The term "war crime" may seem somewhat of an oxymoron at its core, but the need to establish such a protective legal framework becomes more understandable when we read history, and in particular, when we read about horrific massacres that took place in the past.
Perhaps the genocides of the Armenians and the Jews are the first war crimes that come to mind, but there are a bunch more that are lesser known and have remained in the shadow of the above, at least for most people.
Here are five mass crimes against humanity:
The Mi Lai Massacre
The "Mi Lai Massacre" refers to the mass killing of unarmed civilians in South Vietnam by American soldiers on March 16, 1968. The number of victims has remained undetermined, ranging somewhere between 347 and 504 people.
It was carried out by the team of 25-year-old Lieutenant William Calley, who initially thought the village was under Vietcong control. In fact, only women, children and the elderly are in this village. Calley's inexperienced soldiers, with only three months of experience in Vietnam, will not hesitate to slaughter civilians with unprecedented ferocity even by the standards of a war. Some of the women, in fact, will first be gang-raped and then mutilated.
The incident would remain hidden from the Pentagon for almost a year until the day it was revealed by the journalist Seymour Hers - the same man who many years later would also reveal the torture carried out by the Americans, this time inside the Iraqi prisons of Abu Grab.
The "Mi Lai Massacre" will damage the image of the US worldwide and give great strength to the domestic anti-war movement.
30,000 dead in Ethiopia
"Jekatit 12" is a date in the Ethiopian calendar that refers to the massacre and imprisonment of thousands of locals by the then Italian occupation forces in retaliation for the attempt on the life of Rodolfo Graziani, the regent of the conquered country.
On February 19, 1937, Graziani announced that the Italian authorities would give alms to the poor due to the birth of a new Italian prince, where he would even be present as regent.
For this reason, thousands of impoverished people gathered in the capital Addis Ababa. However, two men from the Italian colony of Eritrea were hidden among them, who were going to throw ten grenades towards Graziani. The explosions injured him, but the timely transfer to the hospital managed to save his life. The two men managed to escape and escape with their lives, only temporarily, as a few days later they would be murdered by locals in Sudan.
The revenge of the Italians for the incident was terrifying. Guido Cortese, an Italian official, will address the occupying forces with the following words:
“Comrades, today is the day we must show our loyalty to the Viceroy by reacting and slaughtering the Ethiopians for three days. For three days I give you a blank check to destroy, kill and do whatever you want to the Ethiopians".
In the next three days, in the capital alone, almost 30,000 innocent people would fall dead at the hands of the Italians.
The Banga Island Massacre
During World War II, on February 16, 1942, 21 Australian nurses were murdered by Japanese soldiers on Banga Island, Indonesia. The soldiers thought they had killed 22 women, but nurse Vivian Bullwinkel managed to survive by pretending to be dead. He managed to hide in the jungle until he was finally captured as a prisoner of war. In the end, however, he would manage to return to Australia and live until 2017.
That year, shortly before his death, he would reveal that most of the women were raped before being murdered, a secret he kept well hidden for decades as he believed such a revelation would tarnish the memory of the victims - in Australia prejudice against rape victims was very strong. strong not only in the 40s, but also in the following years.
According to the Australians, the perpetrators of the massacre remained unknown and "avoided any punishment for their crime".
The massacre of Deir Yassin
On April 9, 1948, nearly 120 militiamen from two Israeli paramilitary groups attacked a Palestinian village of six hundred people near Jerusalem, killing more than 107 Palestinian civilians overnight, most of the victims being women and children.
The two groups attacked the village in order to "clear" the road to Jerusalem from its Arab inhabitants, as well as to send a message to the rest of the Palestinians in the area.
The paramilitaries entered the village, shooting those in the street and throwing grenades into houses, destroying them and killing the residents hiding inside. Eyewitnesses reported seeing troops ransacking homes and bodies, stealing money and jewelry from survivors and burning corpses. There were also many reports of rape and mutilation of bodies, while one standout was a testimony that some villagers were murdered during a "victory parade" in the Israeli neighborhoods of West Jerusalem.
The head of the Irgun, one of the two paramilitary groups, was Menachem Begin, later Prime Minister of Israel and founder of the "Likud" party, i.e. the party of the former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Gardelegen Massacre
World War II was coming to an end, the Battle of Berlin was just around the corner, and the Nazis were beginning to try to cover up their crimes. How; Making it even bigger.
On April 13, 1945, the SS executed 1,016 prisoners of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, near the northern German city of Gardelegen. These were prisoners being transported west, mostly Poles - but there were some Soviets among them. The Germans did not want the advancing Allies to see the conditions in which the prisoners lived and worked in the concentration camps, so they had decided to move them to safer lands.
But when the prisoners arrived at Gardelegen, the SS decided that they had to "get rid" of the prisoners. With the help of the locals, they led the prisoners to a warehouse, closed the doors, doused it in gasoline and set it on fire. Those who tried to get out of the fiery hell were shot in cold blood.
The next day, the Nazis tried to eliminate all traces of the corpses, but they could not. On the same day, the American soldiers also entered the city, discovered the ruins of the warehouse that were still smoking and even found eleven alive among the victims.
It was one of the last major war crimes committed by the Axis powers before they were completely defeated.