Atrocities by Country and by
Top 100
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Afghanistan
1842 cJan 2-12, Akbar Khan, Afghan
hero, was victorious against the British. Out of 4,500 (16,500)
soldiers and 12,000 dependents only one survivor, of a mixed
British-Indian garrison, reached the fort in Jalalabad, on a stumbling
pony. The British retreated from Kabul to Jalalabad. The incident is
the backdrop for George MacDonald Fraser’s novel “Flashman.”
(WSJ, 4/10/95, A-16)(www.afghan, 5/25/98)(WSJ,
9/20/01, p.A12)
1988 May 18, A cheering crowd in
the Soviet town of Termez greeted the first Soviet soldiers as they
withdrew from Afghanistan. Experts agree that at least 40,000-50,000
Soviets lost their lives in action, besides the wounded, suicides, and
murders. Mujahideen continued to fight against Najibullah's regime.
Some 130,000 Red Army troops fought in Afghanistan and 15,000 were lost.
(AP, 5/18/98)(www.afghan, 5/25/98)(SFC, 10/18/01,
p.A3)
Algeria
1995 Some 40,000 people were
reported killed since the government cancelled elections in 1992. The
government planned presidential elections for Nov. 16, but Muslim
militants vowed to derail the plans.
(WSJ, 8/21/95, p.A-1)
1999 Jun 27, The president raised
the death toll in the 7-year civil war against rebel groups to 100,000.
(WSJ, 6/28/99, p.A1)
America
1778 Nov 11, Iroquois Indians, led
by William Butler, massacred 40 inhabitants of Cherry Valley, N.Y.
(HN, 11/11/98)(MC, 11/11/01)
1814 Mar 27, General Jackson led
U.S. soldiers who killed 700 Creek Indians at Horseshoe Bend, La. [in
Northern Alabama] Jackson lost 49 men.
(SFEC, 2/16/97, BR p.4)(HN, 3/27/99)
1862 Aug 18, A Sioux Uprising
began uprising in Minnesota. It resulted in more than 800 white
settlers dead and 38 Sioux Indians condemned and hanged. The Minnesota
Uprising began when four young Sioux murdered five white settlers at
Acton. The Santee Sioux, who lived on a long, narrow reservation on the
south side of the Minnesota River, were reacting to broken government
promises and corrupt Indian agents. a military court sentenced 303
Sioux to die, but President Abraham Lincoln reduced the list. The 38
hangings took place on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minn.
(MC, 8/18/02)(HNQ, 1/4/00)
1870 Jan 23, 173 Blackfoot,
including 140 women and children, were killed in Montana by US Army.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1906 Mar, American forces killed
some 900 Muslims including women and children on Mount Dajo,
Philippines.
(SSFC, 11/25/01, p.D3)
1945 Mar 10, American B-29s bombed
Tokyo, killing 100,000. It was the second atomic bomb, dropped on
Nagasaki, that induced the Japanese to surrender.
(HN, 3/10/98)
1945 Apr 1, Easter Sunday, the
American assault on Okinawa began with 150,000 army and marine
soldiers. It was the last campaign of World War II. The island was
defended by 100,000 Japanese troops and auxiliaries. It took three
months of heavy fighting to secure the island. US casualties numbered
68,000 with 8,000 dead. Japanese civilian casualties are estimated at
100-200 thousand killed. A book was published in 1995 by Col. Hiromishi
Yahara, chief Japanese strategist of Okinawa titled “The Battle for
Okinawa.” A counterpoint to the colonel's account is a collection of
first hand accounts from US soldiers in Gerold Astor's “Operation
Iceberg.”
(WSJ, 8/29/95, p.A-12) (AP, 4/1/98)(HN, 4/1/98)
1945 Jun 22, The World War II
battle for Okinawa officially ended; 12,520 Americans and 110,000
Japanese were killed in the 81-day campaign. The battle for Okinawa
proved to be the bloodiest in the Pacific Theater. A huge assemblage of
American forces from both Admiral Chester W. Nimitz's Central Pacific
drive and General Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific thrust
converged on Okinawa--over 180,000 troops. For three months they faced
more than 100,000 Japanese troops of Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima's
Thirty-Second Army. Tokyo needed time to prepare for the expected
American invasion of the home islands, so Ushijima wanted to make his
adversary wrench each hill and ridge from his well-armed men.
(AP, 6/22/97)(HN, 6/27/01)
1945 Aug 6, Hiroshima, Japan, was
struck with the uranium bomb, Little Boy, from the B-29 airplane, Enola
Gay, piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets of the US Air Force. The atom bomb
killed an estimated 140,000 people in the first use of a nuclear weapon
in warfare.
(WSJ, 7/19/95, p.A-12)(AP, 8/6/97)(HN, 8/6/98)
1945 Aug 9, The 10,000 lb.
plutonium bomb, Fat Man, was dropped over Nagasaki after the primary
objective of Kokura was passed due to visibility problems. It killed an
estimated 74,000 people. The B-29 bomber plane Bock’s Car so named for
its assigned pilot, Fred Bock, was piloted by Captain Charles W.
Sweeney. Kermit Beahan (d.1989) was the bombardier.
(WSJ, 7/19/95, p.A-12)(AP, 8/9/97)(HN, 8/9/98)(SFC,
3/17/00, p.D6)(HNQ, 3/31/00)
1969-1973 The US Air Force dropped 539,129 tons of
bombs on Cambodia and killed some 700,000 people. The bombing drove
rural people into the cities and caused a collapse of the agricultural
system that contributed to the rise of the Khmer Rouge and a famine
that was later blamed on the Khmer Rouge.
(SFC, 8/14/97, p.A25)
1973 Aug 7, A U.S. plane
accidentally bombed a Cambodian village, killing 400 civilians.
(HN, 8/7/98)
2001 Sep 11, World leaders
expressed outrage at terrorist attacks in NYC and the Pentagon and
pledged solidarity with the US. In the West Bank town of Nablus, some
3,000 people celebrated the attacks and chanted “God is great.” Later
the estimates of the WTC dead dropped to 4,396.
(SFC, 9/12/01, p.A14)(SFC, 11/3/01, p.A3)
American Indians
Argentina
1976-1983 Mass killings marked these years known as
the “Dirty War” period. At least 9,000 people, suspected by the
government of being leftist dissidents, were arrested, tortured and
never seen again. In 1997 Adolfo Scilingo, a former naval officer,
testified in Spain that as many as 1,500 Argentine navy officials
participated in death flights, where people were hurled into the ocean.
In 1998 Marguerite Feitlowitz published “A Lexicon of Terror,” covering
the “Dirty War.” In 2000 an Italian court convicted 7 Argentine
officers in absentia for kidnapping and killing Italian citizens in the
“dirty war.”
(SFC, 10/10/97, p.D2)(SFC, 7/1/98, p.A8)(WSJ,
12/7/00, p.A1)
1997 Aug 15, It was reported that
Argentina would issue bonds to pay indemnities to the relatives and
descendants of the 1970s “dirty war.” As many as 30,000 people
disappeared and about 8,000 families have applied for payments
authorized at $224,000 per victim.
(WSJ, 8/15/97, p.A1)
Armenians
1894 Nov 16, 6,000 Armenians were
massacred by Turks in Kurdistan.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1894-1896 Thousands of Armenians were massacred by
the Turks after attempts for autonomy and self-defense failed. This
issue was then referred to as the “Armenian Question.”
(Compuserve Online Enc. / Armenia)
1915 Apr 24, The Ottoman Turkish
Empire began the brutal mass deportation of Armenians during World War
I. A massacre of Armenians by Turks took place. Turkish police arrested
hundreds of the most prominent Armenians in Constantinople, took them
into the hinterlands and shot them. With that the terror spread through
Turkish Armenia spearheaded by the “Special Organization” of soldiers
of the Turkish leader Enver. Of the 1.75 million Armenians in Turkey at
the outset of World War I, 250,000 fled into Russia and 1 million were
systematically killed. Henry Morgenthau, US ambassador to the Ottoman
Empire, alerted Pres. Wilson of massacre of Armenians by the Turks.
Evidence and photographs of the camps were provided to Morgenthau by
Armin Wegner, German Red Cross official and Johannes Lepsius, a German
missionary. British diplomat Lord Bryce hired Arnold Toynbee to
document the slaughter. Franz Werfel later wrote "The Forty Days of
Musa Dagh."
(AP, 4/24/97)(HN, 4/24/98)(SFC, 4/27/99, p.A10)(HNQ,
5/30/99)
1915-1923 Some 1 million Armenians were massacred
under the rule of the Ottoman Turks. The Turks claimed that hundreds of
thousands died as casualties of war.
(SFC,11/25/97, p.A22)
Bangladesh
1971 Dec 6, India recognized the
Democratic Republic of Bangladesh and Pakistan broke off diplomatic
relations. Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan following a
9-month war. Bangladesh later accused Pakistan of war atrocities that
led to the death of some 3 million people during the 9-month war.
(WUD, 1994, p. 1688)(SFC, 12/31/00, p.B3)
Belarus
1937-1941 Some 2 million people were killed during
Stalinist purges on the outskirts of Minsk.
(SSFC, 9/2/01, p.A14)
1942 Jul 31, The German SS gassed
some 1,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1942 Nov 6, Nazis executed 12,000
Minsk ghetto Jews.
(MC, 11/6/01)
Belgian Congo
1880-1920 The population of Congo was halved due to
murder, starvation, exhaustion, exposure, disease, and a lowered birth
rate due to the exploitation by King Leopold II.
(SFEC, 9/27/98, BR p.1)
1903 Jun 29, The British
government officially protested Belgian atrocities in the Congo.
Missionaries, such as William Sheppard of Virginia, had provided
information that soldiers of Leopold’s private army turned over the
right hand of villagers they had killed in order to account for their
used bullets. Leopold’s 19,000 man private army held hostage the wives
of workers to force men to work.
(HN, 6/29/98)(SFEM, 8/16/98, p.7,8)
Bosnia
1992 May 24-Aug 30, Serbian forces
confined over 3,000 Bosnian Muslims and Croats in inhuman conditions at
the Keraterm prison camp. Detainees were killed, sexually assaulted and
beaten. In 1999 Dragan Kulundzija, a shift commander at Keraterm, was
arrested on charges of killing and torturing prisoners.
(SFC, 6/8/99, p.A12)
1992 Aug 21, Serbian soldiers
separated over 200 men, mostly Croats and Muslims, from a convoy of
civilians from the Trnopolje detention camp in Bosnia. The captives
were taken to a wooded ravine and shot dead. In 2003 Darko Mrdja,
commander of a special police unit, admitted to a court in the Hague of
playing a role in the slaughter.
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.A8)
1992 In Brcko Serb soldiers and
militiamen conquered the town and expelled the Muslim and Croat
population. As many as 7,000 unarmed captives were killed.
(SFC, 2/15/97, p.A10,11)
1992 In Mostar 3,200 Serbs
disappeared and 27,000 were forced to move.
(WSJ, 8/1/96 p.A15)
1995 Jul, A UN War Crimes Tribunal
in the Hague issued indictments. Dusko Sikirica, who commanded a camp
at Prijedor in 1992 where over 3,000 Bosnian Muslims and Croats were
killed and tortured, was among the indicted. Sikirica was arrested in
2000.
(SFC, 6/26/00, p.A12)(WSJ, 6/26/00, p.A1)
1995 Aug, Some 200,000 Serbs were
moved from the Krajina region. More than 4,500 were killed and some
3,000 are still listed as missing in an operation that was directed by
retired American generals through MPRI of Alexandria, Va. About 14,000
Krajina Serbs ended up in Kosovo until 1998, when they left as violence
spread.
(WSJ, 8/1/96 p.A15)(SFC, 7/6/99, p.B1)
1992-1995 Gen'l. Momir Talic of Bosnia commanded the
1st Krajina Corps. Talic and Radoslav Brdjanin planned and ordered a
terror offensive early in the war that killed hundreds of Muslims and
Croats and forced thousands to flee Prijedor a d Sanski. Talic was
arrested in Austria in 1999 on a secret UN war crimes indictment. Both
men pleaded not guilty to 12 counts of genocide at the Hague. During
the 3 ½ years of war some 200,000 Bosnians were dead or missing
and an estimated 20,000 women were raped.
(SFC, 8/26/99, p.A12)(SFC, 1/12/00, p.A11)(SFC,
3/30/00, p.A18)
1995 Jul 6, 3:15AM The UN safe
area at Srebrenica came under attack by the Bosnian Serb army’s Drina
corps under Genl. Radislav Krstic, and some 7,500 Muslim men and boys
were killed. The acquisition and delivery of arms was organized by
Yugoslav army officer Mirko Krajisnik, brother to Momcilo Krajisnik,
president of the Bosnian Serb assembly. In 1998 Chuck Sudetic published
“Blood and Vengeance: One Family’s Story of the War in Bosnia.” The
book focused on the Srebrenica killings. 300 Dutch troops were later
accused of not preventing the Serbs from overrunning the town. Bosnian
Serb Gen’l. Radislav Krstic was arrested in 1998 for genocide in the
1995 takeover of Srebrenica. In 1999 the UN issued a 155-page report
that admitted its failure to block the massacre. Krstic was convicted
in 2001.
(SFC, 5/30/96, p.A8)(SFC, 6/4/96, p.A12)(SFC,
8/12/98, p.A14) (SFC, 12/3/98, p.A16)(SFC, 11/16/99, p.A1)(SFC,
3/14/00, p.A10)(SFC, 8/3/01, p.A1)
1995 Feb 13, The Hague War Crimes
Tribunal indicted 21 Serbs for atrocities against Croats and Muslims
interned in a Bosnian prison camp. Zeljko Meakic, Bosnian Serb police
officer, was charged with commanding the Serb Omarska camp in northwest
Bosnia. Dusan Tadic, Bosnian Serb cafe owner, was charged for visiting
Serb-run camps to beat and kill non-Serb inmates.
(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 11/30/96, p.A15)(AP,
2/13/00)
Brazil
1964-1985 A military dictatorship ruled over Brazil.
As many as 353 people died while under custody. The dead of the leftist
opposition were either “disappeared” or registered as suicides or
fatalities from accidents or shootouts.
(SFC, 6/14/96, p. A17)
1973-1996 The Pastoral Land Commission, a Catholic
supported human rights group, said that there have been 575 murders of
rural workers over this time in the Para state and only three trials.
One defendant received a suspended sentence and the other 2 escaped
from jail.
(SFC, 6/26/96, p.A8)
Britain
1461 Mar 29, Edward IV secured his
claim to the English thrown in defeating Henry VI’s Lancastrians at the
battle of Towdon (Towton). Some 50,000 fought and an estimated 28,000
were killed.
(HN, 3/29/99)(AM, 7/01, p.69)(AM, 7/01, p.68)
1944 Sep 18, British submarine
Tradewind torpedoed Junyo Maru: 5,600 killed.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1982 May 3, The British sank
Argentina's only cruiser in Falkland Islands War. Some 600 Argentine
sailors were killed when the Belgrano was sunk. Lord Terence Thornton
Lewin (d.1999 at 78), British military commander, was regarded as the
one who persuaded Margaret Thatcher to order the sinking.
(HN, 5/3/98)(SFC, 1/25/99, p.A20)
1982 Jun 14, Argentine forces
surrendered to British troops on the disputed Falkland Islands. 970
people were killed including 255 British soldiers. Argentine dictator
Leopaldo Galtieri led the initial attack in the 74-day war.
(AP, 6/14/97)(SFC, 10/23/98, p.D5)
Bulgaria
1903 Sep 8, Between 30,000 and
50,000 Bulgarian men, women and children were massacred in Monastir by
Turkish troops seeking to check a threatened Macedonian uprising.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1903 Sep 17, Turks destroyed the
town of Kastoria in Bulgaria, killing 10,000 civilians.
