Genocide’ or ‘Politicide’?

Introduction

‘I was too young. I didn’t know what my father’s career was. I don’t know why they took him. I know my mum told me that my father was a manager of a wood factory in Kampong Speu, about 45km south of Phnom Penh.’

– Norng Chan Pal, August 2019

Norng was only nine years old when he was taken to the infamous Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison, where he lost both of his parents at the hands of the Khymer Rouge. At the time, he was unable to understand why his parents were taken from him; with hindsight, it was clear that there was no place for his father – a part of the bourgeois managerial class and one of the ‘new people’ so detested by the regime – in Democratic Kampuchea. The regime intended to
wipe out families such as Norng’s, deemed as ‘impure’. Between 1975-1979, therefore, the Khmer Rouge oversaw the deaths of between 1.5 million to 2 million people, equivalent to approximately 21% of Democratic Kampuchea’s population. Among the victims of this 1 Maoist-Marxist regime were members of both the country’s ethnic, religious, and racial minorities – primarily the Muslim Chams, Vietnamese, and Chinese – and members of the Khymer ethnic group, who comprised a majority of Cambodia’s population. Given that the overwhelming number – approximately 80% – of the regime’s victims were ethnically Khmer, historians, commentators, and sociologists have vigorously debated whether thisviolence constituted a genocide or a ‘politicide.’ This is more than an issue of semantics: in the interests of both justice and proper remembrance, it is vital that such atrocities are properly classified. At the same time, the ambiguity of the term has had pernicious consequences, distracting from both the prevention of ongoing genocides and achieving
justice in their aftermath.

This essay will consider the current historiographical treatment of the Cambodian genocide in the context of the United Nations Genocide Convention (UNGC) of 1948. While historians such as Michael Vickery and Manus I. Midlarsky have argued against using the ‘genocide’ label, albeit for differing reasons, historians such as Ben Kiernan, Hurst Hannum, and Frank Chalk have supported the term’s accuracy. This essay will make two arguments: firstly, that the violence in DK was, even by the UNGC’s narrow definition of the word, a genocide, albeit unusual in many of its key features. Secondly, it will be  argued that the current definition has, in light of the longwinded controversy surrounding its applicability to the Cambodian example, proven too narrow and is thus ripe for redefinition. To date, most commentators have taken an either-or approach to these arguments; it is this author’s contention, however, that both statements are correct in equal measure.

Genocide: An inherently political definition?

A conventional definition of genocide would be the destruction of a particular ethnic, racial, or religious group. In reality, however, the term has been controversial ever since its inception. On the 9th December 1948, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, which signified the international community’s commitment to avoiding future genocides after the atrocities committed during the Second World War. Here, the official and widely accepted definition of a genocide was first introduced. The definition was outlined in Article II of the convention:

‘In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• Killing members of the group;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
  its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.’2

The convention thus defines genocide narrowly as the destruction of ‘national, ethnical, racial or religious groups.’ A broader approach might have included the destruction of any group or collectivity, including social classes, sexual minorities, or the mentally handicapped
– all of whom had been among the victims of either Nazism or Stalinism.

Moreover, the original definition of ‘genocide’ very nearly included political groups. The Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, however, wanted to avoid their inclusion, and thus vetoed it. In the context of the Cold War, Stalin did not want his persecution of the 3 Kulaks in Ukraine to be considered a genocide. In addition, other commentators considered political views as mutable characteristics, and therefore distinguished political identity from the immutable characteristics of race, religion, and ethnicity.

Ultimately, the resulting definition excluded both mutable factors (political identity) and a range of additional non-mutable factors, including gender, sexuality, mental or physical disability, and class. Thus, while the Khymer Rouge considered class to be one of the primary classifications in Cambodian society, it was not part of genocide’s legal definition. Despite the regime’s intent to destroy a clearly defined collectivity, adherence to the flawed UN definition led to the ongoing controversy over whether the murder of ethnically Khymer opponents was a genocide.

