What strikes me as different about the Cambodian genocide is the fact that — comparing to the Armenian genocide/the Holocaust/the Rwandan genocide/etc. — there seems to be a lack of this "foreign element" — a culture that differs by language/religion/traditions etc. — that some major local group wants eliminated.
I am aware of the mass killings of clergy/monks and the ethnic cleansing of the Vietnamese/Chinese minorities in Cambodia, but "Cambodian genocide" does not refer to "the genocide of the Chinese Cambodians" but rather to the whole population.
Is this use universally accepted? Is it for a lack of a more applicable term? What makes the Cambodian genocide different from the atrocities of Stalin's regime in USSR (Holodomor/the Great Purge) where this term isn't used (to the best of my knowledge at least)?
To be clear, I have no intention to trivialize the tremendous suffering of the Cambodian population. I am just wondering about the seemingly inconsistent use of the term.
Thanks!
Can I turn this around then and ask why would you classify the Nazi attempts to exterminate the Jews as any more "true" genocide? As the Hitler apologists love to mention here, a lot of non-Jews were also targeted.
If your issue with the Cambodian genocide is that not everyone targeted belonged to the same clearly defined group, then few so-called genocides are going to fit that pretty subjective definition.
there seems to be a lack of this "foreign element" — a culture that differs by language/religion/traditions etc. — that some major local group wants eliminated.
Actually the Khmer Rogue specifically banned non-Khmer langauges, targeting the groups that spoke them. It was exactly the thing you say is missing. Books written in other languages were burned, Cham and Chinese and Vietnamese were specifically targeted.
Yes, there can be said to be debate on how exactly to define "genocide". Yes, this was a more complex situation than just Hutus killing Tutsis, but so was the Rwandan genocide. In Rwanda you didn't just have Tutsis being targeted. Communites Twa were also targeted and killed in Rwanda.
Genocide is rarely defined as one group killing one and only one other minority languistic/cultural group. I'm having trouble thinking of a single example of a genocide that didn't involve other groups.
Is this use universally accepted? Is it for a lack of a more applicable term? What makes the Cambodian genocide different from the atrocities of Stalin's regime in USSR (Holodomor/the Great Purge) where this term isn't used (to the best of my knowledge at least)?
Well a lot of people do call Holodomor a genocide. Here in Australia it's called such. But the simple answer you'll likely get is that Stalin has gotten a pass because he wasn't specifically trying to wipe out a racial or ethnic group. Ukranians would beg to differ, of course, and so do plenty of other people. But you don't see the same sort of divisions-into-tribes analysis happening in the USSR by Western scholars that you do in places like Southeast Asia where everything often gets dismissed as "tribal conflict". I'd imagine that's the case in Africa as well.
Anyway, my point is, the Cambodian genocide isn't really debatable as genocide, and most definitely was targeting minorities in addition to Buddhism. The real question isn't why is that or Rwanda considered genocide, but rather, why are people not referring to Stalins actions more widely as genocide.