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This article lists and summarizes the war crimes committed since the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the crimes against humanity and crimes against peace that have been committed since these crimes were first defined in the Rome Statute.[1]
Since many war crimes are not ultimately prosecuted (due to lack of political will, lack of effective procedures, or other practical and political reasons[1]), historians and lawyers will often make a serious case that war crimes occurred, even if there was no formal investigations or prosecution of the alleged crimes or an investigation cleared the alleged perpetrators.
War crimes under international law were firmly established by international trials such as the Nuremberg Trials and the Tokyo Trials, in which Austrian, German and Japanese leaders were prosecuted for war crimes committed during World War II.
World War I was the first major international conflict to take place following the codification of war crimes at the Hague Convention of 1907, including derived war crimes, such as the use of poisons as weapons, as well as crimes against humanity, and derivative crimes against humanity, such as torture, and genocide. Before, the Second Boer War took place after the Hague Convention of 1899. The Second Boer War (1899 until 1902) is known for the first concentration camps (1900 until 1902) for civilians in the 20th century.
The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, does not accept the word genocide as an accurate description of the events surrounding this matter.[12]
At least 50,000 people were executed during the Spanish Civil War.[16][17] In his updated history of the Spanish Civil War, Antony Beevor writes, "Franco's ensuing 'white terror' claimed 200,000 lives. The 'red terror' had already killed 38,000."[18] Julius Ruiz concludes that "although the figures remain disputed, a minimum of 37,843 executions were carried out in the Republican zone with a maximum of 150,000 executions (including 50,000 after the war) in Nationalist Spain."[19] César Vidal puts the number of Republican victims at 110,965.[20] In 2008 a Spanish judge, Socialist Baltasar Garzon, opened an investigation into the executions and disappearances of 114,266 people between 17 July 1936 and December 1951. Among the executions investigated was that of the poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca.[21][22]
This section includes war crimes up to and through December 5, 1941 when the Second Sino-Japanese War became the Asian Theater of World War II, due to the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. For war crimes after this date see the section called World War II: Japan perpetrated crimes.
The Axis Powers (particularly Germany and Japan) were perhaps some of the most systematic perpetrators of war crimes in modern history. Contributing factors included Nazi race theory, a desire for "living space" that justified the eradication of native populations, and militaristic indoctrination that encouraged the terrorization of conquered peoples and prisoners of war. The Holocaust, the German attack on the Soviet Union and occupation of much of Europe, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the Philippines and attack on China all contributed to well over half of the civilian deaths in World War II and the conflicts that led up to the war. Even before post-war revelations of atrocities, both militaries were notorious for their brutal treatment of captured combatants.
According to the Nuremberg Trials, there were four major war crimes that were alleged against German military (and Waffen-SS and NSDAP) men and officers, each with individual events that made up the major charges.
1. Participation in a common plan of conspiracy for the accomplishment of crimes against peace
2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace
3. War Crimes Atrocities against enemy combatants or conventional crimes committed by military units (see War crimes of the Wehrmacht), and include:
4. Crimes against Humanity Crimes committed well away from the lines of battle and unconnected in any way to military activity, distinct from war crimes
Other crimes against humanity included:
At least 10 million, and perhaps over 20 million perished directly and indirectly due to the commission of crimes against humanity and war crimes by the Nazi regime, of which the Holocaust lives on in particular infamy, for its particularly cruel nature and scope, and the industrialized nature of the genocide of Jewish citizens of states invaded or controlled by the Nazi regime. At least 5 to 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, or 66 to 78% of Europe's Jewish population, although a complete count may never be known. Though much of Continental Europe suffered under the Nazi occupation, Poland, in particular, was the state most devastated by these crimes, with 90% of its Jews as well as many ethnic Poles slaughtered by the Nazis. After the war, from 1945 to 1949, the Nazi regime was put on trial in two tribunals in Nuremberg, Germany by the victorious Allied powers. The first tribunal indicted 24 major Nazi war criminals, and resulted in 19 convictions (of which 12 led to death sentences) and 3 acquittals, 2 of the accused died before a verdict was rendered, at least one of which by killing himself with cyanide.[36] The second tribunal indicted 185 members of the military, economic, and political leadership of Nazi Germany, of which 142 were convicted and 35 were acquitted. In subsequent decades, approximately 20 additional war criminals who escaped capture in the immediate aftermath of World War II were tried in West Germany and Israel. In Germany and many other European nations, the Nazi Party and denial of the Holocaust is outlawed.
