Template:GenocideCultural genocide or culturicide is a concept first described by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, in the same book that coined the term genocide.<ref name="Bilsky2018">Template:Cite journal</ref> The destruction of culture was a central component in Lemkin's formulation of genocide.<ref name="Bilsky2018"/> The precise definition of cultural genocide remains contested, and the United Nations does not include it in the definition of genocide used in the 1948 Genocide Convention.<ref name="UN2021">Template:Cite web</ref> The Armenian genocide Museum defines culturicide as "acts and measures undertaken to destroy nations' or ethnic groups' culture through spiritual, national, and cultural destruction",<ref name="genocide-museum.am">Template:Cite web</ref> which appears to be essentially the same as ethnocide. Some ethnologists, such as Robert Jaulin, use the term ethnocide as a substitute for cultural genocide,<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> although this usage has been criticized as risking the confusion between ethnicity and culture.<ref name="DelantyKumar2006" /> Cultural genocide and ethnocide have in the past been used in distinct contexts.<ref name="BloxhamMoses2010">Template:Cite book</ref> Cultural genocide without ethnocide is conceivable when a distinct ethnic identity is kept, but distinct cultural elements are eliminated.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Culturicide involves the eradication and destruction of cultural artifacts, such as books, artworks, and structures.<ref name="FH2019">Template:Cite web</ref> The issue is addressed in multiple international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute, which define war crimes associated with the destruction of culture. Cultural genocide may also involve forced assimilation, as well as the suppression of a language or cultural activities that do not conform to the destroyer's notion of what is appropriate.<ref name="FH2019"/> Among many other potential reasons, cultural genocide may be committed for religious motives (e.g., iconoclasm which is based on aniconism); as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing in an attempt to remove the evidence of a people from a specific locale or history; as part of an effort to implement a Year zero, in which the past and its associated culture is deleted and history is "reset". The drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention initially considered using the term, but later dropped it from inclusion.<ref name="AbtahiWebb2008"/><ref name="Davidson2012"/><ref name="AutoCK-2"/> The term "cultural genocide" has been considered in various draft United Nations declarations, but it is not used by the UN Genocide Convention.<ref name=":0" />
The notion of 'cultural genocide' was acknowledged as early as 1944, when lawyer Raphael Lemkin distinguished a cultural component of genocide.<ref name="AutoCK-1"/> In 1989, Robert Badinter, a French criminal lawyer known for his stance against the death penalty, used the term "cultural genocide" on a television show to describe what he said was the disappearance of Tibetan culture in the presence of the 14th Dalai Lama.<ref name="AutoCK-10"/> The Dalai Lama would later use the term in 1993<ref name="AutoCK-11"/> and again in 2008.<ref name="AutoCK-12"/>
The concept of cultural genocide was originally included in drafts of the 1948 Genocide Convention.<ref name="AbtahiWebb2008" /><ref name="Davidson2012" /><ref name="AutoCK-2" /> Genocide was defined as the destruction of a group's language, religion, or culture through one of several methods. This definition of genocide was rejected by the drafting committee by a vote of 25 to 16, with 4 abstentions.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide, including prevention of and redress for:
(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities;
(b) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources;
(c) Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights;
(d) Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures;
(e) Any form of propaganda directed against them.
This wording only ever appeared in a draft. The DRIP—which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly during its 62nd session at UN Headquarters in New York City on 13 September 2007—only makes reference to genocide once, when it mentions "genocide, or any other act of violence" in Article 7. Though the concept of "ethnocide" and "cultural genocide" was removed in the version adopted by the General Assembly, the sub-points from the draft noted above were retained (with slightly expanded wording) in Article 8 that speaks to "the right not to be subject to forced assimilation."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
While not qualifying as genocide under the Convention, the issue is addressed in multiple international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute, which define war crimes associated with the destruction of culture.
