Anti-communist mass killings
Encyclopedia
Anti-communist mass killings refer to the political mass murder
of communists
, alleged communists, other leftists
, or their supporters by right-wing
, reactionary
regimes.
citizenry from roughly 1976 to 1983 carried out primarily by Jorge Rafael Videla
's military government.
Starting in 1976, the junta
s led by Videla until 1981, and then by Roberto Viola
and Leopoldo Galtieri, were responsible for the illegal arrest, torture, killing or forced disappearance
of thousands of people, primarily trade union
ists, students and activists. Videla's dictatorship referred to its systematized persecution of the Argentine citizenry as the "National Reorganization Process
".
Up to 30,000 people "disappeared" during this time. Argentine security forces and death squad
s worked hand in hand with other South America
n dictatorships in Operation Condor
. An Argentine court would later condemn the government's crimes as crimes against humanity and genocide
.
from the Kuomintang
(KMT) in Shanghai
, ordered by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek
on 12 April 1927, during the Northern Expedition against the warlord
s.
On April 12, 1927, Chiang carried out purge of Communists from the Kuomintang in Shanghai and began large-scale massacres. Chiang's forces turned machine guns on 100,000 workers taking to streets, massacring more than 5000 people. Throughout April 1927 in Shanghai, more than 12,000 people were killed. The killing in Shanghai drove most of the Communists out of the urban cities and into the rural countryside.
The greatest slaughter took place in the countryside. The White Terror in China took millions of lives, most of them in the rural areas. The Chinese Communist Party was virtually extinguished. At the beginning of 1927, the Chinese Communist Party had about 60,000 members. By the end of the year, no more than 10,000 remained.
The 228 Incident, also known as the 228 Massacre, was an anti-government uprising in Taiwan
that began on February 27, 1947 and was violently suppressed by the Kuomintang
(KMT) government. Estimates of the number of deaths vary from ten thousand to thirty thousand or more. The Incident marked the beginning of the Kuomintang's White Terror period in Taiwan, in which thousands more Taiwanese vanished, were killed, or imprisoned. The number "228" refers to the day the massacre began: February 28, or 02-28.
Some of the killings were random, while others were systematic. Taiwanese elites were among those targeted, and many of the Taiwanese who had formed home rule groups during the reign of the Japanese were also victims of the 228 Incident. A disproportionate number of the victims were also Taiwanese middle and high school age youths, as many of them had volunteered to serve in the temporary police forces that were organized by the Committee and the local town councils to maintain public order following the initial rebellion. Several sources have claimed that ROC troops were arresting and executing anyone wearing a student uniform.
death squad
that, following the Chilean coup of 1973
, ordered or personally carried out the execution of at least 75 individuals held in Army custody in these garrisons. According to the NGO Memoria y Justicia, the squad killed 26 in the South and 71 in the North, making a total of 97 victims. Augusto Pinochet was indicted
in December 2002 in this case, but he died four years later without having being judged. The trial, however, is on-going as of September 2007, other militaries and a former military chaplain having been indicted in this case.
was used as a concentration camp holding 40,000 prisoners. Some of the most famous cases of "desaparecidos" are Charles Horman
, a U.S. citizen who was killed during the coup itself, Chilean songwriter Víctor Jara
, and the October 1973 Caravan of Death
(Caravana de la Muerte) where at least 70 persons were killed. In the first three months following the coup, the number of suspected leftists killed or "disappeared
" (desaparecidos) soon reached into the thousands. Others operations included Operation Colombo
, during which hundreds of left-wing activists were murdered, and Operation Condor
, carried out with the security services of other Latin American dictatorships.
Following Pinochet's defeat in the 1988 plebiscite, the 1991 Rettig Commission, a multipartisan effort from the Patricio Aylwin
administration to discover the truth about the human-rights violations, listed a number of torture
and detention
centers (such as Colonia Dignidad
, the ship Esmeralda
or Víctor Jara Stadium), and found that at least 3,000 people were killed or disappeared by the regime.
. Estimates of the death toll vary; while police records estimate around 10,000 deaths, the truth commission has said there may be more and according to Prof. Kim Dong-Choon, Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
, at least 100,000 people were executed for the suspicion of supporting communism
.
