Genocide Denial and Ways to Confront It Legally, A Comparative Historical Study

Abstract

This study entitled (Denial of genocide and means of legal confrontation) sheds light on one of the stages of the genocide crime genocide, which is the denial of genocide. Genocide is committed by tyrannical regimes and extremist parties with the aim of total or partial destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. This study aims to show the seriousness of denying the genocide to limit the facts related to the events of the genocide, reduce the number of victims, and try to blame them and characterize them as perpetrators. The study also aims to review the most important international efforts exerted and aimed at working to realize and confront the denial of genocide by governments, armed groups, or other groups at the popular level, as well as criminalizing and punishing it, in an attempt to prevent the recurrence of genocide. Denial is an integral part of the plan for genocide, which includes secret planning for genocide, propaganda during the genocide, and destruction of evidence of the mass killing. Denial is still not criminalized or punished in many countries. This study also aims to know the goal or purpose of the denial of genocide and the effects and consequences of denial for the victims as well as the legal and political consequences of denial, including the possibility of recurrence of genocide and encouragement to carry it out, unless special measures are taken to criminalize it. The perpetrators hide the truth to evade responsibility and protect the political and economic gains they sought by committing genocide and looting the property of the victims, and as an attempt to consolidate the new reality by fabricating an alternative history. The examples dealt with in this study are the denial of the genocide of the European Jewish population by the German National Socialist Workers’ Party (Nazi) during World War II between (19391945-) and the denial of the genocide of the Armenian population of Turkey by the Ottoman authorities and led by the Association for Union and Progress during the first World War in 1915.