Adeath march is a forcedmarch ofprisoners of war or other captives or deportees in which individuals are left to die along the way.[1] It is distinct from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Article 19 of theGeneva Convention requires that prisoners must be moved away from a danger zone such as an advancing front line, to a place that may be considered more secure. It is not required to evacuate prisoners who are too unwell or injured to move. In times of war, such evacuations can be difficult to carry out.
Death marches usually feature harsh physical labor and abuse, neglect of prisoner injury and illness,deliberate starvation anddehydration,humiliation,torture, and execution of those unable to keep up the marching pace. The march may end at aprisoner-of-war camp orinternment camp, or it may continue until all those who are forced to march are dead.
In 1127, during theJin–Song Wars, the forces of theJurchen-ledJin dynasty besieged and sacked the Imperial palaces in Bianjing (present-dayKaifeng), the capital of theHan-ledSong dynasty. The Jin forces captured the Song ruler,Emperor Qinzong, along with his father, theretired EmperorHuizong, as well as many members of theimperial family and officials of the Song imperial court. According toThe Accounts of Jingkang, Jin troops looted the imperial library and palace. Jin troops also abducted all the female servants and imperial musicians. The imperial family was abducted and their residences were looted. Facing the prospect of captivity and enslavement by the Jurchens, numerous palace women chose to take their own lives. The remaining captives, over 14,000 people, were forced to march alongside the seized assets towards the Jin capital. Their entourage – almost all the ministers and generals of the Northern Song dynasty – suffered from illness, dehydration, and exhaustion, and many never made it. Upon arrival, each person had to go through a ritual where the person had to be naked and wearing only sheep skins.[2]
Forced marches were utilized against slaves who were bought or captured by slave traders inAfrica. They were shipped to other lands as part of theEast African slave trade withZanzibar and theAtlantic slave trade. Sometimes, the merchants shackled the slaves and provided insufficient food. Slaves who became too weak to walk were frequently killed or left to die.[3][4]
David Livingstone wrote of the East African slave trade:
We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path. [Onlookers] said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer.[5]
As part of Native American removal in the United States, approximately 6,000Choctaw were forced to leaveMississippi and move to the newly formingIndian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma) in 1831. Only about 4,000 Choctaw arrived in 1832.[6] In 1836, after theCreek War, theUnited States Army deported 2,500Muskogee fromAlabama in chains as prisoners of war.[7] The rest of the tribe (12,000) followed, deported by the Army. Upon arrival to Indian Territory, 3,500 died of infection.[8] In 1838, theCherokee nation was forced by order of PresidentAndrew Jackson to march westward towards Indian Territory. This march became known as theTrail of Tears. An estimated 4,000 men, women, and children died during relocation.[9] When theRound Valley Indian Reservation was established, theYuki people (as they came to be called) of Round Valley were forced into a difficult and unusual situation. Their traditional homeland was not completely taken over by settlers as in other parts of California. Instead, a small part of it was reserved especially for their use as well as the use of other Indians, many of whom were enemies of the Yuki. The Yuki had to share their home with strangers who spoke other languages, lived with other beliefs, and used the land and its products differently. Indians came to Round Valley as they did to other reservations– by force. The word "drive," widely used at the time, is descriptive of the practice of "rounding up" Indians and "driving" them like cattle to the reservation where they were "corralled" by high picket fences. Such drives took place in all weathers and seasons, and the elderly and sick often did not survive.