Unmasking State Crimes: 20 Horrible Things Done by World Governments

Before 1971, Bangladesh and Pakistan were a single country. After a severe typhoon in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) aid from Pakistan was slow to arrive and immediately later Pakistan decided to hold elections. Bangladesh had a bigger population so its own party won. The Pakistani military then responded by commencing Operation Searchlight. They imprisoned intellectuals, slaughtered thousands of Bangladeshi officers, students, and basically anyone with a way of assisting the Bangladesh party. They also obliterated any institution that could support refugees and raped thousands more. India alongside Bangladesh then got into action and after the war that ensued 93,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered (biggest surrender since World War 2) before the Indian army. All in all 300,000 to 3,000,000, Hindus were targeted with many killed, raped and enslaved for 9 months before India declared war.

For over 100 years, Canada forced as many as 150,000 Indigenous children to attend Residential schools away from their families years at a time with the intent of assimilating them and removing their family’s culture. The quality of instruction was sub-par, many children were physically, sexually, and mentally abused and at least 4000 children died in the school system. Most returned home unable to help, or connect with their families.

During World War 2, Croatia had a special concentration camp for killing children. It was set up by the Ustaše government of the Nazi-puppet state. It was the only concentration camp in Europe for children. The children, of Serbian, Roma, and Jewish origins, aged between 3 and 16, were housed in abandoned stables, riddled with filth and pests. Around 6,693 children passed through its gates, out of which records say between 1,152 and 1,630 died. Witnesses recount seeing an “Ustashe soldier pick up a child by the legs and smash its head against a wall until it was dead.”

Sweden involuntarily sterilized people until 1975. Compulsory sterilizations were carried out on eugenic, medical, and social grounds. Also, until 2012, sterilization was mandatory in Sweden before sex change.

Ustase was a Croatian Nazi group, during World War 2, who massacred hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Romani, and Communist Croats using brutally violent ways. They held competitions on who slaughtered more people. Their execution methods were so brutal that even the Nazis were shocked by it. They exterminated their victims manually with mallets and knives. When they realized that your get tired of killing hundreds of people a day with knives, they devised a special kind of blade to attach to your palm, called ‘srbosjek’, meaning ‘the Serb cutter.’ They also killed their prisoners by slashing their intestines and throwing them into a river.

About 35 years before the Holocaust, Germany committed one of the first genocides of the 20th century in modern-day Namibia. While Namibia was still a German colony, the Herero and Namaqua tribes rebelled against German colonial rule. The German soldiers refused to fight because they didn't want to shoot civilians. So the high command told them to shot over their heads to push them out into the desert. German forces then sealed off the Namib Desert, leaving up to 100,000 native Africans to die of starvation and exposure.

Although Switzerland never formally declared its support for either side during World War 2, it heavily aided the Nazis. Switzerland offered banking services and sold guns to the Nazis. Switzerland also interned over 100,000 mostly Allied soldiers in POW camps. At the largest of these camps, which was run by a well-known Nazi sympathizer, the conditions were so bad that most prisoners lost an average of 40 pounds during their internment. Before the war, in 1934, Swiss banking secrecy laws were strengthened to encourage Jews of Central & Eastern Europe, fearful of Nazis, to hide their assets in Swiss banks. After a majority of those depositors died during the Holocaust, the laws were used to wrongfully deny their heirs access to those accounts.

Institute 3000, was a research center dedicated to developing chemical weapons and it was used on Syrians by its own government. On 21 August 2013, chemical weapons were dropped on Eastern and Western Ghouta, Syria. Over a thousand civilians died. It was the largest chemical massacre in the world since 1988. The Syrian government has committed more than two hundred chemical weapons attacks since August 2013. Institute 3000 largely operates from secret centers scattered across the country. Many of these centers are dug deep into mountains or tunnels.

Australia had concentration camps during both World War 1 and World War 2. Rottnest, the island most known for the cute Quokkas, has been an Aboriginal prison island since westerners arrived but during World War 2 it was a camp for Italians to be held in as they weren't trusted by the government. These camps held almost 7000 people of Italian, German, and Japanese origin.

Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle was a major advocate for peace and coexistence between white settlers and his Native Americans. He even met President Lincoln once to negotiate a lasting peace between Americans and Cheyenne. Lincoln gave him an American flag and told him that so long as it flew in their camp, no American would harm them. Colorado cavalry led by Colonel John Chivington was assigned to searching for aggressive natives, but after months they came up empty-handed. So they decided to attack Black Kettle's village to avoid embarrassment in front of the government. They attacked in the middle of the night while everyone was sleeping. Eyewitnesses recount women, children, and men being run down as they tried desperately to flee across a frozen river. Black Kettle ran into the middle of the battle waving the American flag and screaming that they were friends of America, but he was forced to drop the flag and flee as well. Black Kettle miraculously survived, but most of his clan did not, and the few that survived the battle mostly died of hypothermia and starvation. Cavalrymen raped live and dead women, including children, and cut off male and female genitals, and strapped them to their horses as decorations.