Genocide recognition politics

#	Name	Date of recognition	Source
1	Norway	21 November 2012	[19]
3	United Kingdom	1 March 2013	[20]
4	South Korea	13 June 2013	[21]

On 28 February 2013, the British House of Commons formally recognized the Anfal as genocide following a campaign led by Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi, who is of Kurdish descent.^[22]

Armenian genocide recognition is the formal acceptance that the systematic massacres and forced deportation of Armenians committed by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, during and after the First World War, constituted genocide. Most historians outside of Turkey recognize that the Ottoman persecution of Armenians was a genocide.^[23][24][25] However, despite the recognition of the genocidal character of the massacre of Armenians in scholarship as well as in civil society, some governments have been reticent to officially acknowledge the killings as genocide because of political concerns about their relations with the Republic of Turkey.^[26] As of 2021, governments and parliaments of 33 countries—including the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Russia and Brazil—have formally recognized the Armenian genocide.

Beginning in the 1990s, prior to the first academic research on the genocide, Assyrian diaspora groups began the quest for formal recognition of the Sayfo as genocide, patterned off earlier campaigns for Armenian genocide recognition.^[27][28] The Sayfo is recognized as a genocide by resolutions passed by the parliaments of Sweden (in 2010);^[29][30] Armenia,^[31] the Netherlands,^[32] and Austria (in 2015);^[33] Germany (in 2016)^[34] and Syria (in 2020).^[35][36] As of 2020, three American state legislatures (Arizona, California, and New York) have passed resolutions that officially recognize the Assyrian genocide. Ten other legislatures (Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington D.C., and West Virginia) have passed resolutions that recognize the Armenian genocide, but acknowledge the Assyrian victims in their text.^[37] In December 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution officially recognizing the Assyrian genocide.^[38][39][40]

The significant number of deaths under the Free State regime has led some scholars to relate the atrocities to later genocides, though understanding of the losses under the colonial administration's rule as the result of harsh economic exploitation rather than a policy of deliberate extermination has led others to dispute the comparison;^[42] there is an open debate as to whether the atrocities constitute genocide.^[43] According to the United Nations' 1948 definition of the term "genocide", a genocide must be "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".^[44] Sociologist Rhoda Howard-Hassmann stated that because the Congolese were not killed in a systematic fashion according to this criterion, "technically speaking, this was not genocide even in a legally retroactive sense."^[45] Hochschild and political scientist rejected allegations of genocide in the Free State because there was no evidence of a policy of deliberate extermination or the desire to eliminate any specific population groups,^[46][47] though the latter added that nevertheless there was "a death toll of Holocaust proportions."^[45]

It is generally agreed by historians that extermination was never the policy of the Free State. According to historian David Van Reybrouck, "It would be absurd ... to speak of an act of 'genocide' or a 'holocaust'; genocide implies the conscious, planned annihilation of a specific population, and that was never the intention here, or the result ... But it was definitely a hecatomb, a slaughter on a staggering scale that was not intentional, but could have been recognised much earlier as the collateral damage of a perfidious, rapacious policy of exploitation".^[49] Historian Barbara Emerson stated, "Leopold did not start genocide. He was greedy for money and chose not to interest himself when things got out of control."^[50] According to Hochschild, "while not a case of genocide, in the strict sense", the atrocities in the Congo were "one of the most appalling slaughters known to have been brought about by human agency".^[51][a]

Historians have argued that comparisons drawn in the press by some between the death toll of the Free State atrocities and the Holocaust during World War II have been responsible for creating undue confusion over the issue of terminology.^[54][55] In one incident, the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun used the word "genocide" in the title of a 2005 article by Hochschild. Hochschild himself criticised the title as "misleading" and stated that it had been chosen "without my knowledge". Similar criticism was echoed by historian .^[54][49]

Allegations of genocide in the Free State have become common over time.^[56] Political scientist Martin Ewans wrote, "Leopold's African regime became a byword for exploitation and genocide."^[57] According to historian , "Those who easily apply the term genocide to Leopold's regime seem to do so purely on the basis of its obvious horror and the massive numbers of people who may have perished."^[56] Robert Weisbord argued that there does not have to be intent to exterminate all members of a population in a genocide.^[55] He posited that "an endeavor to eliminate a portion of a people would qualify as genocide" according to the UN standards and asserted that the Free State did as much.^[45] Jeanne Haskin, Yaa-Lengi Meema Ngemi, and David Olusoga also referred to the atrocities as a genocide.^[45][58] In an unpublished manuscript from the 1950s, Lemkin, coiner of the term "genocide", asserted the occurrence of "an unambiguous genocide" in the Free State, attributing most of the population decline to the repressive actions of colonial troops.^[42] In 2005, an early day motion before the British House of Commons, introduced by Andrew Dismore, called for the recognition of the Congo Free State's atrocities as a "colonial genocide" and called on the Belgian government to issue a formal apology. It was supported by 48 MPs.^[59]

