Top 10 worst atrocities in human history

VOICE OVER: Rebecca Brayton Script written by George Pacheco. Whether you call them massacres, genocides or crimes against humanity, some of the most despicable crimes during war have led to countless deaths. From the Srebrenica Massacre during the Bosnian War, to the Armenian Genocide to the experiments of Unit 731, which researched biological and chemical warfare, these are some of the most serious violations of the law of war in history. WatchMojo counts down ten of the worst war crimes ever.

Special thanks to our users Faten Al Dabbagh, Wonderboy and Bryan Bell for suggesting this idea! Check out the voting page at http://www.WatchMojo.comsuggest/%20Top%2010%20War%20Crimes

Transcript

Script written by George Pacheco. These are some of the most reprehensible actions ever committed in human history. Welcome to WatchMojo.com, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 Most Despicable Crimes During War. For this list, we’ll be ranking the most infamous crimes against humanity committed during times of war. For the record, we’re not making light of these serious events, but rather presenting an honest look into some of warfare’s darkest moments. The Bosnian War was a tragic conflict that saw numerous war crimes committed in the wake of the breakup of Yugoslavia. One of the most infamous incidents was the genocide of Muslim Bosniaks, which occurred near the tail end of the conflict, in the summer of 1995. The Serbian paramilitary group known as The Scorpions, together with the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska, captured the area of Srebrenica, massacring much of the male population while abusing women, children and the elderly. Although the terms “massacre” and “genocide” have been alternatively used to describe what happened in Srebrenica, 2015 saw an official reaffirmation of the latter by the European Parliament and U.S. House of Representatives. The 1971 Bangladesh Genocide was one of the most terrifying war crimes associated with Operation Searchlight, a Pakistani military operation against Bengal nationals in East Pakistan. Displacement, death and rape were all committed by both Pakistani military forces and Islamist militia groups, with estimated casualty numbers ranging from an extremely conservative 200,000 to a horrifying 3 million. What is particularly disturbing about the Bangladesh Genocide was how many women were assaulted during the country’s nine month long war for independence. The female victims of this genocidal rape have been estimated between two hundred and four hundred thousand. Italy’s 1935 invasion of Abyssinia, known today as Ethiopia, was a crucial moment leading into WWII. It was during this invasion, also known as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, where it was reported that Benito Mussolini’s Italian forces used mustard gas. This was in direct contradiction to the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical weapons. To make matters worse, they were accused of using it against Red Cross hospital outposts, effectively committing two war crimes at once. Italy, in response, claimed that these Red Cross stations actually hid Ethiopian military operations, and that their use of chemical weapons was a justified response to the treatment of Italian prisoners by Ethiopian forces. As previously mentioned, chemical warfare was banned by the Geneva Protocol in 1925. But what happens when a country sees this not as a warning, but rather a challenge to get creative? Enter Unit 731, a group within the Imperial Japanese Army that conducted horrific experiments on human subjects - usually Chinese or Russian prisoners. The purpose of their research was to design new biological and chemical weapons for use during WWII, and involved forceful impregnation, intentional poisoning, un-anaesthetized surgery and inoculation with infectious diseases including, among others, the bubonic plague. Conservative estimates suggest that no fewer than 3000 subjects were experimented on, with no survivors. Other historians suspect the number to have been much higher – up to 250,000. Between 1915 and 1918, it is estimated that up to 1.5 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed. Many more were forced to flee the country as a result of this systematic extermination. Historically treated as second-class citizens, in the late 19th century, between 80,000 and 300,000 Armenians were killed during the Hamidian massacres. The internal conflict within the Ottoman Empire again came to a violent boiling point with the start of WWI. The Ottoman Empire sided with Germany while many of their Armenian countrymen supported the Russian counter-offensive. On April 24th, 1915, the genocide began with the murder of hundreds of Armenian leaders. Deportation, concentration camps, death marches, mass burnings and drownings soon followed. The Vietnam War was a time of great loss and controversy, the latter of which fell largely at the feet of American forces, thanks to one particularly shameful wartime incident. The My Lai Massacre occurred when an American military squadron known as Charlie Company was tasked with a search-and-destroy mission against what was said to be a Viet Cong holdout in My Lai. The soldiers of Charlie Company, who had already taken severe casualties after the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive, proceeded to rape and murder hundreds of civilians in the village. Women, children and the elderly were among the victims. Only one American soldier was convicted in the aftermath. Pol Pot was a notorious Cambodian dictator whose Communist Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for Civil War within the country and the subsequent Cambodian Genocide. Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge sought to ethnically cleanse Cambodia into a classless society based upon the tenets of such leaders as Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin. These efforts resulted in the deaths of well over a million people due to starvation, disease, exhaustion and execution. After losing to the Vietnamese, Pol Pot fled to the Thai border with the remnants of his party. While a faction of his political group did place him under house arrest, he died in 1998 without ever facing real consequences for his actions. The Republic of Biafra was an unrecognized state that attempted to secede from the nation of Nigeria between 1967 and 1970, after escalating tensions between Biafra’s Christian Igbo population and Nigeria’s Muslim nationals. This bid for independence eventually led to what has been called the Biafran War, or Nigerian Civil War, during which Biafra suffered from intense famine and disease, with the death toll reaching between a half million and 2 million. Meanwhile, numerous human rights violations were laid at the feet of Nigerian forces, which were accused of rape, murder and civilian bombing during their raids. Biafra couldn’t stand against Nigeria’s military strength by war’s end, and the state surrendered on January 15th, 1970. The population of Paraguay suffered an unimaginable loss of life during the Paraguayan War, also known as the War of the Triple Alliance. These losses were thanks in part to Paraguay’s fight for independence against not one, but three allied opponents. The combined assault of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay led to the deaths of a large percentage of Paraguay’s population. Paraguayans suffered greatly during this time, with the country’s dictator Francisco Solano Lopez demanding that every male citizen, including children, take up arms and fight. Except… he had no guns with which to arm the children, and so they were given sticks and fake beards. Essentially, thousands of kids were sent to be slaughtered by their own leader. Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few dishonorable mentions: - Andersonville Prison [aka Camp Sumter] - Katyn Massacre - Rwandan Genocide It’s commonly viewed as the most shameful and horrifying event in world history. The final solution of World War II Nazi Germany and its leader Adolf Hitler was to systematically eliminate Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and more. The Holocaust was just one of many despicable war crimes committed during World War II, but with the imprisonment, torture and execution of over six million Jews, the Holocaust truly stands above all others in the history of atrocities. Torture camps such as Dachau, Auschwitz and Treblinka served as homes to some of the world’s most infamous human rights violations. To this day, their names serve to remind us of the true horrors of war and humankind’s potential for evil acts.

