." In Learning the Wrong Lessons: Governments, Hunger and the Great Irish Famine By Gareth G Davis, Davis writes: "Firstly the Great Irish Famine is not a generalised illustration of the dangers of "unrestrained" capitalism, rather it was a freak natural occurrence that was in many ways exacerbated by flawed government policies. Secondly, the Irish Famine was very different from the tragedies which have recently being witnessed in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thirdly, the fundamental cause of famines in the late twentieth century is not Western "injustice" and "indifference" but are rather the actions of third world governments and their armed political competitors. On a superficial level the proximate cause of the famine can be readily identified; the fungus phytophthora infestans which destroyed a large portion of Ireland's potato crop over the period 1845-9. Indeed it has been convincingly shown that the pre-famine Irish economy did not contain the seeds of its own destruction and that there was nothing inevitable about the famine had the potato blight not occurred. The famine was an unpredictable ecological freak; in words of the Dutch historian and scientist Peter Solar it was a case of "Ireland as having been profoundly unlucky" rather than being the inevitable product of market forces run wild (or of unrestrained population growth)." Irish Genocide denial, which coyly refers to itself as revisionism, has emerged over three decades of propagandising as an important "cutting edge" ideological cement in the ideological war against the IRA after 1969. While appearing on the surface as a rather arcane pseudo-scholarly challenge to the well-established record of English genocide against the Gaelic nation since the Norman invasion, Holocaust/genocide denial serves as a powerful conspiracy theory uniting otherwise disparate groups (e.g., Ulster Unionists, Southern Neo-Unionists, 26 county free staters, the British establishment, British public opinion, etc.). On the surface, Irish Genocide deniers portray themselves as individuals and groups engaged in a legitimate, dispassionate quest for historical knowledge and "truth." Dressing themselves in pseudo-academic garb, they have adopted the term "revisionism" in order to mask and legitimate their enterprise. After all, the ongoing challenge to and revision of previously accepted historical interpretation is one of the hallmarks of the professional historian's craft. These so-called revisionists assert that the premise that the British Empire engaged in a premeditated campaign of genocide against the Gaelic people of Ireland is one that does not stand honest scholarly scrutiny. They do not deny that the British government engaged in persecution of and discrimination against the Gaelic population. They even admit the frequency of famine and prevalence of discrimination in occupied Ireland. They assert, however, that the anti-Irish actions of the British government were in large part a legitimate response to Irish misdeeds and disloyalty. As such, the measures taken were not qualitatively different from similar actions of European powers of the time. Irish Genocide deniers seek to plant seeds of questioning and doubt about the Irish Holocaust in their mass audiences. While Holocaust denial has become an article of faith among the Irish 26 county establishment, its success does not depend upon conversion to that faith among the general public. The spread of scepticism about the scope and historicity of the Irish Holocaust among a critical mass of public opinion would be considered to be a significant ideological triumph in and of itself. Holocaust denial has been widely embraced within the otherwise disparate contemporary Neo-Unionist movement because it serves as an ideological cement that meets a very contemporary political need. In particular, it provides a sanitized envelope for the latter-day occupation of the six counties of north eastern Ireland by seeking to show that the heinous crimes ascribed to British rule in Ireland never took place. As such, much of the barrier preventing the legitimisation of contemporary British rule in Ireland from making a strategic breakthrough by appealing to a more mainstream audience would be removed. Accordingly, Holocaust denial provides contemporary legitimisation through posthumous rehabilitation. It is no accident that Southern establishment parties are avid propagators of Holocaust denial ideology. The core message of the Irish Holocaust deniers is even more insidious. They recognize the fact that most people believe that the Holocaust/Artificial Famines actually occurred as a result of British policy. How can it be, they ask, that the great majority have come to accept as truth an historical assertion which is in actuality a gigantic falsehood? They answer that most people have come to accept uncritically the story of the Irish Holocaust because they have been systematically propagandised with deliberate lies for over one hundred and fifty years. These lies include materials inserted by De Valera into the educational curriculum at all levels of instruction; the content of Holocaust-related folk lore and song; a vast Irish Holocaust literature; public rituals of Holocaust remembrance etc.. They picture a vast shadowy conspiracy, led by Sinn Féin/IRA that controls and manipulates the institutions of culture and the media in order to disseminate a pernicious mythology. The purpose of this Holocaust mythology, they assert, is the inculcation of a sense of guilt in the British state and a legitimisation of the IRA campaign. Those who can make others feel guilty have power over them and can make them do their bidding. This power is used to advance the IRA agenda of Irish Unity and total independence from England.

http://www.irishholocaust.org/ There's a map on that site of all the mass graves from the period of the great starvation.

"The bigger the lie, the easier it is to get people to believe it"- loose quote I find it ironic that in many countries it is a crime punishable by imprisonment to deny the jewish holocaust, yet on the other hand the Irish weren't allowed to erect a monument up until a few short years ago for the genocide of millions of Irish men, women and children. Long before I ever read the truth about the Irish holocaust my father related to me the truth of what happened as was related to him by his father. I could not believe how precise the details were that my father related to me in relation to what I read later.

Here's my take on the Irish starvation: 1.) it was not a "famine" as there was plenty of food available (i.e. corn) that was daily shipped out by the British Army 2.) the unjust economic system in Ireland led directly to the starvation of millions. It was a tragedy that was completely foreseable by the British authorities. In fact, there were numerous small scale "famines" before the mass failure of the potato crop. 3.) I do not believe the starvation of the Irish was a pre-meditated genocide by the British, but I do hold the British government responsible for not only creating the conditions but also in their apathetic response. 4.) uncontrolled capitalism is also to be blamed, but the coldness of the British government, on a human level, is the root cause.

The fungus was not the cause of the starvation. It was the cause of the failure of a single crop. The native population was relegated to a diet of potatos and turnips. Because potatos were more versitile, tastier, and yielded more food per acre than turnips, they became the staple while the cash crops - cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, eggs, dairy products, wheat, barley, etc - were shipped out of Ireland under armed British guard. There was enough food shipped out to feed the entire Irish population multiple times over. In November, 1601, English Viceroy Arthur Chichester wrote to Elizabeth's chief advisor Lord Burghly: “I have often said, and written, it is Famine which must consume ; our swords and other endeavours work not that speedy effect which is expected for their overthrow.” Clearly, this sentiment was shared by many.

I agree with your analysis, and that is a fascinating quote. Do you have any historical statistics on the food sent out of the country from the period 1845-1850?

