Modern Era Genocides

The 20th century has witnessed some of the most ghastly and despicable acts of wanton violence and destruction ever recorded in human history. While violence and the human experience have been tragically linked to one another since the dawn of time, there is something particularly dark and grim about the mass killings of innocent civilians. While it is undoubtedly a great loss when soldiers are killed in battle, there is something particularly sick about the purposeful targeting of largely defenseless civilians based solely on their race, religion, ethnicity, political affiliation, or any other identifying factors. The deliberate mass murder of civilian populations at a large scale was not something that happened just once during the Second World War but was a sad and tragic repeating occurrence that would define much of the 20th century around the globe. 

Armenian Genocide (1915-1916)

Armenians had always been a large and impactful minority in the Ottoman Empire. Large numbers of Armenians had lived within the empire's borders for centuries in relative peace and prosperity. However, as the 20th century started to near, attitudes towards Armenians changed in the eyes of many Turks and Kurds. The Ottoman government was growing ever more suspicious that the large Armenian population within the empire was going to eventually agitate for an independent state or decide to join the much more powerful Russian Empire.

The Armenians were overwhelmingly Christian, and this difference in faith only added to the distrust between the majority Muslim population in the Ottoman Empire. In 1894, after the Armenians refused to pay a tax that they viewed as oppressive, Ottoman soldiers and Kurdish tribesmen began to slaughter and kill Armenians indiscriminately. Between 1894-1896 hundreds of thousands of Armenians were thought to have been killed in these pogroms and riots. In 1908 a fiercely nationalistic group of revolutionaries called the Young Turks took power in the empire. While the first few years of rule looked promising for the Armenians and other Christian minorities in the empire, it soon took a dark turn in the lead-up to the First World War. 

The loyalty of the Armenians was being brought into question. There was much paranoia that in the event of a war breaking out between the Ottoman and Russian Empires, the Armenians would betray the Turks and side with the Christian monarch in Moscow. It only made the situation worse that most of the areas with large Armenian populations bordered the Russian Empire in the Caucasus region. 

When war did finally break out in 1914, the Ottoman government requested that the leading Armenian political party encourage the Armenians living within Russian territory to fight for the Ottoman Empire instead. The Armenians refused and the Ottoman government considered this act of defiance as a clear indicator that they were no longer loyal to the empire. 

As the Russians made considerable gains in Eastern Anatolia, an Ottoman army led by Enver Pasha was sent to stop the advance. The two forces would clash at the Battle of Sarıkamış, and the Ottomans would suffer a crushing defeat. Instead of blaming poor leadership, lack of supplies, and lackluster equipment, the Young Turks were quick to point the finger at Armenians for this humiliating military blunder. 

As a consequence, all Armenian and non-Muslim soldiers were demobilized and then subsequently murdered by the remaining Ottoman forces. While this was taking place, other groups of Ottoman soldiers began carrying out indiscriminate massacres in Armenian villages and towns. The vast majority of the Armenian population and other Christians were deported out of Eastern Anatolia under the pretext that their presence threatened the Ottoman war effort. The deported Armenians were sent into concentration camps located deep in the Syrian Desert. Many people died from exposure during these marches south or starved to death in the camps. It is estimated that as many as 700,000 - 1.2 million Armenians died as a result. 

Ukraine (1931-1934)

As the Soviet Union was beginning to recover from years of civil war instability, Joseph Stalin, the famed Soviet dictator, was desperate to try and modernize the largely backward nation that he now ruled over. One of the areas of the Soviet economy that he obsessed over the most was agriculture. Farming was an enormous part of Soviet life, and most of the nation's population at this time either lived in a rural town or participated in agriculture in one way or another. 

In 1929, Stalin decided to collectivize the agricultural sector in hopes of making food production much more efficient. Instead of the small and independently owned farms that dominated the Soviet rural landscape, each of these farms would be consolidated into massive estates that, in theory, would create and grow food at a higher rate. 

Most of the peasants who owned any kind of land or housing had it confiscated by state officials. Those who resisted were either sent to works camps or summarily executed. Much of the collectivization took place in the fertile parts of Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In some cases, there were even instances of armed rebellion in Ukraine, but these uprisings were put down brutally. Collectivization resulted in an immediate drop in overall food production and chaos amongst the peasants and agricultural workers. It did not take long for this disastrous policy to lead to chronic food shortages in Ukraine. 

Despite the desperate need for food in the area, many Ukrainian towns and villages that had been resistant to collectivization were barred from receiving food or any other type of government aid as punishment for their defiance. Ukrainian peasants were also forbidden to stray outside of the republics' borders in search of food elsewhere. Anyone who was caught disobeying these orders was often shot on sight or sent back to their village to starve. 

Deaths peaked in the winter of 1932-33 when local police forces and government thugs ransacked large swathes of the Ukrainian countryside for what little supplies they had left. Countless tales of cannibalism and the total decimation of entire town populations were not uncommon.  Conservative estimates place the total death toll between 1931-1934 at more than 5 million people. Today this tragic man-made famine is known as the Holodomor in Ukraine. Holodomor roughly translates into "death by hunger" or "killing by hunger" in Ukrainian. 

Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979)

In 1975, the communist guerilla group, the Khmer Rouge, emerged victorious against the Cambodian monarchy after years of brutal civil war. The Khmer Rouge was headed by the charismatic Pol Pot, who promised to transform Cambodia into an agricultural powerhouse that placed the rural peasants at the head of society rather than the snobbish urban elite. 

The first action taken in this great transformation was destroying anything the regime deemed "Western influence." This led to many books being banned or burned and dozens of schools and universities being shut down. Many of Cambodia's urban population were marched out into the countryside to be re-educated at gunpoint in hopes that they, too, would one day become productive agricultural workers. 

Persecution against ethnic minorities was another defining aspect of the Khmer Rouge. The communist government killed and imprisoned thousands of Chinese and Muslim minorities. The regime was also vehemently against the so-called "intellectual class." Distinguishing who was a part of this intellectual class was largely arbitrarily changed constantly. A common discerning trait of the intellectuals, according to the regime, was being able to speak a second language or wearing eyeglasses. 

It was soon discovered that many of these new students of rural life were not being given a new education in farming but were actually being killed and tortured in mass. Sometimes referred to as the Killing Fields, these large open-air prison camps were the sites of massacres and other unspeakable acts. 

As word got out amongst the Cambodian population about what was really happening, hundreds of thousands of civilians fled to neighboring countries. In 1978, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and, a year later, finally put an end to the senseless killings of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. When the dust settled, an estimated 1.5 - 3 million of the nation's 7.5 million inhabitants had been killed. 

Bangladesh Genocide (1971)

Upon the breakup of the British Raj in 1947, the British created two separate states - India, which was meant to be a nation for the Hindu population, and Pakistan, a nation for the Muslim population. In typical colonial fashion, the borders between these two new countries were hastily drawn and not given much thought towards ethnic or cultural differences among the local populations. 

The new Indian nation would make a majority of the subcontinent while Pakistan would have land to the east and west, appropriately named East Pakistan and West Pakistan. Since its inception, West Pakistan was much more wealthy and prosperous than its often-neglected Eastern brother. 

Western Pakistanis often looked down on the East as a poor and culturally inferior backwater. After decades of growing resentment, East Pakistan started to slowly drift away from the influence of the West and began to see its identity more along ethnic and linguistic lines rather than religious. It was all well and good that both peoples were Muslims, but in the eyes of the average East Pakistani, this is where the similarities ended. 

Tensions between the two halves only intensified further in the late 1960s when there were attempts from the West to make Urdu, their predominant language, the official language of the entire nation. Only around 10% of East Pakistanis had an understanding of Urdu, while the remaining majority spoke Bangali. This feeling of disrespect and isolation would only continue in 1970 after a cyclone devastated the region and killed as many as 300,000 people. The aid sent from West Pakistan was slow and overall underwhelming.

In 1970 the first-ever democratic election was held in Pakistan. The popular Awami League led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman ran on a platform of Bengali autonomy and won a significant amount of seats in Eastern Pakistan. Shocked by the results, the government of East Pakistan refused to accept the results of the election and declared martial law. 

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was arrested, and roughly 70,000 West Pakistani soldiers who had been slowly moved into the East were ordered to carry out Operation Flashlight. Despite its somewhat disarming name, Operation Flashlight was far from innocent. This military operation was nothing more than the deliberate killing of Bengali civilians. 

The genocide would last more than nine months and would only be ended after the Indian army intervened on the side of the Bengal separatists. It is estimated that between 500,000 - 3 million people were killed. A uniquely dark aspect of this genocide was not just the people murdered but the sheer amount of women who were sexually assaulted by Pakistani troops. The modern-day figures suggest that as many as 200,000 - 400,000 women were raped throughout the conflict. 

Rwandan Genocide (1994)

To what seemed like a sudden and unexpected explosion of ethnically driven violence to much of the international community, what would later be called the Rwanda Genocide was something that had been brewing for decades. 

The two major ethnic groups within Rwanda are the Hutus and Tutsis. Even before the era of European colonialism, both groups had been fierce rivals and would often wage war against one another for land and resources. During the time of both German and Belgian rule, both groups would find themselves leading the government at various times with the Hutu in control by 1990.  

In 1990 an armed guerrilla group called the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) was formed under Tutsis leadership and invaded Rwanda from Uganda. This conflict would continue until 1992, when peace talks would finally come to a close, and progress was being made by the Hutu lead government to form a new government that also included the RPF. This outraged many Hutu extremists who deeply distrusted any kind of Tutsi involvement in the rule of Rwanda. 

In 1994 a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana crashed after it was likely shot down by Hutu militias. The sudden death of the president was all the Hutu extremists needed to attack and kill moderate Hutus and Tutsis.

