This document provides instructions for an assignment on genocide where students will work in groups to create timelines depicting the progression of events that led to specific genocides. It discusses how groups will divide tasks like research, illustration, and writing. It also includes summaries of Gregory Stanton's "8 Stages of Genocide" and "12 Ways to Deny a Genocide" which outline common patterns in how genocides develop and are denied. The goal is for students to demonstrate their understanding of the political, economic, and social causes of genocide through the timeline project.

1. Name___________________________________________________ Date__________________
Genocide: War on the people; by the people
Directions:
Every student is required to participate in this activity. Each member of the group will work on a
specific part of the project. Groups are to decide who will work as researchers and who will work as
illustrators and writers/journalists. The goal of the assignment is to demonstrate your ability to develop
an understanding of the political, economic, and social causes that lead to Genocide.
The Timeline
You will work in small groups to create a small poster-size timeline on construction paper or
plain white paper. Each piece of paper should represent one year and one country (Cambodia,
Sudan, Rwanda, Burinda,…etc.) . That year should be written in large bold print on the top of
your paper. You will work within your groups to decorate your year sheet with pictures
(photographs or drawings), slogans, artwork, poems, copies or re-created newspaper clippings,
and other memorabilia. You are encouraged to research the important events of that year and
think it terms of people and their ideas, the government, the economy and other societal factors
that may have contributed to genocide in this particular country. Your timeline should identify,
illustrate, explain, and interpret the causes of progression of events that led to not only the
Rwandan genocide, but other genocides. You may use my computer to help you find research
material to complete this project or you may send one person to the library to gather material..

2. The 8 Stages of Genocide
By Gregory H. Stanton, President, Genocide Watch
Classification Symbolization Dehumanization Organization Polarization Preparation Extermination
Denial
Genocide is a process that develops in eight stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each
stage, preventive measures can stop it. The process is not linear. Logically, later stages must be
preceded by earlier stages. But all stages continue to operate throughout the process.
1. CLASSIFICATION: All cultures have categories to distinguish people into “us and them” by ethnicity,
race, religion, or nationality: German and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi. Bipolar societies that lack mixed
categories, such as Rwanda and Burundi, are the most likely to have genocide. The main preventive
measure at this early stage is to develop universalistic institutions that transcend ethnic or racial divisions,
that actively promote tolerance and understanding, and that promote classifications that transcend the
divisions. The Catholic church could have played this role in Rwanda, had it not been riven by the same
ethnic cleavages as Rwandan society. Promotion of a common language in countries like Tanzania has
also promoted transcendent national identity. This search for common ground is vital to early prevention
of genocide.
2. SYMBOLIZATION: We give names or other symbols to the classifications. We name people “Jews” or
“Gypsies”, or distinguish them by colors or dress; and apply the symbols to members of groups.
Classification and symbolization are universally human and do not necessarily result in genocide unless
they lead to the next stage, dehumanization. When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon
unwilling members of pariah groups: the yellow star for Jews under Nazi rule, the blue scarf for people
from the Eastern Zone in Khmer Rouge Cambodia. To combat symbolization, hate symbols can be legally
forbidden (swastikas) as can hate speech. Group marking like gang clothing or tribal scarring can be
outlawed, as well. The problem is that legal limitations will fail if unsupported by popular cultural
enforcement. Though Hutu and Tutsi were forbidden words in Burundi until the 1980‟s, code-words
replaced them. If widely supported, however, denial of symbolization can be powerful, as it was in
Bulgaria, where the government refused to supply enough yellow badges and at least eighty percent of
Jews did not wear them, depriving the yellow star of its significance as a Nazi symbol for Jews.
3. DEHUMANIZATION: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated
with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion
against murder. At this stage, hate propaganda in print and on hate radios is used to vilify the victim
group. In combating this dehumanization, incitement to genocide should not be confused with protected
speech. Genocidal societies lack constitutional protection for countervailing speech, and should be
treated differently than democracies. Local and international leaders should condemn the use of hate
speech and make it culturally unacceptable. Leaders who incite genocide should be banned from
international travel and have their foreign finances frozen. Hate radio stations should be shut down, and
hate propaganda banned. Hate crimes and atrocities should be promptly punished.

