United States atrocity crimes

Throughout its history, the United States has been accused of either directly committing or being complicit in violations of international criminal law known as atrocity crime which includes acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing, both within the modern borders of its territory and abroad, as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The detailed list at the international level mainly includes killings of members of a specific group of people, which is one of the elements of the definition given by the United Nations, ^[1] however this definition is including acts with mental or other physical elements not widely covered by this list. The list is also including other cases widely considered war crimes. The list at the national level attempts to include all those cases described in the 1948 UN convention on genocide.

Domestic

This section provides a list of Wikipedia entries that mention acts of genocide in the territory of the United States after its independence from the United Kingdom. It includes both massacres of Native American populations, as well as other aspects of cultural genocide as defined by the United Nations. ^{[2] [3] [4]}

• Native American genocide in the United States

  

  Long Walk of the Navajo: the 1864 deportation and ethnic cleansing of the Navajo people by the United States federal government.

  • California genocide
  • Sullivan Expedition
  • Trail of Tears
  • Potawatomi Trail of Death
  • Sand Creek massacre
  • Bear River Massacre
  • Rogue River Wars
  • Snake War
  • Long Walk of the Navajo
  • Comanche campaign
  • Yavapai Wars
  • Wounded Knee Massacre
  • Dakota War of 1862
  • Gnadenhutten massacre

• Cultural genocide in the United States ^[5]
• Black genocide in the United States ^[6] (including this link is currently under discussion, as it is still debated whether the term ‘black genocide’ has a place in this list).

International

Guatemala genocide exhumation

This section lists those pages that meet the UN definition of genocide where the United States has been involved. It does not include massacres subject to dispute on Wikipedia, or acts of war such as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. In the case of Vietnam War the International War Crimes Tribunal supported the qualification as genocide, although their conclusions have been disputed, ^{[7] [8] [9]} therefore the Sơn Thắng massacre and Mỹ Lai massacre are considered war crimes but not unanimously genocide. In the case of Korean War is also controversial that the United States committed a genocide ^[10] or just war crimes, therefore the list is not including: No Gun Ri massacre. ^{[11] [12] [13]} During the Vietnam War it has been considered that part of the war strategy of the United States in Vietnam was an ecocide. ^{[14] [15]}

• Bangladesh genocide (complicity) ^{[16] [17] [18]}
• Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 (complicity) ^{[19] [20] [21] [22] [23]}
• Expulsion of the Chagossians ^[24]
• Gaza genocide (alleged complicity, alleged genocide) ^{[25] [26]}

In other cases like Guatemala genocide has also been alleged complicity, ^{[27] [28] [29]} as well as, the East Timor genocide. ^{[30] [31] [32]}

See also

• List of genocides
• List of genocides committed by the Soviet Union
• Canadian genocide of Indigenous peoples ^[33]
• List of Indian massacres in North America

