Back on 13th April, the BBC journalist George Wright asked the question, " Ukraine war: Is Russia committing genocide?". At least 500 dead bodies were found as Ukrainian forces re-entered the city of Bucha, near Kyiv, following the Russian army's retreat. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared to the world, "That is real genocide, what you have seen here". He was supported in this claim by Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who stated that the what happened in Bucha and other places near the capital Kyiv "must be called acts of genocide and be dealt with as such" and by the US President Jo Biden, who said the killings do not "look far short of genocide". However, there was not a consensus amongst world statesmen that what was happening in Ukraine could be classified as genocide; for example, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, was reluctant to use the term as he was against an"escalation of rhetoric".
The issue of what acts of killing could be called genocide came to my mind as last Sunday, 24th April, was Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. It is held annually to commemorate what 33 countries in the world now recognise as genocide: in 915 it is claimed that 1.5 million Armenians were either massacred or starved to death by the authorities of the Ottoman Empire. The Republic of Turkey has and continues to deny that any genocide of the Armenians took place. Although the present Turkish Government recognise many Armenians were killed during the First World War, it argues they were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces. Turkey both contests the figures and denies the killings were systematically orchestrated: therefore, the killings of the Armenians do not constitute genocide.
The Turkish denial appears to be based on an argument that the killing of the Armenians fails to meet two key criteria that define the term genocide: that the killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group is both deliberate and aims to completely destroy that nation or group. The word “genocide” was first coined ( from the Greek) in 1944 by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in his book about the Nazi's occupation of European countries. In the book, he described the systematic murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust as genocide but he also extended the concept to previous instances in history of targeted actions "aimed at the destruction of particular groups of people".
In 1946 the United Nations General Assembly recognised genocide as a crime under international law and by 1948 it was codified in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Under Article II genocide ... means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the 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;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Not every member of the UN has recognised the Convention but the International Court of Justice has clearly stated that the principles of the Convention are part of international law, so that all states, regardless of whether they have ratified the Convention, are bound by the principle that genocide is a crime. The most difficult part of determining the crime of genocide is linked to the idea of 'intent'. It must be possible to prove that the perpetrators set out to physically destroy (cultural destruction does not qualify) a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
In 2015 the European Parliament accepted a motion that the massacre of Armenians ordered by the Ottoman officials was a genocide. In 2019, much to the chagrin of the Turkish President Erdogan, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution by 405 votes to 11 recognising the Armenian genocide. The Senate then passed the resolution with a unanimous vote, defying President Donald Trump who opposed recognition of the Armenian genocide. In the UK there is the bizarre situation that the devolved governments of Wales and Scotland recognize the Armenian genocide but the British government does not, as it considers that the evidence is not clear to categorise "the terrible events that afflicted the Ottoman Armenian population at the beginning of the last century" as genocide under the 1948 UN convention. Last year the Labour MP for Warley, John Spellar introduced a Private Member's Bill requiring the British Government to formally recognise the Armenian genocide of 1915-16. The Bill gets its second reading in the House of Commons on 6th May. In reality, it is unlikely the Bill will succeed as it does not have the backing of the Government. As Tim Loughton the Conservative MP for East Worthing and Shoreham remarked, "the UK Foreign Office shamefully stated in a 1999 internal memorandum, 'Given the importance of our relationship (political, strategic, commercial) with Turkey… recognizing the [Armenian] genocide would provide no practical benefit to the UK.'”
When it comes to whether the Russian President Vladimir Putin is committing genocide against the Ukrainian people the question of 'intent' is still unclear. There is good evidence that war crimes are being committed against Ukrainian civilians. Jo Biden has told reporters “It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out even the idea of being Ukrainian. We’ll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies [as genocide], but it sure seems that way to me.” In the end, it will be those recognised experts and lawyers who will determine if Putin can be, figuratively, put in the dock for committing genocide.