 Remains of Victims of the Cambodian Genocide |
The
Cambodian Killing Fields: by Lavinia,
Lindsey, Sara web
project for Prof. Marcuse's lecture course |
Introduction |
Bibliography |
Project Introduction (back to top) Wikipedia: Towards the end of the Second World War, when the full horror of the extermination and concentration camps in Nazi Germany became public knowledge, Winston Churchill stated that the world was being brought face to face with 'a crime that has no name.' Historians now call the mass extermination of innocent people ‘genocide’. The term genocide has come to define a systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status or other particularity. pbs frontline: Genocide is distinguishable from all other crimes by the motivation behind it. History was of little use in finding a recognized word to fit the nature of the crime that Nazi Germany, a modern, industrialized state, had engaged in. There simply were no precedents in regard to either the nature or the degree of the crime. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born adviser to the United States War Ministry, saw that the world was being confronted with a totally unprecedented phenomenon and that 'new conceptions require new terminology.' In his book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Lemkin coined the word 'genocide', constructed from the Greek word 'genos' which means race or tribe and the Latin suffix 'cide' which means to kill. According to Lemkin, genocide signifies "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" and implies the existence of a coordinated plan, aimed at total extermination, to be put into effect against individuals chosen as victims purely, simply and exclusively because they are members of the target group. It included not only physical genocide, but also acts aimed at destroying the culture and livelihood of a group of people. The world now realized how lethal this notion of genocide was, and there was a need not just to protect its citizens from such a horrendous act but also to prevent a further human disaster of such a tremendous scale from repeating itself. This was when the United Nations (UN), previously known as the League of Nations, realized that as a global unit, it was the only institution with the power and faculty to help enact such international laws to protect human rights. Ironically, these laws never seemed to carry much effect as the remaining part of the 20th century and the 21st century today has witnessed one too many genocides. One prominent genocide that shocked the world with its inhumane atrocities was the Cambodian genocide led by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. This paper explores the genesis and dynamics of this genocide whilst historically examining the trials of the perpetrators of the Cambodian genocide to determine whether justice was ever served. We also scrutinize the media portrayal of the Cambodian genocide through a movie review of the Killing Fields and relate how this genocide was fundamentally very much similar to the Holocaust. This web project about the current (2005) genocide in Cambodia is comprised of the following three papers:
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Conclusion (back to top) As such, even though the world does not want to admit that horrible things, such as killing mass groups of people without a good reason still occur today, it cannot be denied. The Holocaust was one of the first of these genocides to take place, and the world said that nothing like this could even happen again. Yet, it is possible for the world to not learn from its mistakes and there are many problems similar to the Jewish Holocaust to support this. The Cambodian genocide took place only about thirty years after the world witnessed one of the greatest hate crimes ever. It seems as if that laws and public education on tolerance and equality has fallen on deaf ears and as long as the world continues to exist, genocide as a concept may never die. It seems appalling then to imagine that the United Nations, the upholder of world peace and harmony, only agreed to aid Cambodia in its efforts to serve justice to all those who were wantonly killed, in 2004--more than twenty five years after the genocide ended. As an international advocate of human rights, one then questions why a needy and devastated third world country was not given the help and support to bring its criminals to justice, just like how Germany had. Is this the legacy of the United Nations? Is it really simply a physical body that is mere talk and no action? Why were they only willing to help when other countries offered to pay the United Nations to trial the Khmer Rouge? It may be true that legal proceedings in the international court of law are expensive but given the United Nation’s rhetoric on the importance of human rights, this seems all glib to us. Moreover, the poor people in Cambodia (who are mostly illiterate and only speak Cambodian) probably have no idea that they experienced genocide or for that matter that others in the world had been to victim to such a curse? How would they feel if they really knew that the world had forgotten their pain, just because they were not economically prolific? What disturbs us the most in the study of the Cambodian genocide is what this speaks of us as a society today and if we are indeed apathetic enough to simply not do anything as long as our lives are not affected? Have we become a selfish and mercenary world that is only concerned with the material aspects of life? Why then bother killing other people if all one is interested in is money? After all, money is said to be the root of all evil but now genocide seems to be manifestation of this evil that the world has turned its back to. |
Annotated Bibliography (back to top)
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