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Preliminary removal. A million people?? This nonsense article based on unpublished wild estimates of one person will get soon have a very nasty AfD on its hands.
Rm unsourced numbers section. The only source is a link to some silly website, many figures are obviously falsified.
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For books, articles, data, and analyses regarding democide, see [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ Rummel's website]. In particular, he has [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/QA.V2.HTML an extensive] [[FAQ]]. He has also made his many sources and the calculations used, from a pre-publisher manuscript of his book ''Statistics of Democide'', [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP1.HTM available online]. Researchers often give widely different estimates of mass murder. They use different definitions, methodology, and sources. For example, some include battle deaths in their calculations. [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstats.htm Matthew White] has compiled some of these different estimates.
For books, articles, data, and analyses regarding democide, see [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ Rummel's website]. In particular, he has [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/QA.V2.HTML an extensive] [[FAQ]]. He has also made his many sources and the calculations used, from a pre-publisher manuscript of his book ''Statistics of Democide'', [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP1.HTM available online]. Researchers often give widely different estimates of mass murder. They use different definitions, methodology, and sources. For example, some include battle deaths in their calculations. [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstats.htm Matthew White] has compiled some of these different estimates.

== Numbers ==
The numbers of people killed in democides are often hard to certify and there are often debates of how many people were actually killed, like the highest and lowest amounts for these dictators, for instance :

Mao Zedong 20 million{{Citation needed|date=March 2010}} to 80 million{{Citation needed|date=March 2010}}

Joseph Stalin 15 million{{Citation needed|date=May 2009}} to 60 million{{Citation needed|date=May 2009}}

Adolf Hitler 6 million{{Citation needed|date=May 2009}} to 20 million{{Citation needed|date=May 2009}}.

Some dictators have been more murderous by population of the country which they ruled:
Mao Zedong's massive 70 million was about 10% of China's population at the time,
while Pol Pot killed roughly 1.7 million people, a massive 21% of Cambodia's population.<ref name = yale>{{cite web|url=http://www.yale.edu/cgp/cgpintro.html |title=The Cambodian Genocide Program |accessdate= 2008-05-12 |date= 1994-2008 |work= Genocide Studies Program |publisher= [[Yale University]] }}</ref>

=== Genocides and Politicides from 1955 to 2001 ===
{| class="wikitable sortable" width="70%"
|+'''Genocides and Politicides from 1955 to 2001''' From ''[http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/genocide/ No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?]'', Barbara Harff, 2003.
| '''Location''' || '''Dates''' || '''Est. Deaths''' (low) || '''Est. Deaths''' (high)
|-
| Sudan || 1956/10–1972/3 || 400,000 || 600,000
|-
| South Vietnam || 1965/1–1975/4 || 400,000 || 500,000
|-
| China || 1959/3–1959/12 || 65,000 || 65,000
|-
| Iraq || 1963/6–1975/3 || 30,000 || 60,000
|-
| Algeria || 1962/7–1962/12 || 9,000 || 30,000
|-
| Rwanda || 1963/12–1964/6 || 12,000 || 20,000
|-
| Congo-K || 1964/2–1965/1 || 1,000 || 10,000
|-
| Burundi || 1965/10–1973/12 || 140,000 || 140,000
|-
| Indonesia || 1965/11–1966/7 || 500,000 || 1,000,000
|-
| China || 1966/5–1975/3 || 400,000 || 850,000
|-
| Guatemala || 1978/7–1996/12 || 60,000 || 200,000
|-
| East Pakistan (Now Bangladesh) || 1971/3–1971/12 || 1,000,000 || 3,000,000
|-
| Uganda || 1972/2–1979/4 || 50,000 || 400,000
|-
| Philippines || 1972/9–1976/6 || 60,000 || 60,000
|-
| Pakistan|| 1973/2–1977/7 || 5,000 || 10,000
|-
| Chile || 1973/9–1976/12 || 5,000 || 10,000
|-
| Angola || 1975/11–2001 || 500,000 || 500,000
|-
| Cambodia || 1975/4–1979/1 || 1,900,000 || 3,500,000
|-
| Indonesia || 1975/12–1992/7 || 100,000 || 200,000
|-
| Argentina || 1976/3–1980/12 || 9,000 || 20,000
|-
| Ethiopia || 1976/7–1979/12 || 10,000 || 10,000
|-
| Congo-Kinshasa || 1977/3–1979/12 || 3,000 || 4,000
|-
| Afghanistan || 1978/4–1992/4 || 1,800,000 || 1,800,000
|-
| Burma || 1978/1–1978/12 || 5,000 || 5,000
|-
| El Salvador || 1980/1–1989/12 || 40,000 || 60,000
|-
| Uganda || 1980/12–1986/1 || 200,000 || 500,000
|-
| Syria || 1981/4–1982/2 || 5,000 || 30,000
|-
| India || 1980–2000 || 25000 || 60,000
|-
| Iran || 1981/6–1992/12 || 10,000 || 20,000
|-
| Sudan || 1983/9–2003 || 2,000,000 || 2,000,000
|-
| Iraq || 1988/3–1991/6 || 180,000 || 180,000
|-
| Somalia || 1988/5–1991/1 || 15,000 || 50,000
|-
| Burundi || 1988 || 5,000 || 20,000
|-
| Sri Lanka || 1989/9–1990/1 || 13,000 || 30,000
|-
| [[Bosnian Genocide|Bosnia]] || 1992/5–1995/11 || 225,000 || 225,000
|-
| Burundi || 1993/10–1994/5 || 50,000 || 50,000
|-
| [[Rwandan Genocide|Rwanda]] || 1994/4–1994/7 || 500,000 || 1,000,000
|-
| Serbia || 1998/12–1999/7 || 10,000 || 10,000
|-
|}

