1994–2017: Chechen genocide
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chechnya declared its independence from the Russian Federation. Russian president Boris Yeltsin refused to accept Chechnya's independence; subsequently, the conflict between Chechnya and the Russian Federation escalated until it reached its climax when Russian troops invaded Chechnya and launched the First Chechen War in December 1994, and in September 1999, they invaded Chechnya again and launched the Second Chechen War. By 2009, Chechen resistance was crushed and the war ended with Russia re-establishing its control over Chechnya. Numerous war crimes were committed during both conflicts. Amnesty International estimated that in the First Chechen War alone, between 20,000 and 30,000 Chechens were killed, mostly in indiscriminate attacks which were launched against them by Russian forces in densely populated areas, and that a further 25,000 civilians died in the Second Chechen War.
Some scholars estimated that the Russian government's brutal attacks against such a small ethnic group amounted to a crime of genocide. The German-based NGO Society for Threatened Peoples accused the Russian authorities of genocide in its 2005 report on Chechnya.Sarah Reinke (2005). . , 2005, p. 8. On 18 October 2022, Ukraine's parliament condemned the "genocide of the Chechen people" during the First and Second Chechen War.
1983–2009: Tamil genocide
The Sri Lankan military was accused of committing human rights violations during Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war. A United Nations' Panel of Experts looking into these alleged violations found "credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed by both the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity". Some activists and politicians also accused the Sri Lankan government which is dominated by Sinhalese people (who predominantly practice Theravada Buddhism) of carrying out a genocide against the minority Sri Lankan Tamil people, who are mostly Hindu, both during and after the war.
Protests and allegations of genocide In 2009, thousands of Tamils protested against the atrocities in cities all over the world. (See 2009 Tamil diaspora protests.) Various diaspora activists formed a group called Tamils Against Genocide to continue the protest. Legal action against Sri Lankan leaders for alleged genocide has been initiated. Norwegian human rights lawyer Harald Stabell filed a case in Norwegian courts against Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa and other officials.
Bruce Fein alleged that Sri Lanka's leaders committed genocide, along with Tamil Parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran. Refugees who escaped from Sri Lanka also stated that they fled from genocide, and various Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora groups echoed these accusations.
Politicians in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu also made accusations of genocide. In 2008 and 2009 the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M. Karunanidhi repeatedly appealed to the Indian government to intervene to "stop the genocide of Tamils", while his successor J. Jayalalithaa called on the Indian government to bring Rajapaksa before international courts for genocide. The women's wing of the Communist Party of India, passed a resolution in August 2012 finding that "Systematic sexual violence against Tamil women" by Sri Lankan forces constituted genocide, calling for an "independent international investigation".
Judicial investigation, court findings, and governmental resolutions In January 2010, a Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT) held in Dublin, Ireland, found Sri Lanka guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but it found insufficient evidence to justify the charge of genocide. The tribunal requested a thorough investigation as some of the evidence indicated "possible acts of genocide". Its panel found Sri Lanka guilty of genocide at its 7–10 December 2013 hearings in Berman, Germany. It also found that the US and UK were guilty of complicity. A decision on whether India, and other states, had also acted in complicity was withheld. PPT reported that LTTE could not be accurately characterised as "terrorist", stating that movements classified as "terrorist" because of their rebellion against a state, can become political entities recognised by the international community. The International Commission of Jurists stated that the camps used to intern nearly 300,000 Tamils after the war's end may have breached the convention against genocide.
In 2015, Sri Lanka's Tamil majority Northern Provincial Council (NPC) "passed a strongly worded resolution accusing successive governments in the island nation of committing 'genocide' against Tamils". The resolution asserts that "Tamils across Sri Lanka, particularly in the historical Tamil homeland of the Northeast, have been subject to gross and systematic human rights violations, culminating in the mass atrocities committed in 2009. Sri Lanka's historic violations include over 60 years of state sponsored anti-Tamil pogroms, massacres, sexual violence, and acts of cultural and linguistic destruction perpetrated by the state. These atrocities have been perpetrated with the intent to destroy the Tamil people, and therefore constitute genocide."
The Sri Lankan government denied the allegations of genocide and war crimes.
1998–present: Boko Haram and Fulani herdsman
Since the turn of the 21st century, 62,000 Nigerian Christians have been killed by the terrorist group Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen and other groups. The killings have been referred to as a silent genocide.
