In ancient times during war soldiers fought on the battlefield corp a corp, face to face with the enemy. It was brutal, horrific and bloody. War was fought over reasons as ancient as man and still true today; Wealth and Power.
A politician once said;"The United States have no friend, only interest." It is true for all countries and man. Unless you are Mother Theresa, Man's agenda is always more then just philanthropic.With great leaps forward in technologie and science, Mass killing did also increase.
Genocide: among other things, the killing of people by a government because of their indelible group membership (race, ethnicity, religion, language).
Politicide: the Murder of any person or people bya government because of their politics or for political purposes.Mass Murder: the indiscriminate killing of any person or people by a government.
Democide: The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.
The 20st Century was one of the most ruthless Century. Dominated by ethnic war and massacre. All continents produced perpetrators of genocide as well as dissenters. The technology, scale, and intensity of this violence were all new. At least 30 million people perished in genocides across the globe. Some were sudden or concentrated outbursts of mass murder, like those committed by the Young Turks in 1915 (visit my Armenian Genocide post), the Nazis in the second world war, the Khmer Rouge in 1975-79, or Rwanda's Hutu-power regime in just three months in 1994.
Other genocides were gradual and prolonged. In the Soviet Union, Stalin's regime of terror rose and fell incrementally, over nearly three decades, before and after his homicidal frenzy of the 1930s. Maoism, along with its Chinese and Japanese enemies, subjected China to intermittent cycles of deadly violence from the 1920s to the 1970s, peaking in a regime-made famine that killed tens of millions in the 1950s. Third-world populations suffered long and hard under smaller, but equally relentless, killer regimes like that of Kim Il-sung in North Korea, where repression and starvation escalated under his son, Kim Jong-il. (visit my North Korean post)
After a United States-sponsored coup ended a democratic era in Guatemala in 1954, murderous political repression plagued that country until 1996, persisting even after its intense genocidal phase of 1981-83. Extermination in East Timor began with the Indonesian invasion of 1975, reached its zenith in 1978-80, and continued sporadically until Jakarta's violent withdrawal in 1999. Mass killing in Sudan has gathered pace since 1982, with its Islamist regime taking 2 million victims by 2006, first Christians and animists, then black Muslims in Darfur.
The 21st century could be just as bleak. After the cold war ended in 1989, new flashpoints emerged. Multinational communist regimes like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia collapsed in ethnic division, as did their allies Afghanistan and Ethiopia. Armed territorial secession threatened other large multi-ethnic states like Indonesia and Congo. Following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, ethnic violence spread to Burundi and to Congo, where a new genocide erupted. Ethnic-cleansing campaigns in the Caucasus and Chechnya cleared ground for new conflicts that seem to resist solution. Vicious al-Qaida terrorism targets Civilians from Manhattan to Madrid, from Morocco to the Moro region of the Philippines. Muslim-Christian violence has erupted in Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Iraq. Threats loom in rising anti-immigrant, nativist, and religious fundamentalist movements from western Europe to east Asia. A deepening divide in China, Islamic rebellions in southern Thailand and the Philippines, murderous insurgency and repression in Iraq, international and domestic crisis in North Korea, continuing ethno-political dissension in Afghanistan and suppression in Burma, and brutal national-religious conflicts in Kashmir and Sri Lanka all bode ill for 21st-century ethnic conciliation.
The following are not only numbers, behind each of them is the face of a human being,;men, women, children, young and old. It maybe difficult to grasp the understanding behind the atrocity hiding in this numbers. But with the constant bombardement of violance in the medias, one may become desinsitized and detached.My hope is to keep what is good, compassionate and our sense of right and wrong alive, to chose to act rather then stay on the side line and watch it happen.
Statistics.
A politician once said;"The United States have no friend, only interest." It is true for all countries and man. Unless you are Mother Theresa, Man's agenda is always more then just philanthropic.With great leaps forward in technologie and science, Mass killing did also increase.
Genocide: among other things, the killing of people by a government because of their indelible group membership (race, ethnicity, religion, language).
Politicide: the Murder of any person or people bya government because of their politics or for political purposes.Mass Murder: the indiscriminate killing of any person or people by a government.
Democide: The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.
The 20st Century was one of the most ruthless Century. Dominated by ethnic war and massacre. All continents produced perpetrators of genocide as well as dissenters. The technology, scale, and intensity of this violence were all new. At least 30 million people perished in genocides across the globe. Some were sudden or concentrated outbursts of mass murder, like those committed by the Young Turks in 1915 (visit my Armenian Genocide post), the Nazis in the second world war, the Khmer Rouge in 1975-79, or Rwanda's Hutu-power regime in just three months in 1994.