3. 4. ORGANIZATION: Genocide is always organized, usually by the state, often using militias to provide
deniability of state responsibility (the Janjaweed in Darfur.) Sometimes organization is informal (Hindu
mobs led by local RSS militants) or decentralized (terrorist groups.) Special army units or militias are
often trained and armed. Plans are made for genocidal killings. To combat this stage, membership in
these militias should be outlawed. Their leaders should be denied visas for foreign travel. The U.N.
should impose arms embargoes on governments and citizens of countries involved in genocidal
massacres, and create commissions to investigate violations, as was done in post-genocide Rwanda.
5. POLARIZATION: Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda.
Laws may forbid intermarriage or social interaction. Extremist terrorism targets moderates, intimidating
and silencing the center. Moderates from the perpetrators‟ own group are most able to stop genocide, so
are the first to be arrested and killed. Prevention may mean security protection for moderate leaders or
assistance to human rights groups. Assets of extremists may be seized, and visas for international travel
denied to them. Coups d‟état by extremists should be opposed by international sanctions.
6. PREPARATION: Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity.
Death lists are drawn up. Members of victim groups are forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property
is expropriated. They are often segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined
to a famine-struck region and starved. At this stage, a Genocide Emergency must be declared. If the
political will of the great powers, regional alliances, or the U.N. Security Council can be mobilized, armed
international intervention should be prepared, or heavy assistance provided to the victim group to prepare
for its self-defense. Otherwise, at least humanitarian assistance should be organized by the U.N. and
private relief groups for the inevitable tide of refugees to come.
7. EXTERMINATION begins, and quickly becomes the mass killing legally called “genocide.” It is
“extermination” to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human. When it is
sponsored by the state, the armed forces often work with militias to do the killing. Sometimes the
genocide results in revenge killings by groups against each other, creating the downward whirlpool-like
cycle of bilateral genocide (as in Burundi). At this stage, only rapid and overwhelming armed intervention
can stop genocide. Real safe areas or refugee escape corridors should be established with heavily armed
international protection. (An unsafe “safe” area is worse than none at all.) The U.N. Standing High
Readiness Brigade, EU Rapid Response Force, or regional forces -- should be authorized to act by the
U.N. Security Council if the genocide is small. For larger interventions, a multilateral force authorized by
the U.N. should intervene. If the U.N. is paralyzed, regional alliances must act. It is time to recognize that
the international responsibility to protect transcends the narrow interests of individual nation states. If
strong nations will not provide troops to intervene directly, they should provide the airlift, equipment, and
financial means necessary for regional states to intervene.
8. DENIAL is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further
genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover
up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often
blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes, and continue to govern
until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile. There they remain with impunity, like Pol Pot or
Idi Amin, unless they are captured and a tribunal is established to try them. The response to denial is
punishment by an international tribunal or national courts. There the evidence can be heard, and the
perpetrators punished. Tribunals like the Yugoslav or Rwanda Tribunals, or an international tribunal to try
the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or an International Criminal Court may not deter the worst genocidal
killers. But with the political will to arrest and prosecute them, some may be brought to justice.
© 1998 Gregory H. Stanton. Originally presented as a briefing paper at the US State Department in 1996.

4. The 12 Ways to Deny a Genocide
Genocide Emergency: Darfur, Sudan
By Gregory H. Stanton
13 September 2004, updated 15 June 2005
The United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell, on 9 September 2004 declared “that genocide has
occurred in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility, and that
genocide may still be continuing.” The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, by unanimous vote on
23 July 2004, declared “that the atrocities unfolding in Darfur, Sudan, are genocide.”
The State Department has not historically been forward-leaning in making findings of genocide, as was
notoriously evident during its refusal to apply the term “genocide” to Rwanda in 1994 until most of the
800,000 victims had been murdered. This time, however, the Ambassador for War Crimes Issues, Pierre
Richard Prosper, adopted an exemplary strategy of proof. Prosper was the Prosecutor in the Akayesu
case, which resulted in history‟s first conviction after trial by an International Criminal Tribunal applying
the Genocide Convention. Prosper‟s strategy demonstrated the careful investigation and solid legal
analysis that made him so successful at the ICTR.
Prosper knew that proof of genocide needs to be based on authoritative facts. So he got the State
Department‟s Human Rights Bureau to commission and fund a thorough investigation by expert
investigators recruited by the Coalition for International Justice. They interviewed 1,136 eye-witnesses in
Sudanese refugee camps, a sample large enough for any social scientific study. Then he and the State
Department Legal Advisers‟ Office applied international law to the facts, without determining in advance
what the conclusion would be. The legal conclusion was properly separated from its political
consequences.