=== 20th century democides causing more than one million deaths. ===
{| class="wikitable sortable" width="70%"
|+'''20th century democides causing more than one million deaths.''' From ''[http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM Death by Government]'', Rummel, 1987. Several estimates have been revised after this date:
{{Citation needed|date=April 2009}}.
|-
| '''Location''' || '''Dates''' || '''Est. Deaths'''
|-
| Cambodia || 1975–1979 || 2,035,000
|-
| China (KMT) || 1928–1949 || 10,075,000
|-
| China (PRC) || 1949–1987 || 77,277,000
|-
| China (Mao Soviets) || 1923–1949 || 3,465,000
|-
| [[Congo Free State]] || 1885–1908 ||est C20th 3,480,000<br>total of 10,000,000
|-
| Germany || 1933–1945 || 20,946,000
|-
| Japan || 1936–1945 || 5,964,000
|-
| Pakistan || 1958–1987 || 1,503,000
|-
| Poland || 1945–1948 || 1,585,000
|-
| Mexico || 1900–1920 || 1,417,000
|-
| North Korea || 1948–1987 || 1,563,000
|-
| Russia || 1900–1917 || 1,066,000
|-
| Turkey || 1909–1918 || 1,883,000
|-
| Vietnam || 1945–1987 || 1,670,000
|-
| U.S.S.R. || 1917–1987 || 61,911,000
|}

=== Selected pre-20th century democides. ===
{| class="wikitable sortable" width="70%"
|+'''Selected pre-20th century democides.''' From ''Death by Government'', Rummel, 1987 [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MURDER.HTM].
|-
| '''Events''' || '''Dates''' || '''Est. Deaths'''
|-
| The [[Crusades]] || 1095–1272 || 1,000,000
|-
| [[Albigensian Crusade]] || 1208–1249 || 200,000
|-
| By [[Mongols]] || 14th–15th Century || 29,927,000
|-
| By [[Aztecs]] || Centuries || >1,000,000
|-
| [[Thirty Years' War]] || 1618–1648 || 5,750,000
|-
| [[Witch Hunt]] || 15th–17th Century || 100,000
|-
| [[Spanish Inquisition]] || 16th–18th Century || 3,000
|-
| In China || 221 BC–19th Century || 33,519,000
|-
| In Iran || 5th–19th Century || >2,000,000
|-
| In Russia || 10th–19th Century || >1,007,000
|-
| In [[Ottoman Empire]] || 12th–19th Century || >2,000,000
|-
| In India || 13th–19th Century || >4,511,000
|-
| Slavery of Africans || 1451–1870 || 17,267,000
|-
| In Japan || 1570–19th Century || >1,500,000
|-
| [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native Americans]] || 16th–19th Century || 13,778,000
|-
| [[French Revolution]] || 1793–1794 || 263,000
|-
|}
Emphasis must be stressed that the condition of the people who were subjected to the "African Slave Trade" is that they were not slaves prior to their subjectgation into the category of "slave". Thus research must be conducted into how demo/genocide has played into the slave making process, maintenance and current thinking up to these modern times of victims of the above mentioned acts.

