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This article lists and summarizes the
war crimes committed since the
Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the
crimes against humanity and
crimes against peace that have been committed since these crimes were first defined in the
Rome Statute.
[a]
Since many war crimes are not ultimately prosecuted (due to lack of
political will, lack of effective procedures, or other practical and
political reasons
[1]),
historians and lawyers will often make a serious case that war crimes
occurred, even if there was no formal investigations or prosecution of
the alleged crimes or an investigation cleared the alleged perpetrators.
War crimes under
international law were firmly established by international trials such as the
Nuremberg Trials and the
Tokyo Trials, in which Austrian, German and Japanese leaders were prosecuted for war crimes committed during
World War II.
1914–1918: World War I
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.
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
World War I |
German Empire (Imperial Germany) |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Rape of Belgium |
War crimes |
No prosecutions |
In defiance of the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare,
the German occupiers engaged in mass atrocities against the civilian
population of Belgium and looting and destruction of civilian property,
in order to flush out the Belgian guerrilla fighters, or francs-tireurs, in the first two months of the war, after the German invasion of Belgium in August 1914.[2]
In addition, since Belgium was officially neutral after hostilities in
Europe broke out and Germany invaded the country without explicit
warning, this act was in breach of the treaty of 1839 and the 1907 Hague Convention on Opening of Hostilities.[3] |
World War I |
All major belligerents |
Employment of poison gas |
Use of poisons as weapons |
No prosecutions |
Poison gas was introduced by Imperial Germany,
and was subsequently used by all major belligerents in the war, in
violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare[4][5] |
World War I |
Ottoman Empire |
Armenian Genocide[6][7][8][9][10][11] |
War crimes, crimes against humanity, crime of genocide (Extermination of Armenians in Western Armenia) |
The Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919–20 as well as the incomplete Malta Tribunals were trials of certain of the alleged perpetrators. |
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.
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.[12] |
World War I |
United Kingdom |
Baralong Incidents |
War crimes (murder of shipwreck survivors) |
No prosecutions |
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 board the lifeboats, was sunk by the British Q-ship HMS 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.[13] 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.[14] |
Aftermath of World War I
|
This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (September 2013) |
1935–1937: Second Italo-Abyssinian War
1936–1939: Spanish Civil War
At least 50,000 people were executed during the
Spanish Civil War.
[16][17] 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."
[18]
Julius Ruiz 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."
[19] César Vidal puts the number of Republican victims at 110,965.
[20]
In 2008 a Spanish judge, Socialist Baltasar Garzon, opened an
investigation into the executions and disappearances of 114,266 people
between 17 July 1936 and December 1951. Among the executions
investigated was that of the poet and dramatist
Federico García Lorca.
[21][22]
1937–1945: Second Sino-Japanese War
This section includes war crimes up to and through December 5, 1941
when the Second Sino-Japanese War became the Asian Theater of World War
II, due to the
attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. For war crimes after this date see the section called
World War II: Japan perpetrated crimes.
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Second Sino-Japanese War |
Japan |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Attack on China in 1937 |
Crimes against peace (Waging unprovoked war against China (count 27 at the Tokyo Trials[23] in contravention of the Nine-Power Treaty, Tanggu Truce, and Kellogg–Briand Pact)) |
Sadao Araki, Kenji Doihara, Kingoro Hashimoto, Shunroku Hata, Hiranuma Kiichirō, Kōki Hirota, Naoki Hoshino, Seishirō Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Kōichi Kido, Heitarō Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Jirō Minami, Akira Mutō, Takazumi Oka, Hiroshi Ōshima, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetarō Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Toshio Shiratori, Shigenori Tōgō, Hideki Tōjō, Yoshijirō Umezu |
A minor clash between the Chinese National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army at the Marco Polo Bridge Incident
on 6–9 July 1937 escalated into a full-scale war after Japan used the
incident as a pretext to launch an all-out invasion of China to conquer
as much territory as possible. |
Nanking Massacre,[23] China, 1937–38 |
Crimes against humanity; War crimes |
General Asaka Yasuhiko, commander, Japanese Shanghai Expeditionary Force, Imperial Japanese Army. General Iwane Matsui, Commanding general of Japanese forces in China, Imperial Japanese Army. Lieutenant General Hisao Tani, commanding officer of the Japanese 10th Army, Imperial Japanese Army. Chief of staff of the Army Kotohito Kan'in, Minister of War Hajime Sugiyama. It is debated how culpable Emperor Hirohito was. |
After the Battle of Nanking,
on 13 December 1937, the Japanese entered and occupied the city
virtually resistance free. From then for a period of about 6 weeks
after, until early February 1938, widespread war crimes were committed including mass rape, looting, arson, the killing of civilians and prisoners of war. Most estimates put deaths at between 150,000 and 300,000 dead. |
Battle of Wuhan, China, 1938 |
Use of chemical weapons on the battlefield |
No prosecutions |
During the Battle of Wuhan, the IJA launched 9,667 red gas artillery shells and 32,162 red gas grenades against Chinese forces over 375 times in total from August to October 1938.[24]
The use of poison gas by the IJA was in violation of the 1899 Hague
Declaration (IV, 2) which prohibited the launching of projectiles
containing asphyxiating or poisonous gas[25] and Article 23 (a) of the 1907 Hague Convention IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land which prohibited the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare.[26] Japan was a signatory to these both agreements.[27][28] |
Hankow massacre, China, 1938 |
War crimes (Mass execution of POWs) |
General Shunroku Hata, commander, China Expeditionary Army, Imperial Japanese Army. |
War crimes were committed including the killing of civilians and prisoners of war.[29] |
1939–1945: World War II
Axis powers
The
Axis Powers
(particularly Germany and Japan) were perhaps some of the most
systematic perpetrators of war crimes in modern history. Contributing
factors included
Nazi
race theory, a desire for "living space" that justified the eradication
of native populations, and militaristic indoctrination that encouraged
the terrorization of conquered peoples and
prisoners of war. The
Holocaust, the German attack on the Soviet Union and occupation of much of Europe, the Japanese occupation of
Manchuria
and the Philippines and attack on China all contributed to well over
half of the civilian deaths in World War II and the conflicts that led
up to the war. Even before post-war revelations of atrocities, both
militaries were notorious for their brutal treatment of captured
combatants.
Crimes perpetrated by Germany
According to the
Nuremberg Trials,
there were four major war crimes that were alleged against German
military (and Waffen-SS and NSDAP) men and officers, each with
individual events that made up the major charges.
1. Participation in a common plan of conspiracy for the accomplishment of crimes against peace
2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace
3. War Crimes Atrocities against enemy combatants or conventional crimes committed by military units (see
War crimes of the Wehrmacht), and include:
- Invasion of Poland,
in the period of 1 September - 25 October 1939 German forces during
their military actions engaged in executions of Polish POWs, bombed
hospitals, murdered civilians, shot refugees, executed wounded soldiers.
The cautious estimates give a number of at least 16,000 murdered
victims[30]
- Pacification Operations in German occupied Poland,
during the occupation of Poland by German Reich, Wehrmacht forces took
part in several pacification actions in rural areas, that resulted in
murder of at least 20,000 Polish villagers
- Le Paradis massacre, May 1940, British soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. Fritz Knoechlein tried, found guilty and hanged.
- Wormhoudt massacre, May 1940, British and French soldiers captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. No one found guilty of the crime.
- d'Ardenne Massacres, June 1944 Canadian soldiers captured by the SS and murdered by 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. SS General Kurt Meyer (Panzermeyer) sentenced to be shot 1946; sentence commuted; released 1954
- Malmedy massacre, December 1944, United States POWs captured by Kampfgruppe Peiper were murdered outside Malmedy, Belgium.
- Gardelegen (war crime) the German SS forced 1,016 slave laborers who were part of a transport evacuated from the Mittelbau-Dora
labor camp into a large barn which was then lit on fire. Most of the
prisoners were burned alive; some were shot trying to escape.
- Marzabotto massacre,
the German SS killing of at least 770 civilians of Marzabotto as a
collective punishment for their support of Italian partisans and the Italian resistance movement
- Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre
committed in the hill village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany,
Italy, in the course of an operation against the Italian resistance
movement during the Italian Campaign of World War II. 560 local
villagers and refugees were murdered and their bodies burnt in a
scorched earth policy action by the Nazis.
- Cefalonia Massacre
mass execution of the men of the Italian 33rd Acqui Infantry Division
by the Germans on the island of Cephalonia, Greece, after the Italian armistice
- Oradour-sur-Glane
On 10 June 1944, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Haute-Vienne in
then Nazi occupied France was destroyed, when 642 of its inhabitants,
including women and children, were massacred by a Nazi Waffen-SS
company.
- The annihilation of the Czech city of Lidice, as an act of vengeance for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.
- Massacre of Kalavryta
refers to the extermination of the male population and the total
destruction of the town of Kalavryta, in Greece, by German occupying
forces during World War II, on 13 December 1943.
- Distomo massacre
perpetrated by members of the Waffen-SS in the village of Distomo,
Greece, during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II.
- Kragujevac massacre was a Nazi war crime in which Serbs, Jews and Roma men and boys in Kragujevac, Serbia, were murdered by German Wehrmacht soldiers on 20 and 21 October 1941.
- The suppression of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and subsequent leveling of the whole city
- The treatment of Soviet POWs throughout the war, who were not given the protections and guarantees of the Geneva Convention unlike other Allied prisoners. Nazi crimes against Soviet POWs, resulted in some 3.3 million to 3.5 million deaths, about 60% of all Soviet POWs.[31]
- Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping
- Commando Order which stated that Allied combatants encountered during commando
operations were to be executed immediately upon capture and without
trial, even if they were properly uniformed, unarmed, or intending to
surrender.
- Commissar Order, an order stating that Soviet political commissars found among captured troops were to be executed immediately.
- Vinkt Massacre in May 1940 at least 86 civilians in Vinkt were killed by the German Wehrmacht
- Heusden; town hall massacre (November 1944).
- German war crimes during the Battle of Moscow
4. Crimes against Humanity Crimes committed well away from the lines of battle and unconnected in any way to military activity, distinct from war crimes
- The major crime was the Holocaust, including:
- The construction and use of Vernichtungslagern (extermination camps) to commit genocide, most prominently at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Bełżec, Sobibór, and Chełmno
- The employment of other concentration camps across Europe, including Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen and Bergen-Belsen, which held Soviet POWs and political prisoners in inhuman conditions, and transported Jews and Roma to extermination camps
- Death marches of prisoners, particularly in the last months of the war when the aforementioned camps were being overrun by the Allies
- The widespread use of slave labor and forced/unfree labor by the Nazi regime, including the use of concentration camp and extermination camp prisoners as slaves, often with the intent of extermination through labor
- The establishment of Jewish Ghettos in Eastern Europe intended to isolate Jewish communities for deportation and subsequent extermination
- The use of SS Einsatzgruppen, mobile extermination squads, to exterminate Jews and anti-nazi "partisans"
- Babi Yar
a series of massacres in Kiev, the most notorious and the best
documented of these massacres took place on 29–30 September 1941,
wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation. The decision to
kill all the Jews in Kiev was made by the military governor,
Major-General Kurt Eberhard, the Police Commander for Army Group South,
SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, and the Einsatzgruppe C
Commander Otto Rasch. It was carried out by Sonderkommando 4a soldiers,
along with the aid of the SD and SS Police Battalions backed by the
local police.
- Rumbula
a collective term for incidents on two non-consecutive days (November
30 and December 8, 1941) in which about 25,000 Jews were killed in or on
the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during the Holocaust
- Ninth Fort
By the order of SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger and SS-Rottenführer
Helmut Rauca, the Sonderkommando under the leadership of
SS-Obersturmführer Joachim Hamann, and 8 to 10 men from Einsatzkommando
3, in collaboration with Lithuanian partisans, murdered 2,007 Jewish
men, 2,920 women, and 4,273 children in a single day at the Ninth Fort,
Kaunas, Lithuania.
- Simferopol Germans perpetrated one of the largest war-time massacres in Simferopol, killing in total over 22,000 locals—mostly Jews, Russians, Krymchaks, and Gypsies.[32] On one occasion, starting December 9, 1941, the Einsatzgruppen D under Otto Ohlendorf's command killed an estimated 14,300 Simferopol residents, most of them being Jews.[33]
- The massacre of 100,000 Jews and Poles at Paneriai
- The suppression of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising which erupted when the SS came to clear the Jewish ghetto and send all of the occupants to extermination camps
- Izieu Massacre
Izieu was the site of a Jewish orphanage during the Second World War.
On 6 April 1944, three vehicles pulled up in front of the orphanage. The
Gestapo, under the direction of the 'Butcher of Lyon' Klaus Barbie,
entered the orphanage and forcibly removed the forty-four children and
their seven supervisors, throwing the crying and terrified children on
to the trucks. Following the raid on their home in Izieu, the children
were shipped directly to the "collection center" in Drancy, then put on
the first available train towards the concentration camps in the East.
