GENOCIDE, COMMUNISM AND TIBET
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP78-02771R000300440002-6
Release Decision:
RIFPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
15
Document Creation Date:
November 11, 2016
Document Release Date:
July 30, 1998
Sequence Number:
2
Case Number:
Publication Date:
June 1, 1959
Content Type:
REPORT
File:
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
CIA-RDP78-02771R000300440002-6.pdf | 972.86 KB |
Body:
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
GENOCIDE, COMMUNISM AND TIBET
UN CLASS. COY
CIS-
~FlED
DTQ'
,GTE: ?~
AUTHm HR 10.2
June 1959
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
SUMMARY
The systematic destruction of racial, national and
religious groups as ?a matter of national policy is recog-
nized today as the crime of genocide under international
law. This new legal concept has been given international
currency and validity through the UN-sponsored Convention
on Genocide, which has been ratified by 58 countries.
Part I of this report, Genocide: A Legal Concept of
Inhumanity, undertakes to show -the of this
concept as a reaction to the Nazi excesses in Europe and
to outline the basic principles of the Genocide Convention.
The report then presents details of the genocidal activities
carried out by the Nazis as well as those perpetrated by
the Soviet Communists against the Poles, the Baltic peo-
ples, and various national minority groups in the Soviet
Union. A final section discusses the recent genocide
measures of the Communist Chinese in Tibet, as detailed
in a report issued by the International Commission of
Jurists.
Part II of the report, China Incorporates Tibet,
briefly surveys Tibetan-Chinese relations up totheme
establishment of the Chinese Communist regime and then
outlines in detail the systematic attempts of the Chinese
Communists to destroy Tibetan autonomy and religious and
cultural values. Communist promises to the Tibetans and
the violation of those promises are shown. Finally, the
series of killings and other atrocities which led to the
International Commission's finding of "a clear pattern
of genocide" are examined in some detail.
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6.
GENOCIDE: A LEGAL CONCEPT OF INHUMANITY
Genocide l- A New Concept
Throughout recorded history, man's inhumanity to man
has been viewed as an immutable law of nature--a social
phenomenon to be deplored but to be accepted as unavoid-
able. Inhumanity by individuals was, 'to be sure, pro-
hibited; but.when executed by the state it was an act of
sovereignty immune from any reprisal or punishment. Not
until the holocaust and slaughter of World War II was the
conscience of mankind sufficiently aroused to provoke
efforts to extend the rule of international law to prevent
the senseless slaughter which war entails.
At Nurnberg the International Military Tribunal (War
Crimes Tribunal) laid down the principle that aggressive
warfare and wartime barbarities were crimes against all
humanity and were to be punished accordingly. This was,
indeed, a notable measure of progress. However, it did
not go far enough, for it ignored the systematic persecu-
tion or destruction of entire peoples, chillingly exempli-
fied by the Nazi extermination of'.approxiately 12 million
Jews and other so-called "Inferior peoples" of Eastern
Europe.
Although the Nazi actions were on a scale to stagger
the imagination, they were not without precedent. History
records many instances of the extermination, or near ex-
termination of entire groups of people united by ties of
blood, ra.ce,, religion, or nationality: the extirpation
of Carthage and the Carthaginians in 146 B.C.; the
slaughter of early Christians by the Romans; the murder
or expulsion of the Jews and Moore from Spain; the pogroms
against the Jews of Europe during the Middle Ages and
against Russian and Romanian Jews in the early 1900's;
the Ottoman massacres of Armenians in the late 19th and
early 20th Centuries; etc.
It was not until after World War II, however, that
the community of nations adjudged such actions to be an
International crime of concern to all nations regardless
of where,by whom and against whom committed. It was,
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
in fact, such a new legal concept that there was not even
a word for it. A term was quickly found, however, and
the word chosen--genocide--has now been given international
currency and validity by the United. Nations Resolution and
Convention on Genocide.
"Genocide" is a hybrid word derived from the Greek
eg nos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing), implying
the deliberate extermination of racial, national, religious
or ethnic groups during peace or wartime. It covers not
only mass murder but also attempts to destroy human groups
without direct physical violence. It thus encompasses
those actions designed to prevent human life, such as
abortion, sterilization, forcible separation of husbands
and wives, together with measures designed to endanger
physical or mental health and to shorten life, such as
injections of harmful chemicals, artificial infections,
hazardous medical experimentations, starvation, overwork
and deliberate exposure to disease in special camps or
other environments controlled by the perpetrator.