In the southeastern city of Ulsan
, hundreds of people were massacred by the South Korean police during the early months of the Korean War
between 1950 and 1953. 407 civilians were summarily executed without trial in July and August 1950 alone. On January 24, 2008, the former President of Korea Roh Moo-hyun
apologized for the mass killings. (See also the mass killings conducted against prison inmates who were suspected leftists at prisons in other cities such as Busan, Masan, and Jinju.)
, South Korea
, beginning on April 3, 1948. Between 14,000 and 30,000 individuals were killed in fighting between various factions on the island. The suppression of rebellion by the South Korean army has been called “brutal”, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, the destruction of many villages on the island, and sparking rebellions on the Korean mainland. The rebellion, which included the mutiny
of several hundred members of the South Korean 11th Constabulary Regiment, lasted until May 1949, although small isolated pockets of fighting continued into 1953.
South Korea's Truth Commission
reported 14,373 victims, 86% at the hands of the security forces and 13.9% at the hands of armed rebels, and estimated that the total death toll was as high as 30,000. Some 70 percent of the island's 230 villages were burned to the ground and 39,000+ houses were destroyed.
s were formed out of demobilized WWI veterans. The Freikorps
, as they were called, were meant as a replacement for the Kaiser's Army, which had evaporated overnight owing to desertion. The Freikorps was sent to suppress the revolution on the streets of Berlin
and later invaded the Bavarian Soviet Republic
. Comintern
journalist and Marxist, Victor Serge
, estimated the number of workers who died in the repression of revolutionary developments in Germany from 1918 to 1921 at 15,000. Academic sources state that between 1919 and 1923 there were 354 victims directly traceable to Freikorps actions.
On 5 May 1919 twelve workers (most of them members of the Social Democratic Party
, SPD) were arrested and killed by members of Freikorps Lützow in Perlach
near Munich
, based on a tip from a local cleric saying they were communists. A memorial on Pfanzeltplatz in Munich
today commemorates this atrocity.
, socialists and trade union
ists were among the earliest domestic opponents of Nazism and were also among the first to be sent to concentration camps. Hitler claimed that communism was a Jewish ideology which the Nazis termed "Judeo-Bolshevism". Fear of communist agitation was used as justification for the Enabling Act of 1933, the law which gave Hitler his original dictator
ial powers. Hermann Göring
later testified at the Nuremberg Trials
that the Nazis' willingness to repress German communists prompted President Paul von Hindenburg
and the German elite to cooperate with the Nazis. The first concentration camp was built at Dachau, in March 1933, to imprison German communists, socialists, trade unionists and others opposed to the Nazis. Communists, social democrats and other political prisoner
s were forced to wear a red triangle
.
Whenever the Nazis occupied a new territory, members of communist, socialist, or anarchist
groups were normally to be the first persons detained or executed. Evidence of this is found in Hitler's infamous Commissar Order
, in which he ordered the summary execution of all political commissar
s captured among Soviet soldiers, as well as the execution of all Communist Party members in German held territory. Einsatzgruppen
carried out these executions in the east.
was a two-year period (1919–1921) of repressive violence by counter-revolutionary soldiers, with the intent of crushing any vestige of Hungary’s brief Communist revolution.
In 1919, an alternative government formed to replace the failed Béla Kun
regime. Leading the armed wing of this new government was Admiral Miklós Horthy
, one-time Admiral
of the Austro-Hungarian Navy
.
Horthy named his new force the National Army. Among the officers who answered Horthy’s call were ultra-nationalist soldiers who mounted a campaign of atrocities to avenge the victims of the Red Terror
; to suppress any lingering loyalty to Communist principles; and to frighten the population into obedience to the new order.
These units, commonly known as the "White Guard," carried out a campaign of murder, torture and humiliations. Summary executions of people they suspected of Communist allegiance were common; these victims were often hanged in public places to serve as a warning to others. But the White Guard’s definition of who was an enemy of the state was a broad one. They also preyed upon peasants, upon the politically liberal, and very often upon Jews, who were broadly blamed for the Revolution because much of the Communist leadership had been Jewish.
purge following an abortive coup
in the Indonesia
n capital of Jakarta
. Conventional estimates of the number of people killed by the Indonesian security forces over the course of this period run at between 500,000 and 1,000,000.
