Genocide Paper Essay

I personally think genocide is wrong in every way you can think of. Why would anyone want to deliberately kill a group of people based on race or ethnicity? There have been much genocide to take place around the world, but some are better known than others. Some people have different theories on why genocide takes place. I think that genocide occurs for a couple reasons. The leaders of the genocide may feel that the group they are eliminating could be a potential threat somehow. Another reason may be to spread fear among real enemies, also to implement a belief or religious view. I don’t really see how the Jews were a threat to Hitler but by eliminating the Jews Hitler gained a lot of power. I think the leaders know that the groups of people are not threats I just think the biggest reason is to spread fear real enemies that will defiantly be a threat someday. They do it to make a point and show that they aren’t afraid to kill. I don’t agree with killing millions to prove that at all. Some genocide occurs because of economic wealth. And what I mean by this is that if one groups sees potential in something but another group is standing in the way of success they may just feel the need to eliminate the group so they can have economic wealth. I still don’t see what brings anyone happiness by killing millions of innocent people just because you want to prove that you’re the top country or something like that. Genocide is stupid in my opinion and I see no point for it whatsoever. The more I actually think about genocide the more I become in shock at the fact that there people in world who can kill and not think twice about. I’d feel bad if I killed a deer†¦I can’t even imagine killing a human. I noticed that there has not been genocide in the United States which I am very thankful for. I feel very bad for the people who are in foreign countries where genocide may not be frowned upon. I’m sure there are many people in those countries that wish they could live in the US. Whenever I think I have it bad I always just remember about the kids that were in Bosnia and Cambodia and the other places where genocides have occurred. I’m glad that the United States has helped countries who h ave been in genocide. Hopefully genocide will end one day and people in foreign countries won’t have to worry about it at all. I think they should really be strict about genocide in foreign countries and the US should be quick to help the country because usually the leader of the genocide is very powerful  and most of the time the country itself is not strong enough to defend itself so that’s where the united states could be a huge help because they are a very powerful country and would most likely defeat anyone. I’m just thankful I haven’t had to endure something like the holocaust or anything close to that because I don’t think I’d be able to. I have no clue how those people did it or how anyone who’s been in genocide has done it. I have a tremendous amount of respect for those people, talk about perseverance. I also have respect for the soldiers who try to stop the genocide that is occurring at the time and the sad part is most of them end up not survi ving, but they are sacrificing their lives for the people and I know the people are appreciative or at least they better be, I know I would be super appreciative of what they have done. There are a number of recorded accounts of genocide; the Holocaust, Darfur, Rwanda, former Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Cambodia and many more. The thought of systematically eradicating a group of people solely based on their religious belief, their racial background or political stance would seem superbly extreme to most people, how could genocide continue without notice or without being stopped? Time after time throughout history, there is either a lack of awareness about the genocide or the people that have the power to intercede have looked the other way or decided not to get involved. Whether or not the genocide directly affects us, it is a crime against humanity that should not be overlooked. The Armenian genocide, Beginning in 1915, ethnic Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were rounded up, deported and executed on orders of the government. The combination of massacres, forced deportation marches and deaths due to disease in concentration camps is estimated to have killed more than 1 million ethnic Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks between 1915 and 1923. Another famous genocide was the holocaust. After coming to power in 1933, the Nazi Party implemented a highly organized strategy of persecution and murder. Their targets were the so-called â€Å"undesirables†: Jews, Slavs, Roma, the disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals, as well as political and religious dissidents.The Nazis began with stripping citizenship from German Jews on the basis of their religious identity. Shortly thereafter, in November 1938, the organized pogrom of Kristallnacht marked the beginning of mass deportations of German Jews to concentration camps. As the Nazis conquered large areas of Europe, Jews and others in Nazi-controlled areas  were also deported to camps. When the German Army invaded the Soviet Union, it soon gave rise to mobile killing squads operating throughout Eastern Europe and Russia, which killed more than one million Jews and tens of thousands of other civilians. The construction of extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkan au, Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno and Sobibor led to the Nazis’ killing of 2.7 million Jews and others through the use of cyanide gas, summary executions and medical experimentation. Poor living conditions in non-extermination camps led to the deaths of millions more. It is estimated that six million Jews, two out of every three living in Europe, and