2002–2003: Mbuti people
During the Congo Civil War (1998–2003), pygmies, who were considered subhuman, were hunted down and eaten by both of the sides which were involved in the conflict. Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti pygmies, asked the UN Security Council to recognise cannibalism as both a crime against humanity and an act of genocide. Minority Rights Group International reported evidence of mass killings, cannibalism and rape. The report, which labeled these events as a campaign of extermination, linked the violence to beliefs about special powers held by the Bambuti. In Ituri district, rebel forces ran an operation code-named "Effacer le tableau" (to wipe the slate clean). The aim of the operation, according to witnesses, was to rid the forest of pygmies.
2003–2005: Darfur genocide
The Darfur genocide is the systematic killing of ethnic Darfuri people which has occurred during the conflict in Western Sudan. It has become known as the first genocide of the 21st century. The genocide, which was committed against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes, led the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict several people for crimes against humanity, rape, forced transfer and torture. Over 2.8 million civilians have been displaced and the death toll is estimated to number 300,000.
2003–2018: South Sudan
During the South Sudanese Civil War there were ethnic undertones to the conflict between the South Sudan People's Defence Forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, which has been accused of being dominated by the Dinka ethnic group. A Dinka lobbying group known as the "Jieng Council of Elders" was often accused of being behind hardline SPLM policies. While the army used to attract men who were members of different tribes, during the war, a large number of the SPLA's soldiers were from the Dinka stronghold of Bahr el Ghazal, and within the country the army was often referred to as "the Dinka army".
Many of the atrocities committed are blamed on a group known as "Dot Ke Beny" (Rescue the President) or "Mathiang Anyoor" (Brown caterpillar), while the SPLA claim that it is just another battalion. Immediately after the alleged coup in 2013, Dinka troops, and particularly Mathiang Anyoor, were accused of carrying out pogroms, assisted by guides, in house to house searches of Nuer suburbs, while similar door to door searches of Nuers were reported in government held Malakal. About 240 Nuer men were killed at a police station in Juba's Gudele neighborhood.
During the fighting in 2016–17 in the Upper Nile region between the SPLA and the SPLA-IO allied Upper Nile faction of Uliny, Shilluk in Wau Shilluk were forced from their homes and Yasmin Sooka, chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, claimed that the government was engaging in "social engineering" after it transported 2,000 mostly Dinka people to the abandoned areas. The king of the Shilluk Kingdom, Kwongo Dak Padiet, claimed his people were at risk of physical and cultural extinction. In the Equatoria region, Dinka soldiers were accused of targeting civilians on ethnic lines against the dozens of ethnic groups among the Equatorians, with much of the atrocities being blamed on Mathiang Anyoor.
Allegations of genocide Adama Dieng, the U.N.'s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, warned of genocide after visiting areas of fighting in Yei. Khalid Boutros of the Cobra faction as well as officials of the Murle led Boma State accuse the SPLA of aiding attacks by Dinka from Jonglei state against Boma state, and soldiers from Jonglei captured Kotchar in Boma in 2017. In 2010, Dennis Blair, the United States Director of National Intelligence, issued a warning that "over the next five years... a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in southern Sudan." In April 2017, Priti Patel, the Secretary of State for International Development of the United Kingdom, stated that the violence in South Sudan constituted genocide.
2014–present: Uyghurs
The Chinese government has committed a series of human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities which live both in and around the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of the People's Republic of China. Since 2014, the Chinese government, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the administration of CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, has pursued policies which have led to the internment of more than one million Muslims and they are currently being held in secretive internment camps without any legal process (the majority of them are Uyghurs) in what has become the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since the Holocaust. Critics of the policy have described it as the Sinicisation of Xinjiang and have called it an ethnocide or cultural genocide, while some governments, activists, independent NGOs, human rights experts, academics, government officials, and the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile have called it a genocide.
In particular, critics have highlighted the concentration of Uyghurs in state-sponsored internment camps, suppression of Uyghur religious practices, political indoctrination, severe ill-treatment, and testimonials of alleged human rights abuses including forced sterilisation, contraception, and abortion. Chinese government statistics show that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar fell by 84%. In the same period, the birth rate of the whole country decreased by 9.69%, from 12.07 to 10.9 per 1,000 people. Chinese authorities acknowledged that birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018 in Xinjiang, but denied reports of forced sterilisation and genocide. Birth rates have continued to plummet in Xinjiang, falling nearly 24% in 2019 alone when compared to just 4.2% nationwide.