Genocides in history Genocide is a term coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin to describe the deliberate and systematic destruction , in whole or in part , of an ethnic , racial , religious , or national group . It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ( CPPCG ) of 1948 as " any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy , in whole or in part , a national , ethnical , racial or religious group , as such : killing members of the group ; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group ; deliberately inflicting on the groups conditions of life , calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part ; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group ; [ and ] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group . " The preamble to the CPPCG not only states that " genocide is a crime under international law , contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world " , but also that " at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity " . Determining what historical events constitute a " genocide " and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clear - cut matter . In nearly every case where accusations of genocide have circulated , partisans of various sides have fiercely disputed the interpretation and details of the event , often to the point of promoting wildly different versions of the facts . An accusation of genocide is certainly not taken lightly and will almost always be controversial . The following list of genocides and alleged genocides should be understood in this context and cannot be regarded as the final word on these subjects . Alternative meanings of genocide . The term genocide has been used in varying contexts to describe modern conflicts , from the Rwandan genocide to the War in Darfur . But the term itself has become a source of conflict , as many look to whether or not governments and leaders recognize and punish genocide . However , while the US has pointed to genocide in Darfur , the United Nations has refrained from using that term to describe the killings in Sudan . Questions on what constitutes genocide are : where do you draw the lines between ‘ land conflict ’ , ‘ ethnic cleansing ’ and genocide ’ , and what are the political values of doing so ? Or how is an event designated as a genocide ? Is it legally - only when the ICC at the Hague says so ? Much of the debate about genocides revolves around the proper definition of the word " genocide " . The exclusion of social and political groups as targets of genocide in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide legal definition has been criticized by some historians and sociologists , for example M . Hassan Kakar in his book " The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response , 1979 – 1982 " argues that the international definition of genocide is too restricted , and that it should include political groups or any group so defined by the perpetrator and quotes Chalk and Jonassohn : " Genocide is a form of one - sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group so defined by the perpetrator . " Some critics of the definition of genocide under international law have also argued that the definition was partly influenced by Joseph Stalin , and that this is the reason why it does not include political groups . According to R . J . Rummel , genocide has 3 different meanings . The ordinary meaning is murder by a government of people due to their national , ethnic , racial , or religious group membership . The legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty , the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide . This also includes actions that are not actually killings but tend to eliminate the group , such as preventing births or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group . A generalized meaning of genocide is similar to the ordinary meaning but also includes government killings of political opponents or otherwise intentional murder . It is to avoid confusion regarding what meaning is intended that Rummel created the term democide for the third meaning . Timeline of genocides . Before 1490 . Adam Jones explains , in his book " Genocide : A Comprehensive Introduction " , that people throughout history have always had the ability to see other groups as alien ; he quotes Chalk and Jonassohn : " Historically and anthropologically peoples have always had a name for themselves . In a great many cases , that name meant ' the people ' to set the owners of that name off against all other people who were considered of lesser quality in some way . If the differences between the people and some other society were particularly large in terms of religion , language , manners , customs , and so on , then such others were seen as less than fully human : pagans , savages , or even animals . ( Chalk and Jonassohn , " The History and Sociology of Genocide " , p . 28 . ) " Jones continues by saying that the less a people have in common with another group the easier it is for the aliens to be defined as less than human and from there it is but a short step to an argument that says if they are a threat , then they should " be eliminated in order that we may live ( Them or us ) . " But after making this assessment Jones continues " The difficulty , as Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn pointed out in their early study , is that such historical records as exist are ambiguous and undependable . While history today is generally written with some fealty to ' objective ' facts , most previous accounts aimed rather to praise the writer ' s patron ( normally the leader ) and to emphasize the superiority of one ' s own gods and religious beliefs . " Scholars of antiquity differentiate between genocide and gendercide , in which males were killed but the children ( particularly the girls ) and women were incorporated into the conquering society . Jones notes that " Chalk and Jonassohn provide a wide - ranging selection of historical events such as the Assyrian Empire ' s root - and branch depredations in the first half of the first millennium BCE , and the destruction of Melos by Athens during the Peloponnesian War ( fifth century BCE ) , a gendercidal rampage described by Thucydides in his ' Melian Dialogue ' . " Jared Diamond has suggested that genocidal violence may have caused the Neanderthals to go extinct . Ronald Wright has also suggested such a genocide . The Old Testament describes the genocides of Amalek ites and Midian ites , the latter taking place during the life of Moses in the 2nd millennium BC . The Book of Numbers chapter 31 recounts that an army of Israelites kill every Midianite man but capture the women and children as plunder . These are later killed at the command of Moses , with the exception of girls who have not slept with a man . The total number killed is not recorded but the number of surviving girls is recorded as thirty two thousand . Jones quotes Jerusalem - based Holocaust Studies Professor Yehuda Bauer : " As a Jew , I must live with the fact that the civilization I inherited . . . encompasses the call for genocide in its canon . " Ben Kiernan , a Yale scholar , has labelled the destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War ( 149 – 146 BC ) " The First Genocide " . The Anasazi civilization in the American Southwest was destroyed in a genocide that took place circa 800 AD , suggests a 2010 study . Quoting Eric Margolis , Jones observes that in the 13th century the Mongol horsemen of Temüjin Genghis Khan were genocidal killers ( " génocidaires " ) who were known to kill whole nations , leaving nothing but empty ruins and bones . He ordered the extermination of the Tata Mongols , and all Kankalis males in Bukhara " taller than a wheel " using a technique called measuring against the linchpin . Rosanne Klass has referred to the Mongols ' rule of Afghanistan as " genocide " . Similarly , the Turko - Mongol conqueror Tamerlane was known for his extreme brutality and his conquests were accompanied by genocidal massacres in the cities he occupied . William Rubinstein wrote : " In Assyria ( 1393 – 4 ) – Tamerlane got around – he killed all the Christians he could find , including everyone in the , then , Christian city of Tikrit , thus virtually destroying Christianity in Mesopotamia . Impartially , however , Tamerlane also slaughtered Shi ' ite Muslims , Jews and heathens . " 1490 to 1914 . Africa . Zulu Kingdom . Adam Jones wrote : " Between 1810 and 1828 , the Zulu kingdom under its dictatorial leader , Shaka Zulu , waged one of the most ambitious campaigns of expansion and annihilation the region has ever known . Huge swathes of present - day South Africa and Zimbabwe were laid waste by Zulu armies . . . . According to Yale historian Michael Mahoney , Zulu armies often aimed not only at defeating enemies but at “ their total destruction . Those exterminated included not only whole armies , but also prisoners of war , women , children , and even dogs . ” . . . Mahoney characterizes these policies as genocidal . “ If genocide is defined as a state - mandated effort to annihilate whole peoples , then Shaka ' s actions in this regard must certainly qualify . ” Normal estimates for the death toll range from 1 million to 2 million . These numbers are however controversial . Congo Free State . In the 1890s , the Congo Free State became privately controlled by Leopold II of Belgium , who forcibly conscripted the population into the collection of ivory and sap from rubber plants . Many were tortured , maimed and killed until the start of the 20th century , when the European and American press exposed the conditions , and public pressure and diplomatic maneuvers forced an end to Leopold ' s personal rule . Rwandan president Paul Kagame , who was himself accused by the UN of genocide in Congo , called Leopold ' s rule over the Congo Free State genocide . As the first census did not take place until 1924 , it is difficult to quantify the population loss of the period . Sleeping sickness and smallpox ravaged the country and must also be taken into account . Excess deaths in this period are believed to number up to 10 million . One view is that the forced labour system directly and indirectly eliminated 20 % of the population . To the contrary , historian William Rubinstein wrote that " More basically , it appears almost certain that the population figures given by Hochschild are inaccurate . There is , of course , no way of ascertaining the population of the Congo before the twentieth century , and estimates like 20 million are purely guesses . " German South - West Africa . The Herero and Namaqua Genocide in German South - West Africa ( present - day Namibia ) occurred between 1904 and 1907 . Eighty percent of the total Herero population and 50 percent of the total Nama population were killed in a brutal scorched earth campaign led by German General Lothar von Trotha . In total , between 24 , 000 and 100 , 000 Herero perished along with 10 , 000 Nama . A lone copy of Trotha ' s Extermination Order survives in the Botswana National Archives , and one reads of his intention that " every Herero , with or without a gun , with or without cattle , will be shot . I will no longer accept women or children , I will drive them back to their people [ to die in the desert ] or let them be shot at . " Olusoga and Erichsen write : " It is an almost unique document : an explicit , written declaration of intent to commit genocide . " Americas . From the 1490s when Christopher Columbus set foot on the Americas to the 1890 massacre of Sioux at Wounded Knee by the United States military , the indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere has declined , the direct cause mostly from disease , to 1 . 