Genocide in Cambodia

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Cambodia is a country in Southeast Asia that is less than half the size of California. It achieved independence from France in 1953. During the Vietnam War, the Prime Minister adopted neutrality, however, he was kicked out in a coup by his own general Lon Nol. Lon Nol was overthrown by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in 1975. In 1975, there was a genocide in Cambodia, led by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, that shook the country of 7.1 million, leading to over 1 million deaths.
The term “genocide” was established by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer who fled from Germany in 1941. Lemkin combined the term “genos”, meaning race or tribe, and “cide” meaning to kill, to create the word genocide. “Genocide” was included in the charter that indicted war criminals by the Allied powers. In 1946, genocide was made punishable by international law. Under the United Nation Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is referred to as ,“any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, including:(a) killing members of the group, (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, (c ) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” However, some have brought up issues with what the term genocide means. Some issues include “the nature of the targeted group” and the number of those killed.
In April 1975, Pol Pot with the aid of the Khmer Rouge, a Communist group, took over Cambodia and renamed it Democrat...

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...withoutgenocide.org/genocides-and-conflicts/cambodian-genocide
Death Of Pol Pot: The Questions. (1998, April 18). Retrieved March 18, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/18/world/death-pol-pot-questions-khmer-rouge-rush-cremate-pol-pot-s-body-without-autopsy.html
Etcheson, C. (2008, June 10). “The Number”- Quantifying Crimes Against Humanity In Cambodia. Retrieved March 18, 2014, from http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/toll.htm
Fagan, A. (2010). The Atlas of Human Rights. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Gemza, S. (n.d.). Cambodia: Genocide. Retrieved from http://www.cybercambodia.com/dachs/stories/soy.html
Genocide In Cambodia. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.hmh.org/ed_Genocide_Cambodia.shtml
Goldhagen, D. J. (2009). Worse Than War. New York, NY: Perseus Books.
What Is Genocide? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/what-is-genocide

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