The results of the systematic interviews were shocking. Over sixty percent of the people interviewed had
witnessed the killing of a family member. Two-thirds had witnessed the killing of a non-family member.
Over eighty percent had witnessed destruction of a village. Two-thirds had witnessed aerial bombing of
villages by the Sudanese government. And perhaps most chillingly, one third had heard racial epithets
used while they or their relatives were being murdered or raped. Assailants often shouted, “Kill the
slaves” and “We have orders to kill all the blacks.” Over 50,000 [2005 update: 250,000] black Africans
have died in Darfur, and 1.5 [2005: 2.5] million people have been displaced from their homes. Over four
[2005: eight] hundred villages have been burnt to the ground by Arab Janjaweed militias, supported by
Sudanese government bombing.
Genocide is “the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnical, racial, or religious
group, as such.” Was the killing “intentional”? Yes. Was it systematically organized by the al-Bashir
regime using government armed Janjaweed militias, bombers, and helicopter gunships? Yes. Were the
victims chosen because of their ethnic and racial identity? Yes. Fur, Masseleit, and Zaghawa black
African villages were destroyed. Arab villages nearby were left untouched. The State Department report
concludes, the “primary cleavage is ethnic: Arabs against Africans.” Is this the intentional destruction, in
part, of ethnic and racial groups? Yes. This, in short, is genocide. The genocide continues.
The Al-Bashir regime in Sudan is a serial killer, a master of genocide and ethnic cleansing, having
combined these crimes before in the Nuba mountains and in the southern Sudan, where over two million

5. black Africans have died. In the south, the government wants to confiscate rich oil reserves under the
lands of the Nuer, Dinka, Shilluk, Nuba, and other black African groups. In Darfur the regime wants to
“Arabize” the territory and drive out black Africans in order to confiscate their grazing lands, water
resources, and cattle herds.
Mass murder by starvation has been a method of genocide for centuries, perfected by the Turks in
Armenia in 1915 and by Stalin in 1933 Ukraine. It has been the strategy of choice of the Sudanese
government, both in the south and in Darfur. It is a shrewd strategy because death comes slowly and
denial is easy. All a government need do is arm and support militias, which drive a self-sufficient people
off their land through terror; herd them into displaced persons and refugee camps; then systematically
impede aid from getting to them, letting them slowly die of starvation and disease. The deaths can then
be blamed on “famine,” “disease”, “ancient tribal conflicts,” or “civil war,” or most cynically, “failure of the
international community to provide needed relief.”
Twelve Ways To Deny A Genocide
The Sudanese government‟s response to accusations of genocide has, from the beginning, been a
classic example of the strategy of denial that accompanies every genocide. The strategy employs
predictable tactics designed to obscure clear perception of criminal conspiracy with an ink-cloud of denial.
The objective of denial is to paralyze the political will of those who might take action to stop the genocide
and punish the perpetrators. [2005: All of these denial tactics are still the official Sudanese government
line.]
Israel Charny outlines the tactics of denial in “Templates for Gross Denial of a Known Genocide: A
Manual,” in The Encyclopedia of Genocide, volume 1, page 168. All of them are being used by the
Sudanese government.
1. Question and minimize the statistics. Sudan‟s Foreign Minister Mustaf Osman Ismail said on 9
September 2004, that no more than 5,000 people have been killed in Darfur since February 2003. [2005:
The Sudanese government has not raised its estimate of deaths since.] In contrast, 50,000 [2005:
160,000]deaths is considered a low estimate by the U.N., World Food Program, and the ICRC. The
Sudanese Embassy in Washington said the interviews were all conducted with Darfur refugees in Chad,
not in Sudan, so were invalid. But refugee accounts are among the most reliable indicators of crimes
because witnesses testify freely, without fear. The interviews were conducted in Chad because the
Sudanese Embassy refused to grant visas to the investigation team. The U.S. has proposed a Security
Council resolution that would send investigators into Darfur to gather evidence of the crimes where they
were committed, which Sudan rejects.
2. Attack the motivations of the truth-tellers. Dismiss U.S. charges as products of election-year politics
in America, or of anti-Islamic imperialists who have demonstrated their hatred of Arabs in Iraq at Abu-
Ghraib prison. This ad-hominem “moral disqualification” argument was the red-herring used by the
Sudanese Ambassadors at both the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and the U.N. Security Council. It
is aimed to appeal to fellow Islamic countries like Algeria and Pakistan.
