Mass murder in the context of "Kantō Massacre"

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is called a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Etymologically, the term capital (lit. 'of the head', derived via the Latin capitalis from caput, "head") refers to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods.

Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes, capital offences, or capital felonies, and vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against a person, such as murder, assassination, mass murder, child murder, aggravated rape, terrorism, aircraft hijacking, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, along with crimes against the state such as attempting to overthrow government, treason, espionage, sedition, and piracy. Also, in some cases, acts of recidivism, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping, in addition to drug trafficking, drug dealing, and drug possession, are capital crimes or enhancements. However, states have also imposed punitive executions, for an expansive range of conduct, for political or religious beliefs and practices, for a status beyond one's control, or without employing any significant due process procedures. Judicial murder is the intentional and premeditated killing of an innocent person by means of capital punishment. For example, the executions following the show trials in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge of 1936–1938 were an instrument of political repression.

A massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless. It is generally used to describe a targeted mass killing of civilians by an armed group or person.

The word is a loan of a French term for "butchery" or "carnage". Other terms with overlapping scope include war crime, pogrom, mass killing, mass murder, and extrajudicial killing.

Anders Behring Breivik (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈɑ̂nːəʂ ˈbêːrɪŋ ˈbræ̂ɪviːk] ; born 13 February 1979), officially Far Skaldigrimmr Rauskjoldr av Northriki and formerly Fjotolf Hansen , is a Norwegian neo-Nazi terrorist and mass murderer. He perpetrated the 2011 Norway attacks in which he killed 8 people by detonating a van bomb at Regjeringskvartalet in Oslo, and 2 hours later he committed a massacre that killed 69 participants (33 of the victims being under the age of 18) of a Workers' Youth League (AUF) summer camp, in a mass shooting on the island of Utøya.

After Breivik was found psychologically competent to stand trial, his criminal trial was held in 2012. That year, Breivik was found guilty of mass murder, causing a fatal explosion, and terrorism. Breivik was sentenced to the maximum civilian criminal penalty in Norway, which is 21 years' imprisonment through preventive detention, allowing the possibility of one or more extensions for as long as he is deemed a danger to society.

Holocaust denial is the negationist and antisemitic claim that Nazi Germany and its collaborators did not commit genocide against European Jews during World War II, ignoring overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary. Theories assert that the genocide of Jews is a fabrication or exaggeration. Holocaust denial includes making one or more of the following false claims: that Nazi Germany's "Final Solution" was aimed only at deporting Jews from the territory of the Third Reich and did not include their extermination; that Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas chambers for the mass murder of Jews; that the actual number of Jews murdered is significantly lower than the accepted figure of approximately six million; and that the Holocaust is a hoax perpetrated by the Allies, Jews, or the Soviet Union.

Holocaust denial has roots in postwar Europe, beginning with writers such as Maurice Bardèche and Paul Rassinier. In the United States, the Institute for Historical Review gave Holocaust denial a pseudo-scholarly platform and helped spread it globally. In the Islamic world, Holocaust denial has been used to delegitimize Israel; deniers portray the Holocaust as a fabrication to justify the creation of a Jewish state. Iran is the leading state sponsor, embedding Holocaust denial into its official ideology through state-backed conferences and cartoon contests. In former Eastern Bloc countries, deniers do not deny the mass murder of Jews but deny the participation of their own nationals.

The Bangladesh genocide was the ethnic cleansing of Bengalis residing in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the Bangladesh Liberation War, perpetrated by the Pakistan Army and the Razakars militia. It began on 25 March 1971, as Operation Searchlight was launched by West Pakistan (now Pakistan) to militarily subdue the Bengali population of East Pakistan; the Bengalis comprised the demographic majority and had been calling for independence from the Pakistani state. Seeking to curtail the Bengali self-determination movement, erstwhile Pakistani president Yahya Khan approved a large-scale military deployment, and in the nine-month-long conflict that ensued, Pakistani soldiers and local pro-Pakistan militias killed between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women in a systematic campaign of mass murder and genocidal sexual violence.

West Pakistanis in particular were shown by the news that the operation was carried out because of the 'rebellion by the East Pakistanis' and many activities at the time were hidden from them, including rape and ethnic cleansing of East Pakistanis by the Pakistani military. Although the majority of the victims were Bengali Muslims, Hindus were especially targeted. In their investigation of the genocide, the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists concluded that Pakistan's campaign also involved the attempt to exterminate or forcibly remove a significant portion of the country's Hindu populace. The West Pakistani government, which had implemented discriminatory legislation in East Pakistan, asserted that Hindus were behind the Mukti Bahini (Bengali resistance fighters) revolt and that resolving the local "Hindu problem" would end the conflict—Khan's government and the Pakistani elite thus regarded the crackdown as a strategic policy. Genocidal rhetoric accompanied the campaign: Pakistani men believed that the sacrifice of Hindus was needed to fix the national malaise. In the countryside, Pakistan Army moved through villages and specifically asked for places where Hindus lived before burning them down. Hindus were identified by checking circumcision or by demanding the recitation of Muslim prayers. This also resulted in the migration of around eight million East Pakistani refugees into India, 80–90% of whom were Hindus.