Other crimes against humanity included:
- The Porajmos, the mass killings of the Romany peoples of Europe by the Nazis
- The Łapanka or "Catching Game", – Nazi roundups of Poles in the major cities for slave labor
- Nikolaev Massacre, which resulted in the deaths of 35,782 Soviet citizens, most of whom were Jews.
- Operation Tannenberg, the AB Action and the Massacre of Lwów professors, all Nazi actions in Poland meant to mass murder the Polish intelligentsia and other potential leaders of resistance.
- Both "encouraging" and "compelling" abortion, prosecuted as a crime
against the child in the womb. The crime consisted of three parts: (a)
providing abortion services, (b) withdrawing the protection of German
law from the unborn child, (c) refusing to enforce existing Polish law
prohibiting abortion.[34][35]
- The Nazi T-4 Euthanasia Program,
an aborted eugenics program meant to kill German children who were
mentally or physically handicapped. 200,000 people were murdered due to
this program.
At least 10 million, and perhaps over 20 million perished directly
and indirectly due to the commission of crimes against humanity and war
crimes by the Nazi regime, of which the Holocaust lives on in particular
infamy, for its particularly cruel nature and scope, and the
industrialized nature of the genocide of Jewish citizens of states
invaded or controlled by the Nazi regime. At least 5.9 million
Jews
were murdered by the Nazis, or 66 to 78% of Europe's Jewish population,
although a complete count may never be known. Though much of
Continental Europe suffered under the Nazi occupation, Poland, in
particular, was the state most devastated by these crimes, with 90% of
its Jews as well as many ethnic Poles slaughtered by the Nazis. After
the war, from 1945 to 1949, the Nazi regime was put on trial in two
tribunals in
Nuremberg, Germany by the victorious
Allied powers. The
first tribunal indicted 24 major Nazi war criminals, and resulted in 19
convictions (of which 12 led to
death sentences) and 3
acquittals, 2 of the accused died before a verdict was rendered, at least one of which by killing himself with cyanide.
[36] The
second tribunal
indicted 185 members of the military, economic, and political
leadership of Nazi Germany, of which 142 were convicted and 35 were
acquitted. In subsequent decades, approximately 20 additional war
criminals who escaped capture in the immediate aftermath of World War II
were tried in
West Germany and Israel. In Germany and many other European nations, the Nazi Party and denial of the Holocaust is outlawed.
Crimes perpetrated by Hungary
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Novi Sad massacre[37][38] |
Crimes against humanity |
After the war, most of the preparators were convicted by the People's Tribunal. The leaders of the massacre, Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner, József Grassy and Márton Zöldy were sentenced to death and later extradited to Yugoslavia, together with Ferenc Szombathelyi, Lajos Gaál, Miklós Nagy, Ferenc Bajor, Ernő Bajsay-Bauer and Pál Perepatics. After a trial at Novi Sad, all of them were sentenced to death and executed. |
4,211 civilians (2,842 Serbs, 1,250 Jews, 64 Roma, 31 Rusyns, 13
Russians and 11 ethnic Hungarians) rounded up and killed by Hungarian
troops in reprisal for resistance activities. |
Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre[39][40] |
Crimes against humanity; Crime of Genocide |
After the war, the preparator of the massacre, Friedrich Jeckeln was sentenced to death and executed in the Soviet Union. |
14000-16000 Jews were deported by Hungarian troops to
Kamianets-Podilskyi to be executed by SS troops. Part of the first
large-scale mass murder in pursuit of the "Final Solution". |
Sarmasu massacre[41][42] |
Crimes against humanity |
The People's Tribunal at Cluj sentenced to death 7 Hungarian officer in absentia, two local Hungarian were sentenced to imprisonment. |
Torture and killing of 126 Jews by Hungarian troops in the village of Sarmasu. |
Treznea massacre [43] |
Crimes against humanity |
The People's Tribunal at Cluj sentenced to death Ferenc Bay in absentia, 3 local Hungarian were sentenced to imprisonment, 2 person were acquitted. |
93 to 236 Romanian and Jewish civilians (depending on sources)
executed as reprisal for alleged attacks from locals on the Hungarian
troops. |
Ip massacre [43] |
Crimes against humanity |
A Hungarian officer was sentenced to death by the People's Tribunal
at Cluj in absentia, 13 local Hungarian was sentenced to imprisonment, 2
person were acquitted. |
150 Romanian civilians executed by Hungarian rogue troops and
paramilitary formations as reprisal for the death of two Hungarian
soldiers in an explosion. |
Hegyeshalom death march [44][45] |
Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide |
After the war most of the responsibles were sentenced by the Hungarian people's tribunals, including the whole Szálasi-government |
About 10,000 Budapest Jews died as a result of exhaustion and
executions while marching toward Hegyeshalom at the Austrian border. |
Crimes perpetrated by Italy
- Invasion of Abyssinia: Waging a war of aggression for territorial
aggrandizement, War crimes, Use of poisons as weapons, Crimes against
humanity; in violation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the customary law
of nations, Italy invaded the Kingdom of Abyssinia in 1936 without
cause cognizable by the law of nations, and waged a war of annihilation
against Ethiopian resistance, using poisons against military forces and
civilian persons alike, not giving quarter to POWs who had surrendered,
and massacring civilians.
- Invasion of Albania: Waging a war of aggression for territorial
aggrandizement; Italy invaded the Kingdom of Albania in 1939 without
cause cognizable by the law of nations in a brief but bloody affair that
saw King Zog deposed and an Italian proconsul installed in his place.
Italy subsequently acted as the suzerain of Albania until its ultimate
liberation later in World War II.
- Invasion of Yugoslavia: Aerial bombardment of civilian population; Concentration camps (Rab, Gonars)
- No one has been brought to trial for war crimes, although in 1950
the former Italian defense minister was convicted for collaboration with
Nazi Germany.
Crimes perpetrated by Japan
This section includes war crimes from 7 December 1941 when the United
States was attacked by Japan so entering World War II. For war crimes
before this date which took place during the Second Sino-Japanese War
please see the section above called
1937–1945: Second Sino-Japanese War.
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
World War II[citation needed] |
Crimes against peace
(Overall waging and/or conspiracy to wage a war of aggression for
territorial aggrandizement, as established by the Tokyo Trials) |
General Doihara Kenji, Baron Hirota Koki, General Seishirō Itagaki, General Kimura Heitaro, General Matsui Iwane, General Muto Akira, General Hideki Tōjō, General Araki Sadao, Colonel Hashimoto Kingoro, Field Marshal Hata Shunroku, Baron Hiranuma Kiichiro, Hoshino Naoki, Kaya Okinori, Marquis Kido Kōichi, General Koiso Kuniaki, General Minami Jiro, Admiral Oka Takasumi, General Oshima Hiroshi, General Sato Kenryo, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, Shiratori Toshio, General Suzuki Teiichi, General Yoshijirō Umezu, Togo Shigenori, Shigemitsu Mamoru |
The persons responsible were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. |
Attack on the United States in 1941[23] |
Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the United States (count 29 at the Tokyo Trials)[23] |
Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Hiranuma Kiichirō, Naoki Hoshino, Seishirō Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Kōichi Kido, Heitarō Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Mutō, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetarō Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Tōgō, Hideki Tōjō, Yoshijirō Umezu[23] |
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet was ordered by his militarist superiors to start the war with a bloody sneak attack on a U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. The attack was in violation of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, which prohibited war of aggression,
and the 1907 Hague Convention (III), which prohibited the initiation of
hostilities without explicit warning, since the U.S. was officially
neutral and was attacked without a declaration of war or an ultimatum at that time.[46] In addition, Japan violated the Four-Power Treaty by attacking and invading the U.S. territories of Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines which began simultaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor. |
Attack on the British Commonwealth in 1941[23] |
Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the British Commonwealth (count 31 at the Tokyo Trials)[23] |
Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Hiranuma Kiichirō, Naoki Hoshino, Seishirō Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Kōichi Kido, Heitarō Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Mutō, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetarō Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Tōgō, Hideki Tōjō, Yoshijirō Umezu[23] |
Simultaneously with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 (Honolulu time), Japan invaded the British colonies of Malaya and bombed Singapore and Hong Kong,
without a declaration of war or an ultimatum, which was in violation of
the 1907 Hague Convention (III) and the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact since
Britain was officially neutral with Japan at the time.[47][48] |
|
Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the Netherlands (count 32 at the Tokyo Trials)[23] |
Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Hiranuma Kiichirō, Naoki Hoshino, Seishirō Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Kōichi Kido, Heitarō Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Mutō, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetarō Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Tōgō, Hideki Tōjō, Yoshijirō Umezu[23] |
|
|
Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against France in Indochina (count 33 at the Tokyo Trials)[23] |
Mamoru Shigemitsu, Hideki Tōjō[23] |
|
|
Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the USSR (counts 35 and 36 or both at the Tokyo Trials)[23] |
Kenji Doihara, Hiranuma Kiichirō, Seishirō Itagaki[23] |
|
Nanjing Massacre; Narcotics Trafficking; Bacteriological Warfare [23] |
War crimes ("ordered, authorized, and permitted" inhumane treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs) and others (count 54 at the Tokyo Trials)[23] |
Kenji Doihara, Seishirō Itagaki, Heitarō Kimura, Akira Mutō, Hideki Tōjō[23] |
|
Nanjing Massacre; Narcotics Trafficking; Bacteriological Warfare [23] |
War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Crime of torture ("deliberately
and recklessly disregarded their duty" to take adequate steps to
prevent atrocities (count 55 at the Tokyo Trials)[23] |
Shunroku Hata, Kōki Hirota, Heitarō Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Iwane Matsui, Akira Mutō, Mamoru Shigemitsu[23] |
"Black Christmas", Hong Kong, December 25, 1941,[49] |
Crimes against humanity (Murder of civilians; mass rape, looting) |
no specific prosecutions, although the conviction and execution of Takashi Sakai included some activities in Hong Kong during the time frame |
On the day of the British surrender of Hong Kong to the Japanese,
Japanese soldiers also terrorised the local population by murdering
many, raping an estimated 10,000 women, and looting. |
Banka Island Massacre, Dutch East Indies, 1942 |
War crimes |
no prosecutions |
The merchant ship Vyner Brooke was sunk by Japanese aircraft.
The survivors who made it to Banka Island were all shot or bayonetted,
including 22 nurses ordered into the sea and machine-gunned. One nurse Vivian Bullwinkel survived the massacre and later testified at a war crimes trial in Tokyo in 1947[50] |
Bataan Death March, Philippines, 1942 |
Crime of torture, war crimes (Torture and murder of POWs) |
General Masaharu Homma
was convicted by an Allied commission of war crimes, including the
atrocities of the death march out of Bataan, and the atrocities at Camp O'Donnell and Cabanatuan that followed. He was executed on April 3, 1946 outside Manila. |
Approximately 75,000 Filipino and US soldiers, commanded by Major General Edward P. King,
Jr. formally surrendered to the Japanese, under General Masaharu Homma,
on April 9, 1942, which forced Japan to accept emaciated captives
outnumbering them. Captives were forced to march, beginning the next
day, about 100 kilometers north to Nueva Ecija to Camp O'Donnell, a prison camp.
Prisoners of war were beaten randomly and denied food and water for
several days. Those who fell behind were executed through various means:
shot, beheaded or bayoneted. Deaths estimated at 650-1,500 U.S. and
2,000 to over 5,000 Filipino-,[51][52] |
Enemy Airmen's Act |
War crimes (Murder of POWs) |
General Shunroku Hata |
Promulgated on August 13, 1942 to try and execute captured Allied
airmen taking part in bombing operations against targets in
Japanese-held territory. The Act contributed to the murder of hundreds of Allied airmen throughout the Pacific War. |
Operation Sankō (Three Alls Policy) |
Crimes against humanity |
General Yasuji Okamura |
Authorized in December 1941 to implement a scorched earth policy in North China by Imperial General Headquarters.