another 5 million people had been killed by 1945. The genocide of Cambodia was also another one. When the Khmer Rouge took control of the Cambodian government in 1975, they declared the beginning of a new age dedicated to a peasant-oriented society. Instead, after outlawing education, religion, healthcare and technology, the Khmer Rouge ordered the evacuation of Cambodia’s cities and forced these residents to labor without adequate food or rest. Those who were unable to keep up were often summarily executed. At the same time, the Khmer Rouge began to target suspected political dissidents. These citizens, including doctors, teachers and those suspected of being educated were singled out for torture at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison. In four years, between 1.7 and 2 million Cambodians died in the Khmer Rougeâ⠂¬â„¢s ‘Killing Fields. The genocide in Bosnia was very large and gory. Beginning in 1991, Yugoslavia began to break up along ethnic lines as political leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic began to use nationalist sentiment as a political tool. While Slovenian independence was relatively bloodless, Croatia’s declaration sparked a civil war between the province and the Yugoslav government. Troops from the mostly Serb Yugoslav army entered Croatian territory and committed widespread human rights abuses, including the siege of Vukovar and the shelling of Dubrovnik.In 1992, the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) also declared independence and the region quickly became the central theater of fighting between Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims). During the wars in the former Yugoslavia, all belligerents committed abuses against the civilians. Soldiers and paramilitaries used rape, torture, forcible displacement, and summary executions to â€Å"ethnically cleanse† areas under their c ontrol. The actions of Serbian units, including the Bosnian Serb army and  paramilitaries, were particularly notorious for committing atrocities, including the massacres at Foca, Tuzla, Visegrad, and Srebrenica. At Srebrenica, Bosnian Serb forces under General Radko Mladic overran a U.N. safe-area and executed at least 7,500 Bosniak men and boys who were sheltering with Dutch peacekeeping troops.Due to the nature of the attacks on civilians during the Bosnian and Croatian wars, the United Nations created the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in 1993. This tribunal is tasked with prosecuting offenders who contributed to the deaths of at least 96,000 people. The genocide in Rwanda started because of the civil war. Civil war broke out in Rwanda in 1990, further exacerbating tensions between the Tutsi minority and Hutu majority. Although a peace agreement was reached in 1992, political negotiations continued. In 1994, as he returned from the latest round of talks in neighboring Tanzania, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down outside of the country’s capital, Kigali. Habyarimana’s death provided the spark for an organized campaign of violence against Tutsi and moderate Hutu civilians across the country. Despite the efforts of United Nations peacekeepers, extremist Hutu groups killed between 800,000 and 1 million people across the country in only 100 days. In 1994, the United Nations created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), dedicated to bringing those responsible for the genocide to justice. While slow-moving, the ICTR has determined that the widespread rapes committed during the Rwandan genocide may also be considered an act of torture and genocide on their own. Darfur is another genocide that has occurred. The conflict in Darfur began in the spring of 2003 when two Darfuri rebel movements — the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) — launched attacks against government military installations as part of a campaign to fight against the historic political and economic marg inalization of Darfur.The Sudanese government, engaged in tense negotiations with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) to end a two decade long civil war between North and South Sudan, responded swiftly and viciously to extinguish the insurgency. Through coordinated military raids with government-armed militia (collectively known as the janjaweed), the Sudanese military specifically targeted ethnic groups from which the rebels received much of their support, systematically destroying  the livelihoods of Darfuris by bombing and burning villages, looting economic resources, and murdering, raping and torturing non-combatant civilians.In March 2009, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for two counts of war crimes and five counts of crimes against humanity. The following summer, the ICC added genocide to the charges against al-Bashir. The ICC has also issued arrest warrants for Ali Kushayb and Ahmad Haroun for a combined 92 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against civilians in Darfur. In March 2012, the ICC added Sudan’s current Minister of Defense Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein to the list issuing an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur.The United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force (UNAMID) in Darfur replaced an underfunded and underequipped African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur in January 2008. UNAMID to this day remains without the necessary resources to protect the 1.