The killings started in October 1965 in Jakarta, spread to Central and East Java
and later to Bali
, and smaller outbreaks occurred in parts of other islands, notably Sumatra
. As the Sukarno
presidency began to unravel and Suharto began to assert control following the coup attempt, the PKI's
upper national leadership was hunted and arrested with some summarily executed; the airforce
in particular was a target of the purge. PKI chairman, Dipa Nusantara Aidit, had flown to Central Java
in early October, and where the coup attempt had been supported by leftist officers in Yogyakarta, Salatiga
, and Semarang
. Fellow senior PKI leader, Njoto
, was shot around 6 November, Aidit on 22 November, and First Deputy PKI Chairman, M.H. Lukman, was killed shortly after.
headed by General Abdel Karim Kassem, who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. The CIA helped the new Ba'ath Party government led by Abdul Salam Arif
in ridding the country of suspected leftists and Communists. In the Ba'athist coup, the government used lists of suspected Communists and other leftists, provided by the CIA, to systematically murder untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite — killings in which Saddam Hussein
himself is said to have participated. The victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers, other professionals, military and political figures. According to an op-ed
in The New York Times, the U.S. sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurd
ish insurgents the U.S. had supported against Kassem and then abandoned. American and UK oil and other interests, including Mobil
, Bechtel
, and British Petroleum, were conducting business in Iraq.
, White Terror refers to the atrocities committed by the Nationalist movement during the Spanish Civil War
and during Francisco Franco
's dictatorship.
Most historians agree that the death toll of the White Terror was higher than that of the Red Terror
. While most estimates of the Red Terror range from 38,000 to 55,000, most of the estimates of the White Terror range from 150,000 to 200,000.
Concrete figures do not exist, as many Communists and Socialists fled Spain after losing the Civil War. Furthermore, the Francoist government destroyed thousands of documents relating to the White Terror and tried to hide the executions of the Republicans. Thousands of victims of the "White Terror" are buried in hundreds of unmarked common graves, more than 600 in Andalusia alone. The largest common grave is that at San Rafael cemetery on the outskirts of Malaga (with perhaps more than 4,000 bodies). The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory
(Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Historica or ARMH) says that the number of disappeared is over 35,000.
Mass murder
Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
of communists
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, alleged communists, other leftists
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
, or their supporters by right-wing
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
, reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
regimes.
Dirty War
The Dirty War refers to the state-sponsored violence against ArgentineArgentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
citizenry from roughly 1976 to 1983 carried out primarily by Jorge Rafael Videla
Jorge Rafael Videla
Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo is a former senior commander in the Argentine Army who was the de facto President of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. He came to power in a coup d'état that deposed Isabel Martínez de Perón...
's military government.
Starting in 1976, the junta
Military dictatorship
A military dictatorship is a form of government where in the political power resides with the military. It is similar but not identical to a stratocracy, a state ruled directly by the military....
s led by Videla until 1981, and then by Roberto Viola
Roberto Eduardo Viola
Roberto Eduardo Viola Redondo was an Argentine military officer who briefly served as president of Argentina from March 29 to December 11, 1981 during a period of military rule.-President of Argentina:...
and Leopoldo Galtieri, were responsible for the illegal arrest, torture, killing or forced disappearance
Forced disappearance
In international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the...
of thousands of people, primarily trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
ists, students and activists. Videla's dictatorship referred to its systematized persecution of the Argentine citizenry as the "National Reorganization Process
National Reorganization Process
The National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In Argentina it is often known simply as la última junta militar or la última dictadura , because several of them existed throughout its history.The Argentine...
".
Up to 30,000 people "disappeared" during this time. Argentine security forces and death squad
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
s worked hand in hand with other South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
n dictatorships in Operation Condor
Operation Condor
Operation Condor , was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America...
. An Argentine court would later condemn the government's crimes as crimes against humanity and genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
.
