List of war crimes

, a Boer child in a British concentration camp The term "concentration camp" was used to describe camps operated by the British Empire in South Africa during the Second Boer War in the years 1900–1902. As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "scorched earth" policy, many tens of thousands of women and children were forcibly moved into the concentration camps. Over 26,000 Boer women and children were to perish in these concentration camps. Six officers from the Bushveldt Carbineers were court-martialed for massacring POWs and civilians. Lieutenants Harry Morant, Peter Handcock, and George Witton were each found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Morant and Handcock were executed, while Witton was reprieved and served a short prison sentence. Two of the other defendants, Major Robert Lenehan and Lieutenant Henry Picton, were found guilty of lesser charges. They were dismissed from the military and deported from South Africa after being found guilty of neglecting one's duty and manslaughter, respectively. The last defendant, Captain Alfred Taylor, was acquitted. == 1899–1902 Philippine–American War ==

'' cartoon of May 5, 1902 about General Jacob H. Smith's infamous order "Kill Everyone Over Ten". The caption at the bottom reads: "Criminals Because They Were Born Ten Years Before We Took the Philippines". Reported American war crimes and atrocities during the Philippine–American War included the summary execution of civilians and prisoners, burning of villages, and torture. 298,000 Filipinos were also moved to concentration camps, where thousands died. In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger wrote: "The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog". In response to the Balangiga massacre, which wiped out a U.S. company garrisoning Samar town, U.S. Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith launched a retaliatory march across Samar with the instructions: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States".{{cite news |title=President Retires Gen. Jacob H. Smith |work=The New York Times |date=1902-07-17 == 1904–1908: Herero Wars ==

In August, German General Lothar von Trotha defeated the Ovaherero in the Battle of Waterberg and drove them into the desert of Omaheke, where most of them died of dehydration. In October, the Nama people also rebelled against the Germans, only to suffer a similar fate. Between 24,000 and 100,000 Hereros, 10,000 Nama and an unknown number of San died in the parallel Herero and Namaqua genocide. Once defeated, thousands of Hereros and Namas were also imprisoned in concentration camps, where the majority died of diseases, abuse, and exhaustion. German soldiers also regularly engaged in gang rapes before killing the women or leaving them in the desert to die; a number of Herero women were also forced into involuntary prostitution. == 1912-1913: Balkan Wars ==

in Prishtina during the Balkan wars The Balkan Wars were marked by ethnic cleansing with all parties being responsible for grave atrocities against civilians and helped inspire later atrocities including war crimes during the 1990s Yugoslav Wars. Massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars were perpetrated on several occasions by Serbian and Montenegrin armies and paramilitaries. According to contemporary accounts, between 20,000 and 25,000 Albanians were massacred in the Kosovo Vilayet during the first two to four months of the conflict; with at least 120,000 being killed in total. Most of the victims were children, women and the elderly. In addition to the massacres, some civilians had their tongues, lips, ears and noses severed. Philip J. Cohen also cited Durham as saying that Serbian soldiers helped bury people alive in Kosovo. Yugoslavia from a Historical Perspective, a 2017 study published in Belgrade by the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, said that villages were burned to ashes and Albanian Muslims forced to flee when Serbo-Montenegrin forces invaded Kosovo in 1912. Some chronicles cited decapitation as well as mutilation. The Serbian army also brutally suppressed the Tikveš uprising and terrorized the Bulgarian population in the rebelling regions. According to some sources, 36 Bulgarian civilians were killed in Kavadarci, 230 in Negotino, and 40 in Vatasha. == 1914–1918: World War I ==

lost about 850,000 people during the war, a quarter of its pre-war population. 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. == 1915–1920: First and Second Caco War ==

