Cultural genocide
Cultural genocide or culturicide is a concept which was proposed by lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 as a component of genocide. Though the precise definition of cultural genocide remains contested, the Armenian Genocide Museum defines it as "acts and measures undertaken to destroy nations' or ethnic groups' culture through spiritual, national, and cultural destruction". Some ethnologists, such as Robert Jaulin, use the term ethnocide as a substitute for cultural genocide, although this usage has been criticized as risking the confusion between ethnicity and culture. Juxtaposed next to ethnocide, cultural genocide was considered in the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; however, it was removed in the final document and simply replaced with "genocide". Definition Among many other potential reasons, cultural genocide may be committed for religious motives (e.g., iconoclasm which is based on aniconism); as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing in an attempt to remove the evidence of a people from a specific locale or history; as part of an effort to implement a Year Zero, in which the past and its associated culture is deleted and history is "reset". Binding international law Cultural property Cultural genocide involves the eradication and destruction of cultural