The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities (113 page)

13.
Chirot,
Modern Tyrants, p. 195.

14.
Spence,
Search for Modern China, p. 583; Chang and Halliday,
Mao, p. 428.

15.
Meisner,
Mao's China and After, p. 237.

16.
Davis,
Late Victorian Holocausts, p. 251, quoting Amartya Sen.

17.
Chang and Halliday,
Mao, p. 433.

18.
Ibid., p. 430; Human Rights Watch,
The Three Gorges Dam in China: Forced Resettlement, Suppression of Dissent and Labor Rights Concerns, Human Rights Watch Reports, vol. 7, no. 1 (February 1995),
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1995/China1.htm
; Thayer Watkins, "The Catastrophic Dam Failures in China in August 1975,"
http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/aug1975.htm
(accessed March 14, 2011).

19.
Chang and Halliday,
Mao, pp. 453–457.

20.
Margolin, "China," in Courtois et al.,
Black Book of Communism, p. 546.

21.
Chirot,
Modern Tyrants, p. 197.

22.
Meisner,
Mao's China and After, p. 313; Chang and Halliday,
Mao, pp. 505–506.

23.
Chang and Halliday,
Mao, p. 517.

24.
Ibid., pp. 520–521.

25.
Spence,
Search for Modern China, p. 606.

26.
Chirot,
Modern Tyrants, p. 205.

27.
Ibid., pp. 204–205.

28.
Marcus Mabry, "Cannibals of the Red Guard,"
Newsweek, January 18, 1993, p. 38; Chirot,
Modern Tyrants, pp. 205–206.

29.
Chirot,
Modern Tyrants, p. 206.

30.
Spence,
Search for Modern China, pp. 616–617.

31.
Richard L. Walker,
The Human Cost of Communism in China, Report to the Subcommittee on Internal Security of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1971).

32.
Courtois et al.,
Black Book of Communism, p. 4.

33.
Chang and Halliday,
Mao, p. 3.

34.
Estimates of deaths in the first few years: Margolin, "China," in Courtois et al.,
Black Book of Communism, p. 479 (1 to 5 million); Spence,
Search for Modern China, p. 517 ("as many as 1 million or more"); Johnson,
Modern Times, p. 447 ("At least 2 million"), p. 548 ("may have been as high as 15 million, though a figure of 1 to 3 million is more likely"); Meisner,
Mao's China and After, p. 72 "2,000,000 people executed during the first three years"); Chirot,
Modern Tyrants, p. 187 ("Chou En-lai later estimated that 830,000 were killed between 1949 and 1956. Mao . . . estimated . . . from two to three million"); Chang and Halliday,
Mao, p. 324 ("Some 3 million perished either by execution, mob violence or suicide "); Rummel,
China's Bloody Century, table II.A, line 37 (4.5 million). The median of these seven estimates is 2 million.

35.
Becker,
Hungry Ghosts, p. 270. Other estimates of the death toll of the Great Leap Forward: Spence,
Search for Modern China, p. 583 ("The result was . . . a famine that claimed 20 million lives or more"); Meisner,
Mao's China and After, p. 237 ("demographers calculate . . . 15,000,000 famine-related deaths. . . . [S]ome scholars have concluded that as many as 30,000,000 people perished"); Chirot,
Modern Tyrants, pp. 195–196 ("Some party officials later estimated that over 40 million died. The economist Nicholas Lardy . . . estimates that between 16 and 28 million died"); Chang and Halliday,
Mao, p. 438 ("Close to 38 million people died of starvation and overwork").

36.
Chirot,
Modern Tyrants, p. 198 ("some estimates of deaths go as high as 20 million").

37.
Estimates of deaths in the Cultural Revolution: Johnson,
Modern Times, p. 558 ("The Agence France Presse, in the most widely respected figure, estimated (3 February 1979) that the Red Guards had murdered about 400,000 people"); Meisner,
Mao's China and After, p. 354 ("a widely accepted nationwide figure of 400,000 Cultural Revolution deaths, a number first reported in 1979 by the Agence France Presse correspondent"); Palmowski,
Dictionary of Twentieth Century World History ("half million"); Chirot,
Modern Tyrants, p. 198 ("At least one million died"); Brzezinski,
Out of Control (1 million to 2 million); Rummel,
China's Bloody Century, table II.A, line 294a (1,613,000); John Heidenrich,
How to Prevent Genocide, A Guide for Policy Makers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), p. 7 (2 million); Chang and Halliday,
Mao, p. 547 ("at least 3 million died violent deaths"). The median of these eight estimates is around 1.5 million.

