Mass murder (in military contexts, sometimes interchangeable with
mass destructionMass destruction may refer to:* Weapon of mass destruction, a munition with the capacity to indiscriminately kill large numbers of living beingsMass Destruction may refer to:* "Mass Destruction" , a 2004 single by Faithless...
) is the act of
murderMurder, as defined in common law countries, is the unlawful killing of another human being with intent , and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
ing a large number of people, typically over a relatively short period of time. Mass murder may be committed by individuals or organizations. Mass murder is also defined to be intentional and indiscriminate murder of large number of people by government agents. Examples are shooting of unarmed protestors,
carpet bombingCarpet bombing is the large scale bombing of large targets, usually by dropping many unguided gravity bombs. The tactic aims for complete destruction of a target region, either to destroy personnel and materiel, or as a means of demoralizing the enemy...
of cities, lobbing of grenades into prison cells and random execution of civilians. The term may refer to
spree killerA spree killer, also known as a rampage killer, is someone who embarks on a murderous assault on his or her victims in a short time in multiple locations. The U.S...
s, who stage a single assault on their victims. The largest mass killings in history have been attempts to exterminate entire groups or communities of people, often on the basis of ethnicity or religion. Some of these mass murders have been found to be
genocideGenocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of...
s and others to be crimes against humanity, but often such crimes have led to few or no convictions of any type.
Mass murder by a state
The concept of state-sponsored mass murder covers a range of potential killings. It is defined to be the intentional and indiscriminate murder of a large number of people by government agents. Examples are shooting of unarmed protestors, carpet bombing of cities, lobbing of grenades into prison cells and random execution of civilians. Other examples of state-sponsored mass murder include:
- Genocide
Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of...
is the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, religious or national group. While precise definition varies among genocide scholarsThis is a list of scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide, a word coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. While there are various definitions of the term, almost all international bodies of law officially adjudicate the crime of genocide pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and...
, the legal definition is found in the 1948 United NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace...
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of GenocideThe Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 as General Assembly Resolution 260. The Convention came into effect in January 1951...
(CPPCG). Since the CPPCG went into effect in 1951 there have been two genocides found to be so in international courts these were the Srebrenica genocide and the Rwandan GenocideThe Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by Hutus under the Hutu Power ideology. Over the course of approximately 100 days, from the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana on 6 April through mid-July, at least 500,000...
(see International prosecution of genocide. There have been a number of other convictions for genocide under municipal lawsThe Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide came into effect in January 1951. Article 5, 6 and 7 of the CPPCG cover obligations that sovereign states that are parties to the convention must undertake to enact:...
, and a number of genocides in historyGenocide is the mass killing of a group of people. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:...
– such as the HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as The Shoah is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany,...
– are widely seen as genocides, but occurred before the universal acceptance of international lawPublic international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states, analogous entities, such as the Holy See, and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...
s defining and forbidding genocide was achieved in 1948, so those criminals who were convicted of taking part in these historical genocides were found guilty of crimes against humanity and other more specific crimes like murder.
- Political mass murder or the killing of a particular political group within a country, such as Béla Kun
Béla Kun , born Béla Kohn, was a Hungarian Communist politician who ruled Hungary as leader of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919.- Early life :...
's ethnic cleansingEthnic cleansing is a term that has come to be used broadly to describe all forms of ethnically inspired violence, ranging from murder, rape, and torture to the forcible removal of populations...
against Turkish and Crimean TatarsCrimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group originally residing in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...
and other minorities in 1921-22, Lenin's "Red TerrorThe Red Terror in Soviet Russia was the campaign of mass arrests and executions conducted by the Bolshevik government. In Soviet historiography, the Red Terror is described as officially announced on September 2, 1918 by Yakov Sverdlov and ended in about October 1918...
," Stalin's Great PurgeGreat Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937–1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and Government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of...
, MaoMao Zedong was a Chinese revolutionary, political theorist and Communist leader. He led the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976...
's "suppression of counterrevolutionaries,"Zhen Fan , is short for Suppression of Counter-revolutionary Activities , which began on March 1950 when the Chinese Communist central committee issued an order:Instruction on the severe suppression of counter-revolutionary activities Those targeted for persecution included former KMT officials,...
Pol PotSaloth Sar or Minh Hai, , widely known as Pol Pot, , was the leader of the Cambodian communist movement known as the Khmer Rouge and was Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from 1976–1979....