(HN, 9/17/98)
Burma (Myanmar)
1988 Aug 8-Aug 13, The police
killed nearly 3,000 protesters in the streets of Rangoon.
(SFEC, 1/19/96, Par. p.5)(SFEC, 10/22/00, p.T8)
Burundi
1996 Apr, The Red Cross said more
than 55,000 people of Burundi have been driven from their homes by
ethnic fighting that intensified last month. More than 100,000 have
been killed since 1993 in the conflict between majority Hutus and
minority Tutsis. The fighting occurred in the capital city of
Bujumbura. 235 civilians died when the Burundi army attacked villages
at Buhoro
(WSJ, 4/5/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 5/5/96, p.T-8)(SFC,
5/13/96, p.C-12)
1996 Jul 27, In Burundi a
Tutsi-led army killed at least 30 Hutu rebels in retaliation for an
attack on a coffee plantation. Independent sources said that Hutus set
fire to the factory and rice plantation in Giheta to justify a
retaliatory attack on villages where Hutu rebels were thought to have
taken refuge. Villagers said Tutsi soldiers massacred about 1,000 Hutus
as they roamed from village to village in Gitega province.
(WSJ, 7/30/96, p.A1)(SFC, 8/8/96, p.A8)
1997 Jan 11, In Burundi soldiers
shot and killed 126 Burundian Hutu refugees trying to break out of a
holding camp in the northeast. Seven soldiers were arrested for the
slayings.
(SFEC, 1/12/97, p.A12)
Cambodia
1973 Aug 7, A U.S. plane
accidentally bombed a Cambodian village, killing 400 civilians.
(HN, 8/7/98)
1975-1979 Pol Pot, whose real name is Saloth Sar, led
the Khmer Rouge and ruled Cambodia. In 1987 Joan D. Criddle and Teeda
Butt Mam authored "To Destroy You Is No Loss: The Odyssey of a
Cambodian Family." The work was recorded on cassette in 1992 and told
the extraordinary story of a Cambodian family caught up in the genocide
under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. An estimated 1.7 million people were
killed under the Khmer Rouge. In 2000 Loung Ung authored “First They
Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.”
(WSJ, 6/7/96, p.A11)(AR, 9/4/99)(SFC, 9/8/99,
p.A15)(SFEC, 6/11/00, BR p.6)
1975-1979 As many as 20,000 men, women and children
entered Tuol Sleng prison and only 7 are known to have survived. In
1997 two of the administrators of the prison, known as Duch and Chan,
were living openly in territory controlled by the government.
(SFC, 8/5/97, p.A9)
Chechnya
1944 Feb 23, Stalin ordered the
mass deportation of Chechens to Central Asia for resisting Soviet rule
and abetting the Germans. More than a third of the population died
before the rest were allowed to go home.
(WSJ, 8/12/96, p.A9)(SFEC, 2/20/00, p.A32)
1996 Sep 3, In Russia Alexander
Lebed said that about 80,000 people had died in the fighting in
Chechnya during the 21 months of the war.
(SFC, 4/9/96, A10)
2000 Jan 25, The Russian
government announced that 1,055 servicemen had been killed and 3,206
wounded in Chechnya since Oct 1.
(SFC, 1/27/00, p.A13)
2000 Aug 4, It was reported that
the war in Chechnya had killed 2,508 Russian soldiers since 8/2/99. A
mother’s group put the figure up to 6,000.
(WSJ, 8/4/00, p.A1)
China
1030-1093 In China Shen Kua was an engineer and high
official Chinese astronomer. In his1086 work “Dream Pool Essays,” Shen
Kua made the first reference to the magnetic compass. The work also
gave the first account of relief maps and an explanation of the origin
of fossils, along with other scientific observations. Shen Kua wrote
his essays after being banished from office after an army under his
command lost 60,000 killed in a battle with Khitan tribes.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)(HNQ, 4/22/99)
1853-1864 The Taiping army of Hong Xiuquan took the
city of Nanjing as its heavenly capital in the Taiping Rebellion. He
claimed to be Jesus' brother and ruled there until 1864. Imperial
troops crushed his movement and tens of millions died. Some 10,000
people were killed at Nanjing.
(WSJ, 1/5/96, p.A-8)(WSJ, 4/26/99, p.A6)(SFC,
7/23/99, p.A10)
1867 Jul 20, Imperial troops in
Guizhou, China, killed 20,000 Miao rebels.
(HN, 7/20/98)
1900 Jun 21, After the Empress
declared war on all foreign powers, the Boxers began a two-month
assault on the legations in Beijing. An international force of
Japanese, Russian, German, American, British, Italian and
Austro-Hungarian troops put down the uprising by August 14. The Boxer
Rebellion was a violent, anti-foreign uprising that broke out in
reaction to years of foreign interference with Chinese affairs. Led by
a Chinese secret society called Yi He Tuan--"the Righteous, Harmonious
Fists"--the Boxers were aided by the Empress Dowager Ci Xi and pillaged
the countryside, murdering foreigners and Chinese Christians. In 2000
Diana Preston authored “The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of
China’s War on foreigners That Shook the World in the Summer of 1900.”
(HNPD, 6/21/99)(WSJ, 6/20/00, p.A24)
1937 Dec-Feb, In the Japanese
“Rape of Nanjing” more than 200,000 people were killed. Japanese
soldiers raped and killed tens of thousands of Chinese women during
their invasion of China. [photo from Nanjing] In 1997 Iris Chang (29)
published “The Rape of Nanking: the Forgotten Holocaust of world War
II.” The largest execution of prisoners took place north of Nanking
near Mufu Mountain where 57,000 civilians and soldiers were gunned down.
(WSJ,2/6/97,p.A14)(SFEC, 12/1/96, p.C4)(WSJ,
12/29/97, p.A9)(SFEC, 7/26/98, Z1 p.1,4)
1958 China tried to modernize its
economy in “The Great Leap Forward” and urged factories and farms to
meet impossible production targets. Rather than concede failure, local
officials misled central planners about output. The result: a famine
that may have killed as many as 30 million people by the end of 1960.
The story is told by Jasper Becker in his 1997 book “Hungry Ghosts:
Mao’s Secret Famine.”
(WSJ 12/10/93)(WSJ, 2/7/97, p.A14)
Colombia
1948-1958 The period known as “La Violencia.” Over
200,000 people were killed in massacres by the 2 rival parties, the
Conservatives and the Liberals.
(SFC, 12/18/00, p.A11)
1999 There were some 5,000
killings this year in Medellin. Some 220 gangs with 8,500 gang members
fought turf battles on a daily basis.
(SFC, 11/23/00, p.A20)
Congo
2000 Jun 9, The 22-month civil war
averaged some 2,600 deaths every day. The total was estimated at 1.7
million dead.
(SFC, 6/9/00, p.A20)
Croatia
1941-1945 Croatia was occupied by Nazi forces and
with its Moslem allies some 700,000 Serbs and 75,000 Jews and Gypsies
were killed. [This was a letter with reference to the Encyclopedia
Britannica as source material] The Independent State of Croatia was set
up after the German and Italian invasions and run by the fascist
Ustashe regime as a puppet state. The central Ustashe aim was to
cleanse Croatia of “foreign” elements and to turn Croatia into a "100%
Roman Catholic state." Jasenovac was the site of the largest Ustashe
death camp, and some estimates claim as many as several hundred
thousand dead. Ante Pavelic was the leader of the Ustashe regime.
(WSJ, 10/11/95, p. A-1)(WSJ, 4/3/96, p.A-22)(WSJ,
5/20/99, p.A21)
1991 Sep 21, Yugoslav army tanks
and artillery began an invasion of eastern Croatia. The Croats said
that some 600 soldiers and 1200 civilians perished in the 3-month
bombardment of Vukovar by rebel Serbs.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 6/28/97, p.A10)
1995 Aug, Some 200,000 Serbs were
moved from the Krajina region. More than 4,500 were killed and some
3,000 are still listed as missing in an operation that was directed by
retired American generals through MPRI of Alexandria, Va. About 14,000
Krajina Serbs ended up in Kosovo until 1998, when they left as violence
spread.
(WSJ, 8/1/96 p.A15)(SFC, 7/6/99, p.B1)
Egypt
1992 Muslim militants began an
insurgency with attacks largely in southern Egypt to overthrow the
government of Hosni Mubarak. By 1996 more than 920 people had been
killed, mostly police and militants.
(SFC, 4/18/96, p.a-15)(SFEC,12/28/97, p.A17)
1997 Nov 17, In Egypt 6 gunmen
killed over 65 [62] [58] tourists at the Hatshepsut Temple in Luxor.
The assailants, members of the Gamaa al-Islamiya, were all killed. The
attack was meant to force the US to release Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman who
was serving a life term for a plot to bomb NYC landmarks.
(SFC,11/18/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 11/19/97,
p.A1)(SFC,11/22/97, p.C1)
El Salvador
1932 Jan 23, El Salvador army
killed 4,000 protesting farmers.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1980-1992 A civil war raged during which security
forces have been blamed for killing 40,000 civilians with torture
commonplace. It was later reported that the US had pumped $1.5 million
a day into the fight “to make El Salvador safe for democracy.”
(SFC, 5/8/96, p.A-19)(SFEM,11/16/97, p.28)
1992 Jan 16, Officials of the
government of El Salvador and rebel leaders signed a pact in Mexico
City ending 12 years of civil war that had left at least 75,000 people
dead.
(AP, 1/16/98)
1993 Mar 14, An independent
U.N.-sponsored commission released a report blaming the bulk of
atrocities committed during El Salvador's civil war on the country's
military.
(AP, 3/14/98)
1994 In el Salvador there were
7,673 people murdered in this year according to the attorney general’s
office.
(SFC, 10/3/97, p.B5)
1995 In El Salvador there were
7,877 people murdered in this year according to the attorney general’s
office.
(SFC, 10/3/97, p.B5)
1996 There were 6,792 people
murdered in this year according to the attorney general’s office.
(SFC, 10/3/97, p.B5)
Eritrea
1993 Eritrea gained independence
from Ethiopia after a 30-year civil war. Some 65,000 Eritreans lost
their lives in the fight for independence. Pres. Meles Zenawi of
Ethiopia allowed Eritrea to secede as a reward for the support of its
rebel forces in 1991.
(WSJ, 3/4/97, p.A14)(SFC, 6/11/97, p.C16)
1999 Jun 14, Eritrea and Ethiopia
battled for a 5th day. Eritrea claimed to have killed, wounded or
captured over 12,000 soldiers, while Ethiopia claimed the same for
8,200 soldiers. Over half a million soldiers were stationed along the
600-mile border.
(SFC, 6/15/99, p.C5)(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A10)
France
1572 Aug 24, The slaughter of
French Protestants at the hands of Catholics began in Paris as Charles
IX of France attempted to rid the country of Huguenots. France’s fourth
war of religion started with the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, in
which 50,000 Huguenots and their leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny,
were killed in and around Paris.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)(AP, 8/24/97)(HN, 8/24/98)
1792 Sep 2, In the "September
Massacres"- mobs removed nobles and clergymen from jails, slaughtering
them.
(MC, 9/2/01)
1795 May 4, Thousands of rioters
entered jails in Lyons, France, and massacred 99 Jacobin prisoners.
(HN, 5/4/99)
1795 May 15, Napoleon entered the
Lombardian capital of Milan in triumph. After taking Milan he released
his troops on the townspeople who became victims of an orgy of
destroying, raping and killing. The events are described in the 1998
biography “Napoleon Bonaparte” by Alan Schom.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, BR p.9)(HN, 5/15/98)
1799 Mar 7, In Palestine, Napoleon
captured the Turkish citadel at Jaffa and his men massacred more than
2,000 Albanian prisoners. [see Mar 26] The prisoners were massacred
because Napoleon claimed that he could not feed them. About this time
bubonic plague broke out among his troops.
(HN, 3/7/99)(ON, 12/99, p.2)
1942 Nov 11, 745 French Jews were
deported to Auschwitz.
(MC, 11/11/01)
Germany
1096 May 18, Crusaders massacred
the Jews of Worms. Before embarking on the First Crusade to wrest the
Holy Land from Muslim Turks, Count Emich von Leiningen and his army
swept through their own German homeland, murdering thousands of Jews,
whom they had declared "murderers of Christ." When Emich arrived in the
town of Worms in May, the town's Roman Catholic Bishop tried to protect
the Jewish population, but the Crusaders overran his palace and
slaughtered some 500 people who had taken shelter there. Another 300
were killed over the next two days. The graves of the massacre victims
can still be seen at the Jewish Cemetery at Worms.
(HNPD, 5/12/99)(SC, 5/18/02)
1349 Feb 14, 2,000 Jews were
burned at the stake in Strasbourg, Germany.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1904 The Hereros, a cattle-herding
tribe of what was German South West Africa, were the first genocide
victims of the 20th century. When the Hereros rebelled against the
German colonialists in 1904, Kaiser Wilhelm II sent General Lothar von
Trotha to the colony, who drove the Hereros into the desert and then
issued a formal “extermination order” authorizing the slaughter of all
who refused to surrender. Out of some 80,000 Hereros, 60,000 died in
the desert. Of the 15,000 who surrendered, half of those died in prison
camps. Some 9,000 escaped to neighboring countries.
(HNPD, 4/14/99)
1914 Aug 23, Gen. von Hausen
executed 612 inhabitants of Dinant, Belgium. Felix Fivet (3 weeks old),
Belgian baby, was among those executed by German troops.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1915 Jun 21, Germany used poison
gas for the first time in warfare in the Argonne Forest.
(HN, 6/21/98)
1915 Sep 25, At the Battle at
Loos: 8,246 British and 0 German casualties.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1915 Oct 8, The WWI Battle of Loos
ended with virtually no gains for either side. There was loss of over
one hundred thousand French, British, and German lives in this battle.
It marked the first use of poisonous gas by the British, which drifted
back to the British trenches.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1916 Dec 18, The Battle of Verdun
ended with the French and Germans each having suffered more than
330,000 killed and wounded in 10 months. [see Dec 15]
(HN, 12/18/98)
1937 Apr 26, German planes
attacked the Basque town of Guernica in Spain. Bombs fell for
three hours and escaping villagers were shot down by machine-gun
fire from the air. The attack killed as many as 1,650 Basque civilians.
(440 Int’l. internet, 4/26/97, p.2)(WSJ, 4/28/97,
p.A1)(AP, 4/26/98)
1938 Nov 9, Kristallnacht took
place in Germany. Nazi leaders heard that a Jew had shot a German
diplomat in Paris and ordered reprisals. Nazis looted and burned
synagogues as well as Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and
Austria in what became known as Kristallnacht. 30,000 Jews were sent to
concentration camps. The event is depicted by Peter Gay in his 1998
book “My German Question.”
(HFA, '96, p.18)(TL, 1988, p.111)(AP, 11/9/97)(WSJ,
11/3/98, p.A20) (SFC, 11/10/98, p.A12)
1939-1945 Of the 330,000 Jews in France at the start
of the war, about 76,000 were deported to Nazi concentration camps and
only 2,500 survived. Prof. Irving Halperin (d.2000) later authored
“”Messengers from the Dead,” a book on Holocaust literature.
(SFC, 4/18/00, p.A8)(SFC, 9/6/00, p.D2)
1940 In Poland “the Nazis packed
450,000 human beings into 75 square blocks of the Warsaw ghetto, then
walled it off and left them to starve.”
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1940 In Greece the occupying
Germans started transporting the 50,000 Jews of Thessaloniki to
Auschwitz. Up to 1943 there were 36 synagogues in the city. In 1997
there was one. The Jewish population at Salonika was wiped out.
