The term Genocidal Massacre, was introduced by Professor Leo Kuper (1908-1994) to denote breaches of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which are massacres committed on a relatively smaller scale when compared to such major genocides such as the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide.

Examples

Warrigal Creek Massacre

In the 1800s, in what is now the state of Victoria in Australia, the Warrigal Creek Massacre was carried out by white settlers against local Aborigines. Due to general lawlessness and the inability of the colonial administration to maintain order throughout what was then a British colony, local Aborigines were often treated harshly and violently by settlers.

In one such incident, settlers badly burnt an Aboriginal man when they threw hot coals on him to make him dance. Some Aborigines then retaliated by tracking down the settler and spearing him. When other settlers found this man dead, they armed themselves and rode down to Warrigal Creek on horseback, where they proceeded to shoot to death all the Aborigines they could find (including women and children), whether on land and or as they came up for air as they hid in the creek.

Burundi refugee camp

In August 2004, 150 Tutsi refugees in a UN camp in Burundi were murdered by Rwandan and Congolese rebels, who had crossed the border from Rwanda in order to target this specific ethnic group. The rebels were believed to be linked with the Rwandan Interahamwe militia, who were responsible for much of the killings during the Rwandan Genocide.