When I think of mass genocide, with reasons for death being race, or imperfections, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I think of WW2, of Hitler and the gas chambers. It's what I was taught at school. We all know about it. But if you think that this was the last time this mistake was made, you're wrong.
The Cambodian genocide started in 1976. It ended in 1979, just one year before my older brother was born. A quarter of the country was killed, and often in much less humane ways than Hitler came up with.
It's important to remember that these things didn't stop with Hitler. Winning the war did not heal the world. There have been even more recent genocides than the Cambodian ones, particularly thinking of Rwanda in 1994 - within my lifetime.
I spent a sombre morning walking around both the prison where innocent people were tortured until they confessed their "crimes", and the killing fields, where they were sent when they ran out of "crimes" to confess to. I won't go into too many details - you can find them on the Internet if you want - but the one thing that really got me from the audio tour was the repeated quote "Cambodians killing Cambodians" and it reminded me of a song by Cara Dillon about the Northern Ireland issues:
"I wonder just how many wars are fought between good friends"
The answer is certainly too many.
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