The consequences of this reliance on the UN’s flawed definition are shown by the findings of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, published in November 2018. In this tribunal, Noun Chea and Khieu Samphan were convicted of committing a genocide against the country’s ethnic minorities but not against the majority of the Khmer victims, with this being deemed a ‘crime against humanity’ instead. The verdict shows why a more inclusive definition of genocide is perhaps needed, given the intent of the Khmer Rouge to destroy, in the minds of the perpetrators, clearly delineated groups among the Khmer population. While supposedly targeted for their political views, moreover, this characteristic was understood as a fundamental and intrinsic difference, rather than simply a mutable one. Again, the UN’s narrow definition draws controversy when defining these terms, showing why the definition is ripe for redefinition, so that more time can be spent on focusing about how to intervene and deal with current and past genocides, as well as preventing future genocides.

The Murder of Ethnic Minorities: A clear case of genocide?

The murder and destruction of Cambodia’s ethnic, religious, and racial minorities during the DK period appears as an unambiguous example of the Khmer’s Rouge’s genocidal intent. As stated above, the UN defines genocide as occurring with an ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group’; according to the historian Ben Kiernan, the Khmer Rouge’s treatment of the country’s minorities surely meets this definition. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge wanted to destroy by extermination or expulsion 4 anyone who was not ethnically Khmer. To that end, the Khmer Rouge targeted the country’s Vietnamese, Chinese, Cham Muslim populations, and Buddhist Monks. According to Liai Duong, the regime wanted to impose a policy of ‘forced Khmerization’, compelling 5 minorities to abandon parts of their culture and to live as Khmer instead, in the hope of creating a ‘pure Khmer’ population. One example of discrimination against non-Khmer people, was that everyone in the Eastern Zone was issued a scarf. People would be known by the colour of their scarfs, and those who wore blue and white scarfs, were deemed inferior. As blue is the colour of death in Cambodia, those who were blue and white scarfs were symbolised that they would be killed. This is similar to how the Nazis discriminated against the Jews, by forcing them to wear the Star of David.

The first ethnic minority to be persecuted was the Vietnamese population. In 1975, there was a total of 20,000 Vietnamese living in Cambodia; by 1979, however, there were none. While at first the Vietnamese were simply expelled from Cambodia, after relations with Vietnam deteriorated, they were often killed. Not only were the Vietnamese killed, but Khmer soldiers earlier trained by Vietnamese forces were also murdered, showing the regime’s disdain for Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge hated these people so much, that they deemed them ‘Cambodians with Vietnamese minds’. This animosity extended to many ordinary Cambodians, who felt threatened by their larger neighbour’s historic attempts to impose its culture on the country. The following quote from a Cambodian exemplifies this hatred: ‘I hate them [the Vietnamese]. I don’t have words to tell you how much I hate them… History and their actions clearly show that the Yuon [term for Vietnamese] have repeatedly done bad things in Cambodia. They learn the tricks of thieves. They steal from [our] economy. They start many fights. They have come to live in Cambodia, but they don’t respect the rights of the Khmer. And their biggest professions are stealing and prostitution.’6 The Khmer Rouge was, in part, fuelled by this hatred, acting to entirely wipe out any trace of Vietnam and its influence in Cambodia, clearly meeting the strict UN definition of a genocide as an act carried out with the intent to destroy ‘in whole or in part’ a national or ethnic group.

Another ethnic group that suffered widespread violence in Democratic Kampuchea were the Chinese. In 1975, there were around 430,000 ethnic Chinese living in the country; by 1979, only half this number remained. Compared to ethnic Cambodians who were killed, 7 the percentage of the population killed was much smaller being around 18.5%, even compared to the Cambodian ‘new’ people, for which the figure is 25%. This shows the Chinese were disproportionately targeted, making this a clear intent of genocide, even compared to other victims. The Chinese were persecuted i in Democratic Kampuchea because they were seen as quintessential members of the capitalist class, with the overwhelming majority living in cites and many from a mercantile background. The Khmer Rouge thus classified them as among the ‘new’ people, and therefore they were deemed as the enemy of a pure Khmer nation. This was, of course, a crude stereotype of the Chinese population, comparable to how the Nazis perceived the Jews as the cause of Germany’s wartime defeat and targeted them for their supposed ‘Bolshevist’ sympathies. Despite the claimed political reason for the Khmer Rouge destroying the Chinese population, it is clear that a genocide was nonetheless committed; given the size of the massacres and that the Chinese were specifically targeted as a group for expulsion and extermination, a possible political motivation does not prevent the genocide label being correctly applied.

