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 Ethnocide

Ethnocide concerns policies and processes designed to destroy the separate identity of a group, with or without the physical destruction of its members. This concept was developed by Raphael Lemkin as part of the definition of genocide:

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be a disintegration of political and social institutions—of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed at the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed at individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group (1944, p. 79).

For Lemkin genocide had two phases: "one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor." If these two conditions are met, a genocide has, according to Lemkin's view, occurred, even if every member of the targeted group has survived the process in a physical sense. Such actions may include the destruction or removal of tangible heritage (monuments, sites, artifacts, etc.) or obliteration of intangible heritage by prohibiting cultural manifestations that do not leave physical evidence. It may also include gross abuses of human rights designed to ensure the disappearance of a group as a separate entity, such as the removal of children.

The existence of cultural remnants, such as monuments, writings, or movable objects of a type unique to that culture, may enable it to be identified and, perhaps, revived, even when all its members have apparently been annihilated or so assimilated into another culture that they no longer identify with it. Scholars have developed a spoken language from written texts (modern Hebrew) and unique basket-making techniques from a study of museum objects.

Definition

The original draft of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, prepared by the United Nations (UN) Secretariat and based on the work of Lemkin, included definitions of physical genocide, biological genocide, and cultural genocide. The latter was defined as follows: Destroying the specific characteristics of the group by:

(a)          forcible transfer of children to another human group; or

(b)          forced and systematic exile of individuals representing the culture of a group; or

(c)          prohibition of the use of the national language even in private intercourse; or

(d)          systematic destruction of books printed in the national language or of religious works or prohibition of new publications; or

(e)          systematic destruction of historical or religious monuments or their diversion to alien uses, destruction or dispersion of documents and objects of historical, artistic, or religious value and of objects used in religious worship.

The only provisions in the Convention as finally adopted that can be used against ethnocide are Article 2 (d) (on the prevention of births) and (e) (the forcible transfer of children). Because the inclusion of cultural genocide in the Convention proved controversial and was finally rejected, some have taken the view that the present text of the Genocide Convention excludes the concept of cultural genocide. However, there is now much more awareness of both the frequent interpene-tration of physical and cultural genocide, as well as the need to preserve threatened cultures. Canada and the United Kingdom were the most active in eliminating the stronger references to cultural genocide in the definition, perhaps because of assimilation policies toward Native Americans, since abandoned, still employed by Canada at the time of the Convention's drafting.

Although the courts will, in criminal prosecutions, apply the legal definition of genocide included in the Convention or in one of the other international instruments granting them such jurisdiction, as the undisputed minimum content of that crime, this does not exclude the use of Lemkin's explicit definition of cultural genocide in other contexts. It is nonetheless helpful to have a separate term for this, since popular usage has followed the limited definition in the Genocide Convention as referring only to the physical destruction of persons. Several theorists have suggested the use of ethnocide to describe the intentional destruction of social, racial, religious, ethnic, and linguistic groups. Ethnocide in that sense would include compulsory exogamy, forced pregnancy, prevention of births, removal of children, insistence on mainstream education without education in their own culture, prohibition of the use of a mother tongue, distortion of history, and discrimination in access to cultural resources. Planned compulsory assimilation, often making use of such activities, would fall within that concept. The deleterious effect of all such policies, even if thought at the time to represent enlightened humanitarianism, is the loss of creative diversity.