Definition of Genocide, Forms, and Examples

At least there are various types of human rights violations, ranging from mild to serious. These serious human rights violations include organized crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes of aggression and genocide.

Genocide

Genocide essentially comes from the English term  genocide  which in its history was first echoed in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin to describe the Nazi systematic policy with the origin of combining the word ” geno ” which comes from the Greek, meaning tribe or race, and  caedere  from the Latin word “genocide”. means murder.

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So that it can be concluded that genocide is a crime or gross violation of human rights because it commits massacres against a group of nations, races, ethnicities, religions, and others in a cruel way without regard to humanity, so that it is often interpreted as a combination of notions of crime.

Understanding Genocide

Genocide is part of a form of social action for any behavior of a certain group or community to destroy, annihilate, and eliminate all or part of an ethnic group, race, nation, even religion which is carried out on a large scale.

Definition of Genocide According to Experts

As for some definitions of genocide according to experts, among others;

1. Adnan Buyung Nasution , The definition of genocide is an act of crime that is practiced by causing physical, mental disability, killing, even preventing birth, and so on in a certain group or community.
2. Raphael Lemkin , The definition of genocide is a crime that covers a very wide range. Not only killing, also suppressing births, forcibly separating families to reduce the population, and so on.
3. Rome Statute and Law No. 26 of 2000 , Genocide is behavior that is carried out with the aim of destroying all inferior groups that do not belong to superior groups with sadistic or very cruel actions.

Forms of Genocide

At least for various forms of genocide, including;

1. Murder

Genocide in the form of murder. This is an example of Hitler’s ambition to restore the glory of the Aryan race, so his behavior led him to kill millions or even billions of Jews.

2. Forced Sterilization

Forced sterilization is a surgical procedure so that a woman is unable to reproduce or get pregnant to suppress the population of the inferior group. Usually this behavior is carried out massively and intensively on minority groups.

3. Extermination

This form of genocide with hostility is usually carried out by destroying a certain group or community down to its roots or center without leaving any of the different social groups behind.

4. Deprivation of Physical Freedom

This deprivation of physical freedom was manifested in the view that people were disabled, sick, they were not allowed to live and their bodies were used as anatomical research by the authorities in power at that time.

Example of Genocide

Social phenomena that are closely related to genocide occur in Indonesia and also on an international scale. There are also case examples. Among others, namely;

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That is;

1. Mass Murder in Bandanaira-Banda Island

In 1621, there was a mass killing on the island of Banda, to be precise in Bandanaira by the Dutch under the leadership of Jan Pietersz Coen. The exact number cannot be found, it is said that almost half of the population died.

2. Westerling in South Sulawesi

Dutch troops, Depot Speciale Troepen, under the leadership of Raymond Pierre Paul Westerling, carried out mass killings of civilians in South Sulawesi which occurred in December 1946-February 1947. It was recorded that 40,000 people died, but the Dutch claimed that only 5,000 people died.

3. Tragedy of 1965

Echoes of the movement to purge communism reverberated throughout Indonesia, becoming a form of social problem. Those who were considered communists were arrested, tortured, massacred and exiled without going through a clear legal trial process.

4. May 1998 tragedy

The next tragic phenomenon occurred in May 1998, namely when there was an attempt to weaken the Chinese-Chinese ethnicity to become victims of massacres, destruction of property, torture, kidnapping, and worse, even rape.

Some examples of genocide cases in the international arena, namely;

1. The murder of the Canaanites by the Jews in the first millennium BC
2. In the first century BC, Julius Caesar massacred the Helvetians
3. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party massacred and burned Jews, Gypsies (Roma women), Slavs and disabled people in World War II.
4. The Janjaweed militia carried out massacres of blacks in Darfur in 2004.
5. At the end of World War II, there were ethnic German massacres in Eastern Europe carried out by ethnic Czechs, Soviet Union and Poles east of the Oder-Neisse border line.

That is an explanation of  the meaning of genocide  according to experts, its forms and examples. Hopefully this article can provide insight and a source of deep inspiration for all readers, especially those who need the material.