Tech & Genocide - Introduction
The links between tech and genocide are numerous and increasing. This article intend to be a short introduction to the subject for those who never considered it. Three case studies will help illustrate theses points by providing non-exhaustive examples.
Corporations are known to not only abuse but also denied freedoms. The tech industry is not exempt to it and in many respects it has become the prime example. In the context of war, crime against humanity and genocide arms manufactures are the usual suspects. But in recent years tech companies are not longer secondary actors. With the complicity of the state perpetrating atrocities and its allies their involvements fall under different categories; censorship, disinformation, surveillance, forced labor and warfare among others.
Genocide definition
Before dissecting the different case studies it is valuable to define what a genocide is.
Lemkin definition
The term genocide has been coined by Raphael Lemkin a polish lawyer who was very concerned about the fact that a leader could only be tried by their own government. He advocated for the development of a framework codifying this crime under international law and proposed it to the United Nation to hold the perpetrators accountable.
Lemkin saw genocide as the intentional elimination of a nation or an ethnic group, a crime against humanity linked to the destruction of a culture.
UN definition
In the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide codified in 1948 the United Nation did not entirely follow Lemkin definition, the cultural aspect being only implied.
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- (a) Killing members of the group;
- (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Responsibility
Article III
The following acts shall be punishable:
- (a) Genocide;
- (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
- (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
- (d) Attempt to commit genocide;
- (e) Complicity in genocide.
Article IV
Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.