(WSJ, 4/29/97, p.A20)(SFEC, 3/21/99, BR p.3)
1941 Aug 29, The German
Einsatzkommando in Russia killed 1,469 Jewish children.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1941 Aug, In Germany public
protests curtailed the Nazi euthanasia program that had already gassed
some 70,000 mentally handicapped German adults and children.
(WSJ, 3/23/04, p.D8)
1941 Sep 15, Nazis killed 800
Jewish women at Shkudvil Lithuania.
(MC, 9/15/01)
1941 Sep 29, 30,000 Jews were
gunned down in Kiev when Henrich Himmler sent four strike squads to
exterminate Soviet Jewish civilians and other “undesirables.”
(HN, 9/29/00)
1941 Sep 26, In Ukraine some
33,761 Jews of Kiev were killed over 3 days before Yom Kippur in the
ravine at Babi Yar by the Nazis. Over the next 2 years some 100-200
thousand more people, mostly Jews, were killed at the site.
(SFC, 10/29/96, p.A6)(SFC, 6/25/01, p.A8)(SFC,
6/26/01, p.A8)(MC, 9/26/01)
1941 Oct 22-23, Some 39,000 Jews
were killed by Romanian troops over 2 days in Odessa. Many of them were
burned to death in a public square or in warehouses that were locked
shut. Altogether some 90,000 Jews were killed in Odessa.
(SFC, 6/15/98, p.A11)
1942 Jun 10, The Gestapo massacred
173 male residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, in retaliation for the
killing of a Nazi official. Germany razed the town of Lidice,
Czechoslovakia, and killed more than 1,300 citizens in retribution of
the murder of Reinhard Heydrich.
(AP, 6/10/97)(HN, 6/10/98)
1942 Jun, By this month 100,000
people of the Nazi imposed Warsaw ghetto had died due to disease or
starvation.
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1942 Jul 31, The German SS gassed
some 1,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1942 Sep 30, The German SS
exterminated some 3,500 Jews in Zelov Lodz, Poland, in 6 week period.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1942 Sep, In Theresienstadt,
Czechoslovakia, some 50,000 Jews were held by the German SS in crowded
conditions and half the inmates died that year from disease.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A11)
1942 Oct 5, 5,000 Jews of Dubno,
Russia, were massacred.
(MC, 10/5/01)
1942 Oct 29, Nazis murdered some
16,000 Jews in Pinsk, Soviet Union.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1942 Oct, On Yom Kippur 2,900 Jews
were killed in Domachevo, Belarus.
(SFEC, 2/14/99, p.A23)
1942 Oct, By this month some
300,000 occupants of the Warsaw ghetto had been shipped off to the Nazi
gas chambers at Treblinka, Poland.
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1943 Nov, The 2-day Nazi
“Operation Harvest” at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland
executed men, women and children. Nazi officer Alfons Goetzfried later
admitted to having personally shot 500 people. Over 42,000 people,
mostly Jews, were killed in the operation. In 1999 Alfons Goetzfrid
(79) was convicted for assisting in the murders of 17,000 Jews at the
camp. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)(SFC, 5/21/99, p.D2)
1945 Feb 14, 521 American heavy
bombers flew daylight raids over Dresden, Germany following the British
assault. The firestorm killed an estimated 135,000 people. At least
35,000 died and some people place the toll closer to 70,000. The novel
“Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut was set in Dresden during the
firebombing where he was being held as a prisoner of war. US B-17
bombers dropped 771 more tons on Dresden while P-51 Mustang fighters
strafed roads packed with soldiers and civilians fleeing the burning
city. [see Feb 13]
(WSJ, 10/22/96, p.A20)(SFC, 1/6/97, p.A10)(SFEC,
7/27/97, p.T6)(HN, 2/13/99)(SFEC, 1/30/00, p.T13)
1945 May 7, SS opened fire on a
crowd in Amsterdam and killed 22.
(MC, 5/7/02)
Guatemala
1980-1984 Some 4,000 people were killed in the area
of Rabinal in central Guatemala during the civil war.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.A10)
1999 Feb 25, A 100-page summary of
a 3,600 page report by the UN mandated Historical Clarification
Committee was released. It indicated that the US government and US
corporations played a key role in maintaining the right-wing military
governments during most of the 36 years of civil war in Guatemala. The
report documented a genocide against Mayan Indians with a death toll of
some 200,000. The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (UNRG) was
responsible for 3% of the atrocities. The Guatemalan Army was blamed
for 93% of the human rights abuses.
(SFC, 2/26/99, p.A1,17)(WSJ, 2/26/99, p.A1)(SFC,
3/13/99, p.A13)
Guyana
1978 Nov 18, California Rep. Leo
J. Ryan and four other people were killed in Jonestown, Guyana, by
members of the Peoples Temple. The killings were followed by a night of
mass murder and suicide by 912 cult members. Greg Robinson, a SF
Examiner photographer, Don Harris, NBC correspondent, Bob Brown, NBC
cameraman, and Patricia Parks, a temple defector, were shot dead. The
914 suicides at Jonestown included 260 children.
(AP, 11/18/97)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.A18)
Haiti
1522 A massive slave rebellion,
the first of dozens, was crushed in Hispaniola.
(TL-MB, p.12)
1991-1994 Emmanuel “Toto” Constant headed the Front
for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti. He was also a paid US CIA
agent and members of FRAPH were believed responsible for many of the
3,000 political killings over this period.
(SFC, 6/21/96, p.A14)
India-Pakistan
1971 Dec 6, India recognized the
Democratic Republic of Bangladesh and Pakistan broke off diplomatic
relations. Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan following a
9-month war. Bangladesh later accused Pakistan of war atrocities that
led to the death of some 3 million people during the 9-month war.
(WUD, 1994, p. 1688)(SFC, 12/31/00, p.B3)
1992 Dec 6, In Uttar Pradesh,
India, thousands of Hindu extremists destroyed a mosque, setting off
two months of Hindu-Muslim rioting that claimed at least 2,000 lives.
Attackers set off 13 bomb blasts in Bombay that destroyed skyscrapers
and killed 600 people. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) inspired Hindus
to raze a 16th century mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya. The
demolition caused Hindu-Muslim riots across India and 3,000 people were
killed. Hindus believe that the site was the birthplace of the god Ram
and that Mogul invaders tore down a temple at the site to build the
Babri Mosque. In 1998 the Congress Party apologized for the mosque
destruction.
(WSJ, 5/6/96, p.A-9)(WSJ, 5/7/96, p.A-14)(AP,
12/6/97)(SFEC, 1/25/98, p.A20)
1993 In Bombay Hindus killed some
800 Muslims in revenge for earlier killings. In 2000 Bal Thackeray, a
Hindu supremacist, was arrested for inciting the killings, but was
released because the case was filed too late.
(SFC, 7/26/00, p.A13)
Indonesia
c1959 In the later 50s the
Permesta and PRRI rebellions engulfed several islands from Sulawesi to
Sumatra and some 30,000 troops were killed.
(SFEC, 11/6/99, p.A30)
1965 Sep 30, A coup was attempted
in Indonesia. Suharto crushed the coup and seized power from Pres.
Sukarno. The 1983 film “The Year of Living Dangerously” with Mel Gibson
was set in Indonesia’s 1965 civil war. An estimated 250-500 thousand
Indonesians were killed on suspicion of being Communist Party members
or sympathizers. US CIA and Embassy officials later admitted that they
furnished as many as 5000 names of “communist” leaders to the
Indonesian army.
(WSJ, 8/17/95, p.A-1)(SFEC, 4/27/97, p.T6)(SFC,
5/16/00, p.A12,14)(SFC, 9/6/00, p.D2)
1965 Oct 20, Mass arrests of
communists took place in Indonesia. Some 500,000 Chinese Indonesians
were killed in anti-Communist riots in this year. Laws restricting
Chinese culture were later established, reportedly to promote
assimilation and protect Chinese Indonesians. [see 1966] The laws
included a ban on publicly celebrating the Chinese New Year. An
estimated 300,000 Communists were massacred by the army in immediate
and later reprisals in Indonesia after an attempted overthrow of the
government in 1965.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.A23)(SFC, 2/5/98, p.A14)(HNQ,
5/21/98)(MC, 10/20/01)
1975 Dec 7, Indonesia invaded East
Timor nine days after the Timorese political party Fretilin claimed
independence. Some 600,000 were left dead after a prolonged war.
(SFC, 7/21/96, zone 1, p.8)(SFEC, 8/29/99,
p.A19)(HNQ, 11/9/00)
2001 Aug 16, In Indonesia Pres.
Sukarnoputri, in her 1st state of the nation speech, apologized for
atrocities in rebellious provinces, urged the military to reform itself
and ruled out independence for Aceh and Irian Jaya.
(SFC, 8/17/01, p.A12)
Iran-Iraq
1980-1988 Iran and Iraq engaged in war. The number of
casualties was estimated at well over a million.
(V.D.-H.K.p.312)(SFC, 2/24/98, p.A9)
1987-1988 Some 50-100 thousand Kurds were killed by
poisonous gas from Iraqi forces.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B6)
Israel
1948 Apr 9, In Deir Yassin about
one-third of 750 Palestinians were killed by Jewish fighters of the
National Military Organization, an underground group better known as
the Irgun, and a splinter group called Lehi. The catastrophe is called
Al-Nakbah by the Palestinians. 30 similar massacres happened on other
Palestinian villages. The death toll was said to be inflated by Jewish
forces to invoke fear and cause maximum flight.
(SFC, 4/25/98, p.A1,11)
Italy
1377 Feb 3, There was a mass
execution of population of Cesena, Italy.
(MC, 2/3/02)
1935-1936 The Italian army used chemical warfare
against Ethiopia in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol.
(NH, 10/98, p.18)
1936 Mar 29, Italy firebombed the
Ethiopian city of Harar.
(HN, 3/29/98)
Japan
1937 Dec-Jan, John Rabe
(1882-1950), a German businessman for Siemens living in China, recorded
the 2-month terror of the Japanese “Rape of Nanking” in his diary. The
Japanese sacked and pillaged the city. They raped at least 20,000 women
and killed at least 50,000 people. Rabe established a neutral safe zone
for hundreds of thousands of Chinese refugees. Noncombatant deaths may
have reached 300,000. Reporter Tillman Durdin (d.1998 at 91) filed
reports for the New York times. Later Iris Chang wrote “The Rape of
Nanking.”
1937 Dec-Feb, In the Japanese
“Rape of Nanjing” more than 200,000 people were killed. Japanese
soldiers raped and killed tens of thousands of Chinese women during
their invasion of China. [photo from Nanjing] In 1997 Iris Chang (29)
published “The Rape of Nanking: the Forgotten Holocaust of world War
II.” The largest execution of prisoners took place north of Nanking
near Mufu Mountain where 57,000 civilians and soldiers were gunned down.
(WSJ,2/6/97,p.A14)(SFEC, 12/1/96, p.C4)(WSJ,
12/29/97, p.A9)(SFEC, 7/26/98, Z1 p.1,4)
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.B1)(SFEC, 2/22/98, Z1 p.6)(SFC,
7/10/98, p.D3)
Kashmir
1988-1998 The fighting in Kashmir left 300,000 dead
over this period.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.C2)
Korea
1950 Jun 25, The Korean War
started as forces from the communist North invaded the South. It lasted
till 1953. A Truman administration statement that Korea was “outside
the US defense perimeter” in the Pacific was said to have invited the
attack. Gen. McArthur led a UN expeditionary force in response to North
Korea’s attack on South Korea. The Chinese entered the war and the UN
forces were pushed into a Christmas retreat. 2.5 million people were
killed. No peace treaty was ever signed. About 1.7 million Americans
were involved and there was an estimated 3 mil casualties including
150,000 (54,246) Americans and over 1 mil Chinese. In 1990 North Korean
officials revealed that Stalin knew about and encouraged North Korea’s
aggression as did Mao Tse-Tung.
(NG, Aug., 1974, H. E. Kim, p.255)(TMC, 1994,
p.1950)(WSJ, 8/8/95, p. A15) (SFC, 4/8/96, p.A-9)(SFEM, 11/10/96,
p.12)(SFC, 2/17/96, p.A26)(AP, 6/25/97)(WSJ, 7/21/97, p.A22)
1950-1953 The Korean War started on Jun 25, 1950.
2.5 million people were killed. No peace treaty was ever signed. About
1.7 million Americans were involved and there was an estimated 3 mil
casualties including 150,000 (54,246) Americans and over 1 mil Chinese.
In 1999 W.D. Ehrhart and Philip K. Jason edited "Retrieving Bones:
Stories and Poems of the Korean War."
(NG, Aug., 1974, H. E. Kim, p.255)(SFC, 4/8/96,
p.A-9)(WSJ, 8/8/95, p. A15) (SFEM, 11/10/96, p.12)(SFC, 2/17/96,
p.A26)(SFEC, 8/29/99, BR p.3)
1995-1998 In 1999 North Korea reported that some
220,000 people died from famine over this period. South Korean
officials estimated that the population had fallen from 25 million to
23 million. In 1998 a US congressional delegation estimated the number
to be 2 million.
(SFC, 5/11/99, p.A12)(SFEC, 8/15/99, p.A21)
Kosovo
1999 Jun 9, The Pentagon revealed
aerial photographs that indicated the destruction of evidence of Serb
atrocities in Kosovo. Some 143 graves at Izbica where 270 residents
were reported killed, appeared to have been obliterated.
(USAT, 6/10/99, p.10A)
2001 May 25, In Serbia police
linked former Pres. Slobodan Milosevic to a 1999 coverup of Kosovo
atrocities that included the dumping of bodies in the Danube.
(SFC, 5/26/01, p.A8)
Kurdistan
1991 Mar 2, The Kurds rose up
against Iraqi forces but were crushed by Iraqi armor that killed 50,000
and forced more than a million Kurds to flee to Turkey and Iran.
(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A7)(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A8)
Laos
1964-1973 US warplanes carried out 580,000 bombing
missions over Laos and dropped an estimated 2.3 million tons of bombs.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A22)
1973-1997 Some 11,000 Laotians were killed or wounded
by left over American bombs.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A19)
Lebanon
1975-1990 An estimated 17,000 Lebanese were reported
missing during the civil war. In 2000 a government commission ended a
7-month investigation and said the missing were probably all dead.
(SFC, 7/27/00, p.C16)
Mexico
1519 Cortez discovered a plot by
some Cholulans to assassinate him and ordered some 6,000 Cholulan men
executed.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T10)
1521 Jan, Cortez returned to
Tenochtitlan and destroyed the city. Thousands of Aztecs were killed.
The surviving children of Montezuma were sent to Spain and were granted
compensatory titles to the Spanish nobility.
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1528 The fortress of San Juan de
Ulua was built on a coral reef in Veracruz. It was later estimated that
half-million slaves died in the process.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
Mozambique
1992 A peace accord ended 17 years
of civil war during which some 600,000 people were killed.
(SFC, 6/25/96, p.A8)(WSJ, 2/14/00, p.B13C)
Nigeria
1967 Jul 6, The Biafran War
erupted. The war, which lasted more than two years, claimed some
600,000 lives. The Republic of Biafra was proclaimed when the eastern
region of Nigeria, the homeland of the Ibo people, seceded. This was
followed by civil war. The federal troops of Nigeria held most of
rebellious Biafra by the end of 1968 but the Ibos attempted to hold out
in a small and crowded area.
