DURING THE US OCCUPATION….of Haiti, American Marines raped girls as young as eight-years-old….this occurred during the US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 under President Woodrow Wilson’s orders…..the Chicago Defender newspaper documented the rapes of young girls by US soldiers in Port-au-Prince neighborhoods….US Marines also reinstituted forced labor….Haitians were made to build roads under armed supervision…..Haiti them became the poorest nation in the hemisphere….and this occupation is not formally taught in US schools.
!N 1901….A US general ordered soldiers to kill every Filipino over the age of ten on Samar Island…..this was during the Philippine-American War of 1901…..under General Jacob. H. Smith…..US forces burned villages, drove civilians into camps…..and used waterboarding to torture prisoners…..over 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence, famine and disease caused by US military operations…..Smith was court-martialed but only forced to retire.
IN 1945….after the battle of Okinawa…..American marines raped thousands of Okinawan women…..historians estimate as many as 10,000 women may have been assaulted….most victims never reported it….due to out of fear and shame…..those who did give birth to children from the assaults….often killed the infants or abandoned them….or were too ashamed to keep them…..village midwives performed crude abortions…..many survivors only spoke through relatives…..even decades later……US military officials denied it….veterans refused to speak about it….and this silence became the official record for fifty years.
IN THE 1940’s……Belgian authorities abducted thousands of mixed-race children from African mothers….these children, born to African mothers and Belgian fathers….were deemed a threat to colonial order….and they had to be removed…..the mothers were threatened with jail if they resisted….many had dogs set upon them and they never saw their children again……the children were sent to Belgium…..placed with foster families….split from their siblings…..they grew up not knowing their mothers, their language nor their home…..in 2024, a Belgium court ruled these abductions were crimes against humanity….the ruling came 70 years too late for most mothers.
BETWEEN 1950 AND 2020…..an estimated 216,000 children were abused by Catholic clergy in France alone…..a landmark French investigation revealed that priests and religious figures…..committed these crimes within parishes and institutions across the country……the Church’s hierarchy was accused of systematically covering up the abuse…..to protect its own reputation…..in Germany, over 6,000 victims were documented between 1946 and 2014….the abuse created a multigenerational trauma….and the silence surrounding it only began to break in the 21st century.
IN 1866…..One year after slavery ended….White mobs burned down 37 Black schools across the South…..their crime was teaching freed Black people how to read and write….they didn’t just burn buildings, they beat teachers, shot students and terrorized entire communities…..because educated Black were a threat.