=== Bloodiest dictators for the millennium. ===
{| class="wikitable sortable" width="70%"
|+'''Bloodiest dictators for the millennium.'''Rummel, [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/QA.V2.HTML#statistics].
|-
| '''Dictator''' || '''Dates''' || '''Est. Deaths'''
|-
| [[Genghis Khan]] || 1215–1233 || 4,000,000
|-
| [[Adolf Hitler]] || 1933–1945 || 20,946,000
|-
| [[Chiang Kai-shek]]|| 1921–1948 || 10,000,000
|-
| [[Kublai Khan]] || 1252–1279 || 19,000,000
|-
| [[Vladimir Lenin]] || 1917–1924 || 4,000,000
|-
| [[Leopold II of Belgium]] || 1885–1908 || 10,000,000
|-
| [[Pol Pot]] || 1968–1987 || 2,000,000
|-
| [[Joseph Stalin]] || 1929–1953 || 43,000,000
|-
| [[Hideki Tojo]] || 1941–1945 || 4,000,000
|-
| [[Mao Zedong]] || 1923–1976 || 73,000,000
|-
|
|}

== Update on democides ==
In May 2005, Rummel guessed the number for [[Darfur Conflict]] to be over 400,000.{{Citation needed|date=April 2009}}

In November 2005, he estimated the democide in [[Mao Zedong|Mao]]'s [[People's Republic of China|China]] (1949–1975) at 73,000,000.<ref name="reeval Mao 2">[http://hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?1c1d76bb-290c-447b-82dd-e295ff0d3d59 Stalin Exceeded Hitler in Monstrous Evil; Mao Beat Out Stalin].</ref>

In December 2005, he raised his estimate for colonial democide to 50,000,000 and estimated the democide in the [[Congo Free State]] to 10,000,000.{{Citation needed|date=April 2009}}


== See also ==
== See also ==

Revision as of 01:24, 30 March 2010

Part of a series on
Homicide
Murder

Note: Varies by jurisdiction

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Non-criminal homicide

Note: Varies by jurisdiction

Family
Other

Democide is a term coined by political scientist R. J. Rummel for "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder." Rummel created the term as an extended concept to include forms of government murder that are not covered by the legal definition of genocide, and it has found currency among other scholars.[1][2][3]

Definition

Democide is death by government relating to genocides. Democides are not the elimination of entire cultural groups, but rather groups within the country that the government feels they need to be eradicated for political reasons and future threats. According to Rummel, genocide has three different meanings. The ordinary meaning is murder by government of people due to their national, ethnic, racial, or religious group membership. The legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This also includes nonlethal acts that in the end eliminate or greatly hinder the group. Looking back on history one can see the different variations of democides that have occurred, but it is still the act of killing or mass murder. A great example would relate to Hitler and Mao Zedong. A generalized meaning of genocide is similar to the ordinary meaning but also includes government killings of political opponents or otherwise intentional murder. In order to avoid confusion over which meaning is intended, Rummel created the term democide for the third meaning.[4]

The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.[5]

Rummel defines democide as "The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder". For example, government-sponsored killings for political reasons would be considered democide. Democide can also include deaths arising from "intentionally or knowingly reckless and depraved disregard for life"; this brings into account many deaths arising through various neglects and abuses, such as forced mass starvation. Rummel explicitly excludes battle deaths in his definition. Capital punishment, actions taken against armed civilians during mob action or riot, and the deaths of noncombatants killed during attacks on military targets so long as the primary target is military, are not considered democide.[6]

He has further stated: "I use the civil definition of murder, where someone can be guilty of murder if they are responsible in a reckless and wanton way for the loss of life, as in incarcerating people in camps where they may soon die of malnutrition, unattended disease, and forced labor, or deporting them into wastelands where they may die rapidly from exposure and disease."