(AP, 7/6/97)(HNQ, 5/27/98)
Palestine
1982 Sep 16-18, The massacre of
hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children by Lebanese Christian
militiamen began in west Beirut's Sabra and Chatilla (Shatilla) refugee
camps. Up to 2,000 Palestinian civilians were killed. Israel’s defense
minister, Ariel Sharon, was held responsible and lost his top post. In
2001 survivors lodged a complaint in Belgium against Sharon.
(AP, 9/16/97)(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A8)(SFC, 5/24/00,
p.A15)(SFC, 6/19/01, p.A8)
Peru
Philippines
1603 Oct 20, A Chinese uprising in
the Philippines failed after 23,000 killed.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1902 Jul, The Philippine-American
War officially ended. Estimates for the civilian people killed ranged
from 250,000 to 1 million. Creighton Miller in 1982 published
"Benevolent Assimilation," a comprehensive account of the conflict.
(SFEC, 1/31/99, Z1 p.1,4)
1942 Apr 9, In the Battle of
Bataan, some 70,000 soldiers gathered at the bottom of the Bataan
peninsula during World War II. American and Philippine defenders on
Bataan capitulated to Japanese forces; the surrender was followed by
the notorious 55-mile “Bataan Death March” which claimed nearly 10,000
lives. 12,000 American soldiers surrendered to the Japanese and some
1000 died on the march. [see Apr 10]
(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.T7)(AP, 4/9/97)(HN, 4/9/98)(SSFC,
6/17/01, Par p.4)
1942 Apr 10, The 65-mile Bataan
Death March began. 10-15,000 soldiers perished on the march. Bataan is
a peninsula of western Luzon in the Philippines. It was surrendered to
the Japanese in this year and retaken by American forces in 1945. [see
Apr 9]
(HFA, ‘96, p.28)(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.T7)(SFC, 4/25/97,
p.A26)
1972 The conflict between the
government and Muslim rebels began. A full-scale guerrilla war began in
which some 120,000 people were killed by 1999.
(WSJ, 6/20/96, p.A1)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A19)
1996 Jun, Talks opened between the
government and Muslim rebels to end the 24-year conflict that has
killed 50,000 people in the southern islands.
(WSJ, 6/20/96, p.A1)
Russia
1759 Jul 23, Russians under
Saltikov defeated Prussians at Kay in eastern Germany, and one-fourth
of Prussian army of 27,000 was lost.
(AP, 7/23/97)
1904 Sep 19, Gen. Nogi assaulted
Port Arthur: 16,000 Japanese casualties.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1905 Feb 21, The Mukden campaign
of the Russo-Japanese War, began. In one of the largest battles ever
fought up to that time, some 750,000 Japanese and Russian soldiers
engaged in the battle for Mukden in the Russo-Japanese War. The
three-week battle pitted 400,000 Japanese and 350,000 Russians
stretched over a front extending more than 90 miles. More than 100,000
were left dead or injured as the Russians began a retreat toward Harbin
on March 9.
(HN, 2/21/98)(HNQ, 4/23/99)
1914 Nov 25, Hindenburg called off
Lodz offensive 40 miles from Warsaw, Poland. The Russians lost 90,000
to the Germans’ 35,000 in two weeks of fighting.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1916 Mar 18, On the Eastern Front,
the Russians countered the Verdun assault with an attack at Lake
Naroch. The Russians lost 100,000 men and the Germans lost 20,000.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1919 The Bolsheviks began
repressions and millions of Cossacks died. Their institutions were
destroyed and many fled the country.
(SFC,10/28/97, p.A8)
1933 Aleksandr Rodchenko was
dispatched to document the White Sea Canal project in which some
200,000 political prisoners were killed.
(WSJ, 7/8/98, p.A13)
1937 Jul 31, The Russian Politburo
enabled Operative Order 00447. This led to the execution of some
193,000 people.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1937 Oct-Nov, A 3-man panel, the
“Osobaya Troika,” signed death sentences that were sent to
thousands of gulags across Russia and led to the massacre of 9,000
victims in the Karelia Forest at Medvezhyegorsk. The grave site was
opened in Jul, 1997, and a monument was planned.
(SFC, 7/17/97, p.A10)
1937-1938 Their were sweeping purges across the
Soviet Union. 14 million people across Russia were estimated to have
died in the purges. Several hundred Americans were arrested in Karelia,
near the Finnish border. Several thousand Americans and Canadians had
moved there to help develop the Soviet timber industry. 40,000 people a
month were executed.
(SFEC, 12/22/96, BR p.7)(SFC, 7/17/97,
p.A10)(SFEC,11/9/97, p.A12)(SFC, 4/17/99, p.B3)
1940 Apr-May, Some 25,700 (15,000)
Polish citizens were massacred by the Soviets in the Katyn and Miednoje
(Mednoye) forests on the outskirts of Moscow and at Kharkov in western
Russia (later Ukraine). Some 14,700 Polish officers were identified by
their uniforms. Excavations of the sites began in 1994. 6,313 Polish
officers were all shot in the back of the head near Mednoye. 9,000
Russians were also massacred at the site.
(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.16)(SFEC, 9/3/00, p.A18)
1942 May 29, The German Army
completed its encirclement of the Kharkov region of the Soviet Union.
The Red Army had lost over 250,000 men including many prisoners.
(HN, 5/29/99)
1942 Aug 23, German forces began
an assault on the major Soviet industrial city of Stalingrad. From Aug.
to Feb. 1943, The Battle of Stalingrad, 600 miles southeast of Moscow,
was fought and ended with the encirclement and destruction of the
German 6th Army Group. Stalingrad has since been renamed to Volgograd.
In 1998 Antony Beevor published “Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege.” The
German in charge was Gen’l. Friedrich Paulus. Luftwaffe air raids
killed 40,000 people in the first week of fighting.
(WSJ, 2/21/96, p.A-15)(WSJ, 7/8/98, p.A13)(HN,
8/23/98)
1944 Some 150,000 Hungarian troops
fought under Nazi command at the Don River. The Red army killed about
90,000 and thousands died trying to walk back to Hungary.
(SFC, 8/12/00, p.A11)
1945 Jan 27, The Soviet army
arrived at Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland, and found the Nazi
concentration camp and crematorium where 1.1 - 1.5 million people were
murdered. It is now believed that 1 million Jews were murdered here, up
to 75,000 Polish Christians, 21,000 Gypsies, and 15,000 Soviet
prisoners of war.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-10)(AP, 1/27/98)
1945 Apr 15, The deadly battle for
Berlin began. The Seelow Heights posed the last natural barrier to
Berlin in April 1945 from an advancing Red Army. The rolling plains and
plateaus of the Seelow Heights were only 35 miles from the German
capital and were well defended. The battle, which raged for a week, was
extremely costly to both sides, leaving some 30,000 Red Army soldiers
and at least 80,000 Germans killed.
(HNQ, 4/16/99)
1982 Mar 8, The U.S. accused the
Soviets of killing 3,000 Afghans with poison gas.
(HN, 3/8/98)
Rwanda
1994 Apr - Jul, 500,000 - 1
Million people in Rwanda, Africa, were killed by Hutu extremists. Most
of them were minority Tutsis and opponents of the ruling Hutu majority.
(SFEC, 1/15/1995, A-10)
1997 Nov 17, In Rwanda at least 27
civilians were killed by suspected rebels in Mukamara. Nearly 300
people were killed when Hutu rebels attacked a prison in the northwest
at Giciye. 200 rebels, 88 prisoners and 2 soldiers died in the clash.
(SFC,11/21/97, p.D3)
Serbia
1941 Apr 6-8, German Luftwaffe
Marshall Alexander Lohr commanded a surprise air attack on Belgrade.
Lohr was later tried and executed for the bombings. Over 17,000
citizens of Belgrade were killed in the bombing.
(SFC, 4/1/99, p.A12)(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A10)(WSJ,
5/20/99, p.A21)
1944 Apr, Orthodox Easter, Allied
bombing of Nazi occupied Serbia resulted in the deaths of some 4,000
Serbian civilians. An account of the raids, requested by US Gen'l. Carl
Spaatz, found that most of the bombs struck at least 600 yards from
their targets.
(SFC, 4/1/99, p.A12)
1991 A Serb rebellion set off a
6-month war in which at least 10,000 people were killed. Serb rebels
backed by Yugoslavia seized a third of Croatia, but the territory was
regained in 1995.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A16)
1992 Aug 21, Serbian soldiers
separated over 200 men, mostly Croats and Muslims, from a convoy of
civilians from the Trnopolje detention camp in Bosnia. The captives
were taken to a wooded ravine and shot dead. In 2003 Darko Mrdja,
commander of a special police unit, admitted to a court in the Hague of
playing a role in the slaughter.
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.A8)
1995 Jul 11, Srebrenica, a UN
declared “safe area,” fell to the Bosnian Serbs. 7,000 Muslim men
supposedly escaped but were never heard from again. Drazen Erdemovic
(24) later admitted that he participated in killing 70 men at
Srebrenica. Victims were shot in the back in groups of 10 by himself
and fellow soldiers in the Bosnian Serb Army’s 10th Sabotage
Detachment. He was told that he would be killed if he refused to follow
orders.
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.A12) (SFC, 7/7/96, A10) (SFC,
6/1/96, p.A10)
Sierra Leone
1991 Civil war began and by 1996
10,000 had been killed. Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front began
fighting a bush war. In 1998 Sankoh was charged with treason.
(WSJ, 5/7/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 6/6/97, p.E2)(SFC, 9/5/98,
p.A12)
1999 Jan 31, Rebels freed 11
Indian nationals abducted a week ago. The government said that as many
as 3,000-5000 people died during the fighting in Freetown. The number
of dead was raised to 6,350.
(WSJ, 2/1/99, p.A1)(SFC, 2/12/99, p.A8)(SFC,
3/26/99, p.A14)
Somalia
1991-1992 Some 350,000 Somalis died from disease,
starvation and civil war.
(SFEC,11/23/97, p.A25)
1992 At least 350,000 people died
in the famine that was compounded by clan warfare.
(SFC, 12/26/96, p.B10)
South Africa
1899-1902 In the Boer War some 12,000 blacks and
18,000 whites were killed from epidemics in British concentration
camps. Some 25,000 blacks and 94,000 whites were herded into the
world's first concentration camps. Thomas Packenham later authored "The
Boer War."
(SFC, 10/8/99, p.D3)
1990-1994 Over 5,000 people were killed in
KwaZulu-Natal province prior to the first all-race elections.
(SFC, 5/13/99, p.C3)
1984-1993 In South Africa from Sep ‘84 to Dec ‘93,
some 19,000 people were killed in political violence.
(SFC, 8/22/96, p.E1)
1988 Dec 3, In South Africa, 11
black funeral mourners were slain in Natal Province in an attack blamed
on security forces.
(AP, 12/3/98)
Spain
1355 May 7, 1,200 Jews of Toledo,
Spain, were killed by Count Henry of Trastamara.
(MC, 5/7/02)
Sri Lanka
1989-1990 In 1997 the government admitted that nearly
17,000 people died or vanished during an offensive against the Janatha
Vimukthi Peramuna ( JVP, People’s Liberation Front), a Marxist rebel
group. Human rights groups estimated that some 60,000 people were
killed or disappeared.
(WSJ, 9/4/97, p.A1)(SFC, 9/4/97, p.A3)
1995 Dec. 6, The flag of Sri Lanka
was raised over the Tamil stronghold of Jaffna. This marked the biggest
victory in the 12 year war in which 39,000 people have died.
(WSJ, 12/6/95, p.A-1)
1995 5,000 people were killed this
year in fighting with the Tamil Tigers.
(WSJ, 7/11/96, p.A10)
Spain
1937 Apr 26, German planes from
the Condor Legion--sent to Spain by Adolf Hitler to help fascist
General Francisco Franco overthrow the communist Popular Front regime--
attacked the Basque town of Guernica in Spain. Bombs fell for
three hours and escaping villagers were shot down by machine-gun
fire from the air. The attack killed as many as 1,600-1,650 Basque
civilians and injured 900. Although the alleged target was a bridge of
military significance some distance from the town, dazed survivors
described a merciless four-hour bombing and strafing attack by German
pilots directed toward the village and its inhabitants. The Guernica
atrocity became synonymous with the horror of modern warfare and
inspired one of the 20th century's greatest works of art, Guernica, by
Spanish artist Pablo Picasso.
(440 Int’l. internet, 4/26/97, p.2)(WSJ, 4/28/97,
p.A1)(AP, 4/26/98) (HNPD, 4/26/99)
Sudan
1898 Sep 2, Anglo-Egyptian lines
under Gen’l. Kitchener were charged by 50,000 fanatical Dervishes and
were mowed down by howitzers, machine guns and rifles. Lt. Winston
Churchill led one of the last (and most useless) cavalry charges in
history. Sir Herbert Kitchener led the British to victory over the
Mahdists at Omdurman and took Khartoum. The Dervishes left 11,000 dead
and 16,000 wounded. The Anglo-Egyptian army suffered fewer than a dozen
casualties. In 1899 Winston Churchill published "The River War, An
Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan." This was the 1st use of the
machine gun in battle.
(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A14)(HN, 9/2/98)(ON, 10/99,
p.3)(MC, 9/2/01)
1983-1998 The Sudan civil war killed some 1.5 million
people over this period.
(SFC, 11/3/98, p.A10)
1988-1989 The war induced famine killed some 250,000
people.
(SFC, 11/3/98, p.A10)
1998 Dec 10, The death toll from
the 15 year civil war was reported to have reached at least 1.9
million. A 40 nation African conference on refugees opened in Khartoum.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.D3)
Sweden
1520 Nov 9, Swedish King Christian
II executed 600 nobles.
(MC, 11/9/01)
Syria
1982 Feb, Pres. Hafez Assad
ordered the Syrian army under his brother, Rifaat Assad, to crush a
fundamentalist Muslim revolt in Hama and 10-20,000 residents were
massacred.
(SFEC, 6/11/00, p.A12)(WSJ, 6/12/00, p.A30)(WSJ,
6/13/00, p.A26)(SSFC, 11/18/01, p.A5)
Thailand
Uganda
2000 Mar 17, Some 330 followers of
the Movement for the Restoration of Ten Commandments of God, led by
Joseph Kibweteree, burned to death in a mass suicide in Kanungu.
Children were involved and it was not clear if Kibweteree was killed.
More bodies were found at the house of Kibweteree. Foul play was later
suspected instead of suicide. 448 other victims were later found.
(SFEC, 3/19/00, p.A19)(SFC, 3/20/00, p.A13)(SFC,
3/24/00, p.A18)(SFC, 7/15/00, p.A13)
2000 Apr 27, Workers in Ggaba, a
residential area south of Kampala, exhumed the bodies of 55 more people
associated with the Movement for the Restoration of Ten Commandments.
Total deaths stood at 979.
(SFC, 4/28/00, p.D2)
Ukraine
1648 Nov 2, 12,000 Jews were
massacred by Chmielnicki hordes in Narol Podlia (Ukraine). Cossack
Bogdan Chmielnicki led the pogrom in quest of Ukrainian independence
from the Polish nobility, who employed Jews to collect taxes.
(PCh, 1992, p.241)(MC, 11/2/01)
1941 Nov 6, Einsatz death groups
killed 15,000 Jews of Rovno, Ukraine.
(MC, 11/6/01)
Vietnam
1954 May 7, The Battle of Dien
Bien Phu in Vietnam ended after 55 days with Vietnamese insurgents
overrunning French forces and the US began to get involved. Vietnamese
insurgents expelled the French but the country was divided into a
communist north and a pro-US south. In the 8 years of the French
Indochina War some 52,000 French soldiers were killed. Vietnam was soon
partitioned between a regime in Hanoi led by Ho Chi Minh and an
anti-communist regime in Saigon under Ngo Dinh Diem. Howard Simpson
later wrote: "Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot."
