Since many war crimes are not prosecuted (due to lack of political will, lack of effective procedures, or other practical and political reasons),[1][bettersourceneeded] historians and lawyers will frequently make a serious case in order to prove that war crimes occurred, even though the alleged perpetrators of these crimes were never formally prosecuted because investigations cleared them of all charges.
Under international law, war crimes were formally defined as crimes during international trials such as the Nuremberg Trials and the Tokyo Trials, in which Austrian, German and Japanese leaders were prosecuted for war crimes which were committed during World War II.
The term "concentration camp" was used to describe camps operated by the British Empire in South Africa during the Second Boer War in the years 1900–1902. As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "scorched earth" policy, many tens of thousands of women and children were forcibly moved into the concentration camps. Over 26,000 Boer women and children were to perish in these concentration camps.[2]
Six officers from the Bushveldt Carbineers were court-martialed for massacring POWs and civilians. Lieutenants Harry Morant, Peter Handcock, and George Witton were each found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Morant and Handcock were executed, while Witton was reprieved and served a short prison sentence. Two of the other defendants, Major Robert Lenehan and Lieutenant Henry Picton, were found guilty of lesser charges. They were dismissed from the military and deported from South Africa after being found guilty of neglecting one's duty and manslaughter, respectively. The last defendant, Captain Alfred Taylor, was acquitted.
New York Journal cartoon of May 5, 1902 about General Jacob H. Smith's infamous order "Kill Everyone Over Ten". The caption at the bottom reads: "Criminals Because They Were Born Ten Years Before We Took the Philippines".
Reported American war crimes and atrocities during the Philippine–American War included the summary execution of civilians and prisoners, burning of villages, and torture. 298,000 Filipinos were also moved to concentration camps, where thousands died.[3][4][5][6][7]
In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger wrote: "The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog".[8]
In response to the Balangiga massacre, which wiped out a U.S. company garrisoning Samar town, U.S. Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith launched a retaliatory march across Samar with the instructions: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States".[9][10]
In August, German General Lothar von Trotha defeated the Ovaherero in the Battle of Waterberg and drove them into the desert of Omaheke, where most of them died of dehydration. In October, the Nama people also rebelled against the Germans, only to suffer a similar fate. Between 24,000 and 100,000 Hereros, 10,000 Nama and an unknown number of San died in the parallel Herero and Namaqua genocide.[11][12][13][14][15] Once defeated, thousands of Hereros and Namas were also imprisoned in concentration camps, where the majority died of diseases, abuse, and exhaustion.[16][17] German soldiers also regularly engaged in gang rapes[18] before killing the women or leaving them in the desert to die; a number of Herero women were also forced into involuntary prostitution.[19][20]:31[21]
1912-1913: Balkan Wars
Photograph of Albanian civilians that were taken prisoner by the Royal Serbian Army in Prishtina during the Balkan wars
The Balkan Wars were marked by ethnic cleansing with all parties being responsible for grave atrocities against civilians and helped inspire later atrocities including war crimes during the 1990s Yugoslav Wars.[22][23][24][25]
Massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars were perpetrated on several occasions by Serbian and Montenegrin armies and paramilitaries.[26][27][28] According to contemporary accounts, between 20,000 and 25,000 Albanians were massacred in the Kosovo Vilayet during the first two to four months of the conflict;[28][29][30] with at least 120,000 being killed in total.[31][32] Most of the victims were children, women and the elderly.[33][34] In addition to the massacres, some civilians had their tongues, lips, ears and noses severed.[35][36]Philip J. Cohen also cited Durham as saying that Serbian soldiers helped bury people alive in Kosovo.[37]Yugoslavia from a Historical Perspective, a 2017 study published in Belgrade by the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, said that villages were burned to ashes and Albanian Muslims forced to flee when Serbo-Montenegrin forces invaded Kosovo in 1912. Some chronicles cited decapitation as well as mutilation.[38]
Serbian army also brutally suppressed the Tikveš uprising and terrorized the Bulgarian population in the rebelling regions. According to some sources 363 civilian Bulgarians were killed in Kavadarci, 230 - in Negotino and 40 - in Vatasha.[39]
1914–1918: World War I
Austro-Hungarian troops executing captured Serbians, 1917. Serbia lost about 850,000 people during the war, a quarter of its pre-war population.
World War I was the first major international conflict to take place following the codification of war crimes at the Hague Convention of 1907, including derived war crimes, such as the use of poisons as weapons, as well as crimes against humanity, and derivative crimes against humanity, such as torture, and genocide. Before, the Second Boer War took place after the Hague Convention of 1899. The Second Boer War (1899 until 1902) is known for the first concentration camps (1900 until 1902) for civilians in the 20th century.
As Belgium was officially neutral after hostilities in Europe broke out and Germany invaded the country without explicit warning, this act was also in breach of the treaty of 1839 and the 1907 Hague Convention on Opening of Hostilities.[42]
German forces ordered a scorched earth policy against the indigenous Duala people to repress an alleged "people's war." Numerous killings were committed by German forces including in Jabassi where a white commander reportedly gave the order to "kill every native they saw."[43]
Several key perpetrators of the genocide were assassinated by Armenian vigilantes as part of Operation Nemesis.
The Young Turk regime ordered the wholesale extermination of Armenians living within Western Armenia. This was carried out by certain elements of their military forces, who either massacred Armenians outright, or deported them to Syria and then massacred them. Over 1.5 million Armenians perished.[citation needed]
The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, does not accept the word genocide as an accurate description of the events surrounding this matter.[52]
War crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, ethnic cleansing
Several key perpetrators of the genocide were assassinated by Armenian vigilantes as part of Operation Nemesis
Mass killing of Assyrian civilians by the Ottoman Empire's forces resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Turkey does not call the event genocide.
Several key perpetrators of the genocide were assassinated by Armenian vigilantes as part of Operation Nemesis.
Violent ethnic cleansing campaign against Greeks in Anatolia resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Turkey does not call the event mass genocide.
On 19 August 1915, a German submarine, U-27, while preparing to sink the British freighter Nicosian, which was loaded with war supplies, after the crew had boarded the lifeboats, was sunk by the British Q-shipHMS Baralong. Afterwards, Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert ordered his Baralong crew to kill the survivors of the German submarine while still at sea, including those who were summarily executed after boarding the Nicosian. The massacre was reported to a newspaper by American citizens who were also on board the Nicosian.[53] Another attack occurred on 24 September a month later when Baralong destroyed U-41, which was in the process of sinking the cargo ship Urbino. According to U41's commander Karl Goetz, the British vessel was flying the American flag even after opening fire on the submarine, and the lifeboat carrying the German survivors was rammed and sunk by the British Q-ship.[54]
Urukun was not covered by Soviet textbooks, and monographs on the subject were removed from Soviet printing houses. As the Soviet Union was disintegrating in 1991, interest in Urkun grew. Some survivors have begun to label the events a "massacre" or "genocide".[55] In August 2016, a public commission in Kyrgyzstan concluded that the 1916 mass crackdown was labelled as "genocide".[56] Arnold Toynbee alleges 500,000 Central Asian Turks perished under the Russian Empire, though he admits this is speculative.[57] Rudolph Rummel citing Toynbee states 500,000 perished within the revolt.[58][unreliable source?] Kyrgyz sources put the death toll between 100,000 and 270,000. Russian sources put the figure at 3,000.[59] Kyrgyz historians Shayyrkul Batyrbaeva puts the death toll at 40,000, based on population tallies.[citation needed]
Although Germans were permitted to return and attempt to reclaim their land, it is estimated that only one-half of their number did so. Many found their houses destroyed and their farms occupied by strangers.[60]
Grand Duke Nicholas (who was still commander-in-chief of the Western forces), after suffering serious defeats at the hands of the German army, decided to implement the decrees for the German Russians living under his army's control, principally in the Volhynia province. The lands were to be expropriated, and the owners deported to Siberia. The land was to be given to Russian war veterans once the war was over. In July 1915, without prior warning, 150,000 German settlers from Volhynia were arrested and shipped to internal exile in Siberia and Central Asia. (Some sources indicate that the number of deportees reached 200,000.) Ukrainian peasants took over their lands. The mortality rate from these deportations is estimated to have been 63,000 to 100,000, that is from 30% to 50%, but exact figures are impossible to determine.[citation needed]
The Surdulica massacre was the mass murder of Serbian men by Bulgarian occupational authorities in the southern Serbian town of Surdulica in 1916 and early 1917, during World War I. Members of the Serbian intelligentsia in the region, mostly functionaries, teachers, priests and former soldiers, were detained by Bulgarian forces—ostensibly so that they could be deported to the Bulgarian capital, Sofia—before being taken into the forests around Surdulica and killed. An estimated 2,000–3,000 Serbian men were executed by the Bulgarians in the town and its surroundings. Witnesses to the massacre were interviewed by American writer William A. Drayton in December 1918 and January 1919.[61]
The Štip massacre was the mass murder of Serbian soldiers by the IMRO paramilitaries in the village of Ljuboten, Štip on 15 October 1915, during World War I. Sick and wounded Serbian soldiers, recuperating at the Štip town hospital, were detained by Bulgarian IMRO militants before being taken into the vicinity of Ljuboten and killed. An estimated 118–120 Serbian soldiers were executed in the massacre.[62]
1915–1920: First and Second Caco War
During the First (1915) and Second (1918–1920) Caco Wars waged during the United States occupation of Haiti (1915–1934), human rights abuses were committed against the native Haitians population.[63][64][65] Overall, American troops and the Haitian gendarmerie killed several thousands of Haitian civilians during the rebellions between 1915 and 1920, though the exact death toll is unknown.[65]
Mass killings of civilians were allegedly committed by United States Marines and their subordinates in the Haitian gendarmerie.[65] According to Haitian historian Roger Gaillard, such killings involved rape, lynchings, summary executions, burning villages and deaths by burning. Internal documents of the United States Army justified the killing of women and children, describing them as "auxiliaries" of rebels. A private memorandum of the Secretary of the Navy criticized "indiscriminate killings against natives". American officers who were responsible for acts of violence were given Creole names such as "Linx" for Commandant Freeman Lang and "Ouiliyanm" for Lieutenant Lee Williams. According to American journalist H. J. Seligman, Marines would practice "bumping off Gooks", describing the shooting of civilians in a manner which was similar to killing for sport.[65]
During the Second Caco War of 1918–1919, many Caco prisoners were summarily executed by Marines and the gendarmerie on orders from their superiors.[65] On June 4, 1916, Marines executed caco General Mizrael Codio and ten others after they were captured in Fonds-Verrettes.[65] In Hinche in January 1919, Captain Ernest Lavoie of the gendarmerie, a former United States Marine, allegedly ordered the killing of nineteen caco rebels according to American officers, though no charges were ever filed against him due to the fact that no physical evidence of the killing was ever presented.[65]
The torture of Haitian rebels and the torture of Haitians who were suspected of rebelling against the United States was a common practice among the occupying Marines. Some of the methods of torture included the use of water cure, hanging prisoners by their genitals and ceps, which involved pushing both sides of the tibia with the butts of two guns.[65]
1921–1927: Rif War
During the Rif War, Spanish forces used chemical weapons against Berber rebels and civilians in Morocco. These attacks marked the first widespread employment of gas warfare in the post-WWI era.[66] The Spanish army indiscriminately used phosgene, diphosgene, chloropicrin and mustard gas against civilian populations, markets and rivers.[67][68] Spain signed the Geneva Protocol in 1925, that prohibited chemical and biological warfare, while simultaneously employing these weapons across the Mediterranean.[68]
According to Miguel Alonso, Alan Kramer and Javier Rodrigo in the book Fascist Warfare, 1922–1945: Aggression, Occupation, Annihilation: "Apart from deciding not to use chemical weapons, Franco's campaign to 'cleanse Spain' resembled that in Morocco: intelligence-gathering through torture, summary executions, forced labour, rape, and the sadistic killing of military prisoners."[69]
Spanish mutilations of captured Moroccans were reported, including castration and severing heads, noses and ears, which were collected by Spanish legionnaries as war trophies and worn as necklaces or spiked on bayonets.[70]
On August 9, 1921, the Massacre of Monte Arruit occurred, in which 2,000 soldiers of the Spanish Army were killed by Riffian forces after surrendering the Monte Arruit garrison near Al Aaroui following a 12-day siege.[71]
1923–1932: Pacification of Libya
The Pacification of Libya resulted in mass deaths of the indigenous people in Cyrenaica by Italy. 80,000 or over a quarter[72][73] of the indigenous people in Cyrenaica perished during the pacification.
