Prosecutable US Crimes Against Humanity In Korea

[L0oniX]

Yea? Who's going to prosecute the war criminals? What a silly idea huh. So old school.

Interesting:

1945, September 8 — US State Department officials, arrive in Korea with the US Army, disband the government of the Korean People’s Republic created September 6, in Seoul, by delegates from local peoples’ offices from all provinces throughout the peninsula formed when Japan announced intention to surrender (August 10), proceed without any Korean authorization whatsoever, to immediately cut Korea into two parts to be occupied by US and Soviet troops and establishing a military government, flying in from Washington DC (in General MacArthur’s private plane), Singman Rhee, to head it; eventually installing him as president of a separate South Korea Government that will include collaborators, and will outlaw all strikes, declare the KPR and all its activities illegal and begin a deadly terror of persecution of members of the disallowed Korean Peoples Republic, communists, socialists, unionists and anyone against the the partition and demanding an independent Korea.4

1946-1949 — The US in effect declares war on the popular movement of Korea south of the 38th Parallel and sets in motion a repressive campaign dismantling the Peoples’ Committees and their supporters throughout the south, becoming massively homicidal as Rhee’s special forces and secret police take the lives of some 200,000 men, women and children as documented recently by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the National Assembly of the Republic of (South) Korea; on the Island of Cheju alone, within a year, as many as 60,000 of its 300,000 residents are murdered, while another 40,000 fled by sea to nearby Japan some two years before the Koreans from the north invade the South. [Wikipedia]

1950, June 28 — The US attacks by, air, sea and land, aiming at the southward invading army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North), which nevertheless unifies the peninsula in five short weeks (except for the US defended port city of Pusan); with little resistance from South Korea’s ROK military as most of its soldiers either defect or go home; over the next three years US will commit dozens of high death toll documented atrocities (some recently apologized for) as American planes level to the ground almost every city and town of any appreciable size in the entire peninsula, north and south, in the end threatening to drop the atomic bomb, and be charged with germ warfare by some not easily dismissed sources.

See the bio about the writer.
See notes at the bottom for references.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34476.htm

[DonCoquixote]

1. Tell ya what

Anyone goping to prosecute the Kim Family? Nope. South Korea is the one example where American interference did good. One half of Korea is wealthy, liberal, and has the second best schools in the worlds (beaten only by finland). The other is where people get killed like hogs, and are poor are pigs.

[L0oniX]

2. Given the background I wonder how it would be if the US had not bullied their way into Korea.

Of course there still are plenty of people who think the US shits gold everywhere it goes.

[hack89]

3. Bullied their way into Korea?

unlike the Russian sponsored invasion of the South?

[L0oniX]

7. Not too unlike the Chinese sponsored N. Vietnam?

We lost the S. and now what is happening in N. Vietnam? ...but then some people don't need to compare ...or wonder what Korea would be like if the Russians had stayed. I don't think it would be worse than it is now.

[hack89]

8. Look at NK - a starving population, prison camps, illegal arm sales, a total police state

And you think SK would be better off if it took the same path NK did? That's some pretty fucked up shit.

[L0oniX]

11. You guys are always trying to reframe ...give it up.

Obviously you won't consider how it may have turned out if the US had not interfered. A reasonable discussion with you? Not likely!

[hack89]

12. SK is a thriving democracy because the US interfered

think where NK would be if the US had fought all the way to the Chinese border.

[L0oniX]

13. The ends justify the means? So it was ok for the US to kill the refugees?

I am sure their families if any are left alive appreciate the US actions. I know we can't correct the killings/mistakes of the past but it seems there is no learning from it as well. Meanwhile war criminals still go unpunished but then that seems to be a US legacy.

[hack89]

14. Of course not. But the good outweighed the bad.

Do you think the typical South Korean has any regret that America intervened? They know all too well what is happening in the north.

[geek tragedy]

18. Have you posted any demands to prosecute the North Korean regime and its allies

for their multiple and egregious violations of human rights, or are those abuses not of interest?

