Armenian Genocide as an Act of Eliminationism
Introduction
The word genocide refers to the destruction of a nation or a particular ethnic group. The word is coined from Greek words ‘genos’ and ‘cide’. Genos means race or tribe while cide means killing. A genocide is not always the immediate destruction of a nation or tribe except when it is done by the mass killing of the members of a nation or tribe. Rather genocides signify a gradual coordinated plan composed of different actions aimed at destroying the essential foundations of a group with the aim of annihilating the group. The goals of such a plan would be to disintegrate the political and social institutions of religion, culture, language and economic existence of the group. It would also involve the destruction of their liberty, health, personal security and dignity (Miller et al., 1999). Genocide has taken place in various parts of the world. Some of the most prominent genocides have taken place in countries such as Rwanda, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sudan. These genocides have resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people. Even today, there are some countries that have been placed on the Genocide Watchlist where the risk of genocide eruption is high.
After the Armenian genocide also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the United Nations used the term genocide in creating the convention on prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. The Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts committed with the intention of destroying wholly or in a part an ethnic, racial, national or religious group. The convention outlines acts such as mass killing of the members of the group, inflicting serious bodily or mental harm on the members of the group, inflicting conditions of life aimed at bringing about physical destruction of the group, imposing measures that will prevent births within the group and forcibly moving children of a group to another group.
Goldhagen saw genocide as an aspect of a bigger phenomenon that needed to be recognized. He came up with the word eliminationism to define this phenomenon of mass killing and other acts that perpetrators use to get rid of hated or unwanted groups. Goldhagen & Daniel (2009) gave the five main eliminationism tools as forced transformation, extreme repression, expulsion, prevention of production and extermination.
Acts of Eliminationism in the Armenian Genocide
The Armenian genocide was a Turks systematic campaign to get rid of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire. The victims are estimated to number between 800,000 and 1.5 million (Miller et al., 1999). This particular genocide is considered to be among the first modern genocides because of the organized manner through which killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians.
1. Forced transformation
This includes acts such as religious transformation and destroying a group’s social, political and cultural identities (Goldhagen & Daniel, 2009). Before the genocide, some of the Armenians were leading very affluent lives in Turkey. However, the genocide had a leveling socioeconomic effect on those who survived. All their education was halted, and only a few have received education beyond what they had. Some of the survivors live very humble lifestyles today (Panian, 2015).
2. Extreme repression
This act of eliminationism involves using threats and violence to reduce a group’s ability to inflict imagined or real harm to other groups. The Ottoman military accomplished this in the first phase of their genocide. They subjected the well-bodied men to forced labor and wholesale massacre (Panian, 2015).
3. Expulsion
This act of elimination is also known as deportation. It involves removing people thoroughly from their location and driving them beyond a country’s border or moving them to another region within the country. It may also involve concentrating them in camps. The Ottoman authorities began its systematic plan by rounding up some 250 community leaders and intellectuals who were arrested, deported and most of the eventually killed. After massacring the men, the Ottoman military deported the women, children and the elderly towards the Syrian Desert. The deportees lived through harsh life conditions being deprived of food and water; they were subjected to rape, periodic robbery, and massacres. According to witness accounts, many of the women deportees were stripped of their clothes and forced to continue the journey completely nude. Those who resisted were killed. Terrible sights were reported in Alepo where the only survivors of the genocide arrived. They looked terribly emaciated, sick and dirty. 3000 women and children arrived on one day, and 2000 arrived the following day. However the boys that miraculously made it to Alepo would later be summoned by police tied with ropes together in groups of 1000 and never to be heard of again (Miller et al., 1999).
4. Prevention of reproduction
This is another eliminationism option. It involves diminishing the normal biological reproduction of a group. The perpetrators prevent the members of a group from becoming pregnant and giving birth. This is done through sterilization. The perpetrators can also seek to weaken the group biologically by raping their women so they can give birth to children who are not ‘purely’ from the group (Goldhagen & Daniel, 2009). In Armenia, doctors were used to cause the death of children by injecting them with morphine.
5. Extermination
This is the final option of eliminationism. It involves complete elimination of the target group through radical killing. It offers a ‘final’ solution’ to the perpetrators. In Armenia, it is estimated that more than 800,000 people were exterminated. They used methods such as burning, drowning and use of poisons. A lieutenant from the Ottoman army described how an entire village would be taken altogether and burned. He said this was the quickest way of disposing people concentrated in camps. Children would be taken on a boat to the sea and thrown overboard. Other methods such as morphine overdose, use of toxic gasses and typhoid inoculation were also used. Witness accounts say that the number that was killed in the city was so great that the military and sanitary officials couldn’t cope. The bodies would be loaded onto ox carts and dumped into mass graves in a nearby cemetery (Miller et al., 1999).
Conclusion
The Armenian genocide was an act of eliminationism. This is well evidenced by the mass extermination, deportation, and prevention of production. Miller et al. (1999) observed that even the deportees were not lucky enough. The aim was death through attrition, and the boys who miraculously made it to Alepo were summoned by police never to be heard from again. In simple terms, the aim of the genocide was to eliminate one group; the Armenians and all the tools discussed above were used to meet this purpose.
References
Goldhagen &Daniel, J. (2009). Worse than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity. New York: Public Affairs.
Miller, Donald, E. & Lorna T. (1999). Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide. University of California Press
Panian, K. (2015). Goodbye, Antoura: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
