Anti-communist mass killings

Anti-communist mass killings are the political mass murders of communists, alleged communists, or their alleged supporters, by people, political organizations or governments opposed to communism. The Communist movement has faced opposition since it was founded, and this opposition has more than often been organized and violent.

Argentina

From 1976 to 1983, the military dictatorship of Argentina, National Reorganization Process, organized the arrest and execution of between 9,000 and 30,000 civilians suspected of communism or other leftist sympathies during a period of state terror. Children of the victims were sometimes given a new identity and forcibly adopted to childless military families.[1][2] Held to account in the 2000s, the perpetrators of the killings argued that their actions were a necessary part of a "war" against Communism.[3]

China

KMT troops rounding up Communist prisoners.

The Shanghai massacre of 12 April 1927 was a violent suppression of Chinese Communist Party organizations in Shanghai by the military forces of Chiang Kai-shek and conservative factions in the Kuomintang (KMT). Following the incident, the latter carried out a full-scale purge of communists in all areas under their control; even more violent suppressions occurred in cities such as Guangzhou and Changsha.[4] The purge led to an open split between left and right wings of the KMT, with Chiang Kai-shek establishing himself as the leader of the right wing at Nanjing in opposition to the original left-wing KMT government led by Wang Jingwei in Wuhan.

Before dawn on April 12, gang members began to attack district offices controlled by the union workers, including Zhabei, Nanshi and Pudong. Under an emergency decree, Chiang ordered the 26th Army to disarm the workers' militias, which resulted in more than 300 people being killed and wounded. The union workers organized a mass meeting denouncing Chiang on April 13, and thousands of workers and students went to the headquarters of the 2nd Division of the 26th Army to protest. Soldiers opened fire, killing 100 and wounding many more. Chiang dissolved the provisional government of Shanghai, labor unions and all other organizations under Communist control, and he reorganized a network of unions with allegiance to the Kuomintang, under the control of Du Yuesheng. Over 1000 communists were arrested, some 300 were executed and more than 5,000 went missing. Western news reports later nicknamed General Bai "The Hewer of Communist Heads".[5]

Some National Revolutionary Army commanders with communist backgrounds who were graduates of Whampoa Military Academy and kept their sympathies hidden and were not arrested, and many switched their allegiance to the communists after the start of the Chinese Civil War.[6]

The twin rival KMT governments, known as the Ninghan (Nanjing and Wuhan) Split (Chinese: 宁汉分裂) did not last long because the Wuhan Kuomintang also began to violently purge Communists as well, after leader Wang found out about Stalin's secret order to Borodin to organize CCP's efforts to overthrow the left-wing KMT and to take over the Wuhan government. More than 10,000 communists in Canton, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Changsha were arrested and executed within 20 days. The Soviet Union officially terminated its cooperation with the KMT, and Wang, fearing retribution as a communist sympathizer, fled to Europe. The Wuhan Nationalist government soon disintegrated, leaving Chiang as the sole legitimate leader of the Kuomintang. In a year, over 300,000 people were killed across China in the suppression campaigns carried out by the KMT.[7]

East Timor

By broadcasting accusations of communism in the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor leaders and sowing discord in the Timorese Democratic Union coalition, the Indonesian government fostered instability in East Timor and, observers said, created a pretext for invading.[8] During the Indonesian invasion of East Timor and the eventual occupation, the Indonesian military killed and starved around 150,000[9][10][11] citizens of East Timor or about a fifth of its population. Oxford University held an academic consensus calling the occupation the East Timor genocide, and Yale University teaches it as part of their "Genocide Studies" program.[12][13]

El Salvador

1932 Salvadoran peasant massacre

In 1932, a communist-led insurrection against the government of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez was brutally suppressed, resulting in the death of 30,000 peasants.[14]

Salvadoran Civil War

The Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992) was a conflict between the military-led government of El Salvador and a coalition of five left-wing guerrilla organizations that was known collectively as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). A coup on 15 October 1979 led to the killings of anti-coup protesters by the government as well as anti-disorder protesters by the guerrillas, and it is widely seen as the tipping point toward civil war.[15]

By January 1980, the left-wing political organizations united to form the Coordinated Revolutionaries of the Masses (CRM). A few months later, the left-wing armed groups united to form the Unified Revolutionary Directorate (DRU). It was renamed the FMLN[16] following its merger with the Communist Party in October 1980.