• During the First (1915) and Second (1918–1920) Caco Wars waged during the United States occupation of Haiti (1915–1934), human rights abuses were committed against the native Haitians population. Overall, American troops and the Haitian gendarmerie killed several thousands of Haitian civilians during the rebellions between 1915 and 1920, though the exact death toll is unknown. • Mass killings of civilians were allegedly committed by United States Marines and their subordinates in the Haitian gendarmerie. According to Haitian historian Roger Gaillard, such killings involved rape, lynchings, summary executions, burning villages and deaths by burning. Internal documents of the United States Army justified the killing of women and children, describing them as "auxiliaries" of rebels. A private memorandum of the Secretary of the Navy criticized "indiscriminate killings against natives". American officers who were responsible for acts of violence were given Creole names such as "Linx" for Commandant Freeman Lang and "Ouiliyanm" for Lieutenant Lee Williams. According to American journalist H. J. Seligman, Marines would practice "bumping off Gooks", describing the shooting of civilians in a manner which was similar to killing for sport. • During the Second Caco War of 1918–1919, many Caco prisoners were summarily executed by Marines and the gendarmerie on orders from their superiors. On June 4, 1916, Marines executed caco General Mizrael Codio and ten others after they were captured in Fonds-Verrettes. In Hinche in January 1919, Captain Ernest Lavoie of the gendarmerie, a former United States Marine, allegedly ordered the killing of nineteen caco rebels according to American officers, though no charges were ever filed against him due to the fact that no physical evidence of the killing was ever presented. • The torture of Haitian rebels and the torture of Haitians who were suspected of rebelling against the United States was a common practice among the occupying Marines. Some of the methods of torture included the use of water cure, hanging prisoners by their genitals and ceps, which involved pushing both sides of the tibia with the butts of two guns. ==1921–1927: Rif War==

• During the Rif War, Spanish forces used chemical weapons against Berber rebels and civilians in Morocco. These attacks marked the first widespread employment of gas warfare in the post-WWI era. The Spanish army indiscriminately used phosgene, diphosgene, chloropicrin and mustard gas against civilian populations, markets and rivers. Spain signed the Geneva Protocol in 1925, that prohibited chemical and biological warfare, while simultaneously employing these weapons across the Mediterranean. • Spanish mutilations of captured Moroccans were reported, including castration and severing heads, noses and ears, which were collected by Spanish legionnaries as war trophies and worn as necklaces or spiked on bayonets. • On August 9, 1921, the Massacre of Monte Arruit occurred, in which 2,000 soldiers of the Spanish Army were killed by Riffian forces after surrendering the Monte Arruit garrison near Al Aaroui following a 12-day siege. ==1923–1932: Pacification of Libya==

• The Pacification of Libya resulted in mass deaths of the indigenous people in Cyrenaica by Italy. 80,000 or over a quarter of the indigenous people in Cyrenaica perished during the pacification. 100,000 Bedouin citizens were also ethnically cleansed by expulsion from their land. • Italian war crimes included the use of chemical weapons, execution of surrendering combatants, and killing of civilians. According to Knud Holmboe tribal villages were being bombed with mustard gas by the spring of 1930, and suspects were hanged or shot in the back, with estimated thirty executions taking place daily. == 1927-1949: Chinese Civil War==