Whenever such acts are deliberately carried out with
the intent of destroying, wholly or in part, or of inflict-
ing permanent harm on a human group, the crime of genocide
is involved.
The United Nations Resolution and Convention
Although the Nurnberg Tribunal, on the basis of the,
evidence presented to it, convicted the principal Nazi
leaders of "crimes against humanity," including murder,
extermination, enslavement and deportation of civilian
populations and their persecution on political, religious
or racial grounds, the Court interpreted its charter so
narrowly that its decision declared as punishable inhuman
acts against civilian populations only when committed
during or in connection with war. The conscience of the
world, however, had been too profoundly shocked by the
Nazi excesses to be satisfied with this restricted ruling.
The reaction to the Nurnberg ruling was a demand for
the establishment of a rule of international law which
would impose penalties on any government that perpetrated
on groups of its own citizens or those of any other country
"revolting and horrible acts" in time of peace as in time
2
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
of war. Accordingly, the General Assembly of the United
Nations, as the most authoritative existing voice of the
world's conscience, adopted on 11 December 19+6 a resolu-
tion which declared genocide to be a "crime under inter-
national law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the UN
and condemned by the civilized world."
The UN Resolution, however, was more than just a
pious enunciation of a new legal concept. It also invited
member states to enact laws designed to prevent and punish
acts of genocide and--more meaningfully--directed the Eco-
nomic and Social Council to draft a convention on the
subject. This the Council proceeded to do without delay.
Its draft Convention on Genocide was then discussed at
length in the General Assembly, which approved it on
9 December 1948 by a vote of 55 to 0.
The Convention asserts that genocide is a crime under
international law, whether committed in time of peace or
in time of war. It then proceeds to define genocide as
follows (Article II):
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of
the following acts committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial
or religious group, as such:
a. Killing members of the group.
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm
to members of the group.
C. Deliberately inflicting on the group con-
ditions of life calculated to bring about
its physical destruction in whole or in
part.
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent
births within the group.
e. Forcibly transferring children of the
group to another group."
The Convention further provides that attempts or
conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement
to commit genocide and complicity in genocide shall also
be punishable. Persons committing genocide or any of the
3
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
other acts cited are to be punished "whether they are
constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or
private individuals." Under the Convention all contract-
ing parties undertake to enact laws with effective penal-
ties covering the crime of genocide. Persons charged with
such crimes "shall be tried by a competent tribunal of
the State in the territory of which the act was committed,
or by such international penal tribunal as may have juris-
diction with respect to those contracting parties which
shall have accepted its jurisdiction."
Although the original UN Resolution included within
its definition of genocide actions against political
groups, this provision was omitted from the Convention.
After some discussion, the drafting committee decided
that membership in political groups was too unstable to
make their inclusion meaningful. Moreover, it was recog-
nized as a matter of practicality that the inclusion of
such groups within the purview of the Convention would
seriously weaken its support on the part of many states
and would endanger its chances of ratification, since it
might lead to fears of UN intervention in domestic politi-
cal struggles.
The Convention became effective on 12 January 1951
after it had been ratified by 20 states, not including the
US or the USSR. By January 1959, instruments of ratifica-
tion or accession had been deposited by 58 states. Some
are not UN members; the Convention is open to them, how-
ever, at the invitation of the General Assembly, when such
states become active members of a specialized agency of the
UN or accede to the Statute of the International. Court of,
Justice. The 58 states are (an asterisk denotes ratifica-
tion or accession with reservations) : Afghanistan, Albania,*
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria,* Burma,
Byelorussian SSR, * Cambodia, Canada, Ceylon, Chile, China,
Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia,* Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt,
El Salvador, Ethiopia, France; German Federal Republic,
Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, * Iceland, Iran,
Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Republic of Korea, Laos,
Lebanon, Liberia, Mexico, Monaco, Morocco, Nicaragua,
Norway, Panama, Pakistan, Philippines,* Poland,* Rumania,*
Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukrainian
SSR,* USSR,* Vietnam, Yugoslavia.