[citation needed] During theLong Walk of the Navajo in August 1863, allKonkow Maidu were to be sent to the Bidwell Ranch in Chico and then be taken to theRound Valley Reservation at Covelo in Mendocino County. Any Indians remaining in the area were to be shot. Maidu were rounded up and marched under guard west out of the Sacramento Valley and through to the Coastal Range. 461 Native Americans started the trek, 277 finished.[10] They reached Round Valley on 18 September 1863. After theYavapai Wars, 375Yavapai perished during deportations out of 1,400 remaining Yavapai.[11][12]
King Leopold II sanctioned the creation of "child colonies" in hisCongo Free State which had orphaned Congolese kidnapped and sent to schools operated by Catholic missionaries in which they would learn to work or be soldiers; these were the only schools funded by the state. More than 50% of the children sent to the schools died of disease, and thousands more died in the forced marches into the colonies. In one such march, 108 boys were sent over to a mission school and only 62 survived, eight of whom died a week later.[13]
During theDungan Revolt (1862–1877), 700,000 to 800,000 Hui Muslims from Shaanxi were deported to Gansu, in a process in which most were killed along the way from thirst, starvation, and massacres by the militia escorting them, with only a few thousand surviving.[14]
TheArmenian genocide resulted in the death of up to 1,500,000 people from 1915 to 1918. Under the cover ofWorld War I, theYoung Turks sought to cleanseTurkey of its Armenian population. As a result, much of the Armenian population was exiled from large parts ofWestern Armenia and forced to march to the Syrian desert.[15] Many wereraped, tortured, and killed on their way to the 25 concentration camps set up in the Syrian desert. The most infamous camps were theDeir ez-Zor camps, where an estimated 150,000 Armenians were killed.[16]
Grand Duke Nicolas (who was still commander-in-chief of the Western forces), after suffering serious defeats at the hands of the German army, decided to implement the decrees for the German Russians living under his army's control, principally in theVolhynia province. The lands were to be expropriated, and the owners deported to Siberia. The land was to be given to Russian war veterans once the war was over. In July 1915, without prior warning, 150,000 German settlers from Volhynia were arrested and shipped to internal exile in Siberia and Central Asia. (Some sources indicate that the number of deportees reached 200,000). Ukrainian peasants took over their lands. While precise figures remain elusive, estimates suggest that the mortality rate associated with these deportations ranged from 30% to 50%, translating to a death toll between 63,000 and 100,000 individuals.[citation needed]
In the eastern part of Russian Turkestan, after the suppression of theUrkun uprising against theRussian Empire tens of thousands of surviving Kyrgyz and Kazakhs fled toward China. In the Tien-Shan mountains, thousands died in mountain passes over 3,000 meters high.[17]
DuringWorld War II, death marches of POWs occurred in bothGerman-occupied Europe and theJapanese colonial empire.Death marches of those held inNazi concentration camps were common in the later stages ofthe Holocaust asAllied forces closed in on the camps. One infamous death march occurred in January 1945, as the SovietRed Army advanced on German-occupied Poland. Nine days before the Red Army arrived at theAuschwitz concentration camp, theSchutzstaffel marched nearly 60,000 prisoners out of the camp towardsWodzisław Śląski, where they were put on freight trains to other camps. Approximately 15,000 prisoners died on the way.[18][19] The death marches were judged during theNuremberg trials to be acrime against humanity.[citation needed]On theEastern Front, death marches were amongst the forms ofGerman atrocities committed against Soviet prisoners of war.
