Genocides and Major events that occurred around said genocides.
The Congo genocide took place from 1884 to 1912, because of King Leopold II of Belgium taking power over the Congo after the scramble for Africa. Leopold changed the Congo so that it functioned much like a business, with the natives being forced to acquire rubber from rubber trees. In order to keep the production of rubber high, Leopold created an army of enforcers known as the "Force Publique". If the natives didn't acquire as much rubber as was requested, Leopold's men would cut off their hands as a placeholder for the rubber that they didn't get. Because of this brutality, around 5-8 million estimated people were killed in the Congo during this time.
World War 1 began in 1914 after Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. During this war, the genocide in Turkey occurred, but was overshadowed because most countries were busy fighting in one of the greatest wars of all time. Because of the genocide being eclipsed, nobody did anything to stop the Ottoman Empire from ethnically cleansing their country of ethnic minorities. However, during WWI Germany and Austria-Hungary were allied with the Ottoman Empire, which means that the Allied powers during the time have less of an ability to explain away why there was little to no support for the people during this time.
The Turkish Genocide consisted of 3 distinct genocides, the Armenian genocide, the Greek genocide, and the Assyrian genocide. Although there is proof that all of these genocides occurred, Turkey disputes these claims and does not recognize these as genocides. The Armenian genocide caused the death of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians living in Turkey. In conjunction with this, the Ottoman empire also committed genocide against both their Greek population and their Assyrian population. The Greek genocide caused the deaths of between 200,000 and 1 million people, whereas the Assyrian genocide caused the deaths of between 275,000 and 750,000 people.
The Holodomor was a genocide that occurred in Ukraine between 1932 and 1933. It was a man-made famine in which the Soviet Union caused the people of Ukraine to starve my taking all of their food for their own personal gain. Stalin imposed a policy in which all of the farmers were to give up their land and join a collective factory-like farm for the state. When most Ukrainians refused because of their strong connection to their independence, Stalin introduces the policy of "class warfare", allowing police and military forces to go and kill the farmers in order to remove them as a class entirely. These farmers were branded by the name "Kurkul" and any who refused the new policies were also branded by this term and eventually sent off into Siberia. After this, Stalin increases Ukraine's production quota, and anyone found taking any grain for themselves were to be killed or thrown into jail. Because all of Ukraine's grain was being sent to the Soviet Union, millions of people starved to death, and no foreign aid was allowed into Ukraine, as it was entirely sealed off from the rest of the world.
After Hitler's unsuccessful coup d'etat, he later became the Chancellor of Germany and after that, he became the supreme leader of Nazi Germany. This is a major event in history not only because he was the cause of one of the worst genocides in history, but also because political figures all over the world knew that he was the new leader of Germany. The realized that he was a dangerous person and was willing to go to any lengths to get what he wanted, especially after the coup d'etat and his book "Mein Kampf". By focusing on Germany and Hitler, many important countries neglected genocides that were occurring during this time, like the Holodomor, and later on, the Nanking massacre.
The Nanking Massacre took place during the Second Sino-Japanese war, in which the Japanese military captured Nanking, the capital of China during the time. An estimated 40-200,000 people were killed during the massacre along with around 20,000 being victims of rape. Although the massacre took place during a war, the amount of atrocities committed during the capture of Nanking was so staggering that it could be considered a genocide. The Japanese military soldiers were given permission from their leader, Prince Asaka, to effectively do what ever they pleased to the area of Nanking, including rape and pillage the unarmed civilians.
The most deadly war to have ever occurred on earth. Aside from directly causing the deaths of over 70 million people, it also indirectly caused the deaths of over 10 million people in a genocide that occurred at the same time. Similar to how during World War I the genocide in the Ottoman Empire was being overshadowed by the war, so too did the Holocaust get overshadowed by World War 2. Even when the leaders of the Allied forces were informed about this complete disregard for human life, they did nothing to attempt to stop it except for attempting, and succeeding, to bring an end to the war. This war changed the world drastically, and brought forth the term genocide by and escaped Jewish Pole known as Raphael Lemkin, which allowed the major countries of the world to better act against something like the Holocaust if it were to ever happen again.
