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Excerpts from The
Black Book of Communism; Cambodia: The Country of
Disconcerting Crimes by Jean-Louis Margolin
[…
pg. 577] The lineage from Mao
Zedong to Pol Pot is obvious. This is one of the paradoxes that make the Khmer
Rouge revolution so difficult to analyze and understand. The Cambodian tyrant
was incontestably mediocre and a pale copy of the imaginative and cultivated
Beijing autocrat who with no outside help established a regime that continues to
thrive in the world's most populous country. Yet despite Pol Pot's limitations,
it is the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward that look like mere
trial runs or preparatory sketches for what was perhaps the most radical social
transformation of all: the attempt to implement total Communism in one fell
swoop, without the long transitional period that seemed to be one of the tenets
of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. Money was abolished in a week; total
collectivization was achieved in less than two years; social distinctions were
suppressed by the elimination of entire classes of property owners,
intellectuals, and businessmen; and the ancient antagonism between urban and
rural areas was solved by emptying the cities in a single week. It seemed that
the only thing needed was sufficient willpower, and heaven would be found on
Earth. Pol Pot believed that he would be enthroned higher than his glorious
ancestors--Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong--and that the revolution of the
twenty-first century would be conducted in Khmer, just as the revolutions of the
twentieth century had been in Russian and then Chinese.
[… pg. 580] Like the
Jews who gave their last ounce of strength so that the world would know about
the realities of the Holocaust, bearing witness was sometimes the last
despairing goal of a number of Cambodians who braved all sorts of dangers to
escape abroad. Their tenacity often bore fruit. All of mankind should take up
their flame today, remembering cases like that of Pin Yathay, who wandered alone
and starving through the jungle for a month "to bring news of the genocide
in Cambodia, to describe what we have been through, to tell how several million
men, women, and children were all coldly programmed for death. . . how the
country was razed to the ground and plunged back into a prehistoric era, and how
its inhabitants were tortured so relentlessly. . . I wanted to live so that I
could beg the world to come to the aid of the survivors and try to prevent total
extermination."
The Spiral of Horror
Despite a rather prickly nationalism, rational Cambodians recognize that their
country was really a victim of a purely domestic tragedy--a small group of
idealists turned toward evil--and that the traditional elites were tragically
incapable of reacting to save the country or themselves. The combination is far
from exceptional in Asia or elsewhere, but only rarely does it lead to
revolutions. Other factors were also to blame, including the unique geographic
situation of the country, especially its long border with Laos and Vietnam, and
the historical moment. The full-scale war that had been raging in Vietnam since
1964 was undoubtedly a decisive factor in these events.
Civil War (1970-1975)
The Khmer kingdom, which had been a French protectorate since 1863, escaped the
Indochinese war of 1946-1954 more or less unharmed. At the moment when
resistance groups linked to the Viet Minh began to form in 1953, Prince Sihanouk
began a peaceful "crusade for independence." Facilitated by excellent
diplomatic relations between Sihanouk and Paris, this "crusade" met
with considerable success and undercut his adversaries on the left. But in the
face of the ensuing confrontation between the Vietnamese Communists and the
United States, the subtle balancing act by which he attempted to preserve
Cambodian neutrality earned him only the mistrust of all parties and growing
incomprehension inside the country.
