Cultural genocide
Cultural genocide or cultural cleansing is a concept that lawyer Raphael Lemkin distinguished in 1944 as a component of genocide. The precise definition of "cultural genocide" remains contested. However, The Armenian Genocide Museum defines cultural genocide as "acts and measures undertaken to destroy nations' or ethnic groups' culture through spiritual, national, and cultural destruction."
Some ethnologists, such as Robert Jaulin, use the term "ethnocide" as a substitute for "cultural genocide", although this usage has been criticized as engendering a risk of confusing ethnicity with culture. The term was considered in the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and juxtaposed next to the term "ethnocide." However, it was removed in the final document, and simply replaced with "genocide".
Definition of "Cultural genocide"
Cultural genocide involves the eradication and destruction of cultural artifacts, such as books, artworks, and structures, and the suppression of cultural activities that do not conform to the destroyer's notion of what is appropriate. Motives may include religious ones, as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing in order to remove the evidence of a people from a specific locale or history, as part of an effort to implement a Year Zero, in which the past and its associated culture is deleted and history is "reset", the suppression of an indigenous culture by invaders and colonisers, along with many other potential reasons.History
Origin of the term "Cultural genocide"
As early as 1944, lawyer Raphael Lemkin distinguished a cultural component of genocide, which since then has become known as "cultural genocide". The term has since acquired rhetorical value as a phrase that is used to actions that destroy cultural heritage and tradition. It is also often misused as a catchphrase to condemn any form of destruction which the speaker disapproves of, without regard for the criterion of intent to destroy an affected group as such.Proposed inclusion in UN's DRIP
The drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention considered the use of the term, but later dropped it from their consideration. The legal definition of genocide is unspecific about the exact way in which genocide is committed, only stating that it is destruction with the intent to destroy a racial, religious, ethnic or national group as such.Article 7 of a 1994 draft of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples used the phrase "cultural genocide" but did not define what it meant. The complete article in the draft read as follows:
This wording only appeared in a draft. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly during its 62nd session at UN Headquarters in New York City on 13 September 2007, but only mentions "genocide, or any other act of violence" in Article 7. The concept of "ethnocide" and "cultural genocide" was removed in the version adopted by the General Assembly, but the sub-points noted above from the draft were retained in Article 8 that speaks to "the right not to be subject to forced assimilation".
List of genocides
The term has been used to describe the destruction of cultural heritage in connection with various events:- The persecution of Bahá'ís in Iran as a case of religious persecution has been called a cultural genocide.
- In reference to the Axis powers 's policies towards some nations during World War II.
- In the Bosnian War during the Siege of Sarajevo, culturcide was committed by Bosnian Serb forces. The National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina was specifically targeted and besieged by cannons positioned all around the city. The National Library was completely destroyed in the fire, along with 80 percent of its contents. Some 3 million books destroyed, along with hundreds of original documents from the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
- In Destruction of books in Croatia around 2.8 million books written in Serbian Cyrillic or the ekavian dialect or books published by non Croatian publishers, particularly works of ideological literature were destroyed.
- 2004 unrest in Kosovo In an urgent appeal, issued on 18 March by the extraordinary session of the Expanded Convocation of the Holy Synod of Serbian Orthodox Church, it was reported that a number of Serbian churches and shrines in Kosovo had been damaged or destroyed by rioters. At least 30 sites were completely destroyed, more or less destroyed, or further destroyed.
- In reference to Francoist Spain, the alleged prohibition of the use of minority languages such as Catalan in the public space, from schools to shops, public transport, or even in the streets, the banning of the use of Catalan birth names for children, the persecution and destruction of books in Catalan language, renaming of cities, streets and all toponyms from Catalan to Spanish, and the abolition of government and all cultural institutions in Catalonia, with the goal of total cultural suppression and assimilation: John D. Hargreaves writes that "A policy of cultural genocide was implemented: the Catalan language and key symbols of Catalan independent identity and nationhood, such as the flag, the national hymn and the national dance, were proscribed. Any sign of independence or opposition, in fact, was brutally suppressed. Catalan identity and consequently the Catalan nation were threatened with extinction.". However this allegations can be contested, Josep Pla and other Catalan authors published books in Catalan in the 1950s, and even there were prizes of Catalan Literature during Francoism like the Premi Sant Jordi de novel·la. Other prominent case of popularization of Catalan was Joan Manuel Serrat: he could compose Catalan songs and gained certain notoriety. So there were no official repression on using the Catalan but a political one.
- In reference to the newly-unified Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam War.
- In 2007, a Canadian Member of Parliament criticized the Ministry of Indian Affairs' destruction of documents which were evidence to the "cultural genocide" imposed on Indigenous peoples within Canada.
- The destruction by Azerbaijan of thousands of medieval Armenian gravestones at a cemetery in Julfa, and Azerbaijan's subsequent denial that the site had ever existed, has been cited as an example of cultural genocide.
- Branch of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the German occupation of Poland and the Japanese occupation of Korea have also been cited as cases of cultural genocide.
- In 1989, Robert Badinter, a French criminal lawyer known for his stance against the death penalty, used the term "cultural genocide" on a television show to describe what he said was the disappearance of Tibetan culture in the presence of the 14th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama would later use the term in 1993 and he would use it again in 2008.
- Historian Jean Brownfield cited the 1638 Treaty of Hartford as a "clear and explicit historical example of a cultural genocide, in which the Pequot language and name were outlawed and there was a clearly stated intention that this cultural entity would simply cease to exist."
- Reportedly, some one million members of China's Muslim Uyghurs minority have been detained in mass detention camps, termed "reeducation camps", which are aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs. Satellite evidence suggests that China has also razed more than two dozen Uyghur Muslim religious sites to the ground.
- Armenian cultural heritage in Turkey
- The Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concluded that the Canadian Indian residential school system "can best be described as 'cultural genocide.'"
- ISIL forced conversions in its territory and destroyed ancient Assyrian, Roman, Yazidi and Christian heritage sites and museums.
- In 2015, Beverly McLachlin, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, stated in a speech to the Global Centre for Pluralism that Canada's historical treatment of Indigenous peoples was an attempt at cultural genocide, and "the worst stain on Canada's human-rights record".
- Hmong persecution in Laos
- In 2018, Tomás Mac Síomóin described cultural genocide in Ireland carried out under British rule, aimed at eradicating the Irish language, Irish culture and the Catholic faith. Ireland is also discussed in the Dictionary of Genocide. Christopher Murray called the suppression of the Irish language "cultural genocide" in Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror Up to Nation. Transportation of Irish convicts to Australia is mentioned as part of the cultural genocide in Hilary M. Carey's Believing in Australia: A Cultural History of Religions.