“These are war crimes and it will be recognized by the world as genocide”. Two days after the discovery of innumerable corpses of civilians in the streets of Boutcha, the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, went to this suburb of kyiv, Monday April 4, to denounce the acts of the Russian soldiers there, discovered after the recapture of the city by Ukrainian troops. The Head of State used the word, serious and full of history, of “genocide”.
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kyiv was already using this term to refer to the murderous siege of Mariupol. After the discovery of the terrible images of Boutcha and other martyr towns, the accusation took on another scope. Spain and Poland, in particular, have taken it over. But others have avoided it, such as the President of the United States, Joe Biden, who, when asked about the term “genocide”preferred that of “war crimes”. Franceinfo answers the questions raised by this debate.
A clearly defined crime…
The crime of genocide was created in 1948 by a UN convention, and its definition has not changed since. It designates certain acts (mainly murders) committed in “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
This narrow definition therefore excludes many scenarios. “A genocide cannot target a political or cultural group”, explains Yann Jurovics, lecturer in public law at the University of Paris-Saclay, who collaborated with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and that for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). While some jurists believe that a term is needed to designate the eradication of a culture, it does not fall within the scope commonly accepted today.
Furthermore, it is necessary to prove “a policy which aims to destroy the group as such, simply because it exists”. As opposed, for example, to massacres which would have the aim of conquering a territory, explains the jurist: “In this case, the motive is not the hatred of the other”. On the other hand, there is no minimum number of victims, as long as it is possible to prove that the objective is to eradicate the targeted population.
The genocides whose recognition makes consensus can be counted on the fingers of one hand, recalls Yann Jurovics: the genocide of the Armenians from 1915, that of the Jews from September 1941, and that of the Tutsis from April 1994. May be added that of the Hereros, a people of Namibia, by Germany from 1904: if “we lack elements from a legal point of view” to decide more than a century later, Germany recognized it in 2015.
… but which does not correspond to the Ukrainian context
Several constituent elements of a genocide are, as we know it, absent from the situation in Ukraine, in the eyes of Yann Jurovics. The perpetrators of genocide, intending to wipe out the group they are targeting, “attack on everyone they meet”. This is not what seems to have happened in Boutcha, where many of the victims were obviously civilians who were arbitrarily executed, but where other inhabitants had their lives saved and are testifying today. The number of victims is in the hundreds, but the Russian army did not exterminate the entire population of this city of 37,000 inhabitants.
The Russian forces, although besieging certain towns, did not “prevented all Ukrainians from leaving”, another aspect that would otherwise help to characterize the will to spare no one. There is also nothing to suggest the existence “killing centers”. And the Russian army does not particularly target women and children, priority targets during genocides, because the objective is then “to destroy the group definitively”decrypts Yann Jurovics.
In a very shared message on Twitter (in English), on Monday, another genocide expert, historian and political scientist Eugene Finkel, of Johns Hopkins University, in the United States, said he was convinced of the existence of a genocide, in particular after the publication of an article by the official Russian agency Ria Novosti. Published on Sunday and summarized in English by a Belarusian journalistthis text defends a very broad vision of what Russia describes as “denazification” Ukraine, an intention repeatedly claimed by Vladimir Putin: all Ukrainians who have taken up arms must be eliminated, and the majority of the Ukrainian population supports the Nazis, writes in particular the state press organ. “One of the most explicit statements I have ever seen of intent to destroy a national group”believes Eugene Finkel, himself Israeli, but born in Ukraine.
But here again, the jurist Yann Jurovics disagrees with this analysis: the Russian discourse does not aim “a biological group”but supporters of a political idea (whether real or not). “The simple test, to determine if it is a genocide, is to ask oneself if the victim has a choice. A Tutsi, for example, could not choose not to be Tutsi anymore”, he explains. The discourse of Russian power, on the other hand, leaves the Ukrainians the choice to give up their defense of the country’s independence and their national identity. “In practice, it’s a very limited choice”, recognizes the lawyer. But he distinguishes Russian power discourse from genocidal discourse, “which would link political thought to a biological criterion”.
Other qualifications possible
Joe Biden demanded a war crimes trial on Monday, a qualification easier to establish. Attacks against civilians, in particular, are war crimes, and they have been numerous and documented since the beginning of the Russian invasion at the end of February, both in Boutcha and in Mariupol or Kharkiv.
Crime against humanity is another possible qualification. It designates, according to Yann Jurovics, “a policy of deprivation of fundamental rights against individuals because of their belonging to an identity”.
“If the Russian authorities attack civilians in the context of an armed conflict, it is a war crime. If the population is targeted because they are Ukrainian, then it is a crime against humanity.”
Yann Jurovics, lecturer in public law and former jurist of the International Criminal Courtat franceinfo.fr
However, it is necessary to establish that the actions of the Russian army are the result of a concerted policy, explains this specialist. “It’s difficult without written evidence, and confessions almost never exist”, he warns. But the repetition of certain methods can make it possible to establish it: “If we realize that the Russian army leaves behind a mass grave in all the cities it occupied, then this can attest to a policy decided at a higher level.” The International Criminal Court (ICC) has already opened an investigation into all the acts committed in Ukraine at the beginning of March, even if the prospect of one day seeing Vladimir Putin tried is unlikely.
“A crime against humanity is no less or more serious than genocide”, also recalls Yann Jurovics. For legal specialists, these two crimes describe different situations. “But the label of ‘genocide’ is sometimes invoked because there is the impression of a hierarchy” in horror, of which it would be the final stage. Using this term, rightly or wrongly, is understandable at a time when it is a question of pushing the international community to react. But the lawyer recalls “that there has never been a military intervention to stop a genocide, in Rwanda for example”.