References

1. Nations, United. "Definitions of Genocide and Related Crimes". United Nations. Retrieved 2024-11-29.
2. "Genocide Of Indigenous Peoples - Holocaust Museum Houston". hmh.org. 2023-08-02. Retrieved 2024-11-29.
3. Ostler, Jeffrey (2015-03-02), "Genocide and American Indian History" , Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.3, ISBN   978-0-19-932917-5 , retrieved 2024-12-02
4. Totten, Samuel; Hitchcock, Robert K., eds. (2011). Genocide of indigenous peoples. Genocide : a critical bibliographic review. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. ISBN   978-1-4128-1495-9.
5. "United States of America". genocidewatch. Retrieved 2024-11-30.
6. Flauzina, Pinheiro (2012-11-07). Nonnegotiable lives: international criminal justice and the denial of black genocide in Brazil and the United States (thesis thesis).
7. Foster, Cody J. (2017). "Did America Commit War Crimes in Vietnam". The New York Times.
8. Fein, Helen (1993). "Discriminating Genocide from War Crimes: Vietnam and Afghanistan Reexamined". Denver Journal of International Law & Policy. 22 (1).
9. Molden, Berthold (2010), Assmann, Aleida; Conrad, Sebastian (eds.), "Vietnam, the New Left and the Holocaust: How the Cold War Changed Discourse on Genocide" , Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 79–96, doi:10.1057/9780230283367_5, ISBN   978-0-230-28336-7 , retrieved 2024-11-30
10. KIM, DONG CHOON (2004-12-01). "Forgotten war, forgotten massacres—the Korean War (1950–1953) as licensed mass killings" . Journal of Genocide Research. 6 (4): 523–544. doi:10.1080/1462352042000320592. ISSN   1462-3528.
11. Baik, Tae-Ung (2012-01-01). "A War Crime against an Ally's Civilians: The No Gun Ri Massacre". Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. 15 (2): 455. ISSN   0883-3648.
12. Sŏ, Chae-jŏng, ed. (2013). Truth and reconciliation in South Korea: between the present and future of the Korean wars. Sŏ, Chae-jŏng. London: Routledge. ISBN   978-0-415-62241-7.
13. Hanley, Charles J. (2010-12-01). "Official Narrative and Inconvenient Truths" . Critical Asian Studies. doi:10.1080/14672715.2010.515389. ISSN   1467-2715.
14. "Ecocide | Sciences Po Violence de masse et Résistance - Réseau de recherche". www.sciencespo.fr (in French). Retrieved 2024-11-30.
15. Weisberg, Barry (1970). Ecocide in Indochina : the ecology of war. San Francisco : Canfield Press.
16. "Henry Kissinger's role in Bengali massacre". The Guardian. 2023-12-04. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2024-11-30.
17. Magazine, Smithsonian; Boissoneault, Lorraine. "The Genocide the U.S. Can't Remember, But Bangladesh Can't Forget". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2024-11-30.
18. Rep. Chabot, Steve [R-OH-1 (2022-10-14). "Text - H.Res.1430 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): Recognizing the Bangladesh Genocide of 1971". www.congress.gov. Retrieved 2024-11-30.
19. Perry, Juliet (2016-07-21). "Tribunal: Indonesia guilty of 1965 genocide". CNN. Retrieved 2024-11-28.
20. Blakeley, Ruth (2009). State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: The North in the South. Routledge. p.  88. ISBN   978-0415686174.
21. Robinson, Geoffrey B. (2018). The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965–66. Princeton University Press. p. 203. ISBN   978-1-4008-8886-3. a US Embassy official in Jakarta, Robert Martens, had supplied the Indonesian Army with lists containing the names of thousands of PKI officials in the months after the alleged coup attempt. According to the journalist Kathy Kadane, "As many as 5,000 names were furnished over a period of months to the Army there, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured." Despite Martens later denials of any such intent, these actions almost certainly aided in the death or detention of many innocent people. They also sent a powerful message that the US government agreed with and supported the army's campaign against the PKI, even as that campaign took its terrible toll in human lives.
22. Bevins, Vincent (2020). The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World . PublicAffairs. p. 157. ISBN   978-1-5417-4240-6. The United States was part and parcel of the operation at every stage, starting well before the killing started, until the last body dropped and the last political prisoner emerged from jail, decades later, tortured, scarred, and bewildered.
23. Melvin, Jess (2018). The Army and the Indonesian Genocide: Mechanics of Mass Murder. Routledge. pp. 9–10. ISBN   978-1-138-57469-4. The exact role played by the United States in the genocide remains unclear, as U.S. government archives relating to Indonesia from the period remain sealed. It is known, however, that at a minimum, in addition to openly celebrating Suharto's rise to power, the United States supplied money and communications equipment to the Indonesian military that facilitated the killings, gave fifty million rupiah to the military-sponsored KAP-Gestapu death squad, and provided the names of thousands of PKI leaders to the military, who may have used this information to hunt down and kill those identified.
24. "UK, US Expelled Islanders 50 Years Ago, a Crime Against Humanity | Human Rights Watch". Human Rights Watch . 2023-02-15.
25. "Amnesty International Warns of U.S. Complicity in War Crimes in Gaza". Amnesty International USA. Retrieved 2024-11-30.
26. Bhabha, Faisal A.; Matthews, Heidi; Fadel, Mohammad (2024-01-28). "Ruling by UN's top court means Canada and the U.S. could be complicit in Gaza genocide". The Conversation. Retrieved 2024-11-30.
27. Gerstenzang, James; Darling, Juanita (1999-03-11). "Clinton Gives Apology for U.S. Role in Guatemala". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2025-02-03.
28. Broder, John M. (1999-03-11). "Clinton Offers His Apologies To Guatemala". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2025-02-03.
29. Blakeley, Ruth (2009). State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: The North in the South. Routledge. pp.  91-94. ISBN   978-0415686174.
30. "Carter Championed Human Rights While Supporting Genocide in East Timor". Democracy Now!. Retrieved 2025-02-03.
31. Vulliamy, Ed; Barnett, Antony (1999-09-19). "US trained butchers of Timor". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2025-02-03.
32. "U.S. sought to preserve close ties to Indonesian military as it terrorized East Timor in runup to 1999 independence referendum | National Security Archive". nsarchive.gwu.edu. Retrieved 2025-02-03.
33. "Confronting genocide in Canada | CMHR". humanrights.ca. Retrieved 2024-11-29.