Some interesting facts for anyone who might have thought the destitution of the Irish people was some kind of accident: THE DESTRUCTION OF IRISH TRADE The early Irish were famous for their excellence in arts and crafts, especially for their wonderful work in metals, bronze, silver and gold. By the beginning of the 14th century trading ships were constantly sailing between Ireland and the leading ports of the Continent. COMPETITION WITH ENGLAND This commerce was a threat to English merchants who tried to discourage such trade. They brought pressure on their government, which passed a law in 1494 that prohibited the Irish from exporting any industrial product, unless it was shipped through an English port, with an English permit after paying English fees. However, England was not able to enforce the law. By 1548 British merchants were using armed vessels to attack and plunder trading ships travelling between Ireland and the Continent. (unofficial piracy) ENGLISH MEN, ENGLISH SHIPS, ENGLISH CREWS, ENGLISH PORTS AND IRISH GOODS In 1571 Queen Elizabeth ordered that no cloth or stuff made in Ireland could be exported, even to England, except by English men in Ireland. The act was amended in 1663 to prohibit the use of all foreign-going ships, except those that were built in England, mastered and three-fourths manned by English, and cleared from English ports. The return cargoes had to be unloaded in England. Ireland's shipbuilding industry was thus destroyed and her trade with the Continent wiped out. TRADE WITH THE COLONIES Ireland then began a lucrative trade with the Colonies. That was "cured" in 1670 by a new law which forbade Ireland to export to the colonies "anything except horses, servants, and victuals." England followed with a decree that no Colonial products could be landed in Ireland until they had first landed in England and paid all English rates and duties. Ireland was forbidden to engage in trade with the colonies and plantations of the New World if it involved sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, rice, and numerous other items. The only item left for Ireland to import was rum. The English wanted to help English rum makers in the West Indies at the expense of Irish farmers and distillers. IRISH WOOL TRADE CURTAILED, THEN DESTROYED When the Irish were forbidden to export their sheep, they began a thriving trade in wool. In 1634 The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Stafford, wrote to King Charles I: "All wisdom advises us to keep this (Irish) kingdom as much subordinate and dependent on England as possible; and, holding them from manufacture of wool (which unless otherwise directed, I shall by all means discourage), and then enforcing them to fetch their cloth from England, how can they depart from us without nakedness and beggary?" In 1660 even the export of wool from Ireland to England was forbidden. Other English laws prohibited all exports of Irish wool in any form. In 1673, Sir William Temple advised that the Irish would act wisely by giving up the manufacture of wool even for home use, because "it tended to interfere prejudicially with the English woolen trade." George II sent three warships and eight other armed vessels to cruise off the coast of Ireland to seize all vessels carrying woolens from Ireland. "So ended the fairest promise that Ireland had ever known of becoming a prosperous and a happy country." LINEN TRADE REPRESSED Irish linen manufacturing met with the same fate when the Irish were forbidden to export their product to all other countries except England. A thirty percent duty was levied in England, effectively prohibiting the trade. English manufacturers, on the other hand, were granted a bounty for all linen exports. BEEF, PORK, BUTTER AND CHEESE In 1665 Irish cattle were no longer welcome in England, so the Irish began killing them and exporting the meat. King Charles II declared that the importation of cattle, sheep, swine and beef from Ireland was henceforth a common nuisance, and forbidden. Pork and bacon were soon prohibited, followed by butter and cheese. SILK AND TOBACCO In the middle of the 18th century, Ireland began developing a silk weaving industry. Britain imposed a heavy duty on Irish silk, but British manufactured silk was admitted to Ireland duty-free. Ireland attempted to develop her tobacco industry, but that too was prohibited. FISH In 1819 England withdrew the subsidy for Irish fisheries and increased the subsidies to British fishermen - with the result that Ireland's possession of one of the longest coastlines in Europe, still left it with one of the most miserable fisheries. GLASS Late in the 18th century the Irish became known for their manufacture of glass. George II forbade the Irish to export glass to any country whatsoever under penalty of forfeiting ship, cargo and ten shillings per pound weight. THE RESULT By 1839, a French visitor to Ireland, Gustave de Beaumont, was able to write: "In all countries, more or less, paupers may be discovered; but an entire nation of paupers is what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland. To explain the social condition of such a country, it would be only necessary to recount its miseries and its sufferings; the history of the poor is the history of Ireland." CONCLUSION From the 15th through the 19th centuries, successive English monarchies and governments enacted laws designed to suppress and destroy Irish manufacturing and trade. These repressive Acts, coupled with the Penal Laws, reduced the Irish people to "nakedness and beggary" in a very direct and purposeful way. The destitute Irish then stood at the very brink of the bottomless pit. When the potato blight struck in 1845, it was but time for the final push. For full text see: http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/irish_pf.html

And for those who may believe that the English establishment did not know exactly what they were doing in Ireland: The Times editorial of September 30, 1845, warned; "In England the two main meals of a working man's day now consists of potatoes." England's potato-dependence was as excessive as Ireland's. Grossly over-populated relative to its food supply, England faced famine unless it could import vast amounts of alternative food. But it didn't take merely Ireland's surplus food; or enough Irish food to save England. It took more; for profit and to exterminate the people of Ireland. Queen Victoria's economist, Nassau Senior, expressed his fear that existing policies "will not kill more than one million Irish in 1848 and that will scarcely be enough to do much good." When an eye-witness urged a stop to the genocide-in-progress, Trevelyan replied: "We must not complain of what we really want to obtain." Trevelyan insisted that all reports of starvation were exaggerated, until 1847. He then declared it ended and refused entry to the American food relief ship Sorciére. Thomas Carlyle; influential British essayist, wrote; "Ireland is like a half-starved rat that crosses the path of an elephant. What must the elephant do? Squelch it - by heavens - squelch it." "Total Annihilation;" suggested The Times leader of September 2, 1846; and in 1848 its editorialists crowed "A Celt will soon be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as the red man on the banks of Manhattan." For full text please consult this link: http://home.comcast.net/~irishholocaust/Irish_Holocaust/English_Pages/ch4_officialintent.htm

Cael, thank you so much for providing this material. This is excellent. The English, over the centuries preceding the starvation, had no problem with forcing the Irish to live in destitution. The economy of England benefited from the plight of the Irish. I agree that the starvation between 1845-1850 was caused principally by British imperialism and apathy. It could very well be true that the starvation was deliberate at a high level. From what I have been reading in Cecil Woodham Smith's book, however, (which chronicles correspondencies between Trevalyn and his underlings), tells differently, however, at least from an "on the ground" level. From what I can see, Treveleyn had a low opinion of the Irish to begin with, and was more concerned with protecting English trade and pure capitalism than helping the Irish. His officers that were in correspondence with him, however, showed a genuine concern and desperate urgency at the situation, and even showed a frustration with Trevelyn at times for his stubborn policies. That's just from what I have been reading. Then again it is a well-recorded fact that the British Army daily exported vast amounts of Irish food!

