State Atrocities and Misdeeds
Note
Towards the end of the "Ancien Régime" historians started to analyse and portray its evil aspects. Nowadays, with the decline and, hopefully, dissolution of statism, it is time to present a documented and exhaustive list of the atrocities and misdeeds committed by the states all over the world in the last two centuries.
Everybody is invited to take part in the activity of documentation by sending a message.
Date / Period: 1894 - 1896 and 1915 |
Place: Turkey |
Crime: Genocide of almost 1,5 million Armenians |
Perpetrator(s): the Turkish state |
Description: According to Johannes Lepsius, a German missionary, in the period 1894 - 1896 there have been 88,243 Armenians killed. In 1915, out of a population of 1,845,450 Armenians, 1,396,350 (75%) have been deported or killed. |
Sources: - Jean Marie Carzou, Armenie 1915. Une génocide exemplaire, Flammarion, Paris, 1975 - Armenian National Institute http://www.armenian-genocide.org/ - Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/facts/index.html http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/papazian/vienna.html#_ednref17 |
Date / Period: 1933-1945 |
Place: Germany and occupied territories |
Crime: Harassment of all Jews and final genocide of 6 million of them |
Perpetrator(s): the German state |
Active accomplices or passive spectators: the rest of the World. To describe the attitude of the national states towards the Jews it is sufficient to quote what has been said by a senior official in the government of the then Canadian Prime Minister McKenzie King. To the question: "How many Jews fleeing Nazi Germany should be allowed into this country" he replied "None are too many." |
Description: Starting from late 1938 the German government under Adolf Hitler started to implement a methodical plan of physical extermination of the Jews. The reason for the genocide was to protect a supposed "racial purity" of the German people. The entire world was a passive spectator all throughout an appalling series of events, from the initial harassment of the Jews, to the introduction of the racial laws up to the "final solution." The introduction by the states of passports and identity cards and of laws limiting the free movement of people, derivations of the concept of supreme territorial sovereignty upheld by the states, condemned from the start the Jews to an horrific destiny. |
Sources: - http://www.mtsu.edu/~~baustin/holo.html - http://ddickerson.igc.org/holocaust.html - http://www.gndesign.it/shoahnet/ |
Date / Period: 1965-1966 |
Place: Indonesia |
Crime: Massacre from half a million to a million of human beings. Other estimates put the total figure at two million people killed |
Perpetrator(s): the Indonesian state under general Suharto |
Active accomplices or passive spectators: the USA and the British governments |
Description: In order for general Suharto to consolidate its power, "hundreds of thousands of people were exterminated in massacres initiated and organized by the Indonesian army, in a drive to eliminate the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI)" and every possible opponent or simple rural peasant, quickly labelled as communist rebel. |
Sources: - Carmel Budiardjo, Indonesia: mass extermination and the consolidation of authoritarian power, in Alexander George editor, Western State Terrorism, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991 - Paolo Barnard, USA: il più grande stato canaglia, Micromega, 1-2004 |
Date / Period: December 2001 - January 2002 |
Place: Afghanistan |
Crime: Killing of more than 180 civilians |
Perpetrator(s): U.S.A. military aviation and U.S.A. special forces |
Description: On the 20th of December 2001, U.S. planes rocketed a convoy of elders going to Kabul, killing 60 people according to local sources. On a late December night 2001, U.S. planes bombed for more than six hours a wedding party that, according to intelligence sources, was believed to be a gathering of terrorists. Death toll: 110 innocent people. On January the 24th, 2002, special forces raided a building in Uruzgan province killing 16 civilians that they mistook for terrorists. |
Sources: Time Magazine, March 11, 2002 (pp.24-25) |