Political cleansing of population

Under the Genocide Convention, political groups are not a protected group if they are targeted with an intent to destroy the political group even if they share an ethnic, national or religious identity.^[1][2][3]

Raphael Lemkin personally insisted against the inclusion of political groups in the Convention.^[4] Lemkin wrote in his autobiography: "We in Latin America make revolutions from time to time, which involves the destruction of political opponents. Then we reconcile and live in peace. Later the group in power is thrown out in another revolution. Why should this be classified as the crime of genocide?"^[3]

Protection of political groups was eliminated from the United Nations resolution after a second vote because many states, including Stalin's Soviet Union,^[5] anticipated that clause to apply unneeded limitations to their right to suppress internal disturbances.^[6][7] The reason given was that the protected groups were immutable, which scholars point out is unlikely, since religious and national affiliation are not immutable.^[4]

Efforts to have political groups added to the Convention have been unsuccessful.^[8]

Scholarly study of genocide usually acknowledges the United Nations omission of economic and political groups, and uses mass political killing datasets of democide, and genocide and politicide, or geno-politicide.^[9] Killings by the Khmer Rouge in Democratic Kampuchea have been labeled genocide or autogenocide, and the deaths under Leninism and Stalinism in the Soviet Union, and Maoism in Communist China have been controversially investigated as possible cases; the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 and the Great Chinese Famine during the Great Leap Forward have been controversially "depicted as instances of mass killing underpinned by genocidal intent."^[10]

Politicide is the deliberate physical destruction or elimination of a group whose members oppose a regime or share the main characteristic of belonging to a political movement. It is a type of political repression and one of the means used to politically cleanse populations, another being forced migration. It may be compared to genocide or ethnic cleansing, both of which involve the killing of people based on their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group rather than their adherence to a particular ideology.^{[citation needed]}

Politicide is used to describe the killing of groups that are not covered by the Genocide Convention.^[11] Social scientists Ted Robert Gurr and Barbara Harff use politicide to describe the killing of groups of people who are targeted not because of their shared ethnic or communal traits, but because of "their hierarchical position or political opposition to the regime and dominant groups."^[12] Harff studies genocide and politicide, sometimes shortened as geno-politicide, in order to include the killing of political, economic, ethnic and cultural groups.^[13] Manus Midlarsky uses politicide to describe an arc of large-scale killing from the western parts of the Soviet Union to China and Cambodia.^[14] In his book The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Midlarsky raises similarities between the killings perpetrated by Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot.^[15]

Some groups attempt to eliminate the base of support for political opponents such as insurgents. This happens in many countries with high levels of insurgency such as Colombia.^[16] It may be a means for and referred to as pacification.^[17]