#18 Understanding Colonialism: Death and Impoverishment Part III
The Cambodian Holocaust (1975-79) and The Rwandan Holocaust (1994)
I continue in this blog to deal with Holocausts as the consequences of colonialism as they result from racial thinking and for good measure, I am adding in famine in India. Here I do not argue that famine was ‘caused’ by British colonialism and racial thinking. Rather, famine was yet another method of allowing very large numbers of people to die. Race as a form of thought was a necessary condition that allowed famine in the 19th-century India to take its course. In Mogul India, as in China, Emperors had constantly looked for methods to mitigate famines.
I begin by illustrating two more 20th-century holocausts, namely the Cambodian Holocaust (1975-79) and then the Rwandan Holocaust (1994). Both Holocausts had different backgrounds to each other, but alongside Indian famines, they were all under layered by racial thinking.
The Cambodian Holocaust (1975-79)
The Khmer Rouge regime frequently arrested and often executed anyone suspected of connections with the former Cambodian government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals, intellectuals, Buddhist monks and ethnic minorities. The regime attempted to purify Cambodian society along racial, social and political lines. Cambodia's previous military and political leadership, business leaders, journalists, students, doctors, and lawyers were all killed.
Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Thai, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Cham, Cambodian Christians, and other minorities were also targeted. The Khmer Rouge forcibly relocated minority groups and banned the use of minority languages. By decree, the Khmer Rouge banned the existence of more than 20 minority groups, which constituted 15% of the country's population.
They initially ordered the expulsion of ethnic Vietnamese from Cambodia, but then massacred large numbers of that population as they attempted to flee the country. The regime then prevented the remaining 20,000 ethnic Vietnamese from fleeing, and much of this group was also executed.
Additionally, the Khmer Rouge conducted many cross-border raids into Vietnam where they slaughtered an estimated 30,000 Vietnamese civilians. Most notably, during the Ba Chúc massacre in April 1978, the Khmer Rouge military crossed the border and entered villages, slaughtering 3,157 Vietnamese civilians at once. This forced an urgent response from the Vietnamese government, precipitating the Cambodian–Vietnamese War in which the Khmer Rouge was ultimately defeated.
The state of Chinese Cambodians during the Khmer Rouge regime has been described as the worst disaster ever to befall any ethnic Chinese community in Southeast Asia. Cambodians of Chinese descent were massacred by the Khmer Rouge under the justification that they used to exploit the Cambodian people. The Chinese were stereotyped as traders and moneylenders associated with capitalism, while historically the group had attracted resentment due to their lighter skin colour and cultural differences. Hundreds of Chinese families were rounded up in 1978 and told that they were to be resettled but were executed. At the beginning of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1975, there were 425,000 ethnic Chinese in Cambodia; by the end of 1979, there were just 200,000. Furthermore, the Chinese were predominantly city-dwellers, making them vulnerable to the Khmer Rouge's revolutionary ruralism and evacuation of city residents to farms. The government of the People's Republic of China did not protest the killings of ethnic Chinese in Cambodia.
According to Ben Kiernan, the fiercest extermination campaign was directed against the ethnic Cham Muslim minority. Islam was seen as an "alien" and "foreign" culture that did not belong in the new Communist system. Initially, the Khmer Rouge aimed for the "forced assimilation" of Chams through population dispersal. Pol Pot then began using intimidation efforts against the Chams that included the assassination of village elders, but ultimately ordered the full-scale mass killing of Cham people. American professor Samuel Totten and Australian professor Paul R. Bartrop estimate that these efforts would have completely wiped out the Cham population were it not for the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979.
Under the leadership of Pol Pot, an ardent atheist, the Khmer Rouge had a policy of state atheism. According to Catherine Wessinger, "Democratic Kampuchea was officially an atheist state, and the persecution of religion by the Khmer Rouge was matched in severity only by the persecution of religion in the communist states of Albania and North Korea". All religions were banned, and the repression of adherents of Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism was extensive. It is estimated that up to 50,000 Buddhist monks were massacred by the Khmer Rouge
Ideology played an important role in the Cambodian genocide. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge aimed to bring Cambodia back to its "mythic past" of the powerful Khmer Empire, to stop corrupting influences like foreign aid and western culture, and to restore the country to an agrarian society. Attempts to implement these goals were key factors in the ensuing genocide. One Khmer Rouge leader said that the killings were meant for the "purification of the populace."
The Khmer Rouge forced virtually the entire population of Cambodia into mobile work teams. They created an inhumane forced labour regime, with starvation, forced resettlement, land collectivisation, and state terror to keep the population in line.
Historian Ben Kiernan has compared the Cambodian genocide to the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire and the holocaust perpetrated by Nazi-era Germany. While each was unique, they shared certain common features. Racism was a major part of the ideology of all three of these genocidal regimes. All three targeted religious minorities and tried to use the force of arms to expand into what they believed to be their historical heartlands (the Khmer Empire, Turkestan, and Lebensraum respectively). All three regimes idealised their ethnic peasantry as the true 'national' class and considered them the ‘ethnic soil’ from which the new state grew.
The Rwandan Holocaust 1994
Rwanda is a small highland territory carved out of the land in central Africa, which lies between the Congo to the west, Tanzania to the east and Uganda to the northwest. Rwanda is highly populated, with rich fertile land of high mountains and many streams. Two physically distinct peoples - the Hutu and the Tutsis - have lived in this area for centuries. The area was first colonised by the Germans in 1899; in 1919 the area was taken over by Belgium.