According to historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta, "more than 2.7 million"
civilians were killed in this operation that began in May 1942.[53] |
Parit Sulong massacre, Malaysia, 1942 |
War crimes (Murder of POWs) |
Lieutenant General Takuma Nishimura, was convicted for this crime by an Australian Military Court and hanged on June 11, 1951.[54] |
Recently captured Australian and Indian POWs, who had been too badly
wounded to escape through the jungle, were murdered by Japanese
soldiers. Accounts differ on how they were killed. Two wounded
Australians managed to escape the massacre and provide eyewitness
accounts of the Japanese treatment of wounded prisoners of war, as did
locals who witnessed the massacre. Official records indicate that 150
wounded men were killed. |
Laha massacre, 1942 |
War crimes (Murder of POWs) |
In 1946, the Laha massacre and other incidents which followed the
fall of Ambon became the subject of the largest ever war crimes trial,
when 93 Japanese personnel were tried by an Australian tribunal, at
Ambon. Among other convictions, four men were executed as a result. Commander Kunito Hatakeyama, who was in direct command of the four massacres, was hanged; Rear Admiral Koichiro Hatakeyama, who was found to have ordered the killings, died before he could be tried.[55] |
After the battle Battle of Ambon, more than 300 Australian and Dutch prisoners of war were chosen at random and summarily executed,
at or near Laha airfield in four separate massacres. "The Laha massacre
was the largest of the atrocities committed against captured Allied
troops in 1942.".[56] |
Palawan Massacre, 1944 |
War crimes (Murder of POWs) |
In 1948, in Lt. Gen. Seiichi Terada was accused of failing to take
command of the soldiers in the Puerto Princesa camp. Master Sgt. Toru
Ogawa and Superior Private Tomisaburo Sawa were the only few soldiers
who were charged for the actual involvement since most of the soldiers
garrisoned in the camp had either died or went missing in the days
following the victory of the Philippines campaign. In 1958, all charges
were dropped and sentences were reduced. |
Following the US invasion of Luzon in 1944, the Japanese high
command ordered that all POWs remaining in the island are to be
exterminated at all cost. As a result, on December 14, 1944, units from
the Japanese Fourteenth Area Army
stationed in the Puerto Princesa POW camp in Palawan rounded up 150
remaining POWs still garrisoned in the camp, herded them into air raid
shelters, before dousing the shelters with gasoline and setting it on
fire. Of the handful of POWs that were able to escape the flames were
hunted before being gunned down, bayonetted, or burned alive. Only 11
POWs survived the ordeal and were able to escape to allied lines to
report the incident.[57] |
Alexandra Hospital massacre, Battle of Singapore, 1942 |
War crimes |
no prosecutions |
At about 1pm on February 14, Japanese soldiers approached Alexandra
Barracks Hospital. Although no resistance was offered, some of them shot
or bayoneted staff members and patients. The remaining staff and patients were murdered over the next two days, 200 in all.[58] |
Sook Ching Massacre, 1942 |
Crimes against humanity (mass murder of civilians) |
In 1947, the British Colonial authorities in Singapore held a war crimes
trial to bring the perpetrators to justice. Seven officers, were
charged with carrying out the massacre. While Lieutenant General Saburo Kawamura, Lieutenant Colonel Masayuki Oishi received the death penalty, the other five received life sentences |
The massacre (estimated at 25,000-50,000)[59] was a systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among the Chinese in Singapore by the Japanese military administration during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, after the British colony surrendered in the Battle of Singapore on 15 February 1942. |
Changjiao massacre, China, 1943 |
Crimes against humanity, War crimes (Mass murder of civilian population & POWs, rape, looting) |
General Shunroku Hata, commander, China Expeditionary Army, Imperial Japanese Army. |
War crimes were committed including mass rape, looting, arson, the killing of civilians and prisoners of war.[60][61][62] |
Manila Massacre |
Crimes against humanity (mass murder of civilians) |
Tomoyuki Yamashita commander, Akira Mutō chief of staff |
As commander of the 14th Area Army of Japan in the Philippines, Gen. Yamashita failed to stop his troops from killing over 100,000 Filipino citizens of Manila[63] while fighting with both native resistance forces and elements of the Sixth U.S. Army
during the capture of the city in February 1945. Yamashita pleaded
inability to act and lack of knowledge of the massacre, due to his
commanding other operations in the area. The defense failed,
establishing the Yamashita Standard,
which holds that a commander who makes no meaningful effort to uncover
and stop atrocities is as culpable as if he had ordered them. His chief
of staff Akira Mutō was condemned by the Tokyo tribunal. |
Wake Island Massacre |
War crimes |
98 US Civilians killed on Wake Island October 7, 1943 by order of Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara |
Shigematsu Sakaibara executed June 18, 1947; subordinate, Lieutenant-Commander Tachibana sentenced to death-later commuted to Life |
Unit 100[citation needed] |
War crimes; Use of poisons as weapons (biological warfare experiments on humans) |
no prosecutions |
|
Unit 731 |
Crimes against humanity; War crimes; Crime of torture; Use of
poisons as weapons (biological warfare testing, manufacturing, and use) |
12 members of the Kantogun were found guilty for the manufacture and
use of biological weapons. Including: General Yamada Otsuzo, former
Commander-in-Chief of the Kwantung Army and Major General Kawashima
Kiyoshi, former Chief of Unit 731. |
During this biological and chemical weapons' program over 10,000
were experimented on without anesthetic and as many as 200,000 died
throughout China. The Soviet Union tried some members of Unit 731 at the
Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. However, those who surrendered to the Americans were never brought to trial as General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing the United States with their research on biological weapons.[64] |
Unit 8604[citation needed] |
War crimes; Use of poisons as weapons (biological warfare experiments on humans) |
no prosecutions |
|
Unit 9420[citation needed] |
War crimes; Use of poisons as weapons (biological warfare experiments on humans) |
no prosecutions |
|
Unit Ei 1644[citation needed] |
War crimes; Use of poisons as weapons; Crime of torture (Human
vivisection & chemical and biological weapon testing on humans) |
no prosecutions |
Unit 1644 conducted tests to determine human susceptibility to a
variety of harmful stimuli ranging from infectious diseases to poison
gas. It was the largest germ experimentation center in China. Unit 1644
regularly carried out human vivisections as well as infecting humans with cholera, typhus, and bubonic plague. |
Construction of Burma-Thai Railway, the "Death Railway"[citation needed] |
War crimes; Crimes against humanity (Crime of Slaving) |
no prosecutions |
The estimated total number of civilian labourers and POWs who died during construction is about 160,000. |
Comfort Women |
Crimes against humanity; (Crime of Slaving; mass rape) |
no prosecutions |
Up to around 200,000 women were forced to work in Japanese military brothels.[65] |
Sandakan Death Marches |
Crimes against humanity (Crime of Slaving), War crimes (Murder of civilian slave laborers and POWs) |
Three Allied POWs survived to give evidence at war crimes trials in Tokyo and Rabaul. Hokijima was found guilty and hanged on April 6, 1946 |
Over 6,000 Indonesian civilian slave laborers and POWs died. |
War Crimes in Manchukuo |
Crimes against humanity (Crime of Slaving) |
Kōa-in |
According to historian Zhifen Ju, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Imperial Japanese Army for slave labor in Manchukuo under the supervision of the Kōa-in.[66] |
Kaimingye germ weapon attack[citation needed] |
War crimes, Use of poisons as weapons (Use of biological weapons) |
no prosecutions |
These bubonic plague attacks killing hundreds were a joint Unit 731 and Unit Ei 1644 endeavor. |
Alleged Changde Bacteriological Weapon Attack April and May, 1943 |
War crimes; Use of poisons as weapons (Use of chemical and biological weapons in massacre of civilians) |
Prosecutions at the Khabarovsk War Crimes Trials |
Chemical weapons supplied by Unit 516. Bubonic plague and poison gas were used against civilians in Chengde, followed by further massacres and burning of the city.[67] Witold Urbanowicz, a Polish pilot fighting in China, estimated that nearly 300,000 civilians alone died in the battle. |
Crimes perpetrated by Romania
Incident |
type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Iași pogrom[68] |
Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide |
57 people were tried and sentenced in the People's Tribunals Iaşi trial [69]
including General Emanoil Leoveanu, General Gheorghe Barozzi, General
Stamatiu, former Iași Prefect Colonel Coculescu, former Iași Mayor
Colonel Captaru, and Gavrilovici Constantin (former driver at the Iași
bus depot). |
resulted in the murder of at least 13,266 Jews |
Odessa massacre[70] |
Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide |
28 people were tried and sentenced in the People's Tribunals Odessa trial [69] including General Nicolae Macici |
The mass murder of Jewish and Romani population of Odessa and
surrounding towns in Transnistria (now in Ukraine) during the autumn of
1941 and winter of 1942 while under Romanian control.Depending on the
accepted terms of reference and scope, the Odessa massacre refers either
to the events of October 22–24, 1941 in which some 25,000 to 34,000
Jews were shot or burned, or to the murder of well over 100,000
Ukrainian Jews in the town and the areas between the Dniester and Bug
rivers, during the Romanian and German occupation. In the same days,
Germans and Romanians killed about 15,000 Romani people. |
Aita Seaca massacre[71] |
War crime |
Gavril Olteanu |
Retaliation by Romanian paramilitaries for the locals killing of 20
Romanian soldiers on September 4, 1944. Eleven ethnic Hungarian
civilians executed on September 26, 1944. |
Crimes perpetrated by the Chetniks
Chetnik ideology revolved around the notion of a
Greater Serbia
within the borders of Yugoslavia, to be created out of all territories
in which Serbs were found, even if the numbers were small. A directive
dated 20 December 1941, addressed to newly appointed commanders in
Montenegro, Major Đorđije Lašić and Captain Pavle Đurišić, outlined,
among other things, the cleansing of all non-Serb elements in order to
create a Greater Serbia:
- The struggle for the liberty of our whole nation under the scepter of His Majesty King Peter II;
- the creation of a Great Yugoslavia and within it of a Great Serbia which is to be ethnically pure and is to include Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Srijem, the Banat, and Bačka;
- the struggle for the inclusion into Yugoslavia of all still unliberated Slovene territories under the Italians and Germans (Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, and Carinthia) as well as Bulgaria, and northern Albania with Skadar;
- the cleansing of the state territory of all national minorities and a-national elements;
- the creation of contiguous frontiers between Serbia and Montenegro, as well as between Serbia and Slovenia by cleansing the Muslim population from Sandžak and the Muslim and Croat populations from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
— Directive of 20 December 1941
Chetniks in
Šumadija kill a Partisan through heart extraction
The Chetniks systemically massacred Muslims in villages that they captured.
In late autumn of 1941 the Italians handed over the towns of Višegrad,
Goražde, Foča and the surrounding areas, in south-east Bosnia to the
Chetniks to run as a puppet administration and NDH forces were compelled
by the Italians to withdraw from there. After the Chetniks gained control of
Goražde
on 29 November 1941, they began a massacre of Home Guard prisoners and
NDH officials that became a systematic massacre of the local Muslim
civilian population. Several hundred Muslims were murdered and their bodies were left hanging in the town or thrown into the Drina river. On 5 December 1941, the Chetniks received the town of
Foča from the Italians and proceeded to massacre around five hundred Muslims. Additional massacres against the Muslims in the area of Foča took place in August 1942. In total, over two thousand people were killed in Foča. In early January, the Chetniks entered
Srebrenica and killed around a thousand Muslim civilians in the town and in nearby villages. Around the same time the Chetniks made their way to
Višegrad where deaths were reportedly in the thousands. Massacres continued in the following months in the region. In the village of
Žepa alone about three hundred were killed in late 1941. In early January, Chetniks massacred fifty-four Muslims in
Čelebić and burned down the village. On 3 March, the Chetniks burned forty-two Muslim villagers to death in Drakan.
In early January 1943 and again in early February, Montenegrin
Chetnik units were ordered to carry out "cleansing actions" against
Muslims, first in the
Bijelo Polje county in Sandžak and then in February in the
Čajniče county and part of Foča county in southeastern Bosnia, and in part of the
Pljevlja county in Sandžak.
Pavle Đurišić,
the officer in charge of these operations, reported to Mihailović,
Chief of Staff of the Supreme Command, that on 10 January 1943:
"thirty-three Muslim villages had been burned down, and 400 Muslim
fighters (members of the Muslim self-protection militia supported by the
Italians) and about 1,000 women and children had been killed, as
against 14 Chetnik dead and 26 wounded".
In another report sent by Đurišić dated 13 February 1943, he reported
that: "Chetniks killed about 1,200 Muslim fighters and about 8,000 old
people, women, and children; Chetnik losses in the action were 22 killed
and 32 wounded". He added that "during the operation the total destruction of the Muslim inhabitants was carried out regardless of sex and age". The total number of deaths caused by the anti-Muslim operations between January and February 1943 is estimated at 10,000. The casualty rate would have been higher had a great number of Muslims not already fled the area, most to
Sarajevo, when the February action began.
According to a statement from the Chetnik Supreme Command from February
24, 1943, these were countermeasures taken against Muslim aggressive
activities; however, all circumstances show that these massacres were
committed in accordance with implementing the directive of December 20,
1941.
Actions against the Croats were of a smaller scale but similar in action. One of the worst Chetnik outbursts against the Croat population of Dalmatia took place in early October 1942 in the village of
Gata near
Split,
in which an estimated one hundred people were killed and many homes
were burnt in a reprisal taken against the people of Gata and nearby
villages for the destruction of some roads in the area and carried out
on the Italians account.
In that same October, formations under the command of Petar Baćović and
Dobroslav Jevđević, who were participating in the Italian
Operation Alfa in the area of
Prozor, massacred over five hundred Croats and Muslims and burnt numerous villages. Baćović noted that "Our Chetniks killed all men 15 years of age or older. ... Seventeen villages were burned to the ground." Mario Roatta, commander of the
Italian Second Army,
objected to these "massive slaughters" of noncombatant civilians and
threatened to halt Italian aid to the Chetniks if they did not end.
