Crime Against Humanity

State Crimes are defined as “acts that are largely committed, instigated or condoned by governments and their officials” (International State Crime initiative). These crimes are considered to be very serious crimes in society today, due to the fact that they are either committed or condoned by governmental personnel with the aim of achieving certain goals. Having said that, scholars today do not have the knowledge of how important these crimes are since it violate international and criminal law within that state. Eugene McLaughlin identified four categories of state crime; Political crimes, crimes by security, economic crimes and social and cultural crimes. However, I will focus on the two that are more widely acknowledged Political crime is corruption and censorship, a state has the right to label a behaviour as political crime if it’s seen as a threat to the state. Crime by security has to do with genocide and torture, a great example of crime by security is the Rwanda Genocide that occurred in 1994 which ended up killing 800,000 citizens in just a few weeks. According to Grabosky and Stohl (2010), state crimes can be divided into six main types; State terror against another state, state terror against private interests, State facilitation of another state’s terrorism, state terror against its own citizens, state facilitation of private actors and political terror scale. In this essay, I will be mainly concentrating on the Rwanda Genocide, Libyan civil war of 2011 and

By June 1933, 28,000 men, women and children were starving to death each and every day. As the Ukrainians were dying, the Soviet Union was exporting their grain to other countries. This famine was initiated to dehumanize the Ukrainians and counterattack any movement for independence. Anyone caught stealing grain was killed immediately, this lead to people eating dogs, birds, mice and withal resulted into cannibalism . Seven to ten million Ukrainians had perished in the course of one year. Despite having a substantial amount of knowledge of the crisis in Ukraine, the west turned a blind eye

It started in 1920 when Ukraine tried to break away from the Soviet Union, but it was unsuccessful because Stalin wouldn’t let them. Stalin then at the end of the 1920s, wanted to shut down Ukraine’s autonomy. He does so by having individuals arrested, sent to prison, and even executed (Sebag, 2008). Ukraine used to be the bread basket of Russia. That was until Stalin and his crew took over and held over ¾ of Ukraine hostage. While he was having people imprisoned and executed, he also ordered the collectivization of agriculture. Most of Ukraine were peasants and farmers. The majority of these people owned a good amount of land, and some even owned livestock. There were people who were against collectivization. These people were called Kulaks, which are rich peasants. Thousands of people were thrown out of their homes and even deported. (Bohdan, 2013)

The famine too was an assault on Ukraine’s rising nationalism, which threatened to remove the country from Soviet influence and thus undermine the Party as Stalin saw it. Thus, in those few months during which millions died, not only was the traditional Ukrainian village effectively destroyed, but much of Ukraine’s political and cultural elite were purged. Moreover, Russian settlers were brought in to repopulate the *devastated countryside, altering the country’s ethnic makeup. Take together, these factors severely retarded the country’s nation-building and nationalist ambitions, and it would not be until 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union that the country would achieve independence. In this paper I will describe the events which led up to the famine, the famine itself, the subsequent Russification of Ukraine, the extent of Stalin’s knowledge and intentions toward Ukraine, explanations for the famine including the role of ideology and the importance of individual personalities, outside reactions from foreign nations and journalists, and the famine’s lasting impact.

The crimes against humanity will never ever end unless people take up arms to protect and fight for their freedom and human rights as what lawyer Lemkin said. The UN has been doing everything in their power to stop the genocide around the world, but I think that they won’t succeed because there are some dictators in our world who lead their countries for their self-interest, and leave the people with cruel choice which is the hard choice between rather they want to follow their leader and be safe or not follow their leader and be killed by their leader. For example, in the movie called watchers of the sky is that they brought the president of Sudan Al basher as a leader who is against humanity by force the people of Darfur to follow his lead and not protesting against him. In addition, these human issues most likely happen in less developed counties like Rwanda where 200,000 people were killed in one month by a dictatorship in order to control the country, which could describe what realism stands for in term of win – lose game.

According to Daniel Goldhagen, genocides are constantly being underestimated, which causes the never ending realities of the past repeating itself. From high officials to ordinary citizens, people often overlook the pattern and causes of these systematic killings. One of these includes the UN, which was created to prevent another World War, and to protect the rights of sovereignty of member states. This organization serves to solve international issues, but has failed and continues to fail to prevent genocides. Even though this group signed in 1948 a UN document, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which punished and still punishes people guilty of genocide, not one life was ever saved from that declaration. The reason is because most at first want to deny that these extreme situations could happen ever again. Sadly,

In the beginning of 1932, the Soviet government had sharply increased the Ukraine's production quotas in the collectivized farms. This ensured that the people would not be able to meet them. This resulted in an even larger widespread of starvation. In the summer of 1932, Stalin ordered a decree that called for the arrest or execution of any person that was caught taking any amount of grain or food item from their place of work. This led to military blockades stationed around many Ukrainian villages, preventing food from coming in and the starving people from going out in search of food. Soviet guards were brought into the villages to confiscate any hidden grain. Eventually all food from any farmer’s home was taken. When news of the Famine reached the outside world, food supplies were sent from the United States and Britain, however through Stalin, the shipments were denied and new policies from the Soviet Union that denied their part in the famine refused all outside aid were instilled. Stalin refused entry even to journalists, as he feared the media would reveal the Soviet Unions’ crimes against the Ukraine.

