Herero Genocide

The Nama or Namaqua are today the largest group of Khoisan people. Khoisan - 'KhoiKhoi or KhoeKhoe', have resided in Southern Africa for 1000's of years. When colonial settlers arrived in the Cape in 1652, they found the Khoi raising huge herds of Nguni cattle. At that time they referred to the people as Hottentots. By the 19th century, Dutch settlers had already been mixing with the Nama for 200 years, and so many Nama had names of European origin. The Nama had access to guns and as a result, confronted the Herero for the most part of the 19th century through warfare.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Herero people, one the many Bantu tribes living in southwest Africa, watched as their territory was slowly swallowed up, shrinking the borders of their homeland. The loss of land was one of many objections they had to the German colonial rulers who had entered their territory and threatened their pastoral way of life. In an attempt to salvage the situation, they staged a secret uprising, attacking military posts and farms. They focused their attacks only on those with whom they had just grievances in the conflict -- avoiding women, children, German missionaries, colonists of different nationalities and rival tribes -- hoping to garner allies among others in the region.






















Lothar Von Trotha
The uprising began on Jan. 12, 1904. Farms were destroyed, forts were harried and some civilians were killed. What little the Hereros accomplished for themselves, however, would be extremely short lived. A new commanding officer charged with leading the colony's military forces; Gen. Lothar von Trotha -- soon set foot in the territory. His presence spelled doom for Hereroland.

 African prisoners chained up by German soldiers, 1904. 

With the use of 1625 modern rifles, 14 machine guns and 30 artillery pieces, The Battle of Waterberg took place in 1904, lasting two days. However, the outcome of the actual combat was less important than von Trotha's strategy of troop deployment, because the Hereros were boxed in.  Hendrik Witbooi, the Nama leader, proved an exceptionally able guerrilla captain, and he inflicted a series of humiliating reverses on German troops. But his fighters had no answer to artillery, particularly as it was used against their women and children. So, like the Herero, the Nama were forced to sign a treaty placing themselves under German "protection". Three enemy sides were strongly defended, the fourth less so. As it became obvious the battle was lost, the surviving Hereros were forced to break free by way of the weaker path, the path which led into the brutal Omaheke Desert. Von Trotha pursued, ordering his troops to kill any who tried to flee the forced march or fell behind the main body in exhaustion. Once his quarry was trapped in the desert, von Trotha had his troops deny the Hereros access to water holes; later, he had those water holes poisoned. Hand-dug holes dozens of feet deep were later found in the desert wastes; desperate attempts to find water in the bleak landscape.



Von Trotha's stated goal was complete expulsion or annihilation. He had the edge of the desert fortified to keep the Hereros cordoned in the barren land. Throughout the ordeal, no prisoners were taken; young or old, healthy or infirm, weak or wounded, male or female. All were killed (or simply left to die) if encountered by patrolling soldiers. Sometimes, after what the Herero suffered at the hands of their captors, death was probably an escape. Eyewitness accounts preserve the horrors of the massacring.



Prisoners in a Labor camp





















The Nama suffered at the hands of the colonists too. After the defeat of the Herero the Nama also rebelled, but von Trotha and his troops quickly routed them. On April 22 1905 Lothar von Trotha sent his clear message to the Nama: they should surrender. ‘The Nama who chooses not to surrender and lets himself be seen in the German area will be shot, until all are exterminated. Those who, at the start of the rebellion, committed murder against whites or have commanded that whites be murdered have, by law, forfeited their lives. As for the few not defeated, it will fare with them as it fared with the Herero, who in their blindness also believed that they could make successful war against the powerful German Emperor and the great German people. I ask you, where are the Herero today?’ During the Nama uprising, half the tribe (over 10,000) were killed; the 9,000 or so left were confined in concentration camps.


