Talk:Genocides in history

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[edit] France and Rummel

In his book Death by Government, Professor R.J. Rummel argues that "a full scale genocide was carried out in the Vendée in which possibly 117,000 inhabitants were systematically murdered." [dubious – discuss]

Ledenierhomme What is dubious about the statement? It is not a statement of fact or are you saying that the Rummel is dubious source? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 10:25, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Could your political/ethnic/cultural/nationalist agenda be any more transparent? the 117,000 figure comes from Secher, whereas reliable sources such as Martin estimate 250,000 insurgents and 200,000 republicans. See Hugh Gough for an analysis of Secher's flawed methodology. For the millionth time, you need to learn to evaluate the quality of your sources. Professor R.J. Rummel is no specialist on the French Revolution or the war in the Vendée. And "Transaction Publishers" (which I assume you got online from http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM where Rummel admits it is "often reported as a civil war" and states that "possibly" 117,000 people were indiscriminately murdered) doesn't quite measure up to peer-reviewed journals. That's why it is dubious, as stated in the edit summary, in contradicts the conventional wisdom of the established authorities on the issue. There's no wriggling out of this one I'm afraid. Ledenierhomme (talk) 18:39, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

So you are not disputing that the statement is verifiable and an accurate reflection of the text from which the the Wikipedia sentence is derived, you are disputing that R.J. Rummel is a reliable source. The text was added by C.J. Griffin lets ask that editor's opinion. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 18:39, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

According to the notes section of Rummel's book his source on this is Laurent Ladouce. But anyways, Rummel is not some hack but a reputable historian and a specialist on Democide so just because some historians disagree with his assertions doesn't mean he's is not a reliable source. And looking over the article it seems others concur with his views.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 22:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

C.J. Griffin, I encourage you to read all the sources cited in the section of this article, before drawing any conclusions as to which sources and statements are plausible or dubious. If your main resource is the internet, well, that's a shame, but at least read Gough's article (which is available online) and look into who some of the authorities mentioned are, before you quote a rather irrelevant book by Rummel, who is not an expert on this subject and who admits his information is second-hand. FYI, Ladouce (another Catholic Christian) is not the source of the 117,000 figure, Secher is - in which case the quote from Rummel is third-hand, and only demonstrates that he is not a reliable source for this subject (the War in the Vendee). Rummel may well be a respected academic, but his credentials are irrelevant as far as this article is concerned. Would you refer to Stephen Hawking in an article on the Yellow Turban Rebellion?

The article as it stands is already too long, and does a gross disservice to the subject matter as it in essence, places the words of polemicists (in most cases self-published in all but name) on an equal footing with established authorities who are specialists/experts on the subjects and have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Unfortunately there seems to be no shortage of anti-French racists and bigots looking to point score over something as serious as genocide, and mob rule has ensured that Secher's polemics remain intact. - Ledenierhomme (talk) 18:43, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rwanda and Sudan

Both of these countries' alleged genocides are under the heading of International Prosecution of Genocide rather than in the main list of alleged genocides. This seems wrong, but as a reader who came here to just to read the article, I would rather leave this edit up to someone more involved in this page. The heading "International Criminal Court" seems to have no text under it that relates to the heading. Has something gone missing? --CloudSurfer (talk) 17:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The reasons are given in the talk archives. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 13:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ottoman Empire (Turkey)

On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, Britain, France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing "a crime against humanity" in reference to that regime's persecution of its Christian minorities including Armenians,Assyrians and Greeks among others [1]. Contrary to popular conception the Armenians were by far not the only ethnic minority to suffer as the Ottoman Empire disolved and Assyrians and Greeks also suffered the genocidal depradations of the Young Turks while many researches consider these events to be part of the same policy of planned ethnoreligious purification of the Turkish state followed by the Young Turks [2].

.. This joint statement stated:

"[i]n view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres".[3]

>=====Armenian Genocide=====

On 15 September 2005 a United States Congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide "Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes." found that:

  • "The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 800,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland."[4]

The BBC reported that 16 December 2003, "The Swiss lower house of parliament has voted to describe the mass killings of Armenians during the last years of the Ottoman Empire as genocide. [...] Fifteen countries have now agreed to label the killings as genocide. They include France [in 2001], Argentina and Russia."[5] On 12 October 2006, French lawmakers "approved a bill making it a crime to deny that mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during and after World War I amounted to genocide. Turkey quickly objected, with its Foreign Ministry saying that the decision "dealt a heavy blow" to Turkish-French relations and 'created great disappointment in our country.'"[6]