8 million from around 50 million . In Brazil alone the indigenous population has declined from a pre - Columbian high of an estimated 3 million to some 300 , 000 ( 1997 ) . Estimates of how many people were living in the Americas when Columbus arrived have varied tremendously ; 20th century scholarly estimates ranged from a low of 8 . 4 million to a high of 112 . 5 million . This population debate has often had ideological underpinnings . Robert Royal writes that " estimates of pre - Columbian population figures have become heavily politicized with scholars who are particularly critical of Europe and / or Western civilization often favoring wildly higher figures . " Epidemic disease was the overwhelming direct cause of the population decline of the American natives . After first contacts with Europeans and Africans , some believe that the death of 90 to 95 percent of the native population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases such as smallpox and measles . Some estimates indicate case fatality rates of 80 – 90 % in Native American populations during smallpox epidemics . One of the most important yet highly disputed pieces of information regarding the intentional ethnocide of indigenous populations in the Americas was possible " intentional use " of disease as a biological weapon , which was first posited by British forces under the command of Jeffery Amherst . There is , however , only one documented case of germ warfare , involving British commander Jeffrey Amherst . It is uncertain whether this documented British attempt successfully infected the natives . Some historians argue that genocide , a crime of intent , was not the intent of European colonization while in America . Stafford Poole , a research historian , wrote : " There are other terms to describe what happened in the Western Hemisphere , but genocide is not one of them . It is a good propaganda term in an age where slogans and shouting have replaced reflection and learning , but to use it in this context is to cheapen both the word itself and the appalling experiences of the Jews and Armenians , to mention but two of the major victims of this century . " In his book " American Holocaust " , David Stannard argues that the destruction of the aboriginal peoples of the Americas , in a " string of genocide campaigns " by Europeans and their descendants , was the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world . Stannard ' s claim of 100 million deaths has been challenged because he does not cite any demographic evidence to support this number , and because he makes no distinction between death from violence and death from disease . Noble David Cook , Latin Americanist and history professor at Florida International University , considers books such as Stannard ' s – a number of which were released around the year 1992 to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the Columbus voyage to America – to be an unproductive return to Black Legend - type explanations for depopulation . According to Noble David Cook , " There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact . " In 2003 , Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez urged Latin Americans to not celebrate the Columbus Day holiday . Chavez blamed Christopher Columbus for leading the way in the mass genocide of the Native Americans by the Spanish . American writer David Quammen has likened the colonial America n policies and practices toward Native Americans with those of Australia toward its aboriginal populations , calling them " brutal , hypocritical , opportunistic , and even genocidal in the fullest sense of the word . " Argentina . The Conquest of the Desert was a military campaign directed mainly by General Julio Argentino Roca in the 1870s , which established Argentine dominance over Patagonia , which was inhabited by indigenous peoples , leaving more than 1 , 300 indigenous dead . Jens Andermann has noted that the contemporary sources on that campaign indicate that it was a genocide by the Argentine government against the indigenous tribes . Others perceive the campaign as intending to suppress specifically those groups of aboriginals that refused to submit to the white government and carried out attacks on the white and mestizo civilian settlements . This recent argument – usually summarized as " Civilization or Genocide ? " – questions whether the Conquest of the Desert was really intended to exterminate the aborigines . Haiti . Jean - Jacques Dessalines , the first ruler of an independent Haiti , ordered the killing of the remaining white population of French creoles on Haiti by the 1804 Haiti Massacre . According to Philippe Girard , " when the genocide was over , Haiti ' s white population was virtually non - existent . " Mexico . The Caste War of Yucatán ( approx . 1847 – 1901 ) against the population of European descent , called Yucatecos , who held political and economic control of the region . Adam Jones wrote : " This ferocious race war featured genocidal atrocities on both sides , with up to 200 , 000 killed . " James L . Haley wrote : " In 1835 Don Ignacio Zuniga , who was the long - time commander of the presidios of northern Sonora , asserted that since 1820 the Apaches had killed at least five thousand settlers . . . The state of Sonora resorted to paying a bounty on Apache scalps in 1835 . Beginning in 1837 Chihuahua state also offered bounty , 100 pesos per warrior , 50 pesos per woman , and 25 pesos per child , nothing more or less than genocide . " Peru . The indigenous rebellions of Túpac Amaru II and Túpac Katari against the Spanish . Adam Jones wrote : " Between 1780 and 1782 , Peru and Upper Peru ( present - day Bolivia ) were ravaged by an Indian uprising in which over 100 , 000 people perished . . . Throughout the region , non - Indians were systematically slaughtered . " United States . Authors such as the Holocaust expert David Cesarani have argued that the government and policies of the United States against certain indigenous peoples in furtherance of Manifest Destiny constituted genocide . Cesarani states that " in terms of the sheer numbers killed , the Native American Genocide exceeds that of the Holocaust " . He quotes David E . Stannard , author of " American Holocaust " , who speaks of the " genocidal and racist horrors against the indigenous peoples that have been and are being perpetrated by many nations in the Western Hemisphere , including the United States " . Determining how many people died as a direct result of armed conflict between Native Americans , and Europeans and their descendants , is difficult because accurate records were not always kept . Various statistics have been developed concerning the devastation of the American Indian Wars on the peoples involved . One notable study by Gregory Michno used records dealing with figures " as a direct result of " engagements and concluded that " of the 21 , 586 total casualties tabulated in this survey , military personnel and civilians accounted for 6 , 596 ( 31 % ) , while Indian casualties totaled about 14 , 990 ( 69 % ) . " for the period of 1850 – 90 . However , Michno says he " used the army ' s estimates in almost every case " and " the number of casualties in this study are inherently biased toward army estimations " . According to the U . S . Bureau of the Census ( 1894 ) , " The Indian wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number . They have cost the lives of about 19 , 000 white men , women and children , including those killed in individual combats , and the lives of about 30 , 000 Indians . " In " God , Greed , and Genocide : The Holocaust Through the Centuries " , Grenke quotes Chalk and Jonassohn with regards to the Cherokee Trail of Tears that " an act like the Cherokee deportation would almost certainly be considered an act of genocide today " . The Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the Trail of Tears . About 17 , 000 Cherokees — along with approximately 2 , 000 black slaves owned by Cherokees — were removed from their homes . The number of people who died as a result of the Trail of Tears has been variously estimated . American doctor and missionary Elizur Butler , who made the journey with one party , estimated 4 , 000 deaths . Asia . Philippines . In an article " We Charge Genocide : A Brief History of US in the Philippines " that appeared in the December 2005 issue of " Political Affairs " , E . San Juan , Jr . , director of the Philippines Cultural Studies Center , Connecticut , argued that during the Philippine - American War ( 1899 – 1902 ) and pacification campaign ( 1902 – 1913 ) , the operations launched by the U . S . against the Filipinos , an integral part of its pacification program , which he asserts claimed the lives of over a million Filipinos , constituted genocide . In contrast , John M . Gates estimated that some 34 , 000 Filipino soldiers were killed in combat , while as many as 200 , 000 civilians died due to acholera epidemic largely unrelated to the war . Gates opined that the " genocidal " label " highlight [ s ] the unscholarly and polemical nature of much that has been written about the Philippine war " , adding that the U . S . " persisted in a policy of pacification emphasizing good works instead of more draconian measures " . Qing empire . The Dzungar ( or Zunghar ) , Oirat Mongols who lived in an area that stretched from the west end of the Great Wall of China to present - day eastern Kazakhstan and from present - day northern Kyrgyzstan to southern Siberia ( most of which is located in present - day Xinjiang ) , were the last nomadic empire to threaten China , which they did from the early 17th century to the middle of the 18th century . After a series of inconclusive military conflicts that started in the 1680s , the Dzungars were subjugated by theManchu - led Qing dynasty ( 1644 – 1911 ) in the late 1750s . According to Qing scholar Wei Yuan , 40 percent of the 600 , 000 Zunghar people were killed by smallpox , 20 percent fled to Russia or sought refuge among the Kazakh tribes , and 30 percent were killed by the army . Clarke has argued that the Qing campaign in 1757 – 58 " amounted to the complete destruction of not only the Zunghar state but of the Zunghars as a people . " Historian Peter Perdue has attributed the decimation of the Dzungars to a " deliberate use of massacre " and has described it as an " ethnic genocide " . Mark Levene , a historian whose recent research interests focus on genocide , has stated that the extermination of the Dzungars was " arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence . " The Taiping Rebellion during the 1850s and 1860s resulted in some 20 to 25 million deaths . Large scale massacres by Imperial Forces , and a deliberate scorched earth policy , contributed to the massive death toll . Europe . France . In 1986 Reynald Secher wrote a controversial book entitled : " A French Genocide : The Vendée " , in which he argued that the actions of the French republican government during the revolt in the Vendée ( 1793 – 1796 ) , a popular mostly Catholic uprising against the anti - clerical Republican government during the French Revolution . Secher claims this was the first modern genocide . Secher ' s claims caused a minor uproar in France amongst scholars of modern French history , as mainstream authorities on the period — both French and foreign — published articles rejecting Secher ' s claims . Claude Langlois ( of the Institute of History of the French Revolution ) derides Secher ' s claims as " quasi - mythological " . Timothy Tackett of the University of California summarizes the case as such : " In reality . . . the Vendée was a tragic civil war with endless horrors committed by both sides — initiated , in fact , by the rebels themselves . The Vendeans were no more blameless than were the republicans . The use of the word genocide is wholly inaccurate and inappropriate . " Hugh Gough ( Professor of history at University College Dublin ) called Secher ' s book an attempt at historical revisionism unlikely to have any lasting impact . Concerning the controversy , Michel