During theNKVD prisoner massacres in 1941,NKVD personnel led prisoners on death marches to various locations inEastern Europe; upon arriving to pre-designated execution sites, the survivors weresummarily executed. After theBattle of Stalingrad in February 1943, numerousGerman prisoners of war in the Soviet Union were subject to death marches; after enduring a period of captivity near Stalingrad, they were sent by the Soviet authorities on a "death march across the frozen steppe" tolabor camps elsewhere in the Soviet Union.[20][21]
TheBrno death march during theexpulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia occurred in May 1945. TheBleiburg repatriations also occurred in May 1945 (during the last days of World War II and after), a total of 280,000Croats,[22] were involved in theIndependent State of Croatia evacuation to Austria. MostlyUstaše and theCroatian Home Guard, but also civilians and refugees, tried to flee theYugoslav Partisans and theRed Army, and marched northwards throughBosnia and Herzegovina,Croatia andSlovenia toAllied-occupied Austria. However, the British refused to accept their surrender and directed them to surrender to Yugoslav forces, who subjected them to death marches back to Yugoslavia, resulting in the death of 70–80,000 people.[23]
In thePacific theatre, theImperial Japanese Armed Forces conducted death marches of Allied POWs, including the 1942Bataan Death March and the 1945Sandakan Death Marches. The former forcibly transferred 60–80,000 POWs to Balanga, resulting in the deaths of 2,500–10,000 Filipino and 100–650 American POWs, while the latter caused the deaths of 2,345 Australian and British POWs, of which only 6 survived. Lieutenant-GeneralMasaharu Homma was charged withfailure to control his troops in 1945 in connection with the Bataan Death March.[24][25] Both the Bataan and Sandakan death marches were judged by theInternational Military Tribunal for the Far East to bewar crimes.[citation needed]
Population transfer in the Soviet Union refers to the forced transfer of various groups from the 1930s up to the 1950s ordered by Joseph Stalin and may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population (often classified as "enemies of workers"), deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite directions to fill the ethnically cleansed territories. Soviet archives documented 390,000[26] deaths duringkulakforced resettlement and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported toforced settlements in the Soviet Union during the 1940s;[27] however Steven Rosefield and Norman Naimark put overall deaths closer to some 1 to 1.5 million perishing as a result of the deportations — of those deaths, thedeportation of Crimean Tatars and thedeportation of Chechens were recognized asgenocides byUkraine and theEuropean Parliament respectively.[28][29][30][31]
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During the1948 Palestine war, 50,000-70,000Palestinians were expelled from the cities ofLydda (also spelled Lod) andRamla by theIsraeli military. Occurring as a part of the broader1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and theNakba, the operation is widely considered to have been an instance ofethnic cleansing.[32] Ramla'a residents were expelled by bus[33] but Lydda's residents had to walk 10–15 miles to meet up with the lines of theArab Legion.[34] Many people died from the heat, thirst, and exhaustion on the journey[35] and the event has come to be known as theLydda Death March.[36][37][38][39]
Reports vary regarding how many died. Palestinian historianAref al-Aref estimated 500 died in the expulsion from Lydda, and that 350 of that number died from thirst and exhaustion.[40][41]Nur Masalha estimated 350 deaths in the "expulsion and forced march" from Lydda.[42][43] HistorianBenny Morris has written that it was a "handful and perhaps dozens."[44]Glubb Pasha wrote that "nobody will ever know how many children died."[45]Nimr al Khatib estimated that 335 died. HistorianBenny Morris calls this number "certainly an exaggeration", while historian Michael Palumbo called Khatib's estimate "a very conservative figure."[46][47]
During theKorean War, in the winter of 1951, 200,000South KoreanNational Defense Corps soldiers were forcibly marched by their commanders, and 50,000 to 90,000 soldiers starved to death or died of disease during the march or in the training camps.[48] This incident is known as theNational Defense Corps incident. During theKorean War, prisoners who were held by theNorth Koreans underwent what became known as the "Tiger Death March". The march occurred whileNorth Korea was being overrun byUnited Nations forces. As North Korean forces retreated to theYalu River on the border withChina, they evacuated their prisoners with them. On 31 October 1950, some 845 prisoners, including about eighty non-combatants, leftManpo and went upriver, arriving inChunggang on 8 November 1950. A year later, fewer than 300 of the prisoners were still alive. The march was named after the brutal North Korean colonel who presided over it, his nickname was "The Tiger". Among the prisoners wasGeorge Blake, anMI6 officer who had been stationed inSeoul. While he was being held as a prisoner, he became aKGB double agent.[49]
The Khmer Rouge marked the beginning of their rule with theforced evacuation of various cities includingPhnom Penh,Cambodia.
Shipler1 was invoked but never defined (see thehelp page).On 12 July, the Arab inhabitants of the Lydda-Ramle area, amounting to some 70,000, were expelled in what became known as the 'Lydda Death March'.
On a visit home in 1948, Habash was caught in the Jewish attack on Lydda and, along with his family, forced to leave the city in the mass expulsion that came to be known as the Lydda Death March.
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