[Awar]

Few thousand?

It proves that people get exiled, killed and tortured for politics, not because someone is
an atheist, or religious, or whatever.

Besides, we're talking about a time after a huge change in the political system.
Similar things would happen in such a large country ( if the government wanted to stay in power ) in any way, whoever took power.

In a huge country of 200 million people, centralizing the power means killing lots of people. In a smaller country, it would take killing less people.