Political cleansing of population

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Politicide
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Political cleansing of a population is the elimination of categories of people in specific areas for political reasons. The means may vary from

forced migration to genocide.[citation needed
]

Politicide

This section is about mass killing based on political belief. For political suicide, of which this word is also a portmanteau, see Political suicide. For the intentional destruction of a city or nation, see Policide.

Politicide is the deliberate physical destruction or elimination of a group whose members share the main characteristic of belonging to a

ethnic group rather than their adherence to a particular ideology.[citation needed
]

Politicide is used to describe the killing of groups that would not otherwise be covered by the

Social scientists Ted Robert Gurr and Barbara Harff use politicide to describe the killing of groups of people who are targeted not because of their shared ethnic or communal traits, but because of "their hierarchical position or political opposition to the regime and dominant groups."[citation needed] Harff studies genocide and politicide, sometimes shortened as geno-politicide, in order to include the killing of political, economic, ethnic and cultural groups.[2] Manus Midlarsky uses politicide to describe an arc of large-scale killing from the western parts of the Soviet Union to China and Cambodia.[3] In his book The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Midlarsky raises similarities between the killings perpetrated by Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot.[4]

Under the

Soviet famine of 1932–1933 and the Great Chinese Famine during the Great Leap Forward have been controversially "depicted as instances of mass killing underpinned by genocidal intent."[9]

Typical reasons

Some groups attempt to eliminate the base of support for

political opponents such as insurgents. This happens in many countries with high levels of insurgency such as Colombia.[10] It may be a means for and referred to as pacification.[11]

See also

Main article:
Outline of Genocide studies

References

  1. ISSN 0020-8833
    .
  2. ISSN 0022-3433
    . "The two important scholars who have created datasets related to this are Rummel (1995) and Harff (2003). Harff (sometimes with Gurr) has studied what she terms 'genocide and politicide', defined to be genocide by killing as understood by the Genocide Convention plus the killing of a political or economic group (Harff & Gurr, 1988); the combined list of genocides is sometimes labeled 'geno-politicide' for short. Rummel (1994, 1995) has a very similar concept, 'democide', which includes such genocide and geno-politicide done by the government forces, plus other killing by government forces, such as random killing not targeted at a particular group. As Rummel (1995: 3-4) says, 'Cold-blooded government killing ... extends beyond genocide'; For example, 'shooting political opponents; or murdering by quota'. Hence, 'to cover all such murder as well as genocide and politicide, I use the concept democide. This is the intentional killing of people by government' (Rummel, 1995: 4). So Rummel has a broader concept than geno-politicide, but one that seems to include geno-politicide as a proper subset." Quote at p. 4.
  3. ISBN 978-0-521-81545-1
    .
  4. ISBN 978-0-521-81545-1
    .
  5. ISBN 978-0-415-48619-4
    . According to Jones: "Also unsurprisingly, it was the settler-colonial regimes who were most anxious to exclude cultural genocide from the Genocide Convention, as Raphael Lemkin’s biographer John Cooper points out." pp. 102.
  6. ISSN 0044-0094
  7. ISSN 1467-9221
  8. S2CID 145155872
    .
  9. ISBN 978-0-415-42561-2
    .
  10. ^ Otis, John (17 October 1999). "'Political cleansing' in Colombia rising". colombiasupport.net. Houston Chronicle. Archived from the original on 15 May 2001.
  11. ISBN 978-1-139-43998-5
    . Retrieved 30 November 2016.

Further reading

Main article:
Bibliography of Genocide studies
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