Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

though, in the long run, impractical means by which to dispose of a large number of bodies
that have been killed as a result of massacres and genocide. Other means have been
tried, such as throwing bodies into rivers (as happened to Armenians and the Tutsi) or cremation
(as used by the Nazis). The former was too public and incriminating; the latter
turned out to be too slow, particularly when the Nazi killing of Jews reached its apogee in
1944. The speediest means of disposing of a large number of bodies remains mass burial,
which can serve to hide or cover up war crimes and genocide. All over eastern Europe, the
Nazis had victims dig their own mass graves on the assumption that they would never be
found. Only when the tide of war shifted in favor of the Soviet Union (USSR), in 1943,
did the Germans think of digging up the half-decomposed bodies and cremating them. The
process proved too slow, however, and had to be abandoned. In Bosnia, in the 1990s, there
were dozens of mass graves dug by all combatant groups in order to hide incriminating evidence.
When these were located by aerial photography, many mass graves were opened and
the bodies reinterred elsewhere, only to be rediscovered through additional surveillance by
satellites. (The Serbs were particularly adept at creating mass graves and then relocating
the bodies elsewhere during the Bosnian War of 1992–1995.) This reinterment has led to
major problems of victim identification, as body parts have often been mixed together, rendering
DNA recognition extremely difficult and slow.
Generally speaking, mass graves can have mixed success as a means of concealing genocide.
Sometimes, vegetation can grow over them quickly, making them difficult to detect.
The longer they are left, the greater the likelihood they may never be found. On the other
hand, when sites are located, the evidence they contain—usually more than the bodies
of the victims alone—can be used to bring the perpetrators to justice. This is more likely,
however, when the mass graves are found relatively soon after the events they are trying
to hide. Mass graves can be the best source of evidence to determine the site of a massacre,
and even whether genocide has actually taken place. This, however, requires the
best that modern science can provide, such as forensic archaeologists and photographic
experts, who can read and interpret satellite images.
Mass Killing. Both an unspecified number of deaths, and cumulative death by a series of
large-scale killings. Defining mass killing is a matter of perception and emphasis. However,
more often than not, mass is a substitute for massacre. The term conjures up thoughts of
group killing. Thus, for example, the term massacre can apply to the eradication of an
entire village, such as My Lai as by U.S. troops during the Vietnam War or during the civil
wars in the 1980s and 1990s in Central America, where killing squads went from village to
village wreaking death as a way of instilling terror in the survivors. In both instances, mass
killing took place. If mass killing is perpetrated with the intent to destroy in whole or in
part a specific group of people protected under the UN Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNCG), then it constitutes genocide—which was
the case in the mass murder of the Mayans in Guatemala in the 1980s and early 1990s. It
is important to note that while in the popular consciousness, mass killing is almost always
viewed as the most obvious expression of genocide, the UNCG recognizes killing members
of a targeted group as only one of five different ways in which genocide can take place.
Mass Rape. Mass rape refers to those situations where systematic rape of women during
a violent conflict (including genocide) is used as a way to terrorize, viciously harm,
and stigmatize individual women. It is also used as means to create fear and terror and to
stigmatize women as a group, their families, and the groups of which they are members.
MASS RAPE
271