Aristotle once said, “The angry man wishes the object of his anger to suffer in return; hatred wishes its object not to exist”(Pinker 2012). Genocides are the eradication of a group of innocent people to please this hateful man. It was all too easy to find three examples of violent genocides post 1950. The more startling data however, was the number of genocides that the news media has simply ignored. The American history textbooks have always glazed over the eradication and genocide of the Native American Tribes which is wrong, but every student later learns not to trust the history textbooks. To see the same liberty of rewriting history and to leave out the more recent genocides in the modern media is, to say the least, alarming. Although violence is declining in the 20th century Pinker states that, “The English language did not even have a word for genocide until 1944…”(2012). There were genocides pre-dating the ones talked about in this article that sadly, had far more victims. The number of deaths, however, should not dictate which genocides are published and which are not. The inglorious, meaning disgraceful, ignored genocides of the 20th century are the Cambodian genocide, Bosnian genocide and Rwandan genocide.
Cambodia is a country in Southeast Asia the country was previously owned by France and famous for its beautiful 12th century temples and Buddhist monks. Cambodia was also a neighboring country to Vietnam and was brought into the fight when the Vietnam civil war began. “Under Prince Sihanouk, Cambodia had preserved neutrality during the Vietnamese civil war by giving a little to both sides: Vietnamese communists were allowed to use a Cambodian port to ship in supplies, the USA were allowed to bomb – secretly and illegitimately – Viet Cong hideouts in Cambodia”(Melicharova 2002). During the same time, however, Cambodia was in the midst of its own civil war between the budding republican government lead by Lon Nol and the communist guerrilla opposition known as Khmer Rouge and led by Pol Pot. Lon Nol’s army was kept very busy fighting against The Viet Cong communists and the homegrown Cambodian communists. “The heavy American bombardment, and Lon Nol’s collaboration with America, drove new recruits to the Khmer Rouge”(Melicharova 2002). Finally, In 1975 Lon Nol and his forces were defeated and Pol Pot took over Cambodia ushering in an age of mass killings based on the ideology of a marxist utopia.
Immediately, the Khmer Rouge embarked on their campaign to reconstruct Cambodia in the image of Mao’s China. According to the article, the goal of the perpetrators was to obtain a society in which everyone in the population are, “labourers in one huge federation of collective farms”(Melicharova 2002). The victims therefore, sacrificed to obtain this “greater good” were intellectuals and any ethnic minority groups. The article states that the victims were,
“Lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists and professional people in any field (including the army) were murdered, together with their extended families….Also targeted were minority groups, victims of the Khmer Rouge’s racism. These included ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai, and also Cambodians with Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai ancestry. Half the Cham Muslim population was murdered, and 8,000 Christians”(Melicharova 2002).
Other victims including the Buddhist monks because Pol Pot outlawed religion and destroyed all the temples including the 12th century temples. The Khmer Rouge also would photograph and document each one of their victims before touching beating and killing them. All these citizens were murdered to obtain this concluded ideal of a farming nation. Later the genocide is described as, “Pol Pot’s expulsion of Cambodian city-dwellers to rural killing fields”(Pinker 2012). In 1978 the regime was overthrown and the genocide ended by the invasion of Vietnam, but the economy had been ruined since there were no intellectuals. Overall the death toll of the Cambodian genocide is estimated to be “well over 2 million”, yet the story is largely untold (Melicharova 2002).