Shanghai Massacre
The Shanghai massacre of 1927, also known as the April 12 Incident, was a large-scale purge of CommunistsCommunist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
from the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
(KMT) in Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
, ordered by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng in Mandarin....
on 12 April 1927, during the Northern Expedition against the warlord
Warlord
A warlord is a person with power who has both military and civil control over a subnational area due to armed forces loyal to the warlord and not to a central authority. The term can also mean one who espouses the ideal that war is necessary, and has the means and authority to engage in war...
s.
On April 12, 1927, Chiang carried out purge of Communists from the Kuomintang in Shanghai and began large-scale massacres. Chiang's forces turned machine guns on 100,000 workers taking to streets, massacring more than 5000 people. Throughout April 1927 in Shanghai, more than 12,000 people were killed. The killing in Shanghai drove most of the Communists out of the urban cities and into the rural countryside.
The greatest slaughter took place in the countryside. The White Terror in China took millions of lives, most of them in the rural areas. The Chinese Communist Party was virtually extinguished. At the beginning of 1927, the Chinese Communist Party had about 60,000 members. By the end of the year, no more than 10,000 remained.
228 Incident
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
that began on February 27, 1947 and was violently suppressed by the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
(KMT) government. Estimates of the number of deaths vary from ten thousand to thirty thousand or more. The Incident marked the beginning of the Kuomintang's White Terror period in Taiwan, in which thousands more Taiwanese vanished, were killed, or imprisoned. The number "228" refers to the day the massacre began: February 28, or 02-28.
Some of the killings were random, while others were systematic. Taiwanese elites were among those targeted, and many of the Taiwanese who had formed home rule groups during the reign of the Japanese were also victims of the 228 Incident. A disproportionate number of the victims were also Taiwanese middle and high school age youths, as many of them had volunteered to serve in the temporary police forces that were organized by the Committee and the local town councils to maintain public order following the initial rebellion. Several sources have claimed that ROC troops were arresting and executing anyone wearing a student uniform.
Caravan of Death
The Caravan of Death was a Chilean ArmyChilean Army
The Chilean Army is the land arm of the Military of Chile. This 45,000-person army is organized into seven divisions, a special operations brigade and an air brigade....
death squad
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
that, following the Chilean coup of 1973
Chilean coup of 1973
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed event of the Cold War and the history of Chile. Following an extended period of political unrest between the conservative-dominated Congress of Chile and the socialist-leaning President Salvador Allende, discontent culminated in the latter's downfall in...
, ordered or personally carried out the execution of at least 75 individuals held in Army custody in these garrisons. According to the NGO Memoria y Justicia, the squad killed 26 in the South and 71 in the North, making a total of 97 victims. Augusto Pinochet was indicted
Augusto Pinochet's arrest and trial
General Augusto Pinochet was indicted for human rights violations committed in his native Chile by Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón on 10 October 1998. He was arrested in London six days later and finally released by the British government in March 2000...
in December 2002 in this case, but he died four years later without having being judged. The trial, however, is on-going as of September 2007, other militaries and a former military chaplain having been indicted in this case.
Forced disappearances
In the days immediately following the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, the National StadiumEstadio Nacional de Chile
The Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos is the national stadium of Chile, and is located in the Ñuñoa district of Santiago). It is the largest stadium in Chile with an official capacity of 47,000, and is part of a 62 ha sporting complex which also features tennis courts, an aquatics center, a...
was used as a concentration camp holding 40,000 prisoners. Some of the most famous cases of "desaparecidos" are Charles Horman
Charles Horman
Charles Horman was an American journalist and was one of the victims of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet, that deposed the socialist president, Salvador Allende, after bombing the Chilean presidential palace on September 11, 1973...
, a U.S. citizen who was killed during the coup itself, Chilean songwriter Víctor Jara
Víctor Jara
Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez was a Chilean teacher, theatre director, poet, singer-songwriter, political activist and member of the Communist Party of Chile...
, and the October 1973 Caravan of Death
Caravan of Death
The Caravan of Death was a Chilean Army death squad that, following the Chilean coup of 1973, flew by helicopters from south to north of Chile between September 30 and October 22, 1973. During this foray, members of the squad ordered or personally carried out the execution of at least 75...
(Caravana de la Muerte) where at least 70 persons were killed. In the first three months following the coup, the number of suspected leftists killed or "disappeared
Forced disappearance
In international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the...