In March 1970 the prince
was ousted by his own government and by the Assembly, with the blessing (but
apparently not the active participation) of the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency. The country was thrown into disarray, and terrible pogroms against the
Vietnamese minority began. Of the roughly 450,000 Vietnamese in the country,
two-thirds were forced to flee to South Vietnam. Communist Vietnamese embassy
buildings were burned down, and an ultimatum was issued for all foreign troops
to leave the country immediately. The ultimatum was of course ignored. Hanoi,
which found itself with no ally except the Khmer Rouge inside the country,
decided to back them to the hilt, supplying arms and military advisers and
providing access to training camps inside Vietnam. Vietnam eventually occupied
the greater part of the country in the name of the Khmer Rouge, or rather in the
name of Sihanouk, who was so furious at his earlier humiliation that he joined
with the local Communists, until then his worst enemies. On the advice of
Beijing and Hanoi, the Communists rolled out the red carpet for him but gave him
no actual political power. Thus the internal conflict became one of royalist
Communists versus the Khmer Republic, with the latter led by General (soon
Marshal) Lon Nol. The forces of the Khmer Republic were considerably weaker than
those of the North Vietnamese and seemed unable to capitalize on Sihanouk's
unpopularity among intellectuals and the middle classes in the cities and towns.
They were soon forced to ask for American aid in the form of bombing raids,
arms, and military advisers; they also accepted a futile intervention from the
South Vietnamese.
After the catastrophic
failure of operation Chenla-II in early 1972, when the best republican troops
were decimated, the war became a long agony as the Khmer Rouge tightened the
screws around the main urban areas, which eventually could be supplied only by
air. But this rearguard action was murderously destructive, and it destabilized
the population, who, unlike the Vietnamese, had never experienced anything like
it. American bombing raids were massive: more than 540,000 tons of explosives
were dropped on the combat zones, mostly in the six months before the U.S.
Congress cut off funding for such raids in August 1973. The bombing slowed the
progress of the Khmer Rouge, but it also ensured that there would never be a
shortage of recruits in a countryside now filled with hatred for the Americans.
It also further destabilized the republic by causing a tremendous influx of
refugees into the cities, probably one-third of a total population of 8 million.
This buildup of refugees facilitated the evacuation of urban areas after the
Khmer Rouge's victory and enabled the Khmers to claim repeatedly in their
propaganda: "We have defeated the world's greatest superpower and will
therefore triumph over all opposition--nature, the Vietnamese, and all
others."
The fall of Phnom Penh and
the last republican cities on 17 April 1975 had been expected for so long that
it came as something of a relief, even to the losers. Nothing, it was assumed,
could be worse than such a cruel and futile civil war. Yet the signs had always
been there: the Khmer Rouge had not waited for victory to demonstrate their
disconcerting aptitude for violence and extreme measures. Tens of thousands of
people were massacred after the capture of the ancient royal capital, Oudong, in
1974."
As "liberation"
swept the country, "reeducation centers" were established and became
harder and harder to distinguish from the "detention centers" that, in
theory, were reserved for hardened criminals. Initially the reeducation centers
were modeled on the Viet Minh prison camps of the 1950s and reserved chiefly for
prisoners from Lon Nol's army. There was never any question of applying the
Geneva Convention here, since all republicans were considered traitors rather
than prisoners of war. In Vietnam there had been no deliberate massacres of
prisoners, whether French or native. In Cambodia, by contrast, the strictest
possible regime became the norm, and it seems to have been decided early on that
the normal fate of a prisoner was to be death. One large camp, which contained
more than 1,000 detainees, was studied by Henri Locard. Established in 1971 or
1972, it confined enemy soldiers and their real or supposed families, including
children, together with Buddhist monks, suspect travelers, and others. As a
result of harsh treatment, a starvation diet, and widespread disease, most of
the prisoners and all the children died very quickly. Executions were also very
common, with as many as thirty killed in a single evening.
Massive deportations of
civilians began in 1973. Some 40,000 were transferred from Takeo Province to the
border zones near Vietnam, and many fled toward Phnom Penh. After an abortive
attempt to take the town of Kompong Cham, thousands of citizens were forced to
accompany the Khmer Rouge in their retreat. Kratie, the first city of any size
to be taken, was entirely emptied of its population. The year 1973 also marked a
decisive break with North Vietnam. Offended by the Kampuchean Communist Party's
refusal to join the negotiations in Paris in January 1973 concerning the US.
withdrawal, the North Vietnamese drastically reduced assistance, and thus their
ability to influence the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot's team took advantage of this turn
of events to begin eliminating approximately 1,000 "Viet Minh Khmers"
who had returned to Cambodia. These former anti-French resistance fighters had
left for Hanoi after the Geneva peace accord of 1954. Because of their
experience and their links with the Vietnamese Communist Party, they represented
a real alternative to the Khmer Rouge leaders, most of whom had come to
Communism only after the Indochinese war or while studying in France. A number
of the latter had begun their political training as militants in the French
Communist Party.