's Killing FieldsThe Killing Fields were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Vietnam War....
, massacres at the partition of India, or the HamaThe Hama massacre occurred on February 2, 1982, when the Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood. An estimated 7,000 to 40,000 people were killed, including about 1,000 soldiers. -Background:...
, Jallianwala BaghThe Jallianwala Bagh Massacre , alternatively known as the Amritsar Massacre, was named after the Jallianwala Bagh in the northern Indian city of Amritsar where, on April 13, 1919, 90 British Indian Army soldiers under the command of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer opened fire on an unarmed...
, TlatelolcoThe Tlatelolco massacre, also known as The Night of Tlatelolco , was a government massacre of student and civilian protesters and bystanders that took place during the afternoon and night of October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City...
massacres, and the mass killing of communists by Suharto's New OrderThe New Order is the term coined by former Indonesian President Suharto to characterize his regime as he came to power in 1966 . Suharto used this term to contrast his rule with that of his predecessor, Sukarno...
.
- Deliberate massacres of captives during wartime by a state's military forces, such as these committed by the Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan was a Japanese political entity that existed during the period from the...
, the Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
and Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
during the Second Sino-Japanese WarThe Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany and the Soviet Union...
and World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
: the Nanjing Massacre, the Katyn Forest Massacre of PolishThe Polish people, or Poles , are a Western Slavic ethnic group of Central Europe, living predominantly in Poland. Poles are sometimes defined as people who share a common Polish culture and are of Polish descent. Their religion is predominantly Roman Catholic...
citizens in 1940 and the massacres of political prisoners after the launch of Operation BarbarossaOperation Barbarossa was the code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a 2,900 km front...
, the Three Alls PolicyThe Three Alls Policy was a Japanese scorched earth policy adopted in China during World War II, the three alls being: "Kill All", "Burn All" and "Loot All". In Japanese documents, the policy was originally referred to as...
and the massacre of Soviet Jews at Babi YarBabi Yar is a ravine outside the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of the most notorious massacre of Jews in the Soviet Union, where 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation on September 29–30, 1941...
.
- Mass killing of civilians during total war
Total war is a conflict of unlimited scope in which a belligerent engages in a mobilization of all available resources at their disposal, whether human, industrial, agricultural, military, natural, technological, or otherwise, in order to entirely destroy or render beyond use their rival's capacity...
, especially via strategic bombingStrategic bombing is a military strategy used in a total war with the goal of defeating an enemy nation-state by destroying its economic ability to wage war rather than destroying its land or naval forces...
, such as the Bombing of ChongqingThe bombing of Chongqing was part of an Imperial Japanese Army Air Service and Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service terror bombing operation on the Chinese provisional capital of Chongqing authorized by the Imperial General Headquarters.A conservative estimate places the number of...
, the BlitzThe Blitz was the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, in World War II. While the Blitz hit many towns and cities across the country, it began with the bombing of London for 57 consecutive nights...
, the bombing of DresdenThe Bombing of Dresden by the British Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Force between 13 February and 15 February 1945 remains one of the most controversial Allied actions of the Second World War...
and Hamburg|-||-||-||-||-||-||}The Allied Bombing of Hamburg during World War II included numerous strategic bombing missions and diversion/nuisance raids. As a large port and industrial center, Hamburg's shipyards, U-boat pens, and the Hamburg-Harburg area oil refineries were attacked throughout the war...
, or the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and NagasakiThe atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear attacks near the end of World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States at the executive order of U.S. President Harry S. Truman on August 6 and August 9, 1945, respectively...
.
- Actions in which the state caused the death of large numbers of people, which political scientist
Political science is a social science concerned with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior. It is often described as the pragmatic application of the art and science of politics defined as "who gets what, when and how",...
R. J. RummelRudolph Joseph Rummel is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii. He has spent his career assembling data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination...
calls "democideDemocide is a term coined by political scientist R. J. Rummel for "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder." Rummel created the term as an extended concept to include forms of government murder that are not covered by the legal definition...
