- "I would order them to go out and kill Bajoran scum. And they'd do it – they murdered them! And they came back covered in blood. But they felt clean. Now why did they feel that way, Major? Because they were clean."
- - Aamin Marritza, describing the Gallitep labor camp, while impersonating Gul Darhe'el (DS9: "Duet")
A genocide is a deliberate, systematic destruction of an ethnic, religious or national group. It is characterized by actions against said group which are intended to destroy the group by causing the deaths of its members, in whole or part, such as:
- Killing them outright
- Deliberately forcing them to live under conditions calculated to cause them to die, for example, depriving them of food, imposing forced labor on them designed to kill them by exhaustion
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, for example, forced sterilization
One of the best known examples of genocide occurred during the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor. The Occupation began a conquest for natural resources. The Cardassians treated the Bajorans as slave labor and interned much of the population in labor camps. However, over the course of forty years, the Cardassians' disdain for the Bajorans led to them deliberately imposing such conditions in these camps that the Bajorans interned in them quickly died. By the Occupation's end, millions of Bajorans had died in these camps, although the exact count is uncertain.
Other examples of genocide
Cardassia Prime after the Dominion's genocide attempt
- Throughout the 19th century, the United States of America killed large numbers of Native Americans. (TNG: "Journey's End")
- In 20th century Earth, the Nazis attempted to eradicate various "undesirable" populations of Europe before an alliance of other nations stopped them. In an alternate timeline, Adolf Hitler succeeded in Europe and pledged to do the same in North America. (ENT: "Storm Front, Part II")
- In the late 2060s, Phillip Green led a genocidal campaign to purge Humanity of those suffering from radiation damage in the aftermath of World War III. (TOS: "The Savage Curtain"; ENT: "Demons", "Terra Prime")
- In 2151, Enterprise Captain Jonathan Archer and Chief Medical Officer Phlox potentially condemned the Valakians to extinction by agreeing not to give them warp drive so that they might seek additional aid in finding the cure for a disease that was destroying their species. Phlox claimed that to do so would be altering the "natural development" of the life forms on that planet, as he had discovered that the flaw was in fact a genetic mutation, not a disease. (ENT: "Dear Doctor")
- In 2153 the Xindi attacked Earth with a weapon that carved a groove out of the planet from Florida to Venezuela, killing seven million Humans. The weapon was a prelude to an intended larger weapon with which they intended to destroy Earth, and Humanity with it. (ENT: "The Expanse")
- In an alternate timeline, in 2258, some six billion Vulcans were killed when Nero destroyed their home planet. Only approximately ten thousand Vulcans survived. Nero intended to destroy every remaining Federation planet, including Earth, but was stopped by the efforts of James T. Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise. (Star Trek)
- In the 2260s, the inhabitants of the planet Cheron exterminated each other in genocidal warfare. (TOS: "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield")
- Sometime between 2222 and 2372, the Pralor and Cravic races were exterminated by the Automated Personnel Units they had constructed to fight their war for them. (VOY: "Prototype")
- In 2366 a Douwd who appeared as a Human named Kevin Uxbridge admitted to annihilating the entire Husnock race in a moment of grief and rage after one of their ships destroyed the colony on Delta Rana IV, killing Uxbridge's wife Rishon. (TNG: "The Survivors")
- In the mid 24th century the Enarans committed genocide on a population group called the Regressives. The general Enaran population despised the Regressives for living an alternative partially technology free lifestyle. They systematically herded them into camps at first, restricting their rights and movements. Then later they forcibly began "relocating" them to a "colony" where they would be able to live as they chose freely. The relocation was a farce meant to soothe the Regressives into a false sense of safety and also to hide the real purpose of the effort to the Enaran population. The truth was that the ships which supposedly took the Regressives to their new colony did not actually go anywhere, it would simply vaporize the Regressives in the cargo hold. Dissidents and those that refused to be relocated were swiftly executed to silence them. Later the Enarans hid all evidence of the genocide, even blaming the Regressives themselves for their death by saying that they all died from a plague caused by their poor hygiene. Later generations of Enarans had no knowledge of the genocide. Some of the older people attempted to reveal the truth surrounding the fate of Regressives but risked being murdered by doing so. (VOY: "Remember")
- Near the end of the Dominion War, Doctor Julian Bashir discovered that a group within Starfleet Intelligence, known as Section 31, was responsible for creating the morphogenic virus which was ravaging the Founders, including Odo. Section 31 had infected Odo so he would act as a carrier and infect other Changelings when he linked with them. However, Bashir and Chief Miles O'Brien lured Section 31 agent Luther Sloan to Deep Space 9 and obtained the cure for the disease by entering Sloan's mind, saving not only Odo's life but also his entire species. (DS9: "Extreme Measures")
- In late 2375, the Female Changeling ordered Dominion troops to exterminate the entire population of Cardassia Prime. Odo managed to convince her to rescind the order but not before more than eight hundred million men, women and children were killed. (DS9: "What You Leave Behind")