[… pg. 584] The influx of city dwellers to the
villages caused a tremendous upheaval in rural life, particularly in the balance
between resources and consumption. In the fertile rice plains of Region 5, in
the northwest, the 170,000 inhabitants were joined by 210,000 new arrivals. The
CPK did all it could to drive a wedge between the prasheashon shah, the
country people, also known as the "70s," most of whom had been under
the control of the Khmer Rouge since the war had broken out; and the prasheashon
thmei, the "New People," also known as the "75s" or the
"17 Aprils." It tried to incite class hatred among the "patriotic
proletariat" for these "lackeys of the capitalist imperialists."
A two-tier legal system was introduced; in effect only the rural people, who
were in a small majority, had any rights. In the early days they were allowed to
cultivate a small amount of private property to eat in the obligatory canteen
before the others. Their food was marginally better, and occasionally they were
also allowed to vote in elections in which only a single candidate appeared on
the ballot. An apartheid system was quickly achieved. The two groups lived in
separate areas of the village and, in principle, were not allowed even to talk
to each other, let alone intermarry.
These two population
groups were soon subdivided. As part of total collectivization, the peasants
were divided into "poor peasants," "landed peasants,"
"rich peasants," and former traders. Among the New People,
nonofficials and those who lacked an education were soon separated from former
civil servants and intellectuals. The fate of these last two groups was
generally dire: they were purged little by little, with each successive purge
reaching a little further down the hierarchy, until both groups completely
disappeared. After 1978 the purges also included women and children.
But ruralizing the entire
population was not enough for the leaders of the CPK. After only a few months,
many of the New People were ordered to new deportation centers, and this time
they had no voice in their fate. For example, in September 1975 alone, several
hundred thousand people left the eastern and southeastern regions for the
northwest. It was not uncommon for an individual to be deported three or four
times. In addition there were "work brigades," which would take all
young people and parents with no young children far from their assigned village
for several months. The intention of the regime was fourfold. First, to preclude
any potential political threat, the regime sought to forestall the formation of
any lasting links between the peasants and the New People. Second, the regime
sought to "proletarianize" the New People ever more thoroughly by
preventing them from taking their possessions with them and from having the time
to reap what they had sown. Third, the Khmer Rouge sought to maintain total
control of population movements through the initiation of large-scale
agricultural projects, such as cultivating the relatively poor land in the
mountains and the sparsely populated jungle regions in the outlying areas of the
country. Finally, the regime undoubtedly sought to rid itself of a maximum of
"useless mouths." Each successive evacuation-- whether on foot, in
carts, or in slow, badly overcrowded trains that sometimes took as long as a
week to reach their destination--was an extremely demanding experience for
severely undernourished people. In light of the severe shortage of medical
facilities, losses were high.
"Voluntary"
transfers were a slightly different matter. New People were often given the
chance to "return to their native village" or to work in a Cooperative
where conditions were easier, with better health care and better food.
Invariably the volunteers, who were often quite numerous, would then find
themselves in places where conditions were even worse.
[… pg. 587] The interrogators zealously extorted
successive confessions by any means possible in order to please their bosses.
Imaginary conspiracies abounded, and more networks were constantly being
uncovered. The blind hatred of Vietnam caused people to lose all sense of
reality. One doctor was accused of being a member of the "Vietnamese
CIA"; he had allegedly been recruited in Hanoi in 1956 by an American agent
disguised as a tourist. Liquidations were also carried out at the grass-roots
level; according to one estimate, 40,000 of the 70,000 inhabitants in one
district were killed as "traitors collaborating with the CIA."
