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 pass 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 of July 1916, the middle day of the middle year of The Great War, WWI, within twelve hours of a British offensive, 19,240 British soldiers lay dead within about 25 square miles after being slaughtered via enemy gunfire.
The Battle of the Somme, a WWI conflict in 1916, lasted 141 days. It saw British and French forces against the Germans along a 15-mile front. It marked the first major offensive for British forces, resulting in over 1 million casualties. It symbolized the brutality and futility of trench warfare
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, which aimed to suppress Ukrainian nationalism and resistance to collectivization.
This was a human rights violation that most figures estimate led to the slaughter of between 4–5 million Ukrainians, who starved to death during the Holodomor. There were wide reports of cannibalism, and even of people eating their 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 to modernize China. Unfortunately for its citizenry, the measures taken in this program resulted in human rights violations and the death of millions of Chinese peasants at the hands of its supposed liberator and father figure in the name of progress.
The program, aiming to rapidly transform the country into a socialist society, resulted in disastrous consequences, with widespread famine and estimated deaths ranging from 15 to 45 million due to starvation, mismanagement, and ideological zeal.
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, 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)
The Great Purge was conducted by Stalin in the Soviet Union, and aimed to eliminate perceived threats to his power. It led to mass arrests, show trials, and executions of millions of perceived enemies, including party members, military officers, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens, instilling fear and solidifying Stalin’s control.
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 Bengal had led to overpopulation and indebtedness in a largely agrarian society by 1943. British wartime colonial policy exacerbated this within the context of ongoing 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 a 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 of nature.
15) Srebrenica Massacre (1993)
Declared a safe zone by the UN during the Yugoslav war, the city of 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 a 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 led 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 violations 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 this 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 eye-sighted individual in one hundred to guide the soldiers back home.
Tags: Atrocity Bombing Hiroshima Nagasaki human right violation human rights human slaughters Humanity Japan scary human rights violation Slave Trade War World Crimes World War