In 1999 Hochschild published King Leopold's Ghost, a book detailing the atrocities committed during the Free State existence. The book became a bestseller in Belgium, but aroused criticism from former Belgian colonialists and some academics as exaggerating the extent of the atrocities and population decline.^[50] Around the 50th anniversary of the Congo's independence from Belgium in 2010, numerous Belgian writers published content about the Congo. Historian Idesbald Goddeeris criticised these works—including Van Reybrouk's Congo: A History—for taking a softened stance on the atrocities committed in the Congolese Free State, saying "They acknowledge the dark period of the Congo Free State, but...they emphasize that the number of victims was unknown and that the terror was concentrated in particular regions."^[60]

The term "Congolese genocide" is often used in an unrelated sense to refer to the mass murder and rape committed in the eastern Congo in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide (and the ensuing Second Congo War) between 1998 and 2003.^[61][62]

The near-destruction of Tasmania's Aboriginal population has been described as an act of genocide by historians including Robert Hughes, James Boyce, Lyndall Ryan and Tom Lawson.^{[63][64][65][66]} The author of the concept of genocide, Raphael Lemkin, considered Tasmania the site of one of the world's clear cases of genocide^[67] and Hughes has described the loss of Aboriginal Tasmanians as "the only true genocide in English colonial history".^[63]

Boyce has claimed that the April 1828 "Proclamation Separating the Aborigines from the White Inhabitants" sanctioned force against Aboriginal people "for no other reason than that they were Aboriginal" and described the decision to remove all Aboriginal Tasmanians after 1832—by which time they had given up their fight against white colonists—as an extreme policy position. He concluded: "The colonial government from 1832 to 1838 ethnically cleansed the western half of Van Diemen's Land and then callously left the exiled people to their fate."^[68] As early as 1852 John West's History of Tasmania portrayed the obliteration of Tasmania's Aboriginal people as an example of "systematic massacre"^[69] and in the 1979 High Court case of Coe v Commonwealth of Australia, judge Lionel Murphy observed that Aboriginal people did not give up their land peacefully and that they were killed or forcibly removed from their land "in what amounted to attempted (and in Tasmania almost complete) genocide".^[70]

Historian Henry Reynolds says there was a widespread call from settlers during the frontier wars for the "extirpation" or "extermination" of the Aboriginal people.^[71] But he has contended that the British government acted as a source of restraint on settlers' actions. Reynolds says there is no evidence the British government deliberately planned the wholesale destruction of indigenous Tasmanians—a November 1830 letter to Arthur by Sir George Murray warned that the extinction of the race would leave "an indelible stain upon the character of the British Government"^[72]—and therefore what eventuated does not meet the definition of genocide codified in the 1948 United Nations convention. He says Arthur was determined to defeat the Aboriginal people and take their land, but believes there is little evidence he had aims beyond that objective and wished to destroy the Tasmanian race.^[73]

Clements accepts Reynolds' argument but also exonerates the colonists themselves of the charge of genocide. He says that unlike genocidal determinations by Nazis against Jews in World War II, Hutus against Tutsis in Rwanda and Ottomans against Armenians in present-day Turkey, which were carried out for ideological reasons, Tasmanian settlers participated in violence largely out of revenge and self-preservation. He adds: "Even those who were motivated by sex or morbid thrillseeking lacked any ideological impetus to exterminate the natives." He also argues that while genocides are inflicted on defeated, captive or otherwise vulnerable minorities, Tasmanian natives appeared as a "capable and terrifying enemy" to colonists and were killed in the context of a war in which both sides killed noncombatants.^[74]

Lawson, in a critique of Reynolds' stand, argues that genocide was the inevitable outcome of a set of British policies to colonise Van Diemen's Land.^[75] He says the British government endorsed the use of partitioning and "absolute force" against Tasmanians, approved Robinson's "Friendly Mission" and colluded in transforming that mission into a campaign of ethnic cleansing from 1832. He says that once on Flinders Island, indigenous peoples were taught to farm land like Europeans and worship God like Europeans and concludes: "The campaign of transformation enacted on Flinders Island amounted to cultural genocide."^[76]

