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Democide 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 of genocide, and it has found currency among other scholars.^[1][2][3]

Contents 1 Definition 2 Research on democide 3 Numbers 4 Update on democides 5 See also 6 External links 7 References

[edit] Definition

According to Rummel, genocide has three different meanings. The ordinary meaning is murder by government of people due to their national, ethnic, racial, or religious group membership. The legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This also includes nonlethal acts that in the end eliminate the group, such as preventing births or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group. A generalized meaning of genocide is similar to the ordinary meaning but also includes government killings of political opponents or otherwise intentional murder. In order to avoid confusion over which meaning is intended, Rummel created the term democide for the third meaning.^[4]

Rummel defines democide as "The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder". For example, government-sponsored killings for political reasons would be considered democide. Democide can also include deaths arising from "intentionally or knowingly reckless and depraved disregard for life"; this brings into account many deaths arising through various neglects and abuses, such as forced mass starvation. Rummel explicitly excludes battle deaths in his definition. Capital punishment, actions taken against armed civilians during mob action or riot, and the deaths of noncombatants killed during attacks on military targets so long as the primary target is military, are not considered democide.^[5]

He has further stated: "I use the civil definition of murder, where someone can be guilty of murder if they are responsible in a reckless and wanton way for the loss of life, as in incarcerating people in camps where they may soon die of malnutrition, unattended disease, and forced labor, or deporting them into wastelands where they may die rapidly from exposure and disease."

Some examples of democide cited by Rummel include the Great Purges carried out by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, the deaths from the colonial policy in the Congo Free State, and Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward resulting in a famine which killed millions of people. According to Rummel, these were not cases of genocide, because those who were killed were not selected on the basis of their race, but were killed in large numbers as a result of government policies. Famine is classified by Rummel as democide if it fits the definition above.

For instance, Rummel only recently classified Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward as democide. He believed that Mao's policies were largely responsible for the famine, but he was misled about it, and finally when he found out, he stopped it and changed his policies. Thus, according to Rummel, is not an intentional famine and thus not a democide. However, contradictory claims from Jung Chang and John Halliday's controversial Mao: the Unknown Story allege that Mao knew about the famine from the beginning but didn't care, and eventually Mao had to be stopped by a meeting of 7,000 top Communist Party members. Based on the book's claims, Rummel now views the famine as intentional and a democide.^[6]

[edit] Research on democide

Accusations of mass killings by a government are relatively common. Less common are well-documented cases with enough evidence to support the accusation. Almost all accusations are disputed to some degree, although the evidence in some cases is stronger than in others.

Rummel's sources include scholarly works, refugee reports, memoirs, biographies, historical analyses, actual exhumed body counts, records kept by the murderers themselves, and so on. In short his data are all estimates available in English for all nations over a period of a century, and available in the libraries he worked in, including the Library of Congress.

He provides the most probable death toll along a low and a high count that are meant to be the most unlikely low and high number of deaths, and thus to bracket the probable true count. It is to determine these lows and highs that he includes what some others might consider absurd estimates. His published books do not include new research and new sources available after the publication date.

Rummel's counts 43 million deaths due to democide during Stalin's regime inside and outside the Soviet Union. This is much higher than an often quoted figure of 20 million. Rummel has responded that this is based on a figure from Robert Conquest's book The Great Terror from 1968 and that Conquest's qualifier "almost certainly too low" is usually forgotten. Conquest's calculations excluded camp deaths after 1950, and before 1936; executions 1939–53; the vast deportation of the people of captive nations into the camps, and their deaths 1939–1953; the massive deportation within the Soviet Union of minorities 1941–1944 and their deaths; and those the Soviet Red Army and secret police executed throughout Eastern Europe after their conquest during 1944–1945. Moreover, the Holodomor that killed 5 million in 1932–1934 is not included.^[7]

His research shows that the death toll from democide is far greater than the death toll from war. After studying over 8,000 reports of government caused deaths, Rummel estimates that there have been 262 million victims of democide in the last century. According to his figures, six times as many people have died from the inflictions of people working for governments than have died in battle.

