Determining what historical events constitute a genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clearcut matter. Furthermore, in nearly every case where accusations of genocide have circulated, partisans of various sides have fiercely disputed the interpretation and details of the event, often to the point of promoting wildly different versions of the facts. An accusation of genocide is certainly not taken lightly and will almost always be controversial. The following list of alleged genocides should be understood in this context and not regarded as the final word on these subjects.

The following list of genocidal incidents is presented in approximate chronological order.

Biblical Genocides : A record of several alleged genocides is found in the Bible, although the accuracy of the accounts must be decided by personal opinion. To name a few:

• The enslavement of Israel and the killing of Jewish children by the Egyptians.
• The war waged against the Canaanite peoples by Moses and Joshua.
• The conquest and massacre of various middle-eastern peoples, including Israel, by the empires of Assyria and Babylon.

Alexander's genocide of Persians : The Macedonian generalissimo Alexander and his army of sixty thousand ravaged Persia's capital city, Persepolis, around 331 BCE, slaughtering nearly all the inhabitants, burning the great palace of Xerxes, and plundering vast wealth.

Roman Empire : Many campaigns of the Roman Empire can by modern standards be rated as genocide:

• Caesar's campaign against the Helvetii: approximately 60% of the tribe was killed, and another 20% was taken into slavery.
• Carthage: the city was completely destroyed, and its people murdered or enslaved.
• Jerusalem: the city was burned and its people murdered or enslaved.

France

• The Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) can be considered as a case of genocide. It was carried out against the Cathar people, militarily and by use of the Inquisition.
• Wars of the Vendée: the revolutionary National Convention ordered a pacification of the province, with specific instructions to kill children and women of reproductive age.

Genghis Khan and his sons : One of the greatest alleged genocides in terms of raw numbers is the killings that occurred during the formation of the empire of Genghis Khan and his sons. It is estimated that millions of civilians were ruthlessly and systematically killed throughout many parts of Eurasia in the 13th Century.

The Americas - (Begun around 1492) : The long-term extermination, sometimes systematic, sometimes not, of the natives of South and North America by Europeans is estimated to be one of the largest and longest in history.

• Various estimates of the pre-contact Native population of the continental U.S. and Canada range from 1.8 to over 12 million. Over the next four centuries, their numbers were reduced to about 237,000 as Natives were almost wiped out. Author Carmen Bernand estimates that the Native population of what is now Mexico was reduced from 30 million to only 3 million over four decades.
• European persecution of Natives started with Christopher Columbus' arrival in San Salvador in 1492. Native population dropped dramatically over the next few decades. Some were directly exterminated by Europeans. Others died indirectly as a result of contact with introduced diseases for which they had no resistance.
• Later European Christian invaders systematically murdered additional Aboriginal people, from the Canadian Arctic to South America. They used warfare, death marches, forced relocation to barren lands, destruction of their main food supply -- the Buffalo -- and poisoning.

Canada : The Beothuk people, an aboriginal group native to the Dominion of Newfoundland, are now completely extinct as a result of extended conflict with European colonists (mostly fishermen who regarded them as thieves), loss of habitat and importation of diseases such as tuberculosis.

Activities of European colonists and importation of previously-unseen diseases (including in some cases the distribution of disease-contaminated blankets) caused many deaths in other Canadian native communities; the Beothuk are unique in Canadian history as having suffered not only genocide but outright extinction.

Australia : The Australian Aboriginal Population was decimated when the Caucasian population moved in. Many died from disease introduced by those settlers and some were shot. During the White Australian Policy, it was expected that Australian Aboriginal population will slowly fade out. The removal of Aboriginal children from their families by the Australian government is considered by some to have constituted genocide, using the argument that it falls within the ambit of Art. 2(e) of the Genocide convention. There is also a converse argument that the removal of Aboriginal children was intended to protect, rather than exterminate them. See Stolen Generation and Keith Windschuttle. The relative effects of those and other factors is a subject of strong historical and political debate, including whether they constituted genocide.

However, in Tasmania, where racially distinct Aboriginal groups existed, Aboriginal population was almost entirely wiped out in the 19th century with only those with mixed blood surviving. It was legal for the settler to shoot natives on the spot and many died from disease introduced by those settlers. The last surviving group was transferred to a colony on a small island and all of its members died out slowly due to neglect. Their languages are entirely lost and most of their cultural heritage are gone, though people of mixed decent still insist on spiritual connection to the land.

