Genocide, which is an act of the mass killing of a population, is a brutal crime against humanity and is punishable to the fullest extent of the law. Nevertheless, recent history knows numerous examples when individual peoples were exterminated by massively dominant forces of those who pursued criminal and inhuman goals. According to the existing world legislation adopted in the middle of the 20th century, genocide is associated not only with direct killings. This act also implies attempts to stop the birth of children in a certain group of the population or cause irreparable mental harm (“Convention on the Prevention and Punishment,” 1948). As a historical example, one can discuss the events of 1915-1923, when in Turkey, over a million of the Armenian people living there were exterminated (Alvarez & Bachman, 2016). From the perspective of the legal standard of genocide accepted in the world law, the events in Turkey correspond to the definition of the mass killing of one people by the other one.
The Turkish government, supported by the military, outlined a clear policy of killing the Armenian people. Armenian men serving in the army were deported to special battalions and murdered (Alvarez & Bachman, 2016). The entire intelligentsia of the Armenian diaspora, including representatives of the medical and educational spheres, were arrested and killed (Alvarez & Bachman, 2016). Finally, the most vulnerable classes, including older adults, children, and women, were sent to special camps like reservations, where they died of hunger and torture (Alvarez & Bachman, 2016). Such inhuman treatment of a certain nation corresponds to the definition of genocide. It falls under several of its characteristics, including mass extermination, the prevention of births, and the eviction of victims to separate territories (“Convention on the Prevention and Punishment,” 1948). Therefore, the events in Turkey at the beginning of the 20th century are an example of a crime against humanity and one of the saddest pages in Armenian history.
References
Alvarez, A., & Bachman, R. D. (2016). Violence: The enduring problem (3rd ed.). Sage Publications.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. (1948). Prevent Genocide International. Web.