Genocide investigations

DEFINITION: Deliberate and systematic attempt to destroy an ethnic, religious, racial, or national group.

SIGNIFICANCE: The nature of genocide is such that those who perpetrate genocidal acts seek to deny their actions and cover up evidence of their guilt. Forensic science can assist in determining the objective facts when genocide is alleged.

Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) coined the word “genocide” to describe the German policy toward the Jews during World War II. His campaign for recognition of this crime resulted in the 1948 adoption by the United Nations of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which defined genocide as acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group by killing or doing serious physical or mental harm to members of the group, by preventing births within the group, and by separating children of the group from other group members.

Conflicting Definitions

The importance of the international recognition of the crime of genocide was that the pre-World War II laws of war (the laws under which could be charged) covered only the actions that governments took against citizens of other countries. For this reason, after World War II, the charges of war crimes brought against several high-ranking German officials at the Nuremberg Trials included charges for their mass execution of Jews from Poland, France, and other nations, but not for the Nazi slaughter of German Jews. By establishing genocide as a crime against humanity, the United Nations made it possible to punish government officials after that time for comparable crimes against their own citizens.

Some legal scholars and other observers have asserted that the definition of genocide should be broadened to include acts intended to destroy political opponents or unpopular minorities (such as homosexuals) as well as the usual national, ethnic, racial, or religious targets of genocide. Some have even coined words—such as “politicide” and “democide”—to cover additional groups they feel should be protected under international law.

Given that legal scholars differ somewhat in their interpretations of the precise definition of genocide, those accused of genocidal acts sometimes attempt to defend themselves against the charge by playing varying interpretations against one another. Forensic science has an important role to play in determining the objective facts of situations involving accusations of genocide, given that defendants nearly always attempt to hide evidence of their crimes. In 2023, the International Criminal Court was actively investigating seventeen situations across four continents in which genocide may have occurred. These included investigations related to the war resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Applications of Forensic Science

At the Nuremberg Trials, the testimony of victims and eyewitnesses, as well as substantial documentary evidence, were presented to support the charges against the Germans. Forensic science was able to answer one important question that was raised at the trials: Although the Germans were guilty of many atrocities, they did not perpetrate the Katyn Massacre, the 1940 killing of Polish military officers that was carried out in Russia’s Katyn Forest. Forensic evidence proved that the massacre was carried out by the Soviets, who subsequently tried to blame it on the Germans.

Advances in forensic science techniques led to the increasing use of such techniques in determining the truth of numerous situations in which genocide had been alleged. Between 1976 and 1983, the military junta that ruled Argentina carried out a “democide” against trade unionists and left-wing students who opposed the regime. The junta was accused of secretly kidnapping opponents, torturing and killing them, and burying the victims in unmarked graves. The junta acknowledged burying some bodies in unmarked graves but insisted that the graves contained only the bodies of elderly male indigents who had died of natural causes. After the regime fell, an international outcry led to exhumations and forensic investigations of the alleged burial sites. It was determined that although a few of those in the graves were elderly males who apparently died of natural causes, the vast majority were young men and women who had died of execution-style gunshot wounds, and their skeletons showed the effects of extreme torture.

In the period 1991–1995, wars in the former Yugoslavia resulted in mass genocidal killings (so-called ethnic cleansing). Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) charged the Serbs with genocide against Bosniaks and pointed to many mass graves. The Serbs replied that the graves held only members of the Bosnian armed resistance who were killed in combat. Forensic science was able to establish that the Serbian contention could not be sustained because the remains in the mass graves included a large number of elderly women and children whose remains indicated they were executed at close range and not victims of battle wounds. Based partly on this evidence, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found various Serbian officials guilty of genocide.

In both Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, a critical problem in identifying the remains of those killed in the genocidal conflict—so that the remains could be returned to their families for proper burial—was the absence of antemortem (before death) medical and dental records for comparison to the remains. Few such records had existed in the first place, and many of those were destroyed in the shelling and burning of the cities, towns, and villages from which the people had come. The groups involved in attempting to identify the victims of the conflict interviewed family members of the missing, asking them to recall whether their loved ones had any possibly identifying dental work or any injuries that might be reflected in their skeletal remains, but this system was not very helpful. The situation would have been hopeless without the application of advanced forensic science techniques. DNA analysis, in particular, was useful for identifying many victims.

Forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley assisted the government of Croatia in creating a system for identifying remains and determining causes of death for individual victims. The system involved coding and inventorying the remains as well as storing all information on the remains—including age, gender, and stature of each victim—in a computerized database. These data could then be used to determine whether any atrocities had occurred so that the information could be forwarded to the international war crimes tribunal.

Bibliography

"About the Court." International Criminal Court, 2024, www.icc-cpi.int/about/the-court. Accessed 14 Aug. 2024.

Benedict, Jeff. No Bone Unturned: Inside the World of a Top Forensic Scientist and His Work on America’s Most Notorious Crimes and Disasters. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

James, Stuart H., and Jon J. Nordby, eds. Forensic Science: An Introduction to Scientific and Investigative Techniques. 2d ed. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 2005.

"Learn About Genocide and Mass Atrocities." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2024, www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/learn-about-genocide-and-other-mass-atrocities. Accessed 14 Aug. 2024.

Scheffler, Immo E. Mitochondria. 2d ed. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.

“Situations under Investigation.” International Criminal Court, www.icc-cpi.int/situations-under-investigations. Accessed 2 Feb. 2023.

Totten, Samuel, William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny. Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. 2d ed. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Valentino, Benjamin A. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004.