Boer Wars

• In South Africa (1880–1881 and 1899–1902)
• Boer (not Afrikaner) and other historians feel that the second war of the British Empire against the Boer (not Afrikaner) Republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State were a definite form of genocide: because the Boers protested English plans to annex their Boer Republics, they declared war against the British.
• The English rounded up Boer civilians, placing them in concentration camps. Until the Boers surrendered in May 1902, at least 27,000 Boer (not Afrikaner) civilians had been killed.
• These figures are more accurately reflected as follows;
  • 24,000 Boer Children, nearly half of the Boer child population had died. 3,000 Boer women also died.

German South - West Africa (1904–1907) in current-day Namibia : In 1985, the United Nations Whitaker Report recognized the German attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of Southwest Africa as one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the twentieth century. In total, some 65,000 Herero (80 percent of the total Herero population), and 10,000 Nama (50 percent of the total Nama population) were killed or perished. Characteristic of this genocide was death by starvation and the poisoning of wells for the Herero and Nama populations that were trapped in the Namib desert. The responsible German general was Lothar von Trotha.

Many historians have stressed the historic importance of these atrocities, tracing the evolution from Kaiser Wilhelm II to Hitler, from Southwest Africa to Auschwitz.

Turkey (1914–1923) genocides by the Young Turk government : Approximately 0.6–1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were killed (some sources cite much higher figures). The Turkish government officially denies that there was any genocide, claiming that most of the Armenian deaths resulted from armed conflict, disease and famine during the turmoil of World War.

Approximately 300,000–600,000 Pontian Greeks in the Ottoman Empire were killed, and several hundred thousand others exiled. The Turkish government denies there was any genocide despite evidence to the contrary, instead blaming the wars with Greece which took place around the same time for the millions of deaths.

World War II (1939–1945)

German Nazi genocide before and during World War II (also known as: the Final Solution, the Holocaust)

The Holocaust: approximately 11 million people were killed (figure is contested, according to the Nazi racist ideology, as some ethnic groups were considered "sub-human"). This includes:

• Ha-Shoah, ("the Catastrophe" in Hebrew), in which 6 million European Jews (3 million of whom were counted as both Polish and Jew), including 1.5 million children, were systematically "exterminated" (the Nazi term) for being Jewish. See also Holocaust denial.
• 6 million Polish citizens (3 million of whom were counted as both Polish and Jew: see possibly Polish Jews).
  Genocide also targeted Gypsies and Slavs.
• 7.5 million Soviet civilians and 3.2 million Soviet POWs. This number includes 2 million Soviet Jews mainly in the areas of former Eastern Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia proper, many of whom were killed by squads of Nazi collaborators formed among Ukrainians, Latvians, Russians and Lithuanians. The Jews of Eastern Poland were doubly counted also among victims in Poland.
• The Nazis also killed other (non-ethnic) groups, such as those suffering from birth defects, learning disability or insanity; homosexuals, prostitutes and communists, as part of eugenics.

Soviet genocide in East Prussia after WWII : The German population of East Prussia was systematically eliminated.

Japanese Genocide during WWII

Japanese genocide before and during World War II (1920s–1945)

• Nanjing Massacre: Some authorities claimed 300,000 people killed during the three months following the fall of Nanjing to the Japanese. Genocide targeted at Chinese at other places of China: Manchuria, the Wan Bao Hill Incident, Xiangyang.
  Unit 731 conducted biological and chemical warfare experiments through unanesthetised vivisection on human. About 30,000 people died this way.
• Sook Ching Massacre: When British Malaya fell to the Japanese Imperial Forces in February 1942, ethnic Chinese in Singapore were systematically exterminated on the pretext of eliminating "anti-Japanese" elements. The death toll range from 5,000 to 100,000.
• Smaller scale Genocide also targeted at Koreans, Filipinos, Dutch, Vietnamese, Indonesians and Burmese.
• In total, about 20 million Chinese, 9 million Korean, 2 million Taiwanese, and a large number of South East Asian civilians were killed during World War II.

Cambodia (1975–1979) : Killed approximately 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975-1979.

• The Khmer Rouge, or more formally, the Communist Party of Kampuchea, led by Pol Pot, Ta Mok, Duch and other leaders, organized the mass killing of ideologically suspect groups, ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese or Sino-Khmers, ethnic Chams, ethnic Thais, former civil servants, demobilized soldiers, Buddhist monks, secular intellectuals and professionals, and refugees. Khmer Rouge cadres defeated in factional struggles were also liquidated in purges.

Sudan 1983 - present (... as of 2004) : The US government's Sudan Peace Act of October 21, 2002 accused Sudan of genocide for killing more than 2 million civilians in the south during an ongoing civil war since 1983.

In 2004 it became widely known that there was an organised campaign by Janjaweed militias (nomadic Arab shepherds with the support of Sudanese government and troops) to rid 80 black African groupsfrom the Darfur region of western Sudan. These peoples include the Fur, Zaghawa and Massalit.

