GENOCIDE: CAUSES BEHIND A GRAVEST STATE CRIME

Abstract

This article will investigate the underlying conditions that make genocide possible, analysing the facts, examining how and why human beings are capable of such criminal action. Throughout the history many intellects including Raphael Lempkin (1944) came up with the definition for the term genocide. Genocide is understood as the gravest crime that is possible to commit against humanity. This is a deliberate action to destroy an ethnic, national, racial or religious group in whole or in part. Genocide is not simply unjust, but it is also evil. It is referred to mass murder that is usually carried out by a state or group, caused by many conflicts and tensions between various sects’ overtime and lead to anxiety that turns into mass murder. The reason for such crime against humanity can vary from people to people - such as, to gain power, greed, political influence, vengeance or religious reasons. It is characteristics, includes the one-sided killing of defenceless civilians. Throughout the article, it will study the motives behind the previous genocides such as, Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, Belgians and the Congolese, black slave trade, Sudan Darfur, Burundi, Vietnam, Iraq, and many more, by looking at the reasons, patterns and stages that took place during the massacres. These atrocities are branded as the wickedest and taught in every international curriculum so that it is a lesson for future generations and present-day leaders. The article will look at the different claims and historical contents of genocide which motivated for such atrocities. Also, the implication it has for the contemporary world and the future. Firstly, the article will start to outline the term genocide and the arguments by critics such as, Katz, Destexhe and Raphael Lemkin about the definition and the historical atrocities that can be recognised as genocide. Secondly, it will examine the different stages of genocide where the dreadful act raises two questions like, how this was possible and why it happened in a particular state. Furthermore, it will explain the unique cases and patterns of genocide along with Stanton's discussion of the ten stages that lead to a state or an individual to carry out the mass killing. Also, it will discuss the negative propaganda of governments and groups that cause division amongst communities. Finally, it will explore the grounds of genocide where nationalism drives to genocide and its implications in the twenty-first century. However, many scholars do not agree with the interpretations of genocide that is led by various conflicts such as historic, religious, ethnicity and many more. Moreover, it will discuss the functionalist and intentionalist and the connections to the contemporary day that links the origins of genocide. Also, it will annotate the statement of Fein of twentieth-century genocide being the “virtual state crime”. In summary, the article will have encountered the causes of genocide and the reasons for various stages which genocide occurred. It will also be understood that the era of modern technology has a great influence in propagating and transmitting communications amongst states and groups more efficiently.