Rwanda had been a centralised kingdom presided over by Tutsi kings. The king ruled through three sets of chiefs, predominantly Batutsi. The lives of the rest of the people, the Bahutu, were based on mutual benefit through the exchange of labour.
In line with racial thinking, the Belgians decided that the Hutu and Tutsis were distinct races and gave the Tutsi authority to collect taxes and keep order over the Hutu. The colonists introduced cash crops but kept the pre-existing structure of the kingdom.
In itself, there was nothing remarkable about this. All colonising authorities had found ways to rule and to collect taxes from existing populations by giving one community authority over another. This was often given to minority peoples, thus raising the status of one group over another, causing deep and lasting resentments. In this case, the Hutu rose against the Tutsis to avenge the humiliation imposed on them during Belgian rule.
Colonial Divisions and Rwanda
Rwanda was divided by Belgium colonialists between the Hutu and Tutsi, which led to lasting and deep resentments which was the vital background to holocaust occurred
The story of the divisions created in past colonies is one that can only be touched on here. Once readers have understood the dynamics of colonial rule in territories that were not fully settled with white farmers, the issue of maintaining law and order and raising taxes becomes important. Colonial rulers, from the East India Company onwards used the existing social and political divisions of each society. Colonial rule was always a dictatorial minority rule, buttressed by local British, for instance, and locally trained military force of arms. The monopoly of superior arms allowed the invader to remain dominant. Law and order and taxation in ancient and centralised societies were incorporated into many of the lesser tasks of rule. Where there were no centralised societies, as was often the case within much of the African continent, other divisions had to be used. In many island societies, such as Sri Lanka, Ireland and Cyprus, the colonial divisions were such that even after civil wars for independence these failed to sort out the problems left by the colonial power. The Rwandan civil war led to their holocaust.
Famine and Colonisation
Famine and drought have been known to humankind since the beginning of history, and both are either mitigated or exacerbated by people. In centralised societies as in pre-colonial India or China, a major responsibility of the central authority was to find ways to mitigate famine. There is plenty of evidence to back this up.
Famines originate when weather systems are unpredictable, locusts invade territory, or a certain crop is ruined by disease. Down through the ages, peoples have prepared for food shortages in many ways and ancient systems of government have often mitigated the effects.
Western writers still write about famine as if colonisation had no impact on it; as if the increase in food production was all down to 'modern' technology. While modern food technologies have had a major effect on feeding the world, the controversy of the advantages of large-versus small-scale food production cannot be resolved in these blogs. Yet famine has not been eradicated.
During the long colonial period of history, the philosopher Malthus argued at the beginning of the 19th century, populations increased faster than our ability to produce food. Malthus’s ideas were adopted as fact, like race theory, with colonial politicians both in Europe and in the colonies. The consequences of the acceptance of Malthusian ideology on the peoples of the colonised cannot be overstated. Across the world, one of the vital jobs of emperors had been to support the people in times of need. Taxes would be reduced or nullified and in many cases stored grain would be moved to famine areas. But both domestic and colonising politicians agreed that it was not their job to mitigate famine. Famine was understood to be the work of God in killing off the poorest.
The Irish famine in the 1840s is the clearest and best-known consequence of colonial famine policy. Ireland was not officially a colony, as the island had been included in the British Isles in 1801. But in terms of all practical forms of government, Ireland was treated as a colony. Because Ireland was in Europe, the famine period was widely written up and we know many details. Over 2 million people died and another million emigrated to North America. Historians now agree that the dependency on the potato was a direct consequence of the events of the previous 40 years and that if the government had attempted to mitigate the famine and support the people many - perhaps most - would have survived. The food was available; it was a conscious political decision not to use it for famine relief purposes, to reduce the population.
In British India, as in Ireland, British officials began to manage peasant taxation after Clive annexed Bengal in 1757. The ancient obligations of monarchs to their peoples were reversed when famine happened, which was a frequent occurrence in many parts of India. In both China and India, famine relief had been taken very seriously by the society’s political authorities. Both societies managed good years by buying up excess supplies and storing grains, to be carefully distributed to the poor during bad years. Taxes were also reduced in years of need. In China, waterways were used to transport food long distances during famines.
Once the British had taken control, first in Bengal and then in the smaller monarchies during the 100 years after Clive’s initial annexation, (see chapter 6) any kind of famine relief was ignored. The British did not consider that they had a responsibility for the welfare of the peasants they ruled. The colonists were there to enrich themselves and their country of origin. In fact, in poor crop years taxes were often increased. There is now considerable evidence from Mike Davis, in his excellent volume Late Victorian Holocausts, that many millions died in India during a raft of famine years in the 19th century. It is difficult to be exact, as the British did not keep sufficient records; but Indian poverty in the 20th century was certainly due in part to colonial famine policy.
The Cambodian Holocaust
Kiernan, Ben (2008). The Pol Pot regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Yale University Press. p. 431.
Hinton, Alexander Laban (2005). Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide. University of California Press. p. 54.
The Rwandan Holocaust
The Rwandan Holocaust occurred during the middle of the Cold War and accounts are often affected by Cold War rhetoric and biases. Wikipedia has some excellent brief, well-researched accounts of the Rwanda Holocaust.
Famine
Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, Verso 2000is essential reading.
Photograph of genocide victims at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, Rwanda. By Adam Jones, Ph.D., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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The Khmer Rouge regime frequently arrested and often executed anyone suspected of connections with the former Cambodian government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals, intellectuals, Buddhist monks and ethnic minorities. The regime attempted to purify Cambodian society along racial, social and political lines. Cambodia's previous military and political leadership, business leaders, journalists, students, doctors, and lawyers were all killed.