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Thursday, April 13, 2023

Islamic republic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_republic

The term Islamic republic has been used in different ways. Some Muslim religious leaders have used it as the name for a theoretical form of Islamic theocratic government enforcing sharia, or laws compatible with sharia. The term has also been used for a sovereign state taking a compromise position between a purely Islamic caliphate and a secular, nationalist republic -- neither an Islamic monarchy nor secular republic. In other cases it is used merely as a symbol of cultural identity.

There are also a number of states where Islam is the state religion and that are (at least partly) ruled by Islamic laws, but carry only "republic" in their official names, not "Islamic republic" — examples include Iraq, Yemen and Maldives. Other supporters of strict sharia law, (such as the Taliban), prefer the title "Islamic emirate", as emirates were common throughout Islamic history and "republic" has a Western origin -- coming from the Roman (from Latin res publica 'public affair') indicating that the "supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives", with no mention of obedience to Allah or sharia law.

Currently, (as of 2022), the name is used in the official title of three states -- the Islamic Republics of Iran, Pakistan, and Mauritania. Pakistan first adopted the title under the constitution of 1956. Mauritania adopted it on 28 November 1958. Iran adopted it after the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty. Despite having similar names, the countries differ greatly in their governments and laws. Of the three, two of which, Iran and Mauritania are religious theocratic states. When Pakistan adopted the name in 1956, Islam was yet to be declared the state religion since gaining independence in 1947; they did so upon adopting a new constitution in 1973.

Iran officially uses the full title in all governance names referring to the country (e.g. the Islamic Republic of Iran Army or the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting); as opposed to its equivalents in Pakistan which are called the Pakistan Armed Forces and the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation. Also unlike the other countries, Iran uses the IRI acronym (Islamic Republic of Iran) as part of official acronyms.

List of current Islamic republics

Map showing Islamic republic countries that use the title in their official names
State Date of name adoption Government type
 Islamic Republic of Iran 1 April 1979 Unitary theocratic republic
 Islamic Republic of Mauritania 28 November 1958 Unitary semi-presidential republic
 Islamic Republic of Pakistan 23 March 1956 Federal parliamentary republic

Iran

See also: Politics of Iran

The creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran was a dramatic, historical event, following the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979 by the Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. "Islamic" in the country's title was not a symbol of cultural identity, but indicated specific governmental system based on rule by Islamic jurists enforcing Islamic law. The system was based on The Jurist's Guardianship: Islamic Government, a work of the revolution's leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, written before Khomeini came to power, and known by Khomeini's followers but not by the general public. It argued that rather than elections and legislators, Islam required traditional Islamic law (sharia), and proper enforcement of sharia required a leading Islamic jurist (faqih) (such as Khomeini himself, who served as the first faqih "guardian" or Supreme Leader of Iran) to provide political "guardianship" (wilayat or velayat) over the people and nation (wilayat al-faqih). All the Muslim world should be united in such a state. With it, the entire non-Muslim world will evidentially "capitulate" to its courage and vigour; without it, Islam would fall victim to heresy, "obsolescence and decay".

The new government held a referendum for public approval to change Iran from a monarchy to an Islamic republic in March 1979, two months after the Islamic Revolution took power. While some political groups had suggested various names for the ideology of the Iranian revolution such as the Republic (without specifying Islam) or the Democratic Republic; Khomeini called for Iranians to vote for the name Islamic Republic, "not a word more and not a word less". When an Iranian journalist asked Khomeini what exactly Islamic Republic meant, Khomeini stated that the term republic has the same sense as other uses and Islamic republic has considered both Islamic ideology and the choice of people. The day after the vote was complete, it was announced that 98.2% of the Iranian voters had voted to approve the new name.

Unlike Khomeini's original vision, the Islamic Republic is a "republic" with elections (Khomeini had originally described his "Islamic government" as "not ... based on the approval of laws in accordance with the opinion of the majority"); it has a The Islamic Republic also contains many trapings of a modern state -- a president, cabinet and legislature (Khomeini mentioned none of these except for the legislature, which his government would not have because "no one has the right to legislate ... except ... the Divine Legislator"). Some, however, have argued that the legislature (and president, etc.) has been kept in a subordinate position in keeping with Khomeini's idea of government being a guardianship by jurists.