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) who live in large camps across Darfur. The government has increasingly obstructed UNAMID and humanitarian organizations by restricting access, often leaving the most vulnerable civilians cut off from outside aid. There are also an estimated 263,000 Darfuri refugees living across the Sudanese border in neighboring Chad. Overall, the UN estimates that more than 4.7 million people in Darfur (out of a total population of roughly 7.5 million) are still affected by the conflict.Women living in IDP camps risk rape or harassment if they leave the camp to access water, collect firewood, or plant crops; however, due to the limited access of aid, they often do not have a choice. Gender based violence (GBV) has been used as a tool to oppress women throughout the crisis and those who target women do so with impunity. Due to cultural and religious taboos, GBV often goes unreported and perpetrators are rarely held accountable for their crimes. The most famous well-known genocide is the holocaust. The holocaust had a huge effect on the US and many other places. The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its c ollaborators. â€Å"Holocaust† is a word of Greek origin meaning â€Å"sacrifice by fire.† The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were â€Å"racially superior† and that the Jews, deemed â€Å"inferior,† were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community. During the  era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived â€Å"racial inferiority†:Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals. In 1933, the Jewish population stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War ll By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the â€Å"Final Solution,† the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Although Jews, whom the Naz is deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered in the so-called Euthasium program. As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people. Between two and three million Soviet Prisoners of War were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment. The Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland, where these individuals worked and often died under deplorable conditions. From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals and others whose behavior did not match prescribed social norms. German police officials targeted thousands of political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses). Man y of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment. In the early years of the Nazi regime, the National Socialist government established concentration camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents. Increasingly in the years before the outbreak of war, SS and police officials incarcerated Jews, Roma, and other victims of ethnic and racial hatred in these camps. To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate later deportation of the Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps for Jews during the war years. The German authorities also established numerous forced-labor camps, both in the  so-called Greater German Reich and in German-occupied territory, for non-Jews whose labor the Germans sought to exploit. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) and, later, militarized battalions of Order Police officials, moved behind German lines to carry out mass-murder operations against Jews , Roma, and Soviet state and Communist Party officials. German SS and police units, supported by units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS, murdered more than a million Jewish men, women, and children, and hundreds of thousands of others. Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities deported millions of Jews from Germany, from occupied territories, and from the countries of many of its Axis allies to ghettos and to killing centers, often called extermination camps, where they were murdered in specially developed gassing facilities. In the final months of the war, SS guards moved camp inmates by train or on forced marches, often called â€Å"death marches,† in an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, as well as prisoners en route by forced march from one camp to another. The marches continued until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. For the western Allies, World War II officially ended in Europe on the next day, May 8 (V-E Day), while Soviet forces announced their â€Å"Victory D ay† on May 9, 1945. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many of the survivors found shelter in displaced persons (DP) camps administered by the Allied powers. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, including 136,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe. Other Jewish DPs emigrated to the United States and other nations. The last DP camp closed in 1957. The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated most European Jewish communities and eliminated hundreds of Jewish communities in occupied Eastern Europe entirely. I think the holocaust was a terrible thing and I feel extremely bad for all the Jews because for no reason at all they were killed and put in camps and basically tortured for a long time. Hitler deserved to die; I just wish he had died a lot earlier before 6 million Jews were killed because of him. They did not deserve to die. I wish someone would have shot Hitler right when the holocaust started. The bad part is the Jews didn’t even know what was  happening. When they were approached the Nazis lied to Jews about where they were going. They told them that the concentration camps were a lot nic er then they really were. They said they would receive food 3 times a day and that there was no mandatory labor, basically making the Jews want to come to the camps. And by the time the Jews realized they were lying it was too late. Another awful thing the Germans did to trick the Jews was they said that the Jews were going to get a shower when really they were going to die. The showers were really gas chambers. So what they did is they made the Jews get completely naked and then they would make them all go in the chamber and in the mean time the Jews were all excited because they were finally