Vovelle , a specialist on the French Revolution , remarked : " A whole literature is forming on " Franco - French genocide " , starting from risky estimates of the number of fatalities in the Vendean wars : 128 , 000 , 400 , 000 . . . and why not 600 , 000 ? Despite not being specialists in the subject , historians such as Pierre Chanu have put all the weight of their great moral authority behind the development of an anathematizing discourse , and have dismissed any effort to look at the subject reasonably . " Roger Price writes in a similar manner : " Some historians like Pierre Chanu , supported by the conservative media . . . frequently exaggerating the number of deaths they have described the repression of counter - revolutionary movements in the Vendée as heralding Nazi genocide . This essentially ahistorical , and indeed hysterical approach , can only be understood as a feature of the politics of the reactionary right of our own time . " Ferenc Féhér comments that Secher draws conclusions " on the basis of almost no evidence " . War of the Three Kingdoms . Toward the end of the War of the Three Kingdoms ( 1639 – 1651 ) the English Rump Parliament sent the New Model Army to Ireland to subdue and take revenge on the Catholic population of the country and to prevent Royalists loyal to Charles II from using Ireland as a base to threaten England . Initially under the command of Oliver Cromwell and later under other parliamentary generals , the New Model army carried this out . Coupled to the war aim of securing the country for the English Parliament were several other interrelated objectives . Punitive confiscation of the lands of Irish families involved in fighting the parliamentary forces was implemented . This became a continuation of the Elizabethan policy of encouraging Protestant settlement of Ireland , because New Model army soldiers — Protestant to a man and who were owed considerable back pay — could be paid in confiscated Irish lands rather than in cash raised through English parliamentary taxes . During the Interregnum ( 1651 – 1660 ) , this policy was enhanced with the passing of the Act of Settlement of Ireland in 1652 whose goal was a further transfer of land from Irish to English hands . The immediate war aims and the longer term policies of the English Parliamentarians resulted in an attempt by the English to transfer the native Irish Catholic population to the western fringes of Ireland to make way for Protestant settlers . This policy has been summed up by a phrase attributed to Cromwell " To Hell or to Connaught " and has been described by historians as ethnic cleansing , if not genocide . Great Irish Famine . During the Irish Potato Famine ( 1845 – 1852 ) approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland , causing the island ' s population to fall by between 20 % and 25 % . The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight . Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s , the impact and human cost in Irelandwhere one - third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for foodwas exacerbated by a host of political , social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate . During the years of the Famine , Ireland produced enough food , flax and wool not only to feed and clothe its nine million people , but enough for eighteen million . When Ireland had experienced a famine in 1782 – 83 , ports were closed to keep Irish - grown food in Ireland to feed the Irish . Local food prices promptly dropped . Merchants lobbied against the export ban , but government in the 1780s overrode their protests . There was no such export ban in the 1840s . Some historians argue that in this sense the famine was artificial , not caused by a shortage of food but by the British government ' s choice not to close the ports as had been done in previous Irish crop blights ; as John Mitchell put it , " The Almighty sent the potato blight . . . but the English created the famine " . Francis A . Boyle , a professor of International Law at the University of Illinois , finding that the government violated sections ( a ) , ( b ) , and ( c ) of Article 2 of the CPPCG and committed genocide , issued a formal legal opinion to the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education on May 2 , 1996 , stating that " Clearly , during [ the Irish Potato Famine ] years [ of ] 1845 to 1850 the British government pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland with intent to destroy in substantial part the national , ethnical , and racial group commonly known as the Irish People . " Law professor Charles E . Rice of Notre Dame likewise issued a formal opinion , also based on Article 2 , that the government had committed genocide . Contesting claims of genocide , Belfast - born and Cambridge - educated historian Peter Gray concludes that UK government policy " was not a policy of deliberate genocide " , but a dogmatic refusal to admit that the policy was wrong , which " amounted to a sentence of death to many thousands " . Professor James S . Donnelly Jr . , a historian at the University of Wisconsin – Madison , wrote that " it is also my contention that while genocide was not in fact committed , what happened during and as a result of the clearances had the look of genocide to a great many Irish " . Cecil Woodham - Smith , an authority on the Irish Famine , wrote in " The Great Hunger ; Ireland 1845 – 1849 " that , " . . . no issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two countries as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation . " Ireland remained a net exporter of food throughout most of the five - year famine . However , Woodham - Smith does not accept that the famine amounted to genocide : " These misfortunes were not part of a plan to destroy the Irish nation ; they fell on the people because the government of Lord John Russell was afflicted with an extraordinary inability to foresee consequences . It has been frequently declared that the parsimony of the British government during the famine was the main cause of the sufferings of the people , and parsimony was certainly carried to remarkable lengths ; but obtuseness , short - sightedness and ignorance probably contributed more . " Irish historian Cormac O ' Grada disagrees with the claim that the famine was genocide on two grounds : firstly , he writes , " genocide includes murderous intent and it must be said that not even the most bigoted and racist commentators of the day sought the extermination of the Irish " . and that most people in Whitehall " hoped for better times in Ireland " . and secondly accusations of genocide overlook or ignore " the enormous challenges facing relief efforts , both central , local , public and private " . Cormac views that a case of neglect is easier to sustain than that of genocide . He also says that " no academic historian takes seriously any more the claim of ' genocide ' " , which were only supported by " a few nationalist historians " . Genocide scholar W . D . Rubinstein seems to agree with O ' Grada . In his book " Genocide " he wrote that : " The Irish Famine cannot in truth be described as an example of genocide , but nor , in truth , was it nineteenth - century Britain ' s finest hour . " Russian Empire . The Russian Tsarist Empire waged war against Circassia in the Northwest Caucasus for more than a hundred years , trying to get Circassia ' s prominent position along the Black Sea coast . After a century of insurgency and all - out war and continual failure to end the affair , the Tsar ordered the expulsion of most of the Muslim population of the North Caucasus . This event is remembered among Circassians as a national tragedy and is well - known among other Caucasian peoples and in Turkey as well . In the modern context of the word , there have been many claims , by Circassians , by Western historians ( Colarusso , Charles King , etc . ) , by Turks and by Chechens that the events of the 1860s constituted one of the first " modern " horrible genocides in modern history , where a whole population is eliminated to satisfy the desires ( in this case economic ) of a powerful country . Antero Leitzinger wrote in an article titled " The Circassian Genocide " , that a genocide committed against the Circassian nation by Czarist Russia in the 19th century has been almost entirely forgotten , and that it was the largest genocide of the 19th century . Approximately 1 - 1 . 5 million Circassians were killed , and upon the order of the Tsar , most of the Muslim population was deported ( i . e . , all except Ossete Muslims and Kabardins ; the modern Circassians and Abazins either managed to escape or , as is the case with most , returned ; at the time after the deportation , as Charles King notes in his books , travelers who searched throughout the area for Circassians could not find any left except the Kabardins ) , mainly to the Ottoman Empire , causing the exile of another 1 . 5 million Circassians and others . This effectively annihilated ( or deported ) 90 % of the nation . Circassians were viewed as tools by the Ottoman government , and settled in restive areas whose populations had nationalist yearnings - Armenia , the Arab regions and the Balkans . Many more Circassians were killed by the policies of the Balkan states , primarily Serbia and Bulgaria , which became independent at that time . Still more Circassians were forcefully assimilated by nationalist Muslim states ( Turkey , Syria , Iraq , etc . ) who looked upon non - Turk / Arab ethnicity as a foreign presence and a threat . In May 1994 , the then Russian President Boris Yeltsin admitted that resistance to the tsarist forces was legitimate , but he did not recognize " the guilt of the tsarist government for the genocide . " In 1997 and 1998 , the leaders of Kabardino - Balkaria and of Adygea sent appeals to the Duma to reconsider the situation and to issue the needed apology ; to date , there has been no response from Moscow . In October 2006 , the Adygeyan public organizations of Russia , Turkey , Israel , Jordan , Syria , the USA , Belgium , Canada and Germany sent the president of the European Parliament a letter with a request to recognize the genocide against Adygean ( Circassian ) people . On 5 July 2005 the Circassian Congress , an organisation that unites representatives of the various Circassian peoples in the Russian Federation , called on Moscow first to acknowledge and then to apologize for Tsarist policies that Circassians say constituted a genocide . Their appeal pointed out that " according to the official tsarist documents more than 400 , 000 Circassians were killed , 497 , 000 were forced to flee abroad to Turkey , and only 80 , 000 were left alive in their native area . " The movement has since been campaigning for the recognition of the " Circassian genocide " . Nevertheless , whether it is considered genocide or not , just as is the case with the Armenians and Jews , the Circassians view the memory of the brutal expulsions and killings at the hands of Russia and the suffering that the Russians inflicted upon them as a central part of the Circassian identity . Oceania . Australia . The Black War was a period of conflict between the British colonists and Tasmanian Aborigine s in Van Diemen ' s Land ( now Tasmania ) in the early years of the 19th century . The conflict , in combination with introduced diseases and other factors , had such devastating impact on the Tasmanian Aboriginal population that it was reported the Tasmanian Aborigines had been exterminated . Historian Geoffrey Blainey says that by 1830 in Tasmania : " Disease had killed most of them but warfare and private violence had also been devastating . " In the 19th century , smallpox was the principal cause of Aboriginal deaths . After the introduction of the word genocide in the 1940s by Raphael Lemkin , Lemkin and most other comparative genocide scholars , basing their analysis on previously published