Prisoners bound by the neck to prevent escape

Forced labor inconcentration camps followed for those who survived the initial genocidal efforts. The death rates in the camps were staggering. Von Trotha was not completely successful, however. Some Hereros survived his horrific campaign, but their tribe's numbers were decimated. Estimates put the magnitude of the event into perspective. Out of an original 80,000 Herero people, only about 20,000 escaped von Trotha's death crusade alive; that's three quarters of the entire population, completly wiped from existence.
In the Herero work camps there were numerous children born to these abused women, and a man called Eugen Fischer, who was interested in genetics, came to the camps to study them; he carried out medical experiments on them as well. He decided that each mixed-race child was physically and mentally inferior to its German father


Soldiers began to trade in the skulls of dead Herero and Nama people.





It is estimated that up to 2000 pastoralist Herero escaped eastward in small numbers into the Kalahari desert, into what was then the British protectorate of Bechuanaland (Botswana).  Included was Samuel Maharero, the Herero leader. His people arrived with little or no cattle and became subservient to the Tswana - Bechwana chieftain of Sekgathôlê a Letsholathêbê.

The Nama led by Hendrick Witbooi, had fought with the Germans against the Herero. Regardless, von Trotha turned his murderous attention to him, sending Witbooi, Cornelius Fredericks and other chiefs the following message; The Nama who choose not to surrender and lets himself be seen in the German area will be shot until all are exterminated. Those who at the start of the rebellion committed murder against whites, or have commanded that whites be murdered have by law, forfeited their lives.

Hendrik Witbooi was killed. In September 1906, Cornelius Fredericks and the fighters of Witbooi surrendered and were sent to Shark Island. Death in the camp was meticulously recorded. Solders were tasked with naming the dead and recording numbers. Their records show that of the 1795 Nama prisoners who had arrived, only 763 were alive in April. One thousand thirty two had died. The detailed record shows that of the living, 123 were in such poor health they would soon die. By 1908 when the camps were closed, disease and malnutrition had killed up to 80% of all prisoners who had entered Shark Island - including Namaqua chief Cornelius Fredericks.


Shark Island
Prisoners were intentionally placed on the exposed northwest point of the barren island - infamous for its bitter cold arctic gale force wind. Diseases in the camp were rampant and intentionally left out of control. The unhygienic living quarters, lack of clothing and high concentration of people contributed to disease which rapidly spread. (typhoid) Huddled together and suffering from malnutrition, the prisoners began to die. Statistics show that as many as 80 % of the prisoners sent to this concentration camp never left the island alive.

The Mayan Genocide

Guatemala is located just south of Mexico in Central America.
The country is less than half the size of the United Nations. Guatemala was the location of a Mayan civilization which thrived until Spanish explorers conquered the region. Once the Spanish explorers came, the Mayans became slaves in their own home. During the 1980's over 20,000 people were killed in the Central American country of Guatemala






















In 1962 a civil war broke out in Guatemala that lasted over 35 years
In 1981 three guerrilla groups merged to create Guatemala's United Front; Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG)
In 1982, over 200,000 Mayan Indians were the targets for the Guatemalan genocide. They were targeted by the Guatemalan government and the Guatemalan Army, whose members called themselves the "killing machines". This genocide came to be known as and called 'The Silent Holocaust'.


Bodies of some of the 20 villagers killed near Salacuin, in northern Guatemala , in May 1982.

The government targeted and accused Mayans for working on creating a communist coup. These "killing machines" targeted the communities and killed not only the men, but women, elderly, and even the children. This genocide was executed by the army and its paramilitary teams which also included local men called 'civil patrols'. Together these groups attacked around 626 villages. Whenever these villages were attacked, the communities were seized while they were already gathered for either a celebration or whenever it was a market day. If the villagers who did not manage to escape they were brutally murdered. Other villagers were forced to watch or were even made to take part in these murders. The buildings in the community were vandalized and demolished. The army applied a 'scorched earth' policy and would then destroy crops, kill the animals, ruin the water supply, and then destroyed sacred places and cultural symbols.

 Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Team are exhuming a mass grave at the La Verbena cemetery in Guatemala City

Children were beaten against walls, tortured, raped, and sometimes they were thrown into live pits where the dead bodies of adults were thrown on top of them. Women were routinely raped and tortured and the wombs of pregnant women were cut open and the fetus removed. Along with this, many victims often hand their arms, legs, or other limbs amputated. Many Mayans were also impaled and left to die a slow and painful death. Reports show that some victims were doused in petrol and set on fire while other villagers were disemboweled while still alive. Death squads (some of which in time came under the army's umbrella), largely made up of criminals, murdered suspected 'subversives' or their allies; under dramatic names, such as 'The White Hand' or 'Eye for an Eye', they terrorised the country and contributed to the deliberate strategy of psychological warfare and intimidation.

Throughout the genocide, the United States provided military support to Guatemala by supplying them with arms and equipment. At the School of Americas in Georgia(USA) trained Guatemalan officers who were later notorious for human rights abuse. This school was also known as a guerrilla training school. Some Guatemalan intelligence officers were members of the CIA and some of the members were known to have been human rights violators. The US's involvement in the genocide is said to have been strictly strategic.


Refugees being brought into town on trucks 


The Guatemalan Army and the Guatemalan government  were the major force behind all the murders. Along with them, there were also military units called Commandos who helped and carried out covert operations against the Mayans.It is said that the State and the Army are responsible for 93% of the human rights violations recorded and that the guerrillas are responsible for 3%. According to Lehman Anthropology Professor; Victoria Sanford, members of the Guatemalan Army were responsible for the vast majority of these acts, yet only eight people were charged. Professor Sanford was a research consultant for the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation Report to the Guatemalan Truth Commission in 1998.

Darfur Genocide

Sudan is a country in North Africa, which shocked the world in the Darfur crisis. It is considered part of the Middle East politically, even though it doesn't belong there geographically. The population is recorded around 30 million people. Most tribes in the country have been Arabized and Arabic and Arab culture predominates the surrounding area.

Over 97 percent of the population of Sudan adheres to Islam, making it the dominating religion. As it happens the world's longest river the Nile, divides the country between the east and west side. The people of Sudan have a long history intertwined with Egypt, which it was united with politically over several periods.

The killing still continues to this day. Despite the fact that genocidal attacks began over a decade ago, the international community has failed to end the violence and hold Omar Bashir and his Janjaweed forces accountable.Since February 28, a new wave of bloody attacks has been unleashed against civilians in the North, South and Central Darfur by the Janjaweed militias. About 38 villages in South Darfur are reported to have been completely burned and destroyed to the ground. Constant conflicts concerning land were common practice in Sudan, but usually settled by traditional reconciliation methods. In February 2003 two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement drawn from members of the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups, demanded an end to chronic economic marginalization and sought power-sharing within the Arab-ruled Sudanese state. They also sought government action to end the abuses of their rivals, Arab pastoralists who were driven onto African farmlands.


Omar al-Bashir



Gaining only negative responses, a civil war unfolded on the divided country. Several factors such as severe drought, combined with intense clashes concerning grazing, arable land and water resources also played a major role in creation of the negative sentiments on behalf of the local communities toward Sudanese government.

In 2003, after decades of neglect, drought, oppression and small-scale conflicts in Sudan's western region of Darfur, two rebel groups mounted an insurgency against Sudan's central government. In response, the regime of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and its allied militia, known as the Janjaweed, launched a campaign of destruction against civilians of similar ethnic background as the rebels. This campaign wiped out entire villages, destroyed food and water supplies, and systematically murdered, tortured and raped thousands of Darfuris. In September 2004, President George W. Bush declared the crisis in Darfur a "genocide". Despite the world's outcry, the violence continued and in recent years has spread to other states in Sudan.

As a result, 100,000 people fled their homes in Darfur in the first week of March, bringing the total number of newly displaced persons to 120,000 in 2014. These alarming numbers are on top of the 460,000 people displaced by violence in 2013, the highest number since the height of the genocide in 2004. The U.N. estimates that 300,000 Darfuris have died since 2003, but it hasn't bothered to estimate casualty numbers since 2008. With fighting continuing to this day, the number is likely to be far higher.