Crimes perpetrated by the Ustashas
Numerous concentration camps were built in
Independent State of Croatia, most notably
Jasenovac (in Croatian: Logor Jasenovac in Serbian: Логор Јасеновац / Logor Jasenovac), the largest, where hundreds of thousands of
Serbs,
Gypsies (Roma),
Jews and Croatian dissidents died. It was established by the
Ustaša
regime of the Independent State of Croatia in August 1941 and not
dismantled until April 1945, shortly before the end of the war. Other
concentration camps were in
Gospić,
Pag,
Đakovo,
Jastrebarsko and
Lepoglava.
According to the
Simon Wiesenthal Center (citing the
Encyclopedia of the Holocaust), "Ustasa terrorists killed 500,000 Serbs, expelled 250,000 and forced 250,000 to convert to
Roman Catholicism. They murdered thousands of Jews and Gypsies."
[82]
Jasenovac was a complex of five subcamps and three smaller camps
spread out over 240 square kilometers (93 sq mi), in relatively close
proximity to each other, on the bank of the Sava river. Most of the camp
was at
Jasenovac, about 100 km (62 mi) southeast of
Zagreb. The complex also included large grounds at Donja Gradina directly across the
Sava River, a camp for children in
Sisak to the northwest, and a women's camp in
Stara Gradiška to the southeast.
Ante Pavelić,
leader of the Ustasha, fled to Argentina and Spain which gave him
protection, and was never extradited to stand trial for his war crimes.
Allied powers
Crimes perpetrated by the Soviet Union
Concurrent with World War II |
Incident |
type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Katyń massacre |
War crimes (Murder of Polish intelligentsia) |
Lavrenty Beria, Joseph Stalin[83][84][85] |
An NKVD-committed
massacre of tens of thousands of Polish officers and intelligentsia
throughout the spring of 1940. Originally believed to have been
committed by the Nazis in 1941 (after the invasion of eastern Poland and the USSR), it was finally admitted by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that it had been a Soviet operation. |
Invasion of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia |
War crimes |
Vladimir Dekanozov, Andrey Vyshinsky, Andrei Zhdanov, Ivan Serov, Joseph Stalin |
An NKVD-committed
deportation of hundreds of thousands of Baltic intelligentsia, land
holders and their families in June 1941 and again in January 1949. |
Nemmersdorf massacre, East Prussia |
War crimes |
No prosecutions |
Nemmersdorf (today Mayakovskoye in Kaliningrad) was one of the first German settlements to fall to the advancing Red Army
on October 22, 1944. It was recaptured by the Germans soon afterwards
and the German authorities reported that the Red Army killed civilians
there. Nazi
propaganda widely disseminated the description of the event with
horrible details, supposedly to boost the determination of German
soldiers to resist the general Soviet advance. Because the incident was
investigated by the Nazis and reports were disseminated as Nazi
propaganda, discerning the facts from the fiction of the incident is
difficult. |
Invasion of East Prussia |
War crimes |
|
War crimes committed by Soviet troops in the areas of Germany
occupied by the Red Army. Estimated number of civilian victims in the
years 1944-46: at least 300,000 (but not all of them victims of war
crimes, many died through starvation, the cold climate and diseases)[86][87][88] |
Treuenbrietzen |
War crimes |
|
Following the capture of the German city of Treuenbrietzen after
fierce fighting. Over a period of several days at the end of April and
beginning of May roughly 1000 inhabitants of the city, most of them men,
were executed by Soviet troops.[89] |
Battle of Berlin |
War crimes (Mass rape)[90] |
|
|
Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II,
Expulsion of Germans after World War I I |
War crimes, Crimes against humanity (mass expulsion) |
[citation needed] |
War crimes committed by Soviet troops in the areas of Germany
occupied by the Red Army (Eastern and Central Germany), in addition to
ethnic-German populations of German controlled, Poland, Czechoslovakia
and Hungary. Estimated number of civilian victims in the years 1944-46:
at least 300,000 (but not all of them victims of war crimes, many died
through starvation, the cold climate and diseases[86][87][88] |
Crimes perpetrated by the United Kingdom
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping |
Breach of London Naval Treaty (1930) |
no prosecutions; Allied representatives admitted responsibility at Nuremberg Trials; questionable whether war crime or a breach of a treaty. |
It was the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials of Karl Dönitz
that Britain had been in breach of the Treaty "in particular of an
order of the British Admiralty announced on 8 May 1940, according to
which all vessels should be sunk at sight in the Skagerrak."[91] |
HMS Torbay incident |
War crimes (Murder of shipwreck survivors) |
no prosecutions |
In July 1941, the submarine HMS Torbay (under the command of Anthony Miers) was based in the Mediterranean where it sank several German ships. On two occasions, once off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, and the other off the coast of Crete,
the crew attacked and killed dozens of shipwrecked German sailors and
troops. None of the shipwrecked survivors posed a major threat to Torbay's
crew. Miers made no attempt to hide his actions, and reported them in
his official logs. He received a strongly worded reprimand from his
superiors following the first incident. Meir's actions violated the
Hague Convention of 1907, which banned the killing of shipwreck
survivors under any circumstances.[92][93] |
Crimes perpetrated by the United States
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping |
Breach of London Naval Treaty (1930) |
no prosecutions; Chester Nimitz admitted responsibility at Nuremberg Trials; questionable whether war crime or a breach of a treaty. |
During the post war Nuremberg Trials, in evidence presented at the trial of Karl Dönitz on his orders to the U-boat fleet to breach the London Rules, Admiral Chester Nimitz
stated that unrestricted submarine warfare was carried on in the
Pacific Ocean by the United States from the first day that nation
entered the war.[91] |
Canicattì massacre[citation needed] |
War crimes (Murder of civilians) |
no prosecutions |
During the Allied invasion of Sicily, eight civilians were killed, though the exact number of casualties is uncertain.[94] |
Biscari massacre[citation needed] |
War crimes (Murder of POWs) |
Sergeant Horace T. West: court-martialed and was found guilty,
stripped of rank and sentenced to life in prison, though he was later
released as a private. Captain John T. Compton was court-martialed for
killing 40 POWs in his charge. He claimed to be following orders. The
investigating officer and the Judge Advocate declared that Compton's
actions were unlawful, but he was acquitted. |
Following the capture of Biscari Airfield in Sicily on July 14,
1943, seventy-six German and Italian POWs were shot by American troops
of the 180th Regimental Combat Team, 45th Division during the Allied invasion of Sicily. These killings occurred in two separate incidents between July and August 1943. |
Dachau liberation reprisals[citation needed] |
War crimes (Murder of POWs) |
Investigated by U.S. forces, found lack of evidence to charge any
individual, and a lack of evidence of any practice or policy; however,
did find that SS guards were separated from Wehrmacht (regular German
Army) prisoners before their deaths. |
Some Death's Head SS guards of the Dachau concentration camp allegedly attempted to escape, and were shot. |
Salina, Utah POW massacre[citation needed] |
War crimes (Murder of POWs) |
Private Clarence V. Bertucci determined to be insane and confined to a mental institution |
Private Clarence V. Bertucci fired a machine gun from one of the
guard towers into the tents that were being used to accommodate the
German prisoners of war. Nine were killed and 20 were injured. |
Rheinwiesenlager[95] |
War crimes (Deaths of POWs from starvation and exposure) |
no prosecutions |
The Rheinwiesenlager (Rhine meadow camps) were transit camps for
millions of German POWs after World War II; there were at least
thousands and potentially tens of thousands of deaths from starvation
and exposure. Estimates range from just over 3,000 to as many as 71,000. |
American mutilation of Japanese war dead[96][97][98] |
War crimes (Abuse of Remains) |
Though there are no known prosecutions, the occasional mutilation of
Japanese remains were recognized to have been conducted by U.S. forces,
declared to be atrocities, and explicitly forbidden by order of the
U.S. Judge Advocate General in 1943–1944. |
Many dead Japanese were desecrated and/or mutilated, for example by taking body parts (such as skulls) as souvenirs or trophies. This is in violation of the law and custom of war, as well as the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Sick and Wounded
which was paraphrased as saying "After every engagement, the
belligerent who remains in possession of the field shall take measures
to search for wounded and the dead and to protect them from robbery and
ill-treatment." in a 1944 memorandum for the U.S. Assistant Chief of the
Staff.[99][100] |
Crimes perpetrated by the Yugoslav Partisans
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
World War II in Yugoslavia |
Yugoslavian partisans |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Bleiburg tragedy |
War crimes |
No prosecutions. |
The victims were Yugoslav collaborationist troops (ethnic Croats,
Serbs, and Slovenes), executed without trial as an act of vengeance for
the genocide committed by the pro-Axis collaborationist regimes (in
particular the Ustaše)
installed by the Nazis during the World War II occupation of
Yugoslavia. Estimates vary significantly, questioned by a number of
historians. |
Foibe massacres |
War crimes |
No prosecutions. |
Following Italy's 1943 armistice with the Allied
powers up to 1945, Yugoslav resistance forces executed an unknown number
of ethnic Italians accused of collaboration.[101] |
1944–1945 killings in Bačka |
War crimes |
No prosecutions. |
1944–1945 killings of ethnic Hungarians in Bačka. |
1948 Arab–Israeli War
Several massacres were committed during this war which could be
described as war crimes. Nearly 15,000 people, mostly combatants and
militants, were killed during the war, including 6,000 Jews and about
8,000 Arabs.
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)
- Rawagede massacre, about 431 civilians killed by Dutch forces
- Bersiap massacre, about 25.000 Indo-European civilians and Dutch and loyalists killed by Indonesian nationalist forces
- Indonesian National Revolution
About 100-150.000 Chinese, Communists, Europeans (French, German,
British, Americans), pro Dutch etc. By Indonesian nationalist forces and
Indonesian youth.
1948-1960: Malayan Emergency
- War crimes: 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
actually 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.[102][103][104][105]
- War crimes: includes beating, torturing, and killing by British troops and communist insurgents of non-combatants.[106]
- 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, had tens of thousands of their homes
destroyed, and interned in guarded camps called "New Villages". The intent of this measure was to inflict collective punishments
on villages where people were deemed to be aiding the insurgents and 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.[106][107][108]
1950–1953: Korean War
United States perpetrated crimes
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Korean War |
United States |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
No Gun Ri massacre |
War crimes |
United States |
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 (160 km) 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; the U.S. Army cites the number of casualties as "unknown".[109] |
North Korean and Chinese perpetrated crimes
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Korean War |
North Korea and China |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Seoul National University Hospital Massacre |
War crimes |
North Korea |
The Seoul National University Hospital Massacre (Korean: 서울대학교 부속병원 학살 사건 Hanja: 서울國立大學校附属病院虐殺事件) was a massacre committed by the North Korean Army on June 18, 1950, of 700 to 900 doctors, nurses, inpatient civilians and wounded soldiers at the Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul district of South Korea.[110][111][112] During the First Battle of Seoul, the North Korean Army wiped out one platoon which guarded Seoul National University Hospital on June 28, 1950.[110][111] They massacred medical personnel, inpatients and wounded soldiers.[110][111] The North Korean Army shot or buried the people alive.[110][111] The victims amounted to 900.[110][111] According to South Korean Ministry of National Defense, the victims included 100 South Korean wounded soldiers.[111] |
Chaplain–Medic massacre |
War crimes (Murder of wounded military personnel and a chaplain) |
North Korea |
On July 16, 1950, 30 unarmed, critically wounded U.S. Army soldiers and an unarmed chaplain were killed by members of the North Korean People's Army during the Battle of Taejon. |
Bloody Gulch massacre |
War crimes (Murder of prisoners of war) |
North Korea |
On August 12, 1950, 75 captured U.S. Army prisoners of war were executed by members of the North Korean People's Army on a mountain above the village of Tunam, South Korea, during one of the smaller engagements of the Battle of Pusan Perimeter. |
Hill 303 massacre |
War crimes (Murder of prisoners of war) |
North Korea |
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. |
- R. J. 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 conscript South Koreans to their war effort. Throughout the conflict,
North Korean and Chinese forces routinely mistreated 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.[113][114]:141
South Korean perpetrated crimes
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Korean War |
South Korea |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Bodo League massacre |
War crimes, Crimes against humanity (mass murder of civilians) |
South Korea |
The Bodo League massacre (Hangul: 보도연맹 사건; hanja: 保導聯盟事件) was a massacre and war crime against communists and suspected sympathizers 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;[115] others estimate 200,000 deaths.[116] The massacre was wrongly blamed on the communists for decades.[117] |
Goyang Geumjeong Cave Massacre |
War crimes |
South Korea |
The Goyang Geumjeong Cave Massacre (Korean: 고양 금정굴 민간인 학살[118][119] Hanja: 高陽衿井窟民間人虐殺[118][119] Goyang Geunjeong Cave civilian massacre[118][119]) 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.[118][119][120] After the victory of the Second Battle of Seoul,
South Korean police arrested and killed people and their families who
they suspected had been sympathizers during North Korean rule.[119] During the massacre, South Korean Police conducted Namyangju Massacre in Namyangju near Goyang.[121] |
Sancheong-Hamyang massacre |
War Crimes |
South Korea |
The Sancheong-Hamyang massacre (Hangul: 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. |
Ganghwa massacre |
War crimes |
South Korea |
The Ganghwa (Geochang) massacre (Hangul: 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. |
1952–1960: Mau Mau uprising
- 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. Between 320,000-450,000 of them were moved into concentration camps.