going to get to take a shower. The saddest part was that even tiny children were put in the gas chambers. I don’t understand how those Germans could sit there and watch kids as young as 8 die slowly. It disgusts me that they would do that. I just wish the US had known about these camps sooner because I’m sure many lives could have been saved. I still don’t see why it had to be the Jews. Why did it even have to happen? I don’t get why genocide has to happen at all, I see absolutely no point to it at all. Basically genocide is a mass murder of people based on race or religion. Why do people feel t he need to kill people based on that? There are other ways to deal with them. Killing shouldn’t even be a last resort. In my opinion people can do what they want and anyone who thinks a race should be eliminated just because deserves to be executed or be put in prison for the rest of his/her life. It is clear from empirical and historical research that democide, including genocide (however defined), are facets of totalitarian systems, and to a lesser extent of authoritarian ones. The degree to which people are not democratically free increases the likelihood of some kind of domestic genocide or democide, as in totalitarian Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany, and Mao’s Communist China; or fascist Chiang Kai-shek’s China, Franco’s Spain, and Admiral Miklos Horthy’s Hungary; or dictator Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Idi Amin’s Uganda, and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey. Those governments that commit virtually no domestic genocide, or other government domest ic murder or extermination campaigns, are the modern democracies that recognize civil liberties and political rights. To predict where genocide is likely to occur, look first at the totalitarian governments, and next at the authoritarian ones. Whatever the political institutions of a government, the  possibility of genocide sharply increases when it is involved in international or domestic wars. The Holocaust is one clear example. There was the mass murder of Jews before 1939, but not as a government policy to murder all Jews wherever they were or came under German control. That policy did not come into existence until Germany was well into World War II. Similarly with the mass murder of Armenians by the Young Turk government. During World War I, the Turk’s alliance with Germany and the Russian invasion of Eastern Turkey provided the Young Turks with the excuse to purify Turkey of Armenians and Christians once and for all. Similarly with Stalin’s deportation of ethnic/national minorities, such as Germans, Greeks, Meskhetians, Tartars, Ukrainians, and others during World War II that caused the death of around 750,000 of them. Perhaps a million or more were thus murdered during the Mexican Revolution from 191 0-20. And other examples of genocide being executed during military incursions, civil wars, or the fight for independence are the genocides by Angola, Burma, Chile, both Congos, Colombia, El Salvador, Indonesia, Iran, Iran, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Syria, Yugoslavia (Serbia and Croatia), and so on for many others. War has always been an excuse, cover, or stimulus for genocide and mass murder. There has been considerable research on why a perpetrator should want to destroy a group or, if not destroy the group as such, murder people because of their group membership. Motives are often complex and intertwined, but one can usually pull out among the mix a major motive. One such motive is to destroy a group that is perceived as a threat to the ruling power. Such, for example, was the 1970 parliamentary elections in Pakistan that showed the political power of East Pakistan and threatened the control over it by West Pakistan, and the power of the military government. They thus militarily seized East Pakistan and murdered over a million Bengali leaders, intellectuals, professionals, and any Hindus that the military were able to capture. Such was also the case with the strong resistance of the Ukrainian farmer to Stalin’s program of collectivization in 1931-32 coupled with the threat of Ukrainian nationalism to communist control. So, when what would have been a mild famine hit the region in 1932, Stalin magnified the famine many fold by seizing food and its sources (livestock, pets, seed grain, shooting birds in the trees, etc.) and boycotting the import of food to Ukraine. Even visitors to Ukraine were  searched and food taken away from them before they entered the Soviet Republic. About 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death. In conclusion, I think genocide has no place in this world whatsoever. I think anyone who is a part of genocide is terrible people. I just feel like there are many other solutions to problems then mass murder. Innocent people do not deserve to die because of a leader’s religious view or any views at all. Do I think it’s possible that this century could be a century of death? My answer is possibly. I say this because I feel like people only think that because a lot of people have died. How can we really tell if this century is a century of death if we can only compare to past centuries? If we could look into future centuries and see how many people will die then we could figure it out. My prediction is more and more people will die in upcoming centuries only because the population will be so great. But I could easily be wrong. So like I said I hope genocide will come to an end one day or at least be stopped before people are killed. I would hope that someone will be brav e enough to stand up to a leader of genocide. My opinion on genocide will never change. Till the day I die I will think genocide has no place in this world or anywhere else. And that all those Jews that were killed and basically anyone who was killed in a genocide