I wouldnt like to say anything against Cecil Woodham Smith's book, but like most histories it focuses on a narrow period of history and therefore is unable to see very noticable trends of intent. The backbone of imperialism is racism. The following shows some of the depths of racist, genocidal hatred felt by the English towards the Irish (and others unfortunate enough to be under their misrule). This genocidal hatred is quickly observed in all aspects of English policy towards Ireland: 2. Conditions leading to genocide – Fanaticism (religious, racial) Anti-Irish prejudice is a very old theme in English culture. The written record begins with Gerald of Wales, whose family was deeply involved in the Norman invasion of Ireland. In his 12th-century History and Topography of Ireland Gerald wrote contemptuously of the people, portraying them as inferior to the Normans in every respect: "They live on beasts only, and live like beasts. They have not progressed at all from the habits of pastoral living." He condemned their customs, dress, and "flowing hair and beards" as examples of their "barbarity". He also vilified the religious practices and marriage customs of the people: "This is a filthy people, wallowing in vice. Of all peoples it is the least instructed in the rudiments of the faith. They do not yet pay tithes or first fruits or contract marriages. They do not avoid incest." (1.) A SACRIFICE TO GOD Religion was often used to justify attacks on the Irish. In 1574, a colonial expedition to Ulster led by the Earl of Essex slaughtered the entire population of Rathlin Island, some 600 people. Edward Barkley, a member of the expedition, gave a graphic description of how Essex's men had driven the Irish from the plains into the woods, where they would freeze or die of hunger at the onset of winter. He concluded: "How godly a deed it is to overthrow so wicked a race the world may judge: for my part I think there cannot be a greater sacrifice to God" (2.) When the Irish resisted colonization, they were met with total war on soldiers and noncombatants alike. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the military governor and half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, stated: "I slew all those from time to time that did belong to, feed, accompany or maintain any outlaws or traitors; and after my first summoning of a castle or fort, if they would not presently yield it, I would not take it afterwards of their gift, but won it perforce - how many lives soever it cost; putting man, woman and child to the sword." (3.) Thomas Churchyard, a pamphleteer who accompanied Gilbert to Munster, justified the killing of non-combatants on the grounds that they provided food for the rebels: "so that killing of them by the sword was the way to kill the men of war by famine." Churchyard described Sir Gilbert's methods: EARLY TERRORISM "That the heads of all those (of what sort soever they were) which were killed in the day, should be cut off from their bodies and brought to the place where he encamped at night, and should there be laid on the ground by each side of the way leading into his own tent so that none could come into his tent for any cause but commonly must pass through a lane of heads which were used ad terrorem, the dead feeling nothing the more pains thereby; and yet did it bring great terror to the people when they saw the heads of their dead fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolk and friends, lie on the ground before their faces, as they came to speak with the said colonel" (4.) "BEASTLY BEHAVIOR" The various justifications for colonization were brought together and elaborated by Edmund Spenser, the poet and author of The Faerie Queene. In his book, A View of the State of Ireland, published in 1596, Spenser wrote: "Marry those be the most barbaric and loathy conditions of any people (I think) under heaven...They do use all the beastly behaviour that may be, they oppress all men, they spoil as well the subject, as the enemy; they steal, they are cruel and bloody, full of revenge, and delighting in deadly execution, licentious, swearers and blasphemers, common ravishers of women, and murderers of children." (5.) In 1610, A New Description of Ireland was published. Its author, Barnaby Rich wrote: "The time hath been, when they lived like Barbarians, in woods, in bogs, and in desolate places, without politic law, or civil government, neither embracing religion, law or mutual love. That which is hateful to all the world besides is only beloved and embraced by the Irish, I mean civil wars and domestic dissensions .... the Cannibals, devourers of men's flesh, do learn to be fierce amongst themselves, but the Irish, without all respect, are even more cruel to their neighbors." (6.) "GLORY TO GOD ALONE" On his arrival in Dublin in 1649, Cromwell said: "By God's divine providence" he and his troops would "carry on the great work against the barbarous and bloodthirsty Irish..." After his army laid siege to the town of Drogheda, and killed the entire garrison, he wrote: "It hath pleased God to bless our endeavors in Drogheda...The enemy were about 3,000 strong in the town...I do not think 30 of the whole number escaped with their lives. Those that did are in safe custody for the Barbados...I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs." Cromwell proceeded to Wexford where he slaughtered 2,000 more. (7.) The English poet John Milton wrote at this time: "God is decreeing some new and great period. What does He then but reveal himself...as his manner is, first to his Englishmen?" (8.) NO PEOPLE MORE PREJUDICED British contempt for the Irish was part of an increasing disdain for foreigners in general. The Swiss traveller de Saussure observed them in 1727: "I do not think there is a people more prejudiced in its own favor than the British people, and they allow this to appear in their talk and manners. They look on foreigners in general with contempt, and think nothing is as well done elsewhere as in their own country." (9.) A TRUE-BORN ENGLISHMAN English writer Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe , lampooned the notion of English superiority in a poem, "A True-born Englishman". The preface began: "The intent of the satire is pointed at the vanity of those who talk of their antiquity, and value themselves upon their pedigree, their ancient families, and being True-Born; whereas it is impossible we should be True-Born: and if we could, should have lost in the bargain." Defoe then listed the diverse peoples who had settled in England: Romans, Gauls, Greeks, Lombards, Scots, Picts, Danes and "slaves of every nation", and concluded: "From this amphibious ill-born mob began that vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman." (10.) RACISM AGAINST AFRICANS, INDIANS AND EGYPTIANS The British denigrated the Africans in terms similar to those they used about the Irish, but even more defamatory. While the Irish were despised for their "inferior" brand of Christianity, the Africans were dismissed for not even being Christians, but "heathens." And African customs were represented as even more "barbaric" than the Irish. In India, British rule was justified because the Indians were "heathans" and unfit to rule themselves. In 1813 Lord Hastings wrote: "The Hindoo appears a being nearly limited to mere animal functions and even in them indifferent. Their proficiency and skill in the several lines of occupation to which they are restricted, are little more than the dexterity which any animal with similar conformation but with no higher intellect than a dog, an elephant or a monkey, might be supposed to be capable of attaining." (11.) Lord Cromer, the British Governor of Egypt, wrote that, "Free institutions in the full sense of the term must for generations to come be wholly unsuitable to countries such as India and Egypt...it will probably never be possible to make a Western silk purse out of an Eastern sow's ear." (12.) The 18th century British philosopher David Hume, who wrote contemptuously of the Irish, also maligned the Africans. In his essay, "Of National Characters" he wrote: "I am apt to suspect that Negroes, and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white..." (13.) In the British view of the world, the Irish occupied a position way below themselves, but just above the Africans. The two were often compared, as in these verses from the British magazine Punch in 1848: "Six-foot Paddy, are you no bigger – You whom cozening friars dish – Mentally, than the poorest ****** Grovelling before fetish? You to Sambo I compare Under superstition's rule Prostrate like an abject fool." (14.) In 1849, British historian Thomas Carlyle published "Occasional Discourse on the ****** Question." Mr. Eric Williams, former Prime Minister of Trinidad, and a historian, called it "The most offensive document in the entire world literature on slavery and the West Indies." Carlyle argued that the recently emancipated slaves should be forced to work for the whites: "Decidedly you will have to be servants to those who are born wiser than you, that are born lords of you; servants to the Whites, if they are (as what mortal can doubt they are?) born wiser than you." (15.) Carlyle visited Ireland soon after the famine and filled his journal with tirades against what he called "this brawling unreasonable people". Ireland, he wrote, was a "human swinery", "an abomination of desolation" and "a black howling Babel of superstitious savages". (16.) IRISH CHIMPANZEES In the 1860s, the debate among scientists about the relationship of humans to animals prompted British racists to make frequent comparisons between Irish people, Black people and apes. The Cambridge historian Charles Kingsley wrote to his wife from Ireland in 1860: "I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country...to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black one would not see it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours." (17.) "THE MISSING LINK" In 1860 the first live adult gorilla arrived at the London Zoo just after Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species had been published. Victorians flocked to see it and debate the relationship of humans to animals. In 1862 the British magazine Punch published "The Missing Link" a satire attacking Irish immigrants: "A gulf certainly, does appear to