The Muslim Cham population were another clear victim of genocide in DK. The Khmer Rouge forced the Muslim Chams to abandon aspects of their culture; for example, the regime forced the Muslim Chams to eat pork under the threat of death. On top of this, the Khmer Rouge murdered many Muslim Chams, killing a total of 36% of the Muslim Cham population. The Khmer Rouge did this in pursuit of their utopian peasant society, populated 8 by a culturally ‘pure’ Khmer race. Since the Muslim Chams were ethnically different and committed to their faith, they had no place in such a society. This is clear evidence of a genocide occurring against the Muslim Chams, with the regime intending to destroy their entire population in Democratic Kampuchea.

Another religious group that suffered in Democratic Kampuchea were Buddhist Monks. Buddhist monks in Cambodia were killed simply because they were religious figures. As previously mentioned, the Khmer Rouge disliked religion, similar to in most other communist countries; Pol Pot himself was an ‘ardent Marxist atheist.’ In total, 50,000 9 Buddhist Monks were killed out of a total population of 66,000 from 1975. and given that religious groups are part of the UN’s narrow definition of genocide, this is clearly a genocide.

These figures clearly show that a genocide incontrovertibly occurred in DK. With the Khmer Rouge intending to remove anyone who was not Khmer, they set out to destroy the country’s ethnic minority populations – the very definition of genocide according to the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide. The only possible counterargument for this is to claim, as has Vickery, that they intended to do so due to the political views of these groups. This argument is normally made with the Chinese population in mind, whom the Khymer Rouge viewed as merchants and capitalists. As such, their continued existence went against the peasant 10 ideology of DK, which they saw to be the ‘pure’ Cambodian population. This does little to explain, however, the manner in which the regime targeted with especial aggression the cultural practices of these groups; nor does it explain the desire to kill entire families – surely without logic if they had ‘only’ been targeting political enemies.

Despite the seemingly incontrovertible evidence in favour of a genocide against Cambodia’s ethnic minorities, some historians have demurred: Michael Vickery, for example, holds that it is incorrect to label the violence in DK as genocidal. Vickery argues that the Khmer Rouge did not intend to destroy Cambodia’s minority communities per se, but that they were caught up in the revolutionary and peasant-led violence after 1975. Vickery also 11 estimated a much lower overall death toll compared to other historians, of approximately 700,00. However, the reliability of Vickery must be questioned. Given that Vickery was a 12 Marxist historian, he was reluctant to associate the communist Khmer Rouge with genocidal violence, positing that the term ‘genocide’ was an exaggeration and misnomer in the case of Cambodia. Many other historians have criticised him for this; Ben Kiernan, for example, argued that the violence was clearly a genocide due to the Khmer Rouge’s intention of wiping out the non-Khmer population and ‘purifying’ Democratic Kampuchea’s peoples. Most historians also agree with Kiernan’s more realistic estimation for the total death toll, thus concluding that the Khmer Rouge intentionally killed, expelled, or otherwise destroyed the country’s ethnic and national minorities.

The Destruction of the Khmer: A case of auto-genocide?

This essay has already demonstrated that the mass killings of Cambodia’s ethnic minorities amounted to a genocide. In addition to the destruction of ethnic, racial, and religious minorities, the Khmer Rouge were also responsible for the murder of millions of Khmer people: a possible case of ‘auto-genocide’ that sets the violence in DK apart from other examples of twentieth century genocide. Indeed, the overwhelming majority – 81% – 13 of the regime’s victims were ethnically Khmer; unlike the fate of Cambodia’s ethnic minority population, whether their murder can be correctly labelled a genocide is open to legitimate academic dispute.

