Genocidal massacre

The term genocidal massacre was introduced by Leo Kuper (1908–1994) to describe incidents which have a genocidal component but are committed on a smaller scale when they are compared to genocides such as the Rwandan genocide. Others such as Robert Melson, who also makes a similar differentiation, class genocidal massacres as "partial genocide". In his book Blood and Soil, Ben Kiernan states that imperial powers have often committed genocidal massacres to control difficult minorities within their empires. As an example he describes the actions of two Roman legions which were sent to Egypt in 68 AD in order to quell Jews who were rioting in Alexandria in support of Jews who were taking part in the First Jewish–Roman War. The Roman governor Tiberius Julius Alexander ordered two legions to massacre the inhabitants of the Jewish quarter, which was carried out to the letter, sparing none whatever their age or sex. The massacre ended after about 50,000 had been killed when Alexander, listening to the pleas of some yet to be killed, felt pity for them and ordered an end to the killings. Kiernan makes the point that in his opinion, the killings, like genocide, do not have to be organized by the state. In support of his view, he describes several incidents: The massacre in the Cave of Frances of all the inhabitants of the Isle of Eigg by members of the Clan MacLeod on a raiding party from the Isle of Skye in 1577 and a retaliatory raid the next year when members of the Clan MacDonald burnt a MacLeod congregation to death in Trumpan Church, which was almost immediately followed by the Battle of the Spoiling Dyke. On 27 February 2002, an argument on a train of Hindu pilgrims (returning from Ayodhya) with vendors at the platform where it had stopped led to an accidental fire that killed 59 people (9 men, 25 women, 25 children). The next day, and for the following two days, riots in Gujarat caused 790 Muslim and 254 Hindu fatalities.

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Related concepts (3)

Outline of genocide studies

Below is an outline of articles on genocide studies and closely related subjects; it is not an outline of acts or events related to genocide. The Event outlines section contains links to outlines of acts of genocide.

Rwandan genocide

The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 662,000 Tutsi deaths. In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from their base in Uganda, initiating the Rwandan Civil War.

Genocide

Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group.