Eliminating groups of people for political reasons
Political cleansing of a population is the elimination of categories of people in specific areas for political reasons. The means may vary from
forced migration to
genocide.[citation needed]
Politicide
This section is about mass killing based on political belief. For political suicide, of which this word is also a portmanteau, see
Political suicide. For the intentional destruction of a city or nation, see
Policide.
Politicide is the deliberate physical destruction or elimination of a group whose members share the main characteristic of belonging to a
political movement. It is a type of
political repression and one of the means used to politically cleanse populations, another being
forced migration. It may be compared to
genocide or
ethnic cleansing, both of which involve the killing of people based on their membership in a particular
racial or
ethnic group rather than their adherence to a particular
ideology.[citation needed]
Politicide is used to describe the killing of groups that would not otherwise be covered by the
Genocide Convention.[1]Social scientistsTed Robert Gurr and
Barbara Harff use politicide to describe the killing of groups of people who are targeted not because of their shared ethnic or communal traits, but because of "their hierarchical position or political opposition to the regime and dominant groups."[citation needed] Harff studies genocide and politicide, sometimes shortened as geno-politicide, in order to include the killing of political, economic, ethnic and cultural groups.[2] Manus Midlarsky uses politicide to describe an arc of large-scale killing from the western parts of the Soviet Union to
China and
Cambodia.[3] In his book The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Midlarsky raises similarities between the killings perpetrated by
Joseph Stalin and
Pol Pot.[4]
Some groups attempt to eliminate the base of support for
political opponents such as insurgents. This happens in many countries with high levels of
insurgency such as
Colombia.[10] It may be a means for and referred to as pacification.[11]
^Harff, Barbara; Gurr, Ted Robert (September 1988). "Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945". International Studies Quarterly. Wiley on behalf of The International Studies Association. 32 (3): 359–371.
doi:
10.2307/2600447.
JSTOR2600447.
ISSN0020-8833.
^Wayman, Frank W.; Tago, Atsushi (January 2010). "Explaining the Onset of Mass killing, 1949–87". Journal of Peace Research Online. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. 47 (1): 3–13.
doi:
10.1177/0022343309342944.
JSTOR25654524.
S2CID145155872.
ISSN0022-3433. "The two important scholars who have created datasets related to this are Rummel (1995) and Harff (2003). Harff (sometimes with Gurr) has studied what she terms 'genocide and politicide', defined to be genocide by killing as understood by the Genocide Convention plus the killing of a political or economic group (Harff & Gurr, 1988); the combined list of genocides is sometimes labeled 'geno-politicide' for short. Rummel (1994, 1995) has a very similar concept, 'democide', which includes such genocide and geno-politicide done by the government forces, plus other killing by government forces, such as random killing not targeted at a particular group. As Rummel (1995: 3-4) says, 'Cold-blooded government killing ... extends beyond genocide'; For example, 'shooting political opponents; or murdering by quota'. Hence, 'to cover all such murder as well as genocide and politicide, I use the concept democide. This is the intentional killing of people by government' (Rummel, 1995: 4). So Rummel has a broader concept than geno-politicide, but one that seems to include geno-politicide as a proper subset." Quote at p. 4.
^Jones, Adam (2010).
Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (2nd ed.). New York:
Routledge. p. 137.
ISBN978-0-415-48619-4. According to Jones: "Also unsurprisingly, it was the settler-colonial regimes who were most anxious to exclude cultural genocide from the Genocide Convention, as Raphael Lemkin’s biographer John Cooper points out." pp. 102.
^Schaack, Beth (1997). "The Crime of Political Genocide: Repairing the Genocide Convention's Blind Spot". The Yale Law Journal. 106 (7): 2259–2291.
doi:
10.2307/797169.
JSTOR797169.
ISSN0044-0094
^Atsushi, Tago; Wayman, Frank W. (January 2010). "Explaining the Onset of Mass Killing, 1949–87". Journal of Peace Research Online. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. 47 (1): 3–13.
doi:
10.1177/0022343309342944.
JSTOR25654524.
S2CID145155872.
Mesko, Zoltan G. (2003). The Silent Conspiracy: A Communist Model of Political Cleansing at the Slovak University in Bratislava after the Second World War.
ISBN0-88033-514-9.
Nersessian, David L. (2010). Genocide and Political Groups. Oxford University Press.
ISBN978-0-19-159455-7.