List of cultural genocides
The term has been used to describe the destruction of cultural heritage in connection with various events which mostly occurred during the 20th century:
Europe
Historian Stephen Wheatcroft states that the Soviet peasantry was subject to cultural destruction during the creation of the "New Soviet man",<ref name=wheatcroft>The Complexity of the Kazakh Famine: Food Problems and Faulty Perceptions Stephen G. Wheatcroft</ref> Lynne Viola makes a similar characterization of Collectivization in the Soviet Union adding a noted colonial character to the project in their observation of the event.<ref name="collectivizationstruggle">Template:Cite book</ref>
During the genocide of the Chechens and Ingush in 1944, Soviet forces destroyed almost every piece of Chechen and Ingush language literature in existence, and damaged or destroyed many Chechen and Ingush cultural sites and artifacts, including towers in the highlands that had been built to resist Mongol invasions in the 13th century. Chechens and Ingush gravestones were destroyed, and when the Chechens and Ingush were allowed to return to their homes a decade later, they were forbidden from settling in their ancestral mountain lands.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
2004 unrest in Kosovo.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In an urgent appeal,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> issued on 18 March by the extraordinary session of the Expanded Convocation of the Holy Synod of Serbian Orthodox Church (Template:Abbr), it was reported that a number of Serbian churches and shrines in Kosovo had been damaged or destroyed by Albanian rioters. At least 30 sites were completely destroyed, more or less destroyed, or further destroyed (sites that had been previously damaged).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
After the Greek Civil War, Greek authorities had conducted a cultural genocide upon Slavic Macedonians in Northern Greece through prohibition of communication in Slavic languages, renaming of cities, towns and villages (Lerin/Лерин to Florina etc.), deportation of Slavic Macedonians, particularly women and children, as well as many other actions intended to marginalize and oppress the Slavic Macedonians residing in Northern Greece. While some of these actions had been motivated by political ideology, as many of the Slavic Macedonians had sided with the defeated communists, the majority of actions were committed to wipe out any traces of Slavic Macedonians or their culture in Northern Greece.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Turkey: Especially in the island of Imbros. The island was primarily inhabited by ethnic Greeks from antiquity until approximately the 1960s, when many were forced to flee due to a campaign of cultural genocide and discrimination enacted by the Turkish government.<ref name="Alexandris">Alexis Alexandris, "The Identity Issue of The Minorities in Greece And Turkey", in Hirschon, Renée (ed.), Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey, Berghahn Books, 2003, p. 120</ref> Massive scale persecution against the local Greeks started in 1961, as part of the Eritme Programmi operation that aimed at the elimination of Greek education and the enforcement of economic, psychological pressure and violence. Under these conditions, the Turkish government approved the appropriation of >90% of the cultivated areas of the island and the settlement of additional 6,000 ethnic Turks from mainland Turkey.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Ashgate Studies in Pilgrimage">Template:Cite book</ref> Finally, the island was also officially renamed by Turkey in 1970 to Gökçeada to finalize the removal of any remaining Greek influence.
Francoist Spain: the prohibition of the use of minority languages such as Catalan or Galician in the public space, from schools to shops, public transport, or even in the streets, the banning of the use of Catalan or Galician birth names for children, the renaming of cities, streets and all toponyms from Catalan, Basque or Galician to Castilian-Spanish, and the abolition of government and all cultural institutions in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands as well as in Basque Country and Galicia with the goal of total cultural suppression and assimilation.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
John D. Hargreaves writes that "A policy of cultural genocide was implemented: the Catalan language and key symbols of Catalan independent identity and nationhood, such as the flag (the senyera), the national hymn ('Els Segadors') and the national dance (the sardana), were proscribed. Any sign of independence or opposition, in fact, was brutally suppressed. Catalan identity and consequently the Catalan nation were threatened with extinction."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Although Josep Pla and other Catalan authors published books in Catalan in the 1950s, and even there were prizes of Catalan Literature during Francoism like the Premi Sant Jordi de novel·la, editorial production in Catalan never recovered the peak levels it had reached before Spanish Civil War.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> A prominent case of popularization of Catalan was Joan Manuel Serrat: although he could compose Catalan songs and gained certain notoriety, he was not allowed to sing in Catalan in the Eurovision contest its La, la, la theme, and was replaced by Spanish singer Massiel, who won the Eurovision contest.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Overall, despite some tolerance as Franco's regime relaxed in the late 60s and early 70s, Catalan and the rest of minority languages of Spain were strictly banned from higher education, administration and all official endeavors, thus being in practice confined to the private sphere and domestic uses (see Language policies of Francoist Spain).
