NewsRescue- In this list prepared by Juan Carlos, the
unusuals include, Nigeria’s dictator from the Middle Belt, the young
Christian general Yakubu Gowon who, together with his army general, ex
president, Olusegun Obasanjo, led the infamous Biafra assault. Also on
the list is
Belgian king, Leopold, who according to popular counts, exterminated no less than 25 Million Africans
especially in the Congo valley. His numbers are more than listed below.
Leopold’s statue is still revered in Belgium and many colleges are
named after the man behind Africa’s most grave holocaust. Not included
in the list however is George W. Bush, the president of America who
caused the death of over 2 million in the Iraq false WMD war.
This is Juan Carlos’ list:
Top Ten Most Evil Dictators of All Time (in order of kill count)
Some people make horrible decisions, others are just bad presidents, a
few are bloodthirsty, many are extremists, a couple are warmongers, and
all of these guys are a mix. Ten of our political leaders in the last
130 years have been the architects of the most horrific genocides,
systematic murders, blockades, brutal wars, and policy reforms history
has ever recorded.
Where to begin? Maybe an icebreaker for you next dinner party? Did
you know the word “genocide” was coined in 1943 to describe when the
Armenians were slaughtered haphazardly by Turkish leader Ismail Enver?
Until then there was no specific word for it in our language. It makes
me think about how much more cognizant we’ve become in this last century
to these events. So, a quick toast between you and I to a more
peaceable future where less of what follows below is allowed to happen.
Sit back, but don’t relax.
10. Yakubu Gowon (1.1 million deaths)
Breakdown: 1 million civilians on the wrong side of a
blockade caused by a war of secession in Nigeria and 100,000 soldiers
who died in that war.
It starts as many sad stories do with
precious beautiful oil.
It had been found in the Niger delta where tensions were already high
between the Eastern region (led by Ojukwu) and the rest of the country
(governed by Yakubu). A dummy agreement was signed between them called
the “Aburi Accord”, but it meant nothing to either leader. Yakubu
started to put pressure on the region, and tested how much sway he had
in the area versus Ojukwu. Well Ojukwu being no slouch declared
secession from the rest of Nigeria and became the “Republic of Biafra”.
This began a war that caused the deaths of 100,000 soldiers, and much
worse, a blockade on the region which starved 1 million civilians.
9. Mengistu Haile Mariam (400,000 – 1.5 million deaths)
Breakdown: As president of Ethiopia and colonel of “the
Derg” (communist militia) Mengitsu systematically killed those against
him in the “Red Terror” campaign.
Mengistu Haile Mariam is (as in still alive) a
politician who presided over Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991. The way he got
into power was by smothering the previous president Haile Selassie
although he has denied those rumors. His biggest claim to fame is the
Ethiopian Red Terror which was a campaign of repression led by the Derg (communist militia in Ethiopia).
In his introductory speech Mengitsu yelled, “Death to
counterrevolutionaries! Death to the EPRP!” Then he took three bottles
filled with blood and threw them to the ground.
It was an auspicious beginning to say the least. Thousands were
killed and found dead on the streets in the years that followed. Much of
the murdering can be attributed to the friendly neighborhood watch
there known as “Kebeles”. As if killing innocents wasn’t enough they
would then charge the family a tax to return the dead body to them. The
tax was aptly named “the wasted bullet”! Are you serious Mengitsu?
However there was an even more gruesome fate of being left on the street
where wild hyenas would fight over the dead. The campaign has been
described as one of the worst mass murders ever in Africa. Mengitsu is
even known to have
garroted people to death.
8. Kim Il Sung (1.6 million deaths)
Breakdown: Unpopular among his people Kim used the U.S. as a
scapegoat and forced the country to believe in his delusion or else.
Before our very own Kim Jong-Il was his murderous father Kim Il Sung
who led North Korea in a terrible direction. He fought for a command
economy that allowed the government to make all decisions for the
country. For various reasons the people never seemed to love the man,
and so his hold on power was tenuous at best. Like most crazies he
blamed somebody else, in this case the USA, and said they had spread
disease throughout its population. He also pulled a Stalin, and had
large-scale purges. His underlying reason was that it would scare people
into believing he was telling the truth. Kim’s purge was a little
different than Stalin’s though in that there were no trials. During his
tenure prison camps sprung up all over the country to contain the ever
growing masses of people against Kim Il Sung.