100,000 Bedouin citizens were ethnically cleansed by expulsion from their land.[74]
Specific war crimes alleged to have been committed by the Italian armed forces against civilians include deliberate bombing of civilians, killing unarmed children, women, and the elderly, rape and disembowelment of women, throwing prisoners out of aircraft to their death and running over others with tanks, regular daily executions of civilians in some areas, and bombing tribal villages with mustard gas bombs beginning in 1930.[75]
1927-1949: Chinese Civil War
During the Chinese Civil War both the Nationalists and Communists carried out mass atrocities, with millions of non-combatants deliberately killed by both sides.[76] Benjamin Valentino has estimated atrocities in the Chinese Civil War resulted in the death of between 1.8million and 3.5million people between 1927 and 1949.[77]
Over several years after the 1927 Shanghai massacre, the Kuomintang killed between 300,000 and one million people, primarily peasants, in anti-communist campaigns as part of the White Terror.[78][79] During the White Terror, the Nationalists specifically targeted women with short hair who had not been subjected to foot binding, on the presumption that such "non-traditional" women were radicals.[79] Nationalist forces cut off their breasts, shaved their heads, and displayed their mutilated bodies to intimidate the populace.[79] From 1946 to 1949, the Nationalists arrested, tortured, and killed political dissidents via the Sino-American Cooperative Organization.[80]
During the December 1930 Futian incident, the communists executed 2,000 to 3,000 members of the Futian battalion after its leaders had mutinied against Mao Zedong.[81] Between 1931 and 1934 in the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet, the communist authorities engaged in a widespread campaign of violence against civilians to ensure compliance with its policies and to stop defection to the advancing KMT, including mass executions, land confiscation and forced labor.[82] According to Li Weihan, a high-ranking communist in Jiangxi at the time, in response to mass flight of civilians to KMT held areas, the local authorities authorities would "usually to send armed squads after those attempting to flee and kill them on the spot, producing numerous mass graves throughout the CSR [Chinese Soviet Republic in Jiangxi] that would later be uncovered by the KMT and its allies." Zhang Wentian, another high-ranking communist, reported that "the policy of annihilating landlords as an exploiting class had degenerated into a massacre"[83] The population of the communist controlled area fell by 700,000 from 1931 and 1935, of which a large proportion were murdered as “class enemies,” worked to death, committed suicide, or died in other circumstances attributable to the communists.[84]
During the Siege of Changchun the People's Liberation Army implemented a military blockade on the KMT-held city of Changchun and prevented civilians from leaving the city during the blockade;[85] this blockade caused the starvation of tens[85] to 150[86] thousand civilians. The PLA continued to use siege tactics throughout Northeast China.[87]
At the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War in 1946, Mao Zedong began to push for a return to radical policies to mobilize China against the landlord class, but protected the rights of middle peasants and specified that rich peasants were not landlords.[88] The 7 July Directive of 1946 set off eighteen months of fierce conflict in which all rich peasant and landlord property of all types was to be confiscated and redistributed to poor peasants. Party work teams went quickly from village to village and divided the population into landlords, rich, middle, poor, and landless peasants. Because the work teams did not involve villagers in the process, however, rich and middle peasants quickly returned to power.[89] The Outline Land Law of October 1947 increased the pressure.[90] Those condemned as landlords were buried alive, dismembered, strangled and shot.[91]
In response to the aforementioned land reform campaign; the Kuomintang helped establish the "Huanxiang Tuan" (還鄉團), or Homecoming Legion, which was composed of landlords who sought the return of their redistributed land and property from peasants and CCP guerrillas, as well as forcibly conscripted peasants and communist POWs.[92] The Homecoming legion conducted its guerrilla warfare campaign against CCP forces and purported collaborators up until the end of the civil war in 1949.[92]
1935–1937: Second Italo-Abyssinian War
Italian use of mustard gas against Ethiopian soldiers in 1936 violated the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which bans the use of chemical weapons in warfare.
Crimes by Ethiopian troops included the use of dum-dum bullets (in violation of the Hague Conventions), the killing of civilian workmen (including during the Gondrand massacre), and the mutilation of captured Eritrean Ascari and Italians (often with castration), beginning in the first weeks of war.[93][94]
Yekatit 12—In response to the unsuccessful assassination of Rodolfo Graziani on 19 February 1937, thousands of Ethiopians were killed, including all of the monks residing at Debre Libanos, and over a thousand more detained at Danan who were then exiled either to the Dahlak Islands or Italy.[95]
The Ethiopians recorded 275,000 combatants killed in action, 78,500 patriots (guerrilla fighters) killed during the occupation, 17,800 civilians killed by aerial bombardment and 30,000 in the February 1937 massacre, 35,000 people died in concentration camps, 24,000 patriots executed by Summary Courts, 300,000 people died of privation due to the destruction of their villages, amounting to 760,300 deaths.[96]
1936–1939: Spanish Civil War
Republicans executed by Francoists at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War
At least 50,000 people were executed during the Spanish Civil War.[97][98] In his updated history of the Spanish Civil War, Antony Beevor writes, "Franco's ensuing 'white terror' claimed 200,000 lives. The 'red terror' had already killed 38,000."[99] Julius Ruiz [who?]concludes that "although the figures remain disputed, a minimum of 37,843 executions were carried out in the Republican zone with a maximum of 150,000 executions (including 50,000 after the war) in Nationalist Spain."[100]
César Vidal puts the number of Republican victims at 110,965.[101] In 2008 a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, opened an investigation into the executions and disappearances of 114,266 people between 17 July 1936 and December 1951. Among the murders and executions investigated was that of poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca.[102][103]
The French Union's struggle against the independence movement backed by the Soviet Union and China claimed 400,000 to 1.5 million Vietnamese lives from 1945 to 1954.[104][105] In the Haiphong massacre of November 1946, about 6,000 Vietnamese were killed by French naval artillery.[104] The French employed electric shock treatment during interrogations of the Vietnamese, and nearly 10,000 Vietnamese perished in French concentration camps.[104]
According to Arthur J. Dommen, the Viet Minh assassinated 100,000–150,000 civilians during the war,[105] while Benjamin Valentino estimates that the French were responsible for 60,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths.[106]
About French massacres and war crimes during the conflict, Christopher Goscha wrote on The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam: "Rape became a disturbing weapon used by the Expeditionary Corps, as did summary executions. Young Vietnamese women who could not escape approaching enemy patrols smeared themselves with any stinking thing they could find, including human excrement. Decapitated heads were raised on sticks, bodies were gruesomely disemboweled, and body parts were taken as 'souvenirs'; Vietnamese soldiers of all political colors also committed such acts. The non-communist nationalist singer, Phạm Duy, wrote a bone-chilling ballad about the mothers of Gio Linh village in central Vietnam, each of whom had lost a son to a French Army massacre in 1948. Troops decapitated their bodies and displayed their heads along a public road to strike fear into those tempted to accept the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's sovereignty. Massacres did not start with the Americans in My Lai, or the Vietnamese communists in Hue in 1968. And yet, the French Union's massacre of over two hundred Vietnamese women and children in My Tratch in 1948 remains virtually unknown in France to this day."[107]
1947–1948: Malagasy Uprising
During the French suppression of the pro-independence Malagasy Uprising, numerous atrocities were carried out such as mass killings, village burnings, torture, war rape, collective punishment, and throwing live prisoners out of airplanes (death flights).[108] Between 11,000 and 90,000 Malagasy died in the fighting, along with about 800 French soldiers and other Europeans.[109][104]
Several massacres were committed during this war which could be described as war crimes.[citation needed] Nearly 15,000 people, mostly combatants and militants, were killed during the war, including 6,000 Jews and about 8,000 Arabs (mostly Muslims).
1945–1949: Indonesian War of Independence
South Sulawesi Campaign, about 4,500 civilians killed by Pro-Indonesian and Indonesian forces and pro-Dutch and Dutch colonial forces (KNIL).
Bersiap massacre: about 25,000 Indo-European civilians, Dutch, and loyalists killed by Indonesian nationalist forces.
Indonesian National Revolution: About 100–150,000 Chinese, Communists, Europeans (French, German, British), pro-Dutch etc. were killed by Indonesian nationalist forces and Indonesian youth.
1948–1960: Malayan Emergency
War crimes: In the Batang Kali massacre, about 24 unarmed villagers were killed by British troops. The British government claimed that these villagers were insurgents attempting to escape but this was later known to be entirely false as they were unarmed, nor actually supporting the insurgents nor attempting to escape after being detained by British troops. No British soldier was prosecuted for the murder at Batang Kali.[110][111][112][113][114][115]
War crimes: includes beating, torturing, and killing by British troops and communist insurgents of non-combatants.[116]
War crimes: As part of the Briggs Plan devised by British General Sir Harold Briggs, 500,000 people (roughly ten percent of Malaya's population) were eventually removed from the land and interned in guarded camps called "New Villages". The intent of this measure was to isolate villagers from contact with insurgents. While considered necessary, some of the cases involving the widespread destruction went beyond justification of military necessity. This practice was prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and customary international law which stated that the destruction of property must not happen unless rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.[116][117][118]
In July 1950, during the early weeks of the Korean War, an undetermined number of South Korean refugees were killed by the 2nd Battalion, 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, and a U.S. air attack at a railroad bridge near the village of No Gun Ri, 100 miles (160km) southeast of Seoul, South Korea. Commanders feared enemy infiltrators among such refugee columns. Estimates of the dead have ranged from dozens to 500. In 2005, a South Korean government committee certified the names of 163 dead or missing and 55 wounded and added that many other victims' names were not reported.[119] The South Korean government-funded No Gun Ri Peace Foundation estimated in 2011 that 250–300 were killed, mostly women and children.[120]
On August 17, 1950, following a UN airstrike on Hill 131 which was already occupied by the North Korean Army from the Americans, a North Korean officer said that the American soldiers were closing in on them and they could not continue to hold the captured American prisoners. The officer ordered the men shot, and the North Koreans then fired into the kneeling Americans as they rested in the gully, killing 41.