histories , present the extinction of the Tasmanian Aborigines as a text book example of a genocide ; however , the majority of Australian experts are more circumspect , because more recent detailed studies of the events surrounding the extinction by historians who specialise in Australian history have raised questions about some of the details and interpretations in the earlier histories . In a chapter describing these developments , Ann Curthoys concludes " It is time for a more robust exchange between genocide and Tasmanian historical scholarship if we are to understand better what did happen in Tasmania in the first half of the nineteenth century , how best to conceptualize it , and how to consider what that historical knowledge might mean for us now , morally and intellectually , in the present . " On the Australian continent itself during the British colonial period ( 1788 – 1901 ) , a population of 500 , 000 – 750 , 000 Australian Aborigines was reduced to fewer than 50 , 000 . Most were devastated by the introduction of alien diseases after contact with Europeans , though perhaps 20 , 000 were killed by massacre , fighting , and other colonial violence . New Zealand . In the early 19th Century there was a genocide of the Moriori people by the Maori tribes of Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama . " Moriori " were the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands ( " Rekohu " in Moriori , " Wharekauri " in Māori ) , east of the New Zealand archipelago in the Pacific Ocean . These people lived by a code of non - violence and passive resistance ( see Nunuku - whenua ) , which led to their near - extinction at the hands of Taranaki Māori invaders in the 1830s . In 1835 some Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama people , Māori from the Taranaki region of the North Island of New Zealand invaded the Chathams . On 19 November 1835 , the " Rodney " , a European ship hired by the Māori , arrived carrying 500 Maori armed with guns , clubs and axes , followed by another ship with 400 more Maori on 5 December 1835 . They proceeded to enslave some Moriori and kill and cannibalise others . " Parties of warriors armed with muskets , clubs and tomahawks , led by their chiefs , walked through Moriori tribal territories and settlements without warning , permission or greeting . If the districts were wanted by the invaders , they curtly informed the inhabitants that their land had been taken and the Moriori living there were now vassals . " A council of Moriori elders was convened at the settlement called Te Awapatiki . Despite knowing of the Māori predilection for killing and eating the conquered , and despite the admonition by some of the elder chiefs that the principle of Nunuku was not appropriate now , two chiefs — Tapata and Torea — declared that " the law of Nunuku was not a strategy for survival , to be varied as conditions changed ; it was a moral imperative . " A Moriori survivor recalled : " [ The Maori ] commenced to kill us like sheep . . . [ We ] were terrified , fled to the bush , concealed ourselves in holes underground , and in any place to escape our enemies . It was of no avail ; we were discovered and killed – men , women and children indiscriminately . " A Maori conqueror explained , " We took possession . . . in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people . Not one escaped . . . " After the invasion , Moriori were forbidden to marry Moriori , or to have children with each other . All became slaves of the Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga invaders . Many Moriori women had children by their Maori masters . A small number of Moriori women eventually married either Maori or European men . Some were taken from the Chathams and never returned . Only 101 Moriori out of a population of about 2 , 000 were left alive by 1862 ( Kopel et al . , 2003 ) . Although the last Moriori of unmixed ancestry , Tommy Solomon , died in 1933 there are several thousand mixed ancestry Moriori alive today . 1915 to 1950 . In 1915 , during World War I , the concept of Crimes against humanity was introduced into international relations for the first time when the Allied Powers sent a correspondence to the government of the Ottoman Empire , a member of the Central Powers , over massacres that were taking place within the Empire . ( For more details see the section Ottoman Empire ) . Ottoman Empire / Turkey . On May 24 , 1915 , the Allied Powers ( Britain , France , and Russia ) jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing " a crime against humanity " in reference to that regime ' s persecution of its Christian minorities including Armenians , Assyrians and Greeks among others . Many researchers consider these events to be part of the same policy of planned ethnoreligious purification of the Turkish state followed by the Young Turks . This joint statement stated , " [ i ] n view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization , the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government , as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres . " Armenian . The Armenian Genocide ( , translit . : ; ) — also called a host of other names , refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I . It was implemented through wholesale massacres and deportations , with the deportations consisting of forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees . The total number of resulting Armenian deaths is generally held to have been between one and one and a half million . The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24 , 1915 , the day when Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople . Thereafter , the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles , depriving them of food and water , to the desert of what is now Syria . Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender , with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace . The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of the Armenian genocide . Mass killing of Armenians continued under the Republic of Turkey during the Turkish – Armenian War phase of Turkish War of Independence . The modern Republic of Turkey , which succeeded the Ottoman Empire in 1923 , vehemently denies that a genocide took place and has resisted calls in recent years by scholars , countries , and international organizations to recognize them as so . The Armenian Genocide is acknowledged to have been one of the earliest modern genocides , as historians point to the organized manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians , and it is the second most - studied case of genocide after the Holocaust . The word genocide was coined by scholar Raphael Lemkin in order to describe these events . Assyrian . The Assyrian Genocide ( also known as " Sayfo " or " Seyfo " ; Aramaic : " ܩܛܠܐ ܕܥܡܐ ܐܬܘܪܝܐ " or ܣܝܦܐ , ) was committed against the Assyrian population of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War by the Young Turks . The Assyrian population of northern Mesopotamia ( Tur Abdin , Hakkari , Van , Siirt region in modern - day southeastern Turkey and Urmia region in northwestern Iran ) was forcibly relocated and massacred by Ottoman ( Turkish and allied Kurdish ) forces between 1914 and 1920 under the regime of the Young Turks . This genocide is considered to be a part of the same policy of extermination as the Armenian Genocide and Greek genocide . The Assyro - Chaldean National Council stated in a December 4 , 1922 , memorandum that the total death toll is unknown , but it estimates that about 750 , 000 Assyrians died between 1914 – 18 . Greek . The Greek genocide refers to the fate of the Greek population of the Ottoman Empire during and in the aftermath of World War I ( 1914 – 18 ) . Like Armenians and Assyrians , the Greeks were subjected to various forms of persecution including massacres , expulsion s , and death marches by Young Turks . Mass killing of Greeks continued under the Republic of Turkey during the Greco - Turkish War phase of Turkish War of Independence . George W . Rendel of the British Foreign Office , among other diplomats , noted the massacres and deportations of Greeks during the post - Armistice period . These persecutions killed an estimate of 348 , 000 Anatolian Greeks . Dersim Kurds . The Dersim massacre refers to the depopulation of Dersim in Turkish Kurdistan , in 1937 – 38 , in which approximately 65 , 000 – 70 , 000 Alevi Kurds were killed and thousands were driven into exile . A key component of the Turkification process was the policy of massive population resettlement . The main policy document in this context , the 1934 Law on Resettlement , was used to target the region of Dersim as one of its first test cases , with disastrous consequences for the local population . Many Kurds and some ethnic Turks consider the events that took place in Dersim to constitute genocide . A prominent proponent of this view is the academic İsmail Beşikçi . Under international laws , it has been argued , the actions of the Turkish authorities were not genocide , because they were not aimed at the extermination of a people , but at resettlement and suppression , while a Turkish court ruled in 2011 that it could not be considered genocide according to the law because they were not directed systematically against an ethnic group . Scholars , such as Martin van Bruinessen , have instead talked of an ethnocide directed against the local language and identity . Soviet Union . There are several documented instances of unnatural mass death occurring in the Soviet Union . These include the Soviet - wide famines in the early 1920s and early 1930s and deportations of ethnic minorities . Soviet diplomatic efforts removed the extermination of political groups from the United Nations Convention on Genocide , so many of the atrocities committed by the Soviet authorities do not fall under the United Nations definition of genocide because the perpetrators of the atrocities were targeting members of political or economic groupings rather than the ethnic , racial , religious , or national groups listed in the UN convention . Nevertheless some of the gross violations of human rights committed by agents of the Bolshevik and Soviet governments have been described by some authorities as genocide . Decossackization . During the Russian Civil War the Bolsheviks engaged in a campaign of genocide against the Don Cossacks . The most reliable estimates indicate that out of a population of three million , between 300 , 000 and 500 , 000 were killed or deported in 1919 – 20 . Holodomor . During the Soviet famine of 1932 – 33 that affected Ukraine , Kazakhstan , and some densely populated regions of Russia , the scale of death in Ukraine is referred to as the Holodomor , and is recognized as genocide by the governments of Australia , Argentina , Georgia , Estonia , Italy , Canada , Lithuania , Poland , the USA , and Hungary . The famine was caused by the confiscation of the whole 1933 harvest in Ukraine , Kazakhstan , the Kuban ( a densely Ukrainian region ) , and some other parts of the Soviet Union , leaving the peasants too little to feed themselves . As a result , an estimated ten million died Soviet - wide , including over seven million in Ukraine , one million in the North Caucasus , and one million elsewhere . American historian Timothy Snyder speaks of " 3 . 