But the really massive
genocide took place in the eastern zone. Hostile Vietnam was nearby, and Sao
Phim, the military and political chief of the region, had built up a solid local
power base. It was here that the only full-fledged rebellion against the central
regime ever occurred, in a short-lived civil war in May and June 1978. In April,
after 409 cadres from the east had been locked up in the central prison in Tuol
Sleng and it was clear that all was lost, Sao Phim killed himself, and his wife
and children were murdered while attending his funeral. A few fragments of the
armed forces in the region tried to foment a rebellion, then crossed into
Vietnam, where they established the embryonic Front for National Salvation,
which later accompanied the Vietnamese army from Hanoi to Phnom Penh. When the
central authorities regained control in the east, they condemned to death all
the people living in the region, labeling them "Vietnamese in Khmer
bodies." From May to December 1978 between 100,000 and 250,000 people out
of a population of 1.7 million were massacred, starting with militants and young
people. In Sao Phim's village all 120 families (700 people) were killed. In
another village, there were 7 survivors out of 15 families, 12 of which were
totally wiped out. After July any survivors were taken away in trucks, trains,
and boats to other zones, where they were progressively exterminated. Thousands
more died in transit. They were forced to wear blue clothes specially imported
from China; everyone else under Pol Pot's rule wore black. Gradually, with
little fanfare, and generally out of sight of the other villagers, the people
dressed in blue disappeared. In one cooperative in the northwest, when the
Vietnamese army finally arrived, only about 100 easterners of the original 3,000
remained. These atrocities took a horrific new turn just before the fall of the
regime. Women, children, and old people were massacred together with the young
men, and the original peasants were killed together with the New People. Because
the task was so overwhelmingly large, the Khmer Rouge forced the ordinary
population, including even the "75s," to help them carry out the
massacres. The revolution was out of control and was threatening to engulf every
last Cambodian.
[… pg. 599] As though it was not already difficult
enough to adjust to a new way of life, the system gave people no time to rest
and recover. The leaders seemed convinced that the radiant future was just
around the corner, at the end of the Four-Year Plan presented by Pol Pot in
August 1976. His objective was to increase production massively by increasing
capital through the export of agricultural products, which were the country's
only obvious resource. The Khmer Rouge believed that the way forward would come
through the industrialization of agriculture and the development of diversified
light industry, followed later by the construction of heavy industry. Strangely,
this modernist mystique was based on the old mythology about the state of
Angkor: "Because we are the race that built Angkor, we can do
anything," said Pol Pot in a long speech on 27 September 1977, in which he
also announced that the Angkar was really the Communist Party of Kampuchea. His
other justification for his belief in the Khmer Rouge was the "glorious 17
April," which had demonstrated the superiority of the poor peasants of
Cambodia over the world's greatest imperial power.