" (desaparecidos) soon reached into the thousands. Others operations included Operation Colombo
Operation Colombo
Operation Colombo was an operation undertaken by the DINA in 1975. The operation involved the disappearance of political dissidents. At least 119 people are alleged to have been abducted and later killed by state forces in the secret operation...
, during which hundreds of left-wing activists were murdered, and Operation Condor
Operation Condor
Operation Condor , was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America...
, carried out with the security services of other Latin American dictatorships.
Following Pinochet's defeat in the 1988 plebiscite, the 1991 Rettig Commission, a multipartisan effort from the Patricio Aylwin
Patricio Aylwin
Patricio Aylwin Azócar was the first president of Chile after its return to democratic rule in 1990, following the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.- Early life :...
administration to discover the truth about the human-rights violations, listed a number of torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
and detention
Detention (imprisonment)
Detention is the process when a state, government or citizen lawfully holds a person by removing their freedom of liberty at that time. This can be due to criminal charges being raised against the individual as part of a prosecution or to protect a person or property...
centers (such as Colonia Dignidad
Colonia Dignidad
Villa Baviera , formerly known as Colonia Dignidad is a hamlet in Parral Commune, Linares Province, Maule Region, Chile. Located in an isolated area of central Chile, it lies 35 km southeast of the city of Parral, on the north bank of the Perquilauquén River. It was founded by a group of German...
, the ship Esmeralda
Esmeralda (BE-43)
Esmeralda is a steel-hulled four-masted barquentine tall ship of the Chilean Navy, currently the second tallest and longest sailing ship in the world.- Construction :The ship is the sixth to carry the name Esmeralda...
or Víctor Jara Stadium), and found that at least 3,000 people were killed or disappeared by the regime.
Bodo League massacre
The Bodo League Massacre was a massacre that occurred in the summer of 1950 during the Korean WarKorean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. Estimates of the death toll vary; while police records estimate around 10,000 deaths, the truth commission has said there may be more and according to Prof. Kim Dong-Choon, Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Korea)
South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission , established on December 1, 2005, is a governmental body responsible for investigating incidents in Korean history which occurred starting from Japan's rule of Korea in 1910 up until the end of Authoritarian Rule in Korea with the election of...
, at least 100,000 people were executed for the suspicion of supporting communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
.
In the southeastern city of Ulsan
Ulsan
Ulsan , officially the Ulsan Metropolitan City, is South Korea's seventh largest metropolis with a population of over 1.1 million. It is located in the south-east of the country, neighboring Busan to the south and facing Gyeongju to the north and the Sea of Japan to the east.Ulsan is the...
, hundreds of people were massacred by the South Korean police during the early months of the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
between 1950 and 1953. 407 civilians were summarily executed without trial in July and August 1950 alone. On January 24, 2008, the former President of Korea Roh Moo-hyun
Roh Moo-hyun
Roh Moo-hyun GOM GCB was the 16th President of South Korea .Roh's pre-presidential political career was focused on human rights advocacy for student activists in South Korea. His electoral career later expanded to a focus on overcoming regionalism in South Korean politics, culminating in his...
apologized for the mass killings. (See also the mass killings conducted against prison inmates who were suspected leftists at prisons in other cities such as Busan, Masan, and Jinju.)
Jeju Uprising
The Jeju Uprising refers to the rebellion on Jeju islandJeju-do
Jeju-do is the only special autonomous province of South Korea, situated on and coterminous with the country's largest island. Jeju-do lies in the Korea Strait, southwest of Jeollanam-do Province, of which it was a part before it became a separate province in 1946...
, South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
, beginning on April 3, 1948. Between 14,000 and 30,000 individuals were killed in fighting between various factions on the island. The suppression of rebellion by the South Korean army has been called “brutal”, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, the destruction of many villages on the island, and sparking rebellions on the Korean mainland. The rebellion, which included the mutiny
Mutiny
Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly situated individuals to openly oppose, change or overthrow an authority to which they are subject...
of several hundred members of the South Korean 11th Constabulary Regiment, lasted until May 1949, although small isolated pockets of fighting continued into 1953.