38.
David Aikman, "The Laogai Archipelago,"
Weekly Standard, September 29, 1997.

39.
Margolin, "China," in Courtois et al.,
Black Book of Communism, p. 498.

40.
Chang and Halliday,
Mao, p. 325.

Korean War

1.
The median of eight published estimates. See
http://www.necrometrics.com/20c1m.htm#Ko
.

2.
"Cheju April 3rd Massacre to Be Unearthed" (30,000 to 80,000); Wehrfritz and Lee, "Ghosts of Cheju" (60,000).

3.
Chang and Halliday,
Mao, pp. 358–359.

4.
Hastings,
Korean War, pp. 77–82.

5.
Charles J. Hanley and Jae-Soon Chang, "Thousands Killed by US's Korean Ally," Associated Press, May 18, 2008.

6.
Center of Military History, "Korean War," p. 56.

7.
"Thousands Perished in North Korean Outrages during War," Associated Press, October 13, 1999; Andrew Nahm,
Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Korea (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004), p. 111.

8.
Hastings,
Korean War, p. 304.

9.
"U.S. Allowed Korean Massacre in 1950," Associated Press, July 5, 2008.

10.
Hastings,
Korean War, pp. 138–139.

11.
Ibid., pp. 128–146.

12.
Center of Military History, "Korean War," pp. 561–562.

13.
Ibid., p. 565.

14.
Matray, "Revisiting Korea"; Chang and Halliday,
Mao, p. 368.

15.
Hastings,
Korean War, p. 306.

North Korea

1.
This is a pure guess. A million or two may have died in the famine, plus a million or two may have died of oppression. The numbers could easily be twice or half as much. One estimate (Omestad, "Gulag Nation") is that 400,000 political prisoners died between 1973 and 2003, and the regime was already a quarter century old by that time. Courtois et al., in
The Black Book of Communism, estimate 2,000,000 deaths (p. 4), including 100,000 killed in party purges and 1,500,000 dead in concentration camps, without counting the famine (p. 564).

2.
Chirot,
Modern Tyrants, p. 248.

3.
Liz McGregor, "Birthday Blues for the 'Sun of Mankind,' "
Sydney Morning Herald, April 29, 1989.

4.
Goodspeed, "Grim North Korea Breaks Its Isolation."

5.
Pierre Rigoulot, "Crimes, Terror, and Secrecy in North Korea," in Stephane Courtois et al.,
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 561.

6.
Ibid., p. 560.

7.
Carol Clark, "Kim Jong Il: 'Dear Leader' or Demon?" CNN Interactive, 2001, http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/korea/story/leader/kim.jong.il/. (accessed March 9, 2008).

8.
Wallechinsky,
Tyrants, p. 41.

9.
Goozner, "World Watches North Korea."

10.
Goodspeed, "Grim North Korea Breaks Its Isolation."

11.
"Top Defector Says Famine Has Killed over Three Million Koreans," Agence France Presse, March 13, 1999; "North Korea Admits Its Famine Has Killed Hundreds of Thousands," Associated Press, May 10, 1999 (the official North Korean figures indicated 220,000 deaths; U.S. delegation estimated 2 million; South Korean intelligence said the population had fallen by 3 million); Tania Branigan, "North Korea Life Expectancy Falls, Census Reveals,"
Guardian, February 22, 2010 (600,000 to 1 million).

The Black Chapter of Communism

1.
Jean-Louis Margolin, "Cambodia," in Stephane Courtois et al.,
The Black Book of Communism; Crimes, Terror, Repression, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 591.

2.
Yugoslavia: Estimates run the gamut, with the highest being almost nine times the lowest: Mazower,
Dark Continent, p. 235 (as many as 60,000); Chuck Sudetic, "Piles of Bones in Yugoslavia Point to Partisan Massacres,"
New York Times, July 9, 1990 (70,000 to 100,000); John R. Lampe,
Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 227 (100,000); Noel Malcolm,
Bosnia: A Short History (New York: NYU Press, 1996), p. 193 (250,000); anti-Communist emigrés as cited in Sudetic, "Piles of Bones" (ca. 500,000); R. J. Rummel,
Statistics of Democide (Münster: LIT, 1998), p. 172 (500,000). Both the geometric mean of the high and low and the median come to around 175,000.

3.
Poland: Rosenberg,
Haunted Land, p. 145.

4.
Bulgaria: Andrew Alexander, "Bulgarians Reveal Labor-Camp Fate of Those Who Criticized Government,"
Orange County Register, July 1, 1990.

5.
Cuba: John Rice, "40 Years of Revolution,"
Star Tribune (Minneapolis), December 27, 1998 ("Historian Hugh Thomas estimated 5,000 people might have been executed by 1970").

6.
Jean-Louis Margolin, "Cambodia," in Stephane Courtois et al.,
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 591.

7.
Pierre Rigoulot, "Crimes Terror, and Secrecy in North Korea," in Stephane Courtois et al.,
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 552–553.