>=====Assyrian Genocide=====

The Assyrian Genocide (also known as Sayfo or Seyfo; Aramaic: ܩܛܠܐ ܕܥܡܐ ܐܬܘܪܝܐ or ܣܝܦܐ, Turkish: Süryani Soykırımı) was committed against the Assyrian population of the Ottoman Empire near the end of the First World War by the Young Turks.[7] The Assyrian/Syriac population of northern Mesopotamia (Tur Abdin, Hakkari, Van, Siirt region in modern-day southeastern Turkey and Urmia region in northwestern Iran) was forcibly relocated and massacred by Ottoman (Turkish and Kurdish) forces between 1914 and 1920 under the regime of the Young Turks.[8] This genocide is considered to be a part of the same policy of extermination as the Armenian Genocide and Pontic Greek Genocide.The Assyro-Chaldean National Council stated in a December 4, 1922, memorandum that the total death toll is unknown, but it estimates that about 275,000 "Assyro-Chaldeans" died between 1914–1918.[9]

>=====Greek Genocide=====

Pontic Greek Genocide [10][11][12][13][14][15][16] is a term used to refer to the fate of the Pontic Greek population of the Ottoman Empire during and in the aftermath of World War I. It is used to refer to the determined persecutions, massacres, expulsions, and death marches of Pontian Greek populations in the historical region of Pontus, the southeastern Black Sea provinces of the Ottoman Empire, during the early 20th century by the Young Turk administration. G.W. Rendel of the British Foreign Office noted the massacres of Greeks in Pontus and elsewhere during the Turkish national movement,[17][18][13] which was organized against Greece's invasion of western Anatolia.[19]According to various sources the direct or indirect death toll of Greeks in Anatolia ranges from 300,000 to 360,000 men, women and children.

>=====Turkish Denial=====

The Republic of Turkey government disputes this interpretation of events and maintains that crucial documents supporting the genocide thesis are actually falsifications.[20] Seen as historical revisionism by many historians, the topic is virtually taboo in Turkey. Laws like Article 301 are used to bring charges against people like the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who had stated that "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it".[21] However, Turkish authorities do acknowledge that the issue should be left to the historians[22] and in an open letter by Prime Minister Erdogan to the U.S. President dated 10 April 2005, extended an "invitation to your country to establish a joint group consisting of historians and other experts from our two countries to study the developments and events of 1915 not only in the archives of Ottoman Empire, Turkey and Armenia but also in the archives of all relevant third countries and to share their findings with the international public".[23] Furthermore, in spite of vehement resistance by nationalist groups, an academic conference was held on September 24, 2005 in Istanbul to discuss the early 20th century massacre of Armenians.[24]. In their book Negotiating the Sacred: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society, Elizabeth Burns Coleman, Kevin White present a list of reasons explaining Turkey's inability to admit the genocides commited by the Young Turks [25]

  1. ^ The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, by Manus I. Midlarsky, p.342
  2. ^ Schaller, Dominik J. and Zimmerer, Jürgen (2008) 'Late Ottoman genocides: the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish population and extermination policies - introduction', Journal of Genocide Research, 10:1, 7 - 14
  3. ^ 1915 declaration
  4. ^ 1915 Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution (Introduced in House of Representatives) 109th Congress, 1st Session, H.RES.316, June 14, 2005. 15 September 2005 House Committee/Subcommittee:International Relations actions. Status: Ordered to be Reported by the Yeas and Nays: 40 - 7.
  5. ^ Swiss accept Armenia 'genocide', BBC 16 December 2003
  6. ^ Associated Press report French lawmakers approve bill on Armenian genocide in the International Herald Tribune October 12, 2006
  7. ^ Assyrians: The Continuous Saga - Page 40 by Frederick A. Aprim
  8. ^ Ye'or, Bat; Miriam Kochan, David Littman (2002). Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (in English). Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, pp. 148-149. ISBN 0838639437. OCLC 47054791. 
  9. ^ Joseph Yacoub, La question assyro-chaldéenne, les Puissances européennes et la SDN (1908–1938), 4 vol., thèse Lyon, 1985, p. 156.
  10. ^ Cohn Jatz, Colin Tatz (2003). With Intent to Destroy: Reflections on Genocide. Essex: Verso. 
  11. ^ R. J. Rummel. Statistics of Democide. Chapter 5, Statistics Of Turkey's Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources. Retrieved on October 4, 2006.
  12. ^ Steven L. Jacobs, Samuel Totten (2002). Pioneers of Genocide Studies (Clt), 207, 213. 
  13. ^ a b Creating a Modern "Zone of Genocide": The Impact of Nation- and State-Formation on Eastern Anatolia, 1878–1923, by Mark Levene, University of Warwick, © 1998 by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  14. ^ Constantine Fotiades, Genocide of the Greeks of Pontus (16 volumes)
  15. ^ Harry Psomiades, professor emeritus of political science at Queens College the City University of New York
  16. ^ Assyrian International News Agency, International Genocide Scholars Association Officially Recognizes Assyrian, Greek Genocides, Retrieved on 2007-12-15.
  17. ^ Foreign Office Memorandum by Mr. G.W. Rendel on Turkish Massacres and Persecutions of Minorities since the Armistice, March 20, 1922, (a) Paragraph 7, (b) Paragraph 35, (c) Paragraph 24, (d) Paragraph 1, (e) Paragraph 2
  18. ^ Taner Akcam, From Empire to Republic, Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide, September 4, 2004, Zed Books, pages (a) 240, (b) 145
  19. ^ Arnold J. Toynbee, The Western question in Greece and Turkey: a study in the contact of civilisations, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922, pp. 312-313.
  20. ^ Armenian issue allegations-facts
  21. ^ Sarah Rainsford Author's trial set to test Turkey BBC 14 December 2005.
  22. ^ Chris Morris Bitter history of Armenian genocide row BBC 23 January 2001
  23. ^ Prime Minister Erdogan's letter dated 10 April 2005 on the website of the Turkish Embassy in Washington
  24. ^ Robert Mahoney Turkey: Nationalism and the Press CPJ 16 March 2006.
  25. ^ Negotiating the Sacred: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society, Elizabeth Burns Coleman, Kevin White, p.82

