Killing fields
In the destruction of masses, innocent people inevitably suffer
It has been 40 years since the Khmer Rouge emerged from their jungle hideouts to capture power in Cambodia. Their maniacal social engineering included total nationalization of the economy, abolition of money, emptying of the cities they saw as dens of ideological corruption and destruction of the educated elite. The result was a genocide that saw a quarter of the Cambodians killed in the four years starting in April 1975.
The destruction of Cambodia had begun much earlier when the American war in Vietnam spilled over into the neighbourhood. Cambodia is still struggling to come to terms with the human tragedy. A memorial to victims of the genocide was recently inaugurated in its capital city Phnom Penh. The world has since seen similar savagery in Rwanda, Serbia, Darfur and the Kurdish lands in Iraq. The savagery of the Islamic State across the Levant is the latest example. The rest of the world has intervened in some cases, but watched helplessly in others. Innocent people inevitably suffer.
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