Having gained power in 1975, the regime divided the population into two categories. The ‘base people’ lived in the countryside before the evacuation of the cities in 1975, in the way the Khmer Rouge wanted all ‘pure’ Cambodians to live. The other group were the ‘new people’, who lived in cities, were more comfortable with capitalism, were more intellectual, and were ‘tainted’ by their western lifestyles. These were the political enemies of the Khmer  Rouge and were killed in huge numbers through starvation, overwork, and execution. This divide was thus based on class, wealth, education, and geographic origin. Unsurprisingly, it was the ‘new people’ whom were most severely persecuted, as their lifestyles did not align with the agrarian peasant culture that the Khmer Rouge sought to implement. It is important to understand the intent of the Khmer Rouge. According to Ben Kiernan , the Khmer Rouge 14 sought to ‘recover its pre-Buddhist glory by rebuilding the powerful economy of the medieval Angkor kingdom and regain “lost territory” from Vietnam and Thailand. Democratic Kampuchea treasured the Cambodian “race,” not individuals.’ This shows that they were prepared to kill anyone who they did not see part of the ‘treasured’ Cambodian race, i.e. not having the same political views, therefore killing them, making it a genocide, as they were attempting to create a ‘pure’ and ‘treasured’ Cambodian race, not simply eliminating political enemies.

Historians such as Manus I. Midlarsky have argued that this violence amounted to a politicide rather than a genocide. This is justified on the grounds that the victims were not 15 ethnically and racially different to the Khmer Rouge and that political views – unlike the racial, religious, ethnical, and national categories covered by the UNCG – are not immutable characteristics. Therefore, according to Midlarsky, the mass killings of Khmer opponents were a politicide; according to the UN’s own definition, they cannot be classed as a genocide. There are, however, several issues with Midlarsky’s argument and the quality of his research. In making his argument, Midlarsky compares the murder of ethnically-Khymer political opponents to Stalin’s destruction of the Kulaks in the USSR, which is not widely classed as a genocide. This seems an unconvincing argument from analogy: it could equally be argued that Stalin’s murder of the Kulaks should be classified as genocidal according to a more inclusive definition of the word. Moreover, Midlarsky compares the violence in Democratic Kampuchea to the violence in Rwanda, where 70% of the Tutsi were wiped out, compared to ‘only’ 21% of Khmer Cambodians. However, even by the strict UN definition, the size of a genocide is not the most important consideration, but rather the intent to destroy a group ‘in whole or in part.’ Finally, Midlarsky does not use the most reliable sources: he cites Sege Thion, a known Holocaust denier, to support his argument, hindering the credibility of his thesis.Vickery’s view on violence against the Khymer ‘new people’ is similar to his view of
violence directed against the ethnic, racial, and religious minorities. Again, he argues that it
was a case of spontaneous peasant violence, not directed against any social group in
particular, but representing an outpouring of anger against the previous regime. As 16
previously mentioned, neither Vickery nor his findings are reliable, due to both his own
pronounced biases and his refusal to accept a higher yet widely-accepted death toll.

He also refuses to acknowledge that the Khmer Rouge targeted any specific groups, ethnic or political, therefore even refusing to use the term politicide. However, concrete evidence from the tortures at Tuol Sleng and the massacres at the Killing Fields, strongly suggest otherwise, again showing why Vickery’s argument why it cannot be a genocide, or even a politicide is incorrect. Evidence shows this, as the Khmer Rouge deemed that there ‘political’ or even ‘ethnic’ enemies were beyond redemption and ‘re-education’ and needed to be killed. As well as this, my own primary research from last August, when interviewing Norng Chan Phal, a survivor of Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison shows clearly that it was not just ‘spontaneous peasant violence’, which caused the deaths. Norng Chan Phal says, ‘According to the evidence, my father was arrested and taken to Tuol Sleng in 1978. One week later, the
Pol Pot army found me and my family in Kampot and they lied to my mum and me that they would take me to meet my father. The first view that I had of the Pol Pot army, I felt very happy and I thought it was a great opportunity to visit the capital and meet my daddy.’ This quote shows that the Khmer Rouge specifically came after him and his family, to torture and kill them, showing the flaws in Vickery’s argument.