," which, in addition to the cases above, may include man-made disasters caused by the state, such as the HolodomorThe Holodomor refers to the famine of 1932–1933 in the Ukrainian SSR during which millions of people were starved to death due to Soviet policies. There were no natural causes for starvation and in fact, Ukraine - unlike other Soviet Republics - enjoyed a bumper wheat crop in 1932...
in the Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
, and the disastrous effects of the Great Leap ForwardThe Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social plan used from 1958 to 1961 which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform China from a primarily agrarian economy by peasant farmers into a modern communist society through the process of...
and the Cultural RevolutionThe Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a period of widespread social and political upheaval in the People’s Republic of China between 1966 and 1976, resulting in nation-wide chaos and economic disarray.It was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, on May 16,...
in the People's Republic of ChinaThe People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately one-fifth of the world's population...
.
For further historical examples of mass murder, both state-committed and in wartime, see here.
Mass murder by individuals
The term "mass murder" refers to the killing of four or more people during a particular event. Examples would include killing several people in the course of a robbery, or setting a crowded nightclub on fire where four or more deaths occur. Two of the first mass murderers in modern American times were
Andrew KehoeAndrew Philip Kehoe was an American mass murderer and tax protester who perpetrated the Bath School Disaster on May 18, 1927.- Early life :...
and
Charles WhitmanCharles Joseph Whitman , a student at the University of Texas at Austin, killed 14 people and wounded 32 others during a shooting rampage on and around the university's campus...
.
Mass murderers may fall into any of a number of categories, including killers of family, of coworkers, of students, and of random strangers. Their motives for murder vary. Many other motivations are possible, including the need for attention or fame.
Workers who assault fellow employees are sometimes called "disgruntled workers," but this is often a misnomer, as many perpetrators are
ex-workers. They are dismissed from their jobs and subsequently turn up heavily armed and kill their former colleagues. In the 1980s, when two fired postal workers carried out such massacres in separate incidents in the US, the term "
going postalGoing postal is an American English slang term, used as a verb meaning to suddenly become extremely and uncontrollably angry, often to the point of violence and in a workplace environment. The term's popularity increased after the 1995 movie Clueless...
" became synonymous with employees snapping and setting out on murderous rampages. One of the 1980s most famous "disgruntled worker" cases involved computer
programmerA programmer is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to programming may also be known as a...
Richard FarleyRichard Wade Farley is an American convicted mass murderer. A former employee of Electromagnetic Systems Labs in Sunnyvale, California, he stalked co-worker Laura Black for four years beginning in 1984. Black obtained a temporary restraining order against him on February 2, 1988, with a court...
who, after being fired for stalking one of his co-workers, Laura Black, returned to his former workplace and shot to death seven of his colleagues, although he failed in his attempt to kill Black herself.
In some rare cases mass murders have been committed during
prison riotA prison riot is a type of incident that occurs in the prison environment. It usually refers to a temporary event that is not a routine part of the everyday operation of the prison that involves an act of concerted defiance or disorder by a group of prisoners against the prison administrators,...
s and uprisings. During the February, 1980
New Mexico State Penitentiary riotThe New Mexico Penitentiary Riot, which took place on February 2 and February 3 1980 in the state's maximum security prison south of Santa Fe, was one of the most violent prison riots in the history of the American correctional system: 33 inmates died and more than 200 inmates were treated for...
, 33 inmates were killed. Most of the dead, 23, lived in the Protective Custody Unit, and were killed by other inmates using knives, axes and being burnt alive over a 48-hour period.
Unlike serial killers, there is rarely a sexual motive to individual mass-murderers, with the possible exception of
Sylvestre MatuschkaSylvestre Matuschka , a former officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, was arrested in October 1931 and charged with arranging the derailment of several trains...
, an Austrian man who apparently derived sexual pleasure from blowing up trains with dynamite, ideally with people in them. His lethal sexual fetish claimed 22 lives before he was caught in 1931.
According to Loren Coleman's book
Copycat Effect, publicity about multiple deaths tends to provoke more, whether workplace or school shootings or
mass suicideMass suicide occurs when a number of people kill themselves together or for the same reason.- Examples :Mass suicide sometimes occurs in religious or cultic settings. Suicide missions, suicide bombers, and kamikazes are military or paramilitary forms of mass suicide. Defeated groups may resort to...
s.
Vasili BlokhinVasili Mikhailovich Blokhin was a Soviet Major-General who served as the chief executioner of the Stalinist NKVD under the administrations of Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrenty Beria...
's count of 7,000 Polish prisoners shot in 28 days remains one of the most organized and protracted mass murders by a single individual on record.
