Genocides

Background Information

Ukraine 1932-1933

• Aka – Stalin’s Forced Famine• Lives Lost: 7 million• Leader: Joseph Stalin• Why? Stalin wanted to crush the growing

numbers of people who supported a national revival movement. Kulaks (people who owned land) became “enemies of the people.” Forced collectivism. Give grain to government quota first.

Joseph Stalin• Dec. 1879 – March 1953• Good Biography

China 1937-1938

• Aka – Rape of Nanking• Lives Lost: 300,000• Leader: Japanese Imperial Army vs. Chinese

People• Why? Japan was at war with China. They

invaded and were provoked by a fierce opposition. Thus when they took Nanking, they murdered all captives.

Nanking

Japanese Army Occupies Nanking

Cambodia 1975-1979

• Aka the Khmer Rouge (Cambodian Communist Party)

• Lives Lost: 2 million• Leader: Pol Pot• Why? Pol Pot wanted to establish a

Communist peasant farming society – an “agrarian utopia”. The Khmer Rouge was comprised of “teenage peasant guerillas.”

• Year Zero – A Cleansed Society

Khmer Rouge & Pol Pot

Khmer Rouge rebels

Pol Pot

Rwanda 1994

• Africa• Lives Lost: 800,000• Leader: Hutus (90%) vs. Tutsis (10%)• Why? Ethnic tensions caused Hutus to revolt

against the aristocratic Tutsis. U.N. forces were overwhelmed and left Rwanda leaving the Hutus to massacre innocent people.

Hutus & TutsisHutu Rebels

Tutsi Refugees

Sierra Leone 1991-2002

• Africa• Lives Lost: 50,000• Leader: Foday Sankoh, leader of the

Revolutionary United Front (RUF)• Why? Internal civil war. The RUF wanted

control of the government funded by diamonds and gold. 18 different ethnicities did not contribute to the war.

Foday Sankoh & RUF

Child Soldiers

• “. . . Child soldiers are forced to give violent expressions to the hatreds of adults” (Olara Otunnu).

Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992-1995

• Bosnia – formerly part of Yugoslavia• Lives Lost: 200,000• Leader(s): Slobodan Milosevic (former Communist –

now Serbian nationalist) and Radovan Karadzic (President Bosnian Serb Republic)

• Why? Ethnic tensions between: Serbs (32% Orthodox Christians) and Muslims. Serbs attacked Muslims in city of Sarajevo in Bosnia. Ethnic cleansing.

Slobodan Milosevic• Jailed in The Hague – U.N. Detention Center.• On trial for war crimes• Committed suicide (2006)