• During the Chinese Civil War both the Nationalists and Communists carried out mass atrocities, with millions of non-combatants deliberately killed by both sides. Benjamin Valentino has estimated atrocities in the Chinese Civil War resulted in the death of between 1.8 million and 3.5 million people between 1927 and 1949. • Over several years after the 1927 Shanghai massacre, the Kuomintang killed between 300,000 and one million people, primarily peasants, in anti-communist campaigns as part of the White Terror. During the White Terror, the Nationalists specifically targeted women with short hair who had not been subjected to foot binding, on the presumption that such "non-traditional" women were radicals. • During the December 1930 Futian incident, the communists executed 2,000 to 3,000 members of the Futian battalion after its leaders had mutinied against Mao Zedong. Between 1931 and 1934 in the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet, the communist authorities engaged in a widespread campaign of violence against civilians to ensure compliance with its policies and to stop defection to the advancing KMT, including mass executions, land confiscation and forced labor. According to Li Weihan, a high-ranking communist in Jiangxi at the time, in response to mass flight of civilians to KMT held areas, the local authorities would "usually send armed squads after those attempting to flee and kill them on the spot, producing numerous mass graves throughout the CSR [Chinese Soviet Republic in Jiangxi] that would later be uncovered by the KMT and its allies." Zhang Wentian, another high-ranking communist, reported that "the policy of annihilating landlords as an exploiting class had degenerated into a massacre" The population of the communist controlled area fell by 700,000 from 1931 and 1935, of which a large proportion were murdered as “class enemies,” worked to death, committed suicide, or died in other circumstances attributable to the communists. • During the Siege of Changchun the People's Liberation Army implemented a military blockade on the KMT-held city of Changchun and prevented civilians from leaving the city during the blockade; to 150 thousand civilians. The PLA continued to use siege tactics throughout Northeast China. • At the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War in 1946, Mao Zedong began to push for a return to radical policies to mobilize China against the landlord class, but protected the rights of middle peasants and specified that rich peasants were not landlords. The 7 July Directive of 1946 set off eighteen months of fierce conflict in which all rich peasant and landlord property of all types was to be confiscated and redistributed to poor peasants. Party work teams went quickly from village to village and divided the population into landlords, rich, middle, poor, and landless peasants. Because the work teams did not involve villagers in the process, however, rich and middle peasants quickly returned to power. The Outline Land Law of October 1947 increased the pressure. Those condemned as landlords were buried alive, dismembered, strangled and shot. • In response to the aforementioned land reform campaign; the Kuomintang helped establish the "Huanxiang Tuan" (), or Homecoming Legion, which was composed of landlords who sought the return of their redistributed land and property from peasants and CCP guerrillas, as well as forcibly conscripted peasants and communist POWs. The Homecoming legion conducted its guerrilla warfare campaign against CCP forces and purported collaborators up until the end of the civil war in 1949. ==1935–1937: Second Italo-Abyssinian War==

• Italian use of mustard gas against Ethiopian soldiers in 1936 violated the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which bans the use of chemical weapons in warfare. • Crimes by Ethiopian troops included the use of dum-dum bullets (in violation of the Hague Conventions), the killing of civilian workmen (including during the Gondrand massacre), and the mutilation of captured Eritrean Ascari and Italians (often with castration), beginning in the first weeks of war. • Yekatit 12—In response to the unsuccessful assassination of Rodolfo Graziani on 19 February 1937, thousands of Ethiopians were killed, including all of the monks residing at Debre Libanos, and over a thousand more detained at Danan who were then exiled either to the Dahlak Islands or Italy. • The Ethiopians recorded 275,000 combatants killed in action, 78,500 patriots (guerrilla fighters) killed during the occupation, 17,800 civilians killed by aerial bombardment and 30,000 in the February 1937 massacre, 35,000 people died in concentration camps, 24,000 patriots executed by Summary Courts, 300,000 people died of privation due to the destruction of their villages, amounting to 760,300 deaths. ==1936–1939: Spanish Civil War==

at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War At least 50,000 people were executed during the Spanish Civil War. 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." 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." César Vidal puts the number of Republican victims at 110,965. In 2008 a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, opened an investigation into the executions and disappearances of 114,266 people between 17 July 1936 and December 1951. Among the murders and executions investigated was that of poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca. == 1939–1945: World War II ==