Holodomor occurred during 1932-1933, but corrupt events and poor leadership led up to the famine and starvation. Vladimir Lenin, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924, declared Ukraine as an independent nation. Sadly, the new country’s government was very unstable and could not withstand. So, the country became a part of the Soviet Union once again. As a result of getting a taste of independence, a new pride and patriotism rose among the Ukrainians along with a political elite group. Joseph Stalin, who rose to power in 1924, saw that this wave of nationalism in Ukraine as a threat. So Stalin set up a new form of economic production called collectivism. Collectivism is where individual farmers were

     The world organization that concerns itself with issues parallel to genocide is the Commission on Human Rights. It is the commission’s duty to meet once a genocidal act occurred and was reported. Then the commission must develop different ways to mend the problem at task in a fair and just way. By doing so, the commission helps to fix this human right’s issue with the seven treaties.

The Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire against its minority Armenian population from 1915-1917 left an estimated 1.5 million dead and to date, not one individual has been tried for these egregious crimes. The mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in World War I and Jews by the Nazis in World War II shocked the conscience of the international community and led to the creation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), in order to hold the perpetrators of crimes of this magnitude accountable. In its preamble, the UN charter sets the objective to "establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained". The genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire and Nazis made it clear that an international standard must be set in order to protect the rights of individuals. The UN has attempted to establish international law with the creation of the CPPCG and other resolutions, however, these resolutions are simply words on paper unless they are properly enforced. In this essay I will be examining whether the United Nations have been successful in its enforcement international law, specifically the CPPCG.

Then, as the background of these two disasters are different, their purpose are also different. In the light of "the fact that Ukrainian officials informed Moscow of the situation in Ukraine and the Stalin’s letter to Kaganovich of 11 August 1932 that outlined his suspicions of the Ukrainian peasantry and his fear of 'losing Ukraine’"(Marples 506), we can infer that Stalin was afraid that Scotchman were not faithful to the central government and consequently he carried out some actions, Forced Famine, to both control and to punish

Genocide is one of the evillest moral crimes any ruling authority such as a government can commit against its people and it happens more than we think. A general definition of Genocide is the intention to destroy or murder people because of their race, beliefs, or even political and economic status. As we have been taught in this course Raphael Lemkin, created the term ‘Genocide’ 1944. Lemkin combined the ancient Greek word ‘genos’ which means race and the Latin word ‘cide’ which translates to killing. There are many examples of genocide in the world but the most recognizable is that of the Holocaust and how the German powers that be sought and attempted to kill all Jews. A recent example is the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 where the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana caused a violent reaction resulting in mass killings. In efforts to reduce Genocide, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNCG) was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 and was placed in force in 1951. On July 1, 2002 the International Criminal Court (ICC) came into force. The ICC not only accepted the UNCG’s definition of Genocide but expanded it to include crimes against humanity such as enslavement, deportation, torture, rape, enforced disappearance and apartheid. There have been many organizations created throughout the world to defend and prevent genocide and even communities, religions and even colleges are forming organizations and these are just some examples of how

The "intent to destroy" certain groups is unique to the characterisation of genocide. Closely related categories of international law "crimes touching humanity" aredescribed as adverse or calculated attacks against citizens.This timeline marks the growth of the term "genocide" and its systematization into international law.

Genocide is a term that can be defined as a planned and systematic destruction of whole or parts of certain national, religious, race, ethnic, cultural or political group (Akhavan 21). Genocide is deliberated with a different set of actions for a purpose to destroy an essential foundation of life. Genocide is characterized with the massive killing of members of a group, causing mental or bodily injuries to a group of people, imposing mechanisms to prevent birth, removing particular group children and putting conditions of life in order to bring to an end existence of a particular group. Therefore, genocide is an illegal action and a crime recognized and punishable by international law (Charmy 35). For instance, Rwanda genocide is characterized by ethnic tensions within the country. Initially the definition of the term genocide as by genocide convection only comprised of racial, ethnic, national and religious groups. They argued that inclusion of other groups cannot strengthen but rather weakens it. This definition failed to recognize other groups such as political groups, economic and cultural groups that are essential elements of genocide. Genocide therefore, is generally considered the worst moral crime the ruling authority can commit against those it controls Naimark (2017).

To better understand the atrocities of these wars, one must have knowledge of the definitions of certain terms and war crimes. The ideas of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” are often thrown