[L0oniX]

25. Yea sure I'll demand that ...while we perpetrate our own barbaric atrocities upon the innocent.

Torture ...yeah ...drones killing children ...yeah ...Guantanamo forever ...yeah ...SS cuts to support the war machine ...lovely ...BTW do you discuss anything on DU???

[LanternWaste]

32. what specifically and objectively leads you to believe that premise?

"I don't think it would be worse than it is now...."

Given both the GDP and GNP of both countries, what specifically and objectively leads you to believe that premise?

[HiPointDem]

4. +1

To the 'ignored' gang: sorry, i will have to live without hearing the pearls of wisdom you dispense.

[msanthrope]

5. I've missed you in the Korea threads!!! nt

[grantcart]

53. Something familiar, kind of rings a Bell doesn't it!!

[SidDithers]

15. ...

Sid

[L0oniX]

28. Thanks for your wonderful insightful contribution to discussion about war crimes. n/t

[pintobean]

46. You mean, like the post he replied to?

little spiders everywhere

[L0oniX]

49. ...and yours. n/t

[octothorpe]

35. What do you think Korea would be like right now had the US/UN stayed out of Korea?

Also, do you think Korea would be better off now if the North Korean government controlled the entire peninsula?

[L0oniX]

47. I don't know. It's the war crimes that I care about ...then and especially now.

Looking at this thread it seems that a lot of people went out of their way reframe this into something I said. I thought people quit taking LSD but people are seeing shit I didn't say. This wasn't my oped. The only thing I said was "Yea? Who's going to prosecute the war criminals? What a silly idea huh. So old school. " ...and I said "interesting"

[DonCoquixote]

39. No one told Kim nor his princes what to do

Not even the Chinese that poured the blood of their own young sons and daughters into their soil. The Us may make messes, yes, but the Kims are no Ches, Fidels, or even ho chi minhs that left their lands better than what they had. You can invoke justice, but the Kims are so bad that anyone trying to argue that they are not a bunch of agressive, greedy scum will wind up losing.

http://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA00/20130305/100436/HHRG-113-FA00-Wstate-LeeS-20130305.pdf
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/02/a_nation_of_racist_dwarfs.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/them/defector.html

Note, I made a point to stay away from right wing sources; you do not have to be right wing to realize the Kim regime is a menace. War would be bad, and must be avoided, but we need not deny that the kims have been driving this boat.

[L0oniX]

50. I don't see any "denial". I do see some reference notes and sources at the bottom...

and they all don't look like RW sources. My concern with posting this is the war crimes ...then an now ...with respect to the Iraq war criminals. As I recall there were war criminals from our side with Vietnam too. War crimes shouldn't be something our side does ...not ever.

[tabasco]

52. Get on the internet and ask some people from South Korea what they think.

Maybe they would like to be one big happy family again with the North in charge.

[dipsydoodle]

6. No Gun Ri Massacre

The No Gun Ri Massacre occurred on July 26–29, 1950, early in the Korean War, when an undetermined number of South Korean refugees were killed by the 2nd Battalion, 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (and a U.S. air attack) at a railroad bridge near the village of No Gun Ri (revised Romanization Nogeun-ri), 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Seoul. Estimates of the dead have ranged from dozens to 500. In 2005, a South Korean government report listed 163 dead or missing and 55 wounded and added that many other victims' names were not reported. The U.S. Army cites the number of casualties as "unknown."

The massacre allegations were little known outside Korea until the publication of Associated Press (AP) reports in 1999 containing interviews with 7th Cavalry veterans who corroborated Korean survivors' accounts. The AP also uncovered warfront orders to fire on refugees, given out of fear of enemy North Korean infiltration. After years of rejecting claims by survivors, the Pentagon conducted an investigation and, in 2001, acknowledged the killings, but referred to the three-day event as "an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing." The U.S. rejected survivors' demands for an apology and compensation.