[edit] Discussion

There has been a considerable extension to this section and I think it raises some issues.

  • Who says "Contrary to popular conception the Armenians were by..."? Who has measured "popular conception" and made such a statement?
  • Does Frederick A. Aprim Assyrians in the "The Continuous Saga" on Page 40 state that the events in Assyria were a genocide? If so what is the definition of genocide he used?
  • Pontic Greek Genocide: Are the missing citations due to a cut and past error? None of the neutral online citations given state unequivocally that this was a genocide. Is there a neutral source that states unequivocally that it was a genocide and gives a definition for genocide? To give an example Rummel states "This wholly genocidal killing is difficult to unravel. During this period Turkey fought five wars, forcefully changed governments several times, endured major revolutionary changes, and was occupied by foreign powers. Suffering deportations, famine, exposure, war, genocide, and massacres, millions of Turkish Moslems, Armenians, Greeks, and other Christians died." It is not clear from this that Rummel is asserting that the deaths of Pontic Greeks was a genocide. "Pioneers of Genocide Studies (Clt)" Mention the Pontic Greeks on pages 207 and 210 (I could not read 213) but the author does not describe the events as a genocide just that it is being studied as a genocide.

--Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 13:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

  • 1 Schaller, Dominik J. and Zimmerer, Jürgen (2008) 'Late Ottoman genocides: the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish population and extermination policies - introduction', Journal of Genocide Research, 10:1, 7 - 14

p.10

The one-sided association of the Armenian genocide with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire is a relatively new phenomenon.

Adam Jones, IAGS member, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia http://www.genocidescholars.org/blog/?cat=16

Over the past decade, many in our community have become more aware that the Ottomans’ genocidal campaign between 1914 and 1923 — that is, between the outbreak of the First World War and the establishment of the Turkish Republic — targeted more than Armenians only.

  • 2 Not sure on that one. Just copied from AG page. If you want to remove it that's fine and I would suggest replacing with one of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Assyrian_genocide#Some_more_quotes_on_the_Assyrian_Genocide

3. Error corrected, thanks for pointing it out. Wrt to use of the term genocide this is also being debated in the article's talk page and there is a list of sources here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_quotes_on_the_Pontic_Greek_Genocide

If you are inclined I would appreciate your taking the time to comment as there is currently a lack of concensus and a third party taking a look could only help. There is also an open RfC. Thanks. Xenovatis (talk) 14:31, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Other genocides not mentioned

During the Second Boer War, the internment of women and children in concentration camps led to massive loss of life - approximately 25% of the interned died, including 50% of the children. Past what threshold can incompetence and willful neglect be considered a policy of active genocide? Fazalmajid (talk) 05:43, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not work that way, we report research by others (See WP:OR). --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 15:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Native Americans

How come there is no mention of the estimated 15 million native Americans killed in America? [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Ijanderson977 (talk) 22:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

See Genocides in history#Americas --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 23:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

In 2008, The U.S. state of Texas seized all the children belonging to one religious group, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints (FLDS). This fits the international definition of genocide, but is clearly not the equivalent of many other historic genocides. Is there a place for genocide "light"? 75.36.143.2 (talk) 16:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rwanda vs the holocost ?

in the part about Rwanda it says "The rate at which people were killed far exceeded any other genocide in history" i disagree the holocost was far worse....Lotharsrevenge

[edit] China

See Talk:Genocides_in_history/Archive_5#China --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 23:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

"These little known revolts were suppressed by the Manchu government in a manner that amounts to genocide," with four sources. What do the authors in the cited books actually say. as "amounts to genocide" does not mean genocide (which must have intent to commit a genocide of protected groups and the and actual destruction of the group). --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 23:20, 19 May 2008 (UTC)