Persecution & Genocide Committees
What is Genocide?
The crime of genocide is defined in international law in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
“Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means 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.
Genocide is a process that develops in stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The process is not linear. Stages may occur simultaneously. Logically, later stages must be preceded by earlier stages. But all stages continue to operate throughout the process.
CLASSIFICATION: All cultures have categories to distinguish people into “us and them” by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality:German and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi. Bipolar societies that lack mixed categories, such as Rwanda and Burundi, are the most likely to havegenocide.SYMBOLIZATION: We give names or other symbols to the classifications. We name people “Jews” or “Gypsies”, or distinguish them by colors or dress; and apply the symbols to members of groups. Classification and symbolization are universally human and do not necessarily result in genocide unless they lead to dehumanization.
DEHUMANIZATION: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder. At this stage, hate propaganda in print and on hate radios
ORGANIZATION: Genocide is always organized, usually by the state, often using militias to provide deniability of state responsibility.States organize secret police to spy on, arrest, torture, and murder people suspected of opposition to political leaders. Special training is given to murderous militias and special army killing units.
POLARIZATION: . Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda. Motivations for targeting a group are indoctrinated through mass media. Extremist terrorism targets moderates, intimidating and silencing the center. The dominant group passes emergency laws or decrees that grants them total power over the targeted group. The laws erode fundamental civil rights and liberties.
PREPARATION: Plans are made for genocidal killings. National or perpetrator group leaders plan the “Final Solution” to targeted group “question.” They often use euphemisms to cloak their intentions, such as referring to their goals as“ethnic cleansing,” “purification,” or “counter-terrorism.” They indoctrinate the populace with fear of the victim group. Leaders often claim that “if we don’t kill them, they will kill us,” disguising genocide as self-defense. Acts of genocide are disguised as counter-terrorism.
PERSECUTION: Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. . Their property is often expropriated. Sometimes they are even segregated into ghettos, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved. They are deliberately deprived of resources such as water or food in order to slowly destroy them.The victim group’s basic human rights become systematically abused through extrajudicial killings, torture and forced displacement. Genocidal massacres begin. Gregory H. Stanton
This section addresses issues such as Special Courts and Judiciary, Hate Speech and Hate Crime, Propaganda Machine, State of Emergency, Rape,Dehumanization, Killings, Icc, Conspiracies, Plotting, Travel Ban, Disguising genocide as self-defense, Classification, Symbolization, Discrimination, Mass arrest, Detention, Cancelling passports, Expropriated Property, Profiling, Crimes against Humanity, Civil Death, Scapegoating, Persecution, Massive dismissals from work.
