The author argues that the proposed provisions of Article 126c of the Penal Code – inasmuch as it penalizes the person who publicly and contrary to facts denies the crimes of genocide – should be assessed negatively. The expert points out that the content of the above-mentioned provisions is partly covered by personal and material scope of regulation of the current provisions of Article 55 of the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance as it concerns the denial of the crime against peace, humanity. He also claims that the proposed provisions concerning the offence of negationism, by making reference to “act of genocide” (whose elements are specified in Article 118 of the Penal Code), provides for too broad scope of penalization.
The article is based on a rich and valuable literature presenting the tragic events occurred in the western part of USSR in the years 1937–1838, when more than hundred thousand people accused of spying for Poland were arrested and many of them were killed. The campaign against the Polish people was initiated by the official order number 00485 issued on 11 August 1937 and signed by the Soviet People’s Commissar for State Security Nikolai Yezhov.
Raphael Lemkin is hardly known to a Polish audiences. One of the most honored Poles of the XX century, forever revered in the history of human rights, nominated six times for the Nobel Peace Prize, Lemkin sacrificed his entire life to make a real change in the world: the creation of the term “genocide” and making it a crime under international law. How long was his struggle to establish what we now take as obvious, what we now take for granted? This paper offers his short biography, showing his long road from realizing that the killing one person was considered a murder but that under international law in 1930s the killing a million was not. Through coining the term “genocide” in 1944, he helped make genocide a criminal charge at the Nuremburg war crimes trials of Nazi leaders in late 1945, although there the crime of genocide did not cover killing whole tribes when committed on inhabitants of the same country nor when not during war. He next lobbied the new United Nations to adopt a resolution that genocide is a crime under international law, which it adopted on 11 December, 1946. Although not a U.N. delegate – he was “Totally Unofficial,” the title of his autobiography – Lemkin then led the U.N. in creating the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted 9 December, 1948. Until his death in 1958, Lemkin lobbied tirelessly to get other U.N. states to ratify the Convention. His legacy is that, as of 2015, 147 U.N. states have done so, 46 still on hold. His tomb inscription reads simply, “Dr. Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), Father of the Genocide Convention”. Without him the world as we know it, would not be possible.
The article aims at describing the genocide that happened in Cambodia. It takes into consideration its specific character and focuses on what occurred there. During the Khmer Rouge’s dictatorship not only were hundreds of thousands of people murdered (about 2.5 million victims according to different sources), but also negative symbols became connected with objects of everyday use. Such objects have become a source of memories about events which were final, inevitable and traumatic.
Rwanda today faces various challenges of civilization, first of all, however, it has ti copy with the legacy of the ehnic genocide. Not surprisingly, that one of the fundamental tasks that the country and its government set itself after 1994 became the problem of the legal judgement of persons responsible for genocide and of the establishing of national unity, which would prevent Rwanda from the next conflict. Therefore, apart from judging on a massive scale all those guilty of crimes, the government has taken parallel action for the idea of commemorating the victims and began the process of building national unity. Today, Rwanda is a place for education which aims at the creation of a one national community and the state, in other words „education for the community”.
A free media is crucial for a functioning democracy, but if not truly free, paves the way for manipulation of views, thus cannot to bring democratic changes. Rwandan media played important role before and during the extermination and after this tragedy. Political elites used the Rwandan media like a weapon of words – they demonized Tutsi ethnic population group and aligned with the government spreads hate. Also after the slaughter opposite media were being brutally suppressed, journalists were killed and because of that some of newspapers stopped publication. This article presents the role of the Rwandan media over the period 1990–2016.
This article situates the German colonial genocides of the 20th century - the Herero genocide and the Holocaust - in a longer history of European colonial genocides, arguing the importance of this wider historical context in genocide scholarship. It explores how the 1948 United Nations genocide convention and the definition of the term “genocide” can affect how one studies various kinds of mass killing, drawing on Christopher Powell’s “relational” concept of genocide to argue that genocide scholars should study both physical and cultural methods of genocide as they work to understand colonial violence. After a brief overview of the Herero genocide, this article then demonstrates several important philosophical and practical links not only between the Herero genocide and the Holocaust, but also between these and earlier colonial genocides by other European nations. The concluding section explores why a historically-situated understanding of the interrelationships among European colonial genocides is crucial to a nuanced understanding of genocide overall.