According to the constitution, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a system based on the following beliefs:

# the One God (as stated in the phrase "There is no other god except God"), His exclusive sovereignty and right to legislate, and the necessity of submission to His commands;

  1. divine revelation and its fundamental role in setting forth the laws;
  2. the return to God in the Hereafter, and the constructive role of this belief in the course of man's ascent towards God;
  3. the justice of God in creation and legislation;
  4. continuous leadership and perpetual guidance, and its fundamental role in ensuring the uninterrupted process of the revolution of Islam;
  5. the exalted dignity and value of man, and his freedom coupled with responsibility before God; in which equity, justice, political, economic, social and cultural independence, and national solidarity are secured by recourse to:
  • continuous leadership of the holy persons, possessing necessary qualifications, exercised on the basis of the Quran and the Sunnah, upon all of whom be peace;
  • sciences and arts and the most advanced results of human experience, together with the effort to advance them further;
  • negation of all forms of oppression, both the infliction of and the submission to it, and of dominance, both its imposition and its acceptance.

Mauritania

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania is a country in the Maghreb region of western North Africa. Mauritania was declared an independent state as the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, on November 28, 1960. Its legal system is "a mix of French civil law and Sharia Law", and its Penal Code punishes crimes against religion and “good morals” with "harsh sentences". "Heresy or apostasy (including in print) are "punishable by death".

Pakistan

Pakistan was created as a homeland for the Muslims of British India, when British India was given independence, making Islam its raison d'ĂȘtre. It was the first country to adopt the adjective Islamic to modify its republican status under its otherwise secular constitution in 1956. Despite this definition, the country did not have a state religion until 1973, when a new constitution, more democratic and less secular, was adopted. Pakistan only uses the Islamic name on its passports, visas and coins. Although Islamic Republic is specifically mentioned in the constitution of 1973, all government documents are prepared under the name of the Government of Pakistan. The Constitution of Pakistan, Part IX, Article 227 states: "All existing laws shall be brought in conformity with the Injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran and Sunnah, in this Part referred to as the Injunctions of Islam, and no law shall be enacted which is repugnant to such Injunctions".

Former

Chechen Republic of Ichkeria

The Chechen Republic of Ichkeria used an Islamic republic government system from 1996 to 2000.

Comoros

Between 1978 and 2001, the Comoros was the Federal and Islamic Republic of the Comoros.

East Turkestan

The Turkic Uyghur- and Kirghiz-controlled Turkish Islamic Republic of East Turkestan was declared in 1933 as an independent Islamic republic by Sabit Damulla Abdulbaki and Muhammad Amin Bughra. However, the Chinese Muslim 36th Division of the National Revolutionary Army defeated their armies and destroyed the republic during the Battles of Kashgar, Yangi Hissar and Yarkand. The Chinese Muslim Generals Ma Fuyuan and Ma Zhancang declared the destruction of the rebel forces and the return of the area to the control of the Republic of China in 1934, followed by the executions of the Turkic Muslim Emirs Abdullah Bughra and Nur Ahmad Jan Bughra. The Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying then entered the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar and lectured the Turkic Muslims on being loyal to the Nationalist Government.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan was an Islamic republic from 1990 to 1996, and from 2001 to 2021. The 1990 constitution was imposed by the Mohammad Najibullah government and eliminated communism.

The constitution formed in 2004 was very similar to the 1964 Constitution of Afghanistan, created when Afghanistan was a constitutional Islamic monarchy. It consisted of three branches, the executive, the legislative and the judicial. The National Assembly was the legislature, a bicameral body having two chambers, the House of the People and the House of Elders. The Islamic prefix to Republic was considered symbolic as it was a name supported by pro-Mujahideen delegates during the assembly of forming the constitution.

From 1996 to the re-establishment of the Islamic republic in 2001, Afghanistan was ruled by the Taliban, a militant group based in Kandahar, who governed Afghanistan as an Islamic theocracy officially known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. In 2021, the Taliban initiated a month-long insurgency to effectively end the Islamic republic and ultimately, re-establish the Islamic Emirate in August 2021. The Islamic Republic continued to be recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate government of Afghanistan both from 1996 to 2001 and from 2021 onwards.