Sunchon Tunnel Massacre
War crimes (murder of prisoners of war)
North Korea
180 American prisoners of war, survivors of the Seoul-Pyongyang death march, were loaded onto a railroad car and brought to the Sunchon tunnel on October 30, 1950. Prisoners, who were already suffering from lack of food, water, and medical supplies were brought in groups of approximately 40 ostensibly to receive food and were shot by North Korean soldiers. 138 Americans in total died; 68 were murdered, 7 died of malnutrition, and the remainder died in the tunnel of pneumonia, dysentery, and malnutrition on the trip from Pyongyang.[124]
Rudolph Rummel estimated that the North Korean Army executed at least 500,000 civilians during the Korean War with many dying in North Korea's drive to forcibly conscript South Koreans to their war effort. Throughout the conflict, North Korean and Chinese forces routinely mistreated and tortured U.S. and UN prisoners of war. Mass starvation and diseases swept through the Chinese-run POW camps during the winter of 1950–51. About 43 percent of all U.S. POWs died during this period. In violation of the Geneva Conventions which explicitly stated that captor states must repatriate prisoners of war to their homeland as quickly as possible, North Korea detained South Korean POWs for decades after the ceasefire. Over 88,000 South Korean soldiers were missing and the Communists' themselves had claimed they had captured 70,000 South Koreans.[125][126]:141
War crimes, Crimes against humanity (mass murder of civilians)
South Korea
The Bodo League massacre (Korean:보도연맹 사건;Hanja:保導聯盟事件) was a massacre and war crime against communists and suspected sympathisers that occurred in the summer of 1950 during the Korean War. Estimates of the death toll vary. According to Prof. Kim Dong-Choon, Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at least 100,000 people were executed on suspicion of supporting communism;[131] others estimate 200,000 deaths.[132] The massacre was wrongly blamed on the communists for decades.[133]
The Goyang Geumjeong Cave Massacre (Korean: 고양 금정굴 민간인 학살[134][135]Hanja: 高陽衿井窟民間人虐殺[134][135]Goyang Geunjeong Cave civilian massacre[134][135]) was a massacre conducted by the police officers of Goyang Police Station of the South Korean Police under the commanding of head of Goyang police station between 9 October 1950 and 31 October 1950 of 150 or over 153 unarmed citizens in Goyang, Gyeonggi-do district of South Korea.[134][135][136] After the victory of the Second Battle of Seoul, South Korean police arrested and killed people and their families who they suspected had been sympathisers during North Korean rule.[135] During the massacre, South Korean Police conducted Namyangju Massacre in Namyangju near Goyang.[137]
The Sancheong-Hamyang massacre (Korean:산청・함양 양민 학살 사건;Hanja:山清・咸陽良民虐殺事件) was a massacre conducted by a unit of the South Korean Army 11th Division during the Korean War. On February 7, 1951, 705 unarmed citizens in Sancheong and Hamyang, South Gyeongsang district of South Korea were killed. The victims were civilians and 85% of them were women, children, and elderly people.
The Ganghwa (Geochang) massacre (Korean:거창 양민 학살 사건;Hanja:居昌良民虐殺事件) was a massacre conducted by the third battalion of the 9th regiment of the 11th Division of the South Korean Army between February 9, 1951, and February 11, 1951, on 719 unarmed citizens in Geochang, South Gyeongsang district of South Korea. The victims included 385 children.
In attempt to suppress the insurgency in Kenya, British colonial authorities suspended civil liberties within the country. In response to the rebellion, many Kikuyu were relocated. According to British authorities 80,000 were interned. Caroline Elkins estimated that between 160,000 and 320,000 were moved into concentration camps. Other estimates are as high as 450,000 interned. Most of the remainder – more than a million – were held in "enclosed villages". Although some were Mau Mau guerillas, many were victims of collective punishment that colonial authorities imposed on large areas of the country. Thousands suffered beatings and sexual assaults during "screenings" intended to extract information about the Mau Mau threat. Later, prisoners suffered even worse mistreatment in an attempt to force them to renounce their allegiance to the insurgency and to obey commands. Significant numbers were murdered; official accounts describe some prisoners being roasted alive. Prisoners were questioned with the help of "slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes". The British colonial police used a "metal castrating instrument" to cut off testicles and fingers. "By the time I cut his balls off", one settler boasted, "he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket. Too bad, he died before we got much out of him." According to David Anderson, the British hanged over 1,090 suspected rebels: far more than the French had executed in Algeria during the Algerian War.[138] Another 400 were sentenced to death but reprieved because they were under 18 or women. The British declared some areas prohibited zones where anyone could be shot. It was common for Kikuyu to be shot because they "failed to halt when challenged."[139][140][138]
The Chuka Massacre, which happened in Chuka, Kenya, was perpetrated by members of the King's African Rifles B Company in June 1953 with 20 unarmed people killed during the Mau Mau uprising. Members of the 5th KAR B Company entered the Chuka area on June 13, 1953, to flush out rebels suspected of hiding in the nearby forests. Over the next few days, the regiment had captured and executed 20 people suspected of being Mau Mau fighters for unknown reasons. It is found out that most of the people executed were actually belonged to the Kikuyu Home Guard – a loyalist militia recruited by the British to fight an increasingly powerful and audacious guerrilla enemy. The commanding officer of the soldiers responsible, Major Gerald Griffiths, was court-martialed for murder. He was found guilty and sentenced to 7 years in prison. In an atmosphere of atrocity and reprisal, the matter was swept under the carpet and nobody else ever stood trial for the massacre.[141]
The Hola massacre was an incident during the conflict in Kenya against British colonial rule at a colonial detention camp in Hola, Kenya. By January 1959 the camp had a population of 506 detainees of whom 127 were held in a secluded "closed camp". This more remote camp near Garissa, eastern Kenya, was reserved for the most uncooperative of the detainees. They often refused, even when threats of force were made, to join in the colonial "rehabilitation process" or perform manual labour or obey colonial orders. The camp commandant outlined a plan that would force 88 of the detainees to bend to work. On 3 March 1959, the camp commandant put this plan into action – as a result, 11 detainees were clubbed to death by guards.[142] 77 surviving detainees sustained serious permanent injuries.[citation needed] The British government accepts that the colonial administration tortured detainees, but denies liability.[143]
The Lari massacre in the settlement of Lari occurred on the night of 25–26 March 1953, in which Mau Mau militants herded Kikuyu men, women and children into huts and set fire to them, killing anyone who attempted to escape. Official estimates place the death toll from the Lari massacre at 74 dead.[144]
Mau Mau militants also tortured, mutilated and murdered Kikuyu on many occasions.[145] Mau Mau racked up 1,819 murders of their fellow Africans, though again this number excludes the many additional hundreds who 'disappeared', whose bodies were never found.[146]
1954–1962: Algerian War
The insurgency began in 1945 and was revived in 1954, winning independence in the early 1960s. The French army killed thousands of Algerians in the first round of fighting in 1945.[104] After the Algerian independence movement formed a National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1954, the French Minister of the Interior joined the Minister of National Defense in 1955 in ordering that every rebel carrying a weapon, suspected of doing so, or suspected of fleeing, must be shot.[104] French troops executed civilians from nearby villages when rebel attacks occurred, tortured both rebels and civilians, and interned Arabs in camps, where forced labor was required of some of them.[104] 2,000,000 Algerians were displaced or forcibly resettled during the war,[147] and over 800 villages were destroyed from 1957 to 1960.[148]
The FLN also indulged in a large amount of atrocities, both against French pieds-noirs and against fellow Algerians whom they deemed as supporting the French or simply as refusing to support the Liberation effort.[155] These crimes included killing unarmed children, women and the elderly, rape and disembowelment or decapitation of women and murdering children by slitting their throats or banging their heads against walls.[156] French sources estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed, or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN during the war. The FLN also killed 30,000 to 150,000 in people in post-war reprisals.[157]
During the war 95 U.S. Army personnel and 27 U.S. Marine Corps personnel were convicted by court-martial of the murder or manslaughter of Vietnamese.[158]:33
On 12 August 1965 Lcpl McGhee of Company M, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, walked through Marine lines at Chu Lai Base Area toward a nearby village. In answer to a Marine sentry's shouted question, he responded that he was going after a VC. Two Marines were dispatched to retrieve McGhee and as they approached the village they heard a shot and a woman's scream and then saw McGhee walking toward them from the village. McGhee said he had just killed a VC and other VC were following him. At trial Vietnamese prosecution witnesses testified that McGhee had kicked through the wall of the hut where their family slept. He seized a 14-year-old girl and pulled her toward the door. When her father interceded, McGhee shot and killed him. Once outside the house the girl escaped McGhee with the help of her grandmother. McGhee was found guilty of unpremeditated murder and sentenced him to confinement at hard labor for ten years. On appeal this was reduced to 7 years and he actually served 6 years and 1 month.[158]:33–4
Xuan Ngoc (2)
Murder and rape
PFC John D. Potter Jr. Hospitalman John R. Bretag PFC James H. Boyd Jr. Sergeant Ronald L. Vogel
On 23 September 1966, a nine-man ambush patrol from the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, left Hill 22, northwest of Chu Lai. Private First Class John D. Potter Jr. took effective command of the patrol. They entered the hamlet of Xuan Ngoc (2) and seized Dao Quang Thinh, whom they accused of being a Viet Cong, and dragged him from his hut. While they beat him, other patrol members forced his wife, Bui Thi Huong, from their hut and four of them raped her. A few minutes later three other patrol members shot Dao Quang Thinh, Bui, their child, Bui's sister-in-law, and her sister in- law's child. Bui Thi Huong survived to testify at the courts-martial. The company commander suspicious of the reported "enemy contact" sent Second Lieutenant Stephen J. Talty, to return to the scene with the patrol. Once there, Talty realized what had happened and attempted to cover up the incident. A wounded child was discovered alive and Potter bludgeoned it to death with his rifle. Potter was convicted of premeditated murder and rape, and sentenced to confinement at hard labor for life, but was released in February 1978, having served 12 years and 1 month. Hospitalman John R. Bretag testified against Potter and was sentenced to 6 month's confinement for rape. PFC James H. Boyd Jr., pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 4 years confinement at hard labor. Sergeant Ronald L. Vogel was convicted for murder of one of the children and rape and was sentenced to 50 years confinement at hard labor, which was reduced on appeal to 10 years, of which he served 9 years. Two patrol members were acquitted of major charges, but were convicted of assault with intent to commit rape and sentenced to 6 months' confinement. Lt Talty was found guilty of making a false report and dismissed from the Marine Corps, but this was overturned on appeal.[158]:53–4[159]
Charles W. Keenan and Stanley J. Luczko
Murder
PFC Charles W. Keenan CPL Stanley J. Luczko
PFC Charles W. Keenan was convicted of murder by firing at point-blank range into an unarmed, elderly Vietnamese woman, and an unarmed Vietnamese man. His life sentence was reduced to 25 years confinement. Upon appeal, the conviction for the woman's murder was dismissed and confinement was reduced to five years. Later clemency action further reduced his confinement to 2 years and 9 months. Corporal Stanley J. Luczko, was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to confinement for three years[158]:79–81
From 31 January to 1 February 1967 145 civilians were purported to have been killed by Company H, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines. Marine accounts record 101 Viet Cong and 22 civilians killed during a 2-day battle. Marines casualties were 5 dead and 26 wounded.