deserved to live. The leaders did not. I personally think genocide is wrong in every way you can think of. Why would anyone want to deliberately kill a group of people based on race or ethnicity? There have been much genocide to take place around the world, but some are better known than others. Some people have different theories on why genocide takes place. I think that genocide occurs for a couple reasons. The leaders of the genocide may feel that the group they are eliminating could be a potential threat somehow. Another reason may be to spread fear among real enemies, also to implement a belief or religious view. I don’t really see how the Jews were a threat to Hitler but by eliminating the Jews Hitler gained a lot of power. I think the leaders know that the groups of people are not threats I just think the biggest reason is to spread fear real enemies that will defiantly be a threat someday. They do it to make a point and show that they aren’t afraid to kill. I don’t agree with killing millions to prove that at all. Some genocide occurs because of economic wealth. And what I mean by this is that if one groups sees potential in something but another group is standing in the way of success they may just feel the need to eliminate the group so they can have economic wealth. I still don’t see what brings anyone happiness by killing millions of innocent people just because you want to prove that you’re the top country or something like that. Genocide is stupid in my opinion and I see no point for it whatsoever. The more I actually think about genocide the more I become in shock at the fact that there people in world who can kill and not think twice about. I’d feel bad if I killed a deer†¦I can’t even imagine killing a human. I noticed that there has not been genocide in the United States which I am very thankful for. I feel very bad for the people who are in foreign countries where genocide may not be frowned upon. I’m sure there are many people in those countries that wish they could live in the US. Whenever I think I have it bad I always just remember about the kids that were in Bosnia and Cambodia and the other places where genocides have occurred. I’m glad that the United States has helped countries who have been in genocide. Hopefully genocide will end one day and people in foreign countries won’t have to worry about it at all. I think they should really be strict about genocide in foreign countries and the US should be quick to help the country because usually the leader of the genocide is very powerful  and most of the time the country itself is not strong enough to defend itself so that’s where the united states could be a huge help because they are a very powerful country and would most likely defeat anyone. I’m just thankful I haven’t had to endure something like the holocaust or anything close to that because I don’t think I’d be able to. I have no clue how those people did it or how anyone who’s been in genocide has done it. I have a tremendous amount of respect for those people, talk about perseverance. I also have respect for the soldiers who try to stop the genocide that is occurring at the time and the sad part is most of them end up not surviving, but they are sacrificing their lives for the people and I know the people are appreciative or at least they better be, I know I would be super appreciative of what they have done. There are a number of recorded accounts of genocide; the Holocaust, Darfur, Rwanda, former Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Cambodia and many more. The thought of systematically eradicating a group of people solely based on their religious belief, their racial background or political stance would seem superbly extreme to most people, how could genocide continue without notice or without being stopped? Time after time throughout history, there is either a lack of awareness about the genocide or the people that have the power to intercede have looked the other way or decided not to get involved. Whether or not the genocide directly affects us, it is a crime against humanity that should not be overlooked. The Armenian genocide, Beginning in 1915, ethnic Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were rounded up, deported and executed on orders of the government. The combination of massacres, forced deportation marches and deaths due to disease in concentration camps is estimated to have killed more than 1 million ethnic Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks between 1915 and 1923. Another famous genocide was the holocaust. After coming to power in 1933, the Nazi Party implemented a highly organized strategy of persecution and murder. Their targets were the so-called â€Å"undesirables†: Jews, Slavs, Roma, the disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals, as well as political and religious dissidents.The Nazis began with stripping citizenship from German Jews on the basis of their religious identity. Shortly thereafter, in November 1938, the organized pogrom of Kristallnacht marked the beginning of mass deportations of German Jews to concentration camps. As the Nazis conquered large areas of Europe, Jews and others in Nazi-controlled areas  were also deported to camps. When the German Army invaded the Soviet Union, it soon gave rise to mobile killing squads operating throughout Eastern Europe and Russia, which killed more than one million Jews and tens of thousands of other civilians. The construction of extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkan au, Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno and Sobibor led to the Nazis’ killing of 2.7 million Jews and others through the use of cyanide gas, summary executions and medical experimentation. Poor living conditions in non-extermination camps led to the deaths of millions more. It is estimated that six million Jews, two out of every three living