The article presents the issue of the obligation to prevent the crime of genocide in reference o legal regulations and practice. The legal framework to analyse genocide is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The document imposes very specific responsibilities on the contracting parties – to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. However, the regulations lack precision and clarity. For instance, it has not been clarified what “preventing genocide” entails. No measures, methods or actions have been enumerated that could serve as means to prevent genocide. The unclear and unprecise regulations leave the parties a lot of space for interpretation, in a way legitimizing “not taking action”. The signatories shy away from the obligation to prevent the crime or intervene only if their particular interest is at stake. The events in Rwanda, Bosnia or Darfur are the shameful exemplifications of this fact.
The article presents findings contained in the work by Arkadiusz Morawiec entitled Literatura polska wobec ludobójstwa. Rekonesans [Polish literature faced with genocide. Reconnaissance]. The scholar from Łódź calls into question the hitherto established hierarchy of genocides. Extensive comparative research into literary representations of particular wartime massacres is what constitutes the thematic pivot of the said treatise, which joins in the discussion scope outlined by genocide studies. Subsequent chapters of the presented book are devoted to literary reverberations of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by Turks, the Nazi-Germany extermination of persons with physical and mental retardation as well as Sinti and Roma, the Srebrenica massacres carried out by Serbs. The remaining chapters deal with the Holocaust literature and, according to the author’s intentions, an attempt to enrich the state of research, and sometimes – to amend some of their findings.
The main aim of the article is to conduct a comparison between the Armenian Genocide (1915) and the Hayırsızada Dog Massacre (1911). The second event is practically forgotten. Many people think that the story of how all the stray dogs in Istanbul were trapped and sent to a desert island, Sivriada, where they died due to hunger and thirst, is only a urban legend. However, it’s a historical fact, similar to the death marches of the Armenians. Both animals and people were killed in the same way – they were deported to a godforsaken territory and left there without any help. So one could say that the Hayırsızada Dog Massacre somehow foretold the Armenian Genocide. The author of this article refers to different works of art (such as Psy z Üsküdar/ The Dogs of Üsküdar – a joint work created by Joanna Rajkowska and Sebastian Cichocki, or Chienne d‘histoire – a short animation directed by Serge Avédikian, and several others), which try to remind us about the massacre of the homeless dogs in Istanbul. It is also worth mentioning that, in the descriptions of the massacres of Armenians which preceded the Armenian Genocide, associations with the killing of animals are very common.
This article assesses the impact of legal rules aimed at preventing genocide. The specific features of the legal obligation to prevent genocide are analyzed in light of the current debate on the “responsibility to protect” and the ICJ’s stance on the issue in Bosnia v Serbia. While the content of positive obligations such as the one under discussion is usually elaborated through the case law of judicial or quasi-judicial bodies, the ICJ refrained from doing so, stating that only manifest breaches of the obligation to prevent genocide give rise to international responsibility. The author seeks an explanation for the reasons underlying such an approach, and tries to identify other ways in which legal standards in the field of genocide prevention could be developed.
The parliamentary debate on commemorating murdered Poles on the 60th anniversary of the Volhynian tragedy showed the levels of political conflict in Poland. The parliamentary divisions on the commemoration of the tragic events did not follow the left – right axis. In principle, all political parties wanted to establish good Polish–Ukrainian relations. However, there were strong divisions in the assessment of historical facts which continually caused tension in bilateral Polish-Ukrainian relations.
The article presents an analysis of the essayistic knowledge about genocide. For this purpose, the author used works by Martin Pollack. Further, the article indicates the intertwining of two threads in Pollack’s prose. The first one is the history of his family, recollections about Nazi relatives, and the dissonance which formed inside him regarding his family’s past. The other one is the study of space understood as uncovering its “contamination”, the sinister past which has marked the specific portion of the landscape. The aim of the article is to check whether it is possible to decontaminate, i.e. expunge that contamination from these landscapes in order to make them once again locations which foster life rather than are mere empty cemeteries.
The author discusses the issue of the presence of the Holocaust in Edgar Hilsenrath’s novel “The Story of the Last Thought”. Hilsenrath is a Holocaust survivor, and that experience allows him to write about the Armenian genocide, but also affects the substance of his book. It turns out that one can notice similarities not only in the causes and process of each of the genocides, but also in the reaction of the world, which was one of silence. The author states that the silence about Armenian genocide has not been broken. This condition is one of the reasons for the absence of books about the Armenian genocide in the consciousness of readers and entire societies.
The study discusses the applied research conducted by the author in Rwanda. The aim was to confirm or refute the basic thesis of the key relevance of situational factors for the construction of dehumanization and the initiation of mass violence in Rwandan society in general. The respondents in the field research were perpetrators and victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Semi-structured interview was chosen as the qualitative research method.