The Holocaust is the most well-known genocide in history, and it occurred during World War II. The Holocaust was committed mainly against the Jewish population living in Germany and Europe, but also included many other ethnic minorities. When Adolf Hitler came into power in Germany, he used the idea of Antisemitism amongst the German population in order to oust the Jewish people from society and truly dehumanize them. After getting the public to think of Jewish people as less than human, the public then became more willing to take further steps to please their leader. Hitler used this to his advantage, as he made many of his military soldiers lead the concentration camps, in order to kill the Jewish peoples. During the Holocaust, around 6 million Jewish people were killed, along with 2-500,000 Romani people, 200,000 people with disabilities, 2-3 million Soviet POWs, 5,000 Jehova's Witnesses, and 15,000 homosexuals were also killed. Millions of Polish, and Soviet civilians were also killed during the Holocaust, leading to it being the most well-known genocides that has ever occurred.
The Cold War was a major contributor to the genocides that occurred after WWII. Although the Cold War didn't have any direct conflict between the super states of the USSR and the USA, they had some major alliances and fought in proxy wars against each other. Directly fighting against each other was not an option during the time as both countries had the power to destroy each other with the press of a button. Because many genocides occurred in communist states, the Americans and their allies couldn't enter the country in order to prevent them from occurring without starting a war between the USSR and the USA. This can be seen in China during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and in Cambodia during the Cambodian genocide.
The Vietnam war was a proxy war between South Vietnam and their allies and North Vietnam and their allies. The result ended in North Vietnam being victorious and the communists gaining control over the region known as Indochina. The Vietnam war also eclipsed the events that occurred in China and Cambodia during the same time, in which millions of people were killed due to genocide. Overshadowing the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward and the Cambodian genocide, caused many of the major countries during that time to not realize what was happening. Not only were these events being overshadowed, but because both China and Cambodia were communist countries, attempting to stop them from committing genocide via invasion would be taken as an act of war against the Soviet Union and their allies. Moreover, many American citizens wanted the American government to pull its troops out of south east Asia and stop fighting in proxy wars, so support to try and prevent a genocide was minuscule.
Began in 1958 during China's Second Five Year Plan, and was intended to allow for the development of China's agricultural and industrial sectors to increase quickly, at the same time as one another. Chairman Mao viewed grain and steel to be the economic backbone of the world, and if he caused China to become the worlds leading producer in both of these categories. However, because he wanted to make steel production raise, the Chinese civilians weren't able to produce enough food to feed themselves and everyone else in the country. Especially when they were restricted from eating their own grown food, much like the Ukrainians during the Holodomor. Because the civilians were unable to provide enough food for themselves and others, millions of people died, numbering between 18 and 48 million people dying of starvation. Along with the people dying from starvation, around 5 million others died because of suicide or being killed by militia forces.
The Cultural Revolution was Mao's way of reasserting his power in China by removing all possible "threats" to the communist system. He did this by removing capitalist, traditional, and cultural elements from the Chinese population. Mao asserted that bourgeois elements were reasserting their dominance in China, aiming to restore capitalism. In order to combat this, Mao ordered that these "revolutionists" be removed from society via violent class warfare. The Cultural Revolution caused the a mass purging of many senior officers in the military and in the government who were allegedly capitalist sympathizers. Not only would they go after the senior officers, they also persecuted millions of others in the country, in which these people suffered from physical abuse, public humiliation, torture, and imprisonment.
The Cambodian Genocide began when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, who were lead by Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge wanted to eradicate all of the ethnic minorities from Cambodia leaving only purely Cambodian people left in their country. Their true goal was to change Cambodia back into an Agrarian based society, so that the farmers would be the most pivotal role in society. Similar to the Holocaust and the genocide in Turkey, the Cambodian genocide was directed highly against religious groups that lived in Cambodia and in particular, the Cham Muslim peoples. The Khmer Rouge forced people out of urban areas, used force labour and had mass executions in order to kill these people. They also used mass graves in order to put dead bodies in, of which around 20,000 different sites have been found of these mass graves.
