i am not a fan of philip short.
no, actually, "crimes
against humanity" should
not be sufficient.
in a post-lecture discussion of his recently published biography of pol pot, short said he refuses to use the word "genocide" in reference to the 1.7 million people in cambodia who died at the hands of the khmer rouge because it is too strong. genocide, he explained, is the extermination of people of a particular race or ethnicity for the sole reason of them being of that race or ethnicity, and such an act is carried out at a higher level of evil than are murders committed for other reasons, even murder on such a numbingly large scale. the khmer rouge didn't target any specific group, they killed anyone and everyone who didn't live up to their ideal of a true cambodian. he was eager to point out, also, that most of those 1.7 million were not killed outright by pol pot's followers; the majority of them died passively of things like malnutrition and starvation, and the actual number of people who were physically, brutally killed is really only in the low hundreds of thousands. only. well, in that case...
gen•o•cide (n) the deliberate extermination of a race of people, such as the Nazis attempted against the Jews [fr. Gk genos, race, + L. caedere, to kill]
-the new lexicon webster's encyclopedic dictionary of the english language, 1993 edition
now, in my opinion, killing a chinese man because he is not cambodian is not so very different from killing a chinese man because he is chinese. it's true that no specific race was targeted by the regime, but that's because they were all targeted. and they weren't only killing people who weren't cambodian, they were killing other cambodians for not being cambodian enough. the killings were motivated exclusively by racism, and that racism was extreme, irrational and all-encompassing. their ultimate desire was to ensure that, within the country's borders, the blood of every member of the population was one hundred percent pure. if you were deemed unworthy of the title of "cambodian," your new race designation was "Other," and you were to be exterminated. it differs from a nazi aryan mindset only in that the khmer rouge was not interested in carrying these exterminations out world-wide. if genocide is the strongest available term, the one most appropriate for describing the gravest of crimes against humanity, then it is definitely the one that must be used here.
although he denied it more than once, it sounded to me then, as it does now, that short was attempting to defend pol pot, or at least his mission and philosophy. the sensation i experienced in the face of such an attitude is one that my personal lexicon lacks suitable language for.
against humanity" should
not be sufficient.
in a post-lecture discussion of his recently published biography of pol pot, short said he refuses to use the word "genocide" in reference to the 1.7 million people in cambodia who died at the hands of the khmer rouge because it is too strong. genocide, he explained, is the extermination of people of a particular race or ethnicity for the sole reason of them being of that race or ethnicity, and such an act is carried out at a higher level of evil than are murders committed for other reasons, even murder on such a numbingly large scale. the khmer rouge didn't target any specific group, they killed anyone and everyone who didn't live up to their ideal of a true cambodian. he was eager to point out, also, that most of those 1.7 million were not killed outright by pol pot's followers; the majority of them died passively of things like malnutrition and starvation, and the actual number of people who were physically, brutally killed is really only in the low hundreds of thousands. only. well, in that case...
gen•o•cide (n) the deliberate extermination of a race of people, such as the Nazis attempted against the Jews [fr. Gk genos, race, + L. caedere, to kill]
-the new lexicon webster's encyclopedic dictionary of the english language, 1993 edition
now, in my opinion, killing a chinese man because he is not cambodian is not so very different from killing a chinese man because he is chinese. it's true that no specific race was targeted by the regime, but that's because they were all targeted. and they weren't only killing people who weren't cambodian, they were killing other cambodians for not being cambodian enough. the killings were motivated exclusively by racism, and that racism was extreme, irrational and all-encompassing. their ultimate desire was to ensure that, within the country's borders, the blood of every member of the population was one hundred percent pure. if you were deemed unworthy of the title of "cambodian," your new race designation was "Other," and you were to be exterminated. it differs from a nazi aryan mindset only in that the khmer rouge was not interested in carrying these exterminations out world-wide. if genocide is the strongest available term, the one most appropriate for describing the gravest of crimes against humanity, then it is definitely the one that must be used here.
although he denied it more than once, it sounded to me then, as it does now, that short was attempting to defend pol pot, or at least his mission and philosophy. the sensation i experienced in the face of such an attitude is one that my personal lexicon lacks suitable language for.
posted by juniper pearl @ 6:17 PM
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