South Korean investigators disagreed with Pentagon findings, saying they believed 7th Cavalry troops were ordered to fire on the refugees. The survivors' group called the U.S. report a "whitewash." Additional archival documents later emerged showing U.S. commanders ordering the shooting of refugees during this period, declassified documents found but not disclosed by the Pentagon investigators. Among them was a report by the U.S. ambassador in South Korea in July 1950 that the U.S. military had adopted a theater-wide policy of firing on approaching refugee groups. Despite demands, the U.S. investigation was not reopened.

Prompted by the exposure of No Gun Ri, survivors of similar alleged incidents in 1950–1951 filed reports with the Seoul government. In 2008 an investigative commission said more than 200 cases of alleged large-scale civilian killings by the U.S. military had been registered, mostly air attacks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_Massacre

[L0oniX]

10. "whitewash." is putting it in the most mild form possible. The US gov and some of its citizens...

are always going to deny its own crimes against humanity in other countries. Truth should be over politics ...always. Interesting input ...thanks.

[dipsydoodle]

19. Time article from 1999 here

The squat, twin-arched concrete bridge at No Gun Ri was built to span a small creek. But for a terrifying three days in late July 1950, it spanned a killing field. Last week the Pentagon was stunned by an Associated Press report, backed up by eyewitness accounts, that a frightened U.S. Army unit had killed as many as 300 civilians at No Gun Ri in the opening weeks of the Korean War. Such a bloodbath would rank as the century's second deadliest committed by U.S. troops, trailing only the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, where G.I.s killed up to 500 noncombatants.



Behind North Korea's move to push its sea frontier south
Accounts of what happened at No Gun Ri, a hamlet some 160 k southeast of Seoul, are hazy and conflicting. But taken together, they paint a picture of panic, fear, vague military orders and, finally, individual G.I.s struggling with the dictates of conscience. The Koreans under the bridge were part of a wave fleeing the North Korean army as it plunged southward in a month-old invasion of the South. North Korean infiltrators in civilian garb had been slipping through U.S. lines, guiding in artillery strikes and sniping at the retreating Americans. Days earlier, units of the 1st Cavalry Division had issued a chilling order. No refugees to cross the front line. Fire everyone trying to cross lines, it said. Use discretion in case of women and children.

G.I.s say a throng--including many women, children and old men--had sought protection under the No Gun Ri bridge from an earlier, perhaps errant, U.S. air raid. They had been pinned down for three days. U.S. forces at the bridge came under repeated enemy attack. The G.I.s regularly fired bursts over the heads of the cowering civilians. But then we were ordered to kill them all, Edward Daily of Clarksville, Tenn., then a corporal in the 7th Cavalry Regiment's 2nd Battalion, told Time. So I lowered the barrel and kept firing.

Some veterans say the killing started on an order from their commander, Captain Melbourne Chandler (now dead), who was acting on radioed orders from headquarters. We were ordered to shoot and kill anything because a lot of them were North Koreans who might set up machine guns in rice paddies and shoot at us, says Delos Flint of Clio, Mich., then a private. Other members of the battalion say they fired in response to muzzle flashes from the darkened arches late on July 26.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2054848,00.html#ixzz2PFhNttJ8

I knew of this because we had the the video on TV years ago here in the UK. This one I think : http://www.amazon.com/The-Bridge-No-Gun-Nightmare/dp/0805071830

[L0oniX]

29. Thank you for that. n/t

[GreenStormCloud]

69. Are you aware that we blew up bridges while hundreds of refugees were on the bridges?

During the retreat in July of 1950 the roads were clogged with refugees. To slow down the advancing NK army bridges were destroyed by blowing them up. That is a standard practice of retreating armies. The refugees would not stop trying to get across the bridges and finally, with the NK army getting close, the bridges were blown, with hundreds of refugees still on the bridges.

This happened repeatedly.

War is hell. Often, more civilians get killed than military.

