Agence France Presse
April 5, 2019 Friday 8:59 AM GMT
Rwanda: One genocide among many
Paris, April 5 2019
The Rwandan genocide 25 years ago shocked the world. Yet it was only one genocide among many to have been committed last century, nor did it stem the threat of genocide today.
Derived from the Greek "genos", for "people", and "cide" from the Latin for "to kill", genocide is defined under a 1948 UN convention as an "act committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group."
Here is a broad overview of the Rwanda killings and other events labelled genocide:
– Rwanda –
Viciously planned and executed, the Rwandan genocide began in early April 1994 shortly after the ethnic Hutu president was killed when his plane was shot down.
For 100 days militias and soldiers from the Hutu majority butchered men, women and children from the Tutsi minority.
The killing ended only when the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took over in July 1994, having defeated the Hutu extremists.
At least 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis and some moderate Hutus, were killed, according to the UN.
The UN set up the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda which issued the world's first genocide conviction in 1998.
The court tried several dozen people before it wrapped up its work in December 2015.
Trials of genocide suspects have taken place in Rwanda, as well as in countries across the world including Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland.
– The Holocaust –
The term genocide was used for the first time within a legal framework by the 1945-1946 international military tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, to try Nazi leaders for the murder of six million Jews during World War II.
The accused were eventually convicted of crimes against humanity.
It paved the way for the UN's 1948 Genocide Convention which for the first time codified the crime of genocide.
– Convictions –
In November 2018 a UN-sponsored tribunal convicted the two top surviving leaders of Cambodia's 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge regime, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, of genocide against the Cham Muslim minority group and ethnic Vietnamese.
The verdict came nearly 40 years after the Khmer Rouge were expelled from Cambodia following a four-year reign of terror that left about a quarter of the population dead from starvation, mass executions and overwork.
The 1995 massacre at Srebrenica of almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces was recognised as a genocide by the International Court of Justice, the UN's top legal body, in 2007.
It is the only episode in the 1990s Balkan wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia to have been ruled as a genocide.
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was convicted for genocide and war crimes in 2016. In March 2019 his 40-year sentence was increased to life.
– Claims in Armenia, Namibia –
Armenia says Ottoman security forces massacred up to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1917, after the Ottoman Empire entered World War I.
It has long sought international recognition of this as genocide, as agreed by around 20 countries and some parliaments.
The charge is vehemently rejected by Turkey, inheritor of the dismantled empire, which admits nonetheless that up to 500,000 Armenians were killed in fighting, some massacres and from starvation.
The 1904 massacre of up to 65,0000 indigenous Hereros by German settlers in today's Namibia is considered by historians to be the first genocide of the 20th century.
While some German officials have acknowledged that a genocide occurred, the government has fallen short of an official declaration.
– Wanted –
The International Criminal Court in 2010 added three genocide counts to charges against Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir over fighting that erupted in Darfur in 2003 and which the UN estimates has left 300,000 dead.
Bashir denies the charges.
More recently there have been international warnings of potential genocide — but no arrest warrants issued — against Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar, as well as in the carnage of the world's newest nation, South Sudan.