The next hundred days in Rwanda would see unprecedented levels of depravity and evil. With no police or military to stop them, machete-wielding Hutu gangs roamed the streets looking for Tutsis to kill. The sheer intensity of the killings was so high that many governments of the international community thought the initial reports of the massacres were exaggerated. 

The United Nations would assemble a peacekeeping force to try and stop the violence, but it was largely ineffective. The UN was heavily criticized at the time for their seemingly disinterested attitude towards the conflict, and many historians claim that if the UN had taken a harder stance, thousands of lives could have been saved. It is estimated that more than 800,000 mostly Tutsis civilians were killed in the genocide, which resulted in more than 3 million refugees fleeing into nearby nations. 

Bosnian Genocide (1992-1995) 

Since the end of the Second World War, the nation of Yugoslavia was held together by the communist dictator Josip Broz Tito. Even though Tito was an admitted communist, he was not interested in taking sides during the Cold War and was able to have somewhat amicable relationships with both the Soviet Union and the West while also distancing himself from their political squabbles. Tito did a remarkable job at building a robust economy for his nation and was largely loved by the various ethnic groups that inhabited the nation. 

Sadly, all of Tito's work would come undone once he died in 1980 at 97. In the wake of his death, the economy would crumble, and the economic despair would only exacerbate the already existing ethnic and religious tension in the nation. By 1990 the various nationalities in Yugoslavia were at one another throats. In 1991 Croatia declared its independence and was in a full-scale war against the largely Serbian-led Yugoslav government. 

Bosnia would follow suit in 1992 but would find itself in a much more precarious situation. While internal borders existed between the "traditional lands" of the various ethnic groups in the times of Tito, there were still plenty of various ethnic enclaves and communities located throughout Bosnia that were not ethnically Bosnian. Declaring independence from what was now essentially Serbia caused an uproar from the Serbians living within Bosnian lands. The Serbians refused to accept this call for independence and a three-way war erupted overnight between Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks. 

Throughout this conflict, each side committed ethnic cleansing against one another at various times. However, truly exceptional acts of barbarity were carried out against the Muslim Bosniaks at the hands of the Orthodox Serbs. Many of the Serbian paramilitary groups were infamous for either killing or displacing entire villages of Bosnians. In one particularly gruesome incident in the town of Srebrenica, more than 7,000 Bosniak men were separated from their families and executed in a nearby forest. Similar instances were not uncommon.  

UN and NATO forces were deployed to Yugoslavia throughout the 90s in attempts to try and bring an end to the war. While foreign intervention had mixed results, the war did not officially end until 1995. Experts estimate that between 100,000 - 200,000 people were killed as a result of the fighting during the conflict, including the massacres that took place against the civilian populations. 

Canada 60s Scoop (1960s)

Often called the 60s Scoop, this era of Canadian history refers to perhaps the largest effort by the Canadian government to forcibly seize and assimilate the First Nations population into wider Canadian society. These abductions were carried out by the police throughout First Nations communities across Canada. Young First Nations children as young as 4-5 years old were taken away from their parents and families and enrolled in Residential Schools in areas often far away and located in remote parts of the vast Canadian wilderness. 

These schools, largely run by the church, were meant to strip these children of their culture and language and transform them into what the government viewed as ideal Canadian citizens. Speaking their native language in school was strictly prohibited, and was often punished harshly with beatings or by having needles stuck into their tongues. 

Residential schools were breeding grounds for sickness and disease, and it was not uncommon for children to die during their time at these institutions. Sexual and physical abuse were also rampant. Young children would often try to flee these schools but would either be caught by watchful staff members or would die from exposure or hunger once they ventured too far into the wild. A concrete death toll is still not clear, but rough estimates suggest that as many as 3,200 - 6,000 First Nations children died at these schools throughout their years of operation between 1831 and 1996. Many of these children, once they were deemed "assimilated," would either return to their communities with little to no connection to their own people or identity or be sent to adoptive White parents in Canada or the United States. 

While Canadian residential schools do not have the same death tolls as other genocides of the 20th century, this instance in Canadian history has been aptly described as a cultural genocide rather than a purely physical one. Tragically, the 60s Scoop left large swathes of an entire generation alienated from their own culture and traumatized from the abuse they had suffered in these schools. Since First Nation languages did not have a written component at the time, many of these languages either dwindled or were outright destroyed by stopping the Aboriginal youth from learning it from their families.

Today the long legacy of the Residential School is still evident in Canadian society and politics. While there have been attempts by various governments to try to make amends, the scars left by these schools will likely remain an ugly part of Canadian history for generations to come. 

Summary

Genocide was a sad and reoccurring theme in the previous century. While the second half of the 20th century is often talked about as one of the most peaceful times in human history, these crimes against humanity cannot be overlooked. 

In the nuclear age, it would seem as though large wars conducted against two large-standing militaries is much less common than it was in years past. However, deliberate violence committed against civilians is something that has dominated the headlines for the past 50 years or so. Hopefully, the study of these atrocious events will arm us with the tools necessary to avoid these catastrophes in the future.