(TMC, 1994, p.1954)(TL, 1988, p.114)(SFC, 12/27/96,
p.A24)(SFC, 2/22/96, p.B3)(AP, 5/7/97)(SFC, 5/24/99, p.C4)
1962-1972 In Vietnam giant US tanker planes sprayed
millions of gallons of Agent Orange on the once lush DMZ in order to
eradicate the enemy’s jungle cover. Some 12 million gallons of Agent
Orange were sprayed over parts of southern and central Vietnam from
1961-1971. The total included some 375 pounds of dioxin. In 1998 a
nationwide survey was planned to count the victims. American
involvement in the Vietnam War was analyzed by H.R. McMaster In his
1997 book: “Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam.” Agent Orange
used dioxins as the active ingredient in the herbicide. Anti-war
activist Jane Fonda at one point laid nude in a rice field near
Sacramento and California Republican Assembly leader Charles J. Conrad
(d.1998) suggested spraying defoliants on her.
(WSJ,2/12/97, p.A1)(SFC, 10/13/97, p.A23)(SFC,
1/22/98, p.E4)(SFC, 7/25/98, p.A10)
1968 Feb 18, Three U.S. pilots who
were held by the Vietnamese arrived in Washington. Today, the
Vietnamese people are pressuring Hanoi to account for their own 300,000
MIAs.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1968 Mar 16, US troops under the
command of Lt. William L. Calley Jr. massacred Vietnamese civilians at
My Lai. 504 [407] villagers were massacred. Hugh Thompson, a helicopter
pilot, observed the end of the massacre. He landed between some
remaining villagers and his fellow soldiers and ordered his gunner to
fire on American troops if necessary. With 2 other gunships he
airlifted to safety a dozen villagers. He and his gunner were awarded
the Soldier’s Medal in 1998. The atrocity was exposed by Ron Ridenhour
(d.1998 at 52), a door gunner on an observation helicopter, who flew
over the village a few days after the event. He waited several months
until he was out of the service before reporting the event to state and
congressional officials. In 1999 Trent Angers authored "The Forgotten
Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story."
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(SFEC, 10/13/96, BR p.4)(AP,
3/16/97)(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A9)(SFC, 3/16/98, p.A8)(SFC, 5/11/98,
p.A20)(WSJ, 11/2/99, p.A24)
1971 Mar 14, US Senator Edward
Kennedy estimated that 25,000 Vietnamese civilians had been killed in
1970.
(HN, 3/14/98)
1972 Dec 18, US Pres. Nixon
ordered the heaviest bombing of North Vietnam that began on this day
over Hanoi. “Operation Linebacker II” lasted 11 days and killed over
1600 civilians with 70 US airmen killed or captured. (The bombardment
ended 12 days later.) President Nixon declared that the bombing of
North Vietnam would continue until an accord was reached.
(SFC,12/16/97, p.B1)(AP, 12/18/97)(HN, 12/18/98)
1973 The Vietnam War resulted in
the death of 58,153 (58,167) Americans, 1.1 [1.2] million North
Vietnamese and Southern resistance fighters (Viet cong), and 2 million
civilians.
(WSJ, 11/30/95, p.A-23)(SFEM, 11/10/96, p.12)(SFC,
10/3/97, p.B14)
Zimbabwe
1982-1987 Some 200 guerrillas of the minority Ndebele
tribe in Matabeleland province fought troops of Pres. Mugabe and as
many as 20,000 civilians were killed. In 1999 Mugabe ordered provincial
officials to prepare compensation claims for the victims of army
atrocities.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.A14)
1983-1984 In Zimbabwe the Matabeleland atrocities
occurred when the government of Robert Mugabe sent in its North Korean
trained Fifth Brigade to terrorize the Ndebele-speaking region that
supported opponent Joshua Nkomo. Thousands of civilians died. The
terror ended in 1987 when Nkomo reconciled with Mugabe.
(SFC, 5/30/97, p.A15)
1998 Nov 25, President Jiang Zemin
arrived in Tokyo for the first visit to Japan by a Chinese head of
state since World War II. Zemin and Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi decided
not to sign a joint declaration on the relationship between their
countries during the Jiang’s 6-day visit, the first ever by a Chinese
head of state. Zemin wanted a written apology from Japan for WW II
atrocities that began with a 1931 Japanese invasion. Only verbal
apologies were made.
(SFC, 11/26/98, p.B3)(AP, 11/25/99)
1998 Aug 21, In South Africa
former Pres. Botha (82) was convicted of ignoring a subpoena to testify
about apartheid atrocities in front of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. He was fined $1,577 and given a suspended 1 year jail
sentence.
(SFC, 8/22/98, p.A8)
1999 Feb 25, A 100-page summary of
a 3,600 page report by the UN mandated Historical Clarification
Committee was released. It indicated that the US government and US
corporations played a key role in maintaining the right-wing military
governments during most of the 36 years of civil war in Guatemala. The
report documented a genocide against Mayan Indians with a death toll of
some 200,000. The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (UNRG) was
responsible for 3% of the atrocities. The Guatemalan Army was blamed
for 93% of the human rights abuses.
(SFC, 2/26/99, p.A1,17)(WSJ, 2/26/99, p.A1)(SFC,
3/13/99, p.A13)
1999 May 27, The Int'l. War Crimes
Tribunal at the Hague announced an indictment against Pres. Milosevic
and 4 senior aides for atrocities and mass deportations and multiple
counts of crimes against humanity. Also indicted were: Milan
Milutinovic, president of Serbia; Vlajko Stojilkovic, Serbian interior
minister; Nikola Sainovic, deputy prime minister of Yugoslavia; and
Gen'l. Dragoljub Ojdanic, chief of staff of the Yugoslav army.
(SFC, 5/27/99, p.A1)(SFC, 5/28/99, p.A1)
1999 Jun 9, The Pentagon revealed
aerial photographs that indicated the destruction of evidence of Serb
atrocities in Kosovo. Some 143 graves at Izbica where 270 residents
were reported killed, appeared to have been obliterated.
(USAT, 6/10/99, p.10A)
1999 Oct 22, In Bosnia Zeljko
Kopanja, editor-in-chief of Nezavisne Novine, lost both legs due to a
bomb attack as he opened his car door. He had recently published a
series of war time atrocities committed against non-Serbs by Bosnian
and Serb forces.
(SFC, 10/23/99, p.A11)
2000 Sep 25, In NYC a US District
court ordered Radovan Karadzic, a former Bosnian Serb leader, to pay
$4.5 million in damages for 1992 war atrocities committed by his
soldiers.
(SFC, 9/26/00, p.A16)
1999 Sep 13, Indonesia agreed to
an int'l. commission to investigate possible atrocities in East Timor
and to create no obstacles to the deployment of a foreign peacekeeping
force.
(SFC, 9/14/99, p.A1)
xxxx Top 100 plus
1347-1350 Oct, The Black Death: A Genoese trading
post in the Crimea was besieged by an army of Kipchaks from Hungary and
Mongols from the East. The latter brought with them a new form of
plague. Infected dead bodies were catapulted into the Genoese town. One
Genoese ship managed to escape and brought the disease to Messina, in
Sicily. From this time forth the disease became an epidemic. It moved
over the next few years to northern Italy, North Africa, France, Spain,
Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, the Low countries, England,
Scandinavia and the Baltic. There were lesser outbreaks in many cities
for the next twenty years. An estimated 25 million died in Europe and
economic depression followed.
(V.D.-H.K.p.151)(NG, 5/88, p.678)(WSJ, 1/11/99,
p.R42)
1958 China tried to modernize its
economy in “The Great Leap Forward” and urged factories and farms to
meet impossible production targets. Rather than concede failure, local
officials misled central planners about output. The result: a famine
that may have killed as many as 30 million people by the end of 1960.
The story is told by Jasper Becker in his 1997 book “Hungry Ghosts:
Mao’s Secret Famine.”
(WSJ 12/10/93)(WSJ, 2/7/97, p.A14)
1853-1864 The Taiping army of Hong Xiuquan took the
city of Nanjing as its heavenly capital in the Taiping Rebellion. He
claimed to be Jesus' brother and ruled there until 1864. Imperial
troops crushed his movement and tens of millions died. Some 10,000
people were killed at Nanjing.
(WSJ, 1/5/96, p.A-8)(WSJ, 4/26/99, p.A6)(SFC,
7/23/99, p.A10)
1937-1938 Their were sweeping purges across the
Soviet Union. 14 million people across Russia were estimated to have
died in the purges. Several hundred Americans were arrested in Karelia,
near the Finnish border. Several thousand Americans and Canadians had
moved there to help develop the Soviet timber industry. 40,000 people a
month were executed.
(SFEC, 12/22/96, BR p.7)(SFC, 7/17/97,
p.A10)(SFEC,11/9/97, p.A12)(SFC, 4/17/99, p.B3)
1919 The Bolsheviks began
repressions and millions of Cossacks died. Their institutions were
destroyed and many fled the country.
(SFC,10/28/97, p.A8)
1971 Dec 6, India recognized the
Democratic Republic of Bangladesh and Pakistan broke off diplomatic
relations. Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan following a
9-month war. Bangladesh later accused Pakistan of war atrocities that
led to the death of some 3 million people during the 9-month war.
(WUD, 1994, p. 1688)(SFC, 12/31/00, p.B3)
1950 Jun 25, The Korean War
started as forces from the communist North invaded the South. It lasted
till 1953. A Truman administration statement that Korea was “outside
the US defense perimeter” in the Pacific was said to have invited the
attack. Gen. McArthur led a UN expeditionary force in response to North
Korea’s attack on South Korea. The Chinese entered the war and the UN
forces were pushed into a Christmas retreat. 2.5 million people were
killed. No peace treaty was ever signed. About 1.7 million Americans
were involved and there was an estimated 3 mil casualties including
150,000 (54,246) Americans and over 1 mil Chinese. In 1990 North Korean
officials revealed that Stalin knew about and encouraged North Korea’s
aggression as did Mao Tse-Tung.
(NG, Aug., 1974, H. E. Kim, p.255)(TMC, 1994,
p.1950)(WSJ, 8/8/95, p. A15) (SFC, 4/8/96, p.A-9)(SFEM, 11/10/96,
p.12)(SFC, 2/17/96, p.A26)(AP, 6/25/97)(WSJ, 7/21/97, p.A22)
1937-1941 Some 2 million people were killed during
Stalinist purges on the outskirts of Minsk, Belarus.
(SSFC, 9/2/01, p.A14)
1973 The Vietnam War resulted in
the death of 58,153 (58,167) Americans, 1.1 [1.2] million North
Vietnamese and Southern resistance fighters (Viet cong), and 2 million
civilians.
(WSJ, 11/30/95, p.A-23)(SFEM, 11/10/96, p.12)(SFC,
10/3/97, p.B14)
2000 Jun 9, The Congo 22-month
civil war averaged some 2,600 deaths every day. The total was estimated
at 1.7 million dead.
(SFC, 6/9/00, p.A20)
1975-1979 Pol Pot, whose real name is Saloth Sar, led
the Khmer Rouge and ruled Cambodia. In 1987 Joan D. Criddle and Teeda
Butt Mam authored "To Destroy You Is No Loss: The Odyssey of a
Cambodian Family." The work was recorded on cassette in 1992 and told
the extraordinary story of a Cambodian family caught up in the genocide
under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. An estimated 1.7 million people were
killed under the Khmer Rouge. In 2000 Loung Ung authored “First They
Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.”
(WSJ, 6/7/96, p.A11)(AR, 9/4/99)(SFC, 9/8/99,
p.A15)(SFEC, 6/11/00, BR p.6)
1983-1998 The Sudan civil war killed some 1.5 million
people over this period.
(SFC, 11/3/98, p.A10)
1945 Jan 27, The Soviet army
arrived at Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland, and found the Nazi
concentration camp and crematorium where 1.1 - 1.5 million people were
murdered. It is now believed that 1 million Jews were murdered here, up
to 75,000 Polish Christians, 21,000 Gypsies, and 15,000 Soviet
prisoners of war.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-10)(AP, 1/27/98)
1915-1923 Some 1 million Armenians were massacred
under the rule of the Ottoman Turks. The Turks claimed that hundreds of
thousands died as casualties of war.
(SFC,11/25/97, p.A22)
1980-1988 Iran and Iraq engaged in war. The number of
casualties was estimated at well over a million.
(V.D.-H.K.p.312)(SFC, 2/24/98, p.A9)
1941-1945 Croatia was occupied by Nazi forces and
with its Moslem allies some 700,000 Serbs and 75,000 Jews and Gypsies
were killed. [This was a letter with reference to the Encyclopedia
Britannica as source material] The Independent State of Croatia was set
up after the German and Italian invasions and run by the fascist
Ustashe regime as a puppet state. The central Ustashe aim was to
cleanse Croatia of “foreign” elements and to turn Croatia into a "100%
Roman Catholic state." Jasenovac was the site of the largest Ustashe
death camp, and some estimates claim as many as several hundred
thousand dead. Ante Pavelic was the leader of the Ustashe regime.
(WSJ, 10/11/95, p. A-1)(WSJ, 4/3/96, p.A-22)(WSJ,
5/20/99, p.A21)
1969-1973 The US Air Force dropped 539,129 tons of
bombs on Cambodia and killed some 700,000 people. The bombing drove
rural people into the cities and caused a collapse of the agricultural
system that contributed to the rise of the Khmer Rouge and a famine
that was later blamed on the Khmer Rouge.
(SFC, 8/14/97, p.A25)
1975 Dec 7, Indonesia invaded East
Timor nine days after the Timorese political party Fretilin claimed
independence. Some 600,000 were left dead after a prolonged war.
(SFC, 7/21/96, zone 1, p.8)(SFEC, 8/29/99,
p.A19)(HNQ, 11/9/00)
1967 Jul 6, The Biafran War
erupted. The war, which lasted more than two years, claimed some
600,000 lives. The Republic of Biafra was proclaimed when the eastern
region of Nigeria, the homeland of the Ibo people, seceded. This was
followed by civil war. The federal troops of Nigeria held most of
rebellious Biafra by the end of 1968 but the Ibos attempted to hold out
in a small and crowded area.
(AP, 7/6/97)(HNQ, 5/27/98)
1992 A Mozambique peace accord
ended 17 years of civil war during which some 600,000 people were
killed.
(SFC, 6/25/96, p.A8)(WSJ, 2/14/00, p.B13C)
1994 Apr - Jul, 500,000 - 1
Million people in Rwanda, Africa, were killed by Hutu extremists. Most
of them were minority Tutsis and opponents of the ruling Hutu majority.
(SFEC, 1/15/1995, A-10)
1994 Spring-summer, Hutus
slaughtered more than 500,000 people, mostly Tutsis, in Rwanda and fled
to refugee camps in Zaire (Congo).
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.B1)
1528 The Mexican fortress of San
Juan de Ulua was built on a coral reef in Veracruz. It was later
estimated that half-million slaves died in the process.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1965 Oct 20, Mass arrests of
communists took place in Indonesia. Some 500,000 Chinese Indonesians
were killed in anti-Communist riots in this year. Laws restricting
Chinese culture were later established, reportedly to promote
assimilation and protect Chinese Indonesians. [see 1966] The laws
included a ban on publicly celebrating the Chinese New Year. An
estimated 300,000 Communists were massacred by the army in immediate
and later reprisals in Indonesia after an attempted overthrow of the
government in 1965.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.A23)(SFC, 2/5/98, p.A14)(HNQ,
5/21/98)(MC, 10/20/01)
1965 Sep 30, A coup was attempted
in Indonesia. Suharto crushed the coup and seized power from Pres.