3. Claim that the deaths were inadvertent, as a result of famine, migration, or disease, not because of
willful murder. This is the usual line given to relief officials to turn the blame back upon them for not
supplying more assistance, hypocritically ignoring the systematic obstruction the Sudanese government
has placed in the way of visas for humanitarian workers and delivery of food and medicine.
4. Emphasize the strangeness of the victims. Whether they be classified as infidels, primitive tribalists,
or of another race and caste, they are unlike us. Thus, the highly influential Sudanese “Arab Gathering”
considers black Africans to be “abd” (male slaves) and “kahdim” (female slaves.) and advocates their
exclusion from Sudanese public life. For Americans or Europeans, such de-humanization is expressed

6. as, “They‟re Africans. They do these sorts of things to each other.”
5. Rationalize the deaths as the result of tribal conflict, coming to the victims out of the inevitability of
their history of relationships. Thus, the Sudanese Ambassador to the U.N. in a BBC interview on 11
September 2004 claimed that the deaths were just the result of age-old tribal conflicts between cattle
herders (Arabs) and farmers (Africans). In fact, there were no such genocidal raids in Darfur until the
Sudanese government armed the Janjaweed in early 2003 and used the Sudanese air-force to support
them.
6. Blame “out of control” forces for committing the killings, distancing responsibility from the
Sudanese government. The success of this tactic was demonstrated in U.N. Security Council Resolution
1556, which blames the killings on the Janjaweed militias and actually demands that the Sudanese
government disarm the Janjaweed and bring their leaders to justice. In fact, it was the Sudanese
government that armed the Janjaweed in the first place, and continues to protect them. Not one major
Janjaweed leader has been arrested. Criminals already in jail for years have simply been renamed
“Janjaweed,” and sentenced for crimes they did not commit, punished by amputations under Sharia law.
7. Avoid antagonizing the genocidists, who might walk out of “the peace process.” This real politik
argument is used to frighten diplomats who fear “upsetting the peace process” in Naivasha for the south,
or in Abuja for Darfur. In 2005 the argument has become: “don‟t upset the fragile new order in Khartoum
since signature on the agreements settling the civil war in the South. Let‟s now concentrate on getting the
Darfur „rebels‟ to reach a similar agreement with Khartoum in Abuja, under the African Union.” Meanwhile
the ethnic cleansing of Darfur is nearly complete, and genocidal massacres and rapes continue daily.
This argument, which diplomats repeatedly and naively espouse, ignores the fact that genocidists are
serial killers. Policies toward them based on fear lead only to appeasement and further genocide.
8. Justify denial in favor of current economic interests. This is a key reason why Russia opposes an
arms embargo on the Sudanese government. It has just sold twelve MIG-29‟s to Khartoum, and continues
to be a major supplier of other arms. Besides being another arms supplier to Khartoum, China is a
primary developer of southern Sudan‟s oilfields and imports Sudanese oil. China has threatened to veto
U.N. sanctions.
9. Claim that the victims are receiving good treatment, while baldly denying the charges of genocide
outright. The Sudanese government claims that the internally displaced are receiving excellent treatment
in IDP camps, and will be even better off when they are moved to “safe areas” under complete Sudanese
government control. The Sudanese show visitors the same “model” IDP camp, just as the Nazis showed
the ICRC Theresienstadt. When Kofi Annan tried to visit another site, the Sudanese quickly evacuated it,
leaving him to ask, “Where are the people?” [2005: When Annan interviewed rape survivors in Darfur, the
Sudanese responded by arresting his interpreter the next day. The government also arrested the director
of Medècins sans Frontières, Sudan the same day for publishing a well-documented report exposing
widespread rapes by Sudanese soldiers and Janjaweed in and around IDP camps.]
The Special Representative of the Secretary General, Jan Pronk, has recently signed a Sudanese
government proposal to create “safe areas” for the black Africans of Darfur, who will be “guarded” by the
Sudanese army. Never forget that the U.N. also agreed to a “safe area” plan in Bosnia. Srebenica was a
“safe area” where 8000 men were murdered in 1995 while Dutch soldiers stood by. Pronk was the Dutch
Development Cooperation Minister in 1995 and he resigned only after a government study of the disaster
seven years later. Now Pronk has recommended the same “safe areas solution” for Darfur. What is wrong
with this picture?