in Europe, and another 5 million people had been killed by 1945. The genocide of Cambodia was also another one. When the Khmer Rouge took control of the Cambodian government in 1975, they declared the beginning of a new age dedicated to a peasant-oriented society. Instead, after outlawing education, religion, healthcare and technology, the Khmer Rouge ordered the evacuation of Cambodia’s cities and forced these residents to labor without adequate food or rest. Those who were unable to keep up were often summarily executed. At the same time, the Khmer Rouge began to target suspected political dissidents. These citizens, including doctors, teachers and those suspected of being educated were singled out for torture at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison. In four years, between 1.7 and 2 million Cambodians died in the Khmer Rougeâ⠂¬â„¢s ‘Killing Fields. The genocide in Bosnia was very large and gory. Beginning in 1991, Yugoslavia began to break up along ethnic lines as political leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic began to use nationalist sentiment as a political tool. While Slovenian independence was relatively bloodless, Croatia’s declaration sparked a civil war between the province and the Yugoslav government. Troops from the mostly Serb Yugoslav army entered Croatian territory and committed widespread human rights abuses, including the siege of Vukovar and the shelling of Dubrovnik.In 1992, the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) also declared independence and the region quickly became the central theater of fighting between Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims). During the wars in the former Yugoslavia, all belligerents committed abuses against the civilians. Soldiers and paramilitaries used rape, torture, forcible displacement, and summary executions to â€Å"ethnically cleanse† areas under their control. The actions of Serbian units, including the Bosnian Serb army and  paramilitaries, were particularly notorious for committing atrocities, including the massacres at Foca, Tuzla, Visegrad, and Srebrenica. At Srebrenica, Bosnian Serb forces under General Radko Mladic overran a U.N. safe-area and executed at least 7,500 Bosniak men and boys who were sheltering with Dutch peacekeeping troops.Due to the nature of the attacks on civilians during the Bosnian and Croatian wars, the United Nations created the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in 1993. This tribunal is tasked with prosecuting offenders who contributed to the deaths of at least 96,000 people. The genocide in Rwanda started because of the civil war. Civil war broke out in Rwanda in 1990, further exacerbating tensions between the Tutsi minority and Hutu majority. Although a peace agreement was reached in 1992, political negotiations continued. In 1994, as he returned from the latest round of talks in neighboring Tanzania, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down outside of the country’s capital, Kigali. Habyarimana’s death provided the spark for an organized campaign of violence against Tutsi and moderate Hutu civilians across the country. Despite the efforts of United Nations peacekeepers, extremist Hutu groups killed between 800,000 and 1 million people across the country in only 100 days. In 1994, the United Nations created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), dedicated to bringing those responsible for the genocide to justice. While slow-moving, the ICTR has determined that the widespread rapes committed during the Rwandan genocide may also be considered an act of torture and genocide on their own. Darfur is another genocide that has occurred. The conflict in Darfur began in the spring of 2003 when two Darfuri rebel movements — the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) — launched attacks against government military installations as part of a campaign to fight against the historic political and economic marginalization of Darfur.The Sudanese government, engaged in tense negotiations with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) to e nd a two decade long civil war between North and South Sudan, responded swiftly and viciously to extinguish the insurgency. Through coordinated military raids with government-armed militia (collectively known as the janjaweed), the Sudanese military specifically targeted ethnic groups from which the rebels received much of their support, systematically destroying  the livelihoods of Darfuris by bombing and burning villages, looting economic resources, and murdering, raping and torturing non-combatant civilians.In March 2009, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for two counts of war crimes and five counts of crimes against humanity. The following summer, the ICC added genocide to the charges against al-Bashir. The ICC has also issued arrest warrants for Ali Kushayb and Ahmad Haroun for a combined 92 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against civilians in Darfur. In March 2012, the ICC added Sudan’s current Minister of Defense Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein to the list issuing an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur.The United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force (UNAMID) in Darfur replaced an underfunded and underequipped African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur in January 2008. UNAMID to this day remains without the necessary resources to protect the 1.