Kosovo

[WSpence245@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/28/99 10:03:21 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
holly.lisle@sff.net writes:

> > The people who were slaughtered in Cambodia didn't fit any of the 
>  > above categories.  They were largely the educated classes who were 
killed 
>  > because they had no place in the agrarian society envisioned by Pol Pot 
> and 
>  > the Khmer Rouge.
>  
>  You're missing something, all right.  Pol Pot eliminated the 
>  educated folks.  They're a political group -- the folks who are 
>  knowlegeable enough to realize protest is possible, and to protest.

	Being a member of a given social group does not mean one is a member 
of a political group.  Just because most Republicans are white does not mean 
all whites are Republicans.  And while the educated were the primary targets 
of the Khmer Rouge pogrom, they were not its only beneficiaries.  Plenty of 
poor illiterate peasants shared their fate.

	When one commits genocide, the desired result is no more of the group 
in question.  The mass rapes committed by the Serbians on Bosnian Muslim 
women were committed with the intention of performing an act to assist in 
genocide, by producing infants of mixed race to diminish the number of 
Bosnian Muslims in the world.  Forced sterilization is another form of 
genocide.  I'm sure there are other tactics equally as heinous out there 
which do not involve killing the members of the group in question.

	Mass murder is equally despicable, but unless you kill all 
Cambodians, there will always be educated Cambodians.  To make genocide a 
useful word, I'd question including political groups in the definition, 
though what I think the AHD had in mind was political organizations which 
also have other things in common (being Catholic, for example, within the 
IRA), so that the group in question is unique unto itself.  I'll let the 
lexicographers debate the term, but when I use it, the above is how I 
interpret it.