Sukarno. The 1983 film “The Year of Living Dangerously” with Mel Gibson
was set in Indonesia’s 1965 civil war. An estimated 250-500 thousand
Indonesians were killed on suspicion of being Communist Party members
or sympathizers. US CIA and Embassy officials later admitted that they
furnished as many as 5000 names of “communist” leaders to the
Indonesian army.
(WSJ, 8/17/95, p.A-1)(SFEC, 4/27/97, p.T6)(SFC,
5/16/00, p.A12,14)(SFC, 9/6/00, p.D2)
1991-1992 Some 350,000 Somalis died from disease,
starvation and civil war.
(SFEC,11/23/97, p.A25)
1916 Dec 18, The Battle of Verdun
ended with the French and Germans each having suffered more than
330,000 killed and wounded in 10 months. [see Dec 15]
(HN, 12/18/98)
1988-1998 The fighting in Kashmir left 300,000 dead
over this period.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.C2)
1902 Jul, The Philippine-American
War officially ended. Estimates for the civilian people killed ranged
from 250,000 to 1 million. Creighton Miller in 1982 published
"Benevolent Assimilation," a comprehensive account of the conflict.
(SFEC, 1/31/99, Z1 p.1,4)
1995-1998 In 1999 North Korea reported that some
220,000 people died from famine over this period. South Korean
officials estimated that the population had fallen from 25 million to
23 million. In 1998 a US congressional delegation estimated the number
to be 2 million.
(SFC, 5/11/99, p.A12)(SFEC, 8/15/99, p.A21)
1948-1958 In Colombia the period known as “La
Violencia.” Over 200,000 people were killed in massacres by the 2 rival
parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals.
(SFC, 12/18/00, p.A11)
1933 Aleksandr Rodchenko was
dispatched to document the White Sea Canal project in which some
200,000 political prisoners were killed.
(WSJ, 7/8/98, p.A13)
1992-1995 Gen'l. Momir Talic of Bosnia commanded the
1st Krajina Corps. Talic and Radoslav Brdjanin planned and ordered a
terror offensive early in the war that killed hundreds of Muslims and
Croats and forced thousands to flee Prijedor a d Sanski. Talic was
arrested in Austria in 1999 on a secret UN war crimes indictment. Both
men pleaded not guilty to 12 counts of genocide at the Hague. During
the 3 ½ years of war some 200,000 Bosnians were dead or missing
and an estimated 20,000 women were raped.
(SFC, 8/26/99, p.A12)(SFC, 1/12/00, p.A11)(SFC,
3/30/00, p.A18)
1999 Feb 25, A 100-page summary of
a 3,600 page report by the UN mandated Historical Clarification
Committee was released. It indicated that the US government and US
corporations played a key role in maintaining the right-wing military
governments during most of the 36 years of civil war in Guatemala. The
report documented a genocide against Mayan Indians with a death toll of
some 200,000. The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (UNRG) was
responsible for 3% of the atrocities. The Guatemalan Army was blamed
for 93% of the human rights abuses.
(SFC, 2/26/99, p.A1,17)(WSJ, 2/26/99, p.A1)(SFC,
3/13/99, p.A13)
1937 Dec-Feb, In the Japanese
“Rape of Nanjing” more than 200,000 people were killed. Japanese
soldiers raped and killed tens of thousands of Chinese women during
their invasion of China. [photo from Nanjing] In 1997 Iris Chang (29)
published “The Rape of Nanking: the Forgotten Holocaust of world War
II.” The largest execution of prisoners took place north of Nanking
near Mufu Mountain where 57,000 civilians and soldiers were gunned down.
(WSJ,2/6/97,p.A14)(SFEC, 12/1/96, p.C4)(WSJ,
12/29/97, p.A9)(SFEC, 7/26/98, Z1 p.1,4)
1945 Apr 1, Easter Sunday, the
American assault on Okinawa began with 150,000 army and marine
soldiers. It was the last campaign of World War II. The island was
defended by 100,000 Japanese troops and auxiliaries. It took three
months of heavy fighting to secure the island. US casualties numbered
68,000 with 8,000 dead. Japanese civilian casualties are estimated at
100-200 thousand killed. A book was published in 1995 by Col. Hiromishi
Yahara, chief Japanese strategist of Okinawa titled “The Battle for
Okinawa.” A counterpoint to the colonel's account is a collection of
first hand accounts from US soldiers in Gerold Astor's “Operation
Iceberg.”
(WSJ, 8/29/95, p.A-12) (AP, 4/1/98)(HN, 4/1/98)
1945 Jun 22, The World War II
battle for Okinawa officially ended; 12,520 Americans and 110,000
Japanese were killed in the 81-day campaign. The battle for Okinawa
proved to be the bloodiest in the Pacific Theater. A huge assemblage of
American forces from both Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s Central Pacific
drive and General Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific thrust
converged on Okinawa--over 180,000 troops. For three months they faced
more than 100,000 Japanese troops of Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima’s
Thirty-Second Army. Tokyo needed time to prepare for the expected
American invasion of the home islands, so Ushijima wanted to make his
adversary wrench each hill and ridge from his well-armed men.
(AP, 6/22/97)(HN, 6/27/01)
1945 Aug 6, Hiroshima, Japan, was
struck with the uranium bomb, Little Boy, from the B-29 airplane, Enola
Gay, piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets of the US Air Force. The atom bomb
killed an estimated 140,000 people in the first use of a nuclear weapon
in warfare.
(WSJ, 7/19/95, p.A-12)(AP, 8/6/97)(HN, 8/6/98)
1945 Feb 14, 521 American heavy
bombers flew daylight raids over Dresden, Germany following the British
assault. The firestorm killed an estimated 135,000 people. At least
35,000 died and some people place the toll closer to 70,000. The novel
“Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut was set in Dresden during the
firebombing where he was being held as a prisoner of war. US B-17
bombers dropped 771 more tons on Dresden while P-51 Mustang fighters
strafed roads packed with soldiers and civilians fleeing the burning
city. [see Feb 13]
(WSJ, 10/22/96, p.A20)(SFC, 1/6/97, p.A10)(SFEC,
7/27/97, p.T6)(HN, 2/13/99)(SFEC, 1/30/00, p.T13)
1914 Nov 25, Hindenburg called off
Lodz offensive 40 miles from Warsaw, Poland. The Russians lost 90,000
to the Germans’ 35,000 in two weeks of fighting.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1916 Mar 18, On the Eastern Front,
the Russians countered the Verdun assault with an attack at Lake
Naroch. The Russians lost 100,000 men and the Germans lost 20,000.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1945 Apr 15, The deadly battle for
Berlin began. The Seelow Heights posed the last natural barrier to
Berlin in April 1945 from an advancing Red Army. The rolling plains and
plateaus of the Seelow Heights were only 35 miles from the German
capital and were well defended. The battle, which raged for a week, was
extremely costly to both sides, leaving some 30,000 Red Army soldiers
and at least 80,000 Germans killed.
(HNQ, 4/16/99)
1972 The conflict between the
Philippine government and Muslim rebels began. A full-scale guerrilla
war began in which some 120,000 people were killed by 1999.
(WSJ, 6/20/96, p.A1)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A19)
1999 Jun 27, The president of
Algeria raised the death toll in the 7-year civil war against rebel
groups to 100,000.
(WSJ, 6/28/99, p.A1)
1939-1945 Of the 330,000 Jews in France at the start
of the war, about 76,000 were deported to Nazi concentration camps and
only 2,500 survived. Prof. Irving Halperin (d.2000) later authored
“”Messengers from the Dead,” a book on Holocaust literature.
(SFC, 4/18/00, p.A8)(SFC, 9/6/00, p.D2)
1996 Apr, The Red Cross said more
than 55,000 people of Burundi have been driven from their homes by
ethnic fighting that intensified last month. More than 100,000 have
been killed since 1993 in the conflict between majority Hutus and
minority Tutsis. The fighting occurred in the capital city of
Bujumbura. 235 civilians died when the Burundi army attacked villages
at Buhoro
(WSJ, 4/5/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 5/5/96, p.T-8)(SFC,
5/13/96, p.C-12)
1905 Feb 21, The Mukden campaign
of the Russo-Japanese War, began. In one of the largest battles ever
fought up to that time, some 750,000 Japanese and Russian soldiers
engaged in the battle for Mukden in the Russo-Japanese War. The
three-week battle pitted 400,000 Japanese and 350,000 Russians
stretched over a front extending more than 90 miles. More than 100,000
were left dead or injured as the Russians began a retreat toward Harbin
on March 9.
(HN, 2/21/98)(HNQ, 4/23/99)
1945 Mar 10, American B-29s bombed
Tokyo, killing 100,000. It was the second atomic bomb, dropped on
Nagasaki, that induced the Japanese to surrender.
(HN, 3/10/98)
1944 Some 150,000 Hungarian troops
fought under Nazi command at the Don River. The Red army killed about
90,000 and thousands died trying to walk back to Hungary.
(SFC, 8/12/00, p.A11)
1996 Sep 3, In Russia Alexander
Lebed said that about 80,000 people had died in the fighting in
Chechnya during the 21 months of the war.
(SFC, 4/9/96, A10)
1992 Jan 16, Officials of the
government of El Salvador and rebel leaders signed a pact in Mexico
City ending 12 years of civil war that had left at least 75,000 people
dead.
(AP, 1/16/98)
1945 Aug 9, The 10,000 lb.
plutonium bomb, Fat Man, was dropped over Nagasaki after the primary
objective of Kokura was passed due to visibility problems. It killed an
estimated 74,000 people. The B-29 bomber plane Bock’s Car so named for
its assigned pilot, Fred Bock, was piloted by Captain Charles W.
Sweeney. Kermit Beahan (d.1989) was the bombardier.
(WSJ, 7/19/95, p.A-12)(AP, 8/9/97)(HN, 8/9/98)(SFC,
3/17/00, p.D6)(HNQ, 3/31/00)
1941 Aug, In Germany public
protests curtailed the Nazi euthanasia program that had already gassed
some 70,000 mentally handicapped German adults and children.
(WSJ, 3/23/04, p.D8)
1993 Eritrea gained independence
from Ethiopia after a 30-year civil war. Some 65,000 Eritreans lost
their lives in the fight for independence. Pres. Meles Zenawi of
Ethiopia allowed Eritrea to secede as a reward for the support of its
rebel forces in 1991.
(WSJ, 3/4/97, p.A14)(SFC, 6/11/97, p.C16)
1030-1093 In China Shen Kua was an engineer and high
official Chinese astronomer. In his1086 work “Dream Pool Essays,” Shen
Kua made the first reference to the magnetic compass. The work also
gave the first account of relief maps and an explanation of the origin
of fossils, along with other scientific observations. Shen Kua wrote
his essays after being banished from office after an army under his
command lost 60,000 killed in a battle with Khitan tribes.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)(HNQ, 4/22/99)
1904 The Hereros, a cattle-herding
tribe of what was German South West Africa, were the first genocide
victims of the 20th century. When the Hereros rebelled against the
German colonialists in 1904, Kaiser Wilhelm II sent General Lothar von
Trotha to the colony, who drove the Hereros into the desert and then
issued a formal “extermination order” authorizing the slaughter of all
who refused to surrender. Out of some 80,000 Hereros, 60,000 died in
the desert. Of the 15,000 who surrendered, half of those died in prison
camps. Some 9,000 escaped to neighboring countries.
(HNPD, 4/14/99)
1987-1988 Some 50-100 thousand Kurds were killed by
poisonous gas from Iraqi forces.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B6)
1991 Mar 2, The Kurds rose up
against Iraqi forces but were crushed by Iraqi armor that killed 50,000
and forced more than a million Kurds to flee to Turkey and Iran.
(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A7)(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A8)
1937 Dec-Jan, John Rabe
(1882-1950), a German businessman for Siemens living in China, recorded
the 2-month terror of the Japanese “Rape of Nanking” in his diary. The
Japanese sacked and pillaged the city. They raped at least 20,000 women
and killed at least 50,000 people. Rabe established a neutral safe zone
for hundreds of thousands of Chinese refugees. Noncombatant deaths may
have reached 300,000. Reporter Tillman Durdin (d.1998 at 91) filed
reports for the New York times. Later Iris Chang wrote “The Rape of
Nanking.”
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.B1)(SFEC, 2/22/98, Z1 p.6)(SFC,
7/10/98, p.D3)
1572 Aug 24, The slaughter of
French Protestants at the hands of Catholics began in Paris as Charles
IX of France attempted to rid the country of Huguenots. France’s fourth
war of religion started with the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, in
which 50,000 Huguenots and their leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny,
were killed in and around Paris.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)(AP, 8/24/97)(HN, 8/24/98)
1903 Sep 8, Between 30,000 and
50,000 Bulgarian men, women and children were massacred in Monastir by
Turkish troops seeking to check a threatened Macedonian uprising.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1903 Sep 17, Turks destroyed the
town of Kastoria in Bulgaria, killing 10,000 civilians.
(HN, 9/17/98)
1988 May 18, A cheering crowd in
the Soviet town of Termez greeted the first Soviet soldiers as they
withdrew from Afghanistan. Experts agree that at least 40,000-50,000
Soviets lost their lives in action, besides the wounded, suicides, and
murders. Mujahideen continued to fight against Najibullah's regime.
Some 130,000 Red Army troops fought in Afghanistan and 15,000 were lost.
(AP, 5/18/98)(www.afghan, 5/25/98)(SFC, 10/18/01,
p.A3)
1943 Nov, The 2-day Nazi
“Operation Harvest” at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland
executed men, women and children. Nazi officer Alfons Goetzfried later
admitted to having personally shot 500 people. Over 42,000 people,
mostly Jews, were killed in the operation. In 1999 Alfons Goetzfrid
(79) was convicted for assisting in the murders of 17,000 Jews at the
camp. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A14)(SFC, 5/21/99, p.D2)
1980-1992 A civil war raged in El Salvador during
which security forces have been blamed for killing 40,000 civilians
with torture commonplace. It was later reported that the US had pumped
$1.5 million a day into the fight “to make El Salvador safe for
democracy.”
(SFC, 5/8/96, p.A-19)(SFEM,11/16/97, p.28)
1942 Aug 23, German forces began
an assault on the major Soviet industrial city of Stalingrad. From Aug.
to Feb. 1943, The Battle of Stalingrad, 600 miles southeast of Moscow,
was fought and ended with the encirclement and destruction of the
German 6th Army Group. Stalingrad has since been renamed to Volgograd.
In 1998 Antony Beevor published “Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege.” The
German in charge was Gen’l. Friedrich Paulus. Luftwaffe air raids
killed 40,000 people in the first week of fighting.
(WSJ, 2/21/96, p.A-15)(WSJ, 7/8/98, p.A13)(HN,
8/23/98)
1899-1902 In the Boer War some 12,000 blacks and
18,000 whites were killed from epidemics in British concentration
camps. Some 25,000 blacks and 94,000 whites were herded into the
world's first concentration camps. Thomas Packenham later authored "The
Boer War."
(SFC, 10/8/99, p.D3)
1944 Hundreds of natives died
during the US invasion of the Northern Marianas. 5,000 American troops
and 40,000 Japanese also died.
(SFEC, 3/7/99,Z1 p.4)
1997 Aug 15, It was reported that
Argentina would issue bonds to pay indemnities to the relatives and
descendants of the 1970s “dirty war.” As many as 30,000 people
disappeared and about 8,000 families have applied for payments
authorized at $224,000 per victim.
(WSJ, 8/15/97, p.A1)
1941 Sep 26, In Ukraine some
33,761 Jews of Kiev were killed over 3 days before Yom Kippur in the
ravine at Babi Yar by the Nazis. Over the next 2 years some 100-200
thousand more people, mostly Jews, were killed at the site.