Poland has experienced two cruel systems. One of them was fascism, symbolized by the German Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The second one was Stalinism, Katyn will remain its symbol forever. For over 50 years, no other issue in Polish-Soviet relations was as concealed as the Katyn massacre. In this essay, I will talk about the genocide in 1940 on 22,000 Poles (soldiers and civilians), investigations in this matter, and the fight for the truth. Everyone knew that any public statement about this crime could have significant consequences, such as dismissal from work or school expulsion. The Katyn genocide was a war crime that was first concealed and then distorted for the longest time. It can be said that it was a crime against the Polish nation.For many years, the press, radio, and television did not talk about it. On April 13, 2020, Polish people celebrated the Katyn Massacre Remembrance Day. In the spring of the year 1940, during two months in and around Katyn (currently in Russia), executioners from the NKVD, ordered by the Soviet authorities, murdered 21,857 prisoners of war with a shot in the back of the head. NKVD-People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. This enormously evil deed of the Bolsheviks is called the Golgotha of the East. Golgotha is a place near Jerusalem where convicts were executed. Christians believe that Jesus Christ was crucified in this place. Similarly, innocent Polish officers were killed at this place of execution. The name of the crime comes from the village of Katyń near Smolensk, where victims were murdered and buried.
The Holodomor and Katyn Massacre are founding crimes of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc’s state. Their common feature was an attempt to annihilate nations and prevent them from achieving independence. Quite often, both crimes are called genocide, but their legal qualification from the perspective of the then international law is extremely difficult. However, there are solid grounds for qualifying both of these crimes, and particularly the Katyn Massacre, as genocide. As a result of the development of the law of armed conflicts in international law in the 1930s and 1940s, there was a ban on committing acts that the 1948 Convention defined as genocide.
The paper is focused on the analysis of the lessons learned from the genocides in the 20th century for the existing situation in Ukraine. Apart from the short overview of the history behind the term genocide and the adoption of the convention for its prevention and punishment in the post-World War II period, the paper explores the main specifics of the selected genocides (Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia). On the basis of the identified specifics, several conclusions and lessons have been drawn, including the expectation that mass atrocities will happen again and that international justice is often slow and deals with a limited number of perpetrators.
The aim of this paper is to present the prognosis of the judgment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Ratko Mladic´ case. Mladic´, who served as a general of the Bosnian Serb army, is responsible for the crimes committed in Srebrenica and Sarajevo. Based on the list of charges against Mladic´, and taking into account the previous ICTY judgments, the authoress makes an attempts to prove that Mladic´ will be convicted for crimes of genocide as well as unlawful attacks and terrorising the civilian population (the latter ones being war crimes). Moreover, General Mladic´ as the chief of staff of the Bosnian Serb army was giving orders to his subordinates including generals Krstic´ and Galic´. An analysis of their cases has also been made for the purpose of the paper, to the extent useful and meaningful to the Mladic´ case. It is then concluded that having been the Krtic´’s and Galic´’s commander, Mladic´ should also be found guilty of the same crimes they have been found to have committed.
PL
Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie prognozy wyroku Międzynarodowego Trybunału Karnego ds. Zbrodni w b. Jugosławii (MTKJ) w sprawie Ratko Mladicia, generała armii bośniackich Serbów odpowiedzialnego za zbrodnie popełnione w Srebrenicy oraz Sarajewie. Po wskazaniu stawianych mu zarzutów autorka próbuje wykazać, że – biorąc pod uwagę dotychczasowe orzecznictwo MTKJ – Mladić zostanie uznany winnym zbrodni ludobójstwa w Srebrenicy oraz bezprawnych ataków i terroryzowania ludności cywilnej (te ostatnie jako zbrodnie wojenne). Mladić jako szef sztabu głównego armii bośniackich Serbów wydawał rozkazy swoim podwładnym (m.in. generałom Krsticiowi i Galiciowi). W artykule zostały przeanalizowane ich sprawy w takim zakresie, w jakim mają znaczenie dla sprawy Mladicia. Ten ostatni jako ich przełożony wydający im rozkazy powinien zostać uznany winnym takich samych zbrodni jak oni, to jest tych wymienionych wyżej.
The purpose of this article is to present the genesis of the Chechen-Russian conflict, including the genocide of Chechens. The analysis explains how the aggressive actions of the Russian authorities were supposed to deal with “the strongest and most dangerous nation” of the Caucasus, in order to subjugate this region. Russian behaviour proves that their priority over the centuries was not an assimilation of Chechens and the peaceful solution of the conflict, but rather an “imperial” dimension of the strife, or to be exact, the ultimate conquest of the Caucasus, even if it would mean the extermination of the Chechen nation.
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