Lt. William Calley convicted in 1971 of premeditated murder of 22 civilians for his role in the massacre and sentenced to life in prison. He served 3½ years under house arrest. Others were indicted but not convicted.
On March 16, 1968, a US army platoon led by Lt. William Calley killed (and in some cases beat, raped, tortured, or maimed) 347 to 504 unarmed civilians – primarily women, children, and old men – in the hamlets of My Lai and My Khe of Sơn Mỹ. The My Lai Massacre was allegedly an operation of the Phoenix Program. 26 US soldiers, including 14 officers, were charged with crimes related to the My Lai massacre and its coverup. Most of the charges were eventually dropped, and only Lt. Calley was convicted.
Huế
Murder
Lcpl Denzil R. Allen Pvt Martin R. Alvarez Lcpl John D. Belknap Lcpl James A. Maushart PFC Robert J. Vickers
On 5 May 1968, Lcpl Denzil R. Allen led a six-man ambush patrol from the 1st Battalion, 27th Marines near Huế. They stopped and interrogated two unarmed Vietnamese men who Allen and Private Martin R. Alvarez then executed. After an attack on their base that night the unit sent out a patrol who brought back three Vietnamese men. Allen, Alvarez, Lance Corporals John D. Belknap, James A. Maushart, PFC Robert J. Vickers, and two others then formed a firing squad and executed two of the Vietnamese. The third captive was taken into a building where Allen, Belknap, and Anthony Licciardo Jr., hanged him, when the rope broke Allen cut the man's throat, killing him. Allen pleaded guilty to five counts of unpremeditated murder and was sentenced to confinement at hard labor for life reduced to 20 years in exchange for the guilty plea. Allen's confinement was reduced to 7 years and he was paroled after having served only 2 years and 11 months confinement. Maushart pleaded guilty to one count of unpremeditated murder and was sentenced to 2 years confinement of which he served 1 year and 8 months. Belknap and Licciardo each pleaded guilty to single murders and were sentenced to 2 years confinement. Belknap served 15 months while Licciardo served his full sentence. Alvarez was found to lack mental responsibility and found not guilty. Vickers was found guilty of two counts of unpremeditated murder, but his convictions were overturned on review
On the morning of 1 March 1969 an eight-man Marine ambush was discovered by three Vietnamese girls, aged about 13, 17, and 19, and a Vietnamese boy, about 11. The four shouted their discovery to those being observed by the ambush. Seized by the Marines, the four were bound, gagged, and led away by Corporal Ronald J. Reese and Lance Corporal Stephen D. Crider. Minutes later, the 4 children were seen, apparently dead, in a small bunker. The Marines tossed a fragmentation grenade into the bunker, which then collapsed the damaged structure atop the bodies. Reese and Crider were each convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to confinement at hard labor for life. On appeal both sentences were reduced to 3 years confinement.[158]:140
Company B, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. One person was sentenced to life in prison, another sentenced to 5 years, but both sentences were reduced to less than a year.[160]
16 unarmed women and children were killed in the Son Thang Hamlet, on February 19, 1970, with those killed reported as enemy combatant.[160]
Tiger Force was the name of a long-range reconnaissance patrol unit[161] of the 1st Battalion (Airborne), 327th Infantry, 1st Brigade (Separate), 101st Airborne Division, which fought in the from November 1965 to November 1967.[162]:22–3 The unit gained notoriety after investigations during the course of the war and decades afterwards revealed extensive war crimes against civilians, which numbered into the hundreds. They were accused of routine torture, execution of prisoners of war and the intentional killing of civilians. US army investigators concluded that many of the alleged war crimes took place.[163]
A six-month operation across several provinces in the Mekong Delta, which were internally reported between 5,000 and 7,000 civilian casualties. The official U.S. body count was 10,889 enemy combatants killed with 748 weapons recovered. The commander of the 9th Division, MG Ewell, was allegedly known to be obsessed with body counts and favorable kill ratios and said "the hearts and minds approach can be overdone....in the delta the only way to overcome VC control and terror is with brute force applied against the VC". David Hackworth, a battalion commander during Speedy Express, said "a lot of innocent Vietnamese civilians got slaughtered because of the Ewell-Hunt drive to have the highest count in the land."[164][165][166]
On 2 June 1971, Donaldson was charged with the murder of six Vietnamese civilians but was acquitted due to lack of evidence. In 13 separate incidences John Donaldson was reported to have flown over civilian areas shooting at civilians. He was the first U.S. general charged with war crimes since General Jacob H. Smith in 1902 and the highest ranking American to be accused of war crimes during the Vietnam War.[167] The charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.
"Vietnam War Crimes Working Group"[168] – Briefly declassified (1994) and subsequently reclassified (2002) documentary evidence compiled by a Pentagon task force detailing endemic war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Substantiating 320 incidents by Army investigators, includes seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 South Vietnamese civilians died (not including the ones at My Lai), 78 other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted, and 141 instances in which U.S. soldiers tortured civilian detainees or prisoners of war.[citation needed]
This was a massacre purportedly conducted between December 3–6, 1966, of 430 unarmed citizens in Bình Hòa village, Quảng Ngãi Province in South Vietnam.[174][175][176]
This was a massacre purportedly conducted by the South Korean Marines on 25 February 1968 of 135 civilians in Hà My village, Quảng Nam Province in South Vietnam.[177]
VC/PAVN forces murdered between 106,000 and 227,000 civilians between 1954 and 1975 in South Vietnam.[180] VC terror squads, in the years 1967 to 1972, were claimed by the US Department of Defense as having assassinated at least 36,000 people and abducted almost 58,000 people.[181] Statistics for 1968–72 suggest that "about 80 percent of the terrorist victims were ordinary civilians and only about 20 percent were government officials, policemen, members of the self-defence forces or pacification cadres."[182]
On 30 March 1965 the Viet Cong detonated a car bomb in the street outside the U.S. Embassy in Saigon killing two Americans, 19 Vietnamese and one Filipino and injuring 183 others[183]
On 25 June 1965 the Viet Cong detonated a bomb on a floating restaurant "My Canh Café" on the banks of the Saigon River. 31–32 people were killed, and 42 were wounded. Of the casualties, 13 were American and most others were Vietnamese citizens. Another bomb exploded next to a tobacco stall on the riverbank near the restaurant, killing at least one American.[184]
On December 5, 1967, two battalions of Viet Cong were reported to have killed 252 civilians in a "vengeance" attack on the hamlet of Đắk Sơn, home to over 2,000 Montagnards. Its alleged that the Vietcong believed that the hamlet had at one point given aid to refugees fleeing Viet Cong forces.[185]
During the months and years that followed the Battle of Huế, which began on January 31, 1968, and lasted a total of 28 days, dozens of mass graves were discovered in and around Huế. North Vietnamese troops executed between 2,800 and 6,000 civilians and prisoners of war.[186] Victims were found bound, tortured, and sometimes apparently buried alive.[187][188][189]
On the night of 28/9 June 1968 the Viet Cong attacked Sơn Trà, a fishing village located approximately 5 miles (8.0km) southeast of Chu Lai Base Area. It had a population of approximately 4,000 people including many resettled refugees. After a mortar attack which forced many of the civilians to take shelter in their defensive bunkers, between 75 and 300 VC then moved through the village throwing satchel charges into bunkers killing their occupants and starting fires killing 73 civilians and 15 pacification workers; a further 103 civilians were wounded. 570 homes were destroyed in the attack and the resulting fires leaving almost 2,800 people homeless.[190]
In the early morning of 11 June 1970 the Viet Cong launched a coordinated attack on Phu Thanh village, a complex of several hamlets, straddling Highway 1 about 3 miles (4.8km) north of Landing Zone Baldy. Two groups of sappers entered the village, armed with grenades and satchel charges, most began burning houses and hurling their grenades and satchel charges into family bomb shelters filled with civilians who had fled to them for protection from the shelling. Civilian casualties totalled 74 dead, many of them women and children; 60 severely injured; and over 100 lightly wounded with 156 houses destroyed and 35 damaged.[191]:177–9
On 29 March 1971 the PAVN attacked Duc Duc in Quảng Nam Province systematically destroying the civilian hamlets with satchel charges and by setting fires. 103 civilians died in the blazing hamlets; 96 were injured and 37 kidnapped. At least 1,500 homes were destroyed.[191]:231–2
On 30 August 1973 during a Viet Cong attack on South Vietnamese positions mortar fire hit a schoolyard killing approximately 20 civilians.[193]
Up to 155,000 refugees fleeing the final North Vietnamese Spring Offensive were alleged to have been killed or abducted on the road to Tuy Hòa in 1975.[194]
1965 Indo-Pakistani War
SepoyMaqbool Hussain was a Pakistani soldier who was wounded and captured by Indian forces during the 1965 War. For the next 40 years, Maqbool was deprived of his rights and was subjected to violent torture during which his Indian counterparts pulled out his finger nails, cut out his tongue since he didn't chant anti Pakistan slogans and various other brutal acts which would've been a violation of the Geneva accords.[195][196][197]
Late 1960s – 1998: The Troubles
War crimes: Various unarmed male civilians (some of whom were named during a 2013 television programme) were shot, two of them (Patrick McVeigh, Daniel Rooney) fatally, in 1972, allegedly by the Military Reaction Force (MRF), an undercover military unit tasked with targeting Irish Republican Army paramilitaries during the last installment of the Troubles. Two brothers, whose names and casualty status were not mentioned in an article regarding the same matter in The Irish Times, ran a fruit stall in west Belfast, and were shot after being mistaken for IRA paramilitaries.[198]
War crimes: The British security forces employed widespread torture and waterboarding on prisoners in Northern Ireland during interrogations in the 1970s. Liam Holden was wrongfully arrested by the security forces for the murder of a British Army soldier and became the last person in the United Kingdom to be sentenced to hang after being convicted in 1973, largely on the basis of an unsigned confession produced by torture.[199] His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he spent 17 years behind bars. On 21 June 2012, in the light of CCRC investigations which confirmed that the methods used to extract confessions were unlawful,[200] Holden had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in Belfast, at the age of 58.[201][202] Former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) interrogators during the Troubles admitted that beatings, the sleep deprivation, waterboarding, and the other tortures were systematic, and were, at times, sanctioned at a very high level within the force.[203]
War crimes: The British Army and the RUC also operated under a shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland, under which suspects were alleged to have been deliberately killed without any attempt to arrest them. In four separate cases considered by the European court of human rights – involving the deaths of ten IRA men, a Sinn Féin member and a civilian – seven judges ruled unanimously that Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteeing a right to life had been violated by Britain.[204]
War crimes, crimes against humanity, crime of genocide (murder of civilians; genocide)
Allegedly the Pakistan Government, and the Pakistan Army and its local collaborators. A case was filed in the Federal Court of Australia on September 20, 2006, for crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.[213] Starting in 2010, numerous perpetrators were imprisoned and executed for their involvement under the jurisdiction of the International Crimes Tribunal.