The Gambia

In December 2015, the then-president Yahya Jammeh declared The Gambia to be an Islamic republic. Jammeh said that the move was designed to distance the West African state from its colonial past, that no dress code would be imposed and that citizens of other faiths would be allowed to practice freely. However, he later ordered all female government employees to wear headscarves before rescinding the decision shortly after. The announcement of an Islamic republic has been criticized as unconstitutional by at least one opposition group. After the removal of Jammeh in 2017, his successor Adama Barrow said the Gambia would no longer be an Islamic republic.

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People's republic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Map of states using the name people's republic:
  Current
  Former

People's republic is an official title, commonly used by some current and former communist states as well as other left-wing governments. It is mainly associated with soviet republics, socialist states following people's democracy, sovereign states with a democratic-republican constitution usually mentioning socialism, as well as some countries that do not fit into any of these categories.

A number of the short-lived socialist states that formed during World War I and its aftermath called themselves people's republics. Many of these sprang up in the territory of the former Russian Empire which collapsed following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Decades later, following the Allied victory in World War II, the name "people's republic" was adopted by some of the newly established Marxist–Leninist states, mainly within the Soviet Union's Eastern Bloc.

As a term, "people's republic" is associated with socialist states as well as communist countries adhering to Marxism–Leninism, although its use is not unique to such states. A number of republics with liberal democratic political systems such as Algeria and Bangladesh adopted the title, given its rather generic nature, after popular wars of independence. Nonetheless, such countries still usually mention socialism in their constitutions.

Marxist–Leninist people's republics

The first people's republics that came into existence were those formed following the Russian Revolution. Ukraine was briefly declared a people's republic in 1917. The Khanate of Khiva and the Emirate of Bukhara, both territories of the former Russian Empire, were declared people's republics in 1920. In 1921, the Russian protectorate of Tuva became a people's republic, followed in 1924 by neighbouring Mongolia. Following World War II, developments in Marxist–Leninist theory led to the appearance of people's democracy, a concept which potentially allowed for a route to socialism via multi-class, multi-party democracy. Countries which had reached this intermediate stage were called people's republics. The European states that became people's republics at this time were Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. In Asia, China became a people's republic following the Chinese Communist Revolution and North Korea also became a people's republic.

Many of these countries also called themselves socialist states in their constitutions. During the 1960s, Romania and Yugoslavia ceased to use the term people's in their official name, replacing it with the term socialist as a mark of their ongoing political development. Czechoslovakia also added the term socialist into its name during this period. It had become a people's republic in 1948, but the country had not used that term in its official name. Albania used both terms in its official name from 1976 to 1991. In the West, these countries are often referred to as communist states. However, none of them described themselves in that way as they regarded communism as a level of political development that they had not yet reached. Terms used by communist states include national-democratic, people's democratic, socialist-oriented and workers and peasants' states. The communist parties in these countries often governed in coalitions with other progressive parties.

During the postcolonial period, a number of former European colonies that had achieved independence and adopted Marxist–Leninist governments took the name people's republic. Angola, Benin, Congo-Brazzaville, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Laos, Mozambique and South Yemen followed this route. Following the Revolutions of 1989, the people's republics of Central and Eastern Europe (Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland) and Mongolia dropped the term people's from their names as it was associated with their former communist governments and became known simply as republics, adopting liberal democracy as their system of government. At around the same time, most of the former European colonies that had taken the people's republic name began to replace it as part of their move away from Marxism–Leninism and towards democratic socialism or social democracy.

List of Marxist–Leninist people's republics

The current officially Marxist-Leninist states that use the term people's republic in their full names include:

Historical examples include:

Other titles commonly used by Marxist–Leninist and socialist states are democratic republic (e.g. the German Democratic Republic, the Somali Democratic Republic, or the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia between 1943 and 1946) and socialist republic (e.g. the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam).

Non-Marxist–Leninist people's republics

The collapse of the European empires during and following World War I resulted in the creation of a number of short-lived non-Marxist–Leninist people's republics during the revolutions of 1917–1923. In many cases, these governments were unrecognised and often had Marxist–Leninist rivals.