yawn between the Gorilla and the Negro. The woods and wilds of Africa do not exhibit an example of any intermediate animal. But in this, as in many other cases, philosophers go vainly searching abroad for that which they could readily find if they sought for it at home. A creature manifestly between the Gorilla and the Negro is to be met with in some of the lowest districts of London and Liverpool by adventurous explorers. It comes from Ireland, whence it has contrived to migrate; it belongs in fact to a tribe of Irish savages: the lowest species of Irish Yahoo. When conversing with its kind it talks a sort of gibberish. It is, moreover, a climbing animal, and may sometimes be seen ascending a ladder ladden with a hod of bricks." (18.) The British historian Edward Freeman visited the United States in 1881. His obituary states that "he gloried in the Germanic origin of the English nation." On his return from America, he wrote: "This would be a grand land if only every Irishman would kill a Negro, and be hanged for it. I find this sentiment generally approved - sometimes with the qualification that they want Irish and Negroes for servants, not being able to get any other." (19.) "SCIENTIFIC" RACISM Although their empire was acquired by military force and a divide and conquer strategy, the British attributed their success to Anglo-Saxon superiority. This old idea was brought up to date through pseudo-scientific theories of race. Nineteenth century theorists divided humanity into "races" on the basis of external physical features. These "races" were said to have inherited differences not only of physique, but also of character. These "differnces" allowed the races to be placed in a heirarchy. Needless to say, the Teutons, who included the Anglo-Saxons, were placed at the top. Black people, especially "Hottentots" were at the bottom, with Celts (Irish) and Jews somewhere in between. Anthropologists went around measuring people's skulls, and assigning them to different "races" on the basis of such factors as how far their jaws protruded. Celts and others were said to have more "primitive" features than Anglo-Saxons. The physician John Beddoe invented the "index of nigrescence" a formula to identify the racial components of a given people. The Anglo-Saxon's "refined" features also came with a "superior" character. They were said to be industrious, thoughtful, clean, law-abiding and emotionally restrained, while the characters of the various colonized peoples were said to be the very opposite. In 1850 the anatomist Robert Knox described the Celtic character as "Furious fanaticism; a love of war and disorder; a hatred for order and patient industry; no accumulative habits; restless; treacherous and uncertain: look to Ireland..." He drew the following conclusion: "As a Saxon, I abhor all dynasties, monarchies and bayonet governments, but this latter seems to be the only one suitable for the Celtic man." (20.) SUBJECTION AS A CONDITION FOR ADVANCEMENT In 1862, the British historian Lord Acton wrote: "The Celts are not among the progressive, initiative races, but among those which supply the materials rather than the impulse of history...The Persians, the Greeks, the Romans and the Teutons are the only makers of history, the only authors of advancement." He concluded: "Subjection to a people of a higher capacity for government is of itself no misfortune; and it is to most countries the condition of their political advancement." (21.) In 1886 Lord Salisbury opposed Home Rule for Ireland with these words: "You would not confide free representative institutions to the Hottentots, for instance." Self government was only for people of the "Teutonic race." (22.) "THE WILD IRISH" Another proponent of the theory of Anglo-Saxon racial supremacy was James Anthony Froude, a professor of history at Oxford. He described the Irish country folk as "more like squalid apes than human beings." He depicted the Irish as "unstable as water", while the English stood for order and self-control. Only "efficient military despotism" could succeed in Ireland, he wrote, because the "wild Irish" understood only force. For full text see: http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/unit_2.html

Some further information on the effects of the English use of famine as an instrument of war and conquest against the Irish during the so-called "Desmond Rebellion." Lord Grey had ordered his army to burn crops, kill livestock and kill the tenents of lords supporting the rebellion. He continued this policy for three years until Munster was brought to its knees from starvation. The same tactics were later used by Mountjoy during the Nine Years War, when he built a string of forts around Ulster. Generally he refrained from attack until the crops were ready for harvest, then sent out raiding parties to burn the crops and murder the farm workers. Its estimated that 60,000 people died of starvation in Ulster during 1601/02 as a result of these tactics: After three years of scorched earth warfare, famine hit Munster. In April 1582, the provost marshal of Munster (Warhame St Ledger) estimated that 30,000 people had died of famine in the previous six months. Plague broke out in Cork city, where the country people fled to avoid the fighting. People continued to die of famine and plague long after the war had ended, and it is estimated that by 1589 one third of the province's population had died. Two famous accounts tell us of the devastation of Munster after the Desmond rebellion. The first is from the Gaelic Annals of the Four Masters. The whole tract of country from Waterford to Lothra, and from Cnamhchoill to the county of Kilkenny, was suffered to remain one surface of weeds and waste... At this period it was commonly said, that the lowing of a cow, or the whistle of the ploughboy, could scarcely be heard from Dun-Caoin to Cashel in Munster. The second is from the View on the Present State of Ireland, written by English poet Edmund Spencer who fought in the campaign: "In those late wars in Munster; for notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they could have been able to stand long, yet eare one year and a half they were brought to such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the wood and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked Anatomies of death, they spoke like ghosts, crying out of their graves; they did eat of the carrions, happy where they could find them, yea, and one another soon after, in so much as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue therewithal; that in a short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man or beast." The wars of the 1570s and 1580s marked a watershed in Ireland. Although English control over the country was still far from total, the Geraldine axis of power had been annihilated, and Munster was "planted" with English colonists. Thousands of English soldiers and administrators had been imported to deal with the rebellion, and were allocated land in the subsequent Munster Plantation of confiscated Desmond estates. The Munster plantation settled several thousand of these people in the south of Ireland. The Elizabethan conquest of Ireland was completed after the subsequent Nine Years War in Ulster.

Article II of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as constituting "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as": Killing members of the group Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. As can easily be seen, the English occupation of Ireland constituted genocide on all five counts.

Genocide R.J. Rummel SUMMARY: 1. Introduction. 2. What is genocide? 3. Jurisdiction over the crime of genocide. 4. What is the origin of the term? 5. History of the crime of genocide. 6. Genocide as a sociological concept: a) the legal definition; b) the common definition; c) the general definition. 7. Genocide in history. 8. Causes and conditions of genocide: a) institutions of government; b) context; c) motives; d) stages. 9. Bibliography. 1. INTRODUCTION Genocide is generally considered one of the worst moral crimes a government (meaning any ruling authority, including that of a guerrilla group, a quasi state, a Soviet, a terrorist organization, or an occupation authority) can commit against its citizens or those it controls. The major reason for this is what the world learned about the Holocaust, the systematic attempt of German authorities during World War II to kill all and every Jew no matter where found-to destroy Jews as a group. This murder of between 5 to 6 million Jews became the paradigm case of genocide and underlies the word's origin. As the world also learned about other genocides, there was an international attempt through the United Nations to make genocide an international crime and to bring its perpetrators to justice. Thus in 1948 it approved and proposed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UHCG), and most recently states signed into being the International Criminal Court (ICC). As a crime, the UHCG defined genocide as the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such. The ICC accepts this definition, further elaborates it, provides broader jurisdiction, and can subject individuals regardless or status or rank to prosecution. Noteworthy is the fact that the ICC now covers not only genocide, but crimes against humanity that include, aside from genocide, government murder, extermination campaigns, enslavement, deportation, torture, rape, sexual slavery, enforced disappearance, and apartheid. Genocide is also a subject of social science and scholarly study, but its legal definition does not easily allow for empirical and historical research. For this reason the definition of genocide for research purposes has, in essence, been of two types. One is the definition of genocide as the intention to murder people because of their group membership, even if political or economic. A second definition, which may also be called democide, is any intentional government murder of unarmed and helpless people for whatever reason. Taking both social definitions into account, governments have murdered probably around 174 million people during the 20th Century. Most of this killing, perhaps around 110 million people, is due to communist governments, especially the USSR under Lenin and Stalin and their successors (62 million murdered), and China under