Genocide
Some historians have argued that mass deaths and mass killings in the 20th Century were linked to utopian projects that aimed at the radical transformation of society. This essay will look at why this argument is both true and correct and will focus on the mass deaths and mass killings better known as genocide that occurred in Cambodia (1975-1979) and Rwanda (1994) both of which were linked to utopian projects.
In order to understand why these mass deaths and mass killings did take place we need to define what is meant by utopian projects, what is genocide and secondly examine the historical events in Cambodia and Rwanda before the mass deaths and mass killings took place. “A utopia is an imaginative account of a perfect society or ideal commonwealth. The term, which I often used derogatively to mean unrealistic is derived from Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516)” . “What is Genocide? Lemkin the inventor of this term explains that genocide is… “a term deriving from the Greek word genos (tribe, race) and the Latin cide (by way of analogy, see homicide, fratricide)…” The legal definition of “genocide” is stipulated in Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime and Genocide which reads as follows:
…genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group, as such:
a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
In the context of genocidal state, the genocidal acts, namely the activities depicted in points a, b, c, d, e are committed or sponsored by the...
Please login to view the full essay...