During the Iraq-Iran war, Iraq had some major countries backing them financially and militarily, most notably being the UK and the USA. Because the United states and the United Kingdom were funding Iraq, they had enough weapons to fight against Iran, and enough to cause a mass genocide against thousands ethnic minorities in their own country. Because the United states and the UK were allies with Iraq, they weren't willing to see the Kurdish genocide as what it really was, and therefore did not punish them for what they did other than simply condemning them for using gaseous weapons.
The Kurdish genocide was committed by Iraq against their Kurdish population who fought in the Iraq-Iran war against them. Not only were the attacks targeted toward the Kurdish population, but also to towns and villages that had a large population of ethnic minorities. In order to kill these people, the Iraqi government used their military forces of upward of 200,000 men along with air support, against the Kurdish population. Not only did they fight against them via military engagements, but the government also used gas attacks on these cities to rid them of the Kurds. Under the leadership of Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majid, between 50 and 100 thousand people were killed, and 4,000 villages and towns were destroyed, out of the original 4655.
This was a mission conducted by the United States of America in Somalia, in order to capture a prominent warlord known as Mohammed Farrah Aidid. However, after the incident that became to be known as Black Hawk Down, the American government became more reluctant to send troops and forces into Africa in order to maintain order and restore the piece. When the helicopter was shot down, the soldiers inside were dragged out on the streets, and were showed to the entire world. Because of this event, Bill Clinton ordered more troops to be put into Somalia as he was fearing an anarchist society rising up from it. However, many US civilians were strongly against the idea and Mr. Clinton ordered for all troops in Somalia to be removed. This event is the reason why America took a long time to act during the Rwandan genocide and the Darfur genocide.
The Rwandan genocide had many years of civil conflict leading up to it, as the two tribes, Tutsi and Hutu, have had conflict between themselves going back to the end of World War II. The official beginning of the genocide was April 7th, a day after the plane carrying the president of Rwanda and the president of Burundi. Soldiers began to execute important Tutsi and moderate Hutu leaders, and set up checkpoints and barricades to use their national identity cards to verify their ethnicity. These same forces then went around pressuring Hutu civilians to arm themselves with weapons like machetes, clubs, blunt object and other weapons to rape, maim, and kill their Tutsi neighbours. During the genocide, many nations in the UN did nothing to attempt to help the country of Rwanda, including the US.
The Bosnian Genocide was directed towards the Muslim population that lived in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the time, and was intended to be an ethnic cleansing campaign. Causing the deaths of over 8 thousand Bosnian Muslims, and expelling over 25 thousand Muslim civilians from Bosnia in and around the town of Srebrenica. Not only did it target Bosnian Muslims, but also Bosnian Croats, in which people were murdered, raped, unlawfully confined, tortured, sexually assaulted, robbed and beaten. During this time, the UN was refused access to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and were not able to provide foreign aid to the people in this area without starting a war.
The Darfur Genocide began in 2003 when rebel groups of Sudan took up arms against the government after claiming that the government was marginalizing Darfur's non-Arab population. The government started to fund the Janjaweed and arm them with weapons in order to carry out an ethnic cleansing against all non-Arabs in Darfur, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people. The Sudanese government engaged in a large air and land attack on the rebel base located in the Marrah Mountains. Not only did the government have full frontal attacks against their own people, but the Janjaweed also went through Darfur and raped anybody who was not of Arab decent. The genocide caused thousands of people to be displaced from Darfur, and have to flee to a different part of Sudan.
Although the Olympics are meant to be fun and competitive, in 2008 China had overshadowed the Darfur genocide, and was a major contributor to the reason that other countries weren't able to act in Sudan. These Olympic games were referred to as the "Genocide Olympics". China prevented countries from entering Sudan because of an economical reason as Sudan has a large amount of oil that China needs to sustain itself. Instead of citizens of major countries hearing about the genocide in Darfur, they heard about the Olympic games that occurred at the same time. This prevented people from realizing what was happening and doing something about it.
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