Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

TYPOLOGIES OF GENOCIDE
Tuzla. A city of approximately one hundred thousand people, dominating a wider
municipal area nearly double that number, Tuzla is situated in the central zone of northeastern
Bosnia. It is the third-largest urban area of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the site of a
massacre on May 25, 1995, in which seventy-two people were killed by shelling from
Bosnian Serb forces. May 25 was traditionally the Day of Youth in the former Yugoslavia,
and it is noteworthy that almost all those killed were between eighteen and twentyfive
years of age. Nearly 250 were wounded, some very severely. Tuzla had previously been
designated as a UN safe area, though this did little to stop the Serbs in their assault on
the city. After an impassioned address to the UN Security Council by the mayor of Tuzla,
Selim Beslagic (b. 1942), steps were taken by the UN Protection Force, UNPROFOR, to
strengthen the defenses around Tuzla, though the city’s position was stretched to the limit
as refugees from other UN-protected safe areas such as Srebrenica flooded in. Ultimately,
Tuzla’s population swelled to nearly a quarter of a million. In the aftermath of the war,
Tuzla began the process of reconstruction within the Muslim-Croat administered region
of Bosnia-Herzegovina and is now once more a prosperous city.
Twa. An ethnic group in Rwanda that constituted about 1 percent of the entire population
before the 1994 genocide in which extremist Hutu killed between five hundred
thousand and 1 million Tutsi and moderate Hutu in a one hundred–day period between
April and July of that year. Originally, Twa were nomadic hunters and gatherers who
resided primarily in forests, but over time, especially in the latter half of the twentieth
century, they began to live and work among the Hutu and Tutsi, largely working as servants
and laborers. Small in stature, and sometimes referred to by the disparaging term of
pygmy, prior to the colonial period Twa were largely isolated from the Hutu and Tutsi in
that both of the latter looked down upon the Twa and looked askance at any relationships
involving Twa.
As far as the 1994 genocide is concerned, little information exists beyond the fact that
some Twa were murdered and some Twa were murderers.
Typologies of Genocide. Typologies of genocide basically provide a system, or categories,
for classifying different types of actual cases of genocide. Numerous typologies of
genocide have been developed by scholars in various fields, and herein only a sampling is
highlighted. One of the earliest typologies was developed by Hervé Savon in his book Du
Cannibalisme au Génocide (1972): genocides of substitution, genocides of devastation, and
genocides of elimination.
Sociologist Helen Fein’s (b. 1934) typology consists of the following: (1) developmental,
where the perpetrator intentionally or unintentionally destroys groups of people who
stand in the way of the economic exploitation of land, wood, water, oil, and other
resources; (2) despotic, which are aimed at eliminating real or potential groups of opposition,
as in a new, highly polarized, multiethnic state; (3) ideological, which involves cases
of genocide against groups perceived and targeted as enemies by the state and/or the
state’s desire to destroy victim groups that are perceived, portrayed, and treated as the
embodiment of evil; and (4) retributive, where the perpetrator sets out to destroy, in
whole or part, its perceived enemies.
As for sociologist Leo Kuper (1908–1994), his initial typology consisted of the following:
(1) genocides carried out to settle ethnic, racial, and religious differences; (2) genocides carried
out to terrorize a people conquered by a colonizing empire; and (3) genocides perpetrated
to carry out a political ideology. Ultimately, Kuper revised the latter and divided categories of
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