The full-fledged civil war lasted for more than 12 years and saw extreme violence from both sides. It also included the deliberate terrorizing and targeting of civilians by death squads, the recruitment of child soldiers, and other violations of human rights, mostly by the military.[17] An unknown number of people "disappeared" during the conflict, and the UN reports that more than 75,000 were killed.[18] The United States contributed to the conflict by providing large amounts of military aid to the government of El Salvador during the Carter[19] and Reagan administrations.

Germany

German communists, socialists and trade unionists were among the earliest domestic opponents of Nazism[20] 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 plenary 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.[21] Communists, social democrats and other political prisoners 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 commissars captured among Soviet soldiers, as well as the execution of all Communist Party members in German held territory.[22][23] Einsatzgruppen carried out these executions in the east.[24]

Guatemala

Massacres, forced disappearances, torture and summary executions of guerrillas and especially civilian collaborators of the communist[25] Guerrilla Army of the Poor at the hands of US-backed security forces had been widespread since 1965. It was a longstanding policy of the military regime and known by US officials.[26] A report from 1984 discussed "the murder of thousands by a military government that maintains its authority by terror."[27] Human Rights Watch described extraordinarily cruel actions by the armed forces, mostly against unarmed civilians.[28]

The repression reached genocidal levels in the predominantly indigenous northern provinces where guerrillas of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor operated. There, the Guatemalan military viewed the Maya, traditionally seen as subhumans, as being supportive of the guerillas and began a campaign of wholesale killings and disappearances of Mayan peasants. While massacres of Indigenous peasants had occurred earlier in the war, the systematic use of terror against the Indigenous population began around 1975 and peaked during the first half of the 1980s. An estimated 200,000 Guatemalan civilians were killed during the Guatemalan Civil War – 93% by government forces – including at least 40,000 persons who "disappeared". Of the 42,275 individual cases of killing and "disappearances" documented by the CEH, 83% of the victims were Maya and 17% Ladino meaning that by applying these proportions to the estimated 200,000 civilians killed and disappeared in the Guatemalan Civil War overall it can be inferred that up to 166,000 Maya and 34,000 Ladino were killed or disappeared in the genocide.[29]

Iran

Many communists were killed during the pahlavi regime but they were also purged to the extreme after the Iranian Revolution, even though they initially supported the revolution. The most well known of these mass killings is the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners.

Indonesia

The Indonesian killings of 1965–66 were a violent anti-Communist purge after an abortive coup in the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta. Conventional estimates of the number of people killed by the Indonesian security forces are between 500,000 and 1,000,000.[30]

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,[31] notably Sumatra. As the Sukarno presidency began to unravel and Suharto began to assert control following the coup attempt, the Communist Party of Indonesia's upper national leadership was hunted and arrested with some summarily executed; the Indonesian Air Force, in particular, was a target of the purge. The party chairman, Dipa Nusantara Aidit, had flown to Central Java in early October, where the coup attempt had been supported by leftist officers in Yogyakarta, Salatiga and Semarang.[32] Fellow senior party leader, Njoto, was shot around 6 November, Aidit on 22 November, and First Deputy PKI Chairman, M.H. Lukman, was killed shortly after.[33]

In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled the killings constitute crimes against humanity and that the United States and other Western governments were complicit in the crimes.[34]

Korea

During the Korean War, tens of thousands of suspected communists and communist sympathizers were killed as what came to be known as Bodo League massacre. Estimates of the death toll vary. According to Prof. Kim Dong-Choon, Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at least 100,000 people were executed on suspicion of supporting communism;.[35] In the southeastern city of Ulsan, hundreds of people were massacred by the police of South Korea during the early months of the war, between 1950 and 1953; 407 civilians were executed without trial in July and August 1950 alone. On 24 January 2008, President Roh Moo-hyun apologized for the mass killings.

