National Public Radio NPR,
March 5 2010
The Tricky Business Of Defining Genocide
by Alan Greenblatt
Photo: Kevin Frayer/APArmenian children in Jerusalem carry signs and
photographs during a 2005 march to mark the 90th anniversary of the
mass killing of Armenian people in 1915. Armenians accuse the Turks of
genocide in the slaughter during World War I.
Kevin Frayer/APArmenian children in Jerusalem carry signs and
photographs during a 2005 march to mark the 90th anniversary of the
mass killing of Armenian people in 1915. Armenians accuse the Turks of
genocide in the slaughter during World War I.
text sizeAAAMarch 5, 2010 The term "genocide" was coined during World
War II to denote a crime so terrible it could not be confused with any
other. In that sense, the word may have worked too well.
The word’s association with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust has
presented a barrier to defining mass killings as genocide. And the
lack of agreement on what constitutes genocide has led to inaction in
the face of contemporary slaughters, as well as endless arguments
about whether historical events qualify for the description.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday approved a resolution
recognizing the slaughter of more than 1 million Armenians by Ottoman
Turks in 1915 as genocide.
Congress ‘ along with parliaments in other nations ‘ has regularly
debated this issue in recent years, creating tensions with Turkey.
Turkey’s foreign minister said Friday that the House panel’s vote
would damage U.S.-Turkish ties.
Obama’s Broken Pledge
But the Armenian debate is not the only argument over what exactly
constitutes genocide. What seems to be the most straightforward
political act imaginable ‘ condemning mass slaughter ‘ turns out to be
a tricky business.
Fear of upsetting Turkey, an important NATO ally, has led President
Obama to lobby against the genocide resolution. This stands in
contrast to his position as a senator and presidential candidate, when
he pledged to recognize the genocide. He said it was simply "a
historical fact."
The reality is that the term is a great hindrance, because fixating on
the term hinders our understanding both of what happens and what
should happen.
– Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
In some contemporary cases, such as the 1994 mass murders in Rwanda,
debate among rich nations has seemed to turn more on the semantic
question of whether events technically qualify as "genocide," rather
than on formulating any response.
Calling such killings genocide would force action. Member states can
call on the United Nations to try to prevent genocide and are bound by
treaty to stop genocide from taking place within their own borders.
"There’s a legal structure out there that makes the word very
powerful," says Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of a 2009 book about
genocide, Worse Than War. "That’s why there’s so much debate about
whether something is genocide or isn’t."
Defining just what is genocide has been a point of contention ever
since the word was invented. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who evaded
capture by the Germans during World War II and eventually settled in
the United States, created the word in a 1944 book in response to the
Holocaust. He combined the Greek word genos, meaning race or tribe,
with the suffix -cide, derived from the Latin word for killing.
This was more than a linguistic exercise. His neologism quickly made
its way into international law with the 1948 adoption of the United
Nations Convention on Genocide, which defines genocide as the attempt
to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic racial or
religious group.
An Enormous Loophole
To Lemkin’s dismay, however, political compromises meant that the
document did not define mass murder for political reasons as genocide.
That has turned out to be an enormous loophole. In Indonesia, for
example, an anti-Communist purge in 1965-66 left an estimated 500,000
people dead. Yet, because of their political nature, the massacres
have not been considered genocide.
Perpetrator regimes typically argue that their intent is based on
self-defense or military necessity. Perhaps surprisingly, outside
nations, too, willingly enter into legalistic arguments about whether
mass slaughters such as Rwanda and Darfur constitute genocide.
"The reality is that the term is a great hindrance, because fixating
on the term hinders our understanding both of what happens and what
should happen," Goldhagen says.
It can be an argument without end.
Charles W. Ingrao, an historian at Purdue University, notes that
former combatants can sometimes agree on the facts ‘ including mass
murder and rape ‘ but the aggressor will still not accept the
opprobrium of the genocide label.
"The use of the term genocide throws a monkey wrench into what could
be the smoothly working machinery of reconciliation," he says. "It has
a political dimension that makes it counterproductive."
The Armenia Question
Armenians insist the 1915 killings constituted the first genocide of
the 20th century. Most scholars agree. Denying it is as unimaginable,
in their eyes, as a German denial of the Holocaust.
Armenians outside of Armenia seem to take a harder line on the
question of the term genocide than those still living in the country.
"This denial of the genocide has become the central organizing
principle among Armenians in the diaspora," says Ronald Grigor Suny, a
professor of Armenian and Russian history at the University of
Michigan.
Turkey has lobbied hard against foreign countries recognizing the 1915
killings as genocide.
Following Thursday’s House committee vote, Turkey recalled its
ambassador to the United States and has threatened to deny the U.S.
use of an airbase, as well as other sanctions, during previous debates
over the past decade.
Turkey has always maintained that the Armenians were not targeted for
extermination and that ethnic massacres happened on both sides during
World War I. Turks also say their Ottoman predecessors feared that
Armenians in their midst would support invading Russians.
But feelings run deep among Armenians. Protesters of Armenian dissent
showed up by the thousands in France, Lebanon and the U.S. last year
as Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan essentially campaigned for
diaspora support of a rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey. He was
trying, unsuccessfully, to get diaspora leaders to back an accord with
Turkey that established diplomatic relations and reopened the borders
‘ but also called for a joint historical commission to examine the
genocide question.
"The government of Armenia is not going to push this issue as much as
they might have," Suny says. "They want to make some realistic
state-to-state agreements with the Turks."
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