Origin of the term "Genocide"

[manjida]

After Second  World War Winston Churchil the then Prime minister of Great Britain termed “Extermination of Jews by the Nazi”as Genocide which derives its origin from Greek word genos which means “race” or “tribe” and a Latin word cide, which means “killer” or “act of killing”.
From its origin of word, we can easily understand that genocide means the killing of a group of people.
 In broader sense, genocide includes within its ambit some other heinous crime. Afterwards many definition of Genocide has been given by different International
Instruments.If we analyze the definitions of genocide as provided by different international instruments, it becomes clear that some conditions must be satisfied to treat a crime as genocide, for example, a killing or seriously injuring the members of a group of people with the intention of destroying the group. The reason of genocide may be either for racial or religion or for any other reason.

[Ferdousi Begum]

A legal definition of Genocide can be found in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide , 1948 (CPPCG). Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: 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; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
For example, in 1971 in our country in Bangladesh, genocide consisted of numerous atrocities and human rights abuses, beginning with Operation Searchlight on 25 March 1971 and continuing during the Bangladesh Liberation War, in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh.) Massacres, killings, rape, arson and systematic elimination of Hindus, political dissidents and the members of the liberation forces of Bangladesh were conducted by the Pakistan Army, with support from local political and religious militias.