During the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, widespread atrocities were committed against the Bengali population of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). With 1–3 million people killed in nine months, 'genocide' is the term that is used to describe the event in almost every major publication and newspaper.[214][215] Although the word 'genocide' was and is still used frequently amongst observers and scholars of the events that transpired during the 1971 war, the allegations that a genocide took place during the Bangladesh War of 1971 were never investigated by an international tribunal set up under the auspices of the United Nations, due to complications arising from the Cold War. Starting from 2010, indictments were issued to numerous participants. Several of them has since been executed or imprisoned.
The number of civilians that died in the liberation war of Bangladesh is not known in any reliable accuracy. There has been a great disparity in the casualty figures put forth by Pakistan on one hand (26,000, as reported in the now discredited Hamoodur Rahman Commission[216]) and India and Bangladesh on the other hand (From 1972 to 1975 the first post-war prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, estimated that 3 million died[217]). This is the figure officially maintained by the Government of Bangladesh. Most scholarship on the topic estimate the number killed to be between 1 and 3 million.[218] A further eight to ten million people fled the country to seek safety in India.[219]
The minorities of Bangladesh, especially the Hindus, were specific targets of the Pakistan army.[220] Numerous East Pakistani women were tortured, raped and killed during the war. The exact numbers are not known and are a subject of debate. Bangladeshi sources cite a figure of 200,000 women raped, giving birth to thousands of war-babies. Some other sources, for example Susan Brownmiller, refer to an even higher number of over 400,000. Pakistani sources claim the number is much lower, though having not completely denied rape incidents.[221][222][223]
During the war, the Pakistan Army and its local supporters carried out a systematic execution of the leading Bengali intellectuals. A number of university professors from Dhaka University were killed during the first few days of the war.[224][225] However, the most extreme cases of targeted killing of intellectuals took place during the last few days of the war. On December 14, 1971, only two days before surrendering to the Indian military and the Mukhti Bahini forces, the Pakistani army – with the assistance of the Al Badr and Al Shams – systematically executed well over 200 of East Pakistan's intellectuals and scholars.[226][227]
1970–1975: Cambodian civil war
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed During the Period of Democratic Kampuchea, commonly known as the Cambodia Tribunal, is a joint court established by the Royal Government of Cambodia and the United Nations to try senior members of the Khmer Rouge for crimes against humanity committed during the Cambodian Civil War. The Khmer Rouge killed many people due to their political affiliation, education, class origin, occupation, or ethnicity.[228][229]
During the 1975 invasion and the subsequent occupation, a significant portion of East Timor's population died. Researcher Ben Kiernan says that "a toll of 150,000 is likely close to the truth", although estimates of 200,000 or higher have been suggested.[230]
On December 6, 1975, Black Saturday was a series of massacres and armed clashes in Beirut, that occurred in the first stages of the Lebanese Civil War.
Took place early in the Lebanese Civil War on January 18, 1976. Karantina was overrun by the Lebanese Christian militias, resulting in the deaths of approximately 1,000–1,500 people.
The Tel al-Zaatar Battle took place during the Lebanese Civil War from June 22 – August 12, 1976. Tel al-Zaatar was a UNRWA administered Palestinian Refugee camp housing approximately 50,000–60,000 refugees in northeast Beirut. Tel al-Zaatar massacre refers to crimes committed around this battle.
Took place on January 20, 1976. Damour, a Christian town on the main highway south of Beirut. It was attacked by the Palestine Liberation Organisation units. Part of its population died in battle or in the massacre that followed, and the remainder were forced to flee.
Took place on October 13, 1990, during the final moments of the Lebanese Civil War, when hundreds of Lebanese soldiers were executed after they surrendered to Syrian forces.[232]
1978–2021: Civil war in Afghanistan
This war ravaged the country for over 40 years, with several foreign actors playing important roles during different periods. From 2001 until 2021, US and other NATO troops took part in the fighting in Afghanistan in the "War on Terror" that is also treated in the corresponding section below.
Perfidiously used suicide bombers disguised as television journalists to murder Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, the leader of the only remaining military opponent of the Taliban, two days before the September 11th Attacks, constituting a failure to bear arms openly, and misuse of the status of protected persons, to wit, journalists in war zones.
War crimes (Maltreatment leading to death of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) prisoners of war)
Northern Alliance partisans
Allegedly placed captured Taliban POWs in cargo containers, and did seal them, leading to deaths of those within due to suffocation and excessive heat, thereby constituting war crimes.
US Army soldiers: Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs Staff Sergeant David Bram SPC Jeremy Morlock PFC Andrew Holmes SPC Adam Winfield SPC Corey Moore
Five members of a platoon were indicted for murder and collecting body parts as trophies. In addition, seven soldiers were charged with crimes such as hashish use, impeding an investigation, and attacking their team member who blew the whistle after he had participated in the crimes.
Multiple substantiated claims that prisoners of war were murdered to allow the "blooding" of junior Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) troopers, in addition to events where unarmed civilians were killed. Report of investigation released in November 2020.[233] Led to disbanding of 2nd squadron of SASR and currently ongoing criminal investigation into events.
During the war against the Coalition and Afghan government, the Taliban committed war crimes including massacres, suicide bombing, terrorism, and targeting civilians.[234] United Nations reports have consistently blamed the Taliban and other anti-government forces for the majority of civilian deaths in the conflict, with the Taliban responsible for 75% of civilian deaths in 2011.[235][236] The Taliban also perpetrated mass rapes and executions of surrendered soldiers.[237][238]
Following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban has also executed civilians and captured insurgents during the ongoing Republican insurgency in Afghanistan.[239]
Iraq made extensive use of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and nerve agents such as tabun. Iraqi chemical weapons were responsible for over 100,000 Iranian casualties (including 20,000 deaths).[241]
Dutch court has ruled that the incident involved war crimes and genocide (part of the Al-Anfal Campaign); also may involve the use of poisons as weapons and crimes against humanity.
Iraq also used chemical weapons against their own Kurdish population causing casualties estimated between several hundred up to 5,000 deaths.[243] On December 23, 2005, a Dutch court ruled in a case brought against Frans van Anraat for supplying chemicals to Iraq, that "[it] thinks and considers legally and convincingly proven that the Kurdish population meets the requirement under the genocide conventions as an ethnic group. The court has no other conclusion that these attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq." Because he supplied the chemicals before 16 March 1988, the date of the Halabja attack, he is guilty of a war crime but not guilty of complicity in genocide.[244][245]
Iran allegedly used volunteers (among them children) in high risk operations for example in clearing mine fields within hours to allow the advancement of regular troops. One source estimates 3% of the Iran–Iraq War's casualties were under the age of 14.[246]
Almost 20 years of fighting... has killed half a million people. Many of the dead are children... The LRA [a cannibalism cult][247] kidnaps children and forces them to join its ranks. And so, incredibly, children are not only the main victims of this war, but also its unwilling perpetrators... The girls told me they had been given to rebel commanders as "wives" and forced to bear them children. The boys said they had been forced to walk for days knowing they would be killed if they showed any weakness, and in some cases forced even to murder their family members... every night up to 10,000 children walk into the centre of Kitgum... because they are not safe in their own beds... more than 25,000 children have been kidnapped ...this year an average of 20 children have been abducted every week.
Serb Territorial Defense forces and SAO Krajina militia. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted by ICTY. Baćin was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment.
Croatian army, Ministry of Interior special forces and paramilitary formations. Commander Tomislav Merčep, and various subordinates and accessories found guilty of war crimes by Croatian courts.[262]
1–3 May 1995; invasion and permanent occupation of territory under international protection; Western Slavonia fully taken from RSK; 53 were killed in their own homes, while 30 during the Croatian raids of the refugee colons.
Crimes against humanity;Crime of genocide (murder of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys)
Army of Republika Srpska. President Radovan Karadžić sentenced to 40 years and General Ratko Mladić to a life in prison for genocide by the ICTY;[270] later Radovan Karadžić was sentenced to life imprisonment on appeal.[271]
Following the fall of the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica the men were separated from the women and executed over a period of several days in July 1995.
Numerous war crimes committed during the Bosnian war by the Serb political and military leadership mostly on Bosniak civilians in the Prijedor region of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Crimes against humanity (murder of 1,000 - 3,000 civilians)
Serbian police and military forces. Seven officers convicted.
Acts of ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Bosniak civilians that occurred in the town of Višegrad in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, committed by Serb police and military forces at the start of the Bosnian War during the spring of 1992.
Crimes against humanity (murder of over 1513 Bosniak civilians)
Army of Republika Srpska. Eight officers and soldiers convicted.
A series of killings committed by Serb military, police and paramilitary forces on Bosniak civilians in the Foča region of Bosnia-Herzegovina (including the towns of Gacko and Kalinovik) from April 7, 1992, to January 1994. In numerous verdicts, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ruled that these killings constituted crimes against humanity and acts of genocide.
The victims were civilians who were shopping in an open-air market in Sarajevo when Serb forces shelled the market. Two separate incidents. February 1994; 68 killed and 144 wounded and August 1995; 37 killed and 90 wounded.[citation needed]
Army of Republika Srpska. Stanislav Galić and Dragomir Milošević, were sentenced to life imprisonment and to 33 years imprisonment, respectively.
The longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. Republika Srpska and the Yugoslav People's Army besieged Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from April 5, 1992, to February 29, 1996.[citation needed]
Mass murder of more than 200 Bosniak men on 21 August 1992 at the Korićani Cliffs (Korićanske Stijene) location on Mount Vlašić, Bosnia and Herzegovina[citation needed]
War crimes; crime of torture (64 men and boys tortured, 56 killed)
Army of the Republika Srpska. No prosecutions.
Rounded up in an attack on a village, they were tortured. Claiming they were going to be exchanged, Serb forces put them on a bus, which they attacked with machine guns and grenades on June 14, 1992. Eight survived by hiding under bodies of the dead.[citation needed]
Crimes against humanity according to ICTY. (2,000 civilians killed and missing)
Croatian Defence Council. Nine politicians and officers convicted, among them Dario Kordić.
Numerous war crimes committed by the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia's political and military leadership on Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) civilians in the Lašva Valley region of Bosnia-Herzegovina, from April 1993 to February 1994.
13 Croatian inhabitants of Grabovica village by members of the 9th Brigade and unidentified members of the Bosnian Army on the 8th or 9 September 1993.[citation needed]
Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. No prosecutions.