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Genocide Under the Nazis
That genocide is today recognized as a crime under
international law is due primarily to the horror and
outrage felt throughout the world over the excesses of
the Hitler regime. Those excesses involved the mass ex-
termination of six million Jews, several million Slavs
and almost all of the gypsies of Europe in a systematic
campaign to eliminate those groups as religious, racial
and national entities.
Predicated as it was on the theory of German racial
superiority, Nazi Germany, from its very inception, rele-
gated the Jews of Germany to an inferior social position.
Social and occupational discrimination instituted by the
Nurnberg racial laws and other anti-Semitic decrees
eventually led to active physical persecution of all
Jews together with their exclusion from business and the
professions, the destruction of their places of worship,
and the "ghettoization" of their society.
The situation of the Jews became critical following
the outbreak of the war. The Nazi police were given
carte blanche, and physical measures, such as deportations
and exterminations, were launched on a large scale. In
the occupied areas of Europe, the Nazi anti-Jewish policies
were applied on an equally heartless basis. Jews were not
only pillaged of their goods and property but were enslaved
to provide the Nazis with cheap labor. It mattered little
whether the Jew was killed outright. or sent to a forced
labor camp. The result was the same, for hunger, cold,
torture and blows weakened the resistance of, the labor
camp inmates and resulted in sickness and death.
After the defeat of Poland, Jews were herded into
ghettos in the large cities and cut off from all normal
living patterns. The beginning of 1942 ushered in the mass
slaughter of Jews in the Polish and western USSR ghettos,
where the Jews were either massacred or deported to ex-
termination camps. Evidence presented at the Nurnberg
trials indicated that Hitler resolved on the total extermi-
nation of the Jews when it became clear to the Nazi leader-
ship that a speedy victory was no longer possible and that
it would be necessary to assure German unity by involving
all Germans in the Nazi criminal conspiracy.
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Following the invasion of Russia in June 1941, special
S3 detachments were assigned to machine-gun systematically
the Jewish population of the invaded territories. An
order from Goering to Heydrich, dated 30 July 1941,
extended the exterminations to all of conquered Europe as
the "final solution" of the Jewish question in areas under
German control.
After December 1941, the extermination camp at Chelmno,
Poland, was used as an "experimental station" for the de-
vising of "scientific" methods for killing large masses
of human beings. Poland, in fact, became a veritable
charnel house, the place of execution for all European
Jews. Intensive gas chamber executions began in April
1942 at Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibov. Cyclone B, an
insecticide with a prussic acid base, was introduced at
Auschwitz and subsequently replaced the carbon monoxide
previously used by the other four large Polish death
centers cited above.
The Nazis also carried out extensive experiments at
Auschwitz and Ravensbruck involving the sterilization and
castration of Jews, but these were abandonded when the
Nazis failed to find any cheap and effective mass sterili-
zation method.
The number of Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide
policies has been authoritatively set at approximately
six million by the Nurnberg Tribunal. This is equivalent
to 73 percent of the pre-war Jewish population (8,295,000)
of Europe. Mere figures, however, tell only part of the
story: the amount of suffering which was involved is
beyond human comprehension and imagination.
Moreover, the Jews were not the only victims of
Nazi racial policies and genocidal measures. The "inferior
races" of conquered Europe--the Poles, Russians, Czechs,
French, etc.--also provided victims. Determined to assure
the permanent supremacy of the German race in all the areas
occupied by the German armed forces, the Nazis embarked on
the direct, if partial, extermination of the population in
Russian areas and the indirect but eventual extermination
of other so-called "inferior peoples."
The Polish government has estimated that the Nazis,
between 1939 and 1945, liquidated nearly three million
Poles. The Nazi plan was to Germanize one-half of the
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: Cl -RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
country and incorporate it into the Reich, while keeping
the other half as a depressed state, devoid of its own
leadership and culture, which could serve as a reservoir
for slave labor. Accordingly, Polish leadership groups--
government officials, priests, judges, educators, etc.--
were either executed. or eliminated by imprisonment or
deportation. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were shipped
to Germany as slave laborers, while the rest of the popu-
lation was kept on a near-starvation diet. This not only
reduced the birth rate but also the survival chances of
those born.