[MineralMan]

9. As suggested in your post, I did "see the bio about the writer"

Here it is:

Jay Janson, spent eight years as Assistant Conductor of the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra in Hanoi and also toured, including with Dan Tai-son, who practiced in a Hanoi bomb shelter. The orchestra was founded by Ho Chi Minh, and it plays most of its concerts in the Opera House, a diminutive copy of the Paris Opera. In 1945, our ally Ho, from a balcony overlooking the large square and flanked by an American Major and a British Colonel, declared Vietnam independent. Everyone in the orchestra lost family, "killed by the Americans" they would mention simply, with Buddhist un-accusing acceptance.

I found it quite interesting, actually, but not very informative about that writer's knowledge of his subject.

[cali]

16. this is simply inaccurate and ahistorical.

Without so much as a mention of Japan's occupation and the context within which Korea was divided into North and South. Furthermore, it was the Soviet Union and North Korea that thwarted peninsula wide elections in 1948 by refusing entry to U.N. supervisors.

This is really appalling lying dog shit. good of you to post.

[dipsydoodle]

20. See post #6 and #19 if you think its a fairytale.

.

[L0oniX]

23. Typical type of response from you. No discussion ...just attack. n/t

[geek tragedy]

17. It's one thing to discuss war crimes. It's another to act as a stenographer of the Kimist

freakshow in Pyongyang.

North Korea has the worst government on the planet. So, no it is not a bad thing they were unable to conquer the south.

[L0oniX]

24. I see ...so then and now are the same thing. Thanks for your meaningfull contribution. n/t

"North Korea has the worst government on the planet. So, no it is not a bad thing they were unable to conquer the south."

[stevenleser]

57. I have been wondering whether to put that person on ignore for a while. Apologia for North Korea

made that decision pretty easy.

[cthulu2016]

21. This is like a RW parody of a left-wing viewpoint

[Skidmore]

22. I was thinking the same thing.

And would add that I highly doubt you could find one conflict in human history in which war crimes were not committed. History is written by the victors and much gets swept under the proverbial carpet.

[L0oniX]

26. Nice excuse. Maybe Bush and Cheney would use the same excuse.

"I highly doubt you could find one conflict in human history in which war crimes were not committed" Sorry you didn't want to discuss anything and since you didn't why did you bother to respond? Let me guess.

[Skidmore]

30. No excuse.

Just a statement of the human experience throughout history. Doesn't make it right nor do I endorse the excusing of war crimes. I just think it is naive to believe that the conflicts of this century are qualitatively different than those throughout history.

[L0oniX]

33. It certainly looks like nothing changes when Iraq war criminals go unpunished...

and the war crimes of history went unpunished. The US apologized for some of what part it played in the Korean war after people came forward and gave witness. Better late than never. I wonder if any will do the same over Iraq in 40 years.

[SidDithers]

36. Nailed it...

Unfortunately, it's all too real.

Sid

[stevenleser]

58. Yes, way, way, WAAAAY into woo woo territory.

I have finally put that person on ignore.

[dlwickham]

27. the stupid burns bright in this thread

[L0oniX]

31. It's a shame some people can't discuss anything reasonably. Kinda like teaparty people. n/t

[Benton D Struckcheon]

37. Pot. Kettle. Black.

You posted tendentious NK propaganda. And yet you expect a reasonable response.
No one here would think that the stuff that the US did against civilians in that war was anything less than awful. No one here would think, also, for even a second, that NK did the same and worse.
I posted this elsewhere, but just for your info and everyone else: civil war is the worst kind of war. Precisely because of the rationale given by the US for what it did at No Gon Ri and all the other incidents: how do you tell the friend from the foe? At some point, if you can't, you don't.
It's the nature of civil war.

For anyone, and that includes you, LOonix, to take either side in another country's civil war is plain stupid. We learned that in Viet Nam. Apparently, for some, that lesson didn't stick.

That said, your post is inexcusable. With the hindsight of 60 years, we know which side was the right side to be on. For that not to be obvious to you after 60 years is a testament to your judgment.

[L0oniX]

40. Great reframe.

"Yea? Who's going to prosecute the war criminals? What a silly idea huh. So old school. " ...and I said "interesting" There are far too many people here who go out of their way to twist and distort. Where did you see me taking sides?