The Russian Empire produced several non-Marxist–Leninist people's republics after the October Revolution. The Crimean People's Republic was opposed to the Bolsheviks and the latter went on to capture its territory and establish the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic. The anti-Bolshevik Kuban People's Republic was established in Russia's Kuban region and survived until the Red Army captured the area. The socialist-leaning Ukrainian People's Republic declared its independence from the Russian Republic, but it had a rival in the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets (later the Ukrainian Soviet Republic) whom it fought during the Ukrainian War of Independence. The Belarusian People's Republic tried to create an independent Belarusian state in land controlled by the German Imperial Army, but the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia replaced it once the German army had left. All of these territories finally became constituent parts of the Soviet Union.

In the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, the West Ukrainian People's Republic was formed in eastern Galicia under the political guidance of Greek Catholic, liberal and socialist ideologies. The territory was subsequently absorbed into the Second Polish Republic. Meanwhile, the Hungarian People's Republic was established, briefly replaced by the Hungarian Soviet Republic and eventually succeeded by the Kingdom of Hungary.

In Germany, the People's State of Bavaria (German: Volksstaat Bayern) was a short-lived socialist state and people's republic formed in Bavaria during the German Revolution of 1918–1919 as a rival to the Bavarian Soviet Republic. It was succeeded by the Free State of Bavaria which existed within the Weimar Republic.

During the 1960s and 1970s, a number of former colonies that had gained independence through revolutionary liberation struggles adopted the name people's republic. Examples include Algeria, Bangladesh and Zanzibar. Libya adopted the term after its Al Fateh Revolution against King Idris.

In the 2010s, Ukraine's pro-Russian separatist movements during the Russo-Ukrainian War declared the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk to be people's republics, but they did not receive diplomatic recognition from the international community. In 2022, during the prelude to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia became the first UN member to formally recognise both the DPR and LPR.

List of non-Marxist–Leninist people's republics

Current non-Marxist–Leninist people's republics include:

Historical people's republics include:

Other uses

As a term, people's republic is sometimes used by critics and satirists to describe areas perceived to be dominated by left-wing politics, such as the People's Republic of South Yorkshire.

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People's democracy (Marxism–Leninism)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

People's democracy is a theoretical concept within Marxism–Leninism and a form of government which developed after World War II and allows in theory for a multi-class and multi-party democracy on the pathway to socialism. People's democracy was established in a number of European and Asian countries as a result of the people's democratic revolutions of the 1940s.

Prior to the rise of fascism, communist parties had called for soviet republics to be implemented throughout the world, such as the Chinese Soviet Republic or William Z. Foster's book Toward Soviet America. However, after the rise of fascism, and the creation of the popular front governments in France and Spain, the Comintern under Bulgarian Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov began to advocate for a multi-party united front of the communist and social democratic parties as opposed to the one-party proletarian dictatorship of the Soviets.

The possibility of a multi-party people's democracy was first put forward during the popular front period against fascism.

History

György Lukåcs was one of the first to suggest the possibility of communists working for a democratic republic in his Blum Thesis of 1929. Lukacs recounted in 1967:

It is hard for most people to imagine how paradoxical this sounded then. Although the Sixth Congress of the Third International did mention this as a possibility, it was generally thought to be historically impossible to take such a retrograde step, as Hungary had already been a soviet republic in 1919.

Joseph Stalin, who had been in Soviet administration throughout the Russian Civil War and its aftermath, well remembered how the attempt to fight Bolshevik-style revolutions throughout Europe during and after World War I—the revolutions of 1917–1923—had mostly failed. Many Old Bolsheviks had thought at the time that these revolutions were the vanguard of the world revolution, but the latter never materialized. It was this very reality that had driven the development of the idea of socialism in one country as the Soviet Union's own path.

