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isaiahromero15
isaiahromero15
28.01.2021 • 
History

"Exactly a century ago, on April 24th 1915, Ottoman officials rounded up scores of Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul, most of whom were later murdered. What followed is still bitterly contested. According to the official Turkish version, perhaps 500,000 Armenians died, some while fighting alongside invading Russians against Ottoman forces and others as a regrettable side-effect of deportations that were understandable in the context of the times. But many scholars say that 1m–1.5m Armenians died, and that their deaths were a result of a deliberate campaign to eliminate the Ottoman empire’s only sizeable Christian population. Members of the Armenian diaspora want the events recognised as genocide. What marks genocide out from other mass killings, and why does it matter what word is used? In 1948 the United Nations adopted a convention aimed at preventing and punishing genocide, which it defined as the ‘deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnical, racial, religious or national group’. Getting agreement on the text involved compromises. Targeting victims because of their class, for example, was not classed as genocide: Stalin would hardly have signed if it meant being held to account for his mass slaughters of ‘middle peasants’ and the like.”

An excerpt from "What Counts as a Genocide,” by H. J., The Economist, April 24, 2015

a) Identify ONE way that the killing of Jewish people during the Holocaust fits the author’s definition of genocide.
b) Explain ONE specific historical example (outside of the author’s example and the example in prompt A) of an act of genocide, based on the author’s definition of genocide.
c) Explain ONE specific historical example of a mass killing that would not meet the author’s definition of genocide.

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