I am sure that nobody would like to live in one of the countries involved with genocide today and the last 100 years. Even though many of genocides in human history happened a long a time ago and governments which started genocide in those days have no connection with governments in those countries today, people simply do not want to be implicated in something as terrible as killing a large number of people.
The word genocide actually means, as dictionaries define it, “the extermination of a group of people” – “geno” in Greek means race and “cide” means killing. By a group of people we mean social, ethnic, political, sexual, national or cultural group. The term genocide was first used in 1943 in a book by a Polish lawyer Lemkin who explained it. Almost five years had passed before the term was widely accepted and finally used in the Declaration of Human Rights defined in 1948. However, a true dedication to prosecuting genocide started in 1991 when the first trials began (if we do not take Nurnberg after WWII into account).
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Perhaps the term killing is not always clear and appropriate since it implies any kind of destroying people, like forbidding them to have a normal and dignified life, to have children or preserve the tradition and culture of their nation. As organization Prevent genocide says, genocide has two elements – mental, where people live under pressure and constantly fear of enemies and for their lives, and physical which involves causing harms, inflicting on the group conditions of life, preventing births and forcibly transferring children to a foreign country or to unknown families, together with killing people in the group.
Dr. Gregory Stanton has described 10 stages of genocide saying that it starts with classifications (a specific group is defined and separated from other groups), continues with symbolization (like “Jews”), discrimination, dehumanization, organization (when the whole state organizes genocide), polarization, preparation, persecution, extermination, and denial. Exactly the last stage is something which stops prosecution and trial in countries involved with genocide today and the last 100 years. It prevents penalties and repentance and surely learning about the crimes committed by governments.
All 10 stages are visible in the example of Armenian genocide committed in 1915-1917, where Turkish government literally killed, expelled and tortured more than 2 million people. The reason was the willingness of Armenian people to separate from Turkey and have their own country, so the first social groups that were severely punished were intellectuals and political activists. A Turkish imperator Abdul Hamid forced women and children to join the Turkish army, so after the 1920’s, only 388,000 people survived in Armenia and got their freedom. Turkey still has not admitted that this was genocide, claiming that the country only fought with the rebels.
Unfortunately, even though science has described the worst genocides in human history which you can find on our list of 11 Biggest Genocides in History, it seems that people still have not realized the horror behind killing and destroying innocent people in this way. There is a lot of evidence that genocides exist at present, too. Genocides are happening currently in a lot of countries where there are wars, where people suffer enormously, so it is of utter importance to recognize and name those countries and observe them constantly in order to provide safety for the people there and prevent their deaths. Numerous organizations are trying to identify the problem of genocide in countries all over the world, to point to this problem, emphasize the necessity to fight it and prevent further killing of innocent people.
In making our list of countries involved with genocide today and the last 100 years, we have used two criteria. On the one hand, it is our responsibility to mention those countries which are known to have provoked genocide within their borders, but, on the other hand, it is also necessary to mention the countries involved in genocidal activities at the moment. As a result, there are five old genocides on our list and five new ones which have all been listed according to the number of victims and the years when they started. So, this is our, sadly still unfinished, list of countries involved with genocide today and the last 100 years.
10. Germany
Is there anyone who has not heard of Holocaust yet? There has been a lot of research with numerous evidence that prove that Germany has committed one of the worst crimes in human history by killing people, forcing them to live in small ghettoes and transferring them to the labor or death camps. Everything started in 1933 when the Nazi party came to power and tried to reach their goal of creating a pure German and Arian nation. The first step towards this goal was Crystal Night, when German people (and the army) destroyed a large number of Jewish stores and homes, allegedly angry because of the assassination of their ambassador. However, this was only the beginning since the years to come were marked with persecution, transferring people to labor or death camps and never-ending torture. History says that more than 6 million Jews and 5 million German political activists, homosexuals, and people with mental disorders were killed during this period. And now, let’s see what else we have in our list of countries involved with genocide today and the last 100 years.
9. Russia
Like in Armenia, Stalin wanted to prevent the independence of Ukraine, whose aspirations were noticed in 1917 when the Russian Czar was killed and suddenly the nations he had ruled wanted their freedom. The first person who prevented these aspirations from turning into reality was Lenin who created the Soviet Union, but, nevertheless, the real enemy of Ukraine’s independence was Stalin. Willing to prevent Ukraine from becoming an independent country, Stalin started torturing and killing intellectuals, while other people who had been declared enemies of the regime were taken to gulags where they were forced to work in the fields and grow vegetables and rice without being given any salary. Many of them were literally starved to death, sick or exhausted. Historians have estimated that more than 7 million people died during this awful period which was ended when World War II broke out and the Nazi army entered the country starting their own type of genocide.
