NASA leaders kneel to be prayed for. They have accused the state of genocide. [Photo/the-star.co.ke]

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In a statement read in Lavington by Musalia Mudavadi, NASA accused the Jubilee government of perpetrating genocide on an ethnic community from which Raila Odinga belongs.

The term genocide is an emotive term that came into existence after 1944.

It was coined by a Jewish legal practitioner called Raphael Lemkin (1900 - 1959) in a best-selling book chronicling the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime on Jews.

He defined genocide as ''a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves''.

In December 1948, the United Nations ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Another example of genocide is the mass killing of members of an ethnic group in Rwanda that shocked the conscience of the world.