This section includes war crimes from 7 December 1941 when the United States was attacked by Japan so entering World War II. For war crimes before this date which took place during the Second Sino-Japanese War please see the section above called 1937–1945: Second Sino-Japanese War.
Chetnik ideology revolved around the notion of a Greater Serbia within the borders of Yugoslavia, to be created out of all territories in which Serbs were found, even if the numbers were small. A directive dated 20 December 1941, addressed to newly appointed commanders in Montenegro, Major Đorđije Lašić and Captain Pavle Đurišić, outlined, among other things, the cleansing of all non-Serb elements in order to create a Greater Serbia:[72]
The struggle for the liberty of our whole nation under the scepter of His Majesty King Peter II; the creation of a Great Yugoslavia and within it of a Great Serbia which is to be ethnically pure and is to include Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Srijem, the Banat, and Bačka; the struggle for the inclusion into Yugoslavia of all still unliberated Slovene territories under the Italians and Germans (Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, and Carinthia) as well as Bulgaria, and northern Albania with Skadar; the cleansing of the state territory of all national minorities and a-national elements; the creation of contiguous frontiers between Serbia and Montenegro, as well as between Serbia and Slovenia by cleansing the Muslim population from Sandžak and the Muslim and Croat populations from Bosnia and Herzegovina. — Directive of 20 December 1941[72]
The Chetniks systemically massacred Muslims in villages that they captured.[73] In late autumn of 1941 the Italians handed over the towns of Višegrad, Goražde, Foča and the surrounding areas, in south-east Bosnia to the Chetniks to run as a puppet administration and NDH forces were compelled by the Italians to withdraw from there.[74] After the Chetniks gained control of Goražde on 29 November 1941, they began a massacre of Home Guard prisoners and NDH officials that became a systematic massacre of the local Muslim civilian population.[74] Several hundred Muslims were murdered and their bodies were left hanging in the town or thrown into the Drina river.[74] On 5 December 1941, the Chetniks received the town of Foča from the Italians and proceeded to massacre around five hundred Muslims.[74] Additional massacres against the Muslims in the area of Foča took place in August 1942.[75] In total, over two thousand people were killed in Foča.[75] In early January, the Chetniks entered Srebrenica and killed around a thousand Muslim civilians in the town and in nearby villages.[76] Around the same time the Chetniks made their way to Višegrad where deaths were reportedly in the thousands.[77] Massacres continued in the following months in the region.[77] In the village of Žepa alone about three hundred were killed in late 1941.[77] In early January, Chetniks massacred fifty-four Muslims in Čelebić and burned down the village.[77] On 3 March, the Chetniks burned forty-two Muslim villagers to death in Drakan.[76]
In early January 1943 and again in early February, Montenegrin Chetnik units were ordered to carry out "cleansing actions" against Muslims, first in the Bijelo Polje county in Sandžak and then in February in the Čajniče county and part of Foča county in southeastern Bosnia, and in part of the Pljevlja county in Sandžak.[78] Pavle Đurišić, the officer in charge of these operations, reported to Mihailović, Chief of Staff of the Supreme Command, that on 10 January 1943: "thirty-three Muslim villages had been burned down, and 400 Muslim fighters (members of the Muslim self-protection militia supported by the Italians) and about 1,000 women and children had been killed, as against 14 Chetnik dead and 26 wounded".[78] In another report sent by Đurišić dated 13 February 1943, he reported that: "Chetniks killed about 1,200 Muslim fighters and about 8,000 old people, women, and children; Chetnik losses in the action were 22 killed and 32 wounded".[78] He added that "during the operation the total destruction of the Muslim inhabitants was carried out regardless of sex and age".[79] The total number of deaths caused by the anti-Muslim operations between January and February 1943 is estimated at 10,000.[78] The casualty rate would have been higher had a great number of Muslims not already fled the area, most to Sarajevo, when the February action began.[78] According to a statement from the Chetnik Supreme Command from February 24, 1943, these were countermeasures taken against Muslim aggressive activities; however, all circumstances show that these massacres were committed in accordance with implementing the directive of December 20, 1941.[75]