(SFC, 10/29/96, p.A6)(SFC, 6/25/01, p.A8)(SFC,
6/26/01, p.A8)(MC, 9/26/01)
1941 Sep 29, 30,000 Jews were
gunned down in Kiev when Henrich Himmler sent four strike squads to
exterminate Soviet Jewish civilians and other “undesirables.”
(HN, 9/29/00)
1941 Oct 22-23, Some 39,000
[20,000] Jews were killed by Romanian troops over 2 days in Odessa.
Many of them were burned to death in a public square or in warehouses
that were locked shut. Altogether some 90,000 Jews were killed in
Odessa.
(SFC, 6/15/98, p.A11)(WSJ, 3/23/04, p.D8)
1759 Jul 23, Russians under
Saltikov defeated Prussians at Kay in eastern Germany, and one-fourth
of Prussian army of 27,000 was lost.
(AP, 7/23/97)
1940 Apr-May, Some 25,700 (15,000)
Polish citizens were massacred by the Soviets in the Katyn and Miednoje
(Mednoye) forests on the outskirts of Moscow and at Kharkov in western
Russia (later Ukraine). Some 14,700 Polish officers were identified by
their uniforms. Excavations of the sites began in 1994. 6,313 Polish
officers were all shot in the back of the head near Mednoye. 9,000
Russians were also massacred at the site.
(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.16)(SFEC, 9/3/00, p.A18)
1971 Mar 14, US Senator Edward
Kennedy estimated that 25,000 Vietnamese civilians had been killed in
1970.
(HN, 3/14/98)
1603 Oct 20, A Chinese uprising in
the Philippines failed after 23,000 killed.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1867 Jul 20, Imperial troops in
Guizhou, China, killed 20,000 Miao rebels.
(HN, 7/20/98)
1982-1987 Some 200 guerrillas of the minority Ndebele
tribe in Matabeleland province fought troops of Pres. Mugabe and as
many as 20,000 civilians were killed. In 1999 Mugabe ordered provincial
officials to prepare compensation claims for the victims of army
atrocities.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.A14)
1983-1984 In Zimbabwe the Matabeleland atrocities
occurred when the government of Robert Mugabe sent in its North Korean
trained Fifth Brigade to terrorize the Ndebele-speaking region that
supported opponent Joshua Nkomo. Thousands of civilians died. The
terror ended in 1987 when Nkomo reconciled with Mugabe.
(SFC, 5/30/97, p.A15)
1982 Feb, Pres. Hafez Assad
ordered the Syrian army under his brother, Rifaat Assad, to crush a
Muslim Brotherhood revolt in Hama. 10-20,000 residents were massacred.
(SFEC, 6/11/00, p.A12)(WSJ, 6/12/00, p.A30)(WSJ,
6/13/00, p.A26)(SSFC, 11/18/01, p.A5)
1941 Apr 6-8, German Luftwaffe
Marshall Alexander Lohr commanded a surprise air attack on Belgrade.
Lohr was later tried and executed for the bombings. Over 17,000
citizens of Belgrade were killed in the bombing.
(SFC, 4/1/99, p.A12)(SFC, 4/8/99, p.A10)(WSJ,
5/20/99, p.A21)
1989-1990 In 1997 the Sri Lanka government admitted
that nearly 17,000 people died or vanished during an offensive against
the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna ( JVP, People’s Liberation Front), a
Marxist rebel group. Human rights groups estimated that some 60,000
people were killed or disappeared.
(WSJ, 9/4/97, p.A1)(SFC, 9/4/97, p.A3)
1995 Dec. 6, The flag of Sri Lanka
was raised over the Tamil stronghold of Jaffna. This marked the biggest
victory in the 12 year war in which 39,000 people have died.
(WSJ, 12/6/95, p.A-1)
1999 Jun 14, Eritrea and Ethiopia
battled for a 5th day. Eritrea claimed to have killed, wounded or
captured over 12,000 soldiers, while Ethiopia claimed the same for
8,200 soldiers. Over half a million soldiers were stationed along the
600-mile border.
(SFC, 6/15/99, p.C5)(SFC, 6/24/99, p.A10)
1984-1993 In South Africa from Sep ‘84 to Dec ‘93,
some 19,000 people were killed in political violence.
(SFC, 8/22/96, p.E1)
1975-1990 An estimated 17,000 Lebanese were reported
missing during the civil war. In 2000 a government commission ended a
7-month investigation and said the missing were probably all dead.
(SFC, 7/27/00, p.C16)
1842 cJan 2-12, Akbar Khan, Afghan
hero, was victorious against the British. Out of 4,500 (16,500)
soldiers and 12,000 dependents only one survivor, of a mixed
British-Indian garrison, reached the fort in Jalalabad, on a stumbling
pony. The British retreated from Kabul to Jalalabad. The incident is
the backdrop for George MacDonald Fraser’s novel “Flashman.”
(WSJ, 4/10/95, A-16)(www.afghan, 5/25/98)(WSJ,
9/20/01, p.A12)
1862 Aug 18, A Sioux Uprising
began uprising in Minnesota. It resulted in more than 800 white
settlers dead and 38 Sioux Indians condemned and hanged. The Minnesota
Uprising began when four young Sioux murdered five white settlers at
Acton. The Santee Sioux, who lived on a long, narrow reservation on the
south side of the Minnesota River, were reacting to broken government
promises and corrupt Indian agents. a military court sentenced 303
Sioux to die, but President Abraham Lincoln reduced the list. The 38
hangings took place on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minn.
(MC, 8/18/02)(HNQ, 1/4/00)
1904 Sep 19, Gen. Nogi assaulted
Port Arthur: 16,000 Japanese casualties.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1942 Oct 29, Nazis murdered some
16,000 Jews in Pinsk, Soviet Union.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1941 Nov 6, Einsatz death groups
killed 15,000 Jews of Rovno, Ukraine.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1648 Nov 2, 12,000 Jews were
massacred by Chmielnicki hordes in Narol Podlia (Ukraine). Cossack
Bogdan Chmielnicki led the pogrom in quest of Ukrainian independence
from the Polish nobility, who employed Jews to collect taxes.
(PCh, 1992, p.241)(MC, 11/2/01)
1942 Nov 6, Nazis executed 12,000
Minsk ghetto Jews.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1898 Sep 2, In Sudan
Anglo-Egyptian lines under Gen’l. Kitchener were charged by 50,000
fanatical Dervishes and were mowed down by howitzers, machine guns and
rifles. Lt. Winston Churchill led one of the last (and most useless)
cavalry charges in history. Sir Herbert Kitchener led the British to
victory over the Mahdists at Omdurman and took Khartoum. The Dervishes
left 11,000 dead and 16,000 wounded. The Anglo-Egyptian army suffered
fewer than a dozen casualties. In 1899 Winston Churchill published "The
River War, An Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan." This was the
1st use of the machine gun in battle.
(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A14)(HN, 9/2/98)(ON, 10/99,
p.3)(MC, 9/2/01)
1973-1997 Some 11,000 Laotians were killed or wounded
by left over American bombs.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A19)
1991 A Serb rebellion set off a
6-month war in which at least 10,000 people were killed. Serb rebels
backed by Yugoslavia seized a third of Croatia, but the territory was
regained in 1995.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A16)
1984 Apr, India sent troops to
occupy the Siachen glacier following suspicious mountaineering
expeditions from Pakistan. Over the next 15 years some 10,000 Indian
and Pakistani casualties, largely due to frostbite and mountain
sickness, resulted.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, p.A25)
1991 Civil war began in Sierra
Leone and by 1996 10,000 had been killed. Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary
United Front began fighting a bush war. In 1998 Sankoh was charged with
treason.
(WSJ, 5/7/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 6/6/97, p.E2)(SFC, 9/5/98,
p.A12)
1937 Oct-Nov, A 3-man panel, the
“Osobaya Troika,” signed death sentences that were sent to
thousands of gulags across Russia and led to the massacre of 9,000
victims in the Karelia Forest at Medvezhyegorsk. The grave site was
opened in Jul, 1997, and a monument was planned.
(SFC, 7/17/97, p.A10)
1915 Jun 21, Germany used poison
gas for the first time in warfare in the Argonne Forest.
(HN, 6/21/98)
1915 Sep 25, At the Battle at
Loos: 8,246 British and 0 German casualties.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1915 Oct 8, The WWI Battle of Loos
ended with virtually no gains for either side. There was loss of over
one hundred thousand French, British, and German lives in this battle.
It marked the first use of poisonous gas by the British, which drifted
back to the British trenches.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1995 In El Salvador there were
7,877 people murdered in this year according to the attorney general’s
office.
(SFC, 10/3/97, p.B5)
1994 In El Salvador there were
7,673 people murdered in this year according to the attorney general’s
office.
(SFC, 10/3/97, p.B5)
1995 Jul 6, 3:15AM The UN safe
area at Srebrenica came under attack by the Bosnian Serb army’s Drina
corps under Genl. Radislav Krstic, and some 7,500 Muslim men and boys
were killed. The acquisition and delivery of arms was organized by
Yugoslav army officer Mirko Krajisnik, brother to Momcilo Krajisnik,
president of the Bosnian Serb assembly. In 1998 Chuck Sudetic published
“Blood and Vengeance: One Family’s Story of the War in Bosnia.” The
book focused on the Srebrenica killings. 300 Dutch troops were later
accused of not preventing the Serbs from overrunning the town. Bosnian
Serb Gen’l. Radislav Krstic was arrested in 1998 for genocide in the
1995 takeover of Srebrenica. In 1999 the UN issued a 155-page report
that admitted its failure to block the massacre. Krstic was convicted
in 2001.
(SFC, 5/30/96, p.A8)(SFC, 6/4/96, p.A12)(SFC,
8/12/98, p.A14) (SFC, 12/3/98, p.A16)(SFC, 11/16/99, p.A1)(SFC,
3/14/00, p.A10)(SFC, 8/3/01, p.A1)
1995 Jul 11, Srebrenica, a UN
declared “safe area,” fell to the Bosnian Serbs. 7,000 Muslim men
supposedly escaped but were never heard from again. Drazen Erdemovic
(24) later admitted that he participated in killing 70 men at
Srebrenica. Victims were shot in the back in groups of 10 by himself
and fellow soldiers in the Bosnian Serb Army’s 10th Sabotage
Detachment. He was told that he would be killed if he refused to follow
orders.
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.A12)(SFC, 7/7/96, A10) (SFC, 6/1/96,
p.A10)
1996 In El Salvador there were
6,792 people murdered in this year according to the attorney general’s
office.
(SFC, 10/3/97, p.B5)
1999 Jan 31, Rebels in Sierra
Leone freed 11 Indian nationals abducted a week ago. The government
said that as many as 3,000-5000 people died during the fighting in
Freetown. The number of dead was raised to 6,350.
(WSJ, 2/1/99, p.A1)(SFC, 2/12/99, p.A8)(SFC,
3/26/99, p.A14)
1894 Nov 16, 6,000 Armenians were
massacred by Turks in Kurdistan.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1894-1896 Thousands of Armenians were massacred by
the Turks after attempts for autonomy and self-defense failed. This
issue was then referred to as the “Armenian Question.”
(Compuserve Online Enc. / Armenia)
1519 Cortez discovered a plot by
some Cholulans to assassinate him and ordered some 6,000 Cholulan men
executed.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T10)
1521 Jan, Cortez returned to
Tenochtitlan and destroyed the city. Thousands of Aztecs were killed.
The surviving children of Montezuma were sent to Spain and were granted
compensatory titles to the Spanish nobility.
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1942 Oct 5, 5,000 Jews of Dubno,
Russia, were massacred.
(MC, 10/5/01)
1999 There were some 5,000
killings this year in Medellin. Some 220 gangs with 8,500 gang members
fought turf battles on a daily basis.
(SFC, 11/23/00, p.A20)
1995 Aug, Some 200,000 Serbs were
moved from the Krajina region. More than 4,500 were killed and some
3,000 are still listed as missing in an operation that was directed by
retired American generals through MPRI of Alexandria, Va. About 14,000
Krajina Serbs ended up in Kosovo until 1998, when they left as violence
spread.
(WSJ, 8/1/96 p.A15)(SFC, 7/6/99, p.B1)
2001 Sep 11, World leaders
expressed outrage at terrorist attacks in NYC and the Pentagon and
pledged solidarity with the US. In the West Bank town of Nablus, some
3,000 people celebrated the attacks and chanted “God is great.” Later
the estimates of the WTC dead dropped to 4,396.
(SFC, 9/12/01, p.A14)(SFC, 11/3/01, p.A3)
1944 Apr, Orthodox Easter, Allied
bombing of Nazi occupied Serbia resulted in the deaths of some 4,000
Serbian civilians. An account of the raids, requested by US Gen'l. Carl
Spaatz, found that most of the bombs struck at least 600 yards from
their targets.
(SFC, 4/1/99, p.A12)
1932 Jan 23, El Salvador army
killed 4,000 protesting farmers.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1942 Sep 30, The German SS
exterminated some 3,500 Jews in Zelov Lodz, Poland, in 6 week period.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1982 Mar 8, The U.S. accused the
Soviets of killing 3,000 Afghans with poison gas.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1988 Aug 8-Aug 13, The Burma
police killed nearly 3,000 protesters in the streets of Rangoon.
(SFEC, 1/19/96, Par. p.5)(SFEC, 10/22/00, p.T8)
1984 Nov 3, Some 3,000 died in a 3
day anti-Sikh riot in India.
(MC, 11/3/01)
1942 Oct, On Yom Kippur 2,900 Jews
were killed in Domachevo, Belarus.
(SFEC, 2/14/99, p.A23)
1349 Feb 14, 2,000 Jews were
burned at the stake in Strasbourg, Germany.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1799 Mar 7, In Palestine, Napoleon
captured the Turkish citadel at Jaffa and his men massacred more than
2,000 Albanian prisoners. [see Mar 26] The prisoners were massacred
because Napoleon claimed that he could not feed them. About this time
bubonic plague broke out among his troops.
(HN, 3/7/99)(ON, 12/99, p.2)
1992 Dec 6, In Uttar Pradesh,
India, thousands of Hindu extremists destroyed a mosque, setting off
two months of Hindu-Muslim rioting that claimed at least 2,000 lives.
Attackers set off 13 bomb blasts in Bombay that destroyed skyscrapers
and killed 600 people. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) inspired Hindus
to raze a 16th century mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya. The
demolition caused Hindu-Muslim riots across India and 3,000 people were
killed. Hindus believe that the site was the birthplace of the god Ram
and that Mogul invaders tore down a temple at the site to build the
Babri Mosque. In 1998 the Congress Party apologized for the mosque
destruction.
(WSJ, 5/6/96, p.A-9)(WSJ, 5/7/96, p.A-14)(AP,
12/6/97)(SFEC, 1/25/98, p.A20)
1982 Sep 16-18, The massacre of
hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children by Lebanese Christian
militiamen began in west Beirut's Sabra and Chatilla (Shatilla) refugee
camps. Up to 2,000 Palestinian civilians were killed. Israel’s defense
minister, Ariel Sharon, was held responsible and lost his top post. In
2001 survivors lodged a complaint in Belgium against Sharon.
(AP, 9/16/97)(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A8)(SFC, 5/24/00,
p.A15)(SFC, 6/19/01, p.A8)
1944 Mar 27, Thousands of Jews
were murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania. Forty Jewish policemen were shot in
the Riga, Latvia, ghetto by the Gestapo.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1096 Oct 21, Seljuk Turks under
Sultan Kilidj Arslan of Nicea slaughtered thousands of German crusaders
at Chivitot.
