Crimes Against Humanity

Related Issue 2
Chapter 7

International Criminal Court

In 1998, the United Nations set up the
International Criminal Court to try people
accused of committing crimes against
humanity, genocide and war crimes. The
court developed definitions of these crimes.
The ICC in Hague, Netherlands

Naming the Crimes

Crimes Against Humanity refer to widespread or
systematic attacks against a civilian populationmurder, extermination, enslavement, deportation,
imprisonment, torture, rape or sexual slavery,
enforced disappearance of persons, and the crime
or apartheid

Naming the Crimes

Genocide refers to the killing of members of
a national, ethnic racial, or religious group;
causing serious bodily or mental harm to
members of the group; and deliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about physical destruction

Naming the Crimes

War Crimes refers to willful killing, torture, or
inhuman treatment; willfully causing great
suffering; intentionally directing attacks
against the civilian population, or against
those who are involved in a humanitarian or
peacekeeping mission.

What are considered to be Crimes

Against Humanity?
Crimes against humanity are particularly odious
(horrible) offenses in that they constitute a serious
attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a
degradation of one or more human beings.
They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are
part either of a government policy (although the
perpetrators need not identify themselves with this
policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities (brutalities)
tolerated or condoned by a government.
- Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

Crimes Against Humanity Includes:

Murder
Extermination
Torture
Rape
Apartheid
Political, racial, or religious persecution
Enforced disappearance
Severe deprivation of physical liberty
other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes
against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or
systematic practice.

The Enforced Disappearance of Persons

Occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or
political organization followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's
fate and whereabouts

Example: In the 1970s in Argentina, many alleged political

dissidents (rebels) were abducted or illegally detained
(imprisoned) by the government, where they were questioned,
tortured and sometimes killed.
Whenever the female captives were pregnant, their children were
stolen away right after giving birth, while they themselves remained
detained.
Eventually, many of the captives were heavily drugged and taken on
airplanes far out over the Atlantic Ocean, into which they were thrown
alive, allegedly with heavy weights tied to their feet, so as to leave no
trace of their passing.
Without any dead bodies, the government could easily deny any
knowledge of their whereabouts and any accusations that they had
been killed.
People murdered in this way (and in others) are today referred to as
"the disappeared" (los desaparecidos)

Mothers of the Disappeared

An activist group called "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo",
formed by mothers of those victims of the dictatorship, were
the inspiration for a song by Irish rock band U2, "Mothers of the

Disappeared
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvRWo8CXTpc

The Crime of Apartheid

Inhumane acts of a character similar to other
crimes against humanity "committed in the
context of an institutionalized regime of
systematic oppression and domination by one
racial group over any other racial group or groups
and committed with the intention of maintaining
that regime.
Comes from the Afrikkans word meaning
apartness
SEGREGATION

South African Apartheid

Apartheid, as an official policy, was

introduced following the general election
of 1948.
New legislation classified inhabitants into
four racial groups ("native", "white",
"coloured", and "Asian")
Residential areas were segregated,
sometimes by means of forced removals.
Non-white political representation was
completely abolished in 1970, and starting
in that year black people were deprived of
their citizenship
The government segregated education,
medical care, beaches, and other public
services, and provided black people with
services inferior to those of white people.

Murder
Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number
of people (four or more), typically at the same time or
over a relatively short period of time.
Mass murder may also be defined as the intentional
murder of a large number of people by government
agents.
Examples are:
the shooting of unarmed protestors
the carpet bombing of cities
the lobbing of grenades into prison cells
the random execution of civilians.

The Rape of Nanking

The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also
known as the Rape of Nanking, was a mass
murder, genocide and war rape that occurred
during the six-week period following the
Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing (Nanking),
the former capital of the Republic of China, on
December 13, 1937.
During this period approximately 300 000
Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were
murdered and 20 00080 000 women were
raped by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army.

Extermination or Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic
destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial,
religious, or national group
The United Nations says that it also includes:
killing members of the group
causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group
deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life,
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or
in part
imposing measures intended to prevent births within the
group
forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Darfur Genocide
In Darfur, Sudan, longstanding ethnic
differences has led to the Sudanese
government allowing the rape and killing of
hundreds of thousands of black, Sudanese
people and the displacement of many more.
Since 2003 it has been a systematic attack to
eliminate the non-Arab people from the area.

My camp is my home,
and the men here are a
part of my family. I do
not want to let them die
by the hands of the
militiamen. So I made a
decision in order to keep
the men out of danger, I
get the firewood myself.
That is my gift for them;
To face rape everyday.

We choose to sacrifice
ourselves for the men
because they can not
leave the camp to get
firewood. It is a
matter of life and
death. So we choose
to preserve their lives.
We choose to go out
ourselves. We chose
to get face to face with
the militiamen. We
choose to get raped.

Imprisonment or Severe Deprivation

of Physical Liberty
To take away a person or groups fundamental
freedoms without just cause or for personal gain.
Example: Former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet
An estimated 30,000 Chileans survived imprisonment
and severe torture by agents of Pinochet's secret
policeelectric shock, beatings, near-drowning, and
rape in secret detention facilities.