8. Cambodia
The reason for this genocide was again the wish of the nation to gain independence and live freely in its own country. In 1975, the Communist Party with the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnam army attacked the government of Cambodia in order to prevent the revolution whose final goal was freedom. Although the US and South Vietnam gave their support to Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge came to power and decided to take revenge on people for what they had done. Their leader, Pol Pot was brutal in his intention to destroy even the genes of Cambodians, so he ordered the killing of babies, children, women (or raping them to death) and forcing men to produce food. Many of them literally died of hard work and starvation. As historian claim, in these four years of torture, 2 million people were killed.
7. Rwanda
Rwanda ranks 7th in our list of countries involved with genocide today and the last 100 years. It is a country on the African continent which used to be a German and then a Belgian colony and which finally became an independent republic and a part of the UN after the WWII. A nation by the name of Tutsi ruled this country since most of the rich, influential people belonged to it. Some extremists who belonged to the low and middle class formed the National Party in this country and tried to reach their mutual goal of putting an end to the Tutsi regime. Consequently, a civil war broke out and genocide against the Tutsi started. The whole world witnessed one of the worst killing and torture in human history when millions of people were expelled from their country to the neighboring countries. The number of people killed reached 800,000.
6. Japan
It is hard not to mention the Japanese genocide on the list of countries involved with genocide today and the last 100 years, mostly because it greatly affected the relations between Japan and China and caused serious political problems between these two countries which are still visible even today. During The Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the Japanese army attacked a Chinese province named Nanking (Nanjing) and murdered and massacred more than 300,000 people. Japanese government, politicians, and nationalists did not want to admit committing genocide for a long period of time mostly due to the bad memories associated with capitulation at the end of WWII. Although there are still people in Japan who claim that these atrocities were actually a regular war against China, there have been various educational programs since 1980 which inform people about this genocidal event.
5. Sudan
In 2003, when a war broke out in the Darfur Region of Sudan, nobody could imagine how serious and terrifying it would be and how greatly innocent people would suffer due to bad policy and war activities. Even though it started as a conflict between the Sudanese government and non-Arab people, it resulted in the extermination of non-Arab people. Basic human rights were violated, numerous people were expatriated and a lot of non-Arab people killed. Although a peace treaty was signed in 2010, a new war might be expected in the years to come because new militant groups are being formed there again.
4. Syria
Everybody remembers (and people still can see) terrifying pictures from Syria with children and civilians who have survived bombing, torture and constant military attacks. Even though the war started in 2011, and last year some optimists reported that the whole world was involved in finding the solution for the situation in Syria, nothing remarkable has been done or changed in Syria for the last six years. People are still being killed in this country, the biggest and the most important cities are being bombed and there is ever-present fear of torture and atrocities. Consequently, we are all witnesses of possibly the worst and most serious refugee crisis in the world. It has been estimated that millions of people have been forced to leave their country and escape to Europe, the US or Canada and they still do. And now, let’s see the top three entries in our list of countries involved with genocide today and the last 100 years.
3. The Central African Republic
A war which started in 2013 between the Muslims and Christians in The Central African Republic, the number three in our list of countries involved with genocide today and the last 100 years, has not come to an end yet, and some of the most influential countries in the world have still not admitted the fact that genocidal activities have marked this war so far. All nations which live in this country have been affected by the consequences of this war but only the Muslims have survived the genocide. As Human Rights Watch claims, more than 400,000 people have been killed in the last few years, but the world has not paid enough attention to this because of current problems in Syria and Sudan are considered to be more serious and scariest than in The Central African Republic. As a journalist Kit O’Connell claims, one of the reasons might also be the fact that The Central African Republic is not rich in oil and that there are no ISIS activists, so nobody finds this country interesting.
2. Myanmar
The government of Myanmar that ranks second in our list of countries involved with genocide today and the last 100 years, claims that there is no genocide nor refugees in this country, but the families of the people who have been killed claim the opposite. An unknown military group has attacked three spots in Western Myanmar, raped, killed and expelled a lot of people. The government has answered with the same level of brutality which in the end led to a bigger conflict. Although numerous human rights organizations claim that genocide is happening in Myanmar right now, it seems that the world is still unaware of the size of the problem in this country. It has been clearly confirmed that the civilians in Myanmar are victims of the worst type of torture.
1. Congo
The war which started in Congo in 1996 is one of the worst conflicts since WWII, and people living in this country still suffer greatly. The war later spread to the neighboring countries – Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Namibia, Angola, Chad, Libya, and Sudan. The name African World War proves the size of the conflict in this region and is definitely the reason why numerous refugees have appeared in Western Europe and the US. This war is actually closely related to that in Rwanda, with the same goals and military group, but the situation is much worse for civilians. One of the leaders of the military army, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, has been arrested and accused of killing and rape, but many human rights organizations claim that this country is still not safe for civilians. This qualifies Congo for our list of countries involved with genocide today and the last 100 years.
