The Genocide In Rwanda

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However, Alain Destexhe, the author of Rwanda and Genocide, argues that these are not actual genocides because they do not fit Lemkin’s definition of the word or the definition put forth by the Convention for the Prevention and the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was established in 1948. The final definition is as follows:
Genocide is based on four constituent factors that include a criminal act, with the intention of destroying, an ethnic, national or religious group, targeted as such (Destexhe, 5).
Although all of these crimes were equally as horrible as the Nazis, they were not aimed at any of the mentioned groups in particular, so therefore they are not classified as genocide but rather as crimes against humanity.
The first “real” genocide of the 20th century occurred in 1915 in Turkey. The victims were the Armenians and the aggressors were the Young Turks or the Ittihad. Close to one million Armenians were

massacred as the Young Turks sought to transform the Ottoman Empire and create a fully Turkish, fully Moslem country. The next genocide was the most well known, that of Hitler and the Jews. The final genocide of the 20th century is one that is perhaps even lesser known than the massacre in Turkey. Its roots lay in the colonial ...