| Convention On The Prevention And Punishment Of The Crime Of Genocide |
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| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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The Convention (in article 2) defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, 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. The convention was passed in order to outlaw actions similar to The Holocaust by Nazi Germany during World War II . Because the convention required the support of the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc , it excluded actions undertaken by those nations. As a result, the convention excludes from the definition of genocide the killing of members of a social class, members of a political or ideological group, and that of cultural killings. The United States became a state party to the convention in 1988, though only with the Proviso that it was Immune from prosecution for genocide without its consent. This proviso was also made by Bahrain , Bangladesh , India , Malaysia , the Philippines , Singapore , Vietnam , Yemen , and Yugoslavia . All participating countries are required to prevent and punish actions of genocide in war and peacetime. The first time that the 1948 law was enforced occurred on September 2 , 1998 when the International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda found Jean-Paul Akayesu , the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda , guilty of nine counts of genocide. The lead prosecutor in this case was Pierre-Richard Prosper . Two days later, Jean Kambanda became the first head of government to be convicted of genocide. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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