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On Preventing Genocide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2018

Helen Fein
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Abstract

Now is the time to consider how we will react to the next genocide. Although the hope that the judgments at Nuremberg would deter genocide and similar crimes against humanity in the postwar world, genocides have occurred without sanction since 1945. The best-documented cases I have studied include the attempted annihilation of Buddhism in Tibet by China (1950-59), the selective genocide of the Hutus in Burundi by the Government of Burundi (1972), the genocidal slaughter of Hindus in East Pakistan by the Government of Pakistan (1971), and the extermination of the Ache Indians of Paraguay from 1971 onward with the toleration or complicity of the Government of Paraguay.

Under the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia it has been estimated that about 2 million, or three out of ten Cambodians, were killed or died due to the regime's policies. Whether these murders, termed “auto-genocide” by Anthony Paul, fit the definition of genocide under the Genocide Convention is open to question.

Type
Articles
Information
Worldview , Volume 23 , Issue 1-2 , February 1980 , pp. 42 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1980

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References

Notes

1 However, the expulsion of nationalities and ethnic groups that has caused their decimation clearly fits under the Convention. See Conquest, Robert, The Nation-Killers; The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities (London. 1970)Google Scholar.

2 The Human Cost of Soviet Communism (Washington, DC. USGPO, 1971), p. 25.

3 Mao's China: A History of the People's Republic (New York, 1977), p. 107.

4 American Bar Assocration, Special Committee on Peace and Law Through the United Nations (Chicago, 1950), p. 11

5 Butler, William J. and Obiozor, George, “The Burundi Affair 1972,” IDOC Survey, no. 52 (April, 1973), p. 26.Google Scholar

6 Arens, Richard, ed., Genocide in Paraguay (Philadelphia, 1976), p. 150.Google Scholar

7 Lillich, Richard B., ed., Humanitarian Intervention and the United Nations (Charlottesville, Va., 1973).Google Scholar

8 International Commission of Jurists, The Events in East Pakistan, 1971 (Geneva, 1972), p. 96.

9 Schurmann, Franz, “On Revolutionary Conflict, ” in Conflict Resolution: Contributions of the Behavioral Sciences, ed. Smith, Clagget G. (Notre Dame, Ind., 1971), p. 271 Google Scholar

10 Home, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace (New York, 1977), pp. 14, 538.Google Scholar