Genocide, Genocide, Genocide

Perez Ashford

3/4/14

Soc. 361

Blog 1

 Genocide, Genocide, Genocide

            The Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 were a mixture of killings, atrocities, and ethnic cleansing of a few hundred thousand people to 1.5 million people. These wars brought about ethnic self-government and great population transfers. In the Ottoman Empire Ottoman religious groups enjoyed great freedom while minorities did not. People of Islamic faith thought non-Muslim people were inferior. Armenians started to become aggressive and rich and powerful; Ottoman officials felt punishment was the only course to handle Armenians. When Armenians refused to pay a tax, the Sultan sent his troops to slaughter them. A campaign of terror was set into motion against the Armenian’s and violent murders took place. The signals for the attacks came from the government. The government didn’t want this seen as Genocide it was meant to keep Armenians in their place. This is an example of something that also happened in the movie Hotel Rwanda. The Hutu’s didn’t want the United Nations seeing their actions as genocide but to see it as revenge for the tootsies “murdering” their president.   Governments and authority don’t want their actions to be seen as genocides because they know the United Nations will get involved so they like to switch up the terms to make the situation seem different.

            The Nazis believed the Jews were a threat of serious contamination to all healthy nations. The Nazis thought the Jews had kept the Germans from reaching their goals. Racialist stated that, “certain racial types were more genetically inclined toward criminal behavior, genetic diseases or mental illnesses (eugenics)(106).” According to Edwin Black, “Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype.”  This means if a certain race could be isolated and kept from breeding, it would free the nation or race of its antisocial elements and weakness. The race could be removed of its impurities and the modern state would not have the burden of caring for useless individuals. In the hands of Nazis, eugenics became a dangerous tool for ethnic cleansing. The Nazis wanted to clean out the Jews. Over one million Jews were murdered by the Germans; this came to be an act of genocide. The Germans wanted to wipe all the Jews out.

(Nazis during the Holocaust murdering Jews)

           

          From the beginning the Soviet state tried to mobilize and control their citizens. They were determined to exert centralized control over its people. They imported Jews, Germans, Muslims, 

Chinese, and Koreans. They tried managing the population by nationality. The Chechens and Ingush operated as clans and groups, or more like nations. They resisted Russian colonialism. They fought the Red Army and police officials. The Chechens and Ingush, about a half million, wanted to keep their cultural ways and their religious ways, and this threatened the soviet authorities. The soviets decided to deal with them once and for all, and ordered all the Chechens and Ingush out of their homelands. 496,000 people were deported. Many died in the process of deportation. Many felt this was an act of genocide but because Stalin’s and Beria’s goal was to destroy the Chechen and Ingush nations, not really eliminate them, many did not consider it genocide. But Aurelie Campana begs to differ, she states, “The genocide has changed the Chechen and Ingush peoples instead of the big mountain dwellers, of the elegant mountain dwellers, of the holy mountain dwellers, living in mountains for centuries, were born puny and sick children, among which a big number died.” The traveling and leaving their land became a drag and very hard for some Chechens and Ingush. They were too old or too young to be traveling out of country for days at a time and death was the answer for some. Aurelie Campana also stated, “The guardians of the national wisdom, of ten centuries of accumulated experience died, the experts of the Chechen-Ingush history, habits, traditions, the experts of the secrecies of the former Masters of the work of metal, and others, died, as died the achug and the expert of the folklore.” In a certain way their people felt this event was an act of genocide because not only did some people die, but also all their history, traditions and other important things died along with them.