Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

DISEASE AND GENOCIDE
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Women, which targeted political, economic, social, cultural, and civil discrimination,
while also recognizing the unique status of women as child bearers and their consequent
health-care needs, as well as their vulnerability to the crime of rape. In 1981 the United
Nations proclaimed the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and
of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. Declarations, of course, do not have the
force of law with the consequence of punishment. Such conventions, no matter how
noble, do not contain within themselves the means of redressing violations, thus leaving
all four statements appropriate to a world-deliberative body without the teeth necessary
for their implementation.
Disease and Genocide. When scholars speak of disease relative to genocide, they most
commonly are referring to lethal diseases that have wrought significant harm to the population
size or future size of a group. The great epidemics of history, such as smallpox,
cholera, tuberculosis, influenza, leprosy, measles, and bubonic plague were frequently visited
upon whole societies as highly infectious viral outbreaks for which there was no
immediate cure, and in which hundreds of thousands, and even millions, died. Where the
study of genocide is concerned, the most important issue relative to disease is how and to
what degree these diseases are, or were, introduced into a population by a perpetrator with
the intention of destroying that population. No global conclusions can be drawn regarding
this issue, as circumstances have varied greatly throughout the world over the last six
or seven centuries. In some situations there is no doubt that viral bacteria were released
deliberately into a group with the intention of wiping them out. The vast majority of those
who have died over the period in question, however, succumbed due to their vulnerability
to the microbes that accompanied encroaching groups, especially immigrants from distant
lands involved in imperialist or colonialist ventures. In North America (what is now Mexico
and the United States), Australasia, and the Pacific, for instance, local populations
from the sixteenth century onward had never before experienced European and Asian diseases,
which were brought on ships arriving from Spain, France, Britain, Portugal, and
elsewhere. Often, these diseases had wiped out large sections of local populations well
before any of those from the encroaching nations had even begun their engagement with
the native inhabitants. It is incumbent on all those who comment on this issue to be
extremely careful in their use of language when considering it. There is certainly a relationship
between disease and genocide, but how far that extends is a matter that can
never be taken for granted, and must always be dealt with cautiously.
“Dispersion.” A euphemism employed in Queensland (Australia) during the mid- to
late nineteenth century, covering a policy of shooting at Aborigines in the rural regions
during the colonial settlement of the land with the intention of killing them. The euphemism
allowed for the prospect of shooting in the direction of Aborigines so that they
might take fright and run away; but, in reality, large numbers of Aborigines were killed
deliberately. For the most part, “dispersals” were undertaken by troopers of the Queensland
Native Mounted Police, a force comprised of Aborigines recruited from various parts
of the colony and commanded by white officers. The policy of “dispersal” came under the
spotlight in 1861, when a government Select Committee looked into the matter. It was
openly acknowledged that “dispersing” equated with shooting at the Aborigines, and that
deaths were frequently caused through indiscriminate hunting down of whole groups of
Aborigines without any recognition of individual difference between groups—or even
within groups. In testimony offered at the Select Committee, Lieutenant Frederick