With such historical lessons in mind, Stalin suggested to the leaders of Eastern European communist parties at the end of World War II that they should present themselves as advocates of a people's democracy. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies in Eastern Europe, Marxist–Leninist theoreticians first began expanding on the idea of a possible peaceful transition to socialism, given the presence of the Soviet Red Army. In most areas of Eastern Europe, the Communist Parties did not immediately take power directly but instead worked in Popular Coalitions with progressive parties. Unlike the Soviet Union, which was officially a one-party state, a majority of people's democracies of Eastern Europe were theoretically multi-party states. Many of the ruling Marxist–Leninist parties no longer called themselves Communist in their official title as they had in the 1930s. The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) for instance was ostensibly a union of the SPD and the Communist Party of Germany. Many of the other European states were ruled by Worker's or Socialist Parties. In the Eastern Bloc, people's democracy was a synonym for socialist state.

The origins of the idea of people's democracy can be traced back to both the idea of popular front governments, which were coalitions of anti-fascist parties, such as the one that existed in Spain. The theory was perhaps first articulated by Bulgarian Communist Georgi Dimitrov.

Scholars have argued that the emergence of the theory acted as a way for the Soviet Union to legitimize its establishment of Socialist States, as well as the method by which they would be established. For one, the Soviet Union had to justify the creation of Soviet-aligned governments to the existing, non-Communist, political movements within Eastern European countries. The theory of people's democracy allowed the Soviet Union to assuage the concerns of such movements, as people's democracies were to be governed by a coalition of Anti-fascist parties. By creating a theory which contrasted the peaceful nature by which Socialism would be established in Eastern European countries with the violent nature it was established in the Soviet Union, the USSR was able to ease fears that many in anti-fascist parties had of a Bolshevik-style revolution.

Many Scholars and Historians have argued that the theory of people's democracy grew out of a need for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to find a place within Marxist–Leninist theory for the different circumstances under which Socialism would emerge in Eastern Europe. For example, Ruth Amende Rosa stated:

the U.S.S.R. apparently felt obliged to establish its own position of ideological "leadership" in eastern Europe and, simultaneously, to fit the concept of "people's democracy" into the body of orthodox Marxist-Leninist doctrine. — Ruth Amende Rosa, World Politics , Jul., 1949, Vol. 1, No. 4, The Soviet Theory of "People's Democracy"

The work of Marxian economist Eugen Varga was of particular importance to the development of the theory of people's democracy. His work entitled Changes in the Economy of Capitalism Resulting from the Second World War gave an explanation as to why newly emerging States were different from the Soviet model while still giving them their place as a transition stage facilitating the emergence of Socialism within the dominant Soviet theory of Marxism–Leninism. However, in 1949, Varga recanted his ideas, and many high ranking Communists, including Dimitrov, suggested that people's democracies actually were similar to the Soviet Union. This reflected the changed view within the Soviet Union that the character of the people's democracies was identical to that of the USSR itself.

The theory of people's democracy underwent a considerable change. In its initial conception, the theory stated that the newly emerging Soviet-aligned states were totally different in character than the Soviet Union, whereas its later conception held that they were quite similar to the Soviet model. The reason for this change is debatable. While Richard F. Staar argues that the initial instance of the theory was used to conceal the true intentions of establishing a one-party dictatorship in the model of the Soviet Union, other scholars have suggested that the uncertain nature of the time when the original theory was formulated help to account for why the theory underwent change once power was consolidated.

Mao Zedong proposed a similar idea of a cross-class democracy in the 1940 essay On New Democracy. In 1949, he would make a speech on the people's democratic dictatorship. The people's democratic model would later be applied to socialist states in Asia, including China, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam.

Ideology

While people's democracies were considered a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, classes such as the peasantry, petite bourgeoisie and progressive bourgeoisie were allowed to participate. Nikita Khrushchev explicitly stated that the possibility of peaceful transition to people's democracy was predicated on the global strength of the USSR as a superpower.