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Top 10 worst atrocities in human history
26–2–1992 Khojaly Genocide of 20th century — Image by Public Domain

here’s an irony surrounding the 20th century. Believe it or not, it began with a strong sense of hope and promise. There were several notable technological and industrial advances afoot, and it seemed that humankind was on the cusp of a new…

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There have been too many heinous crimes and scary human rights violations committed over the centuries, in world history, to name them all. However, particular events stand out even in this sadistic game of top trumps. Here are twenty of the worst human rights violations and slaughters in the history of the world.

1) The Nanking Massacre (1937)

First, on our decrepit list of human rights violations, is the Nanking slaughter, or how it is often referred to as: ‘The Rape of Nanking.’ Reports of this human rights violation suggest a mass rape of unheard-of proportions even for wartime, with even rumors of Chinese families being forced to rape each other. Competitions were held between Japanese soldiers to see who could murder one hundred Chinese civilians the fastest with simply the use of a sword. About 300,000 human lives were lost in this scary ordeal.

2) The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945)

On the advent of the successful testing of the Atom Bomb, via the Manhattan Project in New Mexico, men had entered into a new era of unfathomable power. On witnessing this incredible event, the Atom Bombs creator Robert Oppenheimer eerily remarked: “Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”  His statement came to past next on this list of slaughters in world history.


People’s eyes melted in their sockets at the sight of the explosion, while body remains were forever sprayed onto concrete as shadows.
Many historians believe the slaughters were partly due in response to Japan’s war crimes across Asia and the attack on Pearl Harbour.

A line from the 1946 hit “Atomic Power” puts it best, referencing Hiroshima and Nagasaki as Japan “paying for its sins”. Perhaps the worst part about this ordeal is that it may have been avoided. The fate of the world would now forever be a threat by a select few men in suits who sit in front of a red button. The effect of the bombing resulted in 90,000–146,000 deaths in Hiroshima and 39,000–80,000 deaths in Nagasaki

3) The Battle of the Somme (1916)

On the 1st July 1916, the middle day of the middle year of The Great War, inside twelve hours of a British offensive, 19,240 British soldiers lay dead within about 25 square miles after being slaughtered via enemy gunfire.

4) The Holodomor (1932-33)

Holodomor is the Ukrainian word for “killing by hunger.” This is now the appropriate term used to describe Josef Stalin’s man-made famine, in Ukraine, against fellow human beings. This was a human right violation that most figures estimate led to the slaughter of between 4–5 million Ukrainian’s, who starved to death during the Holodomor. There were wide reports of cannibalism, and even of people eating their own children.

5) The Holocaust (1939-45)

The Holocaust slaughter and human rights violations need very little introduction. Over the course of several years, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party routinely rounded up, enslaved, and exterminated six million Jews via methods as grueling as the gas chambers.

6) 9/11 (2001)

On September 11, 2001, 19 Al-Qaida soldiers hijacked four airplanes and instigated suicide bombings on several USA targets. The most dramatic moment was the fall of the Twin Towers in New York. Almost 3000 people were slaughtered during the attacks, and a new shroud of terror inflicted a part of the world so sure of its safety. The event would lead to the justification of new military powers for the US presidential office and the invasion of Iraq, which continues to cause deaths and human rights ordeal today.

