The Lottery of Huruslahti ( fi, Huruslahden arpajaiset) was a
massacre and alleged
decimation
Decimation, Decimate, or variants may refer to:
* Decimation (punishment), punitive discipline
* Decimation (signal processing), reduction of digital signal's sampling rate
* Decimation (comics), 2006 Marvel crossover spinoff ''House of M''
* ''D ...
that occurred in
Varkaus,
Finland in the
Finnish Civil War. In it, approximately 90
Red (
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
) prisoners were killed by the
White (
anti-communist
Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...
) troops, after the
Battle of Varkaus in 1918.
It was the first application of the
Shoot on the Spot Declaration, which ordered that all Red leaders, agitators, and saboteurs
caught red-handed, and whoever had actually participated in violence should be
shot without trial, defining this as
justifiable homicide rather than a
death sentence. It was claimed by the Reds that the White troops, after the Battle of Varkaus, ordered all the captured Reds to assemble in a single row on the ice of
Huruslahti, selected first all leaders and then every fifth prisoner, and executed them on the spot.
[Marko Tikka / Ajatuskirjat 2006 : Terrorin aika / ] The number executed was 10% of the accused. The Whites claimed that they individually selected each victim based on known identities and acts of violence rather than randomly, even though many victims were
underage and had not participated in the battle. Furthermore, the condemned were first separated from the rest and then shot in groups of five.
The legality of the event been debated: in modern terms, it would be considered a
war crime. It was apparently embarrassing to the White leadership already at the time: there was no declaration of war, and the apparent legality was completely based on a
military order Military order may refer to:
Orders
* Military order (religious society), confraternity of knights originally established as religious societies during the medieval Crusades for protection of Christianity and the Catholic Church
Military organi ...
, not law as conventionally required. The
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
considered the victims as "armed
civilians". Without a particular law to authorize the
death penalty
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
, the executions can be considered illegal. However, the
newly independent state of
Finland had not signed any
treaties on the
laws of war, such as the
Brussels Declaration of 1874 or the
Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were amon ...
. The general
amnesty laws adopted after the war absolved all perpetrators from judicial responsibility.
See also
*
History of Finland#Independence and Civil War
References
Finnish Civil War
1918 in Finland
History of North Savo
{{Finland-hist-stub