Killing members of this group

What crimes can be defined as genocide
"Very often the term "genocide" is used by people in everyday speech to refer to the biggest and most serious crime, because it sounds much worse than war crimes or crimes against humanity," Valerie Gabard, co-founder of the legal consulting company UpRights, an expert on international law from The Hague, tells DW. "But, from a legal point of view, the definition of genocide is very narrow." The criterion of whether certain actions really fall under the concept of "genocide" is not the number of people killed, Gabard continues: "The intention to physically destroy an entire group is the main feature of this crime." But experts say proving this "special intent" is not easy because there is often no direct evidence.
"Genocide is difficult to prove, first of all, because it is not possible to get a direct confession from the perpetrators in court," says William Schabas, professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. - Therefore, courts have to make a conclusion about the intentions of criminals based on their behavior. We have to rely on circumstantial evidence. And the rule says that they should not cause the slightest doubt. And that makes it harder."
The prosecution can last for many years
Valerie Gabard, an expert on international law who has worked in the International Criminal Tribunals for Cambodia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, says that the prosecution of genocide can last for many years.
"It takes a very long time, including because of the scale of the crimes," she explains. "Usually, when it comes to genocide, it assumes that there were many victims, and it takes a lot of time to investigate crimes and prove not only the intention to kill, but to kill them precisely because they belonged to a certain group."
Genocide or not?
In recent years, the term "genocide" has often been used by political leaders to describe crimes in China, Myanmar, Syria and, more recently, in Ukraine. In mid-April, US President Joe Biden brought charges of genocide against Russian President Vladimir Putin for the atrocities committed by his troops in Ukraine.
Last year, the governments of the United States, Canada and the Netherlands accused China of committing genocide against the Uighur national minority in Xinjiang, and several other countries adopted parliamentary resolutions with similar accusations.
However, since the Holocaust, the international competent judicial authorities have recognized three events as genocide: the murder in Rwanda in 1994 of 800 thousand people from the Tutsi tribe and moderate representatives of the Hutu tribe; the massacre in Bosnian Srebrenica in 1995; the killings by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970s of representatives of national minorities in this country - Muslims, Vietnamese and chams.
There are disagreements about the latest event: Some experts believe that many victims of the Khmer Rouge were targeted because of their political or social status, which does not fall within the scope of the definition of genocide established by the UN.
In 2008, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of genocide in connection with the conflict in Darfur, where ethnic cleansing was allegedly carried out. This was the first time that an international justice body brought charges of genocide against a sitting head of State.
"There is a legal definition of genocide, which is used in the cases of the International Court of Justice and in the sentences of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. There is a very clearly established law on what genocide is," says William Shabas, professor of international law. The murders and persecutions of Uighurs in China or mass killings during the war in Ukraine, for all their enormity, do not correspond to the legal definition of genocide, the expert believes.