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, some schools in Wales adopted the Welsh Not policy to discourage students from speaking Welsh instead of English. Under this total immersion policy, students caught speaking Welsh were punished, most typically by having a lump of wood with the letters "WN" placed around their neck. Though the policy enjoyed widespread support among parents and the general public in Wales, some Welsh nationalists have described it as an example of cultural genocide. Academic Martin Johnes noted that despite the Welsh Not not being an official state policy, instead coming down to actions taken by individual teachers, it nonetheless remains "a powerful symbol of the oppression of Welsh culture."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
When at the mid-19th century, primary school is made compulsory all across the State, it is also made clear that only French will be taught, and the teachers will severely punish any pupil speaking in patois. The aim of the French educational system will consequently not be to dignify the pupils' natural humanity, developing their culture and teaching them to write their language, but rather to humiliate them and morally degrade them for the simple fact of being what tradition and their nature made them. The self-proclaimed country of the "human rights" will then ignore one of man's most fundamental rights, the right to be himself and speak the language of his nation. And with that attitude France, the "grande France" that calls itself the champion of liberty, will pass the 20th century, indifferent to the timid protest movements of the various linguistic communities it submitted and the literary prestige they may have given birth to.
[...]
France, that under Franco's reign was seen here [in Catalonia] as the safe haven of freedom, has the miserable honour of being the [only] State of Europe—and probably the world – that succeeded best in the diabolical task of destroying its own ethnic and linguistic patrimony and moreover, of destroying human family bonds: many parents and children, or grandparents and grandchildren, have different languages, and the latter feel ashamed of the first because they speak a despicable patois, and no element of the grandparents' culture has been transmitted to the younger generation, as if they were born out of a completely new world. This is the French State that has just entered the 21st century, a country where stone monuments and natural landscapes are preserved and respected, but where many centuries of popular creation expressed in different tongues are on the brink of extinction. The "gloire" and the "grandeur" built on a genocide. No liberty, no equality, no fraternity: just cultural extermination, this is the real motto of the French Republic.
Azerbaijan's destruction, appropriation, and denial of Armenian heritage sites in Nakhchivan and Nagorno-Karabakh have been characterized as ethnocide<ref>Petrosyan 2010 – Petrosyan H., Cultural ethnocide in Artsakh (mechanism of extortion of cultural heritage), state terrorism of Azerbaijan and the policy of ethnic cleansing against Nagorno Karabakh, Shushi, pp. 137–148 (in Arm.). Petrosyan 2020 – Ethnocide in Artsakh: The Mechanisms of Azerbaijan’s Usurpation of Indigenous Armenian Cultural Heritage, Cultural Heritage. Experiences & Perspectives in International Context, Proceedings of the ROCHEMP center international conference, 23rd- 24 January 2020, Yerevan, pp. 79–90.</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> or potential cultural genocide<ref>Kellogg, Ethan. "Cultural Erasure in the Modern Day: The Destruction of Armenian Heritage Sites in Azerbaijan."The Cornell Diplomat 9 (2023). This wide-spread destruction has taken place since at least the late 1990s, primarily in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, eliminating millennia of artifacts and altering the ethnic and cultural makeup of the region in a manner that may constitute cultural genocide.</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and condemned by the International Court of Justice and European Parliament.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The destruction of thousands of medieval Armenian Churches, khachkars and gravestones at the Armenian cemetery in Julfa is a prominent example.<ref name="AutoCK-7"/><ref name="AutoCK-8" /><ref name="LA Times">Template:Cite news</ref>
Historian Sarah Cameron believes that while the Kazakh famine of 1931–1933 combined with a campaign against nomads was not genocide in the sense of the Genocide Convention's definition, it complies with Raphael Lemkin's original concept of genocide, which considered destruction of culture to be as genocidal as physical annihilation.<ref name="wheatcroft" />
The Sinicization of Tibet from the 1950s onwards. Following the 1959 Tibetan uprising, 97% of Tibet's monasteries were destroyed, while 2 million Tibetans, including 500,000 nomadic farmers, were relocated to newly created urban centers.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
The Japanese “Haibutsu Kishaku” movement which Buddhist temples being closed or demolished, and countless Buddhist artifacts being destroyed.<ref>Rinsaiji Temple</ref>
The persecution of Sri Lankan Tamils during the Sri Lankan civil war was a campaign of ethnic cleansing which was sponsored by the government and it has continued until the present day as a part of the Sinhalisation of the northern and eastern parts of the island.