Mao Tse-tung (35 million). Some other totalitarian or authoritarian governments are also largely responsible for this toll, particularly Hitler's Germany (21 million murdered) and Chiang Kai-chek's Nationalist government of China (about 10 million). Other governments that have murdered lesser millions include Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Japan, North Korea, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, and Tito's Yugoslavia. Fundamentally, genocide is a product of the type of government a country has. There is a high correlation between the degree of democratic freedom a people enjoy and the likelihood that the government will commit democide. Modern democratic governments have committed virtually no domestic genocide. Those governments that commit the most genocide have been totalitarian governments, while those that committed lesser genocide have been partially or wholly authoritarian and dictatorial. Regardless of type of government, the likelihood of genocide increases during their involvement in war, or when undergoing internal disruptions, as by revolution, rebellion, or foreign incursions. Such provides the cover and excuse for genocide. Regardless of war or peace, the motive for genocide may be to deal with a perceived threat to the government or its policies, to destroy those one hates or envies, to pursue the ideological transformation of society, to purify society, or to achieve economic or material gain. Assuming a nondemocratic society, domestic genocide goes through eight stages, which are the classification of peoples into different categories, the symbolization by naming or characterizing them, dehumanization of members of the group, organizing to murder or exterminate members of the group, polarization of the moral distance between groups, preparation for a campaign of extermination, the actual genocide, and after the fact a denial that such was carried out. 2. WHAT IS GENOCIDE? Genocide is foremost an international crime for which individuals, no matter how high in authority, may be indicted, tried, and punished by the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to Article 6 of the ICC Statute, This crime involves, "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. There are a number of things to note about these acts. (1) The perpetrator is not necessarily a state's government or its military, but may be an international organization, such as a UN peacekeeping one, NATO, or a terrorist or guerrilla organization, among others. (2) Regardless of under what authority genocide is done, it is formulated, planned, and conducted by individuals, and it is individuals that the ICC will prosecute for the crime of genocide. Unlike the International Court of Justice that only adjudicates disputes between states, the ICC is a criminal tribunal that will indict individuals, issue international warrants for their arrest, try, and punish them. This is made explicit in Article 27: "This Statute shall apply equally to all persons without distinction based on official capacity. In particular, official capacity as head of state or government, a member of a government or parliament, an elected representative or a government official shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility under this statute, nor shall it, in and of itself, constitute a ground for reduction of sentence." (3) The perpetrator's intent (purpose, goal, aim) is critical. According to the Report of the Preparatory Commission for the International Criminal Court (PCICC), the ICC may infer such from "conduct took place in the context of a manifest pattern of similar conduct directed against that group or was conduct that could itself effect such destruction," (Article 6a) including "the initial acts in an emerging pattern" (Article 6 Introduction). (4) The limitation of genocide to only national, ethnical, racial or religious groups is to groups that one is born into. These may be called indelible groups. In the case of a religious group, while one may choose to leave a religious group as an adult, it is rarely done and one may nonetheless remain identified with the religious group by virtue of physical characteristics, as for Jews. The crime of genocide does not apply to the intent to destroy political, ideological, economic, military, professional, or other groups. Thus, the mass murder of perhaps a million or more "capitalist roaders," "rightists," and counterrevolutionaries during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-69) would not be genocide. Neither would the systematic murder of tens of thousands of communists and leftists by death squads in Latin American during the 1960s to 80s. The rational often given for excluding such groups is that one joins or becomes a member of them as a matter of choice, and the nature and membership in such groups is not as clear as it is for indelible groups. (5) In the definition of genocide, the term "as such" is important. It means that the defined groups are by intention explicitly targeted for destruction, and such destruction is not the unintended outcome, byproduct, or spillover of the intent to achieve some other goal, such as in defensive operations o attacks on military targets during a war or rebellion. (6) Also critical is the word "destroy." The acts that are carried out with this intent are carefully defined in (a) to (e), above. They exclude attempts, for example, to eliminate an indelible group from a territory by ethnic cleansing (that which involves their forced or coerced removal), or the destruction of the culture of a group, as by forced education of their children in a different language and customs. While "culture" is unmentioned in the articles of the ICC's Statute and the Report of the PCICC, and may well be included as the case law of genocide develops, "ethnic cleansing" would seem to be a crime against humanity in the Statute. Under Article 7.1.d, it is unlawful to deport of forcibly transfer a population. (7) The "in whole or in part" means that there is no lower limit to the number of people on which these acts may be committed. It is genocide even any of the Acts (a)-(e) are on one person with the intent described. 8. Genocide is generally believed to involve the murder of indelible group members. But the crime does not. Acts (b)-(e) make clear genocide may also involve the intent to destroy a group by means other than killing one or more of its members. (9) In Act (b) "serious bodily or mental harm" may include acts of torture, rape, sexual slavery, apartheid, or other inhuman or degrading treatment. (PCICC, ft. 3) That these inhumane acts, among others, were explicitly included in the ICC Statute is a major advance in genocide criminal law. (10) In Act (c) "conditions of life" may include "deliberate deprivation of resources indispensable for survival, such as food or medical services, or systematic expulsion from homes." (PCICC ft. 4) (11) The term "forcibly" in Act (e), "is not restricted to physical force, but may include threat of force or coercion, such as that caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power; or taking advantage of a coercive environment. " (PCICC ft. 5). (12) Finally, it must be noted that there are many other crimes that do not fall under the definition of the crime of genocide that are also subject to prosecution by the ICC. Under Article 7 such are systematic murder, extermination of civilians, enslavement, torture, rape, forced pregnancy, political persecution, and forced disappearances. 3. JURISDICTION OVER THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE In 1998, 120 countries voted to adopt the treaty establishing the ICC. With its Statute signed by 139 states and ratified by 76, the ICC formally came into existence on July 1, 2002 at The Hague, in the Netherlands. It is a permanent court, independent of the United Nations, and intended to cover the world. In the Preamble to the Statute the State Parties agreed to the Statute, while: "Affirming that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished and that their effective prosecution must be ensured by taking measures at the national level and by enhancing international cooperation, . . . Determined to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators of these crimes and thus to contribute to the prevention of such crimes, . . . . Recalling that it is the duty of every State to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes, . . . . Determined to these ends and for the sake of present and future generations, to establish an independent permanent International Criminal Court in relationship with the United Nations system, with jurisdiction over the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole . . . ." This shows a clear international desire that the crime of genocide not go unpunished regardless of where it occurs. When fully organized in 2003 the ICC will comprise eighteen judges and a prosecutor selected by the State Parties to the Statute. Cases may be brought before the court by the parties, by the Security Council of the United Nations, or by the prosecutor. The prosecutor cannot undertake an investigation on his own without the agreement of two judges of a three judge ICC panel. Such as investigation can be based on information from any reliable source, including individuals. The ICC has automatic jurisdiction over the nationals of State Parties, and over nationals of countries that are not parties to the Statute "if either the state of the territory where the crime was committed or the state of nationality of the accused consents." Thus, the nationals of states that are not parties to the Stature and who committed genocide on the territory of states that are also not parties to the Statute may go unpunished. Another limitation on jurisdiction is that the trial by domestic courts for genocide takes precedence if carried out in good faith (the domestic criminal law of over 70 states, with some modifications of the definition, make genocide a domestic crime). And prosecution of genocide in domestic courts is becoming more frequent. Therefore, although the scope of the ICC is far reaching, it still has limited jurisdiction. Clear cases of genocide may go untried and unpunished, as it did under the Genocide Convention of 1948 for Saddam Hussein's systematic destruction of the Iraqi Kurd minority