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". British soldiers 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 executed
in Algeria during the Algerian War. It was found out that over half of them executed were not rebels at all. Thousands more were killed by British soldiers, who claimed they had "failed to halt" when challenged.[122][123][124]
- 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. In an atmosphere of atrocity and
reprisal, the matter was swept under the carpet and nobody ever stood
trial for the massacre.
- 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.[125] 77 surviving detainees sustained serious permanent injuries.[126] The British government accepts that the colonial administration tortured detainees, but denies liability.[127]
- 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 escape. Official estimates place the death
toll from the Lari massacre at 74 dead.[128]
- Mau Mau militants also tortured, mutilated and murdered Kikuyu on many occasions.[129]
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.[130]
1954–1962: Algerian War
- War crimes;Crimes against humanity (systematic ethnic cleansing):
French sources estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed or
abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN during the Algerian War. Citizens of European ethnicity (known as Pieds-Noirs) and Algerian Jews[131] were also subjected to ethnic cleansing, resulting in a mass exodus.[132] The number of Pied-Noirs who fled Algeria totaled more than one million between 1962 and 1964. Famous examples of FLN massacres include the Oran massacre of 1962 and the Philippeville massacre.
- Crimes against humanity: Pro-French Muslims allegedly killed in Algeria by FLN in post-war reprisals: 30-150,000 [133]
- War crimes: Killed in France by FLN related terrorism: 4,300[133]
1954–1975: Vietnam War
United States perpetrated crimes
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Vietnam War |
United States |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
My Lai Massacre |
War crimes |
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. |
In March, 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. |
- "Vietnam War Crimes Working Group"[134]
- Briefly declassified (1994) and subsequently reclassified (2002?)
documentary evidence compiled by a Pentagon task force detailing endemic
war crimes. Substantiating 320 incidents by Army investigators,
including seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137
civilians died (not including My Lai). Seventy-eight other attacks on
noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15
sexually assaulted. One hundred forty-one instances in which U.S.
soldiers tortured civilian detainees or prisoners of war.
South Korean perpetrated crimes
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Vietnam War |
South Korea |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Tây Vinh Massacre |
War crimes |
South Korea |
This was a series of massacres conducted by the ROK Capital Division of the South Korean Army between February 12, 1966 and March 17, 1966 of 1,200 unarmed citizens in Bình An village, today Tây Vinh village, Tây Sơn District of Bình Định Province in South Vietnam.[135][136] |
Gò Dài massacre |
War crimes |
South Korea |
This was a massacre conducted by the ROK Capital Division of the
South Korean Army on 26 February 1966 of civilians in Gò Dài hamlet, in
Bình An commune, Tây Sơn District (today Tây Vinh District) of Bình Định Province in South Vietnam.[137][138] |
Diên Niên - Phước Bình massacre |
War crimes |
South Korea |
This was a massacre conducted by South Korean forces on October 9 and October 10, 1966, of 280 civilians in Tịnh Sơn village, Sơn Tịnh District, Quảng Ngãi Province in South Vietnam.[139][140] |
Diên Niên - Phước Bình massacre |
War crimes |
South Korea |
This was a massacre conducted by the South Korean forces between
December 3 and December 6, 1966, of 430 unarmed citizens in Binh Hoa
village, Quảng Ngãi Province in South Vietnam.[141][142] |
Hà My massacre |
War crimes |
South Korea |
This was a massacre conducted by the South Korean Marines on 25 February 1968 of civilians in Hà My village, Quảng Nam Province in South Vietnam.[143] |
North Vietnamese and Vietcong perpetrated crimes
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Vietnam War |
North Vietnam and Vietcong |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Massacre at Huế |
War crimes; Crime of Torture |
North Vietnam and Viet Cong |
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 to 6,000 civilians and prisoners of war.[144] Victims were found bound, tortured, and sometimes apparently buried alive.[145][146][147] |
Đắk Sơn massacre |
War crimes |
Viet Cong |
On December 5, 1967, two battalions of Viet Cong systematically
killed 252 civilians in a "vengeance" attack on the hamlet of Đắk Sơn,
home to over 2,000 Montagnards, known for their fierce opposition to the Viet Cong. The Vietcong believed that the hamlet had at one point given aid to refugees fleeing Viet Cong forces.[148] |
- VC terror squads, in the years 1967 to 1972, assassinated at least 36,000 people and abducted almost 58,000 people.[149]
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."[150] NVA/VC forces murdered between 106,000 and 227,000 civilians between 1954 and 1975 in South Vietnam.[151] Up to 155,000 refugees fleeing the final North Vietnamese Spring Offensive were killed or abducted on the road to Tuy Hòa in 1975.[152] See: VC/NVA use of terror
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.[153]
- War crimes: The British Army had employed widespread torture and waterboarding on prisoners in Northern Ireland during interrogations in the 1970s. Liam Holden
was wrongfully arrested by British forces for the murder of a British
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.[154] 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,[155] Holden had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in Belfast, at the age of 58.[156][157]
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.[158]
- 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.[159]
1971 Bangladesh Liberation War
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
1971 Bangladesh War |
Pakistan |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
1971 Bangladesh genocide |
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.[160] |
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.[161][162]
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. A process is underway in 2009–2010 to begin trials of
some local war collaborators. |
Civilian Casualties |
War crimes |
no prosecutions |
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[163]) 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[164]).
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.[165] A further eight to ten million people fled the country to seek safety in India.[166] |
Atrocities on women and minorities |
Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide; Crime of torture (torture, rape and murder of civilians) |
no prosecutions |
The minorities of Bangladesh, especially the Hindus, were specific targets of the Pakistan army.[167]
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.[168][169][170] |
Killing of intellectuals |
War crimes |
no prosecutions |
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.[171][172]
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.[173][174] |
Bihari and pro Pakistanis massacre in Bangladesh
It is estimated that Bangladesh guerilla army killed about 1,000 to 150,000 bharis or pro Pakistani razakars.
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.
[175][176]
Indonesian Invasion of East Timor
During the 1975 invasion and the subsequent occupation, Indonesian forces murdered tens of thousands of civilians.
1975–1990: Lebanese Civil War
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Lebanese Civil War |
Various |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Black Saturday |
War crime (200 to 600 killed) |
Kataeb Party |
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. |
Karantina massacre |
War crime (Estimated 1,000 to 1,500 killed) |
Kataeb Party, Guardians of the Cedars, Tigers Militia |
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. |
Tel al-Zaatar massacre |
War Crime (Estimated 1,000 to 3,000 killed) |
Lebanese Front, Tigers Militia, Syrian Army, Lebanese Armed Forces |
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. |
Damour massacre |
War crime (Estimated 684 civilians killed) |
PLO, Lebanese National Movement |
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. |
Sabra and Shatila massacre |
War crime (762 to 3,500 (number disputed)) |
Kataeb Party |
Took place in Sabra and the Shatila refugee camp Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon between September 16 and September 18, 1982. Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were massacred in the camps by Christian Lebanese Phalangists while the camp was surrounded by the Israel Defense Forces. Israeli forces controlled the entrances to the refugee camps of Palestinians and controlled the entrance to the city. The massacre was immediately preceded by the assassination of Bachir Gemayel, the leader of the Lebanese Kataeb Party.
Following the assassination, an armed group entered the camp and
murdered inhabitants during the night. It is now generally agreed that
the killers were "the Young Men", a gang recruited by Elie Hobeika.[177] |
1983 Beirut barracks bombing |
War crimes, crimes against peace (Attacks against parties not involved in a war), |
Islamic Jihad Organization |
On October 23, 1983, 241 American servicemen and 58 French paratroopers were killed in their barracks at the Beirut International Airport when Islamic militants drove their trucks filled with bombs and struck separate buildings housing United States and French members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon. |
October 13 massacre |
War crime (500-700 killed during the fighting. Additionally at least 240 unarmed prisoners executed, including civilians) |
Syrian Army, Hafez al-Assad |
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.[178] |
1978–present: Civil war in Afghanistan
This war has ravaged the country for over 30 years now, with several
foreign actors playing important roles during different periods. Since
2001 US and NATO troops have been fighting in Afghanistan in the "
War on Terrorism" that is also treated in the corresponding section below.
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Civil war in Afghanistan |
Taliban |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Executions and torture after fall of Mazar-i-Sharif on August 8, 1998 |
War crimes; Crime of torture (Murder, cruel or degrading treatment and torture; Summary execution) |
Taliban |
Mass killing of the locals; 4,000 to 5,000 civilians were executed, and many more reported tortured. |
Assassination of Iranian diplomats |
War crimes; offenses against the customary law of nations (outrages upon diplomatic plenipotentiaries and agents) |
Taliban |
8 Iranian diplomats were assassinated and an Iranian press correspondent was murdered by the Taliban. |
Murder of Ahmed Shah Massoud, on September 9, 2001 |
War crimes (Perfidious use of suicide bombers disguised as journalists (who are protected persons) in murder.) |
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda |
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. |
Civil war in Afghanistan |
Northern Alliance |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Atrocities against Taliban prisoners of war |
War crimes (Maltreatment leading to death of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan POWs (Taliban)) |
Northern Alliance partisans |
Allegedly did place 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. |
Civil war in Afghanistan |
United States Army / British Royal Marines |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Torture of prisoners |
War crimes (Maltreatment leading to death of prisoners) |
United States Armed Forces |
homicides of at least two unarmed prisoners, allegations of widespread pattern of abuse |
Kandahar massacre |
Murder and wounding of civilians |
United States Armed Forces |
Nine of the victims were children. Some of the corpses were partially burned. |
Maywand District murders |
Murder of at least 3 Afghans |
United States Armed Forces |
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. |
2011 Helmand Province incident |
Murder of a wounded prisoner |
British Royal Marines |
|
1980–1988: Iran – Iraq War
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Iran–Iraq War |
Iraq |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Iran – Iraq War[citation needed] |
Crimes against peace (Waging a war of aggression) |
no prosecutions |
In 1980, Iraq invaded neighboring Iran, allegedly to capture Iraqi territory held by Iran. |
Use of chemical weapons |
War crimes, Use of poisons as weapons (Violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol[179]) |
No prosecutions |
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).[180] |
Attacks on neutral shipping[citation needed] |
War crimes, crimes against peace (Attacks against parties not involved in a war) |
No prosecutions |
Iraq attacked oil tankers from neutral nations in an attempt to disrupt enemy trade |
Al-Anfal Campaign |
Crimes against humanity; Crime of Genocide |
No prosecutions |
A genocidal campaign by Baathist Iraq against the Kurdish people (and other non-Arab populations) in northern Iraq, led by President Saddam Hussein and headed by Ali Hassan al-Majid in the final stages of Iran–Iraq War. The campaign also targeted other minority communities in Iraq including Assyrians, Shabaks, Iraqi Turkmens, Yazidis, Mandeans, and many villages belonging to these ethnic groups were also destroyed.[181] |
Halabja poison gas attack |
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. |
Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, officially titled Secretary
General of the Northern Bureau of the Ba'ath Party from March 1987 to
April 1989, and advisor to Saddam Hussein, was convicted in June 2007 of
war crimes and was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court, along with
accomplices Sultan Hashem Ahmed and Hussein Rashid Mohammed.
Frans van Anraat war crime. |
Iraq also used chemical weapons against their own Kurdish population causing casualties estimated between several hundred up to 5,000 deaths.[182] 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." and 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.[183][184] |
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Iran – Iraq War |
Iran |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Attacks on neutral shipping[citation needed] |
War crimes, crimes against peace (Attacks against parties not involved in the war) |
no prosecutions |
Iran attacked oil tankers from neutral nations in an attempt to disrupt enemy trade. |
Using child soldiers in suicide missions[citation needed] |
War crimes (Using child soldiers) |
no prosecutions |
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. |
Laid mines in international waters[citation needed] |
|
no prosecutions |
Mines damaged the US frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts |
1985–present: Uganda
The Times reports (November 26, 2005 p. 27):
-
- Almost 20 years of fighting... has killed half a million people. Many of the dead are children... The LRA [a cannibalism cult][185] 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.
1991–1999: Yugoslav wars
1991–1995: Croatian War of Independence
Also see
List of ICTY indictees for a variety of war criminals and crimes during this era.