56 Bosnian Serb civilians, including 21 women and three children, in the village of Gornja Jošanica. Victims were stabbed multiple times, had their throats slit, skulls and body parts crushed or mutilated.
45 Kosovo Albanians were killed in the village of Račak in central Kosovo. The government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia asserted that the casualties were all members of the Kosovo Liberation Army who had been killed in a clash with state security forces.
Serbian police. Four former-policemen were convicted and received prison sentences ranging from 13 to 20 years.
The massacre took place in Suva Reka, in central Kosovo on 26 March 1999. The victims were locked inside a pizzeria into which two hand grenades were thrown. Before taking the bodies out of the pizzeria, the police allegedly shot anyone still showing signs of life.[citation needed]
Yugoslav Army, Serbian police, paramilitary and Bosnian Serb volunteers, No prosecutions.
Serbian forces summarily executed 41 Albanians in Ćuška on 14 May 1999, taking three groups of men into three different houses, where they were shot with automatic weapons and set on fire.[citation needed]
Massacre at Velika Kruša near Orahovac, Kosovo, took place during the Kosovo War on the afternoon of March 25, 1999, the day after the NATO air campaign began.[citation needed]
Detention camp (also referred to as a prison and concentration camp) near the city of Glogovac in central Kosovo during the Kosovo War, in 1998. The camp was used by Kosovo Albanian insurgents to collect and confine hundreds of male prisoners of Serb and non-Albanian ethnicity.[citation needed]
"Charles Taylor, the former Liberian President who is one of Africas most wanted men, has gone into hiding in Nigeria to avoid extradition to a UN war crimes tribunal... The UN war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone holds Mr Taylor responsible for about 250,000 deaths. Throughout the 1990s, his armies and supporters, made up of child soldiers orphaned by the conflict wreaked havoc through a swath of West Africa. In Sierra Leone he supported the Revolutionary United Front (R.U.F) whose rebel fighters were notorious for hacking off the limbs of civilians.
Current action – Indicted on 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the UN, which has issued an international warrant for his arrest. As of April 2006 located, extradited, and facing trial in Sierra Leone but then transferred to the Netherlands as requested by the Liberian government. As of the status of the main state actor in the war crimes in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the ongoing war crimes tribunal in the Hague for violating the UN sanctions, Libya's Muamar Gaddafi was elected to the post of President of the African Union. As of late January, 2011, Exxon/Mobile has resumed explorationary drilling in Libya after the exchange of the Lockerbie bombing terrorist was returned to Libya and Libya was taken off terrorist list by the Bush administration with the legal stipulation that Libya could never be prosecuted for past war crimes(regardless of guilt)in the future.
Did conspire to levy and did levy a war of aggression against Kuwait, a sovereign state, took it by force of arms, did occupy it, and did annex it, by right of conquest, a right utterly alien, hostile, and repugnant to all extant international law, being a grave breach of the Charter of the United Nations, and the customary international law, adhered to by all civilised nations and armed groups, thus constituting Crimes against peace.
During the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s, a variety of massacres occurred through the country, many being identified as war crimes. The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) has avowed its responsibility for many of them, while for others no group has claimed responsibility. In addition to generating a widespread sense of fear, these massacres and the ensuing flight of population have resulted in serious depopulation of the worst-affected areas. The massacres peaked in 1997 (with a smaller peak in 1994), and were particularly concentrated in the areas between Algiers and Oran, with very few occurring in the east or in the Sahara.
During the First Chechen War (1994–1996) and Second Chechen War (1999–2000 battle phase, 2000–2009 insurgency phase) there were many allegations of war crimes and terrorism against both sides from various human rights organizations.
War crimes, crimes against peace (attacks against parties not involved in the war), crimes against humanity
No prosecutions
Russian fighter jets dropped cluster munitions on the town of Shali. Targets included a school; cemetery, hospital, fuel station and a collective farm.
War crimes, crimes against peace (attacks against parties not involved in the war), crimes against humanity
No prosecutions
Two Russian Air ForceSukhoi Su-24 use cluster munitions on the remote mountain village of Elistanzhi. The local school is destroyed with nine children inside.
Over two weeks drunken Russian troops under the command of General Vladimir Shamanov went on the rampage after taking the town from the forces of Akhmed Zakayev.
The killings, including executions, of 60 to 82 local civilians by special police unit, OMON, and rapes of at least six women along with arson and robbery in Grozny, Chechnya.
Civil war 1998–2002, est. 5 million deaths; war "sucked in" Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, as well as 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers, its "largest and most costly" peace mission and "the bloodiest conflict since the end of the Second World War."
Fighting involves Mai-Mai militia and Congolese government soldiers. The Government originally armed the Mai-Mai as civil defence against external invaders, who then turned to banditry.
100,000 refugees living in remote disease ridden areas to avoid both sides
"The army attacks the local population as it passes through, often raping and pillaging like the militias. Those who resist are branded Mai-mai supporters and face detention or death. The Mai-mai accuse the villagers of collaborating with the army, they return to the villages at night and extract revenge[sic]. Sometimes they march the villagers into the bush to work as human mules."[297]
In 2003, Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of MbutiPygmies, told the UN's Indigenous People's Forum that during the Congo Civil War, his people were hunted down and eaten as though they were game animals. Both sides of the war regarded them as "subhuman". Makelo asked the UN Security Council to recognise cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide.[298][299]
War crimes: 2006 al-Askari Mosque bombing by Al-Qaeda. The bombing was followed by retaliatory violence with over a hundred dead bodies being found the next day[306] and well over 1,000 people killed in the days following the bombing – by some counts, over 1,000 on the first day alone.[307]
The Mahmudiyah rape and killings were the gang-rape and murder of 14-year-old Iraqi girl Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and the murder of her family by United States Army soldiers on March 12, 2006. It occurred in the family's house to the southwest of Yusufiyah, a village to the west of the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq. Other members of al-Janabi's family murdered by Americans included her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, 45-year-old father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza Al-Janabi.[308] The two remaining survivors of the family, 9-year-old brother Ahmed and 11-year-old brother Mohammed, who were at school during the massacre, were orphaned by the event.
War crimes: Iraqi insurgent groups have committed many armed attacks and bombings targeting civilians. According to Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr insurgents killed over 12,000 Iraqis from January 2005 to June 2006, giving the first official count for the victims of bombings, ambushes and other deadly attacks.[309]Iraq Body Count project data shows that 33% of civilian deaths during the Iraq War resulted from execution after abduction or capture. These were overwhelmingly carried out by unknown actors including insurgents, sectarian militias and criminals.[310] See: Iraq War insurgent attacks, List of suicide bombings in Iraq since 2003 and List of massacres of the Iraq War for a more comprehensive list.
According to various media reports, between 1,000 and 1,200 Lebanese citizens (including Hezbollah fighters) were reported dead; there were between 1,500 and 2,500 people wounded and over 1,000,000 were temporarily displaced. Over 150 Israelis were killed (120 military); thousands wounded; and 300,000–500,000 were displaced because of Hezbollah firing tens of thousands of rockets at major cities in Israel.[312][313][314]
In September 2004, the World Health Organization estimated there had been 50,000 deaths in Darfur since the beginning of the conflict, an 18-month period, mostly due to starvation. An updated estimate the following month put the number of deaths for the six-month period from March to October 2004 due to starvation and disease at 70,000; These figures were criticised, because they only considered short periods and did not include deaths from violence.[317] A more recent British Parliamentary Report has estimated that over 300,000 people have died,[318] and others have estimated even more.
There were allegations of war crimes by both the Israeli military and Hamas. Criticism of Israel's conduct focused on the proportionality of its measures against Hamas, and on its alleged use of weaponised white phosphorus. Numerous reports from human right groups during the war claimed that white phosphorus shells were being used by Israel, often in or near populated areas.[319][320][321] In its early statements the Israeli military denied using any form of white phosphorus, saying "We categorically deny the use of white phosphorus". It eventually admitted to its limited use and stopped using the shells, including as a smoke screen. The Goldstone report investigating possible war crimes in the 2009 war accepted that white phosphorus is not illegal under international law but did find that the Israelis were "systematically reckless in determining its use in build-up areas". It also called for serious consideration to be given to the banning of its use as an obscurant.[322]
There are allegations that war crimes were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War, particularly during the final months of the conflict in 2009. The alleged war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by the government of Sri Lanka; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; acute shortages of food, medicine, and clean water for civilians trapped in the war zone; and child recruitment by the Tamil Tigers.[323][324]
A panel of experts appointed by UN Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the civil war found "credible allegations" which, if proven, indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers.[325][326][327] The panel has called on the UNSG to conduct an independent international inquiry into the alleged violations of international law.[328][329] The Sri Lankan government has denied that its forces committed any war crimes and has strongly opposed any international investigation. It has condemned the UN report as "fundamentally flawed in many respects" and "based on patently biased material which is presented without any verification".[330]
Syrian former colonel Anwar Raslan sentenced in Germany to life in prison for crimes against humanity.[346] Former intelligence officer Eyad al-Gharib sentenced in Germany to 4+1⁄2 years in prison.[347]
Amnesty International estimated in February 2017 "that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya Prison between September 2011 and December 2015."[348]
In August 2012, U.N. investigators released a report which stated that it was likely that Syrian troops and Shabiha militia were responsible for the massacre.[349]
The Ghouta chemical attack occurred during the Syrian Civil War in the early hours of 21 August 2013. Several opposition-controlled areas in the suburbs around Damascus, Syria, were struck by rockets containing the chemical agent sarin. Estimates of the death toll range from at least 281 people to 1,729.
The Syrian Air Force launched strikes on the rebel-held town of Douma, northeast of Damascus, killing at least 96 civilians and injuring at least 200 others.
The Syrian Government ordered an attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Shaykhun in Northwestern Syria in the early morning of 4 April 2017. The chemical caused at least 80 civilians deaths, and three medical workers were injured. The chemical caused asphyxiation and mouth foaming. It is suspected by Turkish authorities to be the poison Sarin.
War crimes; use of poison gas as a weapon; bombardments; starvation of population under siege; attacks against protected objects (schools, hospitals)[361]
Crimes against humanity (ethnic cleansing, systematic forced conversions, crime of slaving); war crimes (murder of Yazidi POWs); crime of genocide (recognized by the UN as an attempted genocide)
Summary executions, attacks against civilians, crimes against peace
No prosecutions
Amnesty International stated that it had gathered evidence of war crimes and other violations committed by Turkish and Turkey-backed Syrian forces who are said to "have displayed a shameful disregard for civilian life, carrying out serious violations and war crimes, including summary killings and unlawful attacks that have killed and injured civilians".[375] Syrian Kurdish authorities accused Turkey of employing the chemical white phosphorus to target people.[376][377]
According to the U.S. State Department 2016 Human Rights Report, in February 2016, Turkish security forces killed at least 130 people, including unarmed civilians, who had taken shelter in the basements of three buildings in the town of Cizre. A domestic NGO, The Human Rights Association (HRA), said the security forces killed more than 300 civilians in the first eight months of 2016.[378] In March 2017, the United Nations voiced "concern" over the Turkish government's operations and called for an independent assessment of the "massive destruction, killings and numerous other serious human rights violations" against the ethnic Kurdish minority.[379]
UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated that "indiscriminate attacks on populated areas anywhere, including in Stepanakert, Ganja and other localities in and around the immediate Nagorno-Karabakh zone of conflict, were totally unacceptable".[380]Amnesty International stated that both Azerbaijani and Armenian forces committed war crimes during recent fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, and called on Azerbaijani and Armenian authorities to immediately conduct independent, impartial investigations, identify all those responsible, and bring them to justice.[381][382]
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, multiple buildings such as airports, hospitals, kindergartens were bombed.[384] There has been abuse of prisoners of war.[385]
In April 2022 bodies of civilians murdered by Russian forces were found in the town of Bucha, which had been left after the occupation of the town. It was confirmed at least more than 300 bodies were in mass graves or stranded on the streets of the city. As of 22 April 2022 there have been more than 500 confirmed bodies.
