History has proven in its course that it has been a producer of the most horrifying and daunting stories the world has ever known. Terrifying. Unimaginable. These stories depict the shocking and inconceivable pictures the evils of man can do: blood splattered on barren lands; the stench of death overcoming the fragrance of life.
Genocide: a crime of unprecedented proportions, a sin not worthy of any mercy. It is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group. From the past to the present, from Rwanda to China, this herculean crime has been experienced by innocent people; children who has been stripped of their future; men and women who have been degraded to mere objects of ridicule; and of the old whose dignity of life have been taken away from them.
More than any horror movie you’ll ever see, reality always is the best shocker. This list compiles the five worst genocides in the history. Genocides that the world will remember and will never forget.
1. Mao Zedong (Responsible for 34,300,000-63,784,000 deaths)
With over 63 million deaths being linked to Mao Zedong, the genocide is like killing all the people in the United Kingdom in a single setting. Commonly known as Chairman Mao, he was the founder of the People’s Republic of China. For his 27 years in power from 1949 to his death in 1976, the greatest cruelty under his rule was in 1958 where his five-year plan called “Great Leap Forward” caused 30 million farmers and peasants to starve to their deaths, the largest known famine in history. An estimated 30 million Chinese also died during the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” in 1966-1969 where millions where imprisoned, tortured, killed and became missing.
2. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin ( Responsible for 23,000,000-60,000,000 deaths)
In the time of rapid social and economic changes emerging as one of the biggest economy after World War II, Russians were sent to labor penal camps, died in famine and executed. The Great Purge, a series of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin, have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands who were accused of various political crimes. They were either executed by shooting or sent to labor camps wherein people died from starvation, disease and overwork. Others were also subjected to deadly experiments.
3. Adolf Hitler ( Responsible for 6,000,000 deaths)
Holocaust has been synonymous with the name, Adolf Hitler. The holocaust, one of the most famous genocides in the world, has showed the world what the evils of man can do to mankind. It was the genocide that killed approximately six million Jews and millions of others in a state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. The slaughter and mass killings were comprehensive covering over 35 European countries. The use of gas chambers to massively exterminate the Jews and the use of prisoners for human experiments were a unique feature of the Holocaust and also, unprecedented in history. To save his face from his falling grace in 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide with Eva Braun, his long time mistress whom he married three days before their untimely death.
4. Hideki Tojo (Responsible for 5,000,000 deaths)
Directly responsible for the bombing in Pearl Harbor which claimed the lives of almost 2,400 people, Hideki Tojo is the 40th Prime Minister of Japan serving from 1941 to 1944 during World War II. The mass slaughter in Nanking, China in 1937 commonly known as the Rape of Nanking killed almost 200,000- 350,000 civilians. It is the worst single massacre of unarmed troops and civilians in the history of the 20th century. The year after, more than 230,000 people have perished in field tests and experiments for biological and chemical weapons establishing a research facility in Ping Fan. It was the largest biological weapons research facility in the world. Though he was successful in his attempt for suicide in 1945, he was arrested and sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He was hanged on December 23, 1948.
5. Pol Pot (Responsible for 2,500,000 deaths)
Perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge during the Democratic Kampuchea communist regime headed by Pol Pot, the massacre has almost killed more than 20% of Cambodia’s population. In 1976, people were classified as full-rights people, candidates and depositees, where depositees were marked for destruction. Hundreds of thousands were taken to the shackles to dig their mass graves where they are beaten to death with iron bars or buried alive. Ethnic and Religious freedom were also curtailed as ethnic groups and religious sect are forbidden to speak their language or practice their customs. The Khmer Rouge under Pot also refused humanitarian aid which caused millions to die in starvation and brutal overwork inflicted by the government to its people. Politicians and bureaucrats accused of association of the previous government were also killed. Surely after, Phnom Penh became a ghost city. Pol Pot has died in 1998 while in house arrest. Persistent rumors say that he was poisoned.
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