Spain

In Spain, the White Terror (or "Francoist Repression") was the atrocities committed by the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War and during Francisco Franco's dictatorship afterward.[36]

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[37] to 55,000,[38] most of the estimates of the White Terror range from 150,000[39] to 400,000.[40]

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[41][42][43] and tried to hide the executions of the Republicans.[44][45] Thousands of victims of the "White Terror" are buried in hundreds of unmarked common graves, more than 600 in Andalusia alone.[46] The largest common grave is that at San Rafael cemetery on the outskirts of Malaga (with perhaps more than 4,000 bodies).[47] The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Historica or ARMH)[48] says that the number of disappeared is over 35,000.[49]

According to the Platform for Victims of Disappearances Enforced by Francoism, 140,000 people were missing, including victims of the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent Franco dictatorship.[50][51] It has come to mention that Spain is the second country in the world in number of disappeared whose remains have not been recovered nor identified, after Cambodia.[52]

Taiwan

Tens of thousands of people, labeled as communist sympathizers and spies, were killed by the government of Chiang Kai-shek during the White Terror (Chinese: 白色恐怖; pinyin: báisè kǒngbù) in Taiwan, a violent suppression of political dissidents following the February 28 Incident in 1947.[53] Protests erupted on 27 February 1947 following an altercation between a group of Tobacco Monopoly Bureau agents and a Taipei resident, with protestors calling for democratic reforms and an end to corruption. The Kuomintang regime responded by using violence to suppress the popular uprising. Over the next several days, the government-led crackdown killed several thousand people, with estimates generally setting the death toll somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 or even more.[54][55] From 1947 to 1987, around 140,000 Taiwanese were imprisoned, about 3000 to 4000 of whom were executed, for their alleged opposition to the Kuomintang regime.[56]

Thailand

The Thai military government and its Communist Suppression Operations Command (CSOC), helped by the Royal Thai Army, the Royal Thai Police and paramilitary vigilantes, reacted with drastic measures to the insurgency of the Communist Party of Thailand during the 1960s and the 1970s. The anti-communist operations peaked between 1971 and 1973, during the rule of Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn and General Praphas Charusathien. According to official figures, 3,008 suspected communists were killed throughout the country.[57] Alternative estimates are much higher. These civilians were usually killed without any judicial proceedings.

A prominent example was the so-called "Red Drum" or "Red Barrel" killings of Lam Sai, Phatthalung Province, Southern Thailand. There, more than 200 civilians[57] (informal accounts speak of up to 3,000)[58][59] who were accused of helping the communists were burned in red 200-litre oil drums , sometimes after having been killed to dispose of their bodies and sometimes burned alive.[59] The incident was never thoroughly investigated, and none of the perpetrators was brought to justice.[60]