The next unknown genocide occurred in a country called Bosnia. After the first world war Bosnia, “was united with other Slav territories to form Yugoslavia, essentially ruled and run by the Serbs”(Melicharova 2002). The population of Bosnia by 1980 consisted of, “1.3m Bosnian Serbs (Orthodox Catholic Christians), over 1m Bosniaks (Sunni Muslim), and 0.7m Bosnian Croats (Roman Catholic Christians), all with strong historical and local claims to a homeland there”(Melicharova 2002). The problems arose when the lead of the Yugoslavian government, President Tito, died. After his death, the Croats and the Bosniaks began to look for independance and to break up Yugoslavia. The Bosnian Serbs were not happy about this and felt like their homeland was being ripped apart. To “save the country” Bosnian Serbs, lead by a man named Mladic began a genocide which they called and ethnic cleans. The goal was to exterminate the Croats and the Sunni Muslims. For the most part Mladic and his army were successful in killing thousands of men, women and children even though the Dutch government was actively helping these men, women and children flee the country. Pinker states the the Bosnian genocide is a representation of a Hobbesian trap. The Bosnian Serbs believed that in breaking up of Yugoslavia the Bosniaks, Sunni Muslims and the Bosnian Croats, Roman Catholic Christians were a threat. The whole idea of a Hobbesian trap is that both sides feels compelled to strike first so as not to risk the chance of being struck first. The Serbs attacked which caused this horrible genocide to occur and not end until, “[p]eace negotiations were held in Dayton, Ohio, and an agreement was signed in December 1995”(Melicharova 2002).
321, 339 The third and final massacre which has been widely ignored until very recently is the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda is a small nation in East Africa made up of a population of Hutus and Tutsis. The Hutus were traditionally farmers while the Tutsis were the landowners. “For 600 years the two groups shared the business of farming, essential for survival, between them. They have also shared their language, their culture, and their nationality. There have been many intermarriages”(Melicharova 2002). Until, the Europeans colonial powers “modernized” the nation and cause the birth of an alien political divide between the Hutus, who felt oppressed and the Tutsis, who were wielding their newly realized power. This caused the beginning of a civil war that turned into a genocide when the Rwandan President’s plane was shot down by an extremist. Melicharova explains that, the Hutus blamed the Tutsis and told their fellow Hutus, to wipe out the Tutsis but to start with the Hutu sympathizers and their Tutsis wives and/or husbands. The Rwandan genocide was carried out by hand with the use of machetes and bats. Angry Hutus killed Tutsis that they were once friends with or even related to without hesitation. Pinker quotes a perpetrator of the genocide in his chapter The New Peace on page 321…
“Several techniques, several, several. One can gather two thousand persons in a house- in a prison, let us say. There are some halls which are large. The house is locked. The men are left there for fifteen days without eating, without drinking. Then one opens. One finds cadavers. Not beaten, not anything. Dead”(Pinker 2012).
This genocide occurring in 1994 was watched by the world, yet by the time the world’s powers took action it was too late. According to Pinker’s numbers, in only four months 10,000 Hutus had killed 700,000 Tutsis. This means that each Hutu murdered 70 of their Tutsis friends, neighbors or relatives. What happened in Rwanda was a politicide, mass killings of civilians by a government or militia. It was well documented, so much so that, “France, a backer of…the genocidal government: it was one of their generals who advised the Hutus to ‘improve their image’”(Melicharova 2002). Which may have been in reference to the corpses in the streets and in sight of aerial cameras. However, “In the West, events in Rwanda were presented as ‘tribal violence’, ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’, ‘breakdown of existing ceasefire’, or a ‘failed State’”(Melicharova 2002). The Western world could not accept that a politicide, which has happened before in for example Nazi, Germany, could ever happen again. The Rwandans prevailed in the end, however, the Tutsis formed a government and welcomed the Hutus back to Rwanda hoping to once again live in peace.
The Cambodian, Bosnian and Rwandan genocides were widely ignored with in the 20th century. Genocides take place for multiple reasons such as utilitarian ideals, Hobbesian traps or politicides. Pinker states in his chapter The New Peace, “How many people would it be permissible to sacrifice to attain that infinite good?”(Pinker 2012). The answer is none. Genocides are hopefully, a part of our violent past, that the human race can learn from and cease to commit. “Groups that avoid, distrust, or even despise each other can coexist without genocide indefinitely”(Pinker 2012).