(HN, 10/21/99)(MC, 10/21/01)
1991 Sep 21, Yugoslav army tanks
and artillery began an invasion of eastern Croatia. The Croats said
that some 600 soldiers and 1200 civilians perished in the 3-month
bombardment of Vukovar by rebel Serbs.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 6/28/97, p.A10)
1937 Apr 26, German planes from
the Condor Legion--sent to Spain by Adolf Hitler to help fascist
General Francisco Franco overthrow the communist Popular Front regime--
attacked the Basque town of Guernica in Spain. Bombs fell for
three hours and escaping villagers were shot down by machine-gun
fire from the air. The attack killed as many as 1,600-1,650 Basque
civilians and injured 900. Although the alleged target was a bridge of
military significance some distance from the town, dazed survivors
described a merciless four-hour bombing and strafing attack by German
pilots directed toward the village and its inhabitants. The Guernica
atrocity became synonymous with the horror of modern warfare and
inspired one of the 20th century's greatest works of art, Guernica, by
Spanish artist Pablo Picasso.
(440 Int’l. internet, 4/26/97, p.2)(WSJ, 4/28/97,
p.A1)(AP, 4/26/98) (HNPD, 4/26/99)
1941 Aug 29, The German
Einsatzkommando in Russia killed 1,469 Jewish children.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1355 May 7, 1,200 Jews of Toledo,
Spain, were killed by Count Henry of Trastamara.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1998 May 12-15, It was later
reported that 1,188 people died in Jakarta in the riots over this
period. The nationwide toll was believed to be much higher.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.C2)
1991 Oct, During the siege of
Vukovar the Yugoslavian army and Serbian paramilitary troops killed and
buried as many as 1000 Croatian soldiers and civilians. The bodies
began to be uncovered in Apr 1998.
(SFC, 4/29/98, p.A12)
1997 May 13, Congo rebel troops
reached Wendji and Mbandaka and proceeded to kill Hutu refugees.
Estimates of deaths varied from 550-2000.
(WSJ, 6/6/97, p.A11)(SFC, 9/23/97, p.A11)
1978 Nov 18, California Rep. Leo
J. Ryan and four other people were killed in Jonestown, Guyana, by
members of the Peoples Temple. The killings were followed by a night of
mass murder and suicide by 912 cult members. Greg Robinson, a SF
Examiner photographer, Don Harris, NBC correspondent, Bob Brown, NBC
cameraman, and Patricia Parks, a temple defector, were shot dead. The
914 suicides at Jonestown included 260 children.
(AP, 11/18/97)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.A18)
1992 Muslim militants in Egypt
began an insurgency with attacks largely in southern Egypt to overthrow
the government of Hosni Mubarak. By 1996 more than 920 people had been
killed, mostly police and militants.
(SFC, 4/18/96, p.a-15)(SFEC,12/28/97, p.A17)
1906 Mar, American forces killed
some 900 Muslims including women and children on Mount Dajo,
Philippines.
(SSFC, 11/25/01, p.D3)
1096 May, Before embarking on the
First Crusade to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim Turks in 1096, Count
Emich von Leiningen and his army swept through their own German
homeland, murdering thousands of Jews, whom they had declared
"murderers of Christ." When Emich arrived in the town of Worms in May
1096, the town's Roman Catholic Bishop tried to protect the Jewish
population, but the Crusaders overran his palace and slaughtered some
500 people who had taken shelter there. Another 300 were killed over
the next two days. The graves of the massacre victims can still be seen
at the Jewish Cemetery at Worms.
(HNPD, 5/12/99)
1993 In Bombay Hindus killed some
800 Muslims in revenge for earlier killings. In 2000 Bal Thackeray, a
Hindu supremacist, was arrested for inciting the killings, but was
released because the case was filed too late.
(SFC, 7/26/00, p.A13)
1942 Nov 11, 745 French Jews were
deported to Auschwitz.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1862 Aug 17, The Sioux Uprising,
which resulted in more than 800 white settlers dead and 38 Sioux
Indians condemned and hanged, took place in Minnesota. The Sioux, or
Minnesota, Uprising began when four young Sioux murdered five white
settlers at Acton. The Santee Sioux, who lived on a long, narrow
reservation on the south side of the Minnesota River, were reacting to
broken government promises and corrupt Indian agents. a military court
sentenced 303 Sioux to die, but President Abraham Lincoln reduced the
list. The 38 hangings took place on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minn.
(HNQ, 1/4/00)
2000 Mar 17, In Uganda some 330
followers of the Movement for the Restoration of Ten Commandments of
God, led by Joseph Kibweteree, burned to death in a mass suicide in
Kanungu. Children were involved and it was not clear if Kibweteree was
killed. More bodies were found at the house of Kibweteree. Foul play
was later suspected instead of suicide. 448 other victims were later
found.
(SFEC, 3/19/00, p.A19)(SFC, 3/20/00, p.A13)(SFC,
3/24/00, p.A18)(SFC, 7/15/00, p.A13)
2000 Apr 27, Workers in Ggaba, a
residential area south of Kampala, exhumed the bodies of 55 more people
associated with the Movement for the Restoration of Ten Commandments.
Total deaths stood at 979.
(SFC, 4/28/00, p.D2)
1976 Jun 16, In South Africa white
police gunned down black schoolchildren and caused a nationwide riot
that left 700 people dead. Students at Morris Isacson High School in
Soweto had marched to protest a new rule that called for Afrikaans as
the medium of instruction.
(SFC, 6/15/96, p.C12)
1814 Mar 27, General Jackson led
U.S. soldiers who killed 700 Creek Indians at Horseshoe Bend, La. [in
Northern Alabama] Jackson lost 49 men.
(SFEC, 2/16/97, BR p.4)(HN, 3/27/99)
1520 Nov 9, Swedish King Christian
II executed 600 nobles.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1999 Aug 4, In Congo at least 518
people, mostly civilians, were killed when Sudanese planes, at the
request of Congo's government, bombed the rebel-held towns of Makanza
and Bogbonga. Sudan denied the charges and Congolese Pres. Kabila
denied responsibility.
(SFC, 8/5/99, p.A12)(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A12)
1998/99 Dec 30-Jan 1, Some 500 people were massacred
in eastern Congo during the 3 day New Year holiday. The killings were
by soldiers aligned with rebels led by Tutsi, but the victims were not
Hutu.
(SFC, 1/6/99, p.A7)
1942 Sep, More than 400 villagers
died of bubonic plague in China’s eastern Zhejiang province after
Japanese warplanes of medical Unit 731 dropped germ bombs. Unit 731 was
stationed on the outskirts of Harbin, China, until the Soviet Union
entered the war. The unit deposited typhus into the water supply
flowing into Manchuria. In 2000 Yoshio Shinozuka testified to seeing
men infected with the plague and then being dissected while still
alive. Harbin had 26 affiliates across China and its germ bombs
(anthrax, cholera, typhus and bubonic plague) killed an estimated
270,000 people.
(SFEC, 12/8/96, p.C8)(SFC, 8/30/97, p.A12)(SFC,
8/15/98, p.A12)(SFC, 12/22/00, p.D6)(SFC, 6/12/01, p.A8)
1870 Jan 23, 173 Blackfoot,
including 140 women and children, were killed in Montana by US Army.
(MC, 1/23/02)
2001 Jan 8, The Taliban massacred
some 150-300 unarmed Hazaras, a Shiite Muslim minority group, in
Yakalang.
(SFC, 2/19/01, p.A9)(SFC, 11/10/01, p.A4)
1997 Jan 11, In Burundi soldiers
shot and killed 126 Burundian Hutu refugees trying to break out of a
holding camp in the northeast. Seven soldiers were arrested for the
slayings.
(SFEC, 1/12/97, p.A12)
1999 Nov 11, In Pakistan Javed
Iqbal (40) killed his 87th victim, Mohammad Imran (15). Iqbal dissolved
the bodies in vats of chemicals and left photos and notes that
described his victims. The story became public in Dec. when his
killings reached 100 and he made his story public. Iqbal surrendered in
Lahore on Dec 30. Iqbal committed suicide in 2001.
(SFC, 12/7/99, p.B2)(WSJ, 12/31/99, p.A1)(WSJ,
10/10/01, p.A1)
1778 Nov 11, Iroquois Indians, led
by William Butler, massacred 40 inhabitants of Cherry Valley, N.Y.
(HN, 11/11/98)(MC, 11/11/01)
1945 May 7, SS opened fire on a
crowd in Amsterdam and killed 22.
(MC, 5/7/02)
xxxx No numbers on killed
722BC The Assyrians conquered
Israel and left nothing behind. The Hebrew kingdom of Judah managed to
survive. Descendants of the Israelites not exiled by the Assyrians were
later known as the Samaritans.
(eawc, p.7)(WSJ, 10/13/00, p.W15)
149-146BC Rome and Carthage fought the 3rd Punic War
that resulted in the total defeat of Carthage. All inhabitants of
Carthage were sold into slavery and the city was burned to the ground.
As a result of the Punic wars Rome expanded its empire to cover Spain,
North Africa, Greece, Asia Minor and Egypt.
(eawc, p.15)
642 Sep 17, Arabs conquered
Alexandria and destroyed the great library. Omar, the second caliph,
successor of Mohammed, conquered Alexandria, then the capital of world
scholarship.
(V.D.-H.K.p.103)(MC, 9/17/01)
1019 Machmud of Ghazni, a kingdom
in central Asia (Afghanistan), invaded India and took so many captives
that the prices of slaves plummeted for several years. He invade India
annually for 25 years.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R4)
1096 May 18, Crusaders massacred
the Jews of Worms. Before embarking on the First Crusade to wrest the
Holy Land from Muslim Turks, Count Emich von Leiningen and his army
swept through their own German homeland, murdering thousands of Jews,
whom they had declared "murderers of Christ." When Emich arrived in the
town of Worms in May, the town's Roman Catholic Bishop tried to protect
the Jewish population, but the Crusaders overran his palace and
slaughtered some 500 people who had taken shelter there. Another 300
were killed over the next two days. The graves of the massacre victims
can still be seen at the Jewish Cemetery at Worms.
(HNPD, 5/12/99)(SC, 5/18/02)
1099 Jul 15, Jerusalem fell to the
crusaders who slaughtered the Jewish and Muslim inhabitants.
(V.D.-H.K.p.109)(HN, 7/15/98)
1160 Feb 3, Emperor Frederick
Barbarossa hurtled prisoners, including children, at the Italian city
of Crema, forcing its surrender.
(HN, 2/3/99)
1221 Genghis Khan razed the city
of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, and exterminated its inhabitants.
(WSJ, 11/16/01, p.W12)
1243 Jun 26, The Seljuk Turkish
army in Asia Minor was wiped out by the Mongols.
(HN, 6/26/98)
1377 Feb 3, There was a mass
execution of population of Cesena, Italy.
(MC, 2/3/02)
1396 Sep 25, The last great
Christian crusade, led jointly by John the Fearless of Nevers and King
Sigismund of Hungary, ended in disaster at the hands of Sultan Bajazet
I's Ottoman army at Nicopolis.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1522 A massive slave rebellion,
the first of dozens, was crushed in Hispaniola.
(TL-MB, p.12)
1880-1920 The population of Congo was halved due to
murder, starvation, exhaustion, exposure, disease, and a lowered birth
rate due to the exploitation by King Leopold II.
(SFEC, 9/27/98, BR p.1)
1906 Edmund Morel wrote “Red
Rubber: the Story of the Rubber Slave Trade Flourishing on the Congo in
the year of Grace 1906.”
(SFEM, 8/16/98, p.9)
1900 Jun 21, After the Empress
declared war on all foreign powers, the Boxers began a two-month
assault on the legations in Beijing. An international force of
Japanese, Russian, German, American, British, Italian and
Austro-Hungarian troops put down the uprising by August 14. The Boxer
Rebellion was a violent, anti-foreign uprising that broke out in
reaction to years of foreign interference with Chinese affairs. Led by
a Chinese secret society called Yi He Tuan--"the Righteous, Harmonious
Fists"--the Boxers were aided by the Empress Dowager Ci Xi and pillaged
the countryside, murdering foreigners and Chinese Christians. In 2000
Diana Preston authored “The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of
China’s War on foreigners That Shook the World in the Summer of 1900.”
(HNPD, 6/21/99)(WSJ, 6/20/00, p.A24)
1903 Sep 8, Between 30,000 and
50,000 Bulgarian men, women and children were massacred in Monastir by
Turkish troops seeking to check a threatened Macedonian uprising.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1914 Aug 23, Gen. von Hausen
executed 612 inhabitants of Dinant, Belgium. Felix Fivet (3 weeks old),
Belgian baby, was among those executed by German troops.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1915 Jan 31, Germans used poison
gas on the Russians at Bolimov.
(HN, 1/31/99)
1935-1936 The Italian army used chemical warfare
against Ethiopia in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol.
(NH, 10/98, p.18)
1936 Mar 29, Italy firebombed the
Ethiopian city of Harar.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1937 Jul 31, The Russian Politburo
enabled Operative Order 00447. This led to the execution of some
193,000 people.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1940 In Poland “the Nazis packed
450,000 human beings into 75 square blocks of the Warsaw ghetto, then
walled it off and left them to starve.”
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1942 May 7, A Nazi decree ordered
all Jewish pregnant women of Kovno Ghetto executed.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1942 Jul 31, The German SS gassed
some 1,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1944 Josef Stalin deported some
250,000 Tatars from Crimea to Uzbekistan. They did not being to return
home until the fall of the Soviet Union.
(SFC, 1/4/99, p.A8,9)
1944 Feb 23, Stalin ordered the
mass deportation of Chechens to Central Asia for resisting Soviet rule
and abetting the Germans. More than a third of the population died
before the rest were allowed to go home.
(WSJ, 8/12/96, p.A9)(SFEC, 2/20/00, p.A32)
1950-1980 In South Africa about 3.5 million blacks
were forcibly trucked off to ethnic territories, often abandoning land,
houses and cattle.
(WSJ, 5/17/96,p.A-10)
1964-1973 US warplanes carried out 580,000 bombing
missions over Laos and dropped an estimated 2.3 million tons of bombs.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A22)
c1976 Black prisoners were killed
by injections supplied by Dr. Wouter Basson, head of the chemical and
biological and weapons program. In 2000 Johan Theron, a former special
forces officer, testified how he flung the victim’s corpses from an
airplane into the Atlantic. Theron and Gen. Fritz Loots had decided
that there were too many guerrillas of the South West African People’s
Organization in the prison camps.
(SFC, 5/5/00, p.A18)
1992 Aug 21, Serbian soldiers
separated over 200 men, mostly Croats and Muslims, from a convoy of
civilians from the Trnopolje detention camp in Bosnia. The captives
were taken to a wooded ravine and shot dead. In 2003 Darko Mrdja,
commander of a special police unit, admitted to a court in the Hague of
playing a role in the slaughter.
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.A8)
1993 Jan 7, A preliminary report
prepared for the European Community said Serb fighters may have raped
about 20,000 women in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
(AP, 1/7/98)
1996 Jul 27, In Burundi a
Tutsi-led army killed at least 30 Hutu rebels in retaliation for an
attack on a coffee plantation. Independent sources said that Hutus set
fire to the factory and rice plantation in Giheta to justify a
retaliatory attack on villages where Hutu rebels were thought to have
taken refuge. Villagers said Tutsi soldiers massacred about 1,000 Hutus
as they roamed from village to village in Gitega province.
(WSJ, 7/30/96, p.A1)(SFC, 8/8/96, p.A8)
2000 Sep 1, The Afghanistan
mine-clearing operations were scheduled to be cut by 50% after the UN
reported lack of funds. 300 people were reported injured by mines every
month. Estimates of mines varied from 5-10 million.
(SFC, 9/2/00, p.C16)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Atrocities
End of file