Instructions: Read the event(s) assigned to your group and answer the questions that follow. Be prepared to share your answers with the class.

The region that is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo became the personal colony of King Leopold II of Belgium in 1885. The Congo Free State measured more than seventy-six times the size of Belgium. Its population of more than twenty million was diverse, with approximately 250 different ethnic groups.

Leopold’s top priority was to make money from his venture, the Congo Free State. Colonial officials constructed an economy based on the export of rubber and ivory to Europe. These goods were produced by the forced labor of Africans. In 1901 alone, six thousand tons of rubber left the colony. Colonial officials required Africans to meet daily quotas, and when people did not collect enough rubber, officials inflicted brutal punishments. Officials used rape, mutilation, and murder as punishment and as a way to control native Congolese. When communities rebelled, officials often killed all the inhabitants. Because they were forced to collect rubber, Congolese could not hunt or tend to their own crops, which resulted in widespread starvation. As many as ten million Congolese died in the first two decades of colonialism, largely as a result of abuses by Leopold’s colonial officials.

Colonial administrators also destroyed parts of Congolese culture. Officials took orphaned children away from their communities to work in “child colonies” or to train as soldiers. Colonial laws prevented Africans from traveling freely across provincial borders, or from practicing non-European religions. In addition to collecting ivory and rubber, Africans were forced to grow crops such as cotton, coffee, and tea for export. They were prohibited from selling harvested products to anyone other than European colonizers or a few powerful companies. Discoveries of precious metals and minerals such as cobalt, gold, copper, and diamonds led to the further extraction of Congo’s resources for European profit. 

Colonial officials forced many Africans to work for the Force Publique, a police force that maintained control by intimidating and abusing local populations. Members of this force were subject to poor pay, brutal working and living conditions, and violent abuse at the hands of their Belgian officers. 

As the international community became aware of the abuses of the Congo’s colonial system under King Leopold, public pressure forced Leopold to hand over the Congo to the Belgian government, which took control in 1908.

Questions

1. Were King Leopold and colonial officials’ actions in the Congo a genocide? Give at least two reasons from the text to support your view. 

2. What standards from Article II of the Genocide Convention apply to determine if this event was a genocide? 

3. What additional information would you like to have about King Leopold and the Congo Free State?

Instructions: Read the event(s) assigned to your group and answer the questions that follow. Be prepared to share your answers with the class.

Tibet lies to the north of the Himalayan Mountains in what is today southwestern China. Starting in the late fourteenth century Tibetan dynasties enjoyed autonomy, sometimes under agreements with the neighboring states of Mongolia, Nepal, and China. Beginning in the early 1600s a series of Dalai Lamas assumed leadership of Tibet. The philosophies of the Gelug school of Buddhism lay the foundation for government and society.  

In 1950, Chinese communist troops entered Tibet and took control. Initially, China did not make social reforms in Tibet. The communist system quickly dismantled other elements of Tibetan government, however, such as by instituting land reform and creating secular (non-religious) schools. 

After a rebellion in 1958, Chinese military forces killed and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Tibetans. The Dalai Lama fled to exile in India, and communist Chinese officials took power. Thousands of monasteries, temples, and other Tibetan architecture were also destroyed. A 1962 report from a Tibetan Buddhist leader chronicled extensive oppression, such as arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, forced abortions, starvation, and the persecution of people openly practicing Buddhism.

Since the 1980s, China’s policies have been aimed at promoting the migration of thousands of ethnic Chinese to Tibet. As a result, Tibetans are now a minority in the region. Since 2001, the Chinese government has focussed its policy in Tibet on rapid economic development and strict control of dissidents. The Chinese government has launched a number of “Strike Hard” campaigns that it claims are aimed at reducing crime in the region. The government has arrested thousands of Tibetans and killed hundreds of others for engaging in “separatist” activities. The Chinese government believes the Dalai Lama seeks independence for Tibet from China, whereas the Dalai Lama claims only to seek more autonomy from the central government. Since 2009, at least 159 Tibetans have set themselves on fire in protest of China’s religious, cultural, and political repression in Tibet.