== 1946–1954: Indochina War ==

The French Union's struggle against the independence movement backed by the Soviet Union and China claimed 400,000 to 1.5 million Vietnamese lives from 1945 to 1954. while Benjamin Valentino estimates that the French were responsible for 60,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths. About French massacres and war crimes during the conflict, Christopher Goscha wrote on The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam: "Rape became a disturbing weapon used by the Expeditionary Corps, as did summary executions. Young Vietnamese women who could not escape approaching enemy patrols smeared themselves with any stinking thing they could find, including human excrement. Severed heads were raised on sticks, bodies were gruesomely disemboweled, and body parts were taken as 'souvenirs'; Vietnamese soldiers of all political colors also committed such acts. The non-communist nationalist singer, Phạm Duy, wrote a bone-chilling ballad about the mothers of Gio Linh village in central Vietnam, each of whom had lost a son to a French Army massacre in 1948. Troops decapitated their bodies and displayed their heads along a public road to strike fear into those tempted to accept the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's sovereignty. Massacres did not start with the Americans in My Lai, or the Vietnamese communists in Hue in 1968. And yet, the French Union's massacre of over two hundred Vietnamese women and children in My Tratch in 1948 remains virtually unknown in France to this day." == 1947–1948: Malagasy Uprising ==

During the French suppression of the pro-independence Malagasy Uprising, numerous atrocities were carried out such as mass killings, village burnings, torture, war rape, collective punishment, and throwing live prisoners out of airplanes (death flights). Between 11,000 and 90,000 Malagasy died in the fighting, along with about 800 French soldiers and other Europeans. == 1948 Arab–Israeli War ==

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, numerous villages were destroyed, and large-scale displacement occurred, with more than 350 Arab villages wiped out and roughly 535,000 Palestinian Arabs forced to flee or resettle in neighboring countries. Nearly 15,000 people were killed during the war, including around 6,000 Jews and about 8,000 Arabs (mostly Muslims). Many of these actions, including attacks on civilians and forced expulsions, are cited as war crimes. == 1945–1949: Indonesian War of Independence ==

• South Sulawesi Campaign, about 4,500 civilians killed by Pro-Indonesian and Indonesian forces and pro-Dutch and Dutch colonial forces (KNIL). • Rawagede massacre: about 431 civilians killed by Dutch forces • Bersiap massacre: about 25,000 Indo-European civilians, Dutch, and loyalists killed by Indonesian nationalist forces. • Indonesian National Revolution: About 100–150,000 Chinese, Communists, Europeans (French, German, British), pro-Dutch etc. were killed by Indonesian nationalist forces and Indonesian youth. == 1948–1960: Malayan Emergency ==

• War crimes: In the Batang Kali massacre, about 24 unarmed villagers were killed by British troops. The British government claimed that these villagers were insurgents attempting to escape but this was later known to be entirely false as they were unarmed, nor actually supporting the insurgents nor attempting to escape after being detained by British troops. No British soldier was prosecuted for the murder at Batang Kali. • War crimes: includes beating, torturing, and killing by British troops and communist insurgents of non-combatants. • War crimes: As part of the Briggs Plan devised by British General Sir Harold Briggs, 500,000 people (roughly ten percent of Malaya's population) were eventually removed from the land and interned in guarded camps called "New Villages". The intent of this measure was to isolate villagers from contact with insurgents. While considered necessary, some of the cases involving the widespread destruction went beyond justification of military necessity. This practice was prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and customary international law which stated that the destruction of property must not happen unless rendered absolutely necessary by military operations. == 1950–1953: Korean War ==

United States perpetrated crimes North Korean perpetrated crimes • Rudolph Rummel estimated that the North Korean Army executed at least 500,000 civilians during the Korean War with many dying in North Korea's drive to conscript or forcibly recruit South Koreans to their war effort. Throughout the conflict, North Korean and Chinese forces routinely mistreated and tortured U.S. and other UN prisoners of war. Mass starvation and diseases swept through the Chinese-run POW camps during the winter of 1950–51. About 43 percent of all U.S. POWs died during this period. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, which explicitly stated that captor states must repatriate prisoners of war to their homeland as quickly as possible, North Korea detained South Korean POWs for decades after the ceasefire. Over 88,000 South Korean soldiers were missing and the Communists' themselves had claimed they had captured 70,000 South Koreans. South Korean perpetrated crimes == 1952–1960: Mau Mau uprising ==