Actions against the Croats were of a smaller scale but similar in action.[80] One of the worst Chetnik outbursts against the Croat population of Dalmatia took place in early October 1942 in the village of Gata near Split, in which an estimated one hundred people were killed and many homes were burnt in a reprisal taken against the people of Gata and nearby villages for the destruction of some roads in the area and carried out on the Italians account.[75] In that same October, formations under the command of Petar Baćović and Dobroslav Jevđević, who were participating in the Italian Operation Alfa in the area of Prozor, massacred over five hundred Croats and Muslims and burnt numerous villages.[75] Baćović noted that "Our Chetniks killed all men 15 years of age or older. ... Seventeen villages were burned to the ground."[81] Mario Roatta, commander of the Italian Second Army, objected to these "massive slaughters" of noncombatant civilians and threatened to halt Italian aid to the Chetniks if they did not end.[81]
Numerous concentration camps were built in Independent State of Croatia, most notably Jasenovac (in Croatian: Logor Jasenovac in Serbian: Логор Јасеновац / Logor Jasenovac), the largest, where hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Gypsies (Roma), Jews and Croatian dissidents died. It was established by the Ustaša regime of the Independent State of Croatia in August 1941 and not dismantled until April 1945, shortly before the end of the war. Other concentration camps were in Gospić, Pag, Đakovo, Jastrebarsko and Lepoglava.
According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center (citing the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust), "Ustasa terrorists killed 500,000 Serbs, expelled 250,000 and forced 250,000 to convert to Roman Catholicism. They murdered thousands of Jews and Gypsies."[82]
Jasenovac was a complex of five subcamps and three smaller camps spread out over 240 square kilometers (93 sq mi), in relatively close proximity to each other, on the bank of the Sava river. Most of the camp was at Jasenovac, about 100 km (62 mi) southeast of Zagreb. The complex also included large grounds at Donja Gradina directly across the Sava River, a camp for children in Sisak to the northwest, and a women's camp in Stara Gradiška to the southeast.
Ante Pavelić, leader of the Ustasha, fled to Argentina and Spain which gave him protection, and was never extradited to stand trial for his war crimes.
The ultra-nationalist OUN-B group, along with their military force – Ukrainian Insurgent Army(UPA) – are responsible for a genocide on the Polish population in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Starting in March 1943, with its peak in the summer 1943, as many as 150,000 people were murdered, mostly women, children and elderly. Although the main target were the Poles, many Jews, Czechs and those Ukrainians who were not willing to participate in the crimes, were massacred as well. Lacking good armament and ammunition, UPA members commonly used tools such as axes and pitchforks for the slaughter. As a result of these massacres, almost the entire non-Ukrainian population of Volhynia was either killed or forced to flee.
UPA commanders responsible for the genocide:
Expulsion of Germans after World War I I
Several massacres were committed during this war which could be described as war crimes. Nearly 15,000 people, mostly combatants and militants, were killed during the war, including 6,000 Jews and about 8,000 Arabs.
It is estimated that Bangladesh guerilla army killed about 1,000 to 150,000 bharis or pro Pakistani razakars.
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed During the Period of Democratic Kampuchea, commonly known as the Cambodia Tribunal, is a joint court established by the Royal Government of Cambodia and the United Nations to try senior members of the Khmer Rouge for crimes against humanity committed during the Cambodian Civil War. The Khmer Rouge killed many people due to their political affiliation, education, class origin, occupation, or ethnicity.[175][176]
This war has ravaged the country for over 30 years now, with several foreign actors playing important roles during different periods. Since 2001 US and NATO troops have been fighting in Afghanistan in the "War on Terrorism" that is also treated in the corresponding section below.
The Times reports (November 26, 2005 p. 27):
Also see List of ICTY indictees for a variety of war criminals and crimes during this era.
