Genocide: - DIIS

Comparing the Killing Fields: Rwanda, Cambodia and Bosnia
The overwhelmingly ideological motives behind the Cambodian bloodbath,
together with the fact that the majority of the victims were Khmers,
are sometimes invoked as justifi cation for the use of “politicide”, or “autogenocide”,
as distinct from “genocide”, yet it is equally clear that entire
ethno-religious communities were also targeted for physical annihilation
(a point to which we shall return). And while some would insist that “ethnic
cleansing” 3 is the most appropriate label to describe the slaughter of
Bosnian Muslims – involving the planned and deliberate “removal” of
populations deemed undesirable from certain territories, rather than the
intent to eliminate a specifi c ethnic community as such – there are legitimate
reasons for dissenting. We are in substantial agreement with Michael
Sells that in Bosnia the aim was “to destroy both Bosnian Muslim culture
and Bosnian multi-religious culture and to destroy the Bosnian Muslims
as a group”. 4 So also in Rwanda, where the purpose of the génocidaires
was to annihilate the Tutsi as a group, and in Cambodia, where specifi c
ethno-religious communities, along with anyone suspected of being an
“enemy of the revolution”, were systematically wiped out. We take the
strongest exception, therefore, to the views expressed by Alain Destexhe
that neither Cambodia nor Bosnia qualify as genocide because in neither
case can it be said that the perpetrators intended to exterminate a whole
people or tribe. 5
Furthermore, the mass murders committed in Rwanda, Bosnia and Cambodia
were planned, engineered and executed by the state. As has been argued
time and again, genocide is preeminently a state crime. In short, the
scale of the carnage, the character of the populations targeted for physical
3 For a fuller discussion of the concept, see Andrew Bell-Fialkoff (1996), Ethnic Cleansing.
New York, p. 1-4.
4 Michael Sells (1996), The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia. Berkeley, p. 25.
5 “It is clear“, writes Destexhe, “that the Khmer Rouge never intended the extermination of
the Cambodian people, although their actions raised many questions about their ultimate
objective“; as for the Serbs “they killed Muslims on a large scale because they were Muslims
(the Croats were not singled out in the same way, at least not systematically) but their
intention was to get rid of the Muslims not to exterminate them”. Alain Destexhe (1994),
Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. New York, p. 18, 19. For dissenting views, see
Sells (1996) and Ben Kiernan (1999), “Sur la notion de génocide”, Le Débat no. 104, March-
April, p. 179-92; Ben Kiernan (1996), The Pol Pot Regime. New Haven, p. 460; Ben Kiernan
(1993), Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia. New Haven.
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