Despite the UN’s narrow and outdated definition, there are still some historians who classify all forms of the killings as genocide, not just the ones of the ethnic minorities. Hurst Hannum argues that even by the UN’s narrow definition, the killing of the majority Khmer people should be considered a genocide. At first sight, this many seem tenuous; yet the 17 stated intention of the Khmer Rouge would support such a claim. The Khmer Rouge intended to have a ‘pure’ Khmer nation, within which a rural peasantry, free of outside influences and intellectualism, would live an agrarian life. The Khmer Rouge wanted to build a ‘new’ Cambodia, which was a purely agrarian society and culture. However, given that much of the current population had been influenced by the West, and the only way of eliminating the Western influence, that the Khmer Rouge hated, was to destroy it, and that meant destroying and eliminating people who did not share the same view as the Khmer Rouge. Frank Chalk also that the Khmer Rouge ‘defined social class and political background as if they were biological traits, meaning that the Khmer Rouge believed people could not be changed and ‘de-Westernised’, therefore eliminating them. Therefore, eliminating political enemies was not just intended for political reasons, but also to ‘cleanse’ the population of those deemed
undesirable in the eyes of the Khmer Rouge, and to build a ‘new’ Cambodia with a pure agrarian culture and peasant population.

Frank Chalk considers the intention of the Khmer Rouge as perpetrators, comparing 18 their treatment of the ‘new people’ to that of the Jews by the Nazis. The ‘Khmer Rouge regime,’ Chalk writes, ‘killed to purify and cleanse society, to rid it of all sources of social and political pollution, to make it “clean, tough and strong.”’ As the Khmer Rouge killed ethnically Khmer people, to ‘purify’ the population, and they were also Khmer, this makes it
a case of ‘auto-genocide’, which is the term Hurst Hannum19 uses, still falling under the category of a genocide, even by the UN’s narrow definition.

The United Nations Definition: No Longer Fit for Purpose?

This essay has so far argued that the violence in Democratic Kampuchea was in fact a genocide, despite the UN’s narrow and outdated definition. This longwinded and intractable debate is, in the mind of this author, evidence that the UN’s definition is no-longer fit for purpose and, therefore, should be changed. Frank Chalk has argued this point convincingly: an alternative and more inclusive definition is preferable, as has been used intermittently by some historians and social scientists. The original UN definition is not set-in-stone; indeed, there is clear logic behind redefining the term to correct an accident of history, that being exclusion of political and other social groups from the 1948 definition. The current 20 definition of genocide is flawed, excluding political views and a range of social categories, including gender, sexuality, mental and physical disability. From the example of the Khmer Rouge, it is clear that these identities are rarely ‘mutable’ and unimportant in the minds of
perpetrators.

With greater definitional clarity, greater focus could be paid to the prevention of genocide, achieving justice for victims, and the punishment of perpetrators. David Hawk has made this point: ‘The absence of “political groups” from the coverage of the Genocide Convention has unfortunately had the effect of diverting the discussion from what to do to deter or remedy a concrete situation of mass killings into debilitating, confusing debate over the question of whether a situation is ‘legally’ a genocide.’ Midlarsky, who terms the events 21 a ‘politicide,’ often compares the Cambodian Genocide to Mao’s Culture Revolution in China, which is not widely classed as a genocide. Due to Mao’s intention of wiping out intellectuals and ‘revisionists,’ a more inclusive definition of genocide would allow events  such as this to receive a classification that fits their enormity.

