No. "Transfering children of one group to another group through adoptions" is not genocide. Neither is persuading people to be "sterilized" -- whether through "deception" or not. You can treat people very horribly without it being genocide. That does not make the crimes any worse or any more excusable.
Remember, the Guatemalan Truth Commission found 200,000 deaths over thirty years, and some of the worst atrocities imaginable, most concentrated among the Indians. But even they claimed that there was "genocide" for only two years of that stretch -- 81-82, I think. It's a strict standard.
There is an impulse when advocating for a cause to use the harshest language one can think of -- and genocide is often the word people find when they grope for the worst possible crime imaginable. They're doing it with Kosovo right now. I think both are fatuous.
Seth
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Henwood [SMTP:dhenwood at panix.com]
> Sent: Monday, April 12, 1999 3:19 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: RE: Re: genocide
>
> Seth Ackerman wrote:
>
> >These are all pretty terrible things -- they range from shabby to
> very
> >nasty treatment. But which of these is evidence that the U.S. is
> >attempting to exterminate Native Americans? I just finished an
> article
> >on how the media are advertising a spurious "genocide" in Kosovo.
> It's
> >pretty clear that the media are trying to pin the word genocide onto
> the
> >Serbs for propaganda purposes. It's an abuse of the term when the
> >mainstream media use it for Kosovo and it's an abuse of the term when
> >activists use it for Indians.
>
> Forced assimilation, forced adoption, and forced sterilization all
> meet the
> official definition of genocide, no?
>
> Doug