[… pg. 603] The Destruction of All Values
Hunger dehumanizes, causing one person to turn on another and to forget
everything except his own survival. How else can one explain cannibalism? It was
perhaps less widespread than in China during the Great Leap Forward, and it
seems to have been limited to the eating of people who were already dead. Pin
Yathay reports two examples: a former teacher who ate her sister, and the
inmates of a hospital ward who ate a young man. In both cases, punishment for
the "ogres" (a particularly bloodthirsty spirit in the Khmer
tradition) was death; the teacher was beaten to death in front of the assembled
village and her own daughter. As in China, cannibalism also existed as an act of
revenge: Ly Heng tells of a Khmer Rouge deserter who was forced to eat his own
ears before being killed. There are also many stories about the eating of human
livers. This act was not confined to the Khmer Rouge: republican soldiers ate
the livers of their enemies during the 1970-1975 civil war. Similar traditions
can be found all across Southeast Asia. Haing Ngor describes how in one prison
the fetus, liver, and breasts of a pregnant woman who had been executed were
treated; the child was simply thrown away (others had already been hung from the
ceiling to dry), and the rest was carried away with cries of "That's enough
meat for tonight!" Ken Khun tells of a cook in a cooperative who prepared
an eye remedy from human gall bladders (which he shared out quite liberally to
his bosses) and who praised the tastiness of human liver. These instances of
cannibalism reflect the loss of all moral and cultural values, and particularly
the disappearance of the central Buddhist value of compassion. Such was one of
the paradoxes of the Khmer Rouge regime: it claimed that its intention was to
create an egalitarian society in which justice, fraternity, and altruism would
be the key values, yet like other Communist regimes it produced a tidal wave of
selfishness, inequality, and irrationality. To survive, people were forced to
cheat, lie, steal, and turn their hearts to stone.
The loss of all human
compassion and decency had long been the norm at the highest level of power.
After Pol Pot disappeared into the jungle in 1963 he did nothing to get back in
touch with his family, even after 17 April 1975. His two brothers and his
sister-in-law were deported along with everyone else.
[… pg. 617] Contemporary events often cause us to
reconsider the past--not to alter the facts, in the manner of the North Koreans,
but to change priorities and to reinterpret events. For a long time Cambodia was
seen as the peaceful country of Sihanouk, an island of neutrality during the
wars in Indochina, typified by the "Khmer smile" of Apsara goddesses
on the Angkor reliefs and by the happy faces of an urbane monarch and his
peaceful peasant people who contentedly tended their rice crops and palm canes.
But the events of the last three decades have brought out the darker side of the
Khmer past. Angkor is one of the marvels of the world, but most of its miles of
low-relief sculptures represent warlike scenes. And such huge constructions,
with even bigger water reservoirs (baray), would have required massive
deportations and enslavements.
There are very few written
records about the Angkor period, which lasted from the eighth to the fourteenth
century; but all the other Hindu and Buddhist monarchies of the Southeast Asian
peninsula (in Thailand, Laos, and Burma) were constituted along the same lines.
Their rather violent history resembles that of Cambodia: throughout the region
repudiated concubines were trampled to death by elephants, new dynasties began
with the massacre of the previous monarch's family, and conquered populations
were deported to desert zones. Absolute power was the norm in all these
societies, and disobedience was tantamount to sacrilege. The more enlightened
despots did not abuse their power, but administrative structures were invariably
extremely weak and fragile, and the situation was often volatile as a result.
Everywhere the populations seemed to have a tremendous capacity simply to accept
things; unlike in China, revolts against monarchic power were rare. Instead,
people tended to flee to other states, which were never far away, or simply to
more remote regions.
Sihanouk's reign (from
1941, although the French protectorate lasted until 1953) appears almost idyllic
in comparison to the events that followed his dethroning in March 1970. But he
himself never hesitated to resort to violence, particularly against his leftist
opponents. There is a good deal of evidence that in 1959 and 1960, when he was
concerned with the growth in popularity of the Communist left--which was highly
critical of corruption within the regime-- he had the editor of the newspaper Prasheashun
(The people) assassinated, and had Khieu Samphan, the editor of the best-selling
paper in the country, the biweekly French language paper L 'observateur,
beaten up in the-street. In August 1960 eighteen people were thrown into prison,
and all the main left-wing papers were banned. In 1962, in conditions that are
still unclear today, Tou Samouth, the secretary general of the underground
Communist Party of Kampuchea, was assassinated, most likely by the secret
police, an event that facilitated Saloth Sar's ascension to the top of the
hierarchy. In 1967 the Samlauth revolt and the influence of the Cultural
Revolution in some Chinese schools brought the worst episodes of repression of
Sihanouk's reign, leading to numerous deaths, including those of the last
Communists who were still out in the open. One side effect of this was that
about 100 intellectuals who were sympathetic to the leftist cause then enlisted
in the Khmer Rouge resistance movement. In Henri Locard's view "Polpotist
violence grew out of the brutality of the repression of the Sihanoukists."
