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Democide is a term coined by political scientist R. J. Rummel to describe "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder". For example, government-sponsored killings for political reasons would be considered democide. Democide can include deaths arising from "reckless and depraved disregard for life"; this brings into account many deaths arising through mass starvation. However, he himself uses the wider sense of "killed by", including all kinds "reason-result" relationship between act of government and actual death of person. Moreover, calculating the number of victims, he doesn't need evidence of somebodies' death; the result of statistical calculation is, for Rummel, effective proof.
While of relatively recent origin, the word has gained in use, particularly by legal and social activists for human rights. It should, however, be noted that the term democide is not yet widely accepted. Furthermore, it is disputed whether the term, both in current use and as Rummel intended it, includes the deaths of soldiers in war.
Accusations of Democide
For books, articles, data, and analyses regarding democide, see Rummel's website at www.hawaii.edu/powerkills.
Accusations of mass killings by a government are relatively common. Less common are well-documented cases with enough evidence to support the accusation. Almost all accusations are disputed to some degree, although the evidence in some cases is stronger than in others. For instance, many of the figures cited in Death by Government, in which R.J. Rummel first coined the term, have been criticized for not taking into account numbers of deaths caused by the absence of government by means such as anarchy, civil disorder, or foreign invasion.
Some frequently used examples of democide include The Great Purges carried out by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union between 1934 and 1939, which led to an estimated 20 million deaths (this figure is disputed), and the actions of Mao Zedong in launching the Great Leap Forward in 1958, resulting in a famine which killed many million of people. These were not cases of genocide, because those who were killed were not selected on the basis of their race, but were killed in large numbers as a result of government policies.
Significant 20th century democides
The following based on Matthew White's web site [1] (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstats.htm) lists the significant democides where the death rate can be estimated to exceed 1,000,000. Accurate figures are difficult to establish and many estimates tend to reflect particular biases. In speaking of the Rwanda and Burundi democides White concludes that the toll was "700,000 to 1,600,000 more or less". Several of these amounts, Mao's China, Stalin's USSR and others, include a significant portion of deaths due to famine.
- World War II (1937-1945) 55,000,000
- Mao's China (1949-1975) 40,000,000 (mostly famine)
- Stalin's Soviet Union (1924-1953) 20,000,000
- World War I (1914-1918) 16,800,000
- Nationalist China (1928-1937) 9,600,000
- Russian Civil War (1917-1922) 8,900,000
- Congo Free State (1886-1908) 8,000,000 (mostly disease)
- Warlord China (1917-1928) 6,800,000
- Indochina War (1946-1975) 5,000,000
- North Korea (1948-now) 4,600,000 (excluding the Korean War)
- Democratic Republic of the Congo (1998-now) 3,300,000
- Chinese Civil War (1945-1949) 3,000,000
- Nigeria (1966-1970) 3,000,000
- Korean War (1950-1953) 2,900,000
- Expulsion of Germans after World War II (1945-1947) 2,100,000 (disputed)
- Suharto's regime in Indonesia (1966-1998) 2,000,000
- Second Indochina War (1960-1975) 1,900,000
- Pol Pot's Cambodia (1975-1978) 1,800,000
- Sudan (1983-now) 1,500,000
- Ethiopia (1962-1992) 1,500,000
- Bangladesh (1971) 1,500,000
- Afghanistan (1979-2001) 1,400,000
- Mozambique (1975-1993) 1,100,000
- Mexico (1910-1920) 1,000,000
- Armenia (1915-1923) 1,000,000
- Rwanda and Burundi (1959-1995) 1,000,000
- Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) 1,000,000
- American Indians from the 1600s to the present
The listing of the Expulsion of Germans after World War II has been hotly disputed, since there is a significant problem to establish how many people died during evacuation. The dispute includes the high numbers associated with that historical event, the killed versus died attribute. Moreover, the very high number must have included people died or killed during WW2, when the process has started.
The total of these is 196,500,000
Critics of Rummel calculations
Professional historians point out that Rummel's methods of calculating death tolls are highly controversial. He compares the statistical data before and after a crucial date and derives conclusions about the number of killings that had occurred in between. However, he fails to establish evidence of the actual killing. His results are essentially based on statistical data which are highly prone to errors.
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