User:Diderot/Khmer Rouge

Exactly what is it about Cambodia that makes people insane?[edit]

Look, this shouldn't be that hard.

According to the most widely accepted estimates, somewhere on the order of one to two million people died in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Estimates of the number executed by the Khmer Rouge and its agents vary from 50,000 to several hundred thousand, with the balance dead through disease, poor nutrition and medical care, and overwork. Some figures in Cambodian politics, as well as many human rights advocates, refer to this as an act of genocide. Francois Pondchaud has gone as far as inventing the word "autogenocide" for this ostensibly self-induced mass slaghter.

Why in the hell is this so bloody hard to say?

No, it does not meet the right-wing's requirement that the Khmer Rouge be the evilest beings ever, but it hardly serves as an apology for them either. Executing five to six digits worth of people and having over a million die through indifference or incompetence is hardly an endorsement of the Khmer Rouge. No, it does not simply "class" the KR years as genocide or autogenocide. It reports - vaguely in the first instance and specifically in the second - who calls what what. Yes, "autogenocide" is Pondchaud's invention - he uses it in the final chapter of Year Zero. Whether or not "genocide" is an appropriate term to describe this level of slaughter - especially considering that far more death was caused by bad policy and disinterest than by execution - is genuinely debatable.

One of the reasons Nazi Holocaust survivors get sensitive when people use the word "holocaust" for any kind of death attributed to political causes is because there is a difference between death due to political malfeasance and death due to political malvolence.

The current version of the article uses passive verbs in a very disingenious way, to make unsourced assertions on behalf of unseen commentors. Who, exactly, "described (the KR) as using Stalinist means for Maoist ends." It certainly wasn't Pol Pot, a man who actually denied that the DK was a socialist state. Which of you is the mind reader who knows what the KR's intents were upon seizing power. Does anyone have interviews with Ieng Sary to the effect that "they were determined immediately to create a classless society by force." Unless telepathy is at work, I expect some sort of confession from senior KR people to back the claim up.

The Khmer Rouge regime also systematically executed anyone with connections to the former government, professionals and intellectuals, and the ethnic Vietnamese population. This claim remains controversial. I've met Cambodian professionals and intelligencia who lived through the KR years, and besides, Vickery's reports seem to contradict it. A quick search of the KR-related websites sees few people reinforcing this claim.

Most sources indicate that the Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for the deaths of a higher proportion of its own country's population than any regime in modern history. No, most sources claim Leopold II's Congo Free State holds that record. Unsourced, this is pure POV.

This stuff is simple POV control. Replace all the passive verbs with active ones and say who said what and who did what.

No, neither version of the "Khmer Rouge in Power" section in this editing dispute cuts it. The right-wing version is too POV - by leaps and bounds - and the other version offers no context or detail on four years of KR government, lending itself to charges of whitewashing. The most salient fact of Hitler's ethnic policy was the Holocaust and the most salient fact about the KR's economic policies was the amount of death and hardship it caused. I'm tempted to try to summarise Vickery's Cambodia: 1975-1982 in this section, but I'm sure someone would complain that Vickery is POV. (Which he is, and has the decency to admit it.)

The Khmer Rouge were bad people. That's POV but I see little chance of something else coming through the text. However, there is no need to echo any of the several Standard Total Views of the KR. These events are now roughly a generation in the past and the actual facts are bad enough.

What is it about Cambodian history that makes people nuts?