[Benton D Struckcheon]

41. Where it says the US attacked South Korea in the article.

And it says NK reunified the Korean peninsula except, it says, for the US held city of Pusan.

Are you seriously going to contend that's not taking sides? Really?

[L0oniX]

43. So now according to some wierd distortion ...I am taking sides? Whatever.

I did not write the opinion piece however much you would like to reframe it that way.

[Posteritatis]

45. You're certainly defending it enthusiastically enough. (nt)

[L0oniX]

48. LOL ok whatever.

"Yea? Who's going to prosecute the war criminals? What a silly idea huh. So old school. " ...and I said "interesting" Assume all you want.

[sarisataka]

34. Shall we discuss...

Bloody Gulch- 75 prisoners executed
Battle of Taejon- 30 wounded and the Chaplain attending them executed
Hill 303- 42 prisoners executed
Seoul National University Hospital- 700-900 doctors, nurses civilians and perhaps 100 wounded soldiers shot or buried alive...

We have not even touched on POW treatment or purges of academics, political and religious leaders, forced conscription and kidnapping of upwards 500,000 civilians and so on...

To imply Korea would be better off, then or now, unified under the DPRK is ludicrous.

[Niceguy1]

38. Not even sure if

the OP even believes the North Korean Propaganda that he posted.

How can anyone support how the NK Govt treats it's people?

[L0oniX]

44. Ah so you read the reference notes huh? Did you even see what I had to say or did you jump...

to your own assumptions? Whoever this dude is he makes reference to books and info from others as well. My thing is about the war crimes then and now. Now go on with your reframing.

[L0oniX]

42. So now I "implied Korea would be better off" ...what ever. You can see whatever you want...

out of what "I" said. Does anyone discuss issues on DU anymore? For those who purposely or unintentionally didn't get what I said I'll repeat it ..."Yea? Who's going to prosecute the war criminals? What a silly idea huh. So old school. " ...and I said "interesting" That is all I said. Twist it anyway you like!

[sarisataka]

51. When you post a one sided piece

the readers must draw their conclusions.

No one is claiming the US was perfect in the '50s in and around Korea. Somethings could be considered war crimes and likely people should have been prosecuted under US or international law.

The complete non-mention of NK actions while "US attacks by, air, sea and land, aiming at the southward invading army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea" is a sign of bias. It is doubled later by the statement "over the next three years US will commit dozens of high death toll documented atrocities" again ignoring NK activities.

The entire excerpt is an attempt to paint the North as innocent victims. It even implies the US is responsible for the division, that it was the US State Department that "cut Korea into two parts to be occupied by US and Soviet troops.

If you do not wish to be misunderstood in minimally commenting on a one-sided article you should say more than 17 words. If I posted an article lauding Mussolini for making the trains run on time and said "interesting" I would not be surprised if people thought I was promoting a positive view of Il Duce.

[L0oniX]

54. Uhm well it seems that the US writes its history as it sees it as well.

Most of what we get is our side of history ....with all its revisionism and propaganda. History is most certainly not the same for those on the other side. I don't believe the other side matters too much to the victor. There are war crimes on all sides. It is on the other hand convenient for conscience sake to not have introspect.

[sarisataka]

55. I find history one of the more transparent disciplines

if you are willing to not take the first report and scratch a bit below the surface. There are many historians who are willing to uncover the truth rather than repeat a politically correct portion of it.

[BlueCheese]

56. Wait, someone is criticizing the U.S. (and the United Nations) for the Korean War?

That's hilarious. That's pure unthinking anti-American nonsense right there.

What's next, criticizing the U.S. for its involvement in France in World War II, which had been "unified" with Germany after
"five short weeks" of fighting? Don't even get me started on how many bombs we must have dropped on France.

[Thread on ignore.]

[premium]

59. Meh.

Sounds just like these nut job assholes.

http://www.answercoalition.org/national/news/the-war-danger-in-korea.html

[snooper2]

60. That site is just so full of great information

get it, "information"




Alex Jones has competition---


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34472.htm

Regime Change Begins at Home

America's on a fast track to full-blown tyranny. It's a hair's breath away. Preventing it is top priority. It begins with knowledge. It involves knowing what's at stake.