3 million Soviet citizens ( mostly Ukrainians ) deliberately starved by their own government in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 – 1933 " In addition to the requisitioning of crops in Ukraine , " all " food was confiscated by Soviet authorities . Any and all aid and food was prohibited from entering specifically the Ukrainian republic . Ukraine ' s Yuschenko ' s administration recognised the Holodomor as an act of genocide , and pushed international policy to reflect this . This move is opposed by the Russian government and some Russophile members of the Ukrainian parliament . A Ukrainian court found Joseph Stalin , Vyacheslav Molotov , Lazar Kaganovich , Stanislav Kosior , Pavel Postyshev , Vlas Chubar and Mendel Khatayevich guilty of genocide on 13 January 2010 As of 2010 , Moscow ' s official position is that the famine took place , but it is not an ethnic genocide ; current Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych has supported this position . A ruling of January 13 , 2010 by Kyiv ' s Court of Appeal recognized the leaders of the totalitarian Bolshevik regime as those guilty of ' genocide against the Ukrainian national group in 1932 – 33 through the artificial creation of living conditions intended for its partial physical destruction . ' " Poles , 1937 – 38 . A few scholars have argued that the killing , on the basis of nationality and politics , of more than 120 , 000 ethnic Poles in the Soviet Union during 1937 – 38 was genocide . Deportation of Chechen people . On February 26 , 2004 the plenary assembly of the European Parliament recognized the deportation of Chechen people during Operation Lentil ( 23 February 1944 ) , as an act of genocide , on the basis of the 1907 IV Hague Convention : The Laws and Customs of War on Land and the CPPCG adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948 . The event in question began on 23 February 1944 , when the entire population of Checheno - Ingushetia was summoned to local party buildings where they were told they were going to be deported as punishment for their alleged collaboration with the Germans . The inhabitants were rounded up and imprisoned in Studebaker trucks and sent to Siberia . Many times , resistance was met with slaughter , and in one such instance , in the aul of Khaibakh , about 700 people were locked in a barn and burned to death . By the next summer , Checheno - Ingushetia was dissolved ; a number of Chechen and Ingush placenames were replaced with Russian ones ; mosques and graveyards were destroyed , and a massive campaign to burn numerous historical Chechen texts was nearly complete . Throughout the North Caucasus , about 700 , 000 ( according to Dalkhat Ediev , 724297 , of which the majority , 412 , 548 , were Chechens , along with 96 , 327 Ingush , 104 , 146 Kalmyks , 39 , 407 Balkars and 71 , 869 Karachais ) . Many died on the trip , and of exposure in the extremely harsh environment of Siberia . The NKVD , supplying the Russian perspective , gives the statistic of 144 , 704 people killed in 1944 – 1948 alone ( with a death rate of 23 . 5 % for all groups ) , though other scholars give larger estimates . Estimates for Chechen deaths alone ( excluding the NKVD statistic ) , range from about 170 , 000 to 200 , 000 , thus ranging from over a third of the total Chechen population to nearly half being killed ( of those that were deported , not counting those killed on the spot ) in those 4 years alone . In addition to being recognized by the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria , the European Union Parliament also recognized it as a genocide in 2004 . Deportations of Lithuanians , Latvians and Estonians . Some scholars believe the mass deportations of up to 17500 Lithuanians , 17000 Latvians and 6000 Estonians carried out by Stalin were the start of a genocide . When added with the killing of the Forest Brethren and the renewed Dekulakization which followed the Soviet reconquest of the Baltic states at the end of world war two . The total number of people deported to Siberia was 118559 from Lithuania 52541 from Latvia and 32540 from Estonia . Due to the high death rate of deportees during the first few years of their Siberian exile , caused by the failure of Soviet authorities to provide suitable clothing or housing at the destination , whether through neglect or premeditation , some sources consider these deportations an act of genocide . Based on the Martens Clause and the principles of the Nuremberg Charter , the European Court of Human Rights has held that the March deportation constituted a crime against humanity . According to Erwin Oberlander , under the current laws of genocide these mass deportations do not constitute a genocide , rather a crime against humanity . Lithuania began trials for genocide in 1997 . Latvia and Estonia began theirs in 1998 . Latvia has since convicted four security officers who had been involved in the mass deportations and in 2003 sentenced a former KGB agent to five years . Estonia has tried and convicted ten men for their actions during the deportations and others are under investigation . In Lithuania by 2004 23 cases were before the courts , but as of the end of the year none have been convicted . In 2007 Estonia charged Arnold Meri ( then 88 years old ) , a former Soviet Communist Party official and highly decorated former Red Army soldier , with genocide for his alleged role in deportations of Estonians to Soviet gulags in Siberia . Shortly after the trial opened , it was suspended because of Meri ' s frail health and then abandoned because he died of lung cancer . A memorial in Vilnius , Lithuania , is dedicated to the genocide victims of Stalin as well as Hitler , and the Museum of Genocide Victims in Lithuania , that was set up on 14 October 1992 under the auspices of the Lithuanian Minister of Culture and Education and the President of the Lithuanian Union of Political Prisoners and Deportees . The Lithuanian museum was established in the former KGB headquarters and chronicles the imprisonment and deportation of Lithuanians by officials of the Soviet Union . Japan . During the Nanking Massacre in the period of the Second Sino - Japanese War , the Japanese engaged in mass killings and committed genocide against the Chinese . Bradley Campbell , in an article published in the journal " Sociological Theory " , described the Nanking Massacre as a genocide considering the fact that the Chinese were unilaterally killed by the Japanese en masse during the aftermath , despite the successful and certain outcome of their battle . Nazi Germany and Nazi - occupied Europe . Because of the universal acceptance of international laws , defining and forbidding genocide was achieved in 1948 , with the promulgation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ( CPPCG ) , those criminals who were prosecuted after the war in international courts , for taking part in the Holocaust were found guilty of crimes against humanity and other more specific crimes like murder . Nevertheless the Holocaust is universally recognized to have been a genocide and the term , that had been coined the year before by Raphael Lemkin , appeared in the indictment of the 24 German leaders , Count 3 , stated that all the defendants had " conducted deliberate and systematic genocide – namely , the extermination of racial and national groups … " The term " the Holocaust " ( from the Greek " hólos " , " whole " and " kaustós " , " burnt " ) is generally used to describe the killing of approximately six million European Jews during World War II , as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the National Socialist German Workers Party in Germany led by Adolf Hitler . A majority of scholars do not include other groups in the definition of the Holocaust , reserving the term to refer only to the genocide of the Jews , or what the Germans called the " Final Solution of the Jewish Question . " However , some scholars maintain that the definition of the Holocaust should also include Germany ' s genocide of millions of people in other groups , including Romani , communists , Soviet prisoners of war , Polish and Soviet civilians , homosexuals , people with disabilities , Jehovah ' s Witnesses and other political and religious opponents , which occurred regardless of whether they were of German or non - German ethnic origin . This was the most common definition from the end of WWII to the 1960s . Using this definition , the total number of Holocaust victims is between 11 million and 17 million people . The Holocaust was accomplished in stages . Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II . Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease . Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe , specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings . Jews and Romani were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of miles by freight train to extermination camp s where , if they survived the journey , the majority of them were killed in gas chambers . Every arm of Germany ' s bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder , turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called " a genocidal nation . " Other targets of the German mass murder or " German genocidal policy " , included Slavs ( Poles , Russians , Ukrainians , Belarusians , Serbs , Czechoslovaks , and others ) , Romani people ( see Porajmos ) , mentally ill ( see T - 4 Euthanasia Program ) , homosexuals and " sexual deviants " , Jehovah ' s Witnesses , and political opponents . R . J . Rummel estimates that 16 , 315 , 000 people died as a result of genocide , just over 10 . 5 million Slavs , just under 5 . 3 million Jews , 258 , 000 Romani and 220 , 000 homosexuals . Donald Niewyk suggests that the broadest definition would produce a death toll of 17 million . A figure of 26 million is given in " Service d ' Information des Crimes de Guerre : Crimes contre la Personne Humain , Camps de Concentration " . Paris , 1946 , p . 197 . Adam Jones has argued that the German killing of 2 . 8 million Soviet POWs in eight months in 1941 - 2 was an act of " gendercide " ( since only men were killed ) and that it " vies with the genocide in Rwanda as the most concentrated mass killing in human history . " In the longer term , the Germans wanted to exterminate some 30 – 45 million Slavs . According to Roger Chickering , " Had the Germans won the war , they would have undertaken the largest genocide in history . " Some historians speak of the siege of Leningrad operations in terms of genocide , as a " racially motivated starvation policy " that became an integral part of the unprecedented German war of extermination against populations of the Soviet Union generally . German historian Dieter Pohl estimates the total death toll of Nazi genocide and other mass murder at 12 to 14 million . The victims of the siege of Leningrad are not included in Pohl ' s estimate . Independent State of Croatia . After the Nazi invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , the Nazis and fascists established the Croatian state known as the " Nezavisna Država Hrvatska " ( Independent State of Croatia ) or NDH . Immediately after its establishment , the NDH began a terror campaign against Serbs , Jews and Romani people . From 1941 to 1945 , when Josip Broz Tito ' s Partisans liberated Croatia , the Ustaše regime killed approximately 300 , 000 to 350 , 000 people , mostly Serbs and almost the entire Jewish and Romani population , many of them in the Jasenovac concentration camp . Helen Fein has estimated that the Ustaše killed virtually every Romani in the country . The Ustaše enacted a policy that called for a solution to the " Serbian problem " in the Independent State of Croatia . The solution was to " kill one - third of the Serbs , expel one - third , and convert one - third " . According to the United States Holocaust Museum , 320 , 000 – 340 , 000 ethnic Serbs were murdered under Ustaše rule in the Independent State of Croatia . The Yad Vashem World Holocaust Museum and Research Center concludes that " more than 500 , 000 Serbs were murdered in horribly sadistic ways , 250 , 000 were expelled , and another 200 , 000 were forced to convert " during the Second World War . Nearly 80 , 000 Roma and 35 , 000 Jews were also killed by the Ustaše . Some historians also consider the crimes of the Chetniks in Bosnia against non - Serbs to constitute acts of Genocide . Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia . The Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were part of an ethnic cleansing operation carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army ( UPA ) West in the Nazi occupied regions of the Eastern Galicia ( Nazi created Distrikt Galizien in General Government ) , and UPA North in Volhynia ( in Nazi created Reichskommissariat Ukraine ) , beginning in March 1943 and lasting until the end of 1944 . The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943 when a senior UPA commander , Dmytro Klyachkivsky , ordered the liquidation of the entire male Polish population between 16 and 60 years of age . Despite this , most of the victims were women and children . The actions of the UPA resulted in 40 , 000 – 60 , 000 Polish civilian casualties in Volhynia , from 25 , 000 to 30 , 000 – 40 , 000 in Eastern Galicia . The killings were directly linked with the policies of the Bandera fraction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists , whose goal , specified at the Second Conference of the OUN - B , was to remove non - Ukrainians from the social and economic spheres of a future Ukrainian state . The massacres are recognized in Poland as ethnic cleansing with " marks of genocide . " According to the IPN prosecutor Piotr Zając , the crimes have a " character of genocide " . However , according to Katchanovski , the actions which occurred in Volhynia cannot be classified as genocide " because there is no evidence of an intent to eliminate entire or a significant party of the Polish population , and the anti - Polish action was mostly limited to a relatively small region . " Flight and expulsion of Germans during and after World War II . With at least 12 million Germans directly involved , it was the largest movement or transfer of any single ethnic population in modern history and the largest among the post - war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe ( which displaced more than twenty million people in total ) . Estimates of the total number of dead range from 500 , 000 to 2 , 000 , 000 , where the higher figures include " unsolved cases " of persons reported as missing and presumed dead . Many German civilians were also sent to internment and labor camps . RJ Rummel estimates that 1 , 585 , 000 Germans were killed in Poland and 197 , 000 were killed in Czechoslovakia . The German - Czech Historians Commission , on the other hand , established for Czechoslovakia a death toll ranging between a minimum of 15 , 000 and a maximum of 30 , 000 . The events have been usually classified as population transfer , or as ethnic cleansing . Martin Shaw ( 2007 ) and W . D . Rubinstein ( 2004 ) describe the expulsions as genocide . Felix Ermacora , in line with a minority of legal scholars , considered ethnic cleansing to be genocide , and stated that the expulsion of the Sudeten German s was genocide . Dominican Republic . In 1937 , Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered the execution of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic . The Parsley Massacre , known in the Dominican Republic as " El Corte " ( the Cutting ) , lasted approximately five days . Trujillo had his soldiers apply parsley to suspected Haitians and they would ask , " What is this ? " Spanish speaking people would be able to pronounce the Spanish word for parsley perfectly , " perejil " . In Haitian Creole , the word for parsley is " persil " . Those who would have trouble pronouncing " perejil " would be assumed to be Haitian and slaughtered . The violence resulted in the deaths of 20 , 000 to 30 , 000 people . Republic of China and Tibet . The Kuomintang ' s Republic of China government supported Muslim warlord Ma Bufang when he launched seven expeditions into Golog , causing the deaths of thousands of Tibetans . Uradyn Erden Bulag called the events that followed genocidal and David Goodman called them ethnic cleansing . One Tibetan counted the number of times Ma attacked him , remembering the seventh attack which made life impossible . Ma was highly anti - communist , and he and his army wiped out many Tibetans in the northeast and eastern Qinghai , and also destroyed Tibetan Buddhist Temples . Ma also patronized the Panchen Lama , who was exiled from Tibet by the Dalai Lama ' s government . 1951 to 2000 . Universal acceptance of international laws , defining and forbidding genocide was achieved in 1948 , with the promulgation of the " Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide " ( CPPCG ) . The CPPCG was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951 ( Resolution 260 ( III ) ) . After the minimum 20 countries became parties to the Convention , it came into force as international law on 12 January 1951 . At that time however , only two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council ( UNSC ) were parties to the treaty , which caused the Convention to languish for over four decades . Australia 1900 – 1969 . Sir Ronald Wilson , former president of Australia ' s Human Rights Commission thinks that Australia ' s " Stolen Generation " — where from 1900 to 1970 , 20 , 000 to 25 , 000 Aboriginal children were forcibly separated from their natural families ( see the Bringing Them Home report ) — " It clearly was attempted genocide . . . [ because it ] was believed that the Aboriginal people would die out " . However the nature and extent of the removals have been disputed within Australia , with some commentators questioning the findings contained in the report and asserting that the Stolen Generation has been exaggerated . Not only has the number of children removed from their parents been questioned , but also the intent and effects of the government policy . Zanzibar . In 1964 , towards the end of the Zanzibar Revolution — which led to the overthrow of the Sultan of Zanzibar and his mainly Arab government by local African revolutionaries — John Okello claimed in radio speeches to have killed or imprisoned tens of thousands of his " enemies and stooges , " but actual estimates of the number of deaths vary greatly , from " hundreds " to 20 , 000 . Some Western newspapers give figures of 2 , 000 – 4 , 000 ; the higher numbers may be inflated by Okello ' s own broadcasts and exaggerated reports in some Western and Arab news media . The killing of Arab prisoners and their burial in mass graves was documented by an Italian film crew , filming from a helicopter , in " Africa Addio " . Many Arabs fled to safety in Oman , and by Okello ' s order no Europeans were harmed . The post - revolution violence did not spread to Pemba . Leo Kuper described the killing of Arabs in Zanzibar as a genocide . Guatemala 1966 – 1996 . During the Guatemalan civil war , some 200 , 000 people died . More than one million people were forced to flee their homes and hundreds of villages were destroyed . The officially chartered Historical Clarification Commission attributed more than 93 % of all documented violations of human rights to Guatemala ' s military government ; and estimated that Maya Indians accounted for 83 % of the victims . It concluded in 1999 that state actions constituted genocide . In 1999 , Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchú brought a case against the military leadership in a Spanish Court . Six officials , among them Efraín Ríos Montt and Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores , were formally charged on 7 July 2006 to appear in the Spanish National Court after Spain ' s Constitutional Court ruled in 2005 that Spanish courts can exercise universal jurisdiction over war crimes committed during the Guatemalan Civil War In May 2013 , Rios Montt was found guilty of genocide 1 , 700 indigenous Ixil Mayans during 1982 – 83 by a Guatemalan court and sentenced to 80 years in prison . Pakistan ( Bangladesh War of 1971 ) . There is an academic consensus the that events which took place during the Bangladesh Liberation War were a genocide During the nine month long conflict it has been estimated that approximately 3 million people were killed , and that the Pakistani armed forces raped between 200 , 000 and 400 , 000 Bangladeshi women and girls in an act of genocidal rape . According to Sarmila Bose , between 50 , 000 and 100 , 000 combatants and civilians were killed by both sides during the war . Bose ' s work and methodology has been heavily critiqued . A 2008 " British Medical Journal " study by Ziad Obermeyer , Christopher J . L . Murray , and Emmanuela Gakidou estimated that up to 269 , 000 civilians died as a result of the conflict ; the authors note that this is far higher than a previous estimate of 58 , 000 from Uppsala University and the Peace Research Institute , Oslo . According to Serajur Rahman , the official Bangladeshi estimate of " 3 " lahks " " ( 300 , 000 ) was wrongly translated into English as 3 million . A case was filed in the Federal Court of Australia on 20 September 2006 for alleged crimes of genocide , war crimes and crimes against humanity during 1971 by the Pakistani Armed Forces and its collaborators : On 21 May 2007 , at the request of the applicant " Leave is granted to the applicant to discontinue his application filed on 20 September 2006 . " ( FILE NO : ( P ) SYG2672 / 2006 ) Burundi 1972 and 1993 . Since Burundi ' s independence in 1962 , there have been two events called genocide in the country . The 1972 mass - killings of Hutu by the Tutsi army , and the 1993 killing of Tutsi by the Hutu population that is recognised as an act of genocide in the final report of the International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi presented to the United Nations Security Council in 2002 . North Korea . Several millions in North Korea have died of starvation since the mid - 1990s , with aid groups and human rights NGOs stating often that North Korea has systematically and deliberately prevented food aid from reaching the areas most devastated by food shortages . Up to one million have died in North Korea ' s political prison camps which detain dissidents and their entire families , including children , for perceived political offences . In 2004 , Yad Vashem , in response to the BBC documentary , " Access to Evil " , which includes witness testimonies from camp survivors and a former guard of gas chambers and mass killings occurring systematically in the camps , called on the international community in 2004 to investigate " political genocide " in North Korea , yet no substantial action has been taken to this day to intervene . In September 2011 , the Harvard International Review published an article which argued that North Korea was violating the UN Genocide Convention in every possible way , through its systematic killing of half - Chinese babies and religious groups . North Korea ' s Christian population , which included 25 – 30 % of the inhabitants of Pyongyang and was considered to be the center of Christianity in East Asia in 1945 , has been systematically massacred and persecuted ; 50 , 000 – 70 , 000 Christians are imprisoned in North Korea ’ s concentration camps today . Equatorial Guinea . Francisco Macías Nguema was the first President of Equatorial Guinea , from 1968 until his overthrow in 1979 . During his presidency , his country was nicknamed " the Auschwitz of Africa " . Nguema ' s regime was characterized by its abandonment of all government functions except internal security , which was accomplished by terror ; he acted as chief judge and sentenced thousands to death . This led to the death or exile of up to 1 / 3 of the country ' s population . Out of a population of 300 , 000 , an estimated 80 , 000 had been killed , in particular those of the Bubi ethnic minority on Bioko associated with relative wealth and intellectualism . Uneasy around educated people , he had killed everyone who wore spectacles . All schools were ordered closed in 1975 . The economy collapsed , and skilled citizens and foreigners left . On August 3 , 1979 , he was overthrown by Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo . Macías Nguema was captured , tried for genocide and other crimes along with 10 others . All of them were found guilty , four received terms of imprisonment , while Nguema and the other six were executed a few weeks later on September 29 . John B . Quigley in " The Genocide Convention : An International Law Analysis " points out that at Macías Nguema ' s trial for genocide that Equatorial Guinea had not ratified the Genocide convention and that records of the court proceedings show that there was some confusion over whether Nguema and his co - defendants were tried under the laws of Spain ( the former colonial power ) , or whether the trial was justified on the claim that the Genocide Convention was part of customary international law . Quigley states that " The Macias case stands out as the most confusing of domestic genocide prosecutions from the standpoint of the applicable law . The Macias conviction is also problematic from the standpoint of the identity of the protected group . " East Timor under Indonesian occupation . East Timor was occupied by Indonesia from 1975 to 1999 as an annexed territory with Indonesian provincial status . A detailed statistical report prepared for the Commission for Reception , Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor cited a lower range of 102 , 800 conflict - related deaths in the period 1974 – 1999 , namely , approximately 18 , 600 killings and 84 , 200 excess deaths from hunger and illness , including the Indonesian military using " starvation as a weapon to exterminate the East Timorese " most of which occurred during the Indonesian occupation . Earlier estimates of deaths during the occupation range from 60 , 000 to 200 , 000 . According to Sian Powell writing in " The Australian " , a UN report states that the Indonesian military used starvation as a weapon to exterminate the East Timorese , along with Napalm and chemical weapons , which poisoned the food and water supply . Ben Kiernan has written in " War , Genocide , and Resistance in East Timor , 1975 – 99 : Comparative Reflections on Cambodia " that the crimes committed . . . in East Timor , with a toll of 150 , 000 in a population of 650 , 000 , clearly meet a range of sociological definitions of genocide used by most scholars of the phenomenon , who see both political and ethnic groups as possible victims of genocide . The victims in East Timor included not only that substantial ' part ' of the Timorese ' national group ' targeted for destruction because of their resistance to Indonesian annexation — along with their relatives , as we shall see — but also most members of the twenty - thousand strong ethnic Chinese minority prominent in the towns of East Timor , whom Indonesian forces singled out for destruction , apparently because of their ethnicity ' as such . ' Laos . The communist Pathet Lao overthrew the royalist government of Laos in December 1975 , establishing the Lao People ' s Democratic Republic . The conflict between Hmong rebels and the Pathet Lao continued in isolated pockets . The government of Laos in collaboration with Vietnam has been accused of committing genocide against the Hmong , with up to 100 , 000 killed out of a population 400 , 000 . Dirty War in Argentina . In September 2006 , Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz , who had been the police commissioner of the province of Buenos Aires during the Dirty War ( 1976 – 1983 ) , was found guilty of six counts of murder , six counts of unlawful imprisonment , and seven counts of torture in a federal court . The judge who presided over the case , Carlos Rozanski , described the offences as part of a systematic attack that was intended to destroy parts of society that the victims represented and as such it was genocide . Rozanski noted that the CPPCG does not include the elimination of political groups ( because that group was removed at the behest of Stalin ) , but instead based his findings on 11 December 1946 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96 barring acts of genocide " when racial , religious , political and other groups have been destroyed , entirely or in part " ( which passed unanimously ) , because he considered the original UN definition to be more legitimate than the politically compromised CPPCG definition . Ethiopia . Ethiopia ' s former Soviet - backed Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam was tried in an Ethiopian court , " in absentia " , for his role in mass killings . Mengistu ' s charge sheet and evidence list was 8 , 000 pages long . The evidence against him included signed execution orders , videos of torture sessions and personal testimonies . The trial began in 1994 and on 12 December 2006 Mengistu was found guilty of genocide and other offences . He was sentenced to life in prison in January 2007 . Ethiopian law defines genocide as any act committed with the intent to wipe out political and not just ethnic groups . 106 Derg officials were accused of genocide during the trials , but only 36 of them were present in the court . Several former members of the Derg have been sentenced to death . Zimbabwe has refused to respond to Ethiopia ' s request that Mengistu be extradited , which has permitted him to avoid his Ethiopian life imprisonment sentence . Mengistu supported Robert Mugabe , the long - standing President of Zimbabwe , during his leadership of Ethiopia . Michael Clough , a US attorney and longtime observer of Ethiopia told Voice of America in a statement released on December 13 , 2006 , “ The biggest problem with prosecuting Mengistu for genocide is that his actions did not necessarily target a particular group . They were directed against anybody who was opposing his government , and they were generally much more political than based on any ethnic targeting . In contrast , the irony is the Ethiopian government itself has been accused of genocide based on atrocities committed in Gambella . I ’ m not sure that they qualify as genocide either . But in Gambella , the incidents , which were well documented in a human rights report of about 2 years ago , were clearly directed at a particular group , the tribal group , the Anuak . ” Some experts have estimated that 150 , 000 university students , intellectuals and politicians were killed during Mengistu ' s rule . Amnesty International estimates that up to 500 , 000 people were killed during the Ethiopian Red Terror Human Rights Watch describes the Red Terror as " one of the most systematic uses of mass murder by a state ever witnessed in Africa . " During his reign it was not uncommon to see students , suspected government critics or rebel sympathisers hanging from lampposts each morning . Mengistu himself is alleged to have murdered opponents by garroting or shooting them , saying that he was leading by example . Iraqi Kurds . On December 23 , 2005 a Dutch court ruled in a case brought against Frans van Anraat for supplying chemicals to Iraq , that " [ it ] thinks and considers it legally and convincingly proven that the Kurdish population meets the requirement under the genocide conventions as an ethnic group . The court has no other conclusion than that these attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq . " and because he supplied the chemicals before 16 March 1988 , the date of the Halabja poison gas attack he is guilty of a war crime but not guilty of complicity in genocide . Tibet . On 5 June 1959 Shri Purshottam Trikamdas , Senior Advocate , Supreme Court of India , presented a report on Tibet to the International Commission of Jurists ( an NGO ) . The press conference address on the report states in paragraph 26 that The report of the International Commission of Jurists ( 1960 ) is widely misquoted as stating that there was physical genocide ( mass killings ) . It actually claims that there was ' only ' cultural genocide . ICJ Report ( 1960 ) page 346 : " The committee found that acts of genocide had been committed in Tibet in an attempt to destroy the Tibetans as a religious group , and that such acts are acts of genocide independently of any conventional obligation . The committee did not find that there was sufficient proof of the destruction of Tibetans as a race , nation or ethnic group as such by methods that can be regarded as genocide in international law " . However cultural genocide is also contested by some academics such as Barry Sautman . Tibetan is the everyday language of Tibetans in Tibet . In addition Tibetans are exempt from the one child policy . The Central Tibetan Administration & other Tibetan in excile media have claimed that the actual number of Tibetans that have died of starvation , violence , or other indirect causes since 1950 is approximately 1 . 2 million . White states this figure as ' . . . In all , over one million Tibetans , a fifth of the population , had died as a result of Chinese occupation up until the end of the Cultural Revolution . . ' Adam Jones , a specialist on genocide , argued that the struggle session s after the 1959 Tibetan uprising may be considered genocide , based on the claim that the conflict resulted in 92 , 000 deaths . However , according to tibetologist Tom Grunfeld , " the veracity of such a claim is difficult to verify . " Spain ' s top criminal court has decided to hear a case brought by Tibetan rights activists who allege that China ' s former President Hu Jintao committed genocide in Tibet Democratic Republic of Congo . During the Congo Civil War ( 1998 – 2003 ) , Pygmies were hunted down and eaten by both sides in the conflict , who regarded them as subhuman . Sinafasi Makelo , a representative of Mbuti pygmies , has asked the UN Security Council to recognize cannibalism as a crime against humanity and also as an act of genocide . According to a report by Minority Rights Group International there is evidence of mass killings , cannibalism and rape . The report , which labeled these events as a campaign of extermination , linked much of the violence to beliefs about special powers held by the Bambuti . In Ituri district , rebel forces ran an operation code - named " Effacer le tableau " ( to wipe the slate clean ) . The aim of the operation , according to witnesses , was to rid the forest of pygmies . Hutu genocide in DR Congo . A leaked United Nations draft report accused Rwanda ' s Tutsi - led army of committing a possible genocide against the ethnic Hutus in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo . The report accused the Rwandan Army and allied Congolese rebels of killing tens of thousands of ethnic Hutu men , women and children ( refugees from Rwanda and locals alike ) in a series of systematic attacks between 1996 and 1997 . The government of Rwanda rejected the accusation . Somalia . The Social Science Research Council ( 2007 ) reported genocidal killings committed against Somalia ' s Bantu population and Jubba Valley dwellers from 1991 onwards noting that " Somalia is a rare case in which genocidal acts were carried out by militias in the utter absence of a governing state structure . " Sri Lanka . Both the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were accused of human rights violations during Sri Lanka ' s 26 - year civil war . An United Nations Panel of Experts looking into these alleged violations found " credible allegations , which if proven , indicate that serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed both by the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE , some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity " . Some activists and politicians have gone further and accused the Sri Lankan government of carrying out genocide against the minority Sri Lankan Tamil people during and after the war . Human rights lawyer Bruce Fein believes that Sri Lanka ' s leaders committed genocide , stating " It ' s hard to come to conclusion that the aim wasn ' t to destroy the Tamil people in whole or substantial part " , while leading Sri Lankan Tamil Parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran labelled the Sri Lankan military ' s actions during the final months of the civil war as genocide . Refugees escaping Sri Lanka have also stated that they fled from genocide , and various Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora groups have echoed these accusations . In 2009 thousands of Tamils protested in cities all over the world against what they claimed was genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka . Various diaspora activists have formed a campaign group called Tamils Against Genocide . Some have taken legal action against Sri Lankan leaders for alleged genocide . Norwegian human rights lawyer Harald Stabell has filed a case in Norwegian courts against Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa and others officials . Politicians from various political parties in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu have also made genocide accusations . In 2008 and 2009 the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M . Karunanidhi appealed to the Indian government on a number of occasions to intervene to " stop the genocide of Tamils " , while his successor J . Jayalalithaa called on the Indian government to bring Rajapaksa before international courts for genocide . The women ' s wing of the Communist Party of India , passed a resolution in August 2012 finding that the " Systematic sexual violence against Tamil women " by Sri Lankan forces constitutes genocide , calling for an " independent international investigation " . In January 2010 a Permanent Peoples ' Tribunal ( PPT ) held in Dublin , Ireland found Sri Lanka guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity but could not find enough evidence to justify the charge of genocide . The tribunal requested that a thorough investigation be held as some of the evidence indicated " possible acts of genocide " . The PPT will convene in Germany in April 2013 to examine reports on the matter . The International Commission of Jurists has stated that the camps used by the Sri Lankan government / military to intern nearly 300 , 000 Tamils after the war ' s end may have breached the convention against genocide . The Sri Lankan government has denied the allegations of genocide and war crimes . Srebrenica . The Srebrenica genocide ( or Srebrenica massacre ) was the July 1995 killing of more than 8 , 000 Bosniaks ( Bosnian Muslims ) , mainly men and boys , in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War . The killing was perpetrated by units of the Army of Republika Srpska ( VRS ) under the command of General Ratko Mladić . The Secretary - General of the United Nations described the mass murder as the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War . A paramilitary unit from Serbia known as the Scorpions , officially part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991 , participated in the massacre , along with several hundred Russian and Greek volunteers . International prosecution of genocide . Ad hoc tribunals . In 1951 only two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council ( UNSC ) were parties to the CPPCG : France and the Republic of China . The CPPCG was ratified by the Soviet Union in 1954 , the United Kingdom in 1970 , the People ' s Republic of China in 1983 ( having replaced the Taiwan - based Republic of China on the UNSC in 1971 ) , and the United States in 1988 . So it was only in the 1990s that the international law on the crime of genocide began to be enforced . Bosnia and Herzegovina . In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia ( ICTY ) delivered its first conviction for the crime of genocide , against General Krstić for his role in the 1994 Srebrenica Genocide . This judgement was upheld by the International Court of Justice ( ICJ ) in its February 2007 ruling in the case of Bosnia vs Serbia . However , contrary to the claim made by Bosnia , the ICJ did not find that genocide had been committed on the wider territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war , limiting local genocide to Srebrenica and Žepa . The ICJ also ruled that Serbia was not responsible for the genocide nor for " aiding and abetting it " , although it ruled that Serbia could have done more to prevent the genocide and that Serbia failed to punish the perpetrators . Before this ruling the term Bosnian Genocide had been used by some academics , and human rights officials . In 2010 , Vujadin Popović , Lieutenant Colonel and the Chief of Security of the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army , and Ljubiša Beara , Colonel and Chief of Security of the same army , were convicted of genocide , extermination , murder and persecution by the ICTY for their role in the Srebrenice massacre and sentenced to a life in prison . German courts have handed down several convictions for genocide during the Bosnian War . Novislav Djajic was indicted for participation in genocide , but the Higher Regional Court failed to find that there was sufficient certainty , for a criminal conviction , that he had intended to commit genocide . Nevertheless Djajic was found guilty of 14 cases of murder and one case of attempted murder . At Djajic ' s appeal on 23 May 1997 , the Bavarian Appeals Chamber found that acts of genocide were committed in June 1992 , confined within the administrative district of Foca . The Higher Regional Court ( Oberlandesgericht ) of Düsseldorf , in September 1997 , handed down a genocide conviction against Nikola Jorgic , a Bosnian Serb from the Doboj region who was the leader of a paramilitary group located in the Doboj region . He was sentenced to four terms of life imprisonment for his involvement in genocidal actions that took place in regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina , other than Srebrenica ; and " On 29 November 1999 , the Higher Regional Court ( Oberlandesgericht ) of Düsseldorf condemned Maksim Sokolovic to 9 years in prison for aiding and abetting the crime of genocide and for grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions " . Rwanda . The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ( ICTR ) is a court under the auspices of the United Nations for the prosecution of offenses committed in Rwanda during the genocide that occurred there during April and May , 1994 , commencing on April 6 . The ICTR was created on November 8 , 1994 by the Security Council of the United Nations to judge those people responsible for the acts of genocide and other serious violations of international law performed in the territory of Rwanda , or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states , between January 1 and December 31 , 1994 . Over the course of approximately 100 days from the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana on April 6 through mid - July , at least 800 , 000 people were killed , according to a Human Rights Watch estimate . As of mid - 2011 , the ICTR has convicted 57 accused persons ( including 19 whose cases are on appeal ) and acquitted eight . Another ten persons are still on trial while one is awaiting trial . Nine remain at large . The first trial , of Jean - Paul Akayesu , ended in 1998 with his conviction for genocide and crimes against humanity . This was notable as the world ' s first conviction for the crime of genocide , as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide . Jean Kambanda , interim Prime Minister during the genocide , pled guilty . Cambodia . The Khmer Rouge , led by Pol Pot , Ta Mok and other leaders , organized the mass killing of ideologically suspect groups , ethnic minorities like the ethnic Vietnamese , Chinese ( or Sino - Khmers ) , Cham s and Thais , former civil servants , former government soldiers , Buddhist monk s , secular intellectuals and professionals , and former city dwellers . Khmer Rouge cadres defeated in factional struggles were also liquidated in purges . Man - made famine and slave labor resulted in many hundreds of thousands of deaths . Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2 . 5 million , with a " most likely " figure of 2 . 2 million . After 5 years of researching 20 , 000 grave sites , he concluded that " these mass graves contain the remains of 1 , 386 , 734 victims of execution . " However , some scholars have argued that the Khmer Rouge were not racist and had no intention of exterminating ethnic minorities or the Cambodian people ; in this view , their brutality was the product of an extreme version of communist ideology . On 6 June 2003 the Cambodian government and the United Nations reached an agreement to set up the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia ( ECCC ) which would focus exclusively on crimes committed by the most senior Khmer Rouge officials during the period of Khmer Rouge rule from 1975 – 1979 . The judges were sworn in in early July 2006 . The investigating judges were presented with the names of five possible suspects by the prosecution on 18 July 2007 . There has been disagreement between some of the international jurists and the Cambodian government over whether any other people should be tried by the Tribunal . International Criminal Court . The ICC can only prosecute crimes committed on or after 1 July 2002 . Darfur , Sudan . The on - going racial conflict in Darfur , Sudan , which started in 2003 , was declared a " genocide " by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell on September 9 , 2004 in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee . Since that time however , no other permanent member of the UN Security Council has followed suit . In fact , in January 2005 , an International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur , authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 1564 of 2004 , issued a report to the Secretary - General stating that " the Government of the Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide . " Nevertheless , the Commission cautioned that " The conclusion that no genocidal policy has been pursued and implemented in Darfur by the Government authorities , directly or through the militias under their control , should not be taken in any way as detracting from the gravity of the crimes perpetrated in that region . International offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide . " In March 2005 , the Security Council formally referred the situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court ( ICC ) , taking into account the Commission report but without mentioning any specific crimes . Two permanent members of the Security Council , the United States and China , abstained from the vote on the referral resolution . As of his fourth report to the Security Council , the Prosecutor has found " reasonable grounds to believe that the individuals identified [ in the UN Security Council Resolution 1593 ] have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes " , but did not find sufficient evidence to prosecute for genocide . In April 2007 , the Judges of the ICC issued arrest warrants against the former Minister of State for the Interior , Ahmad Harun , and a Militia Janjaweed leader , Ali Kushayb , for crimes against humanity and war crimes . On July 14 , 2008 , prosecutors at the ICC , filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan ' s President Omar al - Bashir , three counts of genocide , five of crimes against humanity and two of murder . The ICC ' s prosecutors have claimed that al - Bashir " masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part " three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity . The ICC ' s prosecutor for Darfur , Luis Moreno - Ocampo , is expected within months to ask a panel of ICC judges to issue an arrest warrant for al - Bashir . On 4 March 2009 the ICC issued a warrant for al - Bashir ' s arrest for crimes against humanity and war crimes , but not genocide . This is the first warrant issued by the ICC against a sitting head of state .