Mukesh Kapila (United Nations humanitarian coordinator) is quoted as saying: "The vicious war in Darfur has led to violations on a scale comparable in character with Rwanda in 1994. All the warning signs are there."

On September 9, 2004 United States Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that the actions of the armed Muslim Arab Janjaweed organization in Darfur, conducted with the tacit approval, if not active support, of the Government of Sudan, constitute genocide. Powell stated before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility." (www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/09/09/sudan.powell/index.html)

Western countries are as yet undecided how or whether to intervene, while at present millions of people are displaced, had their family separated and property destroyed. There is a risk of famine and epidemic because of overcrowding in camps, the destruction of agriculture, and poor supplies of medicine and food.

Vietnam 1973 - Present : Since the end of the Vietnam War hostilities against the Degar (Montagnard) by the Vietnamese government have been widespread. After the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam at the close of this war, the Vietnamese government retaliated against the tribes who had helped the U.S. Nearly two thirds of the Degars have died since 1973, including more than half the male population. These reprisals continue at present (2003) and are considered by many to fit the definition of genocide.

Indian Subcontinent - (British General Dyer) : Soon after Dyer's arrival, on the afternoon of April 13, 1919, some 10,000 or more unarmed men, women, and children gathered in Amritsar's Jallianwala Bagh (bagh, "garden"; but before 1919 it had become a public square) to attend a protest meeting, despite a ban on public assemblies. It was a Sunday, and many neighbouring village peasants also came to Amritsar to celebrate the Hindu Baisakhi Spring Festival. Dyer positioned his men at the sole, narrow passageway of the Bagh, which was otherwise entirely enclosed by the backs of abutted brick buildings. Giving no word of warning, he ordered 50 soldiers to fire into the gathering, and for 10 to 15 minutes 1,650 rounds of ammunition were unloaded into the crowd, some of whom were trampled by those trying to escape. According to official estimates, nearly 400 civilians were killed, and another 1,200 were left wounded with no medical attention. Dyer, who argued his action was necessary to produce a "moral and widespread effect," admitted that the firing would have continued had more ammunition been available.

Bosnia (1992–1995) : Organized ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbs against Croats, Roma, and Bosniaks throughout the period. More than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in July 1995.

Rwandan (April 1994) : The Rwandan Genocide was a genocide of 937,000 Rwandan Tutsis and Hutu moderates at the hands of Hutu militias and the Hutu-dominated government. It was a major factor in the destabilization of whole regions of Central Africa.

As though the assassination was a signal, military and militia groups began rounding up and killing all Tutsis they could capture as well as political moderates irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds. Large numbers of opposition politicians were also murdered. Many nations evacuated all their nationals from Kigali and closed their embassies as violence escalated. National radio urged people to stay in their homes, and the government funded station RTLM broadcast vitriolic attacks against Tutsis and Hutu moderates. Road-blocks were set up around the country.

The prime minister and her 10 Belgian UN bodyguards were among the first victims. The killing swiftly spread from Kigali to all corners of the country; between April 6 and the beginning of July, a genocide of unprecedented swiftness officially left 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead at the hands of organized bands of militias known as the Interahamwe. One such massacre occurred at Nyarubuye. Even ordinary citizens were called on by local officials and government-sponsored radio to kill their neighbors. Those Hutu who refused to kill were often killed themselves. The president's MRND party was implicated in organizing many aspects of the genocide.

Most of the victims were killed in their villages or in towns, often by their neighbors and fellow villagers. The Interahamwe mostly killed their victims by chopping them up with machetes, although some army units shot and killed the Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In some towns the victims were forcibly crammed into churches and school buildings, where Hutu extremist gangs then massacred them. In June 1994 about 3000 Tutsis sought refuge in a Catholic church in Kivumu. Local Interahamwe then used bulldozers supplied by the local police to knock down the church building. People who tried to escape were hacked down with machetes. In many cases ethnic Hutu who opposed the killings or failed to take part in the massacres were themselves hunted down and killed. "Either you took part in the massacres or you were massacred yourself," said one Hutu who was forced to take part.

The RPF battalion stationed in Kigali under the Arusha accords came under attack immediately after the shooting down of the president's plane. The battalion fought its way out of Kigali and joined up with RPF units in the north. The RPF renewed its civil war against the Rwanda Hutu government when it received word that the genocidal massacres had begun. Its leader Paul Kagame directed RPF forces in neighboring countries such as Uganda and Tanzania to invade the country, battling the Hutu forces and Interahamwe militias who were committing the massacres. The resulting civil war raged concurrently with the genocide for two months.