Women with children walk near a soldier of Darfur's joint U.N./African Union UNAMID peacekeeping force outside the UNAMID team site 

One of the main issues which triggered the actual crisis was the government decision to arm Arab militia groups in Darfur. The government has responded to this armed and political threat by targeting the civilian populations from which the rebels were drawn. The response included ethnic manipulation in the form of a military and political partnership with Arab nomadic tribes which comprising the Janjaweed units. They were armed, trained, organized units with effective immunity for all crimes committed.

The government-Janjaweed partnership was characterized by joint attacks on civilians rather than on the rebel forces that participated in the conflict. These attacks were typically carried out by members of the Sudanese military accompanied with Janjaweed units wearing uniforms that were virtually indistinguishable from the standard army. Most of the attacks were frequently supported by the Sudanese air force, against which the civilians had no chance.


Janjaweed Soldiers

Numerous assaults have resulted in decimated small farming communities. Everything that can sustain life such as livestock, food stores, wells, blankets or clothing had been looted or destroyed. Villages were torched systematically, often not just once, but rather twice. The uncontrolled presence of Janjaweed units in the burned countryside and in abandoned villages has driven civilians into refugee camps and improvised settlements outside of the larger towns.

The violence had spread over the border to Chad with the same devastating effect. Innocent civilians died at the hands of factions, countless women and girls were raped and murdered without mercy, large numbers of men were tortured or killed, while children suffered severely from malnutrition and violence.
Finally, in July 2007 the United Nations agreed to pass Resolution 1769 which authorized the deployment of 26,000 peacekeeping forces in Darfur. The foundations for Darfur Peace Agreement were set and in 2011 it was reached in Doha. A peace agreement was signed between the two sides - the Government of Sudan and the Liberation and Justice Movement.



This agreement includes establishment of a compensation fund for victims of the Darfur conflict, allows the President of Sudan to appoint a Vice-President from Darfur and to establish a new Darfur Regional Authority as a overseer in the troubled region until a referendum can determine its permanent status within the Republic of Sudan.

Rwandan Genocide

"100 Days of Slaughter"

From April to July 1994, members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the east-central African nation of Rwanda murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority. Beginning on April 6, 1994, Hutus began slaughtering the Tutsis in the African country of Rwanda. As the brutal killings continued, the world stood idly by and just watched the slaughter. Lasting 100 days, the Rwanda genocide left approximately 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu sympathizers dead.


It began with extreme Hutu nationalists in the capital of Kigali, the genocide spread throughout the country with intense speed and brutality, as ordinary citizens were incited by local officials and the Hutu Power government to take up arms against their neighbors. By the time the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) gained control of the country through a military offensive in early July, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were dead and many more displaced from their homes. The RPF victory created 2 million more refugees (mainly Hutus) from Rwanda, exacerbating what had already become a full-blown humanitarian crisis.

By the early 1990s, Rwanda, a small country with an overwhelmingly agricultural economy, had one of the highest population densities in Africa. About 85 percent of its population is Hutu; the rest is Tutsi. A Hutu revolution in 1959 forced as many as 300,000 Tutsis to flee the country, making them an even smaller minority. By early 1961, victorious Hutus had forced Rwanda’s Tutsi monarch into exile and declared the country a republic. After a U.N. referendum that same year, Belgium officially granted independence to Rwanda in July 1962.



Ethnically motivated violence continued in the years following independence. In 1973, Major General Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, came to power. He was the leader of Rwandan government for the next two decades, Habyarimana founded a new political party, the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (NRMD). In 1990, forces of the Rwandese Patriotic Front invaded Rwanda from Uganda. A ceasefire in these hostilities led to negotiations between the government and the RPF in 1992. In August 1993, Habyarimana signed an agreement at Arusha, Tanzania, calling for the creation of a transition government that would include the RPF. This power-sharing agreement angered Hutu extremists, who would soon take swift action to prevent it.