7. Pol Pot (1.7 million deaths)
Breakdown: Forced city folk to relocate to farms and forced them into hard labor.
Pol Pot was the leader of the communist movement in Cambodia. He
attempted to “cleanse” the country and it resulted in the death of an
estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million people. There was an interesting policy
going around called agrarian collectivization which he put into practice
in the late 1970′s. Basically it forced city folk to head out to the
farms to do some labor and vice versa for farmers. As you might guess,
and hindsight is 20/20, neither group was very good at their new jobs.
Pol didn’t stop at enslaving his own people though. He also didn’t feed
them well, gave them little medical care, and executed many of them. The
net result was killing off approximately 1/5 of the Cambodian
population!
6. Ismail Enver Pasha (2.5 million deaths)
Breakdown: 1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek
Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians
(1915-20)
He began his career as a Turkish military officer and leader in the
Young Turk revolution. Eventually he rose to power and led the Ottoman
Empire in both Balkan Wars and World War I. As a war minister Enver was
not very useful, and was defeated over and over. His crushing loss at
the Battle of Sarikamish needed a scapegoat, and that’s when he decided
to blame Armenians for the failure. That is what began what is now known
as the
Armenian Genocide. The word “genocide” was coined to describe this event.
Etymology from Wikipedia:
Coined in 1943 by Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), a Polish-Jewish legal scholar, to describe what the Turkish government (ca 1915–18) perpetrated against the Armenian people, now called the Armenian Genocide. From the stem of Ancient Greek (génos), “race, kind” or Latin “tribe, clan” (-cide).
5. Hideki Tojo (5 million deaths)
Breakdown: Waged unprovoked wars against China, USA, Netherlands, and France.
Hideki Tojo was a general in the Imperial Japanese
Army. He assumed the position of Prime Minister and held Army Minister
concurrently. As if that wasn’t enough he also held other major
positions like Home Minister, Foreign Minister, Education Minister, and
Commerce Minister. His major contributions to education were teaching
militaristic and nationalist indoctrination. His version of homeland
security was approving
eugenics measures which essentially made a distinction between pure blood and mixed blood Japanese families.
During World War II Tojo started winning battles and the public loved
him for it. He really bought into the Nazi Kool-aid, and held
steadfastly with Germany. When the tide turned, and he began losing, it
was devastating. Eventually he went into seclusion. He was tried for war
crimes and found guilty of waging wars of aggression, wars in violation
of international law, and waging unprovoked war against many countries.
Not to mention ordering, authorizing, and permitting inhumane treatment
of Prisoners of War.
NewsRescue-
Imposing statue of King Leopold II on his horse, proudly found at Place
du Trône surrounding the Royal Palace in Brussels, Belgium. How about a
Hitler statue of same sort in Germany?
4. Leopold II of Belgium (2-15 million deaths)
Breakdown: Created a colony called the “Congo Free State”, enslaved its people, and forced them into labor plants.
Leopold II was the King of the Belgians, and
believed in colonialism. He thought acquiring colonies overseas was
essential to a great country and was always scheming. The problem was
Belgium really didn’t care, and so Leopold went into business for
himself. He started a company that seemed like it was doing good called
the International African Society. A year later he used that company to
travel to Congo, laid claim to a plot of land 14 times the size of
Belgium, and made 14 countries agree (USA included) that he was free to
rule it with his own private militia. He then forced the indigenous
populations into forced labor, created a bustling rubber industry, and
abused his workers grievously.
Missionary John Harris on returning from Congo said:
“I have just returned from a journey inland to the village of Insongo
Mboyo. The abject misery and utter abandon is positively indescribable.”
Estimates of the death toll range from two to fifteen million which
could all have been avoided if 14 countries didn’t hand him the keys to
the car!
3. Adolf Hitler (17 million deaths)
Breakdown: Concentration camps and civilians in WWII.
Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi Party. He was the absolute dictator of Germany from 1934 to 1945
.
He gained support by promoting values like German nationalism and
anti-semitism. Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933 and began the
Third Reich. Hitler was power hungry as all hell, hated the shit out of
Jews (and others), and wanted hegemony in Europe. The militarization
that was needed to complete such a lofty goal led to the outbreak of
World War II. Nazi forces engaged in the systematic murder of as many as
17 million civilians,an estimated six million of whom were Jews, and
1.5 million Romanis.
2. Jozef Stalin (23 million deaths)
Breakdown: The great purges and Ukraine’s famine.
