Crimes of the Kampuchean revolution

When the revolutionists Kampuchean S arrive at the capacity in 1975, they are given to create a new business while starting by destroying all the aspects of old.

They gradually put at execution a program which consists in making move people of the urban areas in agricultural cooperatives, to rehabilitate by removing the idea even private property, to develop a self-sufficing economy and a medicine, to remove the family money and meals.

The centralist mode of the Khmer Rouge (whose currency could be reduced to " Like your State like yourself! ") also start to carry out any person systematically having had relations with the old government. People of the cities like the intellectuals must as for them be rehabilitated and rejoined with the new mode which needs some like tactical forces. The relations with Vietnam will be degraded and the few 10.000 Vietnameses who had remained after May 1975 will be for the majority eliminated, because of their old economic position and infiltrations growing Vietnamese soldiers on the Kampuchean territory who increase the mistrust of the leaders with respect to the strategic and economic ambitions of their close big brother.

One can also note the creation of centers of Torture and execution such as Tuol Sleng, also called s-21. It is about an old college transformed into prison where ravelled nearly 200.000 people. There will be only 7 survivors saved by their talents, such as the sculpture or painting. On their arrival in 1978, Vietnamese found that the last people present at Tuol Sleng had been carried out by the Khmer Rouges in order to be able to flee.

The exact number of victims of the mode called " Khmer rouge" by the Westerners is still discussed. The specialists consider this number ranging between 1 million and 3 million deaths.

Can one speak about genocide?

The article Génocide watch that there are four genocides recognized by the United Nations. The massacres of Kampuchea do not form part of it, but this qualification is discussed. The question of the width is not a fundamental criterion. The genocide during the Second world war relates to 6 million Juifs and 50.000 and 80.000 of Tziganes.

There exists about the width the concept of Massacre of mass. Article 6 of the statute of the International penal court, which began again what was defined by the the United Nations following the Shoa, precise in which case one can speak about genocide. (See Genocide).

Which is the Ethnie or the Peuple or religious group, etc, targeted as such, by the birth of its members? Where the will of éradiquer is such a unit distinguished by its birth, while killing to the fetus left the bellies open of the expectant mothers as to the Rwanda? The behavior of the " Khmers rouges" (or, according to their terminology, of Kampuchéens revolutionists) to the ideology of the red guards of the China corresponds, which preceded them, but by exacerbating it, doubled of a disorganization which added to the political massacres a humane Catastrophe. There were not a Racisme but a population politically (but not inevitably economically) displaced on purely social criteria.

The qualification of Génocide is called in question by certain historians (Sacha Sher, Steve Heder, Philip Short), by certain lawyers (Ong Sophinie, David Boyle). For example for Sacha Sher, the term of genocide could not be isolated s'" it is brought back to a will to make disappear a group culturally, which considered at the beginning the inventor of the word, Raphael Lemkin as regards the assimilation of the Jews, and what occurred with the Moslems and certain ethnic minorities of the Kampuchean plates. Only, this direction was given up by the definitions of UNO, since that was likely to include too many colonial crimes and others against the thought and the traditions of many people or minorities. One could in fact all of cataloguing under this term of genocide according to the direction which one wants to lend to him well (...). But if one sticks to the legal definitions recognized internationally, which occurred in Kampuchea pas." does not pay to it;

In any case, everyone seems of agreement to say that there was Crimes against humanity (in particular of forced displacements of population) and War crimes (against the civil and military officers of the old mode).

Bibliographies

Sacha SHER, Kampuchea of the " Khmers rouges" , test of comprehension of an attempt at revolution , Harmattan, 2004.
BEN KIERNAN, the Genocide of Kampuchea 1975-79 , Gallimard, 1998.
D. CHANDLER, Pol Pot, Brother Number one, 1993 , Plon, Paris, 343 p.
MY. MARTIN, Kampuchean evil, history of a traditional company vis-a-vis its political leaders 1946 - 1987 , Hatchet, 1989,307 p.
F. PONCHAUD, Kampuchea, year zero , Julliard, Paris, 1977.

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