10. Claim that what is going on doesn’t fit the definition of genocide. “Definitionalist” denial is most
common among lawyers and policy makers who want to avoid intervention beyond provision of
humanitarian aid. It results in “analysis paralysis.” It is what the State Department investigation and report
brilliantly overcame. At the time of writing (September 2004), the European Union, the Secretary General

7. of the United Nations and even Amnesty International still avoid calling the crimes in Darfur by their
proper name. It is a pity. There are three reasons for such reluctance:
A. Among journalists, the general public, diplomats, and lawyers who haven‟t read the Genocide
Convention, there is a common misconception that a finding of genocide would legally require action to
suppress it. Under this misconception, having been informed that the U.S. would take no action in
Rwanda in 1994, State Department lawyers ordered avoidance of the word. They made their legal
conclusion fit the Procrustean bed of U.S. policy. They committed legal malpractice.
Unfortunately, the Genocide Convention carries no such legal compulsion to act. It legally requires only
that states-parties pass national laws against genocide and then prosecute or extradite those who commit
the crime. Article VIII of the Convention says they also “may call upon the competent organs of the United
Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the
prevention and suppression of acts of genocide.” But they aren‟t legally required to do so. Article I of the
Genocide Convention creates a moral obligation to prevent genocide, but it does not dictate military
intervention or any other particular measures.
B. Another misconception is the “all or none” concept of genocide. The all-or-none school considers
killings to be genocide only if their intent is to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group “in
whole.” Their model is the Holocaust. They ignore the “in part” in the definition in the Genocide
Convention, which they often haven‟t read.
C. Since the 1990‟s, a new obstacle to calling genocide by its proper name has been the distinction
between genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” a term originally invented as a euphemism for genocide in the
Balkans. Genocide and “ethnic cleansing” are sometimes portrayed as mutually exclusive crimes, but
they are not. Prof. Schabas, for example, says that the intent of “ethnic cleansing” is expulsion of a group,
whereas the intent of “genocide” is its destruction, in whole or in part. He illustrates with a simplistic
distinction: in “ethnic cleansing,” borders are left open and a group is driven out; in “genocide,” borders
are closed and a group is killed. The fallacy of the distinction is evident in Darfur, where the intent of the
Sudanese government and their Janjaweed militias is to drive Fur, Massaleit, and Zaghawa black African
farmers off of their ancestral lands (ethnic cleansing,) using terror caused by systematic acts of genocide,
including mass murder, mass rape, mass starvation, and concentration camps run by Janjaweed and
Sudanese army guards, where murder and rape are standing orders. Both ethnic cleansing and genocide
are underway in Darfur.
D. Claim that the “intent” of the perpetrator is merely “ethnic cleansing” not “genocide,” which requires the
specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The U.N.
Commission of Experts report of 2005 took this way out. It confused motive with intent. (Ironically, the
U.N. Commission report even included a paragraph saying motive and intent should not be confused, an
exhortation the Commission promptly violated, itself.) Even if the motive of a perpetrator is to drive a
group off its land (“ethnic cleansing”), killing members of the group and other acts enumerated in the
Genocide Convention may still have the specific intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part. That‟s
genocide.
11. Blame the victims. Claim that the Sudanese government is simply fighting an insurrection by a rebel
movement comprised of bandits who themselves commit war crimes. By portraying the situation as civil
war rather than genocide, the Sudanese appeal to the common misunderstanding that the two are
mutually exclusive, when in fact, as Robert Melson, Barbara Harff, Helen Fein, and others have shown,
civil war is very often a predictor and correlate of genocide. Genocide occurs especially during civil wars
because war is legalized killing, when even women and children of an adversary group may be seen as
enemies of the state.
12. Say that peace and reconciliation are more important that blaming people for genocide,
especially if the genocide happened in the past. This is the justification for amnesties for mass murderers

8. as part of peace agreements, and for opposition to post-conflict tribunals. But peace and reconciliation
are not alternatives to justice. Lasting peace requires justice. Without prosecution of those who commit
genocide, an expectation of impunity is created. As Fein and Harff have shown, one of the best predictors
of future genocide is previous genocide that has gone unpunished. Without trials, denial becomes
permanent.
A brutal civil war is underway in Darfur, and the ceasefire and settlement being negotiated in Abuja might
save lives. But the talks could take years. Meanwhile there will be peace in Darfur only with a powerful
African Union force, supported logistically and financially by the West, to enforce it, much as NATO has
enforced the peace in Bosnia. If the African Union force cannot stop the genocide, the U.N., NATO,
European Union, and their member nations should send in troops under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter.