9781422281369

and countries of western Europe to promote international defense and collective security, responded to this atrocity . They launched a major bombing campaign, attacking Serb positions throughout Bosnia. The Serbs found they had no choice but to negotiate. A peace deal was agreed to in 1995. By this time, however, 200,000 Muslims had been massacred; over 20,000 were missing, feared dead; and two million Muslims had become refugees . What Is Genocide Genocide is defined as any action aimed at the destruction of a group of people, such as a nation, an ethnic group, or a race. An ethnic group is a community whose members shares a similar culture or background, and a race is a group of people who share similar physical characteristics, such as skin color and/or physical features. The term “genocide” was invented in 1944 by a Polish- American legal expert named Raphael Lemkin. He decided a new word was needed to describe the large-scale, deliberate massacres that the Nazis were carrying out against the Jews and other ethnic or national groups at that time living in the parts of Europe that had been occupied by the armies of Nazi Germany. Lemkin combined the Greek word genos , meaning race or tribe, and –cide from the Latin word for killing. Ever since the word genocide was created, there has been a debate about its exact meaning, and about what it should include. Some have argued that the term should include only actions that cause death. Others believe that the destruction of culture, religion, and language are also serious crimes worthy

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Genocide