Other genocides were gradual and prolonged. In the Soviet Union, Stalin's regime of terror rose and fell incrementally, over nearly three decades, before and after his homicidal frenzy of the 1930s. Maoism, along with its Chinese and Japanese enemies, subjected China to intermittent cycles of deadly violence from the 1920s to the 1970s, peaking in a regime-made famine that killed tens of millions in the 1950s. Third-world populations suffered long and hard under smaller, but equally relentless, killer regimes like that of Kim Il-sung in North Korea, where repression and starvation escalated under his son, Kim Jong-il. (visit my North Korean post)
After a United States-sponsored coup ended a democratic era in Guatemala in 1954, murderous political repression plagued that country until 1996, persisting even after its intense genocidal phase of 1981-83. Extermination in East Timor began with the Indonesian invasion of 1975, reached its zenith in 1978-80, and continued sporadically until Jakarta's violent withdrawal in 1999. Mass killing in Sudan has gathered pace since 1982, with its Islamist regime taking 2 million victims by 2006, first Christians and animists, then black Muslims in Darfur.
The 21st century could be just as bleak. After the cold war ended in 1989, new flashpoints emerged. Multinational communist regimes like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia collapsed in ethnic division, as did their allies Afghanistan and Ethiopia. Armed territorial secession threatened other large multi-ethnic states like Indonesia and Congo. Following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, ethnic violence spread to Burundi and to Congo, where a new genocide erupted. Ethnic-cleansing campaigns in the Caucasus and Chechnya cleared ground for new conflicts that seem to resist solution. Vicious al-Qaida terrorism targets Civilians from Manhattan to Madrid, from Morocco to the Moro region of the Philippines. Muslim-Christian violence has erupted in Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Iraq. Threats loom in rising anti-immigrant, nativist, and religious fundamentalist movements from western Europe to east Asia. A deepening divide in China, Islamic rebellions in southern Thailand and the Philippines, murderous insurgency and repression in Iraq, international and domestic crisis in North Korea, continuing ethno-political dissension in Afghanistan and suppression in Burma, and brutal national-religious conflicts in Kashmir and Sri Lanka all bode ill for 21st-century ethnic conciliation.
The following are not only numbers, behind each of them is the face of a human being,;men, women, children, young and old. It maybe difficult to grasp the understanding behind the atrocity hiding in this numbers. But with the constant bombardement of violance in the medias, one may become desinsitized and detached.My hope is to keep what is good, compassionate and our sense of right and wrong alive, to chose to act rather then stay on the side line and watch it happen.
Statistics.
- Mao Ze-Dong: China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50 49-78,000,000
- Jozef Stalin: USSR, 1932-39 the purges plus Ukraine's famine 23,000,000
- Adolf Hitler: Germany, 1939-1945 concentration camps and civilians WWII 12,000,000
- Leopold II: Belgium Congo, 1886-1908 8,000,000
- Hideki Tojo: Japan, civilians in WWII 1941-44 5,000,000
- Ismail Enver: Turkey, 1915-20 1,200,000
- Pol Pot: Cambodia, 1975-79 1,700,000
- Kim Il Sung: North Korea, purges and concentration camps 1948-94 1.6 million
- Menghistu: Ethiopia, 1975-78 1,500,000
- Yakubu Gowon: Biafra, 1967-1970 1,000,000
- Leonid Brezhnev: Afghanistan, 1979-1982 900,000
- Jean Kambanda: Rwanda, 1994 800,000
- Suharto: East Timor, West Papua, Communists, 1966-98 800,000
- Saddam Hussein: Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88 600,000
- Tito: Yugoslavia, 1945-1987 570,000
- Fumimaro Konoe: Japan, Chinese civilians1937-39 500,000?
- Jonas Savimbi: Angola, 1975-2002 400,000
- Taliban: Afghanistan, 1986-2001 400,000
- Idi Amin: Uganda, 1969-1979 300,000
- Yahya Khan: Pakistan, Bangladesh1970-71 300,000
- Benito Mussolini: Ethiopia, 1936; Libya, 1934-45; Yugoslavia, WWII 300,000
- Mobutu Sese Seko: Zaire, 1965-97 ?
- Charles Taylor: Liberia, 1989-1996 220,000
- Foday Sankoh: Sierra Leone, 1991-2000 200,000
- Michel Micombero: Burundi, 1972 150,000
- Slobodan Milosevic:Yugoslavia, 1992-99 100,000
- Hassan Turabi: Sudan, 1989-1999 100,000
- Richard Nixon: Vietnam,Vietnamese civilians 1969-1974 70,000
- Efrain Rios Montt: Guatemala, 1982-83 70,000
- Papa Doc Duvalier: Haiti, 1957-71 60,000
- Hissene Habre: Chad, 1982-1990 40,000
- Vladimir Ilich Lenin: USSR, 1917-20 dissidents executed 30,000
- Francisco Franco: Spain dissidents executed after the civil war 30,000
- Fidel Castro: Cuba, 1959-1999 30,000
- Lyndon Johnson: Vietnam, 1963-1968 30,000
- Hafez Al-Assad: Syria, 1980-2000 25,000
- Khomeini: Iran, 1979-89 20,000
- Main sources:
- Charny (1988) Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review
- Stephane Courtois: Black Book on Communism (1995)
- Matthews: Guiness Book of Records (2000)
- Clodfelter: Warfare and Armed Conflicts (1992)
- Elliot: Twentieth Century Book of the Dead (1972)
- Bouthoul : A List of the 366 Major Armed Conflicts of the period 1740-1974, Peace Research (1978)
- R.J. Rummel: Death by Government - Genocide and Mass Murder (1994)
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