Can Slow Violence Constitute Genocide? Colonial Land Dispossession And Group Destruction
Shaik Sarfaraj Amin, O.P. Jindal Global University
ABSTRACT
This research article examines whether "slow violence" – defined as colonial land dispossession and structural harm – can be considered genocide in international law. Previous to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the emphasis had been on the direct, "spectacular" physical destruction, leaving a large conceptual and legal void surrounding the more gradual harms of colonial actions like forced displacement and the destruction of Indigenous subsistence bases. Based on the original wide definition of genocide by Raphael Lemkin (which also encompassed collective efforts to destroy the cultural, economic and social base of the group life), this paper employs the perspective of settler colonialism as a "structure, not an event" developed by Patrick Wolfe. It also draws on Rob Nixon's idea of "slow violence" to bring to light the "slow" harms that occur over time through environmental destruction and deprivation of resources, and which can be less visible in the dominant legal discourses. The idea that for territorially based groups, ecological degradation is a "social death" is at the core of this analysis, as described by the "genocide-ecocide” nexus. This action is the "missing method" of Lemkin's genocide, one that causes physical destruction of the group through conditions of life, which may come under Article II(c) of the Convention. The theoretical frameworks are used to analyse the present-day situation of the Uighurs in Xinjiang. The paper examines the nature of structural processes, using state-manipulated demographic changes, mass detention, and cultural disintegration as examples. The paper examines the nature of structural processes, as manifested in state-manipulated demographic changes, in mass detention and in cultural dismantling as examples of such. The study highlights, however, a serious gap in the existing jurisprudence, specifically the insuperable doctrinal obstacles encountered in establishing specific intent (dolus specialis) in the context of states that define eliminating policies as a matter of national security or development. In the end, the research calls for a broader interpretation of the concept of international law, which extends beyond a materialist and event- oriented approach. The legal framework thus also reflects the qualitative features of structural violence and the systematic deconstruction of the bases of life on which it operates as a lethal mode of group destruction, and thereby can finally consider the "long emergency" of colonial and state policies that try to destroy marginalised groups silently.
Keywords: Slow Violence, Colonial Land Dispossession, Social Death, Structural Genocide, Dolus Specialis.