In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June, 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the genocide. Newsom said, "That’s what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books."^[87] After hearing testimony, a Truth and Healing Council will clarify the historical record on the relationship between the state and California Native Americans.^[88]

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin's May 1994 statement admitted that resistance to the tsarist forces was legitimate, but he did not recognize "the guilt of the tsarist government for the genocide."^[89] In 1997 and 1998, the leaders of Kabardino-Balkaria and of Adygea sent appeals to the Duma to reconsider the situation and to issue an apology; to date, there has been no response from Moscow. In October 2006, the Adygeyan public organizations of Russia, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Syria, the United States, Belgium, Canada, and Germany have sent the president of the European Parliament a letter with the request to recognize the genocide against Adygean (Circassian) people.^[90]

On 5 July 2005, the , an organization that unites representatives of the various Circassian peoples in the Russian Federation, has called on Moscow first to acknowledge and then to apologize for tsarist policies that Circassians say constituted a genocide.^[91] Their appeal pointed out that "according to the official tsarist documents more than 400,000 Circassians were killed, 497,000 were forced to flee abroad to Turkey, and only 80,000 were left alive in their native area."^[89] The Russian parliament (Duma) rejected the petition in 2006 in a statement that acknowledged past actions of the Soviet and previous regimes while referring to in overcoming multiple contemporary problems and issues in the Caucasus through cooperation.^[91] There is concern by the Russian government that acknowledging the events as genocide would entail possible claims of financial compensation in addition to efforts toward repatriating diaspora Circassians back to Circassia.^[91]

On 21 May 2011, the Parliament of Georgia passed a resolution, stating that "pre-planned" mass killings of Circassians by Imperial Russia, accompanied by "deliberate famine and epidemics", should be recognized as "genocide" and those deported during those events from their homeland, should be recognized as "refugees". Georgia, which has poor relations with Russia, has made outreach efforts to North Caucasian ethnic groups since the 2008 Russo-Georgian War.^[92] Following a consultation with academics, human rights activists and Circassian diaspora groups and parliamentary discussions in Tbilisi in 2010 and 2011, Georgia became the first country to use the word "genocide" to refer to the events.^{[92][93][94][95]} On 20 May 2011 the parliament of the Republic of Georgia declared in its resolution^[96] that the mass annihilation of the Cherkess (Adyghe) people during the Russian-Caucasian war and thereafter constituted genocide as defined in the Hague Convention of 1907 and the UN Convention of 1948. The next year, on the same day of 21 May, a monument was erected in Anaklia, Georgia, to commemorate the suffering of the Circassians.^[97]

In Russia, a presidential commission has been set up to try and deny the Circassian genocide, with respect to the events of the 1860s.^[98]

On 1 December 2015, in the Great Union Day (the national day of Romania), a large number of Circassian representatives sent a request to the Romanian Government asking it to recognize the Circassian genocide. The letter was specifically sent to the President (Klaus Iohannis), the Prime Minister (Dacian Cioloș), the President of the Senate (Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu) and the President of the Chamber of Deputies (Valeriu Zgonea). The document included 239 signatures and was written in Arabic, English, Romanian and Turkish. Similar requests had already been sent earlier by Circassian representatives to Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland and Ukraine.^[99][100] In the case of Moldova, the request was sent on 27 August of the same year (2015), on the Moldovan Independence Day, to the President (Nicolae Timofti), the Prime Minister (Valeriu Streleț) and the President of the Parliament (Andrian Candu). The request was also redacted in Arabic, English, Romanian and Turkish languages and included 192 signatures.^[101][102]

The forced relocation, slaughter, and conditions during and after transfer have been described as on act of genocide by various scholars as well as the European Parliament^[103] on the basis of the IV Hague Convention of 1907 and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of the U.N. General Assembly (adopted in 1948), including French historian and expert on communist studies Nicolas Werth,^[104] German historian Philipp Ther,^[105] Professor Anthony James Joes,^[106] American journalist Eric Margolis,^[107] Canadian political scientist Adam Jones,^[108] professor of Islamic History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Brian Glyn Williams,^[109] scholars Michael Fredholm^[110] and Fanny E. Bryan.^[111] Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent who initiated the Genocide Convention, assumed that genocide was perpetrated in the context of the mass deportation of the Chechens, Ingush, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks and Karachay.^[112] German investigative journalist Lutz Kleveman compared the deportation to a "slow genocide".^[113] In this case this was acknowledged by the European Parliament as an act of genocide in 2004:^[103]

