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'Collective punishment' is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behaviour of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions. In times of war and armed conflict, collective punishment has resulted in atrocities, and is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions. Historically, occupying powers have used collective punishment to retaliate against and deter attacks on their forces by resistance movements (eg. by burning villages where attacks have taken place).

Contents

History

Eighteenth Century

19th century

20th century

Israel and Middle East

Recent

See also

References

External links

History

Eighteenth Century

The Intolerable Acts were seen as a collective punishment of Massachusetts.

19th century

The principle of collective punishment was laid out by U.S General William Tecumseh Sherman in his Special Field Order 120, November 9, 1864, which laid out the rules for his ""March to the sea" in the American Civil War:

V. To army corps commanders alone is intrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, &c., and for them this general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.^[1]

20th century

British in the Boer War and Germans in the Franco-Prussian War and World War I justified such actions as being in accord with the laws of war then in force.^[2]
During WWII, in 1942 the Germans destroyed the village of Lidice Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) killing 340 inhabitants as collective punishment or reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by commandos nearby the village. In the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane 642 of its inhabitants — men, women, and children — were slaughtered by the German Waffen-SS in 1944.^[3] In the Dutch village of Putten^[4] and the Italian villages of Sant'Anna di Stazzema^[5] and Marzabotto,^[6] as well as in the Soviet village of Kortelisy^[7] (in what is now Ukraine), large scale reprisal killings were carried out by the Germans.
The British used collective punishment against villages which concealed Communist rebels in Malaya in 1951.^[8] The British used collective punishment as an official policy to suppress the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in 1952.^[9] In 1956, Britain officially used collective punishment in Cyprus in the form of evicting families from their homes and closing shops anywhere British soldiers and police had been murdered, to obtain information about the identity (ies) of the attackers^[10] Today, it is considered by most nations contradictory to the modern concept of due process, where each individual receives separate treatment based on his or her role in the crime in question. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention specifically forbids collective punishment.
Joseph Stalin's mass deportations of several nations of the USSR to remote regions (including the Chechens, Crimean Tatars) is an example of officially-orchestrated collective punishment. Pogroms may be considered examples of unofficial collective punishment which resemble rioting.
There have been claims that certain CIA and U.S. military programs such as Operation Phoenix were a form of collective punishment of Vietnamese civilians to terrorize them into submission. There have also been claims that special US Army units such as Tiger Force were involved in civilians massacres also designed to collectively punish Vietnamese civilians who supported the Viet Cong [1] [2].

Israel and Middle East

In recent history, supporters of the Palestinians use the term to refer to certain Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They have used the term to describe the Israeli policy of destroying the homes of alleged terrorists.[3].[4] [5]. Israel's extensive system of internal roadblocks and checkpoints in Palestinian land has been condemned as a form of economic collective punishment. Possibly the most serious charge of collective punishment pertains to Israel's systematic destruction of roads, bridges, power and water plants, ports, airports, and the civilian economy inflicted upon Palestinians and Lebanese, which Palestinians contend may constitute a war crime under Article 52, Additional Protocol I, which states that "Civilian objects shall not be the object of attack or of reprisals." Others counter that this article allows attack upon military objectives, "those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage."
The term "collective punishment" was freely used by the British government to refer to measures they took against Arabs when unknown Arabs attacked Jews, or against Jews when unknown Jews attacked Arabs during the British mandate over Palestine after 1919.^{[11][12][13][14][15]} In that era, it meant closure of shops, restriction of movement, and taxes or fines levied on towns as punishment. Supporters of Israel have argued that Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians constitutes collective punishment of Israelis for the actions of their government.^[16]

Recent

The term is also used to describe confiscation of assets connected with drug use and trafficking in the United States. More recently the U.S. Army has been accused of practicing collective punishment in Iraq [6].
A form of collective punishment may also occur in schools, such as where a teacher imposes some form of discipline upon a whole class as a result of the actions of an individual student or small group of students. For some this may constitute a form of adultcentrism.

See also

★ Achor

★ Collective responsibility (doctrine)

★ Fourth Geneva Convention (article 33 specifically forbids collective punishment)

★ Reprisal

★ Sippenhaft

References

1. Sherman, William T., ''Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman'', 2nd ed., D. Appleton & Co., 1913 (1889), Chapter XXI. Reprinted by the Library of America, 1990, ISBN 0-940450-65-8.
2. "The laws of war as to conquered territory" by William Miller Collier, New York Times, November 29, 1914, p SM6
3. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9057248/Oradour-sur-Glane
4.
★ Official Website
5. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/international/europe/18TUSC.html
6. http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres_axis.html#Italy
7. ''World War II in Ukraine: Kortelisy (Ukraine), Lidice (Czechoslovakia) & Oradour-sur-Glane (France): Razed Villages.''

8. "British to step up Malaya campaign; 1951 plans include 'collective punishment' for aiding Reds, rewards and more troops" New York Times, Dec. 17, 1950, p 12
9. "Labor's censure over Kenya fails" New York Times, Dec 17, 1952, p16
10. Britain punishes Cypriote balking in informer role" New York Times,Mar. 17, 1956, p1
11. "Arab overtures to Jews Reported; Shieks of fined villages ask Palestine refugees to return to plow. Promise to protect them" New York Times, Dec. 19, 1929, p6
12. "Riot compensation fixed. Nothing to be paid in Palestine for deaths of those under 14" New York Times, March 27, 1930, p 21
13. "Britain will protect her hold in near east" New York Times, May 24, 1936, p E5
14. "Britain justifies acts in Palestine" New York Times, Jan. 10, 1939, p9
15. "Attack on an Arab shuts Jews' shops" New York Times, June 29, 1939, p 10
16. How to solve "Palestinian problem".

External links

★ US Department of Justice's page on asset Forfeiture