Conclusion

This essay has considered whether or not the violence in Democratic Kampuchea is better classified as a genocide or politicide. Acts of violence towards the ethnic minority populations and religious groups were clearly and indisputably genocidal, even by the UN’s very narrow definition. This is because the Khmer Rouge targeted the ethnic minorities and religious groups either because they were not Khmer and would not abide by the agrarian and ‘pure’ Khmer culture that the Khmer Rouge wanted to impose. Therefore, given that they had an intent to destroy ‘in whole or in part’ these groups in Cambodia, this is clearly a genocide, and the figures of the deaths make this indisputable. Ethnic minorities were specifically targeted as the Khmer Rouge wanted a ‘pure’ Khmer population and wanted ethnic minorities to abandon aspects of their culture, in what was called ‘forced khmerisation’. On top of this, the majority of the violence towards the ethnic Khmers was in fact a genocide as well, even by the UN’s strict and narrow definition. This is because of the clear intent of the Khmer Rouge to wipe out the ‘new people’, and not just wiping out their political enemies, but also their families. This was because in the eyes of the Khmer Rouge, those whose political views were different to theirs, were considered to be ‘impure’ Cambodians, and the Khmer Rouge wanted to wipe them out. Given that this is the case, this is clearly a genocide, or the term ‘auto-genocide’ could be used. However, the UN should still adopt a broader definition. This is because too much time is spent on arguing whether mass killings are a genocide or not, so that the UN can focus on preventing and dealing with future genocides.

Works Cited

• Kiernan, Ben (2003). “The Demography of Genocide in Southeast Asia: The Death Tolls in Cambodia, 1975–79, and East Timor, 1975–80”. Critical Asian Studies. 35 (4): 585–597
• United Nations, the 1948 Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide.
• ‘Genocide and Historical Debate’. W. D. Rubinstein. History Today, vol. 54, issue 4 (April 2004).
• Ben Kiernan. ‘The Genocide in Cambodia, 1975-79.’ Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 22:2, PP. 35-40
• Duong, Liai, ‘Racial Discrimination in the Cambodian Genocide.’ Unpublished thesis, Genocide Studies Program, Yale University, 2006. P.6
• Alexander Laban Hinton. Why Did they Kill? (Berkely: University of California Press, 2005). p.216.
• B. Kiernan, ‘The Cambodian Genocide.’ In A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation New, ed. by Weitz, Eric D, p.290.
• B. Kiernan, ‘The Cambodian Genocide.’ In A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation New, ed. by Weitz, Eric D, p.290.
• Geoffrey Blainey; A Short History of Christianity; Viking; 2011; p.543
• Duong, Liai, ‘Racial Discrimination in the Cambodian Genocide.’ Unpublished thesis, Genocide Studies Program, Yale University, 2006. P. 35
• Vickery, M. Cambodia 1975–1982, P. 303
• Vickery, M. Cambodia 1975–1982, P.VIII
• Whitaker, B. Revised and updated report on the question of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. United Nations Economic and Social Council, 1985. p.2.
• B. Kiernan, ‘The Cambodian Genocide.’ In A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation New, ed. by Weitz, Eric D, p.287
• Midlarsky, M. I. The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, p. 303
• H. Hannum. ‘International Law and Cambodian Genocide: The Sounds of Silence.’ In Human Rights Quarterly, Feb., 1989, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Feb., 1989), p.112
• Chalk, F. ‘Redefining Genocide.’ In Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions, ed. George J. Andreopoulos, p.52
• H. Hannum. ‘International Law and Cambodian Genocide: The Sounds of Silence.’ In Human Rights Quarterly, Feb., 1989, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Feb., 1989), p. 113
• Chalk, F. ‘Redefining Genocide.’ In Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions, ed. George J. Andreopoulos, p.58
• David Hawk quoted in Chalk, F. ‘Redefining Genocide.’ In Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions,
  ed. George J. Andreopoulos, p.51
• H. Hannum. ‘International Law and Cambodian Genocide: The Sounds of Silence.’ In Human Rights Quarterly, Feb., 1989, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Feb., 1989), pp. 82-138.