Mass killings under Communist regimes

Mass killings occurred under some Communist regimes during the twentieth century. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, depending on the methodology used. Scholarship focuses on the causes of mass killings in single societies, though some claims of common causes for mass killings have been made. Some higher estimates of mass killings include not only mass murders or executions that took place during the elimination of political opponents, civil wars, terror campaigns, and land reforms, but also lives lost due to war, famine, disease, and exhaustion in labor camps. There are scholars who believe that government policies and mistakes in management contributed to these calamities, and, based on that conclusion combine all these deaths under the categories "mass killings", democide, politicide, "classicide", or loosely defined genocide. According to these scholars, the total death toll of the mass killings defined in this way amounts to many tens of millions; however, the validity of this approach is questioned by other scholars. In his summary of the estimates in the Black Book of Communism, Martin Malia suggested a death toll of between 85 and 100 million people.

Communist state

A communist state is a state that is governed by a single party adhering to some variation of Marxist–Leninism as its guiding ideology. A communist state is not necessarily communist, but often aims to achieve socialism and then progress toward full communism. Most communist states have been states with a form of government characterized by one-party rule or a dominant-party system, organized around the political structures of democratic centralism with the party supposedly representing the Vanguard of the working class.

Western historians, political scientists, and media generally consider states that do not consider themselves to be communist nor that claim to have achieved communism; that refer to themselves as Socialist states or Workers' states that are in the process of constructing socialism are commonly refer to as communist states.

Communist states often compare favorably with Western states in some health indicators such as infant mortality and life expectancy. Similarly, Amartya Sen's own analysis of international comparisons of life expectancy found that several Marxist–Leninist states made significant gains, and commented "one thought that is bound to occur is that communism is good for poverty removal."

European Parliament

The European Parliament (EP) is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union (EU). Together with the Council of the European Union (the Council) and the European Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU. The Parliament is composed of 751 (previously 766) members, who represent the second largest democratic electorate in the world (after the Parliament of India) and the largest trans-national democratic electorate in the world (375 million eligible voters in 2009).

It has been directly elected every five years by universal suffrage since 1979. However, turnout at European Parliament elections has fallen consecutively at each election since that date, and has been under 50% since 1999. Turnout in 2014 stood at 42.54% of all European voters.

Although the European Parliament has legislative power that the Council and Commission do not possess, it does not formally possess legislative initiative, as most national parliaments of European Union member states do. The Parliament is the "first institution" of the EU (mentioned first in the treaties, having ceremonial precedence over all authority at European level), and shares equal legislative and budgetary powers with the Council (except in a few areas where the special legislative procedures apply). It likewise has equal control over the EU budget. Finally, the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, is accountable to Parliament. In particular, Parliament elects the President of the Commission, and approves (or rejects) the appointment of the Commission as a whole. It can subsequently force the Commission as a body to resign by adopting a motion of censure.

List of rampage killers

This is a partial list of rampage killings. It is further divided into several subsections.

A rampage killer has been defined as follows:

This list should contain every case with at least one of the following features:

In the tables that follow, the "W" column indicates the weapon, or weapons, used. Details are listed in the Annotation section.

Africa and the Middle East

Only the first 15 entries are shown here. For the entire list see: Africa and the Middle East

This section contains cases that occurred in Africa and the Middle East. Not included are school massacres, workplace killings, hate crimes or familicides, which form their own categories.

Americas

Only the first 15 entries are shown here. For the entire list see: Americas

This section contains cases that occurred in the Americas.

Member of the European Parliament

A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament.

When the European Parliament was first established, MEPs were directly appointed by the governments of member states from among those already sitting in their own national parliaments. Since 1979, however, MEPs have been elected by direct universal suffrage. Each member state establishes its own method for electing MEPs – and in some states this has changed over time – but the system chosen must be a form of proportional representation. In some member states the MEPs are elected to represent a single national constituency; in others they are elected from sub-national regions.

For a list of current MEPs, see Members of the European Parliament 2014–2019.

Election

From 1 January 2007, when Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, there were 785 MEPs, but their number was reduced to 736 at the elections in 2009. With effect from the elections held in May 2014 the number has risen again and now stands at 751, with each member state having at least six and at most 96 MEPs.