The Stolen Generations in Australia where half-caste children were removed from their families.<ref name="Wilkie1997" />
In the year 1896, the United States enacted a law in Hawaii that made the use of the English language compulsory in schools, which led to the decline of the use of the Hawaiian language in Hawaii.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In December 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola in what is now known as Haiti, which he named the island "La Isla Española" meaning Little Spain, Columbus also founded La Navidad as the first European colony in the Americas soon after the Spanish landed in the island of "Ayiti". In 1493, the Spanish forced the Taíno to convert to Christianity and suppressed their indigenous religious beliefs and rituals involving the worship of spirits known as zemis, as the Spanish used systematic violence, slavery, and other brutalities were aimed not only at the physical elimination of the Taíno population but also at the destruction of their cultural identity, beliefs, and way of life on the island that has caused by massacres, forced labor in gold mines, and mass starvation as well as the destruction of social structure and customs. With the Spanish exploiting and controlling the remaining indigenous people by severing their ties to their heritage as many Taino people of all ages died in Hispaniola due to a combination of factors including forced labor, disease, and massacres following the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the Spanish colonists. Within three decades of European contact, 70-85% of the Taino population perished from diseases to which they had no immunity, and continued harsh treatment and slavery under the Spanish encomienda system further decimated their numbers, leading to their near extinction by the mid-16th century in 1550.
Scholars have coined the term cultural suicide for cases in which Indigenous peoples were coerced into a nominally voluntary abandonment of cultural and religious traditions in return for necessary military aid from colonial powers, such as the early 1700 alliance between the Spanish and Seminole that included the baptism of natives as a term.<ref>Justice, Daniel Heath. "Go Away, Water!: Kinship Criticism mand the Decolonization Imperative", Reasoning Together, University of Oklahoma, 2008. pp 149–150.</ref>
In the mid-1800s to early 1900s, the United States established American Indian boarding schools to assimilate Native American children and youth into Euro-American culture.
According to historians and biographers, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire resulted in the destruction of Aztec culture and the imposition of Spanish culture, it's a complex issue, and whether it constitutes cultural genocide is a matter of ongoing debate and interpretation as the Spanish destroyed Aztec libraries, art, and other cultural artifacts, aiming to erase indigenous knowledge and traditions as well as their language, laws, and customs on the indigenous population, leading to the loss of indigenous languages, cultural practices, and social structures which caused dramatic decline in the indigenous population due to disease, warfare, starvation and forced labor. The Mexican government under the rule of Porfirio Diaz as a dictator who commit Yaqui genocide against the Yaqui tribes who led an uprising against the regime with 5,000 had been sold into slavery and forced to work with physical hard labor until they died of illness, exhaustion and/or starvation.
In 2015, Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin, of the Supreme Court of Canada, stated in a speech to the Global Centre for Pluralism that Canada's historical treatment of Indigenous peoples was an attempt at cultural genocide, and "the worst stain on Canada's human-rights record."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