...Believes that the deportation of the entire Chechen people to Central Asia on 23 February 1944 on the orders of Stalin constitutes an act of genocide within the meaning of the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907 and the Convention for the Prevention and Repression of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948.^[114]

Experts of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum cited the events of 1944 for a reason of placing Chechnya on their genocide watch list for its potential for genocide.^[115] The separatist government of Chechnya also recognized it as genocide.^[116] Members of the Chechen diaspora and their supporters promote February 23 as World Chechnya Day to commemorate the victims.^[117]

The Chechens, along with the Ingush, Karachai and Balkars, are represented in the Confederation of Repressed Peoples (CRP), an organization that covers the former Soviet Union and aims to support and rehabilitate the rights of the deported peoples.^[118]

The draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes occurred in Iraq and to a smaller degree in Iran between the 1950s and 1990s to clear large areas of the marshes in the Tigris-Euphrates river system. Formerly covering an area of around 20,000 km² (7,700 sq mi), the main sub-marshes, the Hawizeh, Central, and Hammar marshes and all three were drained at different times for different reasons.

The draining of the marshes was undertaken primarily for political ends, namely to force the Marsh Arabs out of the area through water diversion tactics and to punish them for their role in the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein's government.^[119] However, the government's stated reasoning was to reclaim land for agriculture and exterminate a breeding ground for mosquitoes.^[120] The displacement of more than 200,000 of the Ma'dan and the associated state-sponsored campaign of violence against them has led the United States and others to describe the draining of the marshes as ecocide or ethnic cleansing.^{[121][122][123]}

The draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes has been described by the United Nations as a "tragic human and environmental catastrophe" on par with the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest^[124] and by other observers as one of the worst environmental disasters of the 20th century.^[125]

Many international organisations, governments and parliaments, as well as groups have classified ISIL's treatment of the Yazidis as genocide, and condemned it as such. The Genocide of Yazidis has been officially recognized by several bodies of the United Nations^[126][127] and the European Parliament.^[128] Many states have recognized it as well, for example the Armenian parliament,^[129] the Australian parliament,^{[130][better source needed]} the British parliament,^[131] the Canadian parliament,^[132] the Scottish Parliament,^[133] and the United States parliament.^[134] Multiple individual human rights activists such as Nazand Begikhani and Dr. Widad Akrawi have also advocated for this view.^[135][136]

•  United Nations:
  • In a March 2015 report, the persecution of the Yazidi people was qualified as a genocide by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR). The organization cited the numerous atrocities such as forced religious conversion and sexual slavery as being parts of an overall malicious campaign.^[137][138]
  • In August 2017, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) stated that 'ISIL committed the crime of genocide by seeking to destroy the Yazidis through killings, sexual slavery, enslavement, torture, forcible displacement, the transfer of children and measures intended to prohibit the birth of Yazidi children.' It added that the genocide was ongoing, and stating that the international community still must recognize the detrimental effects of the genocide. The Commission wrote that, while some countries may choose to overlook the idea of the genocide, the atrocities need to be understood and the international community needs to bring the killings to an end.^[139]
  • In 2018, the Security Council team enforced the idea of a new accountability team that would collect evidence of the international crimes committed by the Islamic State. However, the international community has not been in full support of this idea, because it can sometimes oversee the crimes that other armed groups are involved in.^[140]
  • On 10 May 2021, the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da'esh/ISIL (UNITAD) determined that ISIL's actions in Iraq constituted genocide.^{[141][142][143]}

•  Council of Europe: On 27 January 2016, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution stating: "...individuals who act in the name of the terrorist entity which calls itself "Islamic State" (Daesh) (...) have perpetrated acts of genocide and other serious crimes punishable under international law. States should act on the presumption that Daesh commits genocide and should be aware that this entails action under the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." However, it did not identify victims.^[144]

•  European Union: On 4 February 2016, the European Parliament unanimously passed a resolution to recognise 'that the so-called 'ISIS/Daesh' is committing genocide against Christians and Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities, who do not agree with the so-called 'ISIS/Daesh' interpretation of Islam, and that this therefore entails action under the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.'^[128][145] Additionally, it called for those who intentionally committed atrocities for ethnic or religious reasons to be brought to justice for violating international law, and committing crimes against humanity, and genocide.^[128][145]

•  United States: The United States Department of State has formally recognised the Yazidi genocide in areas under the control of ISIS in 2016 and 2017.^[146] On 14 March 2016, the United States House of Representatives voted unanimously 393-0 that violent actions performed against Yazidis, Christians, Shia and other groups by ISIL were acts of genocide. Days later on 17 March 2016, United States Secretary of State John Kerry declared that the violence initiated by ISIL against the Yazidis and others amounted to genocide.^[134]

•  United Kingdom: On 20 April 2016, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom unanimously supported a motion to declare that the treatment of Yazidis and Christians by the Islamic State amounted to genocide, to condemn it as such, and to refer the issue to the UN Security Council. In doing so, Conservative MPs defied their fellow party members in the UK government, who had tried to dissuade Tory MPs from making such a statement, because of the Foreign Office legal department's long-standing policy (dating back to the 1948 passing of the Genocide Convention) of refusing to give a legal description to potential war crimes. Foreign Office secretary Tobias Ellwood – who was jeered at and interrupted by MPs during his speech in the debate – stated that he personally believed genocide had taken place, but that it was not up to politicians to make that determination, but to the courts.^[131]

•  Canada: On 25 October 2016, the House of Commons of Canada unanimously supported a motion tabled by MP Michelle Rempel Garner (CPC) to recognise that ISIS was committing genocide against the Yazidi people, to acknowledge that ISIS still kept many Yazidi women and girls captive as sex slaves, to support and take action on a recent UN commission report, and provide asylum to Yazidi women and girls within 120 days.^[132]

•  France: On 6 December 2016, the French Senate unanimously approved a resolution stating that acts committed by the Islamic State against "the Christian and Yazidi populations, other minorities and civilians" were "war crimes", "crimes against humanity", and constituted a "genocide." It also invited the government to "use all legal channels" to have these crimes recognised, and the perpetrators tried.^[147] The National Assembly adopted a similar resolution two days later (originally tabled on 25 May 2016 by Yves Fromion of The Republicans), with the Socialist, Ecologist and Republican group abstaining and the other groups approving.^[148][149]

•  Scotland: On 23 March 2017, the Scottish Parliament adopted a motion stating: '[The Scottish Parliament] recognises and condemns the genocide perpetrated against the Yezidi people by Daesh [ISIS]; acknowledges the great human suffering and loss that have been inflicted by bigotry, brutality and religious intolerance, [and] further acknowledges and condemns the crimes perpetrated by Daesh against Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Kurds and all of the religious and ethnic communities of Iraq and Syria; welcomes the actions of the US Congress, the European Parliament, the French Senate, the UN and others in formally recognising the genocide'.^[133][150]

•  Armenia: In January 2018, the Armenian parliament recognised and condemned the 2014 genocide of Yazidis by the Islamic State, and called on the international community to conduct an international investigation into the events.^[151]

•  Israel: On 21 November 2018, a bill tabled by opposition MP Ksenia Svetlova (ZU) to recognise the Islamic State's killing of Yazidis as a genocide was defeated in a 58 to 38 vote in the Knesset. The coalition parties motivated their rejection of the bill by saying that the United Nations had not yet recognised it as a genocide.^[152]

•  Iraq: On 1 March 2021, the Iraq parliament passed the Yazidi [Female] Survivors Bill which provides assistance to survivors and "determines the atrocities perpetrated by Daesh against the Yazidis, Turkmen, Christians and Shabaks to be genocide and crimes against humanity."^[153] The law provides compensation, measures for rehabilitation and reintegration, pensions, provision of land, housing, and education, and a quota in public sector employment.^[154] On 10 May 2021, the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da'esh/ISIL (UNITAD) determined that ISIL's actions in Iraq constituted genocide.^[141]

•  Belgium: On 30 June 2021, the Foreign Relations Commission of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives unanimously approved a resolution by opposition representatives Georges Dallemagne (cdH) and  [nl] (N-VA) to recognise ISIL's August 2014 massacre of thousands of Yazidi men and enslavement of thousands of Yazidi women and children as genocide. The resolution, which would likely also pass with overwhelming approval in the Chamber itself, called on the Belgian government to increase its efforts to support victims, and prosecute perpetrators (either at the International Criminal Court, or at a new ad hoc tribunal).^[155] On 17 July 2021, the Belgian parliament unanimously voted to recognize the suffering of the Yazidis at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 as a genocide.^[156]

•  Netherlands: On 6 July 2021, the Dutch House of Representatives unanimously passed a motion tabled by MP Anne Kuik (CDA) which recognised the crimes of Islamic State against the Yazidi population as a genocide and crimes against humanity.^[157]

