Genocide by Attrition III. The International Legal Framework Raphael Lemkin, who developed the concept of genocide and was the driving force behind the adoption of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, envisioned a more comprehensive definition of the “crime of all crimes” than how it is defined in the Convention. In 1944, he wrote, “The objectives of such a [genocidal] plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups . . .”242 Most of these indicators of genocide as a process of attrition were not included in the final text of the Convention, which required significant diplomatic compromise to pass.243 Nonetheless, Article 2 of the 1948 Convention, employing more generic language, listed five qualifying acts, three of which are directly relevant to the idea of “genocide by attrition,” especially as it relates to the Rohingya case.244 Decades of union- and state-level laws, policies, and practices enabled military and civilian government officials to identify, control, and persecute Rohingya in ways that violated elements of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention. These enumerated crimes include: (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; [and] (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.245 Fortify Rights, like many other human rights organizations and various U.N. bodies, have comprehensively documented all three violations, which have continued over generations.246 242 Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), p. ix. 243 Kurt Jonassohn with Karin Solveig Bjornson, Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations in Comparative Perspective, (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers 1998). 244 Genocide Convention, Art. II. 245 Ibid. 246 For example, Fortify Rights found “reasonable grounds” to believe that the Myanmar military, police, and civilian perpetrators committed the crime of genocide against Rohingya civilians in Rakhine State through at least three criminal acts of genocide: killings, serious bodily and mental harm, and the infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group. Fortify Rights, “They Gave Them Long Swords,” pp.

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