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Croatian War of Independence |
Yugoslav People's Army, Army of Serbian Krajina and paramilitary units. |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Battle of Vukovar |
War crimes (indiscriminate shelling of city for 87 days until it was
leveled to the ground. At least 1.798 killed, civilians and soldiers)[186] |
JNA, Serb Volunteer Guard. Mile Mrkšić and Veselin Šljivančanin sentenced by the ICTY. |
August 25-November 18, 1991 |
Ovčara massacre[187] |
War crimes (Over 264 civilians and wounded POWs executed after Battle of Vukovar) |
Serb Territorial Defense and paramilitary units. Mile Mrkšić sentenced to 20 years, Veselin Šljivančanin sentenced to 5 years. Miroslav Radić acquitted. |
18–21 November 1991; bodies buried in a mass grave |
Stajićevo camp, Morinj camp, Sremska Mitrovica camp, Velepromet camp, Knin camp |
Torture of POWs and illegal detention of civilians |
Milosevic indicted by the ICTY. |
November 1991-March 1992 |
Dalj killings[188] |
War crimes (Execution of 11 detainees) |
Territorial Defense of SAO SBWS under Željko Ražnatović. Dalj was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment. |
21 September 1991; bodies buried in a mass grave in the village of Celija |
Dalj massacre[188] |
War crimes (Massacre of 28 detainees) |
Territorial Defense of SAO SBWS under Željko Ražnatović. Dalj was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment. |
4 October 1991 |
Lovas massacre[189] |
War crimes |
Yugoslav People's Army, Territorial Defense of SAO SBWS and Dušan Silni paramilitary unit. Ljuban Devetak and 17 individuals are being tried by Croatian courts. Lovas was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment. |
10 October 1991 |
Široka Kula massacre[190] |
War crimes |
JNA and Krajina Serb Territorial Defense. |
Široka Kula near Gospić. On October 13, 1991. |
Baćin massacre[190] |
War crimes |
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. |
On 21 October 1991. |
Saborsko massacre[190] |
War crimes |
Serb-led JNA (special JNA unit from Niš), TO forces, rebel Serbs militia. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted. |
On October 28, November 7, and November 12, 1991. |
Erdut massacre |
War crimes (killing of 37 civilians)[191] |
Željko Ražnatović, Slobodan Milošević, Goran Hadžić, Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović indicted by the ICTY. |
November 1991-February 1992 |
Škabrnja massacre[192] |
War crimes |
Serb forces. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted. |
On November 18, 1991. |
Siege of Dubrovnik[193] |
War crimes |
JNA and Montenegrin territorial forces. Several JNA commanders sentenced. |
Shelling of UNESCO protected World Heritage site. October 1991. |
Voćin massacre[194] |
War crimes |
White Eagles paramilitary group under Vojislav Šešelj, indicted by ICTY. Voćin was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment. |
13 December 1991. |
Bruška massacre[195] |
War crimes |
Serb forces. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted. |
On December 21, 1991. |
Zagreb rocket attack[196] |
War crimes |
RSK Serb forces. Leader Milan Martić bragged on Television about ordering the assault, the videotape being used against him at ICTY, convicted. |
Rocket attack was started as revenge for Serb military defeat in Operation Flash. |
Ethnic cleansing in Serb Krajina[190] |
Crimes against humanity (Serb forces forcibly removed virtually all
non-Serbs living there-nearly a quarter of a million people (mostly
Croats))[197] |
JNA and Serb paramilitaries. Many people, including leaders Milan Babić and Milan Martić, convicted at ICTY and Croatian courts. |
June–December 1991 |
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Croatian War of Independence |
Croatian Army and paramilitary units |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Lora prison camp |
Crime of torture, War crimes (Torture of POWs) |
Croatian army. Several people convicted by Croatian courts.[citation needed] |
Croatian internment camp for Serb soldiers and civilians between 1992 and 1997 |
Gospić massacre |
War crimes |
Croatian army. Commander Mirko Norac and others convicted by Croatian courts. |
16–18 October 1991 |
Operation Otkos 10[198] |
War crimes |
Croatian army. No prosecutions |
31 October - 4 November 1991 |
Miljevci plateau incident |
War crimes (Killings of 40 militiamen) |
Croatian army. No prosecutions |
21 June 1992; invasion and permanent occupation of territory under international protection; bodies buried in mass graves nearby |
Battle for Maslenica Bridge |
War crimes (Killings of 490 or 491 individuals, including civilians) |
Croatian army. No prosecutions |
22 January - 1 February 1993; invasion of territory under international protection |
Mirlovic Polje incident[199] |
War crimes |
Croatian paramilitaries. No prosecutions |
6 September 1993; 5 men and 2 women, four were executed and three burned alive at the stake |
Operation Medak Pocket |
War crimes, Crime against peace (Killings of 29 civilians and 71 soldiers;[200] wounding 4 UN peacekeepers) |
Croatian army. Commanders Janko Bobetko, Rahim Ademi and Mirko Norac. Ademi acquitted, Bobetko died in the meantime, Norac sentenced to 7 years. |
9–17 September 1993; invasion of territory under international protection and assault on UN peacekeeping forces |
Operation Flash |
War crimes |
Croatian army. No prosecutions |
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. |
Operation Storm |
War crimes (Killings of at least 677 civilians, 150-200,000 Serbian refugees [201]) |
Croatian army. Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač ultimately acquitted by the ICTY.[202][203] |
4–8 August 1995; invasion and permanent occupation of territory
under international protection; Individual war crimes committed during
the operation. |
1992–1995: Bosnian War
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Bosnian War |
Serb forces, Army of Republika Srpska, Paramilitary units from Serbia, local Serb police and civilians. |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Srebrenica Massacre[204] |
Crimes against humanity;Crime of genocide (Murder of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys) |
Army of Republika Srpska. President Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić charged. |
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. |
Prijedor massacre[205] |
Crimes against humanity (5,200 killed and missing) |
Army of Republika Srpska. Milomir Stakić convicted. |
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. |
Višegrad massacre[206] |
Crimes against humanity (Murder of over 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. |
Foča massacres[207] |
Crimes against humanity (Murder of over 2,704 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. |
Markale massacre[208] |
War crimes |
Army of Republika Srpska. Stanislav Galić convicted |
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. |
Siege of Sarajevo[209] |
War crimes |
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. |
Siege of Bihać |
War crimes |
Army of Republika Srpska. |
From April 1992 to August 1995. |
Tuzla massacre[210] |
War crimes |
Army of Republika Srpska. ARS Officer Novak Đukić on trial. |
On May 25, 1995 the Serb army shelled the city of Tuzla and killed 72 people with a single shell. |
Korićani Cliffs massacre[211][212] |
War crimes |
Serbian reserve police. Darko Mrđa was convicted. |
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 |
Ahatovići massacre[213] |
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. 8
survived by hiding under bodies of the dead. |
Paklenik Massacre[214] |
War crimes |
Army of the Republika Srpska. Four indicted. |
the massacre of at least 50 Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb Army in the Rogatica Municipality on 15 June 1992. |
Bosanska Jagodina massacre[215] |
War crimes |
Army of the Republika Srpska. No prosecutions. |
The execution of 17 Bosniak civilians from Višegrad on 26 May 1992, all of which were men. |
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Bosnian War |
Croat forces, HVO. |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
- |
Ahmići massacre[216] |
Crimes against humanity according to ICTY, (ethnic cleansing, murder of civilians) |
Croatian Defence Council, Tihomir Blaškić convicted. |
On April 16, 1993, the Croatian Defence Council attacked the village of Ahmići and killed 116 Bosniaks. |
Stupni Do massacre[217] |
Crimes against humanity according to ICTY; (Murder of 37 civilians) |
Croatian Defence Council, Ivica Rajić convicted. |
On October 23, 1993, the Croatian Defence Council attacked the village of Stupni do and killed 37 Bosniaks |
Lašva Valley ethnic cleansing[218] |
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. |
Armed conflict |
perpetrator |
Bosnian War |
Bosniak forces, Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina |
Incident |
type of crime |
Persons responsible |
- |
Massacre in Grabovica[219] |
War crimes (13 civilians murdered) |
Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nihad Vlahovljak, Sead Karagićm and Haris Rajkić convicted. |
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. |
1998–1999: Kosovo War
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Kosovo War |
Yugoslav army, Serbian police and paramilitary forces |
Incident |
type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Račak massacre[220] |
War crimes |
Serbian police, no prosecutions |
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. |
Izbica massacre[221] |
War crimes |
Serbian police and paramilitaries, no prosecutions. |
120 Albanian civilians killed by Serbian forces in the village of Izbica, in the Drenica region of central Kosovo on 28 March 1999. |
Suva Reka massacre |
War crimes |
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. |
Ćuška massacre |
War crimes |
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. |
Massacre at Velika Kruša[222] |
War crimes |
Serbian special forces, no prosecutions. |
Massacre at Velika Kruša near Orahovac, Kosovo, took place during the Kosovo War on the afternoon of 25 March 1999 the day after the NATO air campaign began. |
Podujevo massacre |
War crimes |
Serbian paramilitaries. Four convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. |
19 Kosovo Albanian civilians, all women and children, were executed by Serbian paramilitary forces in March, 1999 in Podujevo, in eastern Kosovo. |
Kosovo War |
Kosovo Liberation Army |
Incident |
type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Lapušnik prison camp[223] |
War crimes |
Kosovo Liberation Army; Haradin Bala sentenced to 13 years. |
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. |
Klečka killings |
War crime; (murder of 22 Serbian civilians) |
Kosovo Liberation Army, no prosecutions |
22 Kosovo Serb civilians were killed by Albanian insurgents in the village of Klečka, and their remains were cremated in a lime kiln.[224] |
Lake Radonjić massacre[225][226] |
War crime; (murder of 34 civilians) |
Kosovo Liberation Army, no prosecutions |
34 Serbs, non-Albanians and moderate Kosovo Albanians were killed by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army near Lake Radonjić[227] |
Staro Gračko massacre[228] |
War crime; (murder of 14 Serb civilians) |
Kosovo Liberation Army, no prosecutions |
14 Kosovo Serb farmers were executed by Kosovo Liberation Army gunmen, who then disfigured their corpses with blunt instruments. |
1990–2000: Liberia / Sierra Leone
From
The Times March 28, 2006 p. 43:
- "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.
1990: Invasion of Kuwait
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
1990:Invasion of Kuwait |
Iraq |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Invasion of Kuwait[citation needed] |
Crimes against peace (waging a war of aggression for territorial aggrandizement; "breach of international peace and security" (UN Security Council Resolution 660)) |
no prosecutions |
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 civilized
nations and armed groups, thus constituting Crimes against peace. |
Invasion of Kuwait[citation needed] |
War crimes, Crime of torture, Criminal environmental modification
(Destruction of resources; murder, persecution, and torture of
civilians and soldiers; willful environmental devastation and
modification) |
no prosecutions |
Country devastated, resources intentionally and wantonly destroyed
for no militarily necessitous purpose, murder of civilians, torture of
residents and citizens of Kuwait, attempted criminal environmental
modification on a global scale through intentional oil spills and soot
from intentional oil well fires. |
1991-2000/2002: Algerian Civil War
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.
1994-1996/1999-2009: Russia-Chechnya Wars
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.
1998–2006: Second Congo War
- 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
- Estimated 1000 deaths a day according to Oxfam:
- "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. Sometimes they march the villagers into the bush to work as human mules."[229]
- In 2003, Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti Pygmies, 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.[230][231]
2003–2011: Iraq War
- During the Iraq War
- War crimes: Alleged rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family by U.S. troops.[citation needed]
- Blackwater Baghdad shootings On September 16, 2007, Blackwater military contractors shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad.[232] The fatalities occurred while a Blackwater Personal Security Detail (PSD) was escorting a convoy of US State Department vehicles en route to a meeting in western Baghdad with United States Agency for International Development
officials. The shooting led to the unraveling of the North
Carolina-based company, which since has replaced its management and
changed its name to Xe Services.
- Beginning in 2004, accounts of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture,[233][234] rape,[233] sodomy,[234] and homicide[235] of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (also known as Baghdad Correctional Facility) came to public attention. These acts were committed by military police personnel of the United States Army together with additional US governmental agencies.[236]
In January 2014, evidence accuses British troops of being involved in
widespread torture and abuse towards Iraqi civilians and prisoners.[237]
- War crimes: 2006 al-Askari Mosque bombing by Al-Queda. The bombing was followed by retaliatory violence with over a hundred dead bodies being found the next day[238] and well over 1,000 people killed in the days following the bombing – by some counts, over 1,000 on the first day alone.[239]
- 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.[240] 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.
2006 Lebanon War
Allegations of war crimes in the
2006 Lebanon War refer to claims of various groups and individuals, including
Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch, and
United Nations officials, who accused both
Hezbollah and Israel of violating
international humanitarian law during the
2006 Lebanon War, and warned of possible
war crimes.
[241] These allegations included intentional attacks on
civilian populations or
infrastructure,
disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks in densely populated residential districts.
According to various media reports, between 1,000 and 1,200 Lebanese
citizens 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.
[242][243][244]
2003–2009/2010: Darfur conflict; 2005–2010: Civil war in Chad
During the
Darfur conflict,
Civil war in Chad (2005–2010) The conflict in Darfur has been variously characterized as a genocide.
Sudanese authorities claim a death toll of roughly 19,500 civilians
[245] while many
non-governmental organizations, such as the
Coalition for International Justice, claim over 400,000 people have been killed.