Money power runs America. Fundamental freedoms are on the chopping block for elimination. Preventing it takes commitment.

Challenging authority is essential. Social movements are pivotal forces. They work. Abolitionists, labor movements, and civil rights activists proved it.

Collective activism has power. What better time to use it than now. America's waging political, social, financial, and hot wars. It's doing it globally. It's happening at home and abroad. Constitutional protections are disappearing. America's social contract is being destroyed.

[dionysus]

61. LOL

[GreenStormCloud]

62. The North Korean Army is responsible for that action.

In all wars, when one side uses civilians as shields from the fire of the other side, then the one side is responsible for the civilian casualties caused by fire from the other side. North Korea mixed in troops, not in uniform, with fleeing refugees. Once through the allied lines those troops attacked allied troops in rear areas and supply dumps, creating strong difficulties for the allies. Lacking manpower to search all the refugees, the only thing the allies could do was to close their lines. Once a military force closes its lines, anybody approaching the line will be fired upon. That is the brutal nature of war.

During WWII we shelled and bombed lots of French towns and cities, killing lots of good French citizens to be able to damage the German troops that were occupying the place. Nobody considered that to be anything but the fault of the Nazis.

The OP poster is nothing more than a NK apologist.

BTW - I knew about that type of action back in the early 1960s. I was watching a Korean War movie and there was a scene in which a column of refugees were approaching American lines. Mixed in with the refugees were NK troops. The American commander ordered artillery fire on the refugee column, and cried about what he had to do. But he had to do it to save his own troops from being attacked from behind. I don't remember the name of the movie.

When I joined the Army in 1964 I got to meet a bunch of Korean war vets. They told similar stories. Yes, it happened, and if Nk had obeyed the rules of war and not mixed troops in with civilians, it would not have happened.

[dipsydoodle]

63. See post #6 and #19

[GreenStormCloud]

64. Che murdered people for fun.

He wasn't a romantic revolutionary, he was a brutal thug.

[dipsydoodle]

65. Got any reputable links to that.

Or have you been reading comics.

[GreenStormCloud]

66. Sure.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2004/09/the_cult_of_che.html

The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. And yet he succeeded in inspiring tens of thousands of middle class Latin-Americans to exit the universities and organize guerrilla insurgencies of their own. And these insurgencies likewise accomplished nothing, except to bring about the death of hundreds of thousands, and to set back the cause of Latin-American democracy—a tragedy on the hugest scale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara
...the newly empowered government carried out executions, punctuated by cries from the crowds of "¡paredón!" (to the wall),[97] which biographer Jorge Castañeda describes as "without respect for due process".[109]

SNIP

What is acknowledged by all sides is that Guevara had become a "hardened" man, who had no qualms about the death penalty or summary and collective trials. If the only way to "defend the revolution was to execute its enemies, he would not be swayed by humanitarian or political arguments".[109] This is further confirmed by a February 5, 1959, letter to Luis Paredes López in Buenos Aires where Guevara states unequivocally "The executions by firing squads are not only a necessity for the people of Cuba, but also an imposition of the people."[112]

And here is a quote from Che himself: "We don't need proof to execute a man. We only need proof that it's necessary to execute him. A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate." -Che Guevara No due process. No concern for innocence or guilt. No justice, just killing.

And here is another Che quote: "To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary...These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall!

BTW - Che executed gays for being gay.


No true progressive supports Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hard-line communism. By supporting NK and Che's memory, that is what you are supporting.

[dipsydoodle]

67. The only definitive version

is Jon Lee Anderson's biography.

He shot a handful of deserters and ordered the execution of 200 or so after the revolution : an appropriate punishment for their crimes. Those are the only documented incidents.

[GreenStormCloud]

68. 200+ killed, with no trials. Like I said, he was a murderer.

He was not a champion of human rights.