South Korea's Truth Commission
Truth commission
A truth commission or truth and reconciliation commission is a commission tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government , in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past...
reported 14,373 victims, 86% at the hands of the security forces and 13.9% at the hands of armed rebels, and estimated that the total death toll was as high as 30,000. Some 70 percent of the island's 230 villages were burned to the ground and 39,000+ houses were destroyed.
Freikorps
In an attempt to suppress the revolution following the First World War, militiaMilitia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
s were formed out of demobilized WWI veterans. The Freikorps
Freikorps
Freikorps are German volunteer military or paramilitary units. The term was originally applied to voluntary armies formed in German lands from the middle of the 18th century onwards. Between World War I and World War II the term was also used for the paramilitary organizations that arose during...
, as they were called, were meant as a replacement for the Kaiser's Army, which had evaporated overnight owing to desertion. The Freikorps was sent to suppress the revolution on the streets of Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and later invaded the Bavarian Soviet Republic
Bavarian Soviet Republic
The Bavarian Soviet Republic, also known as the Munich Soviet Republic was, as part of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the short-lived attempt to establish a socialist state in form of a council republic in the Free State of Bavaria. It sought independence from the also recently proclaimed...
. Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
journalist and Marxist, Victor Serge
Victor Serge
Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...
, estimated the number of workers who died in the repression of revolutionary developments in Germany from 1918 to 1921 at 15,000. Academic sources state that between 1919 and 1923 there were 354 victims directly traceable to Freikorps actions.
On 5 May 1919 twelve workers (most of them members of the Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
, SPD) were arrested and killed by members of Freikorps Lützow in Perlach
Perlach
Perlach may refer to:*Ramersdorf-Perlach, one of 25 boroughs/districts of Munich, Germany*Perlachturm, , a bell tower built in 1182 in Augsburg, Germany*Andreas Perlach, court astrologer to Archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg...
near Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, based on a tip from a local cleric saying they were communists. A memorial on Pfanzeltplatz in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
today commemorates this atrocity.
Holocaust
German communistsCommunism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, socialists and trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
ists were among the earliest domestic opponents of Nazism and were also among the first to be sent to concentration camps. Hitler claimed that communism was a Jewish ideology which the Nazis termed "Judeo-Bolshevism". Fear of communist agitation was used as justification for the Enabling Act of 1933, the law which gave Hitler his original dictator
Dictator
A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...
ial powers. Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...
later testified at the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
that the Nazis' willingness to repress German communists prompted President Paul von Hindenburg
Paul von Hindenburg
Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg , known universally as Paul von Hindenburg was a Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and politician, and served as the second President of Germany from 1925 to 1934....
and the German elite to cooperate with the Nazis. The first concentration camp was built at Dachau, in March 1933, to imprison German communists, socialists, trade unionists and others opposed to the Nazis. Communists, social democrats and other political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
s were forced to wear a red triangle
Nazi concentration camp badges
Nazi concentration camp badges, primarily triangles, were part of the system of identification in Nazi camps. They were used in the concentration camps in the Nazi-occupied countries to identify the reason the prisoners had been placed there. The triangles were made of fabric and were sewn on...
.
Whenever the Nazis occupied a new territory, members of communist, socialist, or anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
groups were normally to be the first persons detained or executed. Evidence of this is found in Hitler's infamous Commissar Order
Commissar Order
The Commissar Order was a written order given by Adolf Hitler on 6 June 1941, prior to Operation Barbarossa. Its official name was Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars...
, in which he ordered the summary execution of all political commissar
Commissar
Commissar is the English transliteration of an official title used in Russia from the time of Peter the Great.The title was used during the Provisional Government for regional heads of administration, but it is mostly associated with a number of Cheka and military functions in Bolshevik and Soviet...
s captured among Soviet soldiers, as well as the execution of all Communist Party members in German held territory. Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
carried out these executions in the east.
White Terror
The White Terror in HungaryHungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
was a two-year period (1919–1921) of repressive violence by counter-revolutionary soldiers, with the intent of crushing any vestige of Hungary’s brief Communist revolution.