The gypsies of Europe. also were a special target of
Nazi dislike. It is estimated that of Europe's pre-war
total of 1,422,000 gypsies, at least 500,000 were massacred
by the Nazis..
Throughout occupied Europe,, the Nazis systematically
carried out measures designed to ensure German racial pre-
dominance. Even where. direct physical elimination was
not carried out, other measures equally genocidal in
character.were applied: legalization of abortion and
sterilization, raising the marriage age, encouraging the
use of contraceptives, denial of vaccinations and other
health safeguards, etc. Especially heartless was the
separation of children from their parents.
The enormity of the Nazi barbarisms is reflected in
the fact that victims of the Hitlerian genocide measures
actually exceeded in numbers the total casualties inflicted
on the battle fields of what was, by far, the bloodiest
conflict in recorded history.
Genocide Under the Soviets
Although the Soviet Union has ratified the. UN Conven-
tion on Genocide, the Soviet record is anything but clean.
Indeed, the Soviets stand second only to the Nazis in the
number of their victims. These include both Poles and
various Soviet minority groups.
The Katyn Forest Massacre - Sometime after the Russian
occupation of eastern Poland in 1939 and no later than the
.spring of 1940, some 15,000 Polish civilian leaders and
army officers were massacred in Katyn Forest, near Smolensk,
Russia.
7
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA -RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
According to a_special committee of the:US House of
Representatives, which made an official investigation of
the Katyn_'Forest massacre, the Soviet secret police (NKVD)
carried out from September 1939 through March 1940 a
"deliberate and well-organized plan" designed-to separate
Polish army officers and intellectual,leaders from the
mass of Polish prisoners then in Soviet hands.
The members of this Polish elite, numbering 15,400,
were assigned to three special camps in the USSR, namely,
Kozielsk, Sarobielsk and Ostashkov. There they were sub-
jected by the Soviets to intensive interrogation during
a 6-month period in an attempt to determine which of
them could eventually be converted to Communism. About
"March 1940 an evacuation from the three camps began. Of
the 15,400 internees, only 400 survived. None of the
other prisoners were heard from or seen after May 1940,
except for the 4,143 identified in the mass graves at
Katyn.
The world first learned of the Katyn affair from a
German radio broadcast on 13 April 1943, which announced
the discovery of mass graves at Katyn of approximately
3,000 Polish officers. According to the broadcast, the
officers were found "in full uniform, in some cases
shackled. All had wounds from pistol bullets in the
back of the neck." This version was subsequently corrob-
orated by eye witnesses as well as witnesses at the
exhumation of the bodies who further testified that the
prisoners' hands had been bound with wire and their
mouths stuffed with sawdust. Most of the victims were.
reported to have been executed with a shot through the
backs of their heads; some, however, appeared to have
been thrown alive into the graves and left to suffocate.
As was to be expected, the Soviets denied responsibility.
They claimed that the Polish prisoners had been transferred
to the Smolensk area in the spring of 1940 and had been .
subsequently captured and executed by the Germans in 1941
during the Russian retreat. As the House Committee's
report pointed out, however, the Soviets did not make
such a claim until after the German radio had announced
discovery of the Katyn graves.
On 30 April 1943 a commission selected by the'Germans
and made up of specialists in medical jurisprudence and
criminology from 12 European universities signed a protocol
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
to the effect that the Poles had been murdered in. the
spring of 1940 when the Katyn area was under Soviet
control. To counter this report the USSR, on 24 January
1944, appointed a Special Commission to Investigate the
Katyn Massacre, whose report charged that the Poles were
executed by the Germans after they had been captured by
the Nazis in July-August 1941.
In its final report on the Katyn massacre, the US
House Committee noted several inconsistencies in the
Russian chronology and version of. the murder of the
Poles. The Committee also took note of the Russian
refusal to allow a neutral investigation of the German
charges in 1943 by the International Committee of the Red
Cross and Russian failure at the Nurnberg trials, where
they were in charge of the prosecutions, to produce
sufficient evidence to warrant a verdict against the
Germans. in this matter. The House Committee concluded
that the weight of the evidence was thatthe Russians
had perpetrated the Katyn Forest Massacre.
