Politicide v. Genocide: An Analysis of the Exclusion of Political Groups from the United Nations Convention

PDF with text, charts, color photographs, and bibliography (pages 40-43).The purpose of this paper is to analyze historical cases of genocide and mass murder perpetrated against groups not expressly mentioned or under-represented in the United Nations Genocide Convention. Among historians and genocide scholars there is an agreed-upon theory on the progression of genocide; the processes necessary to get to elimination and murder of a group of people. What is missing from this dialogue is stateless nations, political groups, and other groups that exist in the minority of their society, putting them at risk of extermination. The purpose of this paper is to expand the conception of the process of genocide to those groups left out of the common historical dialogue. This paper will employ a case study method, analyzing primary sources from survivors and perpetrators alike, as well as international sources focusing on intervention, or lack thereof. The case study will focus on the White Terror in Spain which took place from 1936 until 1939. There will be supplementary cases focusing on the Cambodian Genocide and the Holodomor/Great Terror in the Soviet Union from 1930-1937. Primary sources will be supplemented with secondary sources from genocide scholars and historians that describe genocide processes, principles, and theories. These sources will be used to support the argument for a more inclusive definition of genocide from the United Nations and to provide a road map for groups that are less likely to see intervention based on a lack of information of their situation and its implication. This paper seeks to expand the definition and identify times in history in which historians, politicians, political scientists, and humanists viewed Genocide under a narrow lens leading to the death of persons and their social influences on culture