On ___________, the United Nations General Assembly condemned the massacre and declared it to be an act of genocide. The voting record on section D of Resolution 37/123 was: yes: 123; no: 0; abstentions: 22; non-voting: 12.
The delegate for Canada stated: “The term genocide cannot, in our view, be applied to this particular inhuman act.” The Soviet Union, by contrast, asserted that: “The word for what ______ is doing on ________ soil is genocide. Its purpose is to destroy the _________ as a nation.” The delegate of Singapore—voting yes—added: “My delegation regrets the use of the term ‘an act of genocide’ . . . as the term ‘genocide’ is used to mean acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” The Nicaragua delegate asserted: “It is difficult to believe that a people that suffered so much from _______________________________ would use the same fascist, genocidal arguments and methods against other peoples.” Canada and Singapore questioned whether the General Assembly was competent to determine whether such an event would constitute genocide.
The United States commented that “While the criminality of the massacre was beyond question, it was a serious and reckless misuse of language to label this tragedy genocide as defined in the 1948 Convention . . .”.