Soviet Mass Deportations - Soviet genocidal measures
applied against Soviet citizens have generally been in
the nature of mass deportations designed to disperse
members of a national or ethnic group, thus clearly
falling within the scope of genocide as defined in the
UN Convention on Genocide. The record shows numerous
instances of such deportations, beginning with the harsh
collectivization campaigns of the 1930's (which had the
secondary motive of crushing the independent spirit of
the minority nationalities), and continuing through the
war period into the late 1940's when population resettle-
ments were made in the name of national security.
As a result of the collectivization campaign initiated
in 1929, an estimated 2,400,000 were deported from the
Ukraine by the end of 1932. Uprisings and disorders in
Azerbaidzhan up to 1925 brought about the execution and
deportation of about 100,000 Azerbaidzhani Turks. Mass
repression in the Caucasus in the 1930's led to Siberian
exile or execution for 422,000, mostly of the intelligentsia.
In 1937, as a result of the increase in Soviet-Japanese
tensions in Asia, 75,000 Koreans were deported to
Uzbekistan.
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
The deportations which have occurred in the Baltic
states are especially clear-cut examples of genocide.
The deportation procedures laid down in a 21 January 1941,
order, issued by Serov, then Deputy People's Commissar
for State Security, and applied, both at that time and
in subsequent periods, manifests an intent to bring
about the destruction of national and ethnic groups.
After directing that "a large number of deportees must
be arrested and placed in special camps and their
families settled at special points in distant regions,"
the Serov order described the technique for separating
families for the purpose of preventing births.
The conditions under which the deportations were
effected added to the genocidal character of the Soviet
actions. The deportees were jammed into unheated railway
cars, denied adequate food or medical care during the
period of transit, and then unloaded at special labor
camps lacking adequate housing and located in isolated
areas subject to harsh climatic conditions.
In 1941 the Soviets deported 43 500 persons from
Estonia, ostensibly as "conscriptees" but actually as
inmates for Soviet forced labor camps. In March 1949,
an estimated 30,000 Estonians were deported as a result
of a Soviet collectivization program.
From 1941 to 1945, approximately 60,000 Latvians
were deported to slave labor camps. Of the 60,000 persons
held in so-called "filtration" camps at the end of the
war, 40,000 were deported to forced labor camps in
Siberia, while the remainder were either executed or
sent to other parts of the USSR for "reconstruction
work." Another 50,000 Latvians were deported in March
1949 when they refused to "volunteer" for membership in
collective farms.
In June 1941, 34,000 persons were deported to the
Soviet Far East from Lithuania. During the collectiviza-
tion drives of 1948 and 1949, 287,000 Lithuanians--roughly
10 percent of the total Lithuanian population--reportedly
was deported to Siberia.
The most comprehensive mass deportations in the USSR,
however, occurred during the war and involved the Volga
Germans and the peoples of the north Caucasus area. On
10
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24.: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
28 August 1941, two months after the German invasion of
the Soviet Union and two years after 99.7 percent of the
population had voted for the Soviet Government, a decree
was published which charged the Volga Germans with dis-
loyalty and ordered their deportation to and resettlement
in Novosibirsk and Omsk in Central Siberia and in the
Altai region and the Kazakhstan Republic in Soviet
Central Asia. Of 500,000 Volga Germans affected by this
order, the Soviets actually deported about 200,000 to
the above areas; the remainder were transported to
Germany by the Nazis during the Nazi occupation. Al-
though the decree was ostensibly issued as a precautionary
measure against treason, it contained no indication that
after the emergency the Volga Germans would be permitted
to return to their lands. On the contrary, the decree
abolished their republic and divided its territory among
other oblasts.
Charges of collaborating with the Germans were also
made against the nationalities in the north Caucasus
region after these territories were reconquered by the
Soviets. Early in 1944 the people of the Chechen-Ingush
Republic, the Balkars, the Karachays, and the Crimean
Tatars were rounded up and arrested. Those who resisted
were shot, while the remainder were sent to remote areas
in Siberia. Altogether, a total of almost 1,745,000
were affected, including 700,000 Chechens and 300,000
Tatars. Many died of starvation and exposure during the
long winter journey beyond the Urals. Those who reached
their destination were split into widely dispersed groups,
thus effecting the separation of families and the elimina-
tion of the nationality group as such.