7) The Rwandan Genocide (1994)

It is estimated that up to one million of the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda were slaughtered by the rival Hutu majority. This slaughter and human rights violations were carried out during a 100-day period from the 7th of April to mid-July 1994, with machetes as the primary weapon. Tutsi civilians begged UN troops not to leave as they knew their impending fate, helpless to prevent it.

8) Unit 731 (1934-45)

This a world war II (WWII) Japanese research center where up to 250,000 people died from human rights violated experimentation. Such experiments included cutting people open while alive and without anesthesia so that certain organs could be removed and the effects studied. Some folks were amputated just to study blood loss and forced infections.

9) The Great Leap Forward (1958-61)

The Great Leap Forward was an initiative created by Chairman Mao Zedong in order to modernize China. Unfortunately for its citizenry, the measures taken in this program resulted in the human rights violation and death of millions of Chinese peasants at the hands of its supposed liberator and father-figure in the name of progress.

10) The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

This involved the stealing and subjugation of the African population, from Africa, into the Western world. Many Africans, in a most heinous human rights violation, were forced into slave labor on sugarcane or cotton plantations in the US and the UK. Hundreds of years later and the relations between blacks and whites in these nations are still frayed but in a process of healing. About 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World.

11) The Great Purge (1936-38)

Millions of Soviet citizens were either slaughtered or sent to the Gulag under Stalin’s Great Terror. Perhaps what is more concerning about this event is the mass hysteria of anxiety experienced amongst the populace as they were encouraged to spy and give up enemies of the state. It pitted neighbors against neighbors, family against family, friends against friends. Just the scary thought of this human rights violation could make anyone cringe in fear.

12) The Crusades (1096-13thC)

Perhaps the worst slaughter that man has committed, in the name of religion, occurred during The Crusades (1096-1291). A call to arms was undertaken to recapture the Holy Lands from Islamic control. It’s estimated that over 1.7 million people were slaughtered during its entirety and that only one in twenty crusaders reached the Promised Land!

13) The Bengal Famine (1943)

The socio-economic context of the Bengal had led to overpopulation and indebtedness in a largely agrarian society by 1943. British wartime colonial policy exacerbated this within the context of on-goings WWII, and The Bengal was essentially neglected, with no state of famine officially recognized. The priority of one race and class of people was prioritized over another, a human rights violation that led to the death of over one million people.

14) Native Indian Genocide

The purging of the ‘savage’ native Indians from North American land in the name of White Americans divine right, through manifest destiny, cost up to five million Native American lives. This violation of human rights and slaughter can also be seen as representing man’s continued destruction against nature.

15) Srebrenica Massacre (1993)

Declared a safe-haven by the UN during the Yugoslav war, the city, Srebrenica, was disarmed but protected by UN peacekeeping forces. However, these peacekeeping forces proved ineffective as Bosnian Serb forces marched on the city, bussing men and boys to death sites, and raping women. At least 7000 lives were lost in this senseless violation of human rights and slaughter.

16) The Cambodian Killing Fields (1975-79)

The Khmer Rouge regime indiscriminately violated human rights by arresting and slaughtering anyone with connections to the former government, as well as different ethnic groups. This state-sponsored genocide resulted in the death of at least 1,386,734 Cambodians buried in over 20,000 mass grave sites.

17) Native American Genocide

The continents of the Americas, within few generations, in a scary and dastardly violation of human rights, were virtually emptied of their native inhabitants – potentially up to 20 million native Americans of the Inca and Aztec tribes were wiped out due to many of the diseases brought over by the Europeans such as smallpox. A generous culture and people were practically erased from the world.

18) Genghis Khan

The conquests of Genghis Khan lead to the slaughter of about 40 million lives. To put this in context, this was 10% of the world’s population. WWII, by comparison, claimed the lives of an estimated 60 million, 5% of the world’s population at that time.

19) Gladiator Fights (264BCE-404CE)

The Roman Empire, for over 600 years, put on a show of unrivaled brutality, forcing prisoners of war, in one of the biggest violation of human rights in world history, to fight each other for the entertainment of the masses. Perhaps the longest and most organized ‘civil’ bloodlust in world history as people’s lives were treated as a game. It is estimated that half a million people were slaughtered in the Colosseum.

20) The Blinding of the Bulgars (1014)

It is said, in another case of human rights violation, that the victorious Basil II and his Byzantines, after The Battle of Kleidion between the Byzantines and the Bulgarian Empires, blinded 99 of every 100 Bulgar prisoners of war, leaving only one in one hundred with an eye to guide the soldiers back home.

Tags: Atrocity Bombing Genghis Khan Gladiator Fights Hiroshima Nagasaki human rights human slaughters Humanity Japan scary human rights violation Slave Trade War World Crimes world history World War