Following an initiative of MPs of the so-called "patriotic" wing of the ruling PASOK party's parliamentary group and like-minded MPs of conservative New Democracy,^[158] the Greek Parliament passed two laws on the fate of the Ottoman Greeks; the first in 1994 and the second in 1998. The decrees were published in the Greek Government Gazette on 8 March 1994 and 13 October 1998 respectively. The 1994 decree affirmed the genocide in the Pontus region of Asia Minor and designated 19 May (the day Mustafa Kemal landed in Samsun in 1919) a day of commemoration,^[159] (called Pontian Greek Genocide Remembrance Day^[160]) while the 1998 decree affirmed the genocide of Greeks in Asia Minor as a whole and designated 14 September a day of commemoration.^[161] These laws were signed by the President of Greece but were not immediately ratified after political interventions. After leftist newspaper I Avgi initiated a campaign against the application of this law, the subject became subject of a political debate. The president of the left-ecologist Synaspismos party Nikos Konstantopoulos and historian Angelos Elefantis,^[162] known for his books on the history of Greek communism, were two of the major figures of the political left who expressed their opposition to the decree. However, the non-parliamentary left-wing nationalist^[163] intellectual and author George Karabelias bitterly criticized Elefantis and others opposing the recognition of genocide and called them "revisionist historians", accusing the Greek mainstream left of a "distorted ideological evolution". He said that for the Greek left 19 May is a "day of amnesia".^[164]

In the late 2000s the Communist Party of Greece adopted the term "Genocide of the Pontic (Greeks)" (Γενοκτονία Ποντίων) in its official newspaper Rizospastis and participates in memorial events.^{[165][166][167]}

The Republic of Cyprus has also officially called the events "Greek Genocide in Pontus of Asia Minor".^[168]

In response to the 1998 law, the Turkish government released a statement which claimed that describing the events as genocide was "without any historical basis". "We condemn and protest this resolution" a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement said. "With this resolution the Greek Parliament, which in fact has to apologize to the Turkish people for the large-scale destruction and massacres Greece perpetrated in Anatolia, not only sustains the traditional Greek policy of distorting history, but it also displays that the expansionist Greek mentality is still alive," the statement added.^[169]

On 11 March 2010, Sweden's Riksdag passed a motion recognising "as an act of genocide the killing of Armenians, Assyrians/Syriacs/Chaldeans and Pontic Greeks in 1915".^[170]

On 14 May 2013, the government of New South Wales was submitted a genocide recognition motion by Fred Nile of the Christian Democratic Party, which was later passed making it the fourth political entity to recognise the genocide.^[171]

In March 2015, the National Assembly of Armenia unanimously adopted a resolution recognizing both the Greek and Assyrian genocides.^[172]

In April 2015, the States General of the Netherlands and the Austrian Parliament passed resolutions recognizing the Greek and Assyrian genocides.^[173][174]

The following sovereign states have recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide:^[177][178] Argentina, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Ukraine, and the Vatican. (The United States Congress and Senate passed resolutions of recognition, but the executive branch has not formally stated this.) The United States does not yet officially recognize the Holodomor as genocide.^[179] The Baltic Assembly—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania collectively—has also condemned the Holodomor as genocide. See Holodomor genocide question for more on the topic.

Many countries have signed declarations in statements at the UNGA affirming that the Holodomor was as a "national tragedy of the Ukrainian people" caused by the "cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime".^[b] Similar statements were passed as resolutions by the following international organizations:^[c] the European Parliament^[d], the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE),^[e] the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),^[180][181] and the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO).^[b]

The following countries have signed declarations for the United Nations on the Holodomor:^{[f][g][184][185][186]} Albania,^[h] Argentina,^{[188][189][190]} Australia,^{[191][192][193][194][h]} Austria,^[h] Azerbaijan,^[h] Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada,^[195][196] Chile, Colombia,^[197][198] Czechia^[199] Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador,^[200][201] Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Paraguay, Peru, Poland,^[202][203] Portugal, Slovakia,^[204][205] Spain, Ukraine, United States.^[206][207] The Vatican City also recognized the Holodomor as genocide.^[208]

The Khojaly massacre is currently recognized and commemorated by parliamentary acts adopted in fifteen countries and in twenty-three states of the United States of America.^[209][210]

The German government paid war reparations to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, but not to the Romani. There were "never any consultations at Nuremberg or any other international conference as to whether the Sinti and Roma were entitled like the Jews to reparations."^[212] The Interior Ministry of Wuerttemberg argued that "Gypsies [were] persecuted under the Nazis not for any racial reason but because of an asocial and criminal record".^[213] When on trial for his leadership of Einsatzgruppen in the USSR, Otto Ohlendorf cited the massacres of Romanis during the Thirty Years War as a historical precedent.^[214]