One of his main findings is that liberal democracies have much less democide than authoritarian regimes.^[8] He argues that there is a relation between political power and democide. Political mass murder grows increasingly common as political power becomes unconstrained. At the other end of the scale, where power is diffuse, checked, and balanced, political violence is a rarity. According to Rummel, "The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom." Rummel concludes: "Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth."

Several other researchers have found similar results. "Numerous researchers point out that democratic norms and political structures constrain elite decisions about the use of repression against their citizens whereas autocratic elites are not so constrained." "Once in place, democratic institutions — even partial ones — reduce the likelihood of armed conflict and all but eliminate the risk that it will lead to geno/politicide."^[9]

For books, articles, data, and analyses regarding democide, see Rummel's website. In particular, he has an extensive FAQ. He has also made his many sources and the calculations used, from a pre-publisher manuscript of his book Statistics of Democide, available online. Researchers often give widely different estimates of mass murder. They use different definitions, methodology, and sources. For example, some include battle deaths in their calculations. Matthew White has compiled some of these different estimates.

[edit] Numbers

The numbers of people killed in democides are often hard to certify and there are often debates of how many people were actually killed, like the highest and lowest amounts for these dictators, for instance :

Mao Zedong 20 million to 80 million

Joseph Stalin 15 million to 60 million

Adolf Hitler 6 million to 20 million.

The reality is often roughly halfway between the highest and lowest estimates. Also some dictators democides are more widley publicised than others, such as the Holocaust which some (but very few) Germans have said has been over exaggerated because they were on the losing side in the war. Some dictators have been more murderous by population of the country which they ruled: Mao Zedong's massive 70 million was about 10% of China's population at the time, while Pol Pot, believed to be the most murderous dictator in proportion to the population killed roughly 2.5 million people believed to be a massive 40% of Cambodia's population.

Genocides and Politicides from 1955 to 2001 From No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?, Barbara Harff, 2003.

Location	Dates	Est. Deaths (low)	Est. Deaths (high)
Sudan	10/56–3/72	400,000	600,000
South Vietnam	1/65–4/75	400,000	500,000
China	3/59–12/59	65,000	65,000
Iraq	6/63–3/75	30,000	60,000
Algeria	7/62–12/62	9,000	30,000
Rwanda	12/63–6/64	12,000	20,000
Congo-K	2/64–1/65	1,000	10,000
Burundi	10/65–12/73	140,000	140,000
Indonesia	11/65–7/66	500,000	1,000,000
China	5/66–3/75	400,000	850,000
Guatemala	7/78–12/96	60,000	200,000
East Pakistan (Now Bangladesh)	3/71–12/71	1,000,000	3,000,000
Uganda	2/72–4/79	50,000	400,000
Philippines	9/72–6/76	60,000	60,000
Pakistan	2/73–7/77	5,000	10,000
Chile	9/73–12/76	5,000	10,000
Angola	11/75–2001	500,000	500,000
Cambodia	4/75–1/79	1,900,000	3,500,000
Indonesia	12/75–7/92	100,000	200,000
Argentina	3/76–12/80	9,000	20,000
Ethiopia	7/76–12/79	10,000	10,000
Congo-K	3/77–12/79	3,000	4,000
Afghanistan	4/78–4/92	1,800,000	1,800,000
Burma	1/78–12/78	5,000	5,000
El Salvador	1/80–12/89	40,000	60,000
Uganda	12/80–1/86	200,000	500,000
Syria	4/81–2/82	5,000	30,000
Iran	6/81–12/92	10,000	20,000
Sudan	9/83–2003	2,000,000	2,000,000
Iraq	3/88–6/91	180,000	180,000
Somalia	5/88–1/91	15,000	50,000
Burundi	1988	5,000	20,000
Sri Lanka	9/89–1/90	13,000	30,000
Bosnia	5/92–11/95	225,000	225,000
Burundi	10/93–5/94	50,000	50,000
Rwanda	4/94–7/94	500,000	1,000,000
Serbia	12/98–7/99	10,000	10,000

20th century democides causing more than one million deaths. From Death by Government, Rummel, 1987. Several estimates have been revised after this date: China, the colonial ones, in general.