[246]
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 6-month period from March to October 2004 due to starvation and
disease at 70,000; These figures were criticized, because they only
considered short periods and did not include deaths from violence.
[247] A more recent British Parliamentary Report has estimated that over 300,000 people have died,
[248] and others have estimated even more.
2008-2009 Gaza War
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 weaponized 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.
[249][250][251]
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.
[252]
2009 Sri Lankan Civil War
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.
[253][254]
It is widely accused that the Secretary of Defense Gotabaya Rajapakse
(brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa) ordered troops under his
command to "Kill them All" when the troops on the grounds asked him for
direction for handling the surrendering Tamil combatants.
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.
[255][256][257] The panel has called on the UNSG to conduct an independent international inquiry into the alleged violations of
international law.
[258][259] 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".
[260]
(2011–present): Syrian civil war
|
This section requires expansion. (August 2015) |
International organizations have accused the Syrian government, ISIL
and other opposition forces of severe human rights violations, with
many massacres occurring.
[261][262][263][264][265] Chemical weapons have been
used many times during the conflict as well.
[266][267][268] The Syrian government is reportedly responsible for the majority of civilian casualties and
war crimes, often through bombings.
[261][263][269][270] In addition, tens of thousands of protesters and activists have been imprisoned and there are reports of
torture in state prisons.
[271][272][273][274]
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Syrian Civil War |
Syrian Government |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
Civil uprising phase of the Syrian Civil War Violent suppression of peaceful protests |
Crimes against peace (armed suppression of popular uprising leading to war) |
no prosecutions |
|
Use of mass detention and torture of Syrian civilians and political prisoners |
Crime of torture, war crimes |
no prosecutions |
|
Ghouta chemical attack |
War crimes; use of poison gas as a weapon |
no prosecutions |
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. |
2015 Douma market massacre |
War crimes |
no prosecutions |
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. |
Armed conflict |
Perpetrator |
Syrian Civil War |
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant |
Incident |
Type of crime |
Persons responsible |
Notes |
ISIL beheading incidents Murder of neutral civilians; journalists; and aid workers |
Crimes against peace (murder of uninvolved parties); war crimes |
no prosecutions |
|
Chemical attacks on YPG |
War crimes; use of poison as a weapon |
no prosecutions |
|
Persecution of Yazidis by ISIL |
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) |
no prosecutions |
|
See also
Notes
- This list is a work in progress and is not complete.
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..."
Spencer C. Tucker, Priscilla Mary Roberts (October 25, 2005). World War I: A Student Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 1074. ISBN 1-8510-9879-8.
Robinson, James J., (September 1960). "Surprise Attack: Crime at Pearl Harbor and Now" ABA Journal 46(9), p. 978.
Telford Taylor (November 1, 1993). The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-3168-3400-9. Retrieved 20 June 2013.
Thomas Graham, Damien J. Lavera (May 2003). Cornerstones of Security: Arms Control Treaties in the Nuclear Era. University of Washington Press. pp. 7–9. ISBN 0-2959-8296-9. Retrieved 5 July 2013.
"Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Resolution, April 24, 1998". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
Ferguson, Niall. The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West. New York: Penguin Press, 2006 p. 177 ISBN 1-59420-100-5
A Letter from The International Association of Genocide Scholars
Kamiya, Gary.Genocide: An inconvenient truth salon.com. October 16, 2007.
Jaschik, Scott.Genocide Deniers.History News Network. October 10, 2007.
Kifner, John.Armenian Genocide of 1915: An Overview. The New York Times.
BBC News Europe (2006-10-12). "Q&A: Armenian 'genocide'". BBC News. Archived from the original on 2007-03-01. Retrieved 2009-03-05.
Halpern, Paul G. (1994). A Naval History of World War I. Routledge, p. 301. ISBN 1857284984
Hadley, Michael L. (1995). Count Not the Dead: The Popular Image of the German Submarine. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, p. 36. ISBN 0773512829.
An account of this attrocity, known in Ethiopia as "Yekatit 12", is contained in chapter 14 of Anthony Mockler's Haile Selassie's War (New York: Olive Branch, 2003).
"Spanish Civil War". Concise.britannica.com. Retrieved 2009-06-24.
Published: 12:01AM BST 11 Jun 2006 (2006-06-11). "A revelatory account of the Spanish civil war". London: Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 2009-06-24.
"Men of La Mancha". Rev. of Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain. The Economist (22 June 2006).
Julius Ruiz, "Defending the Republic: The García Atadell Brigade in Madrid, 1936". Journal of Contemporary History 42.1 (2007):97.
César Vidal, Checas de Madrid: Las cárceles republicanas al descubierto. ISBN 978-84-9793-168-7
"Spanish judge opens case into Franco's atrocities". New York Times. 16 October 2008. Retrieved 2009-07-28.
Decision of Juzgado Central de Instruccion No. 005, Audiencia Nacional, Madrid (16 October 2008)
Staff, Tokyo War Crimes Trial, China News Digest International section "III. The verdict"
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Oct 1988. SAGE Publications. October 1988. p. 16. Retrieved 7 July 2013.
Laws
of War: Declaration on the Use of Projectiles the Object of Which is
the Diffusion of Asphyxiating or Deleterious Gases; July 29, 1899
"Convention
(IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex:
Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land. The Hague,
18 October 1907.". International Committee of the Red Cross. Retrieved July 7, 2013.
"Declaration
concerning the prohibition of the use of projectiles with the sole
object to spread asphyxiating poisonous gases; July 29, 1899". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
"Convention
(IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex:
Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land. The Hague,
18 October 1907.". International Committee of the Red Cross. Retrieved July 7, 2013.
"Hyper: International Military Tribunal For The far east Chapter 8". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
Archived July 19, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.[dead link]
Christian
Streit: Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die Sowjetischen
Kriegsgefangenen, 1941–1945, Bonn: Dietz (3. Aufl., 1. Aufl. 1978), ISBN 3-8012-5016-4
- "Between 22 June 1941 and the end of the war, roughly 5.7 million
members of the Red Army fell into German hands. In January 1945, 930,000
were still in German camps. A million at most had been released, most
of whom were so-called "volunteers" (Hilfswillige) for (often
compulsory) auxiliary service in the Wehrmacht. Another 500,000, as
estimated by the Army High Command, had either fled or been liberated.
The remaining 3,300,000 (57.5 percent of the total) had perished."
"Simferopol". simferopol.ws (in Russian). Retrieved 2008-05-13.
Das
Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945.
Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Zweite aktualisierte Auflage, Frankfurt am
Main 2005, page 72
Nuremberg
and the Crime of Abortion, Jeffrey C. Toumala, Liberty University,
1-1-2011, 42 University of Toledo Law Review, Rev. 283
http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1047&context=lusol_fac_pubs
"Nuremberg: Tyranny on Trial", The History Channel, 40:30, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJCPkmrYZw
Yahil, Leni (1990). The Holocaust. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504522-X., p.503
NY Times, October 1, 2006 "Hungarian Is Faced With Evidence of Role in ’42 Atrocity" [1]
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Holocaust Encyclopedia - "Kamenets-Podolsk" [2]
"The
Marmaros Book: In Memory of 160 Jewish Communities (Maramureş Region)";
English Translation of "Sefer Marmarosh; mea ve-shishim kehilot
kedoshot be- yishuvan u-ve-hurbanan", Ed. S.Y. Gross and Y. Yosef Cohen,
pp. 93 (Tel Aviv, 1996) [3]
Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera "The Anatomy of a Massacre: Sarmas 1944", Online Museum of Tolerance [4]
Matatias Carp, "Sarmas: One of the Most Horrible of Fascist Crimes" (Bucharest, 1945), pp. 11, 39 [in Romanian]
David
M. Kennedy, Margaret E. Wagner, Linda Barrett Osborne, Susan Reyburn,
and Staff of the Library of Congress, "The Library of Congress World War
II Companion", pp. 646, (Simon & Schuster, 2007) ISBN 978-0-7432-5219-5
Jeno Levai, "Black book on the martyrdom of Hungarian Jewry", pp. 272, (Zurich, 1948)
Per Anger, "With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest", pp. 187 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1981), ISBN 978-0-89604-047-2
Jose Doria, Hans-Peter Gasser, M. Cherif Bassiouni, eds. (15 May 2008). The
Legal Regime of the International Criminal Court: Essays in Honour of
Professor Igor Blishchenko (International Humanitarian Law Series). Brill Publishers. p. 33. ISBN 9-0041-6308-5.
Antony Best (August 1, 1995). Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbour: Avoiding War in East Asia, 1936-1941. Routledge. p. 1. ISBN 0-4151-1171-4.
Study "Riposte".: Analytical papers.
Estimate from Snow 2003 via "The history of Hong Kong". Economist.com. June 5, 2003.
Banka Island Massacre (1942)
http://www.philippine-scouts.org/Articles/TheCausesoftheBataanDeathMarchRevisited.doc
http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforaustralia/JapWarCrimes/TenWarCrimes/Bataan_Death_March.html
Himeta, Mitsuyoshi (姫田光義) Concerning the Three Alls Strategy/Three Alls Policy By the Japanese Forces (日本軍による『三光政策・三光作戦をめぐって』), Iwanami Bukkuretto, 1996, Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, HarperCollins, 2001. ISBN 0-06-019314-X, p. 365, citing an order drafted by Ryūkichi Tanaka
ThisIsFolkestone.co.uk
"Fall of Ambon Massacred at Laha". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
Dr Peter Stanley The defence of the 'Malay barrier': Rabaul and Ambon, January 1942 principal historian to Australian War Memorial
American Prisoners of War: Massacre at Palawan':
"Alexandra Massacre". Archived from the original on 2005-10-18. Retrieved 2005-12-07.
Blackburn,
Kevin. "The Collective Memory of the Sook Ching Massacre and the
Creation of the Civilian War Memorial of Singapore". Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
73, 2 (December 2000), 71-90; Kang, Jew Koon. "Chinese in Singapore
during the Japanese occupation, 1942–1945." Academic exercise - Dept. of
History, National University of Singapore, 1981.
Kangzhan.org article on the Rape of Nanking
"Xinhuanet.com article on Changjiao Massacre (in Simplified Chinese) 厂窖惨案一天屠杀一万人". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
"People.com article (in Simplied Chinese) 骇人听闻的厂窖惨案". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
White, Matthew. "Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the 20th century". Retrieved 2007-08-01.
Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, 2003, p.97
The Asian Women's Fund. "Who were the Comfort Women?-The Establishment of Comfort Stations". Digital Museum The Comfort Women Issue and the Asian Women's Fund. The Asian Women's Fund. Archived from the original on August 7, 2014. Retrieved August 8, 2014.
Zhifen Ju, Japan's atrocities of conscripting and abusing north China draftees after the outbreak of the Pacific war, 2002.
Daniel Barenblatt, A plague upon Humanity, HarperCollns, 2004, pp.220-222.
Radu Ioanid, "The Holocaust in Romania: The Iasi Pogrom of June 1941", Contemporary European History, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 119-148 (Cambridge University Press, 1993) [5]
Chapter 12 - Trials of War Criminals, Wiesel Commission - "Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania" (in English at Yad Vashem) [6]
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Holocaust Encyclopedia - "Odessa massacre" [7]
(in Romanian) Northern Transilvania from release from Horthy regime to Soviet occupation (September 1944 – March 1945) [8]
Simon Wiesenthal Center Multimedia Learning Center at the Wayback Machine (archived November 8, 2002)
Fischer, Benjamin B., "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field". "Studies in Intelligence", Winter 1999–2000. Retrieved on 10 December 2005.
"Katyn documentary film". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
Sanford, George. "Katyn And The Soviet Massacre Of 1940: Truth, Justice And Memory". Routledge, 2005.
Excerpt, Chapter one The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent 1945–2002 William I. Hitchcock 2003. ISBN 0-385-49798-9 (No pages cited)
A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944–1950 Alfred-Maurice de Zayas 1994. ISBN 0-312-12159-8 (No pages cited)
Barefoot in the Rubble Elizabeth B. Walter 1997. ISBN 0-9657793-0-0 (No pages cited)
Claus-Dieter Steyer, "Stadt ohne Männer" ("City without men"), Der Tagesspiegel online June 21, 2006, viewed November 11, 2006
Antony Beevor They raped every German female from eight to 80 in The Guardian May 1, 2002
Judgement: Doenitz the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School
"HMS Torbay (N79)". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
Michael L. Hadley (March 17, 1995). Count Not the Dead: The Popular Image of the German Submarine. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 135. ISBN 0-7735-1282-9.
Le altre stragi - Le stragi alleate e tedesche nella Sicilia del 1943–1944
"U.S. (and French) abuse of German PoWs, 1945–1948". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
James
J. Weingartner "Trophies of War: U.S. Troops and the Mutilation of
Japanese War Dead, 1941–1945" Pacific Historical Review (1992)
Simon Harrison "Skull Trophies of the Pacific War: transgressive objects of remembrance" Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S) 12, 817-836 (2006)
Weingartner, James J. (1992), "Trophies of War: U.S. Troops and the Mutilation of Japanese War Dead, 1941–1945" (PDF), Pacific Historical Review: 59 cites: "Maltreatment of Enemy Dead, June 1944, NARS, CNO", Memorandum for the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-l, June 13, 1944: for the quotation.