The Soviet Textbook A Dictionary of Scientific Communism defined people's democracy as follows:

People's Democracy, a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat established in several European and Asian countries as a result of popular-democratic revolutions in the 1940s which developed into socialist revolutions. It emerged at a new stage in the world revolutionary process and reflected the specific way in which the socialist revolution was developing at a time when imperialism was weakened and the balance of world forces had tipped in favour of socialism. The common features characteristic of people's democracy as a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat were determined by the broad social base underlying the socialist revolutions that occurred in the European and Asian countries after World War II, their relatively peaceful development and the assistance and support rendered to them by the Soviet Union. Yet, in each particular country, people's democracy has its own distinctive features, since the socialist changeover took place there under specific historical and national conditions. Unlike the Soviet Union, where a single-party system emerged in the course of history, in most of the countries under people's democratic rule, a multi-party system was formed. The parties united in the Popular Front to fight fascism and imperialism; under these conditions, the multi-party system helped to expand the social base of the revolution and better fulfil the tasks facing it. Leading positions were held by Communist and Workers' Parties (this was the case in the East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia). To strengthen cohesion within the ranks of the working class, the Communist and Workers' Parties in several European countries of P.D. merged with Social-Democratic parties on the basis of Marxism-Leninism (q. v.), while in Hungary and Romania the multi-party system was replaced by a single-party one.

Trotskyists and other dissident anti-Stalinist Communists were against the idea of people's democracy which they saw as denying the Leninist insistence on the class essence of all state power.

The Marxists Internet Archive dictionary critiques people's democracy as follows:

Stalin fully intended to establish Popular Front-type governments, that is multi-class governments, states representing an alliance between the working class and the Bourgeoisie. It was quite explicitly envisaged that capitalist property would be protected.

When no bourgeois party could be found with whom to form a 'popular front' the Communist Party created their own. Artificial 'parties' were created to represent the various social classes who were 'invited' to form coalition governments. The presence of 'deputies' representing absolutely impotent 'parties' in rubber-stamp 'parliaments' does not make a two-class or three-class state.

The 'Peoples Democracy' program proved unworkable however. The combination of the pressure of the working class and peasantry in favour of expropriation of the capitalists and landowners and the inability of the Soviet bureaucracy to manage a capitalist economy forced Stalin into a policy that he never anticipated.

In Soviet-occupied Europe, the Red Army was the State. The social relations of production upon which the Red Army rested, i.e. the political-economy of the Soviet Union, imposed themselves upon the countries it occupied. Stalin's diplomacy could not eradicate the fundamental antagonism between the workers' state and international capitalism.

The same policy was carried in China under the banner of "Bloc of Four classes".

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Crimes against humanity under communist regimes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity_under_communist_regimes
 
Map of current and former Communist regimes
  Current
  Former

Crimes against humanity under communist regimes occurred during the 20th century, including forced deportations, massacres, torture, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, terror, ethnic cleansing, enslavement and the deliberate starvation of people i.e. during the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward. Additional events included the use of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide. Such events have been described as crimes against humanity.

The 2008 Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism stated that crimes which were committed in the name of communism should be assessed as crimes against humanity. Very few people have been tried for these crimes, although the government of Cambodia has prosecuted former members of the Khmer Rouge and the governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have passed laws that have led to the prosecution of several perpetrators for their crimes against the Baltic peoples. They were tried for crimes which they committed during the Occupation of the Baltic states in 1940 and 1941 as well as for crimes which they committed during the Soviet reoccupation of those states which occurred after World War II. Trials were also held for attacks which the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) carried out against the Forest Brethren.

Cambodia

Skulls of victims of the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields in Cambodia

There is a scholarly consensus that the Cambodian genocide which was carried out by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Pol Pot in what became known as the Killing Fields was a crime against humanity. Over the course of 4 years, the Pol Pot regime was responsible for the deaths of approximately 2 million people through starvation, exhaustion, execution, lack of medical care as a result of the communist utopia experiment. Legal scholars Antoine Garapon and David Boyle, sociologist Michael Mann and professor of political science Jacques SĂ©melin all believe that the actions of the Communist Party of Kampuchea can best be described as a crime against humanity rather than a genocide. In 2018, the Khmer Rouge was declared guilty of committing genocide against the minority Muslim Cham and Vietnamese. Conviction appeal against court decision was rejected in 2022. It reaffirms the ECCC's recognition of Khmer Rouges racial discriminations and ethnic cleansing against non-Cambodian (Khmer) minorities. The naming of the Cambodian Genocide is an overlooked problem because it downplays the overwhelming sufferings among targeted minority groups and the important roles of racism in understanding how the genocide was perpetrated. Historian Eric D. Weitz calls the Khmer Rouge's ethnic policy "racial communism."