On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi’s president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over Kigali, leaving no survivors. Within an hour of the plane crash, the Presidential Guard together with members of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and Hutu militia groups known as the Interahamwe (“Those Who Attack Together”) and Impuzamugambi (“Those Who Have the Same Goal”) set up roadblocks and barricades and began slaughtering Tutsis and moderate Hutus with impunity. The first victims of the genocide were Hutu Prime Minister; Agathe Uwilingiyimana and her 10 Belgian bodyguards.


Habyarimana crash

The mass killings in Rwanda quickly spread from Kigali to the rest of the country, with some 800,000 people slaughtered over the next three months. During this period, local officials and government-sponsored radio stations called on ordinary Rwandan civilians to murder their neighbors. Meanwhile, the RPF resumed fighting, and civil war raged alongside the genocide. By early July, RPF forces had gained control over most of country, including Kigali. In response, more than 2 million people, nearly all Hutus, fled Rwanda, crowding into refugee camps in the Congo (then called Zaire) and other neighboring countries. To further degrade the Tutsi, Hutu extremists would not allow the Tutsi dead to be buried. Their bodies were left where they were slaughtered, exposed to the elements, eaten by rats and dogs. Many Tutsi bodies were thrown into rivers, lakes, and streams in order to send the Tutsis "back to Ethiopia" - a reference to the myth that the Tutsi were foreigners and originally came from Ethiopia.

Bodies in the streets of Rwanda

Thousands of Tutsis tried to escape the slaughter by hiding in churches, hospitals, schools, and government offices. These places, which historically have been places of refuge, were turned into places of mass murder during the Rwanda Genocide. One of the worst massacres of the Rwanda genocide took place on April 15-16, 1994 at the Nyarubuye Roman Catholic Church, located about 60 miles east of Kigali. Here, the mayor of the town, a Hutu, encouraged Tutsis to seek sanctuary inside the church by assuring them they would be safe there. Then the mayor betrayed them to the Hutu extremists.


The killing began with grenades and guns, but soon changed to machetes and clubs. Killing by hand was tiresome, so the killers took shifts. It took two days to kill the thousands of Tutsi who were inside.



A Rwandan survivor of the 1994 genocide pays tribute over the bones of genocide victims at a mass grave in Nyamata


As in the case of atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia around the same time, the international community largely remained on the sidelines during the Rwandan genocide. A U.N. Security Council vote in April 1994 led to the withdrawal of most of a U.N. peacekeeping operation. As reports of the genocide spread, the Security Council voted in mid-May to supply a more force, including more than 5,000 troops. By the time that force arrived in full, the genocide had been over for months. 


Prisoners in Kigali suspected of the 1994 massacres in Rwanda in April 1995. In the genocide an estimated 800,000 people were killed.

In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, many prominent figures in the international community lamented the outside world’s general obliviousness to the situation and its failure to act in order to prevent the atrocities from taking place. As former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali told the PBS news program “Frontline”: “The failure of Rwanda is 10 times greater than the failure of Yugoslavia. Because in Yugoslavia the international community was interested, was involved. In Rwanda nobody was interested.” The Rwanda Genocide ended only when the RPF took over the country. The RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) were a trained military group consisting of Tutsis who had been exiled in earlier years, many of whom lived in Uganda. The RPF were able to enter Rwanda and slowly take over the country. Only in mid July 1994, when the RPF had full control, did the genocide stop.

Bosnian Genocide

The Bosnian Genocide was committed by the Bosnian Serb Forces during 1995 in the midst of war. In 1979 Muslims represented the largest single population group.


The biggest execution happened in the town of Srebrenica, a small town in the East of Bosnia. The massacre killed more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, as well as the mass murder of an additional 27,000+ civilians, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, committed by units of the Army of the Republika Srpska under the command of General Ratko Mladić.

 Former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic. May 26th, 2011


The ethnic cleansing campaign targeted Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats. This campaign included confinement, murder, rape, sexual assault, torture, beating, robbery and inhumane treatment of civilians. Along with this; the targeting of political leaders,deportation of the citizens and the destruction of homes, business and places of worship. During World War II, Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia and corrupted the government, murdered over 80 percent of the Jewish population, along with thousands of Serbs and gypsies. A communist resistance army, led by Marshal Tito, drove the Nazis back in 1945 and declared Yugoslavia to be a new independent communist state. Afterwards, Tito ruled Yugoslavia as a benevolent dictator. Yugoslavia was one of the most open communist nations for its time and successfully implemented peaceful coexistence between cultures, but Tito marginalized any political activists  who disagreed with his pan-Yugoslav ideals.