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) who live in large camps across Darfur. The government has increasingly obstructed UNAMID and humanitarian organizations by restricting access, often leaving the most vulnerable civilians cut off from outside aid. There are also an estimated 263,000 Darfuri refugees living across the Sudanese border in neighboring Chad. Overall, the UN estimates that more than 4.7 million people in Darfur (out of a total population of roughly 7.5 million) are still affected by the conflict.Women living in IDP camps risk rap e or harassment if they leave the camp to access water, collect firewood, or plant crops; however, due to the limited access of aid, they often do not have a choice. Gender based violence (GBV) has been used as a tool to oppress women throughout the crisis and those who target women do so with impunity. Due to cultural and religious taboos, GBV often goes unreported and perpetrators are rarely held accountable for their crimes. The most famous well-known genocide is the holocaust. The holocaust had a huge effect on the US and many other places. The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. â€Å"Holocaust† is a word of Greek origin meaning â€Å"sacrifice by fire.† The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were â€Å"racially superior† and that the Jews, deemed â€Å"inferior,† were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community. During the  era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived â€Å"racial inferiority†:Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on pol itical, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals. In 1933, the Jewish population stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War ll By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the â€Å"Final Solution,† the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered in the so-called Euthasium program. As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people. Between two and three million Soviet Prisoners of War were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment. The Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland, where these individuals worked and often died under deplorable conditions. From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals and others whose behavior did not match prescribed social norms. German police officials targeted thousands of political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses). Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment. In the early years of the Nazi regime, the National Socialist government established concentration camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents. Increasingly in the years before the outbreak of war, SS and police officials incarcerated Jews, Roma, and other victims of ethnic and racial hatred in these camps. To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate later deportation of the Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps for Jews during the war years. The German authorities also established numerous forced-labor camps, both in the  so-called Greater German Reich and in German-occupied territory, for non-Jews whose labor the Germans sought to exploit. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) and, later, militarized battalions of Order Police officials, moved behind German lines to carry out mass-murder operations against Jews, Roma, and Soviet state and Communist Party officials. German SS and police units, supported by units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS, murdered more than a million Jewish men, women, and children, and hundreds of thousands of others. Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities deported millions of Jews from Germany, from occupied territories, and from the countries of many of its Axis allies to ghettos and to killing centers, often called extermination camps, where they were murdered in specially developed gassing facilities. In the final months of the war, SS guards moved camp inmates by train or on forced marches, often called â€Å"death marches,† in an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, as well as prisoners en route by forced march from one camp to another. The marches continued until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. For the western Allies, World War II officially ended in Europe on the next day, May 8 (V-E Day), while Soviet forces announced their â€Å"Victory Day† on May 9, 1945. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many of the survivors found shelter in displaced persons (DP) camps administered by the Allied powers. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, including 136,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe. Other Jewish DPs emigrated to the United States and other nations. The last DP camp closed in 1957. The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated most European Jewish communities and eliminated hundreds of Jewish communities in occupied Eastern Europe entirely. I think the holocaust was a terrible thing and I feel extremely bad for all the Jews because for no reason at all they were killed and put in camps and basically tortured for a long time. Hitler deserved to die; I just wish he had died a lot earlier before 6 million Jews were killed because of him. They did not deserve to die. I wish someone would have shot Hitler right when the holocaust started. The bad part is the Jews didn’t even know what was  happening . When they were approached the Nazis lied to Jews about where they were going. They told them that the concentration camps were a lot nicer then they really were. They said they would receive food 3 times a day and that there was no mandatory labor, basically making the Jews want to come to the camps. And by the time the Jews realized they were lying it was too late. Another awful thing the Germans did to trick the Jews was they said that the Jews were going to get a shower when really they were going to die. The showers were really gas chambers. So what they did is they made the Jews get completely naked and then they would make them all go in the chamber and in the mean time the Jews were all excited because they were finally going to get to take a shower. The