West Germany recognised the genocide of the Roma in 1982,^[215] and since then the Porajmos has been increasingly recognized as a genocide committed simultaneously with the Shoah.^[216] The American historian wrote several articles arguing that the Porajmos deserved recognition as part of the Holocaust.^[217] In Switzerland, a committee of experts investigated the policy of the Swiss government during the Porajmos.^[218]

Formal recognition and commemoration of the Roma persecution by the Nazis have been difficult in practical terms due to the lack of significant collective memory and documentation of the Porajmos among the Roma. This results from both of their tradition of oral history and illiteracy, heightened by widespread poverty and continuing discrimination that has forced some Roma out of state schools. One UNESCO report of Roma in Romania showed that only 40% of Roma children are enrolled in primary school, compared to the national average of 93%.^[219] Of those enrolled, only 30% of Roma children go on to complete primary school. In a 2011 investigation of the state of the Roma in Europe today, Ben Judah, a Policy Fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, traveled to Romania.

Nico Fortuna, a sociologist and Roma activist, explained the distinction between Jewish collective memory of the Shoah and the Roma experience:

There is a difference between the Jewish and Roma deportees ... The Jews were shocked and can remember the year, date and time it happened. The Roma shrugged it off. They said, "Of course I was deported. I'm Roma; these things happen to a Roma." The Roma mentality is different from the Jewish mentality. For example, a Roma came to me and asked, "Why do you care so much about these deportations? Your family was not deported." I went, "I care as a Roma" and the guy said back, "I do not care because my family were brave, proud Roma that were not deported."
For the Jews it was total and everyone knew this—from bankers to pawnbrokers. For the Roma it was selective and not comprehensive. The Roma were only exterminated in a few parts of Europe such as Poland, the Netherlands, Germany and France. In Romania and much of the Balkans, only nomadic Roma and social outcast Roma were deported. This matters and influences the Roma mentality.^[220]

Ian Hancock has also observed a reluctance among Roma to acknowledge their victimization by the Third Reich. The Roma "are traditionally not disposed to keeping alive the terrible memories from their history—nostalgia is a luxury for others".^[221] The effects of the illiteracy, the lack of social institutions, and the rampant discrimination faced by Roma in Europe today have produced a people who, according to Fortuna, lack a "national consciousness ... and historical memory of the Holocaust because there is no Roma elite."^[220]

In June 2019, the China Tribunal, an independent judicial investigation into forced organ transplantation in China concluded that crimes against humanity had been committed beyond reasonable doubt against China's Uyghur Muslim and Falun Gong populations.^[222][223]

The use of the full "genocide" term did not gain traction until after the publication of a report by Adrian Zenz for the Jamestown Foundation and an article by the Associated Press in late June 2020 on forced sterilizations.^[224]

In July 2020, Zenz said an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) that he had previously argued that the actions of the Chinese government are a cultural genocide, not a "literal genocide", but that one of the five criteria from the Genocide Convention was satisfied by more recent developments concerning the suppression of birth rates so "we do need to probably call it a genocide".^[225] The same month, the last colonial governor of British Hong Kong, Chris Patten, said that the "birth control campaign" was "arguably something that comes within the terms of the UN views on sorts of genocide" and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China demanded an independent UN investigation. At roughly the same time, U.S. senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris urged the Trump administration to investigate the allegations.^[226]

Although the People's Republic of China (PRC) is not a member of the International Criminal Court, on 6 July 2020 the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile and the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement filed a complaint with the ICC calling for it to investigate PRC officials for crimes against Uyghurs including allegations of genocide.^{[227][228][229]} The ICC responded in December 2020 and "asked for more evidence before it will be willing to open an investigation into claims of genocide against Uighur people by China, but has said it will keep the file open for such further evidence to be submitted."^[230]

An August 2020 Quartz article reported that some scholars hesitate to label the human rights abuses in Xinjiang as a "full-blown genocide", preferring the term "cultural genocide", but that increasingly many experts were calling them "crimes against humanity" or "genocide".^[227] Also in August 2020 the spokesperson for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign described China's actions as genocide.^[231]

In October 2020, the U.S. Senate introduced a bipartisan resolution designating the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government against the Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang as genocide.^[232] Around the same time, the House of Commons of Canada issued a statement that its Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development was persuaded that the Chinese Communist Party's actions in Xinjiang constitute genocide as laid out in the Genocide Convention.^[233] The 2020 annual report by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China referred to the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs as "crimes against humanity and possibly genocide."^[234][235]

The Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect at the University of Queensland concluded in November that evidence of atrocities in Xinjiang "likely meets the requirements of the following crimes against humanity: persecution, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, forced sterilisation, and enslavement" and that "It is arguable that genocidal acts have occurred in Xinjiang, in particular acts of imposing measures to prevent births and forcible transfers."^[236] In December, lawyers David Matas and wrote in Toronto Star that "One distressing present day example [of genocide] is the atrocities faced by the Uighur population in Xinjiang, China."^[237]

In January 2021, U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. government would be officially designating the crimes against the Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim people living in China as a genocide.^[238] This declaration, which came in the final hours of the Trump administration, had not been made earlier due to a worry that it could disrupt trade talks between the US and China. On the allegations of crimes against humanity Pompeo asserted that "These crimes are ongoing and include: the arbitrary imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians, forced sterilization, torture of a large number of those arbitrarily detained, forced labor and the imposition of draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression and freedom of movement."^[239]

However, there was internal disagreement within the administration with the Office of the Legal Advisor concluding that although the situation in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity, there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide.^[240] Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying responded to the designation by calling Pompeo a "doomsday clown", and dismissing the allegations of genocide as "wastepaper" and "pseudo-propositions and a malicious farce concocted by individual anti-China and anti-Communist forces represented by Pompeo".^[241] On 19 January 2021, incoming U.S. president Joe Biden's secretary of state nominee Antony Blinken was asked during his confirmation hearings whether he agreed with Pompeo's conclusion that the CCP has committed genocide against the Uyghurs, he contended "That would be my judgment as well."^[242] During her confirmation hearings Joe Biden's nominee to be the US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield stated that she believed what was currently happening in Xinjiang was a genocide, adding "I lived through and experienced and witnessed a genocide in Rwanda."^[243]

In January 2021, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum stated that, "[t]here is a reasonable basis to believe that the government of China is committing crimes against humanity."^[244][245]

When asked about the situation by a reporter, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated that "what's happening to the Uyghurs is utterly abhorrent" but that "the attribution of genocide is a judicial matter".^[241] Chinese state media ran op-eds and reports disputing the use of the term “genocide".^[231]

The US designation was followed by Canada's House of Commons and the Dutch parliament each passing a non-binding motion in February 2021 to recognize China's actions as genocide.^[246][247]

In February 2021, a report released by the Essex Court Chambers concluded that "there is a very credible case that acts carried out by the Chinese government against the Uighur people in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region amount to crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide, and describes how the minority group has been subject to "enslavement, torture, rape, enforced sterilisation and persecution." "Victims have been "forced to remain in stress positions for an extended period of time, beaten, deprived of food, shackled and blindfolded”, it said. The legal team state they have seen “prolific credible evidence” of sterilisation procedures carried out on women, including forced abortions, saying they “clearly constitute a form of genocidal conduct”.^[248]

According to a March 2021 Newlines Institute report that was written by over 50 worldwide experts on China, genocide, and international law,^[249][250] the Chinese government breached every article in the Genocide Convention, writing that “simply put, China's long-established, publicly and repeatedly declared, specifically targeted, systematically implemented, and fully resourced policy and practice toward the Uyghur group is inseparable from 'the intent to destroy in whole or in part' the Uyghur group as such."^{[251][252][253]} The report, published by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, said there were credible reports of mass deaths under the mass internment drive, while Uighur leaders were selectively sentenced to death or sentenced to long-term imprisonment. “Uyghurs are suffering from systematic torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, including rape, sexual abuse, and public humiliation, both inside and outside the camps,” the report stated. The report argued that these policies are directly orchestrated by the highest levels of state, including Xi and the top officials of the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang.^[254] It also reported that the Chinese government gave explicit orders to "eradicate tumours", "wipe them out completely", "destroy them root and branch", “round up everyone", and "show absolutely no mercy", in regards to Uyghurs,^[254][250] and that camp guards reportedly follow orders to uphold the system in place until ‘Kazakhs, Uyghurs, and other Muslim nationalities, would disappear...until all Muslim nationalities would be extinct’.”^[255] According to the report "Internment camps contain designated “interrogation rooms,” where Uyghur detainees are subjected to consistent and brutal torture methods, including beatings with metal prods, electric shocks, and whips."^[256]

In June 2021, the Canadian Anthropology Society issued a statement on Xinjiang in which the organization stated, "expert testimony and witnessing, and irrefutable evidence from the Chinese Government's own satellite imagery, documents, and eyewitness reports, overwhelmingly confirms the scale of the genocide."^[257]