Revisiting the Killing Fields

Revisting the Killing Fields Genocide, by definition, is the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, or cultural group. The Khmer Rouge, a major political group during the 1950’s to the 1980’s, was very secretive and was somewhat like the Nazis. the Khmer Rouge were, at least partially, a reaction to the loss of political sovereignty and the social dislocation wrought by the regional wars of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as an …

…of minorities, distrust of modernization and urbanization, and outrage at the war's destruction of rural communities, all exacerbated by uncontrollable and destructive global processes, enabled the germination of the Khmer Rouge. In the end, the singular and potent constellation of global forces and local conditions at a particular moment in history shaped a small group, a political vacuum, an insurgent peasantry, and ultimately, a regime that committed one of the century's worst crimes against humanity.