20th Century Genocides

The Rape of Nanking

The Rape of Nanking was the invasion by the Japanese imperial army in December 1937, which marched into China’s capital city of Nanking and proceeded to murder 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians. Three reasons contributed to the attack. One reason was that the attack was preceded by a tough battle in Shanghai that began in summer 1937. Another was that the Japanese wanted to eliminate all surrendered soldiers, who were considered with utter contempt, therefore unworthy of life. The last reason was the stubborn resistance by the Chinese troops, which upset the timetable, with the battle dragging through the summer into late fall. All these factors infuriated the Japanese and whetted their appetite for the revenge that was to follow at Nanking. Senior members of the Japanese high command bearing direct responsibility for the mass atrocities in China included the Emperor Hirohito, who made all the military decisions, including the one to invade China in 1937. The motivations for these attacks were simple: revenge. Through a span of 6 weeks, Japanese soldiers gang-raped more than 20,000 females (with some estimates as high as 80,000), then stabbed them to death with bayonets or by gunshot so they could never bear witness. Those who were not killed on the spot were taken to the outskirts of the city and forced to dig their own graves, large rectangular pits that would be filled with decapitated corpses resulting from killing contests the Japanese held among themselves. Other times, the Japanese forced the Chinese to bury each other alive in the dirt. During the six weeks of the Japanese massacre, over 300,000 people were killed and over 20,000 additional women were brutally raped. The city was in ruins and the living civilians lost everything. The streets had so many corpses it was hard to move around, even on foot. They floated in the river for a year afterwards, emitting a stench that clung to the whole area. The massacres and mass rapes in Nanking continued for a full six weeks, extending into January 1938. Eventually the genocidal rampage was replaced by a brutal occupation conducted under a puppet authority, the "Nanking Self-Government Committee." Life began to return to the city, and its population eventually re-stabilized at around 700,000, two-thirds of the prewar population. A Chinese survivor Xia Shuqin quotes, “It was my father who went to open the door and the Japanese soldiers, with guns already loaded, shot my father as soon as he opened up," said Xia, a small, thin woman with an unseeing, greyishly discolored right eye.

Hutus vs. Tutsis in Rwanda

Beginning in April 6, 1994, and for the next hundred days, up to 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutu militia using clubs and machetes, with as many as 10,000 killed each day. The Genocide was sparked by three reasons. One was the death of the Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down above Kilagi airport on April 6, 1994. Also, the economic situation worsened and incumbent president, Juvenal Habyarimana (before his death) began losing popularity. Lastly, Peace was threatened by Hutu extremists who were violently opposed to sharing any power with the Tutsis. Today, adult males make only 20% of the population. Nearly 100,000 children were left orphaned after the genocide. The economy and education system are extremely slow to recover. Most children do not attend school. Everyday, Rwandans face extreme poverty and starvation and with little education they are not developing as a nation; the children are the leaders of the future, but with little education that future looks bleak. “There’s a little window in the bathroom. I went up and I looked through the curtains. And I saw like people running, running, running…inside the house. And we heard them. I can see the spears, “ Immaculee explains.

Arab Africans vs. Native Africans in Darfur, Sudan

Today in Darfur, Sudan, African farmers and others in Darfur are being systematically displaced and murdered at the hands of the Janjaweed, a government-supported militia recruited from local Arab tribes. The genocide in Darfur has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over 2,500,000 people. More than one hundred people continue to die each day, five thousand every month. Three reasons contributed to the start of the genocide. Frustrated by poverty and neglect, two Darfurian rebel groups launched an uprising against the Khartoum government. Another was black Arabs are being discriminated against because they are black and are not part of the right religion. And thirdly, drought has forced the Arabs to move to more fertile lands, straining relations with the Africans. This lead to fights over land and Arabs became jealous and violent. Since February 2003, the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia has used rape, displacement, organized starvation, threats against aid workers and mass murder. Violence, disease, and displacement continue to kill thousands of innocent Dufurians every month. Statistical numbers show that 800,000 Africans have been driven from their homes, 100,000 people have crossed the border to Chad, and 10,000 people have died of thirst and hunger. Jon Bul Dau explains, “Our village was looted, women were raped, men were abducted and it was sometimes, as if God grew tired of us. But God would never grow tired of anybody.”