From a strictly chronological point of view, he is undoubtedly correct. Both the
regal autocrat and the marshal silenced anyone who was remotely critical of
their inept regimes. In so doing, they left the CPK as the only opposition with
any credibility. But it is harder to agree with Locard from the point of view of
genealogy: the ideological foundations and the political ends of the Khmer Rouge
were never a reaction to Sihanouk, but were instead part of the great tradition
of Leninism found in the successive figures of Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi
Minh. Cambodia's calamitous evolution after independence and its participation
in the war facilitated the seizure of power by CPK extremists and lent some
legitimacy to their unparalleled recourse to violence, but the radicalism itself
cannot be explained away by external circumstances.
[… pg. 619] 1975: A
Radical Break
It was much easier for the revolution in Cambodia to define what it opposed than
actually to announce a positive program. For the most part, the Khmer Rouge
sought revenge, and it was through this intention that they found most of their
popular support, which then gained new impetus through radical collectivization.
The revolution was also the revenge of the countryside against the towns. In no
time at all the peasants had taken everything from the New People, either
through the black market or by quite simply going through their baggage. In the
villages, the poorest peasants took revenge on the local
"capitalists," who were identified as anyone who had anything to sell
or who employed someone. But revenge was often personal, too, as old
professional and familial hierarchies were overturned. Eyewitness statements
often emphasize the surprising promotion of previously marginal characters, such
as alcoholics, to new positions of authority in the villages: "Often these
people were rehabilitated by the Angkar and given positions of authority because
they could kill their compatriots without showing any scruples or remorse."
Haing Ngor saw in this action the political sanctification of what he considered
to be the lowest part of the Khmer soul, known as kum, a murderous thirst for
revenge that time is powerless to assuage. Many suffered as a result: Ngor's
aunt, for instance, stayed behind in her native village, lost without the help
of her parents in the city. Ngor also met a nurse who had been promoted to the
position of doctor and who tried to have him killed even though he was a
newcomer. The nurse was then promoted to the position of ward leader, radically
overturning the hierarchy he had helped support. What exploded in Cambodian
society was thus a complex of tensions, only some of which could be termed
social in the strictest sense of the word.
Values were turned on
their heads. Jobs that had been extremely low status, such as chef or canteen
cleaner, became the most sought after, as they offered ready opportunities to
steal food on the job. Degrees and qualifications became useless bits of paper
and a real liability if one ever attempted to use them. Humility became the
cardinal virtue: among cadres who came back to the countryside, "strangely
enough, the job they wanted most was toilet cleaner. . . . getting over one's
repugnance for such things was proof of ideological transformation." The
Angkar wanted a monopoly on familial relations, and sought to be addressed by
people in public as "mother-father." This typical feature of Asiatic
Communism caused considerable confusion between the Party-state and the adult
population.
[… pg. 623] The system thus never progressed beyond
its warlike origins, and hatred always formed a crucial part of its ideology.
This was often translated into a morbid obsession with blood. The beginning of
the national anthem, "The Glorious Victory of 17 April," is revealing:
Bright red blood that covers towns and plains
Of Kampuchea, our motherland,
Sublime blood of workers and peasants,
Sublime blood of revolutionary men and women fighters!
The blood, changing into unrelenting hatred
And resolute struggle
On 17 April, under the flag of revolution,
Frees us from slavery!
Long live, long live, Glorious 17 April,
Glorious victory, with greater significance
than the age of Angkor Wat!
Pol Pot once commented:
"As you know, our national anthem was not written by a poet. Its essence is
the blood of our whole people, of everyone who fell in the course of the past
few centuries. It is the appeal of this blood that has been incorporated into
our national anthem." There was even a lullaby that ended with the words:
"You should never forget the class struggle."