Location	Dates	Est. Deaths
Cambodia	1975–1979	2,035,000
China (KMT)	1928–1949	10,075,000
China (PRC)	1949–1987	77,277,000
China (Mao Soviets)	1923–1949	3,465,000
Colonialism	1900–Independence	50,000,000
Congo Free State	1885–1908	est C20th 3,480,000 total of 10,000,000
Germany	1933–1945	20,946,000
Japan	1936–1945	5,964,000
Pakistan	1958–1987	1,503,000
Poland	1945–1948	1,585,000
Mexico	1900–1920	1,417,000
North Korea	1948–1987	1,563,000
Russia	1900–1917	1,066,000
Turkey	1909–1918	1,883,000
Vietnam	1945–1987	1,670,000
Yugoslavia (Tito)	1944–1987	1,072,000
U.S.S.R.	1917–1987	61,911,000

Selected pre-20th century democides. From Death by Government, Rummel, 1987 [1].

Events	Dates	Est. Deaths
Christian Crusades	1095–1272	1,000,000
Albigensian Crusade	1208–1249	200,000
By Mongols	14th–15th Century	29,927,000
By Aztecs	Centuries	>1,000,000
Thirty Years' War	1618–1648	5,750,000
Witch Hunt	15th–17th Century	100,000
Spanish Inquisition	16th–18th Century	350,000
In China	221 BC–19th Century	33,519,000
In Iran	5th–19th Century	>2,000,000
In Russia	10th–19th Century	>1,007,000
In Ottoman Empire	12th–19th Century	>2,000,000
In India	13th–19th Century	>4,511,000
Slavery of Africans	1451–1870	17,267,000
In Japan	1570–19th Century	>1,500,000
Native Americans	16th–19th Century	13,778,000
French Revolution	1793–1794	263,000

Bloodiest dictators for the millennium.Rummel, [2][3][4].

Dictator	Dates	Est. Deaths
Qing Dynasty, mainly Empress Dowager Cixi	1859-64, Tai Ping Rebellion	12,000,000
Genghis Khan	1215–1233	4,000,000
Adolf Hitler	1933–1945	21,000,000
Chiang Kai-shek	1921–1948	10,000,000
Kublai Khan	1252–1279	19,000,000
Vladimir Lenin	1917–1924	4,000,000
Leopold II of Belgium	1885–1908	10,000,000
Pol Pot	1968–1987	2,000,000
Joseph Stalin	1929–1953	43,000,000
Hideki Tojo	1941–1945	4,000,000
Mao Zedong	1923–1976	77,000,000

[edit] Update on democides

In May 2005, Rummel guessed the number for Darfur Conflict to be over 400,000.

In November 2005, he estimated the alleged democide in Mao's China (1949–1975) at 73,000,000.^[10][11]

In December 2005, he raised his estimate for colonial democide to 50,000,000 and estimated the democide in the Congo Free State to 10,000,000.^[12][13]

[edit] See also

• Genocide
• Democratic peace theory
• Linguicide
• Genocides in history
• Policide
• Rummel's Law
• An Gorta Mór - The Great Irish Famine

[edit] External links

• Definition of Democide - by R.J. Rummel, from his book Death by Government.
• Never Again - international genocide prevention group; organized 2004 Rwanda Forum at the Imperial War Museum in London.
• Never Again Wiki
• Power Kills - Rummel's website.
• Genocides, Politicides, and Other Mass Murder Since 1945, With Stages in 2006 - Genocide Watch

[edit] References