Mass murder by terrorists
In recent years,
terroristsTerrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.At present, there is no internationally agreed definition of terrorism...
have performed acts of mass murder to intimidate a society and draw attention to their causes. Examples of major terrorist incidents involving mass murder of more than 100 individual's include:
- June 23, 1985: Air India Flight 182
Air India Flight 182 was an Air India flight operating on the Montréal-London-Delhi-Bombay route. On 23 June 1985, the airplane operating on the route was blown up in midair by a bomb in Irish airspace in the single deadliest terrorist attack involving an aircraft to that date. The incident...
bombing over the Atlantic OceanThe Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres , it covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface and about one-quarter of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek...
- 329 killed
- December 21, 1988: Pan Am Flight 103
Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' third daily scheduled transatlantic flight from London's Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. On Wednesday 21 December 1988, the aircraft flying this route—a Boeing 747-121 named Clipper Maid of the Seas—was...
bombing over ScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
- 270 killed
- March 12, 1993: Bombay bombings - 257 killed
- April 19, 1995: Oklahoma City bombing
The Oklahoma City bombing occurred on April 19, 1995 when American militia movement sympathizer Timothy McVeigh, with the assistance of Terry Nichols, destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma...
in the United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
- 168 killed
- August 7, 1998: U.S. embassy bombings
In the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya...
in Kenya and Tanzania - 224 killed
- September 11, 2001: September 11 attacks in the United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
- 2,998 killed
- October 12, 2002: Bali bombing
The 2002 Bali bombings occurred on 12 October 2002 in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali. The attack was the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of Indonesia, killing 202 people, 152 of whom were foreign nationals, and 38 Indonesian citizens...
in IndonesiaThe Republic of Indonesia is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia comprises 17,508 islands. With an estimated population of around 237 million people, it is the world's fourth most populous country, with the world's largest population of Muslims.Indonesia is a republic, with an...
- 202 killed
- March 2, 2004: Ashura massacre
The Ashura massacre of March 2, 2004 in Iraq was a series of planned terrorist explosions that killed at least 178 and injured at least 500 Iraqi Shi'a Muslims commemorating the Day of Ashura...
in IraqIraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , also known as Mesopotamia, is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.Iraq shares borders with Jordan to the west, Syria...
- 170 killed
- March 11, 2004: Madrid train bombings in Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
- 191 killed
- September 4, 2004: Beslan school hostage crisis
The Beslan school hostage crisis began when a group of armed Muslim terrorists, demanding an end to the Second Chechen War, took more than 1,100 people hostage on September 1, 2004, at School Number One in the town of Beslan, North Ossetia-Alania, an autonomous republic in the...
in RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
- 344 killed
- February 28, 2005: Al Hillah bombing
The 2005 Al Hillah bombing killed 127 people on February 28, 2005 in Al Hillah, Iraq.A suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden vehicle into a line of people queueing outside a police recruiting centre and exploded it, killing 127 people and injuring hundreds more. The explosion also affected a...
in Iraq - 127 killed
- July 11, 2006: Mumbai train bombings in India
India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
- 207 killed
- March 27, 2007: Tal Afar bombings and massacre
The 2007 Tal Afar bombings took place on March 27, 2007, when two truck bombs targeted Shia areas of the town of Tal Afar, Iraq, killing 152 and wounding 347 people.One suicide bomber lured victims to buy wheat loaded on his truck, then detonated it...
in Iraq - 152 killed
- August 14, 2007: Yazidi communities bombings
__NOEDITSECTION__The 2007 Yazidi communities bombings occurred at around 8pm local time on August 14, 2007, when four co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks detonated in the Iraqi towns of Qahtaniya and Jazeera , near Mosul...
in Iraq - 796 killed
- November 26-28, 2008 - 2008 Mumbai attacks
The 2008 Mumbai attacks were more than ten coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai, India's financial capital and its largest city...
in IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
- 185 killed
See also
- Crimes against humanity
- Mass grave
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple, usually unidentified human corpses. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave...
- School shooting
- Suicide bomber
- Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.At present, there is no internationally agreed definition of terrorism...
- War crime
.War crimes are "violations of the laws or customs of war"; including "murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps", "the murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war", the killing of hostages, "the wanton destruction of cities, towns...
External links