In 1989 Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia became President of Yugoslavia. Milosevic began promoting violent uprisings of Serb political parties in Croatia. Milosevic wanted a Serb-dominated state and saw fit an ethnic cleansing. In 1992 Croatia declared independence from Slovania and almost immediately, Croatia was flooded with violence, no nationality was spared during the fighting. In the first seven months of the war, 10,000 people died and another 700,000 were deported.


Penny Marshallshakes hand with Bosnian Muslim prisoner; Fikret Alic, at concentration camp. (1992)


The Serbs had five various methods of execution:
 1. Concentration -  The Serbs would urge residents of the chosen city to leave, while the army surrounded the city and opened fire resulting in mass murder. The camps were surrounded by  land-mines to prevent escape of prisoners.
2. Decapitation - This mainly happened to professionals and political leaders and anyone with substantial education
3. Separation -  This segregated the women, children, and elderly men from the men of “fighting age.”
4. Evacuation - move women, children, and edlerly men to concentration camps or national   borders.
5. Liquidation - execute the men of “fighting age.”


 The entrance to the Manjaca concentration camp reads in cyrillic letters "CONCENTRATION CAMP - PROHIBITED ENTRY". The Manjaca concentration camp was controlled by Serb Lieutenant Colonel Bozidar Popovic.

The single largest massacre in Europe since World War II occurred on July 11th, 1995. General Ratko Mladic marched his army into Srebrenica, and murdered approximately 7,000 Bosnian males. Up to 7,500 men, and boys over 13 years old, were killed. They were marched to fields which later became mass graves. Anyone caught trying to escape, were shot or decapitated on the spot.

Those who were not killed in massacres, were sent to one of 381 concentration or detention camps in Bosnia. These camps contained inhumane living conditions, and beatings, torture, and mass executions were daily occurrences. Approximately 10,000 people died over the course of the war. Women of reproductive age were taken to rape camps, where they were raped and tortured until they became pregnant. It is estimated that 20,000 women were raped during this time.


Bosnian genocide mass grave at Pilica farm, twenty feet deep and a hundred feet long, was excavated by forensic pathologists in 1996.

In July of 1992, the first international press reports, photos, and videos of the conflict in Bosnia were revealed, which brought back images of the horror from the Holocaust fifty years earlier, however the international community and powerful countries did not send relief or aid. In Bosnia's, a radio message from an amateur operator in Srebrenica was recieved: 'Please do something. Whatever you can. In the name of God, do something.'
Former Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić  went on trial on two counts of genocide and other war crimes committed in Bosnia. Karadžić and Mladić were charged(separately) with: the following and both been declared war criminals. In 2001, Radislav Krstic was sentenced 46 years in prison.

Count 1: Genocide against multiple communities
Count 2: Genocide
Count 3: Persecutions on Political, Racial and Religious Grounds, a Crime Against Humanity.
Count 4: Extermination, a Crime Against Humanity.
Count 5: Murder, a Crime Against Humanity.
Count 6: Murder, a Violation of the Laws or Customs of War.
Count 7: Deportation, a Crime Against Humanity.
Count 8: Inhumane Acts (forcible transfer), a Crime Against Humanity.
Count 9: Acts of Violence the Primary Purpose of which is to Spread Terror among the Civilian Population, a Violation of the Laws or Customs of War.
Count 10: Unlawful Attacks on Civilians, a Violation of the Laws or Customs of War.

Count 11: Taking of Hostages, a Violation of the Laws or Customs of War.


Today, mass graves have been uncovered but identification of the corpses has proved near impossible. Only a few hundred have been given names. There are still 20,000 people listed as missing in Bosnia.