The Siege of Mariupol started on 24 February 2022 and ended on 20 May 2022. It has been confirmed at thousands of lives have been claimed through the siege and that the city has been reduced to rubble.
On 21 April 2022, Satellite images showed mass graves around the besieged city of Mariupol. It has been confirmed at least 9,000+ bodies have been found since. On the same day Vladimir Putin ordered troops to blockade the Azovstal Steel Plant, the last Ukrainian controlled place in the besieged city of Mariupol. The steel plant had more than 1,000 Ukrainians confirmed inside of it.
On 13 June 2023, Russian troops murdered 6 civilians in Sumy Oblast near Seredyna-Buda, mutilated their bodies, and then mined the place to kill people who tried to retrieve their bodies. They also blocked retrieval of bodies for 2 more days.[387][388] This case is currently being investigated by Ukrainian authorities.
Several mass graves, including one site containing at least 440 bodies were found in woods near Izium after it was recaptured by Ukrainian forces from Russia.[399][400]
Yet unknown estimate of human deaths. Hundreds of homes destroyed. Thousands of people displaced. Ecocide. Deaths of uncountable number of animals. "Ukraine's agriculture ministry said 10,000 hectares of agricultural land on the Ukrainian-controlled side of the Dnipro had been flooded, and several times more on the Russian-occupied.[407]
Kyiv courts sentenced two Russian soldiers to 11 1/2 years each for firing artillery on two villages in the Kharkiv Oblast[408] and a Russian pilot to 12 years in prison for dropping eight bombs on the Kharkiv TV and radio station.[409]
In April 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, and demanding a halt to all arms sales to the country. 28 countries voted in favor, 13 abstained, and six voted against. Israel's ambassador accused the UN of anti-Israeli bias.[411][412]
At least 110 people were killed in the attack, including women and children,[414] claiming the lives of 10% of the farming community's residents. Dozens of homes were also burned down.[415]
War crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against civilians
No prosecutions
60 people were killed when the Israel Defense Forces conducted an airstrike on a market in Jabalia refugee camp, which was packed with civilians at the time of the attack[418]
On 13 October, Israel directed over 1 million residents of northern Gaza to evacuate within 24 hours.[421][422] 70 were killed in explosions on the road south. Sources disagree about the source of the attacks.[423][424]
On 29 February 2024, Israeli soldiers opened fire on a crowd of Gazan civilians seeking food from a humanitarian aid convoy, killing at least 118 and wounding many more.[425]
Universal jurisdiction is a legal principle that allows states or international organizations to prosecute individuals for serious crimes, such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, regardless of where the crime was committed and irrespective of the accused's nationality or residence. Rooted in the belief that certain offenses are so heinous that they threaten the international community as a whole, universal jurisdiction holds that such acts are beyond the scope of any single nation's laws. Instead, these crimes are considered to violate norms owed to the global community and fundamental principles of international law, making them prosecutable in any court that invokes this principle.
Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as foreign nationals. Together with war crimes, genocide, and the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity are one of the core crimes of international criminal law and, like other crimes against international law, have no temporal or jurisdictional limitations on prosecution.
A human shield is a non-combatant who either volunteers or is forced to shield a legitimate military target in order to deter the enemy from attacking it.
The Hama massacre occurred in February 1982 when the Syrian Arab Army and the Defense Companies paramilitary force, under the orders of President Hafez al-Assad, besieged the town of Hama for 27 days in order to quell an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood against the Ba'athist government. The campaign that had begun in 1976 by Sunni Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, was brutally crushed in an anti-Sunni massacre at Hama, carried out by the Syrian Arab Army and Alawite militias under the command of Major General Rifaat al-Assad.
Purity of arms is one of the core values listed in the Spirit of the Israel Defense Forces. It is described as the following:
The soldier shall make use of his weaponry and power only for the fulfillment of the mission and solely to the extent required; he will maintain his humanity even in combat. The soldier shall not employ his weaponry and power in order to harm non-combatants or prisoners of war, and shall do all he can to avoid harming their lives, body, honor and property.
There has been a varying nature of human rights under various governments that ruled Syria since the French colonial rule in Syria starting in the 1920s.
The United States Armed Forces and its members have violated the law of war after the signing of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the signing of the Geneva Conventions. The United States prosecutes offenders through the War Crimes Act of 1996 as well as through articles in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The United States signed the 1999 Rome Statute but it never ratified the treaty, taking the position that the International Criminal Court (ICC) lacks fundamental checks and balances. The American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002 further limited US involvement with the ICC. The ICC reserves the right of states to prosecute war crimes, and the ICC can only proceed with prosecution of crimes when states do not have willingness or effective and reliable processes to investigate for themselves. The United States says that it has investigated many of the accusations alleged by the ICC prosecutors as having occurred in Afghanistan, and thus does not accept ICC jurisdiction over its nationals.
War crimes in the Syrian civil war have been numerous and serious. A United Nations report published in August 2014 stated that "the conduct of the warring parties in the Syrian Arab Republic has caused civilians immeasurable suffering". Another UN report released in 2015 stated that the war has been "characterized by a complete lack of adherence to the norms of international law" and that "civilians have borne the brunt of the suffering inflicted by the warring parties". Various countries have prosecuted several war criminals for a limited number of atrocities committed during the Syrian civil war.
The Bayda and Baniyas massacres were two widely reported massacres that occurred in May 2013 in the village of Bayda and the city of Baniyas, in Tartus Governorate, Syria, where Syrian Army troops, supported by paramilitaries, killed civilians in the predominantly Sunni locales. The killings were supposedly in retaliation for an earlier rebel attack near the town that left at least half a dozen soldiers dead.
The Syrian Revolution, also known as the Syrian Revolution of Dignity, was a series of mass protests and uprisings in Syria – with a subsequent violent reaction by the Syrian Arab Republic – lasting from March 2011 to December 2024, as part of the wider Arab Spring in the Arab world. The revolution, which demanded the end of the decades-long Assad family rule, began as minor demonstrations during January 2011 and transformed into large nation-wide protests in March. The uprising was marked by mass protests against the Ba'athist dictatorship of president Bashar al-Assad meeting police and military violence, massive arrests and a brutal crackdown, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and tens of thousands wounded. 13 years after the start of the revolution, the Assad regime fell in 2024 after a series of rebel offensives.
The 2014 Syrian detainee report, also known as the Caesar Report, formally titled A Report into the credibility of certain evidence with regard to Torture and Execution of Persons Incarcerated by the current Syrian regime, is a report that claims to detail "the systematic killing of more than 11,000 detainees by the Syrian government in one region during the Syrian Civil War over a two and half year period from March 2011 to August 2013". It was released on 21 January 2014, a day before talks were due to begin at the Geneva II Conference on Syria, and was commissioned by the government of Qatar. Qatar has been a key funder of the rebels in Syria. The Syrian government questioned the report due to its ties to hostile sides against the Syrian government and pointed to how many of the photos were identified as casualties among international terrorists fighting the Syrian government or Syrian army troops or civilians massacred by them due to supporting the Syrian government.
The condition of human rights in the territory controlled by the Islamic State (IS) is considered to be among the worst in the world. The Islamic State's policies included acts of genocide, torture and slavery. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) stated in November 2014 that the Islamic State "seeks to subjugate civilians under its control and dominate every aspect of their lives through terror, indoctrination, and the provision of services to those who obey". Many Islamic State actions of extreme criminality, terror, recruitment and other activities have been documented in the Middle East.
Russian war crimes are violations of international criminal law including war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide which the official armed and paramilitary forces of Russia have committed or been accused of committing since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, as well as the aiding and abetting of crimes by proto-statelets or puppet statelets which are armed and financed by Russia, including the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic. These have included murder, torture, terror, persecution, deportation and forced transfer, enforced disappearance, child abductions, rape, looting, unlawful confinement, inhumane acts, unlawful airstrikes and attacks against civilian objects, use of banned chemical weapons, and wanton destruction.
War crimes in Afghanistan covers the period of conflict from 1979 to the present. Starting with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, 40 years of civil war in various forms has wracked Afghanistan. War crimes have been committed by all sides.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian military and authorities have committed war crimes, such as deliberate attacks against civilian targets, including on hospitals, medical facilities and on the energy grid; indiscriminate attacks on densely-populated areas; the abduction, torture and murder of civilians; forced deportations; sexual violence; destruction of cultural heritage; and the killing and torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The Bucha massacre was the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war by the Russian Armed Forces during the fight for and occupation of the city of Bucha as part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photographic and video evidence of the massacre emerged on 1 April 2022 after Russian forces withdrew from the city.
Israeli war crimes are violations of international criminal law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide, which Israeli security forces have committed or been accused of committing since the founding of Israel in 1948. These have included murder, intentional targeting of civilians, killing prisoners of war and surrendered combatants, indiscriminate attacks, collective punishment, starvation, persecution, the use of human shields, sexual violence and rape, torture, pillage, forced transfer, breach of medical neutrality, enforced disappearance, targeting journalists, attacking civilian and protected objects, wanton destruction, incitement to genocide, and genocide.
Since the start of the Israel–Hamas war on 7 October 2023, the UN Human Rights Council has identified "clear evidence" of war crimes by both Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces. A UN Commission to the Israel–Palestine conflict stated that there is "clear evidence that war crimes may have been committed in the latest explosion of violence in Israel and Gaza, and all those who have violated international law and targeted civilians must be held accountable." On 27 October, a spokesperson for the OHCHR called for an independent court to review potential war crimes committed by both sides.
Allegations have been made that the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel constituted a genocidal massacre against Israelis. In the course of the assault, Palestinian militants attacked communities, a music festival, and military bases in the region of southern Israel known as the Gaza Envelope. The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,163 Israelis and foreigners, two thirds of whom were civilians.
Turkish war crimes are violations of international criminal law which the official armed and paramilitary forces of Turkey have committed or are accused of committing. These accusations also extend to the aiding and abetting of crimes committed by non-state actors aligned with Turkey, including rebel groups in Syria. These war crimes have included massacres, torture, terrorism, deportation or forced displacement, kidnapping, sexual violence, looting, unlawful confinement, unlawful airstrikes and indiscriminate attacks on civilian structures.