in 1988, during which he used poison gas on them. 4. WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM GENOCIDE? While attempts to destroy groups has been very much a part of human history, such were usually identified, if at all, either as by a description of the action ("Jinghiz Khan set out to wholly destroy the Tanguts in china in 1226-1233") or by subsuming the act under some very general concept, such as massacres, mass murder, put to the sword, barbarism, or inhumanity. Even the attempts by the international community to develop humanitarian law during the 19th and early 20th Centuries wholly focused on war crimes and crimes against humanity during war. Various Hague treaties and the Geneva Conventions, for example, made it an international crime to murder POWs, indiscriminately kill or target noncombatants, sink unarmed passenger ships, and the like. Moreover, there were occasions when states applied pressure or threatened military actions against other nations to stop massacring their nationals or coreligionists, as when the major European Powers in the late 19th Century threatened action against the Ottoman Empire because of its massacres of Christians. None of the Hague treaties or Geneva conventions mentioned genocide, nor were the massacres the Powers tried to prevent called genocide. There was a simple reason for this that was recognized by Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain. During World War II, when the horrible scope of the Nazi extermination of the Jews became known, Churchill recognized that this was "a crime that has no name." The jurist Raphael Lemkin, a Polish scholar of international law, coined the legal concept in 1944. He fled the German occupation of Poland in 1939 for Sweden, and at the end of World War II, he moved to New York to lobby the United Nations for an international genocide convention. He subsequently taught law at Duke and Yale Universities and was nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1933 Lemkin delivered a paper at an international meeting in Madrid in which he focused on the historical destruction of racial, religious or other social groups. He called for an international convention that like that against slavery and piracy would make international crimes out of the destruction of groups, which lacking a better term, he called "Acts of Barbarity." He was not satisfied with this very broad term, and it went nowhere in subsequent international law. Then, years later he came upon Plato's use of the Greek word genos for a "race," or "tribe." The idea naturally occurred to Lemkin to add the Latin -cide, which means "killer" or "act of killing" in Latin, as in homicide or suicide. Thus was born "genocide." At the height of Holocaust, and with that in mind, Lemkin wrote his 1944 book on, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, which was the first public articulation of the concept. In it he proposed the international regulation of genocide-the "practice of extermination of nations and ethnic groups." Lemkin played an important role in the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal trials of Nazi war criminals. He also lobbied at the UN during its debate on genocide, which concluded with the General Assembly resolution that "genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices are punishable." 5. HISTORY OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE The legal application of the term genocide first occurred in the indictment of the Nazi war criminals in the 1945-46 Nuremburg Tribunal. They were indicted for "War Crimes" (Count Three), which included the "deliberate and systematic genocide; viz., the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian population of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people, and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies." Following the aforementioned UN resolution of genocide, the question of an international genocide convention was referred to the UN Economic and Social Council. Their debate and deliberation ended in the 1948 UNCG, which came into force in 1951, and since then has been ratified by 133 states. The UN discussion and debate on genocide and final consideration of its definition focused on the horrors of the Holocaust, and in preventing or punishing future Holocaust like occurrences. For this reason, infused as it is with the memory of piles of corpses, gas ovens, and helpless men, women, and children in long lines being led to gas ovens or to face machine guns, genocide has been considered among the worst international crimes. The UNCG's definition of genocide is the same as the ICC's Acts (a)-(e), above, although the clarifications and elements added to the definition by the PCICC have gone far to clarify what the crime means in practice. For example, as mentioned, even if the act involves one person it is genocide, and torture, rape, and sexual violence are explicitly genocide if involving the intent to destroy an indelible group in whole or in part. Only states may be parties to the UNCG and a tribunal may hold trials for the crime of genocide (Article 6) in the state in which genocide was committed, "or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those contracting parties which have accepted its jurisdiction." Only parties to the UNCG may initiate cases of genocide under the UNCG. When such cases are left up to states, international and domestic politics play a prime role. And for this reason, there has been no case of genocide initiated under the UNCG by a State Party, even though there are many possible cases, such as by Burundi (1972), Cambodian Khmer Rouge (1975-79), Iraq (1963-), Myanmar (1962-), Nigeria (1967-70), Rwanda (1994), Serbia (1990s), Sudan (1956-), and many others. Moreover, many cases of genocide have been committed by non-parties, or before they ratified the UNCG, such as by Angola, China, Congo (Kinshasa), Indonesia, Pakistan, Paraguay, and Sierra Leone. In order to deal with the glaring cases of genocide and war crimes, the United Nations has resorted to setting up ad hoc Tribunals. So far only two are in existence, one the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for the Rwandan genocide of 1994. It has been successful in finding Mayor Jean-Paul Akayesu, former Prime Minister Jean Kambanda, and businessman and militia leader Omar Serushago, guilty of genocide, among other crimes. Kambanda has been found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment. Moreover many other high officials have been detained and are on trial, including the former ministers of education, health, information, foreign affairs, civil service, and commerce and industry. Since this was an internal domestic matter, a crime committed against their own people during a domestic conflict, their prosecution sets an important precedent for the application of international humanitarian law. Moreover, many states cooperated with the ICTR, including complying with ICTR arrest warrants, thus setting additional precedents. The other tribunal is The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was established in 1993 with regard to serious violations of humanitarian law. Genocide is among the crimes it has authority to persecute. Seven individuals are now serving sentences, and three have completed their sentence and ten have been provisionally released. In 1999 the Tribunal issue a warrant for the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, former President of Yugoslavia, and four of his associates for genocide and crimes against humanity. Milosevic is now standing trail before the Tribunal. The United Nations had also made attempts to set up similar tribunals for the Cambodian Khmer Rouge genocide and other crimes against humanity, and similarly for genocide and other crimes against humanity of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front, among other groups, and Indonesia's genocide in former East Timor 1975- 98. For one reason or another these have either been unsuccessful or partially successful, as in the hybrid national-international Special Court for Sierra Leone. In the future the activities of these tribunals may be folded into the ICC or the ICC will be given exclusive jurisdiction. In effect, the UNCG has now been replaced by the ICC's Statute. 6. GENOCIDE AS A SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPT Aside from it being a crime, genocide is a subject of research by social scientists and scholars. They ask such questions as to the history of genocide, its dynamics and stages, and its conditions and causes. If we are to eradicate or reduce genocide in the world, such research is essential. It is not enough to try to deter it by legal punishment. We must also understand why it occurs. However, the legal definition of genocide in the UNCG and ICC is too broad in including very different kinds of behavior, such as murder, mental damage, preventing births, removing children from a group, and so on. Yet, the legal definition also is too narrow in another way. It does not include the intent to destroy political, economic, and other non-indelible groups. Much killing by governments has been for to destroy other than indelible groups. It has been manifestly murder, and the intent to commit murder is inherent in the act itself. For example, soldiers lining up civilians against a wall and shooting them to death without a fair trial is manifestly government murder. Such has been the mass murder of hostages by the Nazis, the murder of Kulaks during Stalin's collectivization campaign in the 1930s, Mao's killing of "counterrevolutionaries in the 1950s and 60s," "the forced disappearance of leftists by death squads in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, and Honduras, among others in the 1970s and 80s; and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge's mass murder of former government military officers and officials from 1975 to 1979. The progress of our knowledge of genocide depends fundamentally on the clarity and significance of our concepts. Especially, these concepts should refer to real world behavior and events that can be clearly and similarly discriminated regardless of the observers and their prejudices. For if any area of social study is laden with predispositions and biases, it surely has to do with the who, why, when, and how of government