The Ghost of Stalin and Genocide in Cambodia
Published January 11, 2010 @ 09:03AM PT
Add it to the list of Stalin's legacies: The shortcomings of the 1948 Genocide Convention are currently being felt in Cambodia, where efforts to prosecute those responsible for genocide under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime are getting hung up on the nuances of the legal definition of genocide.
Though included in earlier drafts, a category protecting groups from destruction based on "political opinion of its members" was excluded from the final version at the insistence of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin -- ostensibly, with his mind on his own acts of mass murder back home. For Cambodia, this has resulted in a debate over whether Vietnamese and Cham Muslims were targeted by the Khmer Rouge because of their ethnicity and religion, or because of their political opposition to the Khmer Rouge.
Why does it matter? After all, even if prosecutors at Cambodia's special tribunal are unsuccessful in proving the charge of genocide, former leaders of the Khmer Rouge are still likely to go to jail for war crimes and crimes against humanity. But the "genocide" label is often most important to the groups who were the target of the onslaught -- as a matter of accuracy of historical record, among other things -- and that a genocide might go unrecognized because of past political wrangling seems more than a little unjust.
The key to genocide is the intent of the perpetrator, and if the perpetrator identifies a group for annihilation, then that's genocide. Or it should be, at any rate -- legally, it's only genocide if the group was targeted for national, ethnical, racial, or religious identity. But prosecutors are hamstrung from delivering full recognition and justice to targeted populations by the ghost of Stalin.
If a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, then a genocide by any other name would taste as bitter. Sadly, I don't think that the battle over the definition of genocide is anything that anyone is interested in revisiting.
Photo credit: Sean Hoyland
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Comments (3)
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Author
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Michelle became involved in the anti-genocide cause at a young age, and has been involved in various activist endeavors, including the Teach Against Genocide pilot campaigns, ever since.
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Very interesting, and tragic. I'm reading quite a bit about Stalin over my winter break (morbid, I know!) and am continually amazed at how little we learn, in U.S. schools, about Stalin's crimes. Reminders of the price of ignoring murderous regimes, like this one, reinforce the need to accurately teach history.
Posted by Melinda Lewis on 01/11/2010 @ 04:52PM PT
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This question of definition is not a mere technicality. "Genocide" has a specific definition precisely because it's such a ghastly crime: virtually every nation in the world agreed as to just what constitutes genocide, and they clearly didn't mean the term to be applied broadly.
This is also part of the problem with proposed declarations about what the Ottoman Turks did to the Armenians in 1915-18. Massive human rigts violations? That seems pretty clear. Genocide, which specifically includes the evident intent to wipe out the entire ethnic group? I, for one, am not convinced, certainly not to the point of deeply offending an important ally whose current government was not a party to the crime(s). I'm open to persuasion, but I think it's a high standard of proof that's required, and it should remain so.
In Cambodia's case, as I understand it, there's solid evidence that a Vietnamese accent was enough to get a person persecuted and quite likely killed. That seems to me to meet the strict definition. But, again, let's make sure it does before applying that label to it. Preserving fairness to the accused is essential to credible justice.
Posted by Doug Samuelson on 02/06/2010 @ 05:52PM PT
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I hasten to re-emphasize that my uncertainty about whether the Armenian Great Calamity, as the Armenians generally call it, fits the strict definition of genocide in no way implies any doubt about whether it really did occur or whether it constituted multiple crimes against humanity, as defined by latter 20th-Century standards. Some European national courts are already convinced that it was genocide. My point is simply that the legal question seems still to be short of a definitive international judgment, and I'd rather have that before we turn the issue over to national legislatures.
Posted by Doug Samuelson on 02/06/2010 @ 06:23PM PT
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