1st Edition

Genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda New Perspectives

By Susan E. Cook Copyright 2006
    318 Pages
    by Routledge

    318 Pages
    by Routledge

    This volume deals with aspects of genocide in Rwandaand Cambodia that have been largely unexplored to date, including the impact of regional politics and the role played by social institutions in perpetrating genocide. Although the "story" of the Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979 and that of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 have been written about in detail, most have focused on how the genocides took place, what the ideas and motives were that led extremist factions to attempt to kill whole sections of their country's population, and who their victims were. This volume builds on our understanding of genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda by bringing new issues, sources, and approaches into focus.The chapters in this book are grouped so that a single theme^s explored in both the Cambodian and Rwandan contexts; their ordering is designed to facilitate comparative analysis. The first three chapters emphasize the importance of political discourse in the genocidal process. Chapters 4 and 5 examine social institutions and explore their role in the genocidal process. Chapters 6 and 7 describe the military trajectories of the genocidal regimes in Cambodia and Rwanda after their overthrow, showing that genocide and genocidal intents as a political program do not cease the moment the massacres subside. The final chapters deal with private and public efforts to memorialize the genocides in the months and years following the killing.Drawing on ten years of genocide studies at Yale, this excellent anthology assembles high-quality new research from a variety of continents, disciplines, and languages. It will be an important addition to ongoing research on genocide.

    Introduction; Peasant Ideology and Genocide in Rwanda Under Habyarimana; The Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese Communists: A History of Their Relations as Told in the Soviet Archives; Thailand ’s Response to the Cambodian Genocide; The Endurance of the Cambodian Family Under the Khmer Rouge Regime: An Oral History; Ibitero Means and Motive in the Rwandan Genocide; Second Life, Second Death: The Khmer Rouge After 1978; Rwanda’s Hutu Extremist Insurgency: An Eyewitness Perspective; Memory and Sovereignty in Post-1979 Cambodia: Choeung Ek and Local Genocide Memorials 1; The Politics of Preservation in Rwanda 1

    Biography

    Susan E. Cook