murder. For these reasons, genocide scholars have tried to develop their own definitions of genocide that would better fit their understanding of such government murder. Below are four definitions that have a following among researchers. "Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator." (Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn) "Genocide in the generic sense is the mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims." (Israel W. Charny). "Genocide is sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectivity directly or indirectly, through interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of group members, sustained regardless of the surrender or lack of threat offered by the victim." (Helen Fein) The "concept of genocide applies only when there is an actualized intent, however successfully carried out, to physically destroy an entire group (as such a group is defined by the perpetrators)." (Steven T. Katz) Across the law oriented and scholarly literature, genocide is defined explicitly or implicitly in three ways. a) The legal definition That of the UBCG and ICC, as clarified in the report of the PCICC, and given above by Acts (a) - (e). b) The Common Definition The intentional killing (murder) by government of people because of their group identity. Regardless of the legal definition and doubtlessly influenced by the Holocaust, ordinary usage and that by some researchers have tended to wholly equate it with the murder and only the murder by government of people due to their specified or perceived group membership, which for some researchers may include political and other groups. This way of viewing genocide has become so ingrained in the public mind that it seems utterly false to claim genocide for nonlethal mental or physical conditions imposed on a group. Note that by this definition, the destruction of the group need not be intended. To kill Jews en masse because they are Jews, Christians because they are Christians, Chinese because they are Chinese would by this common definition be genocide. On this there is confusion, however, for while researchers may mention in their explicit definition that the destruction of the group is intended, in actual application they often include as genocide cases for which this intention is not made explicit (such as for the Stalin made Ukrainian famine and deportation of minority groups, Indonesia's mass murder in East Timor, and the killing fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia), while the murder of people by virtue of group membership is clear. c) General Definition Any intentional killing (murder) of unarmed and helpless people by government. In some usage and especially among some researchers (see Charny's definition, above), genocide has been so defined to fill a void in the legal and common definitions. They mean it to cover the mass murder of people for reasons other than their group membership, such as the mass murder of POWs, political critics, and violators of draconian rules; that during rape or sexual enslavement; that in the process of ideological purification; or that in order to simply fulfill a government death quota (as in the Soviet Union under Stalin in the 1930s, or by North Vietnam in the 1950s). None of such murders are genocide according the legal and common meanings. The problem with the generalized meaning of genocide is that to fill one void it creates another. For if genocide refers to all government murder, there is then no name for the murder of people because of their group membership, or the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part? It is precisely because of this conceptual problem that the new term democide (from the Greek demos for "people") is useful. It means murder by government or ruling authorities, and replaces the generalized definition of genocide, thus leaving the sociological concept of genocide to specifically refer to the murder of people because of their group membership. One of the great advances in international and humanitarian law of the ICC Statute is that it now explicitly defines murder and extermination as international crimes, whether in time of war or peace. Article 7.1 of the Statute includes the intentional "murder" and "extermination" of one or more persons as "'crime against humanity' when part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack." Of special importance, "extermination includes the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population." (Article 7.2.b) Murder and extermination by governments are within the general definition of genocide-democide. Therefore, the ICC Statute meets the extensive criticism of the UNCG that it was too narrow and should have included the murder or extermination of people for reasons other than the attempt to destroy indelible groups, although not under the crime of genocide. In effect, the ICC now covers almost all cases of democide, with the exception of the murder of political opponents or others (such as that of a pesky reporter) that is not part of the widespread or systematic attack on the population. 7. GENOCIDE IN HISTORY Throughout history hundreds of millions of people have been so murdered by their governments or rulers. This because they were hated; the wrong ethnic group, race, religion, or nationality; got in the way; were perceived a threat or enemy; on a whim; or for no reason at all. A conservative accounting would put the murdered as around 133 million, a number whose size was only limited by the small population of the world. By contrast, pre-20th Century war dead may have been about 40 million; the Black Plagues during the fifth to the 20th Century may have killed 102 million. Just a few examples will have to suffice. In China as one emperor succeeded another and as one imperial war devastated the population, tens of millions were murdered. In the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) alone, upwards of forty million were killed, the vast majority likely murdered. The Mongols, Jinghiz Khan a particular ruthless killer among them, devastated large sections of Persia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Russia and China-perhaps murdering through the 14-15th Centuries as many as 30 million people (about 13 percent of the world's population). Then, of course, there was slavery which may have accounted for the murder of about 17 million African blacks; and the murder of the Indians of the Americas, another 13 or so million. These are just the most notorious examples, but then there were the less deadly only in their lesser number of victims, such as in the murder of Christians by the Romans, the Christian Crusades, the Aztec sacrifices, the Spanish Inquisition, the witch hunts, the frequent anti-Jewish pogroms throughout Europe, and so on. By the 20th Century the human population had multiplied. At the time of the Mongols the world population was about 400 million. In 1900 it was about 1.2 billion, which rose to 6.1 billion by mid-2001. With many more people to kill, governments murdered many more people. In the 20th Century alone, the toll probably exceeded all those murdered before, likely an incredible 174 million. Possibly even around 340 million. For perspective on this, it is as though the world suffered a catastrophic nuclear war in slow motion. The conservative count of 174 million murdered is four times the number killed in combat in all domestic and foreign wars during the century, including World Wars I and II. This many corpses placed head to toe would ring the earth about four times. The worst murdering government was that of the Soviet Union, where Lenin, Stalin, and their successor may have killed around 62 million citizens and foreigners. Beginning in 1923, the Communist Party of China under Mao Tse-tung and his successorsmay have accounted for 39 million Chinese. The Nazis under Hitler carried out the Holocaust against the Jews, which everyone knows about, but lesser known is their other murders, which including the Jews amount to about 21 million murdered. Virtually unknown is that the Chinese Nationalist government, while in power from 1928 to 1949 under Chiang Kai-shek, murdered some 10 million Chinese. There were lesser murdering governments that while they killed a million or more people, managed to keep the total under 10 million. Just to name them, with the years and approximate millions murdered in parenthesis: Japan (1937-45: 6), Cambodia Khmer Rouge (1975-79: 2), Turkey (1909-18: 1.9), Vietnam (1945-87: 1.7), North Korea (1948-2002: over 2), Poland (1945-48: 1.6), Pakistan (1958-87: 1.5), Mexico (1900-20: 1.4), Russia (1900-17: 1.1), and Yugoslavia under Tito (1944-87:1). Well over a hundred other governments murdered their share in the tens or hundreds of thousands in this 20th century blood bath. All of this killing would now be a crime under the ICC, How much of this is the crime of genocide, however? Those cases that most clearly would be such crimes are the Holocaust costing 5-6 million Jews killed, of course. Both the UN Tribunals for Rwanda (overall about, 500-750 thousand Tutsi killed in 1994) and Yugoslavia (about 25,000-100,000 murdered in Bosnia-Herzegovina) have found that genocide had occurred and have meted out punishment. Some other major cases the fit or come close, with murdered in parenthesis) are the 1909-23 mass murder of Armenians, Greeks, and other Christians by the Turkish regimes (about 2.1 million Armenians and 347 thousand Greeks), Cambodian Khmer Rouge 1975-79 murder of Buddhist monks, Cambodian-Vietnamese, Muslims, and other minorities (541,000); 1904-07 German murder of Hereros, Hottentots, and Berg-Damaras of Namibia (72,000), 1967-87 Burundi murder of Hutus (150,000), World War II Croatia's murder of Serbs and Jews (655,000), Iraq's 1966-88 murder of Kurds and southern Shiites (over 100,000). If we use the common definition of genocide, then there are many more cases, that added to those that fit the legal definition, may amount to around eighty million murdered by governments. Some of the major cases would by Stalin's forced 1932-33 famine in Ukraine that murdered about 5 million; Communist China murder of 375,000 Tibetans, Sinkiang Muslims, and other minorities; West Pakistan's 1971 mass murder of over a million Bengalis and Hindus in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh); Indonesia's 1965 mass murder of 509,000 communists and ethnic Chinese and 1975-98 murders of over 150,000 in East Timor; Sudan's continuing murder since 1955 of Southern Christians and Black, now totaling over 1 million killed; and throughout the world the mass murder of tens of millions of indigenous people and colonial natives. 