11Australian Concentration Camps
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.
12Sand Creek Massacre
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.
131938 Yellow River Flood
The Chinese Government killed approximately 800,000 of its own citizen in 1938 by opening dykes on the Yellow River to halt Japanese military advance during the early stage of the Second Sino-Japanese War. It has been called the “largest act of environmental warfare in history” and an example of Scorched earth military strategy. This also shifted the mouth of the Yellow River by several hundred miles south.
14Mexican Repatriation
In the 1920s and 1930s, the U.S. had “repatriation programs”, which forced Mexican-Americans to relocate to Mexico. Scapegoated for taking jobs away from “real” Americans during the Great Depression, state and local governments illegally rounded up as many as two million legal immigrants, and others of Mexican heritage onto cattle cars and shipped them back to Mexico, where nearly all of them hadn't lived for decades or had never lived at all. In the process of moving around that many people in harsh conditions, it is inevitable that people will die, and over 10,000 did.
15February 28 Massacre
The 1947 February 28 Massacre was committed by the US-backed Taiwanese government. Deaths during the massacre surpassed the Tiananmen Square in casualties. An estimated 500 -28,000 civilians were killed and the incident was covered up. The massacre marked the beginning of the White Terror, in which tens of thousands of other Taiwanese went missing, died, or were imprisoned.
16Black War
The Black War was a period of violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Australians in Tasmania between 1820s and 1832. A bounty of ₤5 was paid for every captured Aboriginal and ₤2 per child. The conflict only ended when all the aborigines on the island were killed.
17Bodo League Massacre
Bodo League massacre was a massacre committed by the South Korean government in 1950. South Korea’s then president Syngman Rhee ordered the execution of suspected communists (people related to either the Bodo League or the South Korean Workers Party). An estimated 100,000+ South Koreans were killed and US, Australian, and British officials witnessed and photographed the genocide.
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18Project Eldest Son
During the Vietnam War, the US government had a secret military operation called Project Eldest Son. It involved flooding communist ammo depots throughout Southeast Asia with thousands of sabotaged rifles, machine guns, and mortar rounds. Each of the ordinary-looking bullets was packed with enough high explosives to destroy any weapon that fired it while also maiming (or perhaps even killing) the unlucky shooter. Charges hidden within spiked mortar shells were powerful enough to wipe out an entire gun crew. Fake documents were also left behind that questioned the quality control in Chinese munitions factories.
19Magdalene Laundries
Magdalene laundries were religious institutions run by the Roman Catholics in Ireland and UK. In these religious institutions, pregnant unmarried women among other female “sinners” went to forcefully spend a significant chunk of their life. The nuns always took babies minutes after birth and either killed them or sent them out for adoption without the mother’s knowledge. Almost a century of women being imprisoned here are now classed as “the nations’ disappeared” as records were not kept on the inmates. The last such institution in Ireland closed down in 1996.
20Sweden's Internment Camps
During the Second World War, the Swedish government operated eight internment camps, where they conducted among other things racial studies. In May 1941, 10 more camps were planned, but towards the end of 1941, the plans were put on ice, and in 1943 the last camp was closed down. All the records were burned.