Some examples of democide cited by Rummel include the Great Purges carried out by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union (despite those people were executed), the deaths from the colonial policy in the Congo Free State, and Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward resulting in a famine which killed millions of people. According to Rummel, these were not cases of genocide, because those who were killed were not selected on the basis of their race, but were killed in large numbers as a result of government policies. Famine is classified by Rummel as democide if it fits the definition above.

For instance, Rummel only recently classified Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward as democide. He believed that Mao's policies were largely responsible for the famine, but he was misled about it, and finally when he found out, he stopped it and changed his policies. Thus, according to Rummel, is not an intentional famine and thus not a democide. However, contradictory claims from Jung Chang and John Halliday's controversial Mao: the Unknown Story allege that Mao knew about the famine from the beginning but didn't care, and eventually Mao had to be stopped by a meeting of 7,000 top Communist Party members. Based on the book's claims, Rummel now views the famine as intentional and a democide.[citation needed]

Research on democide

Accusations of mass killings by a government are relatively common. Less common are well-documented cases with enough evidence to support the accusation. Almost all accusations are disputed to some degree, although the evidence in some cases is stronger than in others.

Rummel's sources include scholarly works, refugee reports, memoirs, biographies, historical analyses, actual exhumed body counts, records kept by the murderers themselves, and so on. In short his data are all estimates available in English for all nations over a period of a century, and available in the libraries he worked in, including the Library of Congress.

He provides the most probable death toll along a low and a high count that are meant to be the most unlikely low and high number of deaths, and thus to bracket the probable true count. It is to determine these lows and highs that he includes what some others might consider absurd estimates. His published books do not include new research and new sources available after the publication date.

Rummel's counts 43 million deaths due to democide during Stalin's regime inside and outside the Soviet Union. This is much higher than an often quoted figure of 20 million. Rummel has responded that this is based on a figure from Robert Conquest's book The Great Terror from 1968 and that Conquest's qualifier "almost certainly too low" is usually forgotten. Conquest's calculations excluded camp deaths after 1950, and before 1936; executions 1939–53; the vast deportation of the people of captive nations into the camps, and their deaths 1939–1953; the massive deportation within the Soviet Union of minorities 1941–1944 and their deaths; and those the Soviet Red Army and secret police executed throughout Eastern Europe after their conquest during 1944–1945. Moreover, the Holodomor that killed 5 million in 1932–1934 is not included.[citation needed]

His research shows that the death toll from democide is far greater than the death toll from war. After studying over 8,000 reports of government caused deaths, Rummel estimates that there have been 262 million victims of democide in the last century. According to his figures, six times as many people have died from the inflictions of people working for governments than have died in battle.

One of his main findings is that liberal democracies have much less democide than authoritarian regimes.[7] He argues that there is a relation between political power and democide. Political mass murder grows increasingly common as political power becomes unconstrained. At the other end of the scale, where power is diffuse, checked, and balanced, political violence is a rarity. According to Rummel, "The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom." Rummel concludes: "Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth."

Several other researchers have found similar results. "Numerous researchers point out that democratic norms and political structures constrain elite decisions about the use of repression against their citizens whereas autocratic elites are not so constrained." "Once in place, democratic institutions — even partial ones — reduce the likelihood of armed conflict and all but eliminate the risk that it will lead to geno/politicide."[8]

For books, articles, data, and analyses regarding democide, see Rummel's website. In particular, he has an extensive FAQ. He has also made his many sources and the calculations used, from a pre-publisher manuscript of his book Statistics of Democide, available online. Researchers often give widely different estimates of mass murder. They use different definitions, methodology, and sources. For example, some include battle deaths in their calculations. Matthew White has compiled some of these different estimates.

See also

References

  1. ^ Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, Stephen Thane Davis, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, ISBN 066422251X Google Books
  2. ^ Understanding and Preventing Violence: The Psychology of Human Destructiveness, Leighton C. Whitaker, CRC Press, 2000, ISBN 0849322650 Google Books
  3. ^ Contemporary Responses to the Holocaust, Konrad Kwiet, Jürgen Matthäus, Praeger/Greenwood, 2004, ISBN 0275974669 Google Books
  4. ^ Genocide.
  5. ^ (Lemkin, Raphael. "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe," 1944.)
  6. ^ Rummel’s definition.
  7. ^ Miracle.
  8. ^ Genocide.
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