Jozef Stalin was the first Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922
– 1953. After Lenin’s death in 1924, he became the leader of the Soviet
Union. Stalin didn’t take long in launching a new economy that screwed
up food production across the country so bad it caused massive famine.
Between 1922-23 it reached such catastrophic proportions
everything went to shit. In Ukraine this dark period is known as
Holodomor.
Its widely believed that Soviet policies caused the famine there and
was designed as an attack on Ukrainian nationalism. Estimates on the
total number of casualties within Soviet Ukraine range from 2.6 million
to 10 million! During the late 1930s Stalin launched another wonderfully
titled initiative called the
Great Purge
(also known as the “Great Terror”). It was a paranoid campaign to kill
off the people who opposed him, and his targets were often executed.
In 1939 Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with the Nazis.
Eventually Germany violated the pact, the Soviet Union joined the
allies, and they racked up 23.9 million deaths (the largest death toll
in the war).
1. Mao Zedong (49-78 million deaths)
Breakdown: Policy reforms like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Mao Zedong was a Chinese revolutionary, political
theorist, and communist leader who led the People’s Republic of China.
Mao, while controversial, is still widely considered a savior of the
nation. I did a semester abroad in China in 2001 after falling in love
with its history, and was surprised in my conversations that many people
thought Mao had done 70% – 80% good things. During his first five
years from 1949 – 53 he is said to have systematically killed between 4
to 6 million people by sentencing them to die or by sending them to
“reform through labor” camps. He organized mass repressions, established
execution quotas, and defended his actions in these early years as
necessary for securing power for “The People’s Republic of China”.
His social programs the
Great Leap Forward and the
Cultural Revolution
are two of the most ill-fated, poorly named, initiatives ever. The
first was an effort to rapidly industrialize China. His focus was on
making China a premier exporter of steel, and to this end he asked
everybody to make it. The problem was it got many citizens to make
smelting shops in their backyards. Not only was the steel of little
value, but it was made from everything lying around the house including
their own cooking supplies! Without the tools to make food, no money
coming in from the steel, and no money to survive ~
a lot of
people starved to death. The estimates on this program alone are 20
million deaths! Think about that number. Really think about it. Then ask
yourself… why would you EVER let someone back into power after such an
insanely bad decision.Well, they took the reigns away from him for a
short time.
In the interim Mao started the socialist education movement. He aimed
the concept at young ones who would eventually wrest the power away
from the older guard. By 1964 this movement was renamed the “four
cleanups movement” whose goal was cleansing
politics, economics, ideas, and organization
of “reactionaries”. This led to the formation of the “Red Guards” who
were organized to punish intellectuals and take out Mao’s political
adversaries. The Cultural Revolution was now underway, and its
overriding mission was to abolish: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits,
and Old Ideas. Something Mao fervently believed in was that destruction
and chaos could bring re-birth. So he told his followers to destroy
buildings, sacred objects, talk back to ones elders, punish them, turn
them in, and kill those who did not agree. By 1968 things were starting
to look pretty good for Mao all over again, and so he put into place the
decade long “Down to the Countryside Movement” which forced young
intellectuals to move out to the country to become farmers. Sadly, the
people he pushed out there were the same Red Guards who had helped him
get power. Estimates of the death toll are between 40,000 – 7 million
depending on who you ask.
Finally, there is the 100 flowers movement which just needs an
abbreviated mention here. Mao asked people to come forth and tell him
how he should govern China. Intellectuals and liberals bit at the
chance to tell him what they really thought, and were encouraged by the
Communist party to do so. Then in a sudden change of heart, or an
incredibly crafty mission to out his haters, the government persecuted
500,000 of them who were considered to be “dangerous thinkers”.
Mao is essentially like that girlfriend/boyfriend who keeps on taking
a shit on you, but is so damn charming you hardly notice. His policies
and political purges from 1949 to 1976 caused the deaths of 49 to 78
million people.
The moral of the story is ~
Let’s stop allowing evil political dictators to take office. And if
we do have someone bad in office we can find better ways to get them out
than murdering them, wars, and aggressive confrontations. Link:
http://popten.net/2010/05/top-ten-most-evil-dictators-of-all-time-in-order-of-kill-count/
NewsRescue
Former
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole has chided
Nigerian leaders for not giving the youth the opportunity to lead,
rather they prefer to ‘die in office.’