In 1919, an alternative government formed to replace the failed Béla Kun
Béla Kun
Béla Kun , born Béla Kohn, was a Hungarian Communist politician and a Bolshevik Revolutionary who led the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919.- Early life :...
regime. Leading the armed wing of this new government was Admiral Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya was the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary during the interwar years and throughout most of World War II, serving from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944. Horthy was styled "His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary" .Admiral Horthy was an officer of the...
, one-time Admiral
Admiral
Admiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet . It is usually abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"...
of the Austro-Hungarian Navy
Austro-Hungarian Navy
The Austro-Hungarian Navy was the naval force of Austria-Hungary. Its official name in German was Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine , abbreviated as k.u.k. Kriegsmarine....
.
Horthy named his new force the National Army. Among the officers who answered Horthy’s call were ultra-nationalist soldiers who mounted a campaign of atrocities to avenge the victims of the Red Terror
Red Terror (Hungary)
The Red Terror in Hungary was a series of atrocities aimed at crushing political rivals during the four-month regime of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. It was so named because of its similarity to the Red Terror in Soviet Russia in both purpose and effect...
; to suppress any lingering loyalty to Communist principles; and to frighten the population into obedience to the new order.
These units, commonly known as the "White Guard," carried out a campaign of murder, torture and humiliations. Summary executions of people they suspected of Communist allegiance were common; these victims were often hanged in public places to serve as a warning to others. But the White Guard’s definition of who was an enemy of the state was a broad one. They also preyed upon peasants, upon the politically liberal, and very often upon Jews, who were broadly blamed for the Revolution because much of the Communist leadership had been Jewish.
Killings of 1965–66
The Indonesian killings of 1965-66 were a violent anti-CommunistAnti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
purge following an abortive coup
30 September Movement
The Thirtieth of September Movement ) was a self-proclaimed organization of Indonesian National Armed Forces members who, in the early hours of 1 October 1965, assassinated six Indonesian Army generals in an abortive coup d'état. Later that morning, the organization declared that it was in control...
in the Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
n capital of Jakarta
Jakarta
Jakarta is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Officially known as the Special Capital Territory of Jakarta, it is located on the northwest coast of Java, has an area of , and a population of 9,580,000. Jakarta is the country's economic, cultural and political centre...
. Conventional estimates of the number of people killed by the Indonesian security forces over the course of this period run at between 500,000 and 1,000,000.
The killings started in October 1965 in Jakarta, spread to Central and East Java
Java
Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...
and later to Bali
Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...
, and smaller outbreaks occurred in parts of other islands, notably Sumatra
Sumatra
Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...
. As the Sukarno
Sukarno
Sukarno, born Kusno Sosrodihardjo was the first President of Indonesia.Sukarno was the leader of his country's struggle for independence from the Netherlands and was Indonesia's first President from 1945 to 1967...
presidency began to unravel and Suharto began to assert control following the coup attempt, the PKI's
Communist Party of Indonesia
The Communist Party of Indonesia was the largest non-ruling communist party in the world prior to being crushed in 1965 and banned the following year.-Forerunners:...
upper national leadership was hunted and arrested with some summarily executed; the airforce
Indonesian Air Force
The Indonesian Air Force is the air force branch of the Indonesian National Armed Forces.The Indonesian Air Force has 34,930 personnel equipped with 110 combat aircraft including Su-27 and Su-30.-Before Indonesian independence :...
in particular was a target of the purge. PKI chairman, Dipa Nusantara Aidit, had flown to Central Java
Central Java
Central Java is a province of Indonesia. The administrative capital is Semarang. It is one of six provinces on the island of Java.This province is the province of high Human Development in Indonesia and its Points Development Index countries is equivalent to Lebanon. The province of Central Java...
in early October, and where the coup attempt had been supported by leftist officers in Yogyakarta, Salatiga
Salatiga
Salatiga is a city in Central Java, Indonesia, located between the cities of Semarang and Surakarta. It sits at the foot of Mount Merbabu and Mount Telomoyo, and has a relatively cool climate due to its elevated position.-Origin of name:...
, and Semarang
Semarang
- Economy :The western part of the city is home to many industrial parks and factories. The port of Semarang is located on the north coast and it is the main shipping port for the province of Central Java. Many small manufacturers are located in Semarang, producing goods such as textiles,...