References
↑ Comment by The Times, November 21, 2006 p. 17, in relation to Jean-Pierre Bemba of the Congo: "There was nothing funny about his soldiers' actions in Eastern Congo... Among the crimes alleged are mass murder, rape, and acts of cannibalism. Yet one senior UN diplomat has indicated privately that for the sake of peace, the investigation [by the International Criminal Court] into Bemba's responsibility may be sidelined. It isn't just in Congo that trade-offs are being made. [...] Skeptics point out that those who have stood trial so far have either been defeated in war or are retired and irrelevant. They insist there would be no chance of hauling powerful political figures in Washington and London before a court to answer for their actions..."
↑ Wessels, André (2010). A Century of Postgraduate Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) Studies: Masters' and Doctoral Studies Completed at Universities in South Africa, in English-speaking Countries and on the European Continent, 1908–2008. African Sun Media. p.32. ISBN978-1-920383-09-1.
↑ Nuhn, Walter (1989). Sturm über Südwest. Der Hereroaufstand von 1904 (in German). Koblenz, Germany: Bernard & Graefe-Verlag. ISBN978-3-7637-5852-4.[pageneeded]
↑ Schaller, Dominik J. (2008). Moses, A. Dirk (ed.). From Conquest to Genocide: Colonial Rule in German Southwest Africa and German East Africa[Empire, Colony Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History] (firsted.). Oxford: Berghahn Books. p.296. ISBN978-1-84545-452-4. see his footnotes to German language sources citation #1 for Chapter 13.
↑ Schaller, Dominik J. (2008). From Conquest to Genocide: Colonial Rule in German Southwest Africa and German East Africa. New York: Berghahn Books. p.296. ISBN978-1-84545-452-4.
↑ Friedrichsmeyer, Sara L.; Lennox, Sara; Zantop, Susanne M. (1998). The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. p.87. ISBN978-0-472-09682-4.
↑ Baronian, Marie-Aude; Besser, Stephan; Jansen, Yolande, eds. (2007). Diaspora and Memory: Figures of Displacement in Contemporary Literature, Arts and Politics. Thamyris, Intersecting Place, Sex and Race, Issue 13. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill/Rodopi. p.33. ISBN978-9042021297. ISSN1381-1312.
↑ Gewald, J. B. (2000). "Colonization, Genocide and Resurgence: The Herero of Namibia, 1890–1933". In Bollig, M.; Gewald, J. B. (eds.). People, Cattle and Land: Transformations of a Pastoral Society in Southwestern Africa. Cologne, Germany: Köppe. pp.167, 209. hdl:1887/4830. ISBN978-3-89645-352-5.
↑ Olusoga, David [unspecified role] (October 2004). Namibia – Genocide and the Second Reich. Real Genocides. BBC Four.
↑ Dictionary of Genocide: M-Z Samuel Totten, Paul Robert Bartrop, Steven L. Jacobs, page 272, Greenwood 2007
↑ Cocker, Mark (1998). Rivers of blood, rivers of gold: Europe's conflict with tribal peoples. London: Jonathan Cape. p.308. ISBN978-0-224-03884-3.
↑ Jan-Bart Gewald (1998) Herero heroes: a socio-political history of the Herero of Namibia, 1890-1923, James Currey, Oxford ISBN978-0-82141-256-5
↑ Peace and freedom, Volume 40, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, page 57, The Section, 1980
↑ Levene, Mark (2018). ""The Bulgarians Were the Worst!" Reconsidering the Holocaust in Salonika within a Regional History of Mass Violence". The Holocaust in Greece. Cambridge University Press. p.54. ISBN978-1-108-47467-2.
↑ Farrar, L L Jr. (2003). "Aggression versus apathy: The limits of nationalism during the Balkan Wars, 1912-1913". East European Quarterly. 37 (3): 257–280. ProQuest195176627.
↑ Michail, Eugene (2017). "The Balkan Wars in Western Historiography, 1912–2012". The Balkan Wars from Contemporary Perception to Historic Memory. Springer International Publishing. pp.319–340. ISBN978-3-319-44642-4.
↑ Rifati, Fitim. Kryengritjet shqiptare në Kosovë si alternativë çlirimi nga sundimi serbo-malazez (1913-1914)(PDF). Journal of Balkan Studies. p.84. According to Serbian Social Democrat politician Kosta Novakovic, from October 1912 to the end of 1913, the Serbo-Montenegrin regime exterminated more than 120,000 Albanians of all ages, and forcibly expelled more than 50,000 Albanians to the Ottoman Empire and Albania.
↑ Alpion, Gëzim (30 December 2021). Mother Teresa: The Saint and Her Nation. Bloomsbury. pp.11, 19. ISBN978-93-89812-46-6. During the Balkan wars, in total '120,000 Albanians were exterminated', hundreds of villages' were shelled by artillery and 'a large number of them were burned down' across Kosova and Macedonia. The figures do not include people killed in present-day Albania and the devastated houses, villages and towns that Serbian and Montenegrin soldiers left behind when they were eventually forced to retreat.'
↑ Bytyçi, Enver (2015). Coercive Diplomacy of NATO in Kosovo. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN978-1-4438-7668-1. Chronicles also record the fact that during that period, it was mostly women, children, and elderly people who were destroyed and cruelly massacred,
↑ Гоцев, Димитър. Национално-освободителната борба в Македония 1912-1915, София 1981, с. 51 (Gotsev, Dimitar. The National Liberation Struggle in Macedonia, Sofia 1981, p. 51)
↑ Ferguson, Niall. The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West. New York: Penguin Press, 2006 p. 177 ISBN1-59420-100-5
↑ Merten, Ulrich (2015). Voices from the Gulag: the Oppression of the German Minority in the Soviet Union. Lincoln Nebraska: American Historical Society. pp.77–80, 82. ISBN978-0-692-60337-6.
↑ Rada, Javier (September 2006). "Los últimos de Alhucemas" (in Spanish). 20minutos.es. Retrieved 2007-04-13. Durante la guerra del Rif (1921–1927), la última pesadilla colonial, España fue una de las primeras potencias en utilizar armas químicas contra población civil.
1 2 Enrique Cerro Aguilar. "España fue el primer país que utilizó armas químicas contra civiles en Marruecos en 1920". Revista Rebelión. 13 de enero de 2001. (in Spanish)
↑ Miguel Alonso; Alan Kramer; Javier Rodrigo (2019). Fascist Warfare, 1922–1945: Aggression, Occupation, Annihilation. Springer International Publishing. p.32. ISBN978-3030276478.
↑ Susan Martin-Márquez (2008). Disorientations: Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Performance of Identity. Yale University Press. p.193.
↑ Halliday, Jon; Chang, Jung (30 September 2012). Mao: The Unknown Story. Random House. p.133. ISBN9781448156863. The Ruijin base, the seat of the first Red state, consisted of large parts of the provinces of Jiangxi and Fujian. These two provinces suffered the greatest population decrease in the whole of China from the year when the Communist state was founded, 1931, to the year after the Reds left, 1935. The population of Red Jiangxi fell by more than half a million — a drop of 20 percent. The fall in Red Fujian was comparable. Given that escapes were few, this means that altogether some 700,000 people died in the Ruijin base. A large part of these were murdered as “class enemies,” or were worked to death, or committed suicide, or died other premature deaths attributable to the regime.
1 2 Koga, Yukiko (2016). Inheritance of Loss: China, Japan, and the Political Economy of Redemption After Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN022641213X.
1 2 Liu, Zaiyu (2002). 第二次國共戰爭時期的還鄉團(PDF). Hong Kong: Twenty First Century Bimonthly.
↑ Zamorani, Massimo. La strage della "Gondrand", in "Storia militare", 21, no. 236, May 2013, pp. 37–39
↑ Antonicelli, Franco (1975). Trent'anni di storia italiana: dall'antifascismo alla Resistenza (1915–1945) lezioni con testimonianze[Thirty Years of Italian History: From Antifascism to the Resistance (1915–1945) Lessons with Testimonials]. Reprints Einaudi (in Italian). Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore. OCLC878595757.
↑ An account of this atrocity, known in Ethiopia as "Yekatit 12", is contained in chapter 14 of Anthony Mockler's Haile Selassie's War (New York: Olive Branch, 2003)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Travis, Hannibal (2013). Genocide, Ethnonationalism, and the United Nations: Exploring the Causes of Mass Killing Since 1945. Routledge. p.138.
1 2 Dommen, Arthur J (2002-02-20). The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Indiana University Press. p.252. ISBN978-0253109255.
↑ Fujio Hara (December 2002). Malaysian Chinese & China: Conversion in Identity Consciousness, 1945–1957. University of Hawaii Press. pp.61–65.
↑ Pamela Sodhy (1991). The US-Malaysian nexus: Themes in superpower-small state relations. Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia. pp.284–290.
1 2 Kim, Hun Joon (2014). The Massacre at Mt. Halla: Sixty Years of Truth Seeking in South Korea. Cornell University Press. pp.13–41. ISBN9780801452390.
↑ "1971 Command History Volume II"(PDF). United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam. p.J-21. Archived(PDF) from the original on July 11, 2019. Retrieved 18 January 2015.
↑ Turse, Nick. Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Co, 2013.
↑ Anderson, David L. The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War. 2004, page 98–9
↑ Kendrick Oliver, The My Lai Massacre in American History and Memory (Manchester University Press, 2006), p. 27.
↑ Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations: Ethnic and National Groups around the World, edited by James Minahan, vol. 4 (Greenwood, 2002), p. 1761.
↑ Pierre Journod, "La France, les États-Unis et la guerre du Vietnam: l'année 1968", in Les relations franco-américaines au XX siècle, edited by Pierre Melandri and Serge Ricard (L'Harmattan, 2003), p. 176.
↑ "Headquarters MACV Monthly Summary June 1968"(PDF). Headquarters United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. 26 October 1968. p.33. Retrieved 18 June 2020. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
↑ Debasish Roy Chowdhury "Indians are bastards anyway", Asia Times, June 23, 2005. "In Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Susan Brownmiller likens it to the Japanese rapes in Nanjing and German rapes in Russia during World War II. "...200,000, 300,000 or possibly 400,000 women (three sets of statistics have been variously quoted) were raped.""
↑ The LRA is described by sources such as The Times as a "cannibalistic cult that has slaughtered whole villages and left its victims without hands, feet or faces".[dead link]
↑ Final report of the United Nations Commission of Experts, established pursuant to security council resolution 780 (1992), Annex VIII – Prison camps; Under the Direction of: M. Cherif Bassiouni; S/1994/674/Add.2 (Vol. IV), 27 May 1994, Special ForcesArchived 2010-10-20 at the Wayback Machine , (p. 1070). Accessdate 20 October 2010.
↑ Scherer, Michael; Benjamin, Mark (4 November 2003). "Other government agencies". The Abu Ghraib files. salon.com. Archived from the original on 2008-02-12. Retrieved 2008-02-24. The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology later ruled al-Jamadi's death a homicide, caused by "blunt force injuries to the torso complicated by compromised respiration."
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