Questions

1. Are China’s actions in Tibet a genocide? Give at least two reasons from the text to support your view.

2. What standards from Article II of the Genocide Convention apply to determine if this event was a genocide? 

3. What additional information would you like to have about Tibet? 

Instructions: Read the event(s) assigned to your group and answer the questions that follow. Be prepared to share your answers with the class.

Russia and Ukraine have been closely linked politically and economically since the eighteenth century, when the Russian Empire established control over much of what is today Ukraine. During the Soviet era (1917-1991), Ukraine was home to much of the Soviet Union’s agriculture and industry. 

In 1928, the leader of the Soviet Union—Josef Stalin—imposed a Five-Year Plan designed to industrialize the struggling Soviet economy. Stalin believed that the Soviet Union had to industrialize at all costs in order to compete against the threat of the capitalist countries of Europe, the United States, and Japan. 

The plan included ending small-scale farming and forcing the farmers, known as kulaks, to work on large-scale farms. This process was known as “collectivization.” When Ukrainian kulaks were told they would have to give up their land to the Soviet state and grow what they were told, they resisted. In response, Stalin announced in 1929 his intention to “liquidate [eliminate] the kulaks.” Hundreds of thousands were deported to forced labor camps, called Gulags, in Siberia, the expansive northern Russian state known for its cold temperatures and severe winters. 

The changes Stalin made to the agricultural system led to poor harvests and ultimately food shortages and famine. This was true in other parts of the Soviet Union, but Stalin saw the shortages in Ukraine as acts of sabotage by disloyal Ukrainians. The truth was that the policies of “collectivization,” not sabotage, had created the vast shortages and famine. Because Stalin saw the failures as a result of plots by Ukrainian groups resisting Soviet rule, he escalated the Soviet crackdown in Ukraine, worsening the famine. All grain was shipped to Russia, leaving none for the Ukrainians who grew it. Families resorted to eating field mice and even grass. Many were killed or deported, and millions were left by the Soviet government to starve to death. Between three and five million Ukrainians died of starvation in 1932 and 1933. The famine is often referred to as the Holodomor, which means “to kill by starvation” in Ukrainian.

Questions

1. Were the Soviet Union’s actions in Ukraine a genocide? Give at least two reasons from the text to support your view. 

2. What standards from Article II of the Genocide Convention apply to determine if this event was a genocide?

3. What additional information would you like to have about the famine in Ukraine? 

Instructions: Read the event(s) assigned to your group and answer the questions that follow. Be prepared to share your answers with the class.

The country of Argentina gained its independence from Spain in 1816. Argentina’s newly unified central government wanted to expand its control of land from the coastal areas into more inland areas inhabited by Native groups. This was a way of increasing agricultural and commercial production and providing land to new immigrants of European origin, whom government officials saw as superior to Native people. Many Argentinian officials believed in eugenics, a racist and false theory claiming that there are racial differences in humans. Officials wanted to eliminate the possibility of mixing with Native groups because they believed the groups were inferior and prevented the country from developing economically. In addition, Argentines hoped that by taking land further west they would prevent the neighboring country of Chile from expanding its borders. 

Continuing the long history of colonizing Native land to expand its borders, between 1878 and 1885 the Argentine government began a military campaign in the regions of Pampas and Patagonia. General Julio Argentino Roca, the national minister of defense who became the president of Argentina from 1880-1886 and again from 1898-1904, started the campaign. 

During this campaign, the army was authorized to execute prisoners, including women and children. Families of Native groups were separated. Children were often kidnapped or forcibly removed from their parents. They were relocated to “concentration camps’’ in different parts of Argentina or forced to work as servants for wealthy Argentines. Some were brought back to the capital city as curiosities and forced to sit in state fairs for urban white residents to observe. Native men and women were also separated, and Native women were often raped or forced into marriage with white soldiers. Argentines justified these separations by saying that they were introducing Native children to a higher form of civilization. The Argentine government’s actions killed at least one thousand Native people and forced fifteen thousand from their homes. The government took thirty-seven thousand acres of land for wealthy white investors.

Questions

1. Were the Argentine government’s actions a genocide? Give at least two reasons from the text to support your view.

2. What standards from Article II of the Genocide Convention apply to determine if this event was a genocide?

3. What additional information would you like to have about the “Conquest of the Desert”?