The wording of the ICRC copy of the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Sick and Wounded states in Article 3
that "After each engagement the occupant of the field of battle shall
take measures to search for the wounded and dead, and to protect them
against pillage and maltreatment. ...", and Article 4
states that "... They shall further ensure that the dead are honourably
interred, that their graves are respected and marked so that they may
always be found. ...".
See article Foibe massacres (G: Rumici, Infoibati (1943–1945), Mursia, Milano 2002.).
"New documents reveal cover-up of 1948 British 'massacre' of villagers in Malaya". The Guardian. 9 April 2011. Retrieved 4 December 2013.
"Batang Kali massacre families snubbed". The Sun Daily. 29 October 2013. Retrieved 4 December 2013.
"UK urged to accept responsibility for 1948 Batang Kali massacre in Malaya". The Guardian. 18 June 2013. Retrieved 4 December 2013.
"Malaysian lose fight for 1948 'massacre' inquiry". BBC News. 4 September 2012. Retrieved 13 January 2014.
The Other Forgotten War: Understanding atrocities during the Malayan Emergency
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.
:247–249,328,278
"서울대병원, 6.25전쟁 참전 용사들을 위한 추모제 가져". Seoul National University Hospital. 2010-06-04. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
Rhee Gwi-jeon (2006-08-03). "'이름모를 자유전사의 비' 서울대 현충탑을 아시나요 한국전쟁때 죽은 군인과 민간인 위해 1963년 세워져"민족상잔의 아픔을 담은 장소로 계속 보존할 것"". SEGYE. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
"<407>서울대 병원의 대학살". New Daily. 2011-06-18. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
"STATISTICS OF DEMOCIDE Chapter 10". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
Heo, Man-ho (2002). "North Korea’s Continued Detention of South Korean POWs since the Korean and Vietnam Wars" (PDF). The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 14 (2).
"Khiem and Kim Sung-soo: Crime, Concealment and South Korea". Japan Focus. Archived from the original on 2008-10-07. Retrieved 11 August 2008.
Bae Ji-sook (3 February 2009). "Gov’t Killed 3,400 Civilians During War". Korea Times. Retrieved 2011-07-18.
"South Korea owns up to brutal past". The Sydney Morning Herald. 2007. Retrieved 2013-04-05.
Hwang Chun-hwa (2011-11-29). "고양 금정굴 민간인 학살…법원 "유족에 국가배상을"". Hankyoreh. Retrieved 2011-11-29.
"'고양 금정굴 민간인 학살사건' 유족에게 1억원 국가 배상 판결 "헌법에 보장된 기본권인 신체의 자유와 적법절차에 따라 재판받을 권리 등 침해"". CBS. 2011-11-28. Retrieved 2011-11-29.
Song Gyeong-hwa (2010-07-05). "‘금정굴 학살사건’ 국가상대 소송". Hankyoreh. Retrieved 2012-01-20.
Charles J. Hanley (December 6, 2008). "Children 'executed' in 1950 South Korean killings". San Diego Union-Tribune. Associated Press. Retrieved 2012-08-30.
MARK CURTIS (2003). WEB OF DECEIT: BRITAIN'S REAL FOREIGN POLICY: BRITAIN'S REAL ROLE IN THE WORLD. VINTAGE. pp. 324–330.
Caroline Elkins (2005). Britain's gulag: the brutal end of empire in Kenya. Pimlico. pp. 124–145.
David Anderson (January 23, 2013). Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. W. W. Norton. pp. 150–154.
Maloba,
Wunyabari O. Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant
Revolt.(Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN: 1993) pp. 142-43.
http://www.ogiek.org/indepth/special-report-3.htm
"Mau Mau massacre documents revealed". BBC News. 30 November 2012. Retrieved 6 December 2013.
Anderson, David (2005). Histories of the Hanged. W. W. Norton & Company, pg.119–180
Ogot, Bethwell Allan (1995). "The Decisive Years: 1956–63"
Anderson, David (2005). Histories of the Hanged. W. W. Norton & Company, pg.84
"Breitbart News: Big Hollywood". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
[9]
Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace (1977)
Turse, Nick. Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Co, 2013.
"Words
of Condemnation and Drinks of Reconciliation Massacre in Vin Dinh
Province All 380 People Turned into Dead Bodies Within an Hour.". Hankyoreh. 1999-09-02. Retrieved 2011-03-02.
Lunar calendar:between January 23 and February 26 of 1966
Ku Su Jeong. "Words
of Condemnation and Drinks of Reconciliation Massacre in Vin Dinh
Province All 380 People Turned into Dead Bodies Within an Hour.". Hankyoreh. Retrieved 2011-02-24.
Kim HyoSeong (2007-04-07). 1966년 베트남 고자이 마을의 비극. OhmyNews (in Korean). Retrieved 2011-02-24.
[10]
"Dien Nien-Phuoc Binh Massacre". Quang Ngai government. Retrieved 2011-07-10.
"On War extra - Vietnam's massacre survivors". Al Jazeera. 2009-01-04. Retrieved 2011-07-09.
Wintle, Justin (2006). Romancing Vietnam: inside the boat country. Signal Books Ltd. p. 266. ISBN 1-904955-15-0.
Kwon, Heonik. After the Massacre: Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai. University of California Press. p. 2.
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.
Spector, Ronald H. After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam.
Lanning & Cragg (1993), pp. 186-188.
Lewy (1968), p. 273.
Vietnam Democide Power Kills R.J. Rummel
Wiesner, Louis (1988), Victims and Survivors: Displaced Persons and Other War Victims in Viet-Nam, 1954–1975 Greenwood Press, pp. 318–9.
"Army sanctioned "shoot to kill policy"". irishtimes.com. Retrieved 21 November 2013.
"British army 'waterboarded' suspects in 70s". BBC News. 21 December 2009.
Henry McDonald. "Man granted soldier murder appeal following waterboarding evidence (The Guardian, 4 May 2012)". the Guardian. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
Murder verdict of man sentenced to death quashed (The Irish Times, 22 June 2012)
"Army 'waterboarding victim' who spent 17 years in jail is cleared of murder". BBC News. 21 June 2012.
"Inside Castlereagh: 'We got confessions by torture'". Guardian. 11 October 2010.
"Killing of IRA men was 'human rights violation'". BBC News. 4 May 2001.
"Immigration Citizenship-Australia". Rayimmigration.com.au. Retrieved 2011-01-01.
Editorial The Jamaat Talks Backin The Bangladesh Observer December 30, 2005
Dr. N. Rabbee Remembering a Martyr Star weekend Magazine, The Daily Star December 16, 2005
Hamoodur Rahman Commission, Chapter 2, Paragraph 33
F. Hossain Genocide 1971 Correspondence with the Guinness Book of Records on the number of dead
White, Matthew, Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century
Rummel, Rudolph J., "Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900", ISBN 3-8258-4010-7, Chapter 8, Table 8.2 Pakistan Genocide in Bangladesh Estimates, Sources, and Calculations: lowest estimate 2 million claimed by Pakistan (reported by Aziz, Qutubuddin. Blood and tears
Karachi: United Press of Pakistan, 1974. pp. 74,226), all the other
sources used by Rummel suggest a figure of between 8 and 10 million with
one (Johnson, B. L. C. Bangladesh. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1975. pp. 73,75) that "could have been" 12 million.
U.S. Consulate (Dacca) Cable, Sitrep: Army Terror Campaign Continues in Dacca; Evidence Military Faces Some Difficulties Elsewhere, March 31, 1971, Confidential, 3 pp
Debasish Roy Chowdhury 'Indians are bastards anyway' in 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.""
Brownmiller, Susan, "Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape" ISBN 0-449-90820-8, page 81
Hamoodur Rahman Commission, Chapter 2, Paragraphs 32,34
Blood, Archer, Transcript of Selective Genocide Telex, Department of State, United States
Ajoy Roy, "Homage to my martyr colleagues", 2002
Shahiduzzaman "No count of the nation's intellectual loss" The New Age, December 15, 2005
Killing of Intellectuals Asiatic Society of Bangladesh
[11] Archived November 11, 2005, at the Wayback Machine.
Cambodian Holocaust Survivor
Les Secrets de la guerre du Liban : Du coup d'état de Béchir Gémayel aux massacres des camps palestiniens, by Alain Menargues, final chapter
The Middle East enters the twenty-first century, By Robert Owen Freedman, Baltimore University 2002, page 214
"Security Council members condemn use of chemical weapons in Iran-Iraq conflict; demand observance of Geneva protocol". UN Chronicle. 1987.
Link to article by the Star-Ledger
G. Black, Human Rights Watch, Middle East Watch (1993). Genocide in Iraq: the Anfal campaign against the Kurds. Human Rights Watch. pp. 312–313. ISBN 978-1-56432-108-4.
Whatever Happened To The Iraqi Kurds? (Human Rights Watch Report, March 11, 1991)
Dutch court says gassing of Iraqi Kurds was 'genocide' by Anne Penketh and Robert Verkaik in The Independent December 24, 2005
Dutch man sentenced for role in gassing death of Kurds CBC December 23, 2005
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".[12]
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 Forces, (p. 1070). Accessdate 20 October 2010.
Two jailed over Croatia massacre, BBC News, 27 September 2007. Retrieved 28 September 2007.
(Croatian) Državno odvjetništvo RH Priopćenje povodom obilježavanja 16. obljetnice pogibije 39 branitelja u Dalju
(Croatian) Link leading to a downloadable booklet "Krvava Istina o Lovasu" ("Bloody Truth on Lovas")
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2007/pr1162e.htm Summary of judgement: Milan Martić sentenced to 35 years for crimes against humanity and war crimes
"The Prosecutor of the Tribunal against Slobodan Milošević (p. 53, 54, 56, 57, 58)" (PDF). ICTY. 2001. Retrieved 29 October 2010.
"Summary of judgement: the case of Milan Martić". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
The battle of Dubrovnik, Final report of the United Nations Commission of Experts
"Šešelj Indictment". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
ICTY, case Milan Martić, summary of judgement
"Prosecutors Seek Life Sentence for War Crimes Suspect Martić". Voice of America. 2007-01-10. Retrieved 2007-06-12.
"Milosevic: Important New Charges on Croatia". Human Rights Watch. October 21, 2001. Retrieved October 29, 2010.
Annex IV : The policy of ethnic cleansing
CROATIA HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1993
Daniel Simpson (2002-12-03). "Croatia Protects a General Charged With War Crimes". New York Times. Retrieved 2010-10-06.
Republic of Serbian Krajina#Operation Storm
[13]
[14]
Federal Commission for Missing Persons; "Preliminary List of Missing and Killed in Srebrenica"; 2005 [15] PDF (522 KB). The list is discussed here [16] and the identification process here [17]
Wittenauer, Cheryl (2008-01-18). "Exhibit details Bosnia ethnic cleansing". USA Today. Retrieved 2010-05-11.
Security Watch / Current Affairs / ISN
Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic - Trial Chamber I - Judgment - IT-98-33 [2001] ICTY 8 (2 August 2001)
Fish, Jim. (February 5, 2004). Sarajevo massacre remembered. BBC.
[18] Archived August 7, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina
[19][dead link]
[20] Archived March 11, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
Massacre Survivor Testifies
Bosnia Report - July - September 2000
Resolution 771, The First Report on the War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia
"Flashback: The Ahmici massacre". BBC News. 2000-01-14. Retrieved 2010-05-11.
"Microsoft Word - ~8822308.doc" (PDF). Retrieved 2011-01-01.
[21] Archived April 26, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
[22] Archived August 2, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
"Nato crisis talks on massacre". BBC News. 1999-01-17. Retrieved 2010-05-11.
"U.S.: Massacre video matches mass grave evidence". CNN. Retrieved 2010-05-11.
Massacre at Krusha e Madhe, Human Rights Watch Report, 4 April 1999
[23] Archived June 14, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
"Serbs highlight 'KLA atrocity'". BBC. 29 August 1998. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
"Vreme 901 - Ratni zlocini: U ime zakona Leke Dukadjina". Nedeljnik Vreme. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
http://www.pogledi.rs/galerija/sz/index.php
"Human Rights Watch report". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
"KiM: 13 godina od ubistva žetelaca". B92. 23 July 2012. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
The Times World News, April 3, 2006, p.29)
"DR Congo pygmies 'exterminated'". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
"DR Congo Pygmies appeal to UN". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
Johnston, David; John M. Broder (2007-11-14). "F.B.I. Says Guards Killed 14 Iraqis Without Cause". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-30.
Benjamin, Mark (2008-05-30). "Taguba
denies he's seen abuse photos suppressed by Obama: The general told a
U.K. paper about images he saw investigating Abu Ghraib -- not photos
Obama wants kept secret.". Salon.com. Retrieved 2009-06-06. The
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