]]]] Twentieth Century Killed, by Cause [[[[[[[
CAUSE TOTALS AVERAGES
(in millions) (per 100,000 population)
----------------
Government 119.4 349
Communist 95.2 477
Other non-free 20.3 495
Partially free 3.1 48
Free 0.8 22
----------------
War 35.7 22
International 29.7 17
Civil 6.0 26
----------------
All figures rounded. Source: various historical materials.
---------------
Those killed in the totals were killed apart from the pursuit of
any continuing military action or campaign, or as part of any con-
flict. The Jews that Hitler slaughtered during World War II are
counted, since their merciless and systematic extermination was
unrelated to and actually conflicted with Hitler's pursuit of the war.
UNDERESTIMATION POSSIBLE
The totals are based on a nation-by nation assessment and are
minimum figures that may underestimate the true total by 10% or more.
Moreover, they do not even include the 1921-22 Soviet famine and the
1958-61 Chinese famine, which caused about 4 and 27 million deaths,
respectively, by the imposition of a command agricultural economy and
by destructive collectivization.
However, the table does include the Soviet government's planned
starvation of the Ukraine that was begun in 1932 as a way of destroy-
ing Ukranian nationalism and breaking peasant opposition to collecti-
vization. As many as 10 million may have been starved to death or
succumbed to famine-related diseases; I estimate 8 million died. Had
these people all been shot, the moral responsibility would have been
no greater.
The table lists 831,000 people killed by free democratic govern-
ments, a fact that should startle most readers. This figure includes
the French massacres in Algeria before and during the Algerian War
(36,000 killed, at a minimum), and those Eastern Europeans killed by
the the Soviets after the Western democracies forcibly repatriated
them during and after World War II.
It is appalling that the democracies, particularly Britain and
the US, turned over to Soviet authorities more than 2,250,000 Soviet
citizens, prisoners of war, and Russian exiles (who were not Soviet
citizens) found in the Allied zones of occupation in Europe. Most of
these people were terrified of returning and refused to cooperate;
often whole families preferred suicide. An estimated 795,000 of those
repatriated were executed or died in, or traveling to, slave-labor
camps.
It is sad that hundreds of thousands of people can be killed by
governments with hardly an international murmur, while a war killing
several thousand people can cause an immediate world outcry and global
reaction. Contrast the international focus on the relatively minor
1982 war between Britain and Argentina with the widescale lack of
interest in Burundi's killing of some 100,000 Hutu in 1972, of Indone-
sia slaughtering a likely 600,000 people it accused of being "commu-
nists" in 1965, and of Pakistan's eventual killing of from one to
three million Bengalis in 1971.
A most noteworthy example of this double standard is the Vietnam
War. The international community was outraged at the US efforts to
prevent North Vietnam from taking over South Vietnam and ultimately
Laos and Cambodia. "Stop the killing" was the cry, and eventually the
pressure of foreign and domestic opposition forced an American with-
drawal. The overall number killed in the Vietnam War on all sides was
about 1.2 million people.
South Vietnam was eventually conquered by the North, and Cambodia
was taken over by the Khmer Rouge, who in trying to recreate a primi-
tive communist agricultural society slaughtered from one to three
million Cambodians. If we take two million as the best estimate, then
in four years the government of this small nation of 7 million alone
killed 64% more people than died in the 10-year Vietnam War. Overall,
the best estimate of those killed by the victorious communists in
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia is 2,270,000. And the killing still goes
on.
To view this double standard from another perspective, both world
wars cost 24 million battle deaths. But from 1918 to 1953, the Soviet
government executed, slaughtered, starved, beat or tortured to death,
or otherwise killed some 39.5 million of its own people (estimates
vary from between 20 and 83 million). In China under Mao Tse-Tung, the
communist government eliminated, as an average figure between esti-
mates, 45 million people. The number killed in just these two nations
is about 84.5 million, or a lethality of 252% more than both world
wars together. Yet, have the world community and the intellectuals
generally shown anything like the same horror or outrage over these
Soviet and Chinese megakillings as has been directed at the much less
deadly world wars?
However, as large as the number of people killed by communist
governments is, it is nearly the same as for other non-free govern-
ments. This is due to the massacres and widescale killing in the very
small country of East Timor, where since 1975 Indonesia has eliminated
(aside from the guerrilla war and associated violence) an estimated
100,000 Timorans out of a population of 600,000. Omitting this country
alone would reduce the average killed by non-communist, non-free
governments to 397 per 10,000, or significantly less than the 477 per
10,000 for communist countries.
In any case, we can still see from the table that the more free-
dom in a nation, the fewer people killed by government. Freedom serves
as a brake on a governing elite's power over life and death.
DEADLIEST SCOURGE
This principle appeared to be violated in the two special cases
mentioned above. One was the French government's mass killings in the
colony of Algeria. There the Algerians were considered to be second-
class citizens and lacked the right to vote in French elections. In
the other case the Allied democracies acted during and just after
wartime, under a regime of strict secrecy, to turn over foreigners to
the Soviet Union. These foreigners, of course, had no rights as citi-
zens that would protect them in the democracies. In no case have I
found a democratic government carrying out massacres, genocides and
mass executions of its own citizens; nor have I found a case where
such a government's policies have knowingly and directly resulted in
the large-scale deaths of people through privation, torture, beatings
and the like.
Absolutist governments (those that Freedom House would classify
as not free) are not only many times deadlier than war and other forms
of violent conflict. They are a major cause of militarism. Indeed,
absolutism, not war, is mankind's deadliest scourge of all.
In light of all this, the peaceful, nonviolent fostering of civil
liberties and political rights must be made mankind's highest humani-
tarian goal. Not simply to give the greatest number the greatest hap-
piness, not simply to obey the moral imperative of individual rights,
but because freedom preserves life and peace.
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