After three years of civilian rule following the October 1973 popular uprising, at least 46 leftist students and activists who had gathered on and around Bangkok's Thammasat University campus were massacred by police and right-wing paramilitaries on 6 October 1976. They had been accused of supporting communism. The mass killing followed a campaign of violently anti-communist propaganda by right-wing politicians, media and clerics, exemplified by the Buddhist monk Phra Kittiwuttho's claim that killing communists were not sinful.[61][62]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Anderson, Jon Lee (14 March 2013). "Pope Francis and the Dirty War". New Yorker.
  2. ↑ Goldman, Francisco (19 March 2012). "Children of the Dirty War". New Yorker.
  3. ↑ McDonnell, Patrick (29 August 2008). "Two Argentine ex-generals guilty in 'dirty war' death". Los Angeles Times.
  4. ↑ Wilbur, Nationalist Revolution 114
  5. ↑ "CHINA: Nationalist Notes". TIME. June 25, 1928. Retrieved April 11, 2011.
  6. ↑ Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (2005). Mao, The Unknown Story. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-224-07126-2. (This book is controversial for its anti-Mao tone and references.)
  7. ↑ Barnouin, Barbara and Yu Changgen. Zhou Enlai: A Political Life. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. ISBN 962-996-280-2. Retrieved at <https://books.google.com/books?id=NztlWQeXf2IC&printsec=frontcover&dq=zhou+enlai&hl=en&ei=wBkuTdKyB4H_8AaJucigAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false> on March 12, 2011. p.38
  8. ↑ Dunn, p. 78; Budiadjo and Liong, p. 5; Jolliffe, pp. 197–198; Taylor (1991), p. 58. Taylor cites a September CIA report describing Indonesian attempts to "provoke incidents that would provide the Indonesians with an excuse to invade should they decide to do so".
  9. ↑ Kiernan, p. 594.
  10. ↑ http://www.cdi.org/dm/issue1/index.html%5B%5D
  11. ↑ http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB14.1C.GIF
  12. ↑ Payaslian, Simon. "20th Century Genocides". Oxford bibliographies.
  13. ↑ "Genocide Studies Program: East Timor". Yale.edu.
  14. ↑ Cold War's Last Battlefield, The: Reagan, the Soviets, and Central America by Edward A. Lynch State University of New York Press 2011, page 49
  15. ↑ Wood, Elizabeth (2003). Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  16. ↑ Uppsala Conflict Data Program Conflict Encyclopedia, El Salvador, In Depth: Negotiating a settlement to the conflict, http://www.ucdp.uu.se/gpdatabase/gpcountry.php?id=51&regionSelect=4-Central_Americas#, viewed on 24 May 2013
  17. ↑ Larsen, Neil (2010). "Thoughts on Violence and Modernity in Latin America". In Grandin & Joseph, Greg & Gilbert. A Century of Revolution. Durham & London: Duke University Press. pp. 381–393.
  18. ↑ "Report of the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador" United Nations, 1 April 1993
  19. ↑ Uppsala Conflict Data Program Conflict Encyclopedia, El Salvador, In Depth: Negotiating a settlement to the conflict, http://www.ucdp.uu.se/gpdatabase/gpcountry.php?id=51&regionSelect=4-Central_Americas#, "While nothing of the aid delivered from the US in 1979 was earmarked for security purposes the 1980 aid for security only summed US$6,2 million, close to two-thirds of the total aid in 1979", viewed on 24 May 2013
  20. ↑ Non-Jewish Resistance, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
  21. ↑ "Horrors of Auschwitz", Newsquest Media Group Newspapers, 27 January 2005
  22. ↑ "The war that time forgot", The Guardian, 5 October 1999
  23. ↑ Commissar Order
  24. ↑ Peter Hitchens, The Gathering Storm, 9 April 2008
  25. ↑ McAllister2010, pp. 280-281.
  26. ↑ Group says files show U.S. knew of Guatemala abuses. The Associated Press via the New York Daily News, March 19, 2009. Retrieved October 29, 2016.
  27. ↑ Guatemala: A Nation of Prisoners, An Americas Watch Report, January 1984, pp. 2–3
  28. ↑ "Human Rights Testimony Given Before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus" (Press release). Human Rights Watch. 16 October 2003. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  29. ↑ 83% of the "fully identified" 42,275 civilians killed by human rights violations during the Guatemalan Civil War were Mayan and 17% Ladino. This estimate come from applying the 83% and 17% proportions to the 200,000 disappeared and killed during total war < See CEH 1999, p. 17, and "Press Briefing: Press conference by members of the Guatemala Historical Clarification Commission". United Nations. 1 March 1999. Retrieved 13 August 2016.
