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The Eight Stages of Genocide 20Th Century Genocides According to Gregory Stanton’S Criteria

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The Eight Stages of Genocide 20Th Century Genocides According to Gregory Stanton’S Criteria THE EIGHT STAGES OF GENOCIDE 20TH CENTURY GENOCIDES ACCORDING TO GREGORY STANTON’S CRITERIA Item Type text; Electronic Thesis Authors Kmeid, Amani Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 25/09/2021 22:59:38 Item License http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/630281 THE EIGHT STAGES OF GENOCIDE 20TH CENTURY GENOCIDES ACCORDING TO GREGORY STANTON’S CRITERIA By Amani Kmeid ____________________ A Thesis submitted to the Honors College In Partial Fulfillment of the Bachelor’s degree with With Honors in Global Studies THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA M A Y 2 0 1 8 Approved by: _________________________ Dr. Katherine Snyder School of Geography and Development Kmeid 1 Abstract: Through the analysis of three 20th century genocides: the Holodomor, the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, this research paper will utilize Gregory Stanton’s (1998) original genocide criteria. He describes eight key stages of a genocide: classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination, and denial, in that particular order. The recognition of these phases has allowed for the identification of past genocides whose statuses were once disputed by providing a rubric to compare other events to, while also aiding in the de-escalation and prevention of future genocides by allowing officials and the global community to recognize what is occurring, and stop it before it progresses. These examples of genocides were chosen without any prior knowledge as to whether or not they would in fact fit Stanton’s structure, but selected as a random sampling of 20th century genocides from various regions of the world. This paper also tries to understand how these three aforementioned genocides each conformed to Stanton’s rubric long before any official publishing, while also being geographically distant and culturally dissimilar. Were the methods applied in each of the eight stages similar? How successful were they in their genocidal process? Alongside historical evidence, testimonies, and scholarly discussions, this paper seeks to address all of these questions and more. Kmeid 2 Introduction The classification of mass murders as genocides has been debated by many renowned, scholars for centuries. Gregory Stanton’s 1996 briefing paper explicitly quotes The International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in order to provide a universal basis for any categorization of a massacre: 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. (1) Alongside this definition, he stresses the importance of the intent behind the mass killings, which may be “deduced from the systematic pattern of their acts” (Stanton, 2), and would in turn be used to decipher the perpetrators ambition to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in full, OR at least in part. This definition, our understanding of intent, and the eight stages of genocide defined by Stanton, will be used together to classify (or deny the classification of) these massacres as genocides. This paper will focus on three of the many genocides that occurred during the 20th century. The first will be the Holodomor that occurred in Ukraine between the 1932-1933. Ukrainians of the late 1920s and early 1930s were immensely nationalistic in the face of the Soviet Union. They viewed themselves as distinct from the Russian identity, with separate languages, cultures, and origin. What began as Stalin’s grand attempt to improve the economic issues present during his reign of the Soviet Union, quickly became a man-made mass famine that almost exclusively targeted the Ukrainian peasantry. Also observed as the final solution to the “Ukrainian problem”, consisting of Ukrainian nationalism, culture, language, and Kmeid 3 religion, the Holodomor (holod meaning “hunger, mor meaning “plague”) served to finally assimilate the Ukrainian state into urban Soviet Russia. Through the collectivization of once peasant-owned lands, the Soviet leadership was able to increase exports through the requisitioning of tones of grains from Soviet Ukraine, unilaterally starving and eradicating Ukrainian nationalism and its adherents. Alone, the death of five-seven million Ukrainians between 1932-33 remained insufficient in defining the Holodomor as a genocide, as many insisted this event was an unavoidable natural disaster that resulted in severe malnutrition. However, since “Ukraine, along with the North Caucasus (also severely stricken), [was] normally the most fertile area of the cast country, all the more paradoxical and poignant the tragedy that overwhelmed the second most populous nation of the Soviet Union” (Dolot, 1987: vii). It is the publication of Ukraine’s distinct, nationalistic identity, and Stalin’s direct assault upon them, that revolutionized our understanding of the Holodomor and its true origins and intentions. Secondly, this paper will focus on the Holocaust. While World War II did not begin until 1941the roots of the Holocaust can be found in 1933, following Hitler’s rise to power. While the Nazis went to extreme lengths to achieve their goals, particularly racial purity and spatial expansion, they were rather typical in who they chose to attack. Hitler’s idea of racial purity encouraged the development of an “Aryan race”, and he used the isolation and vulnerability of asocial populations, such as the disabled and the Sinti and Roma, in order to achieve this new order. Through eugenics — selective breeding — Hitler hoped to rid the world of all those deemed unworthy, while also creating a master race. This new master race would consist of Germans and ethnic Germans — Germans living abroad — and they: “were to settle eastern Europe, where they would produce food and babies for the “Aryan race.” To make such settlements possible, the plan demanded elimination of the people Kmeid 4 currently living there. Tens of millions of Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, and others were to be forced into less desirable areas, allowed to die of starvation or disease, or killed. A small percentage would be kept as slaves for the German empire. Jews were to disappear altogether.” (Bergen, 2002: 213) Since the essence of Hitler’s plans relied on winning the approval of Germans at home, Hitler “brought in millions of people considered disposable,” the aforementioned asocials, “and used them to make waging a war of annihilation as comfortable as possible for the German people” (Bergen, 2002: 215). While Germans did not necessarily endorse Hitler’s plan to annihilate several different populations, Hitler ensured that Germans were never directly compromised by his ploys to eliminate asocials, and construed their passivity as acceptance of his plans for the new “Aryan race”. So long as German lives were thriving, they paid little attention to the atrocities occurring around them under the Nazi Regime. Lastly, The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), also known as the Khmer Rouge, took power in 1975 hoping to “transform Cambodia into a rural, classless society in which there were no rich people, no poor people, and no exploitation” (Dy, 2007: 2), thus resulting in the Cambodian genocide. While most believed that they would find peace under this new leadership, one that would hopefully save them from U.S. presence in their territory, and the damage that the Vietnam War had inflicted on their country, they were sorely mistaken. Days after the Khmer Rouge came to power, two million people were forced from the capital, Phnom Penh, and neighboring cities, into the countryside. “The nation’s cities were evacuated, hospitals emptied, schools closed, factories deserted, money and wages abolished, monasteries empties, libraries scattered” (Kiernan, 2004: 339), and citizens were sent to undertake agricultural work in the new collectivized nation. Thousands of evacuees, particularly those who were young, old, pregnant, and sick perished during the journey. In the confusion of the sudden upheaval of a seemingly orderly civilization, husbands and wives were separated, children were lost, and many were Kmeid 5 never reunited. “It is estimated that between 1.7 and 2 million Cambodians died during the four year reign of the Khmer Rouge” (United to End Genocide), while several hundred thousand Cambodians fled the country and became refugees. Those targeted most severely by the regime were “the Muslim Cham as an ethnic and religious group; the Vietnamese communities as an ethnic and, perhaps, a racial group; and the Buddhist monkhood as a religious group” (Kiernan, 2004: 354), all of which were protected under the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948. Also at risk were Cambodians with any affiliation with the previous government, the Khmer Republic government.
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