The Marxist-Leninist
Culmination
The exceptionally bloody nature of the Khmer Rouge experience inevitably arouses
a temptation to insist on its uniqueness as a phenomenon, similar to the
argument for the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Other Communist regimes and the
people who defend them have led the way here, claiming that the Pol Pot regime
was an ultra-left-wing phenomenon or some sort of red fascism that was thinly
disguised as Communism. But two decades later it is clear that the CPK was
indeed a member of the family: it had its own peculiarities, but so did Poland
and Albania. And in the final analysis, Cambodian Communism was closer to
Chinese Communism than Chinese Communism was to the Russian version.
Several possible
influences on the Khmer Rouge have been singled out. There has long been a
theory that there was a considerable French influence, since almost all the
Khmer Rouge leaders were at some point students in France, and most of
them--including Pol Pot himself--were members of the French Communist Party. A
number of the historical references they used can be explained on that basis. As
Suong Sikoeun, leng Sary's second-in-command, explained: "I was very
influenced by the French Revolution, and in particular by Robespierre. It was
only a step from there to becoming a Communist. Robespierre is my hero.
Robespierre and Pol Pot: both of them share the qualities of determination and
integrity." It is difficult to go beyond this ideal of intransigence and
find anything more substantial in the discourse or practice of the CPK that
might be described as clearly coming from France or from French Communism. Khmer
Rouge leaders were far more practical than they were theoretical: what was
genuinely of interest to them was carrying out an experiment in "real
socialism."
[… pg. 634] It is unquestionable that Pol Pot and
his cohorts are guilty of war crimes. Prisoners from the republican army were
systematically maltreated; many were executed. Those who surrendered in 1975
were later persecuted without mercy. It is equally clear that the Khmer Rouge
also committed crimes against humanity. Entire social groups were found unworthy
of living and were largely exterminated. Any political opposition, real or
supposed, was punished by death. The chief difficulty involves determining the
crime of genocide. If one uses the literal definition, the discussion risks
falling into absurdity: genocide refers only to the systematic extermination of
national, ethnic, racial, and religious groups. Because the Khmers as a whole
were not targeted for extermination, attention would then have to turn to ethnic
minorities and eventually to the Buddhist monks. But even taken as a whole they
would represent only a small proportion of the victims; and it is not easy to
say that the Khmer Rouge did specifically repress minorities--with the exception
of the Vietnamese after 1977, when relatively few remained in the country. The
Cham on the other hand were targeted because of their Muslim faith, which was a
serious cause for resistance. Some authors have tried to resolve the problem by
bringing in the notion of politicide, which, broadly speaking, means
genocide on a political basis (one might also speak of sociocide, meaning
genocide on a social basis). But this fails to get to the heart of the matter.
The real question is, should such crimes be treated as seriously as genocide or
not? And if the answer is yes, as these authors seem to believe, why should the
issue be clouded by the use of a new term? It is perhaps worth recalling that
during the discussions leading to the adoption of the United Nations
Convention on Genocide, it was the Soviet Union that--for all too obvious
reasons--opposed the inclusion of the word "political" in the
definition of the term. But it is above all the word "racial" (which
covers neither ethnicity nor nationality) that should provide an answer here.
"Race," a phantasm that recedes ever further as human knowledge
increases, exists only in the eyes of the beholder; in reality there is no more
a Jewish race than there is a bourgeois race. But for the Khmer Rouge, as for
the Chinese Communists, some social groups were criminal by nature, and this
criminality was seen as transmittable from husband to wife, as well as an
inherited trait. Here the ghost of Trofim Lysenko looms large. We can speak of
the racialization of social groups, and the crime of genocide therefore can be
applied to their physical elimination. This elimination, as we have seen, was
pushed to its limits in Cambodia and was undoubtedly carried out deliberately.