  30. ↑ Friend (2003), p. 113.
  31. ↑ Cribb (1990), p. 3.
  32. ↑ Vickers (2005), p. 157.
  33. ↑ Ricklefs (1991), p. 288; Vickers (2005), p. 157
  34. ↑ Perry, Juliet (July 21, 2016). "Tribunal finds Indonesia guilty of 1965 genocide; US, UK complicit". CNN. Retrieved June 16, 2017.
  35. ↑ "Khiem and Kim Sung-soo: Crime, Concealment and South Korea". Japan Focus. Archived from the original on 2008-10-07. Retrieved 11 August 2008.
  36. ↑ Beevor, Antony. The Battle for Spain; The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2006), pp.89–94.
  37. ↑ Beevor, Antony. The Battle for Spain; The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939. Penguin Books. 2006. London. p.87
  38. ↑ Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. Penguin Books. London. 2001. p.900
  39. ↑ Casanova, Julían; Espinosa, Francisco; Mir, Conxita; Moreno Gómez, Francisco. Morir, matar, sobrevivir. La violencia en la dictadura de Franco. Editorial Crítica. Barcelona. 2002. p.8
  40. ↑ Richards, Michael. A Time of Silence: Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco's Spain, 1936-1945. Cambridge University Press. 1998. p.11
  41. ↑ Preston, Paul. The Spanish Civil War. Reaction, revolution & revenge. Harper Perennial. 2006. London. p.316
  42. ↑ Espinosa, Francisco. La justicia de Queipo. Editorial Crítica. 2006. Barcelona. p.4
  43. ↑ Espinosa, Francisco. Contra el olvido. Historia y memoria de la guerra civil. Editorial Crítica. 2006. Barcelona. p.131
  44. ↑ Fontana, Josep, ed. España bajo el franquismo. Editorial Crítica. 1986. Barcelona. p.22
  45. ↑ Espinosa, Francisco. La justicia de Queipo. Editorial Crítica. 2006. Barcelona. pp.172–173
  46. ↑ Moreno Gómez, Francisco. 1936: el genocidio franquista en Córdoba. Editorial Crítica. Barcelona. 2008. p.11
  47. ↑ The Olive Press
  48. ↑ "Opening Franco's Graves", by Mike Elkin Archaeology Volume 59 Number 5, September/October 2006. Archaeological Institute of America
  49. ↑ Silva, Emilio. Las fosas de Franco. Crónica de un desagravio. Ediciones Temas de Hoy. 2006. Madrid. p. 110
  50. ↑ http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2008/09/22/espana/1222093274.html "Garzón recibe más de 140.000 nombres de desaparecidos en la Guerra Civil y la dictadura respecto de las que todavía se continúa desconociendo su paradero". El Mundo, 22 de septiembre de 2008.
  51. ↑ http://www.publico.es/actualidad/al-menos-88-000-victimas.html "Al menos 88.000 víctimas del franquismo continúan sepultadas en fosas comunes." Público, 30 de agosto de 2012.
  52. ↑ http://www.diariodelaltoaragon.es/NoticiasDetalle.aspx?Id=796901 "España es el segundo país con más desaparecidos después de Camboya". Diario del Alto Aragón, 1 de marzo de 2013
  53. ↑ Rubinstein, Murray A. (2007). Taiwan: A New History. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe. p. 302. ISBN 9780765614957.
  54. ↑ 傷亡人數與人才斷層. TaiwanUS.net (in Chinese). Retrieved 2008-09-24.
  55. ↑ Durdin, Tillman (29 March 1947). "Formosa killings are put at 10,000". New York Times. Archived from the original on 24 April 2006. Retrieved 2006-04-22.
  56. ↑ Huang, Tai-lin (20 May 2005). "White Terror exhibit unveils part of the truth". Taipei Times.
  57. 1 2 Jularat Damrongviteetham (2013). Narratives of the "Red Barrel" Incident: Collective and Individual Memories in Lamsin, Southern Thailand. Oral History in Southeast Asia: Memories and Fragments. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 101.
  58. ↑ Tyrell Haberkorn (2013). Getting Away with Murder in Thailand: State Violence and Impunity in Phatthalung. State Violence in East Asia. University Press of Kentucky. p. 186.
  59. 1 2 Matthew Zipple (2014). "Thailand’s Red Drum Murders Through an Analysis of Declassified Documents" (PDF). Southeast Review of Asian Studies. 36: 91.
  60. ↑ Tyrell Haberkorn (2013). Getting Away with Murder in Thailand. pp. 186–187.
  61. ↑ Chris Baker; Pasuk Pongphaichit (2009). A History of Thailand (Second ed.). Ocford University Press. pp. 191–194.
  62. ↑ Thongchai Winichakul (2002). Remembering/Silencing the Traumatic Past: The Ambivalent Memories of the October 1976 Massacre in Bangkok. Cultural Crisis and Social Memory: Modernity and Identity in Thailand and Laos. Routledge. p. 244.
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