WAR
|
PERPETRATOR
|
Incident
|
Type of war crimes
|
Ordered or Committed By
|
Notes
|
World War I
(1914-1918)
|
All major belligerents
|
Chemical weapons in World War I
|
Use of
chemical weapons
|
Ordered by all major belligerents
|
Throughout World War I, all major belligerents employed chemical weapons in combat in violation of the
Hague Conventions
of 1899 and 1907, which prohibited the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in international conflicts.
|
Second Sino-Japanese War
(1937-1945)
|
Empire of Japan
|
Nanjing Massacre
|
Mass murder of civilians and prisoners of war; rape; torture; robbery;
setting buildings on fire
[5]
|
Committed by the
Imperial Japanese Army
[5]
|
For six weeks after
invading
and
taking over
Nanjing
,
China
, Japanese soldiers committed war crimes. About 200,000 people died or were killed.
[6]
|
World War II
(1939-1945)
|
Nazi Germany
|
Invasion of Poland
|
Mass murder of civilians, including hospital patients; attacking
refugees
and civilian buildings
|
Committed by the German
Wehrmacht
and
Schutzstaffel
(SS)
|
The Nazis killed about 150,000?200,000 Polish civilians,
[7]
including over 20,000 in mass
executions
by
mobile death squads
, and about 6,000 hospital patients.
[8]
|
World War II (1939-1945)
|
Empire of Japan
|
Attack on Pearl Harbor
|
Attacking neutral territory and murder of neutral persons
|
Committed by the
Imperial Japanese Navy
|
On December 7, 1941, Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft and submarines attacked a United States naval base at Pearl Harbor without a state of war and without explicit warning, killing 2,403 people, destroying 188 U.S. aircraft, and sinking eight battleships.
[9]
[10]
|
World War II (1939-1945)
|
United States
|
Biscari massacre
|
Murder of prisoners of war
|
Sergeant Horace T. West; Captain John T. Compton
[11]
|
During the
Allied
invasion
of
Sicily
, American soldiers killed 76 Italian and German prisoners of war. West was found guilty in an American
court martial
; Compton was found not guilty.
[11]
|
Vietnam War
(1955-1975)
|
North Vietnam
|
Massacre at Hu?
|
Mass murder, beatings, and torture of civilians
|
Viet Cong
and
People's Army of Vietnam
|
The
Battle of Hu?
began on 31 January 1968, and lasted a total of 26 days. During the months and years that followed, dozens of
mass graves
were discovered in and around Hu?. Victims included men, women, children, and infants killed under North Vietnamese occupation of Hu?, South Vietnam.
[12]
The estimated death toll was between 2,800 and 6,000
civilians
and
prisoners of war
,
[13]
or 5?10% of the total population of Hu?.
[14]
Victims were found bound, tortured, and sometimes
buried alive
. Many victims were also clubbed to death.
[15]
[16]
[17]
|
The Troubles
(1968-1998)
|
United Kingdom
|
Actions in
Northern Ireland
|
Torture; killing suspects (including a civilian) without trying to arrest them first
|
Members of the
British Army
|
In the 1970s, members of the British Army commonly used torture, including
waterboarding
, on
prisoners
in Northern Ireland.
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
They also started a "
shoot
to kill" policy, where they would shoot and kill suspects without trying to arrest them first. The
European Court of Human Rights
ruled that this was illegal.
[23]
|
Iran-Iraq War
(1980-1988)
|
Iraq
|
Iraqi chemical attacks against Iran
|
Use of chemical weapons
|
Ordered by
Saddam Hussein
;
[24]
led by
Al? ?assan al-Maj?d
("Chemical Ali")
[25]
|
Throughout the 1980s, Iraq used
poison gases
to attack Iran.
[25]
[26]
A
Dutch
war crimes
tribunal
also found a Dutch businessman guilty for selling Iraq chemical weapons.
[27]
|
War in
Uganda
(1985 ? today)
|
Lord's Resistance Army
(LRA)
|
Many events
|
Mass murder; kidnapping; forcing children to be soldiers and sex slaves; attacking civilians
|
Led by
Joseph Kony
[28]
|
The LRA is a
rebel
group in Uganda, started in 1987. Since 1987, the LRA has forced about 60,000 ? 100,000 children to be soldiers, and made about 2 million people in central
Africa
have to leave their homes.
[29]
In 2002, Kony ordered the LRA to start attacking civilians.
[28]
The ICC has
indicted
Kony for 21 different war crimes. The Court has also indicted four other LRA leaders.
[28]
|
War in Darfur
(2003 ? today)
|
Sudan
|
Many events
|
Mass murder of civilians; destroying civilian villages; rape; making civilians leave home; looting
|
Led by
Omar al-Bashir
; committed by Sudanese military, police, and
militia
[30]
[31]
|
The al-Bashir government has committed many crimes against people in
Darfur
who are not of the
Arab
,
Muslim
majority.
[30]
In 2014, the
United Nations
estimated
that 300,000 had been killed and more than 1.5 million had been forced to leave their homes.
[30]
The ICC has indicted al-Bashir and five other leaders with war crimes.
[31]
|