In 1997, the co-prime ministers of Cambodia sought help from the United Nations in seeking justice for the crimes which were perpetrated by the communists during the years from 1975 to 1979. In June 1997, Pol Pot was taken prisoner during an internal power struggle within the Khmer Rouge and offered up to the international community. However, no country was willing to seek his extradition. The policies enacted by the Khmer Rouge led to the deaths of one quarter of the population in just four years.

China

Under Mao Zedong

A large portrait of Mao Zedong at Tiananmen

Mao Zedong was the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which took control of China in 1949 until his death in September 1976. During this time, he instituted several reform efforts, the most notable of which were the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. In January 1958, Mao launched the first five-year plan, the latter part of which was known as the Great Leap Forward. The plan was intended to expedite production and heavy industry as a supplement to economic growth similar to the Soviet model and the defining factor behind Mao's Chinese Marxist policies. Mao spent ten months touring the country in 1958 in order to gain support for the Great Leap Forward and inspect the progress that had already been made. What this entailed was the humiliation, public castigation and torture of all who questioned the leap. The five-year-plan first instituted the division of farming communities into communes. The Chinese National Program for Agricultural Development (NPAD) began to accelerate its drafting plans for the countries industrial and agricultural outputs. The drafting plans were initially successful as the Great Leap Forward divided the Chinese workforce and production briefly soared.

Eventually, CCP planners developed even more ambitious goals such as replacing the draft plans for 1962 with those for 1967 and the industries developed supply bottlenecks, but they could not meet the growth demands. Rapid industrial development came in turn with a swelling of urban populations. Due to the furthering of collectivization, heavy industry production and the stagnation of the farming industry that did not keep up with the demands of population growth in combination with a year (1959) of unfortunate weather in farming areas, only 170 million tons of grain were produced, far below the actual amount of grain which the population needed. Mass starvation ensued and it was made even worse in 1960, when only 144 million tons of grain were produced, a total amount which was 26 million tons lower than the total amount of grain that was produced in 1959. The government instituted rationing, but between 1958 and 1962 it is estimated that at least 10 million people died of starvation. The famine did not go unnoticed and Mao was fully aware of the major famine that was sweeping the countryside, but rather than try to fix the problem he blamed it on counterrevolutionaries who were "hiding and dividing grain". Mao even symbolically decided to abstain from eating meat in honor of those who were suffering.

Due to the widespread famine across the country, there were many reports of human cannibalism, including that of a farmer from Hunan who was forced to kill and eat his own child. When questioned about it, he said he did it "out of mercy". An original estimate of the final death toll ranged from 15 to 40 million. According to Frank Dikötter, a chair professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong and the author of Mao's Great Famine, a book which details the Great Leap Forward and the consequences of the strong armed implementation of the economic reform, the total number of people who were killed in the famine which lasted from 1958 to 1962 ran upwards of 45 million. Of those who were killed in the famine, 6–8% of them were often tortured first and then prematurely killed by the government, 2% of them committed suicide and 5% of them died in Mao's labor camps which were built to hold those who were labelled "enemies of the people". In an article for The New York Times, Dikötter also references severe punishments for slight infractions such as being buried alive for stealing a handful of grain or losing an ear and being branded for digging up a potato. Dikotter claims that a chairman in an executive meeting in 1959 expressed apathy with regard to the widespread suffering, stating: "When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill". Anthony Garnaut clarifies that Dikötter's interpretation of Mao's quotation, "It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill." not only ignores the substantial commentary on the conference by other scholars and several of its key participants, but defies the very plain wording of the archival document in his possession on which he hangs his case.

Ethiopia

Main article: Red Terror (Ethiopia)
 
Sketch showing civilian torture by the Derg police officers

Following the overthrow of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, the Derg gained control over Ethiopia and established a Marxist–Leninist state. They enacted the Red Terror against political opponents, killing an estimated 10,000 to 750,000 people. Derg chairman Mengistu Haile Mariam said "We are doing what Lenin did. You cannot build socialism without Red Terror." The Save the Children Fund reported that the victims of the Red Terror included not only adults but 1,000 or more children, mostly aged between eleven and thirteen, whose corpses were left in the streets of Addis Ababa.

