Genocides Background Information
Mar 26, 2015
Genocides
Background Information
Ukraine 1932-1933
• Aka – Stalin’s Forced Famine• Lives Lost: 7 million• Leader: Joseph Stalin• Why? Stalin wanted to crush the growing
numbers of people who supported a national revival movement. Kulaks (people who owned land) became “enemies of the people.” Forced collectivism. Give grain to government quota first.
Joseph Stalin• Dec. 1879 – March 1953• Good Biography
China 1937-1938
• Aka – Rape of Nanking• Lives Lost: 300,000• Leader: Japanese Imperial Army vs. Chinese
People• Why? Japan was at war with China. They
invaded and were provoked by a fierce opposition. Thus when they took Nanking, they murdered all captives.
Nanking
Japanese Army Occupies Nanking
Cambodia 1975-1979
• Aka the Khmer Rouge (Cambodian Communist Party)
• Lives Lost: 2 million• Leader: Pol Pot• Why? Pol Pot wanted to establish a
Communist peasant farming society – an “agrarian utopia”. The Khmer Rouge was comprised of “teenage peasant guerillas.”
• Year Zero – A Cleansed Society
Khmer Rouge & Pol Pot
Khmer Rouge rebels
Pol Pot
Rwanda 1994
• Africa• Lives Lost: 800,000• Leader: Hutus (90%) vs. Tutsis (10%)• Why? Ethnic tensions caused Hutus to revolt
against the aristocratic Tutsis. U.N. forces were overwhelmed and left Rwanda leaving the Hutus to massacre innocent people.
Hutus & TutsisHutu Rebels
Tutsi Refugees
Sierra Leone 1991-2002
• Africa• Lives Lost: 50,000• Leader: Foday Sankoh, leader of the
Revolutionary United Front (RUF)• Why? Internal civil war. The RUF wanted
control of the government funded by diamonds and gold. 18 different ethnicities did not contribute to the war.
Foday Sankoh & RUF
Child Soldiers
• “. . . Child soldiers are forced to give violent expressions to the hatreds of adults” (Olara Otunnu).
Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992-1995
• Bosnia – formerly part of Yugoslavia• Lives Lost: 200,000• Leader(s): Slobodan Milosevic (former Communist –
now Serbian nationalist) and Radovan Karadzic (President Bosnian Serb Republic)
• Why? Ethnic tensions between: Serbs (32% Orthodox Christians) and Muslims. Serbs attacked Muslims in city of Sarajevo in Bosnia. Ethnic cleansing.
Slobodan Milosevic• Jailed in The Hague – U.N. Detention Center.• On trial for war crimes• Committed suicide (2006)