As the final step in the destruction of these
minority groups, the Soviets abolished the Chechen-Ingush
ASSR, the Kalmyk ASSR, the Crimean ASSR and the Karachay
autonomous province. The actions were later characterized
as "monstrous acts" by Khrushchev in his speech to the
20th Party Congress. Although a Supreme Soviet decree
restoring the autonomous republics of the Chechen, Ingush,
Kalmyks, Balkars and Karachays was published in Pravda
on 12 February 1957, there is no information available
to indicate that the USSR has taken any positive steps
to return the survivors of the deported groups to their
ancestral homes. It is to be noted, moreover, that the
decree did not mention Volga Germans or Crimean Tatars.
11
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24:
CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Poles and Soviet Greel s also were victims of Soviet
wartime and post-war deporf ations. Witnesses before a
US Congressional committee have testified that, during
the period 1939-1941, 1,692,000 were deported from
Russian-occupied eastern Poland.
Many of the Soviet Greeks living in the Caucasus and
in the Krasnodar and Stavropol areas were evacuated to
Kazakhstan and Siberia when the German armies advanced
into those areas in 1942. Two years later, following
the Russian re-occupation, the entire Greek population
of the Crimea, consisting of 10,000, was deported to
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, llegedly for collaborating
with the Germans. In the immediate post-war era, 17,000
Greek citizens remained in he areas of Tbilisi, Sukhumi
and Batum, areas not reache by the German armies. In
June 1949 this group and th entire remaining Greek
population of the Caucasus were forcibly removed from
their homes and deported, without warning, in a two-hour
period. The deportation,ap lied both to the Greeks who
had retained Greek citizenship and to about 12,000 Soviet
citizens of Greek origin.
Genocide and the United Nat ons
To date the United Nat
on charges of genocide eith
General Assembly resolution
Charges made by Pakistan ag
"mass destruction of Muslim
of genocide" in East Punjab
dispute were never substant
nist front organizations, n
ciation of Democratic Lawye
States, by its alleged use
in North Korea and Northeas
cide. The charge was so oh
by propaganda aims that the
by taking cognizance of it.
ons has not taken any action
r on the basis of the 1946
or of the Convention itself,
inst India in 1948 concerning
in a pre-arranged program '
in connection with the Kashmir
ated. In 1952 various Commu-
tably the International Asso-
s, charged that the United
f bacteriological warfare
China, was guilty of geno-
iously spurious and motivated
UN refused to demean itself
It appears that this situation may now be changing
and that the UN will shortly be called upon to take its
first action under the Convention on Genocide. On 5 June
1959, the International Commission of Jurists, a non-
governmental organization representing 35,000 lawyers in
I 12
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6
53 countries and enjoying consultative status with the UN
Economic and Social Council, issued a report which asserted
that during the past nine years the Chinese Communists
had committed systematically the "crime of genocide" in
an attempt to destroy the Tibetan people. The Commission
declared that it would "initiate such action as envisaged
by the Genocide Convention of 1948 and by the Charter of
the United Nations for suppression of these (Chinese)
acts..."
Prepared by Shri Purshottam Trikamdas, senior advo-
cate of the India Supreme Court and former secretary to
Mohandas K. Gandhi, the report asserts that the Chinese
Communists have followed a "systematic policy of killing,
imprisonment and deportation of those opposed to the
regime." Trikamdas estimated that at least 65,000
Tibetans had been killed and that of the 200,000 drafted
since 1950 for forced labor in a road-building program,
about one-fourth have died from cold weather, hunger and
fatigue.
In presenting a summary of the report at a news con-
ference in Geneva, Trikamdas declared that there was a
"prima facie case that on the part of the Chinese there
has been an attempt to destroy the national, ethnical,
racial and religious group of Tibetans by killing members
of the group and by causing serious bodily and mental
harm." Trikamdas stated categorically that "these acts
constitute the crime of genocide under the Genocide Con-
vention."
The Tibetans have thus joined those other peoples--
Chechens, Poles, Crimean Tatars, etc.--who have felt the
brutal hand of Communism. As the Commission's report
states, the Communist action in Tibet "reminds one of
the brutal suppression in Hungary." Mr. Trikamdas
expressed it equally well when he declared that "a
practically independent country is being turned by force
into a province of China..."
13
Approved For Release 1999/08/24: CIA-RDP78-02771 R000300440002-6