Who Could Make It Turn ? : Responsibility in Pol Pot's Agrarian Revolution
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概要
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Ben Kiernan, director of genocide studies at Yale, was invited to contribute to 90 Years of Denial commemorating the 1915 slaughter of Armenians. He seized the opportunity to write on Khmer Rouge Kampuchea, since much about that unparalleled catastrophe remains unknown, unacknowledged or misunderstood. The central dilemma of all genocides - who to blame and who to try (if you can try anybody) - is one with urgent Cambodian currency. Two former leaders of the Khmer Rouge are incarcerated awaiting the UN-sponsored trials which may never happen. Pol Pot is dead. And to muddy the who-to-blame waters, former influential Khmer Rouge operatives now hold top positions in the current government. Philip Short's comprehensive, gritty and controversial Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare is an effective means through which to revisit the killing fields. Short's desire to explore multiple causation - historical, ethnic, political, economic, and religious - seems to be sound scholary practice, but it ultimately shifts some of the blame away from key individuals whose perverse, simple ideas led to the deaths of at least one and a half million of their fellow nationals. Kiernan and others feel that much of Short's argument plays into the hands of those, like the current US administration, who feel it unwise to give the accused their day in court. This paper also highlights some of the absurdities marring Short's view of the crisis - he maintains that Cambodians as a race are slow and lazy and unproductive, and that Theravada Buddhism must bear some of the blame. It would be unfair to conclude from this that Short feels Cambodians got what was coming to them, but it is difficult to avoid the implication. No matter how much Short works for justice, sharing the blame amongst many inevitably reduces the responsibility of a few.
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