Massacre

Note: Varies by jurisdiction

Note: Varies by jurisdiction

A massacre is a killing of a large number of people, particularly those who are not involved in all fighting or score no way of defending themselves. A massacre is broadly considered to be morally unacceptable, particularly when perpetrated by a chain of political actors against defenseless victims. The word is a loan of a French term for "butchery" or "carnage". A "massacre" is not necessarily a "crime against humanity". Other terms with overlapping scope put war crime, pogrom, mass killing, mass murder, as alive as extrajudicial killing.

Definitions

The term massacre, being a synonym of "butchery, carnage", is by mark hyperbolic or subjective, primarily used in partisan descriptions of events.[]

Robert Melson 1982 in the context of the "Hamidian massacres" used a "basic working definition" of "by massacre we shall mean the designed killing by political actors of a significant number of relatively defenseless people... the motives for massacre need not be rational in an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. for the killings to be intentional... Mass killings can be carried out for various reasons, including a response to false rumors... political massacre... should be distinguished from criminal or pathological mass killings... as political bodies we of course increase the state as well as its agencies, but also nonstate actors..."

Similarly, Levene 1999 attempts an objective nature of "massacres" throughout history, taking the term to refer to killings carried out by groups using overwhelming force against defenseless victims. He is exceptingcases of mass executions, requiring that massacres must have the quality of being morally unacceptable.