On 13 August 2004, 33 top former Derg officials were presented in trial for genocide and other human rights violations during the Red Terror. The officials appealed for a pardon to the Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in a forum to "beg the Ethiopian public for their pardon for the mistakes done knowingly or unknowingly" during the Derg regime. No official response made by the government to the date. The Red Terror trial included grave human rights violations, comprising genocide, crime against humanity, torture, rape and forced disappearances which be would punishable under Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as article 3 of the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, all of which made part of the Ethiopian law.

North Korea

Further information: Human experimentation in North Korea, Human rights in North Korea, and Prisons in North Korea

Three victims of the prison camp system in North Korea unsuccessfully attempted to bring Kim Jong-il to justice with the aid of the Citizens Coalition for Human Rights of abductees and North Korean Refugees. In December 2010, they filed charges in The Hague. The NGO group Christian Solidarity Worldwide has stated that the gulag system appears to be specifically designed to kill a large number of people who are labelled enemies or have a differing political belief.

Romania

In a speech before the Parliament of Romania, President Traian Băsescu stated that "the criminal and illegitimate former communist regime committed massive human rights violations and crimes against humanity, killing and persecuting as many as two million people between 1945 and 1989". The speech was based on the 660-page report of a Presidential Commission headed by Vladimir Tismăneanu, a professor at the University of Maryland. The report also stated that "the regime exterminated people by assassination and deportation of hundreds of thousands of people" and it also highlighted the Pitești Experiment.

Engineer and former political prisoner Gheorghe Boldur-Lățescu has also stated that the Pitești Experiment was a crime against humanity, while Dennis Deletant has described it as "[a]n experiment of a grotesque originality ... [which] employed techniques of psychiatric abuse which were not only designed to inculcate terror into opponents of the regime but also to destroy the personality of the individual. The nature and enormity of the experiment ... set Romania apart from the other Eastern European regimes."

Soviet Union

Further information: Soviet war crimes and Human rights in the Soviet Union

Yugoslavia

Dominic McGoldrick writes that as the head of a "highly centralized and oppressive" dictatorship, Josip Broz Tito wielded tremendous power in Yugoslavia, with his dictatorial rule administered through an elaborate bureaucracy which routinely suppressed human rights. The main victims of this repression were known and alleged Stalinists during the first years such as Dragoslav Mihailović and Dragoljub Mićunović, but during the following years even some of the most prominent among Tito's collaborators were arrested. On 19 November 1956, Milovan Đilas, perhaps the closest of Tito's collaborator and widely regarded as Tito's possible successor, was arrested because of his criticism against Tito's regime. The repression did not exclude intellectuals and writers such as Venko Markovski, who was arrested and sent to jail in January 1956 for writing poems considered anti-Titoist. Tito, during his totalitarian system, made dramatic bloody repression and several massacres of POW after World War II including Bleiburg repatriations and Foibe massacres.

Tito's Yugoslavia remained a tightly controlled police state. According to David Matas, outside the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia had more political prisoners than all of the rest of Eastern Europe combined. Tito's secret police was modeled on the Soviet KGB. Its members were ever-present and often acted extrajudicially, with victims including middle-class intellectuals, liberals and democrats. Yugoslavia was a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but scant regard was paid to some of its provisions.

Near the end of the Second World War, Banat Swabians who were suspected to have been involved with the Nazi administration were placed into internment camps. Many were tortured, and at least 5,800 were killed. Others were subject to forced labor. In March 1945, the surviving Swabians were ghettoized in "village camps", later described as "extermination camps" by the survivors, where the death rate ranged as high as 50%. The most notorious camp was at Knićanin (formerly Rudolfsgnad), where an estimated 11,000 to 12,500 Swabians died.

Some 120,000 Macedonian Serbs were forced to emigrate to Serbia by the Yugoslav Communists after they had opted for Serbian citizenship in 1944. Those who stayed were subject to increasing Macedonian efforts, such as forcibly changing their surnames, substituting "ić" with "ski " (Jovanović - Jovanovski). In the whole period after the Second World War the Serbs in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia were kept from freely developing their national and cultural identity. The Serbs were treated like second-class citizens.

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