saddest part was that even tiny children were put in the gas chambers. I don’t understand how those Germans could sit there and watch kids as young as 8 die slowly. It disgusts me that they would do that. I just wish the US had known about these camps sooner because I’m sure many lives cou ld have been saved. I still don’t see why it had to be the Jews. Why did it even have to happen? I don’t get why genocide has to happen at all, I see absolutely no point to it at all. Basically genocide is a mass murder of people based on race or religion. Why do people feel the need to kill people based on that? There are other ways to deal with them. Killing shouldn’t even be a last resort. In my opinion people can do what they want and anyone who thinks a race should be eliminated just because deserves to be executed or be put in prison for the rest of his/her life. It is clear from empirical and historical research that democide, including genocide (however defined), are facets of totalitarian systems, and to a lesser extent of authoritarian ones. The degree to which people are not democratically free increases the likelihood of some kind of domestic genocide or democide, as in totalitarian Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany, and Mao’s Communist China; or fascist Chiang Kai-shek’s China, Franco’s Spain, and Admiral Miklos Horthy’s Hungary; or dictator Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Idi Amin’s Uganda, and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey. Those governments that commit virtually no domestic genocide, or other government domestic murder or extermination campaigns, ar e the modern democracies that recognize civil liberties and political rights. To predict where genocide is likely to occur, look first at the totalitarian governments, and next at the authoritarian ones. Whatever the political institutions of a government, the  possibility of genocide sharply increases when it is involved in international or domestic wars. The Holocaust is one clear example. There was the mass murder of Jews before 1939, but not as a government policy to murder all Jews wherever they were or came under German control. That policy did not come into existence until Germany was well into World War II. Similarly with the mass murder of Armenians by the Young Turk government. During World War I, the Turk’s alliance with Germany and the Russian invasion of Eastern Turkey provided the Young Turks with the excuse to purify Turkey of Armenians and Christians once and for all. Similarly with Stalin’s deportation of ethnic/national minorities, such as Germans, Greeks, Meskhetians, Tartars, Ukrainians, and others during World War II that caused the death of around 750,000 of them. Perhaps a million or more were thus murdered during the Mexican Revolution from 1910-20. And other examples of genocide being executed during military incursions, civil wars, or the fight for independence are the genocides by Angola, Burma, Chile, both Congos, Colombia, El Sa lvador, Indonesia, Iran, Iran, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Syria, Yugoslavia (Serbia and Croatia), and so on for many others. War has always been an excuse, cover, or stimulus for genocide and mass murder. There has been considerable research on why a perpetrator should want to destroy a group or, if not destroy the group as such, murder people because of their group membership. Motives are often complex and intertwined, but one can usually pull out among the mix a major motive. One such motive is to destroy a group that is perceived as a threat to the ruling power. Such, for example, was the 1970 parliamentary elections in Pakistan that showed the political power of East Pakistan and threatened the control over it by West Pakistan, and the power of the military government. They thus militarily seized East Pakistan and murdered over a million Bengali leaders, intellectuals, professionals, and any Hindus that the military were able to capture. Such was also the case with the strong resistance of the Ukrainian farmer to Stalin’s program of collectivization in 1931-32 coupled with the threat of Ukrainian nationalism to communist control. So, when what would have been a mild famine hit the region in 1932, Stalin magnified the famine many fold by seizing food and its sources (livestock, pets, seed grain, shooting birds in the trees, etc.) and boycotting the import of food to Ukraine. Even visitors to Ukraine were  searched and food taken away from them before they entered the Soviet Republic. About 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death. In conclusion, I think genocide has no place in this world whatsoever. I think anyone who is a part of genocide is terrible people. I just feel like there are many other solutions to problems then mass murder. Innocent people do not deserve to die because of a leader’s religious view or any views at all. Do I think it’s possible that this century could be a century of death? My answer is possibly. I say this because I feel like people only think that because a lot of people have died. How can we really tell if this century is a century of death if we can only compare to past centuries? If we could look into future centuries and see how many people will die then we could figure it out. My prediction is more and more people will die in upcoming centuries only because the population will be so great. But I could easily be wrong. So like I said I hope genocide will come to an end one day or at least be stopped before people are killed. I would hope that someone will be brav e enough to stand up to a leader of genocide. My opinion on genocide will never change. Till the day I die I will think genocide has no place in this world or anywhere else. And that all those Jews that were killed and basically anyone who was killed in a genocide deserved to live. The leaders did not.