From The Times March 28, 2006 p. 43:
During the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s, a variety of massacres occurred through the country, many being identified as war crimes. The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) has avowed its responsibility for many of them, while for others no group has claimed responsibility. In addition to generating a widespread sense of fear, these massacres and the ensuing flight of population have resulted in serious depopulation of the worst-affected areas. The massacres peaked in 1997 (with a smaller peak in 1994), and were particularly concentrated in the areas between Algiers and Oran, with very few occurring in the east or in the Sahara.
During the First Chechen War (1994-1996) and Second Chechen War (1999-2000 battle phase, 2000-2009 insurgency phase) there were many allegations of war crimes and terrorism against both sides from various human rights organizations.
Allegations of war crimes in the 2006 Lebanon War refer to claims of various groups and individuals, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and United Nations officials, who accused both Hezbollah and Israel of violating international humanitarian law during the 2006 Lebanon War, and warned of possible war crimes.[241] These allegations included intentional attacks on civilian populations or infrastructure, disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks in densely populated residential districts.
According to various media reports, between 1,000 and 1,200 Lebanese citizens were reported dead; there were between 1,500 and 2,500 people wounded and over 1,000,000 were temporarily displaced. Over 150 Israelis were killed (120 military); thousands wounded; and 300,000–500,000 were displaced because of Hezbollah firing tens of thousands of rockets at major cities in Israel.[242][243][244]
==2003–2009/2010: Darfur conflict; 2005–2010: Civil war in Chad ==
During the Darfur conflict, Civil war in Chad (2005–2010)
Sudanese authorities claim a death toll of roughly 19,500 civilians [245] while many Coalition for International Justice, claim over 400,000 people have been killed.[246]
In September 2004, the starvation. An updated estimate the following month put the number of deaths for the 6-month period from March to October 2004 due to starvation and disease at 70,000; These figures were criticized, because they only considered short periods and did not include deaths from violence.[247] A more recent British Parliamentary Report has estimated that over 300,000 people have died,[248] and others have estimated even more.
There were allegations of war crimes by both the Israeli military and Hamas. Criticism of Israel's conduct focused on the proportionality of its measures against Hamas, and on its alleged use of weaponized white phosphorus. Numerous reports from human right groups during the war claimed that white phosphorus shells were being used by Israel, often in or near populated areas.[249][250][251] In its early statements the Israeli military denied using any form of white phosphorus, saying "We categorically deny the use of white phosphorus". It eventually admitted to its limited use and stopped using the shells, including as a smoke screen. The Goldstone report investigating possible war crimes in the 2009 war accepted that white phosphorus is not illegal under international law but did find that the Israelis were "systematically reckless in determining its use in build-up areas". It also called for serious consideration to be given to the banning of its use as an obscurant.[252]
There are allegations that war crimes were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War, particularly during the final months of the conflict in 2009. The alleged war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by the government of Sri Lanka; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; acute shortages of food, medicine, and clean water for civilians trapped in the war zone; and child recruitment by the Tamil Tigers.[253][254] It is widely accused that the Secretary of Defense Gotabaya Rajapakse (brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa) ordered troops under his command to "Kill them All" when the troops on the grounds asked him for direction for handling the surrendering Tamil combatants.
A panel of experts appointed by UN Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the civil war found "credible allegations" which, if proven, indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers.[255][256][257] The panel has called on the UNSG to conduct an independent international inquiry into the alleged violations of international law.[258][259] The Sri Lankan government has denied that its forces committed any war crimes and has strongly opposed any international investigation. It has condemned the UN report as "fundamentally flawed in many respects" and "based on patently biased material which is presented without any verification".[260]
International organizations have accused the Syrian government, ISIL and other opposition forces of severe human rights violations, with many massacres occurring.[261][262][263][264][265] Chemical weapons have been used many times during the conflict as well.[266][267][268] The Syrian government is reportedly responsible for the majority of civilian casualties and war crimes, often through bombings.[261][263][269][270] In addition, tens of thousands of protesters and activists have been imprisoned and there are reports of torture in state prisons.[271][272][273][274]
The paper quoted Taguba as saying, "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency." [...] The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said -- but he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
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