• In attempt to suppress the insurgency in Kenya, British colonial authorities suspended civil liberties within the country. In response to the rebellion, many Kikuyu were relocated. According to British authorities 80,000 were interned. Caroline Elkins estimated that between 160,000 and 320,000 were moved into concentration camps. Other estimates are as high as 450,000 interned. Most of the remainder – more than a million – were held in "enclosed villages". Although some were Mau Mau guerillas, many were victims of collective punishment that colonial authorities imposed on large areas of the country. Thousands suffered beatings and sexual assaults during "screenings" intended to extract information about the Mau Mau threat. Later, prisoners suffered even worse mistreatment in an attempt to force them to renounce their allegiance to the insurgency and to obey commands. Significant numbers were murdered; official accounts describe some prisoners being roasted alive. Prisoners were questioned with the help of "slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes". The British colonial police used a "metal castrating instrument" to cut off testicles and fingers. "By the time I cut his balls off", one settler boasted, "he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket. Too bad, he died before we got much out of him." According to David Anderson, the British hanged over 1,090 suspected rebels: far more than the French had executed in Algeria during the Algerian War. • The Chuka Massacre, which happened in Chuka, Kenya, was perpetrated by members of the King's African Rifles B Company in June 1953 with 20 unarmed people killed during the Mau Mau uprising. Members of the 5th KAR B Company entered the Chuka area on June 13, 1953, to flush out rebels suspected of hiding in the nearby forests. Over the next few days, the regiment had captured and executed 20 people suspected of being Mau Mau fighters for unknown reasons. It is found out that most of the people executed were actually belonged to the Kikuyu Home Guard – a loyalist militia recruited by the British to fight an increasingly powerful and audacious guerrilla enemy. The commanding officer of the soldiers responsible, Major Gerald Griffiths, was court-martialed for murder. He was found guilty and sentenced to 7 years in prison. In an atmosphere of atrocity and reprisal, the matter was swept under the carpet and nobody else ever stood trial for the massacre. • The Hola massacre was an incident during the conflict in Kenya against British colonial rule at a colonial detention camp in Hola, Kenya. By January 1959 the camp had a population of 506 detainees of whom 127 were held in a secluded "closed camp". This more remote camp near Garissa, eastern Kenya, was reserved for the most uncooperative of the detainees. They often refused, even when threats of force were made, to join in the colonial "rehabilitation process" or perform manual labour or obey colonial orders. The camp commandant outlined a plan that would force 88 of the detainees to bend to work. On 3 March 1959, the camp commandant put this plan into action – as a result, 11 detainees were clubbed to death by guards. 77 surviving detainees sustained serious permanent injuries. The British government accepts that the colonial administration tortured detainees, but denies liability. • The Lari massacre in the settlement of Lari occurred on the night of 25–26 March 1953, in which Mau Mau militants herded Kikuyu men, women and children into huts and set fire to them, killing anyone who attempted to escape. Official estimates place the death toll from the Lari massacre at 74 dead. • Mau Mau militants also tortured, mutilated and murdered Kikuyu on many occasions. Mau Mau racked up 1,819 murders of their fellow Africans, though again this number excludes the many additional hundreds who 'disappeared', whose bodies were never found. ==1954–1962: Algerian War==

The insurgency began in 1945 and was revived in 1954, winning independence in the early 1960s. The French army killed thousands of Algerians in the first round of fighting in 1945. and over 800 villages were destroyed from 1957 to 1960. Other French crimes included deliberate bombing, torture and mutilation of civilians, rape and sexual assaults, disembowelment of pregnant women, imprisonment without food in small cells, throwing detainees from helicopters and into the sea with concrete on their feet, and burying people alive. The FLN also indulged in a large amount of atrocities, both against French pieds-noirs and against fellow Algerians whom they deemed as supporting the French or simply as refusing to support the Liberation effort. These crimes included killing unarmed children, women and the elderly, rape and disembowelment or decapitation of women and murdering children by slitting their throats or banging their heads against walls. French sources estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed, or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN during the war. The FLN also killed 30,000 to 150,000 in people in post-war reprisals. ==1955–1975: Vietnam War==