. Fellow senior PKI leader, Njoto
Njoto
Njoto was a top national leader of the Communist Party of Indonesia . He was shot dead by around 6 November 1965 in the anti-Communist purge during the Transition to the New Order.-References:...
, was shot around 6 November, Aidit on 22 November, and First Deputy PKI Chairman, M.H. Lukman, was killed shortly after.
Iraq
In 1963, the Kennedy administration backed a coup against the government of IraqIraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
headed by General Abdel Karim Kassem, who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. The CIA helped the new Ba'ath Party government led by Abdul Salam Arif
Abdul Salam Arif
Abdul Salam Mohammed Arif Aljumaily was President of Iraq from 1963 till his death. He played a leading role in the coup in which the Hashemite monarchy was overthrown on July 14, 1958.-1958 revolution and conflict with Qasim:...
in ridding the country of suspected leftists and Communists. In the Ba'athist coup, the government used lists of suspected Communists and other leftists, provided by the CIA, to systematically murder untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite — killings in which Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
himself is said to have participated. The victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers, other professionals, military and political figures. According to an op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
in The New York Times, the U.S. sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurd
Kürd
Kürd or Kyurd or Kyurt may refer to:*Kürd Eldarbəyli, Azerbaijan*Kürd Mahrızlı, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Goychay, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Jalilabad, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Qabala, Azerbaijan*Qurdbayram, Azerbaijan...
ish insurgents the U.S. had supported against Kassem and then abandoned. American and UK oil and other interests, including Mobil
Mobil
Mobil, previously known as the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, was a major American oil company which merged with Exxon in 1999 to form ExxonMobil. Today Mobil continues as a major brand name within the combined company, as well as still being a gas station sometimes paired with their own store or On...
, Bechtel
Bechtel
Bechtel Corporation is the largest engineering company in the United States, ranking as the 5th-largest privately owned company in the U.S...
, and British Petroleum, were conducting business in Iraq.
White Terror
In SpainSpain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, White Terror refers to the atrocities committed by the Nationalist movement during the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
and during Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
's dictatorship.
Most historians agree that the death toll of the White Terror was higher than that of the Red Terror
Red Terror (Spain)
The Red Terror in Spain is the name given by historians to various acts committed "by sections of nearly all the leftist groups" such as the killing of tens of thousands of people , as well as attacks on landowners, industrialists, and politicians, and the...
. While most estimates of the Red Terror range from 38,000 to 55,000, most of the estimates of the White Terror range from 150,000 to 200,000.
Concrete figures do not exist, as many Communists and Socialists fled Spain after losing the Civil War. Furthermore, the Francoist government destroyed thousands of documents relating to the White Terror and tried to hide the executions of the Republicans. Thousands of victims of the "White Terror" are buried in hundreds of unmarked common graves, more than 600 in Andalusia alone. The largest common grave is that at San Rafael cemetery on the outskirts of Malaga (with perhaps more than 4,000 bodies). The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory
Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory
The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory is a Spanish organization that collects the oral and written testimonies about the victims of the regime of Francisco Franco and excavates and identifies their bodies that were often dumped in mass graves.Emilio Silva and Santiago Macias...
(Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Historica or ARMH) says that the number of disappeared is over 35,000.
See also
- Mass killings under communist regimesMass killings under Communist regimesMass killings occurred under some Communist regimes during the twentieth century with an estimated death toll numbering between 85 and 100 million. Scholarship focuses on the causes of mass killings in single societies, though some claims of common causes for mass killings have been made...
- Repression in the Soviet UnionRepression in the Soviet UnionThere were many forms of repression in the Soviet Union carried out by the Soviet government and the ruling Communist Party.*Political repression in the Soviet Union*Economic repression in the Soviet Union*Ideological repression in the Soviet Union...
- White TerrorWhite TerrorWhite Terror is the violence carried out by reactionary groups as part of a counter-revolution. In particular, during the 20th century, in several countries the term White Terror was applied to acts of violence against real or suspected socialists and communists.-Historical origin: the French...
- Red TerrorRed Terror (disambiguation)The Red Terror was a campaign of mass arrests and executions conducted by the Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia in 1918–1922.Red Terror may also refer to:*Communist terrorism*Revolutionary terror...