8. CAUSES AND CONDITIONS OF GENOCIDE Social scientists and scholars have generally organized their understanding of genocide in terms of the political structure within which it takes place, the context in which genocide occurs, the motives of the perpetrator, the nature of the victims, and the stages through which genocide passes. a) Institutions of government It is clear from empirical and historical research that democide, including genocide (however defined), are facets of totalitarian systems, and to a lesser extent of authoritarian ones. The degree to which people are not democratically free increases the likelihood of some kind of domestic genocide or democide, as in totalitarian Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, and Mao's Communist China; or fascist Chiang Kai-shek's China, Franco's Spain, and Admiral Miklos Horthy's Hungary; or dictator Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Idi Amin's Uganda, and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's Turkey. Those governments that commit virtually no domestic genocide, or other government domestic murder or extermination campaigns, are the modern democracies that recognize civil liberties and political rights. To predict where genocide is likely to occur, look first at the totalitarian governments, and next at the authoritarian ones. b) Context Whatever the political institutions of a government, the possibility of genocide sharply increases when it is involved in international or domestic wars. The Holocaust is one clear example. There was the mass murder of Jews before 1939, but not as a government policy to murder all Jews wherever they were or came under German control. That policy did not come into existence until Germany was well into World War II. Similarly with the mass murder of Armenians by the Young Turk government. During World War I, the Turk's alliance with Germany and the Russian invasion of Eastern Turkey provided the Young Turks with the excuse to purify Turkey of Armenians and Christians once and for all. Similarly with Stalin's deportation of ethnic/national minorities, such as Germans, Greeks, Meskhetians, Tartars, Ukrainians, and others during World War II that caused the death of around 750,000 of them. Perhaps a million or more were thus murdered during the Mexican Revolution from 1910-20. And other examples of genocide being executed during military incursions, civil wars, or the fight for independence are the genocides by Angola, Burma, Chile, both Congos, Colombia, El Salvador, Indonesia, Iran, Iran, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Syria, Yugoslavia (Serbia and Croatia), and so on for many others. War has always been an excuse, cover, or stimulus for genocide and mass murder. c) Motives There has been considerable research on why a perpetrator should want to destroy a group or, if not destroy the group as such, murder people because of their group membership. Motives are often complex and intertwined, but one can usually pull out among the mix a major motive. One such motive is to destroy a group that is perceived as a threat to the ruling power. Such, for example, was the 1970 parliamentary elections in Pakistan that showed the political power of East Pakistan and threatened the control over it by West Pakistan, and the power of the military government. They thus militarily seized East Pakistan and murdered over a million Bengali leaders, intellectuals, professionals, and any Hindus that the military were able to capture. Such was also the case with the strong resistance of the Ukrainian farmer to Stalin's program of collectivization in 1931-32 coupled with the threat of Ukrainian nationalism to communist control. So, when what would have been a mild famine hit the region in 1932, Stalin magnified the famine many fold by seizing food and its sources (livestock, pets, seed grain, shooting birds in the trees, etc.) and boycotting the import of food to Ukraine. Even visitors to Ukraine were searched and food taken away from them before they entered the Soviet Republic. About 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death. And such was the case when the Rwandan Hutu majority government undertook to murder all Tutsi within their reach at the time when there was turmoil resulting from a major 1991 incursion of the Tutsi expatriate Rwandan Patriotic Front in the northern part of the country. A second motive is deeply emotional and involves the destruction of those who are hated, despised, or conversely are envied or resented. The genocide of Jews throughout history and in particular the Holocaust was fundamentally an act of religious and ethnic hatred mixed with envy and resentment over their disproportionate economic and professional achievements. Similarly with the genocide of the Armenians in Turkey, 1915-18, where Armenians enjoyed wealth and professional status far beyond their numbers, but also were hated as Christians in a Moslem society. A third motive for genocide is the pursuit of an ideological transformation of society. Such have been the genocides and democides carried out by communist societies, for example, where those resisting or perceived to be enemies of the ideology are murdered, such as landlords, Kulaks, nationalists, "right-wingers," and "counterrevolutionaries." A fourth motive is purification, or the attempt to eliminate from society perceived alien beliefs, cultures, practices, and ethic groups. "Ethnic cleansing," "waste disposal," or "prophylaxis," are terms for this. Examples are the systematic attempt of Mao Tse-tung and Stalin to eliminate disbeliveers from their communist societies; the attempt to do the same by Christianity during the Middle Ages; the elimination of Christian groups and Moslem "blasphemers" in many current Islamic countries such as in Iran and Saudi Arabia; the ethnic cleansing that the Serbians practiced in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s; and the war that the Myanmar (Burmese) military have been carrying out against the Karen and other ethnic groups. And a fifth motive is that of economic gain. Thus, rapacious colonial powers or individuals (as of Belgium King Leopold who personally owned the Congo Free State) mass murdered tens of millions in their colonies who got in the way, resisted the rape of the colony's wealth, or were worked to death; and similarly for the mass murder of Indians in the Americas that continues to this day. And thus many millions were so murdered in the process of capturing, transporting, and maintaining slavery, d) Stages Then there are the stages through which the causes and conditions for genocide develop and gradually end in manifest genocide, as developed by Gregory H. Stanton. Assuming that the government is authoritarian or totalitarian, such stages are as follows. 1. Classification: People are typed, categorized, and classified into different groups, such as whites, blacks, Asians; or into Christians and Jews; or into communists, leftists, or rightists. 2. Symbolization: Different groups are given names, such as Chinese, Jews, Hindus, or Marxists." Particular clothes, (like a Turban), food eaten (like rice), physical characteristic (like long noses), or behavior (like inscrutable) may become ways of stereotyping the group's members. Classification and symbolization are common to all societies and while necessary for genocide to occur, do not foretell that it will; or that the next stages will follow. 3. Dehumanization: Members of the out-groups are dehumanized, as in calling them apes, monkeys, cockroaches, parasites, rats, vermin, and the like. In this way, members of the out-group are made to appear clearly outside of "our" moral universe. As vermin and such, members of the out-group have been stripped of the moral in-group protection against extermination. 4. Organization: Officials, sympathetic in-group leaders, and intellectuals organize to repress, murder out-group members, or entirely destroy the dehumanized group. Weapons are stacked or handed out; militia, security forces, or military are selected and trained; preliminary plans are made. 5. Polarization: Officials, extremists, propagandists, or demagogues undertake a systematic campaign to maximize the social, psychological, and moral distance between "us" and "them." In this stage, moderate intellectuals and leaders are silenced either through intimidation, beatings, arrests, and outright assassination. 6. Preparation: All is ready for genocide and the final step is to tag those to be killed. They may be forced to wear identifying clothing, symbols on their clothing, or be segregated in ghettos. Lists of those to be killed may be prepared for killing squads, and the out-group may be systematically deprived by law and weapon roundups of any weapons. Those who might lead the resistance to genocide, such as young males, may be conscripted into the military and segregated for subsequent execution, or simply jailed. 7. Genocide: For whatever motive, the final decision is made to attack and destroy those in the out-group, or to destroy the group as such. It may be justified as a righteous campaign to exterminate vermin or cleanse the society of filth, to recover ancient greatness or save the nation's race, to revenge past wrongs, and so on. 8 Denial: The final stage is the perpetrator's denial of their genocide. They destroy or hide the relevant official evidence, burn bodies, leave unmarked graves, or invent a reasonable rational for the killing ("they were in rebellion," "were killed during the civil war," or "were helpmates to our enemies."). Moreover, the perpetrators may harass those who claim that a genocide occurred. The most coherent and far reaching official denial today is that of the Turkish government that the murder of over a million Armenians during World War I was genocide. According to the Turks, they died as a result of a civil war, an invasion by Russia, and the attempt of the Young Turk government to deport potential and actual hostile Armenians to a different part of the country for their own protection.