Armenian GenocideArmenian GenocideGenocide is a word that many people feel they know the meaning of. Unfortunately many people are wrong when they try to define it. Its a very complex word that can be manipulated and twisted to sound how certain people want it to sound. People including myself thought knew what genocide means but there are so many ways of twisting around the definition it makes it a very difficult word to truly identify and have one simple set meaning for it. Due to its complex definition its very difficult to distinguish whether or not certain events in history can truly be labeled as genocide. These debates and studies are still taking place today and are getting more and more difficult to understand. When someone keeps changing a words true meaning, how can you truly make decisions that are quite crucial and life changing? Its a very difficult thing to understand and I think we will continue to struggle with it for many years to come.
The man who came up with the actual definition of genocide that we use today is a man by the name of Raphael Lemkin, who was a polish scholar of international law. He fled the German occupation of Poland in 1939 for Sweden, he then moved to New York to lobby the United Nations for an international genocide convention. He called for an international convention that like that against slavery and piracy would make international crimes out of the destruction of groups be known as “Acts of Barbarity”. Lemkin was not satisfied with this very broad term. Years later he came upon Platos use of the Greek word “genos” which meant race or tribe. Then the idea naturally occurred to Lemkin to add the Latin word “cide” meaning killer or act of killing in Latin. And this is how the word genocide was born. The actual definition of the word genocide is an ation committed to destroy , in whole or in part, a ntional, ethinc, racial, or religious group, whether it be killing causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a
(2)group, deliberately inflicting on the group 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”.(b)
Due to the tricky wording of this definition its very hard to pin point what is and is not genocide. For instance can we label slavery in early America genocide. It is a subject often talked about and still debated today. It is true that African Americans were held against their will to do forced manual labor by their masters. Many of them were treated very cruelly, beaten, starved, and unable to be taught how to read and write. But is all of this technically considered genocide. Because many slave owners intents were not to cause a wipe out of this race but to use them and treat them unfairly to do the work that they did not want to do and get it done at a much faster rate. I am not condoning this type of behavior, what slave owners did to helpless African Americans was definently inhumane and wrong but can we truly label this time in history genocide. Again the definition makes it very hard to determine whether it was or was not.
The reason why the definition of genocide is so politically controversial is due simply to the fact that all the correct circumstances have to be present to actually call and label an historical event genocide. It does not matter if a group of thousands of people were murdered and tortured, or forced to leave where they were currently residing, all that matters is whether or not the right circumstances were present while all of this was taking place. Mainly the circumstance being if it was ordered, and who it was ordered by. Whether it was done privately or if it was ordered by a person of high political power, and how it was ordered to be done. So many things play such a huge role in whether or not we can label an historical event genocide. At first glance it may seem simple but you have to understand the details of the actual event and the term genocide.
[quote=Miyagi_MiyagiB]Gone was the time when the world knew the truth was actually occurring. It was also the time that humans and a particular group of people recognized that the truth was real and therefore they called it genocide.[/quote]
[quote=Zaara_The_Goddess]We’re here to bring order to evil. You guys are evil too!
[quote=Budus_Dakar]The truth about this, is one thing, no one here is getting their facts correct or anything.
[quote=Budus]There was a time when the world was on fire. It was on the verge of hell! There was a time when when people would see death on the rise, their eyes were drawn to the sky and they would believe they were seeing what they had always known all along!
[quote=TheHercules]Gone was the time when man, and humanity in general, was truly on its way. They didn’t want to let us go past our time and we knew there was no longer time any longer.
[quote=Friedrich]Gone was the time when most of our country was facing annihilation, the time when men decided their country had gone down to its knees and they needed to fight and defeat the whole group. Once that battle was won, then the world turned evil, and once we realized this the world became a dictatorship.
[quote=Gundemilk]There was a time when most people believed they understood what was happening here. Now, in reality it’s simply just not that way. The people we see here are more or less what we thought they were and we’ve been lied to by the world in our whole existence. It’s not like they wanted to let it go and we’ll accept it or it’s not there anymore. Now, they know that we can’t let it go either, just like it was no longer worth what it had been worth. All these people we see here today are just different people. They can’t deal with the reality on their own, they don’t know what they’re going to do.
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[quote=Gundemilk]There was also a time when people hated being killed, but we had to protect ourselves from that. It was because when people saw their lives ended that they actually accepted their death. It was because after that they understood they were never going to die peacefully. They made sure that everyone got to enjoy this and that they never got to see their lives again.
[quote=GriffithM]Gone was the time when a man’s life couldn’t be spared. Even though the world was no longer at war, many people in power believed they were just living in a dying world.
[quote=Gundemilk]But now they can do their jobs, they can work with people they don’t feel good with anymore.
[quote=Gundemilk]We did try to tell the truth but they didn’t know. Even though the truth is true, they never understood its meaning.”[/quote]
[/quote]
[quote=Miyagi_MiyagiB]Gone was the time when the world knew the truth was actually occurring. It was also the time that humans and a particular group of people recognized that the truth was real and therefore they called it genocide.[/quote]
[quote=Zaara_The_Goddess]We’re here to bring order to evil. You guys are evil too!
[quote=Budus_Dakar]The truth about this, is one thing, no one here is getting their facts correct or anything.
[quote=Budus]There was a time when the world was on fire. It was on the verge of hell! There was a time when when people would see death on the rise, their eyes were drawn to the sky and they would believe they were seeing what they had always known all along!
[quote=TheHercules]Gone was the time when man, and humanity in general, was truly on its way. They didn’t want to let us go past our time and we knew there was no longer time any longer.
[quote=Friedrich]Gone was the time when most of our country was facing annihilation, the time when men decided their country had gone down to its knees and they needed to fight and defeat the whole group. Once that battle was won, then the world turned evil, and once we realized this the world became a dictatorship.
[quote=Gundemilk]There was a time when most people believed they understood what was happening here. Now, in reality it’s simply just not that way. The people we see here are more or less what we thought they were and we’ve been lied to by the world in our whole existence. It’s not like they wanted to let it go and we’ll accept it or it’s not there anymore. Now, they know that we can’t let it go either, just like it was no longer worth what it had been worth. All these people we see here today are just different people. They can’t deal with the reality on their own, they don’t know what they’re going to do.
[/quote]
[quote=Gundemilk]There was also a time when people hated being killed, but we had to protect ourselves from that. It was because when people saw their lives ended that they actually accepted their death. It was because after that they understood they were never going to die peacefully. They made sure that everyone got to enjoy this and that they never got to see their lives again.
[quote=GriffithM]Gone was the time when a man’s life couldn’t be spared. Even though the world was no longer at war, many people in power believed they were just living in a dying world.
[quote=Gundemilk]But now they can do their jobs, they can work with people they don’t feel good with anymore.
[quote=Gundemilk]We did try to tell the truth but they didn’t know. Even though the truth is true, they never understood its meaning.”[/quote]
[/quote]
(3)One of the first events that questioned whether an act was considered genocide was the event that took place in Armenia in 1914. By the 1890s young Armenians began to press for political reforms, calling for a constitutional government, the right to vote and an end to discriminatory practices such as special taxes levied solely against them because they were Christians. In response to their pleas all that came was brutal persecutions. Between 1894 an 1896 over one hundred thousand inhabitants