Remembering The Past

With all the conflicts of Iraq, Syria, Darfur and The Democratic Republic of Congo going on we must not forget the past genocides. Genocide and mass atrocities are now a hot topic. Here are a few of the past genocides and there summaries:

Armenia:

The conflict dates back till the 18th century when the Armenian nationalists slowly began to want to rule themselves. Within the Ottoman Empire they became a highly politicized religious minority. They were inspired by The French revolution. This caused a series of massacres by the Ottoman Sultan from 1894 to 1896. About 200,000 Armenians perished. Later the Young Turks took over the Ottoman Empire and they continue to harass and discriminate against the Christian Armenians. Another Massacre of the Armenians took place in 1909 in a town called Adana. The Ottoman government murdered 1 million Armenians in the years 1915-1923.

Holocaust:

Germany was forced to pay huge price which was caused by the Treaty of Versailles, after world war 1. This caused an inflation and the great depression. Due to desperation, Hitler rose to power in 1933. He and his socialist party provided a scapegoat by blaming the Jews. Hitler told Germany that they were the superior race and that they needed to eliminate the undesirable races: Jews, slaves, gypsies, homosexuals, religious dissidents and the disabled. They made laws against the Jews caused by the Nuremburg Law. Jews weren’t allowed in stores etc. The Jews were deported. The Jews Communist and prisoners of war were the reason the first concentration camp was made. 11,000,000 million people were killed during the Holocaust. 6,000,000 were Jews.

Cambodia:

Founded in 1951, an offshoot of Khmer Rouge, the communist party of Kampuchea which had studied in Paris and was influenced by the French communist party. Originally the CPK was a close ally with the communist in Vietnam. Then they tried to distance themselves from the Vietnamese as the war progressed. Real power of this movement, during this time, fell into the hands of Cambodians who despised intellectualism one which was Saloth Sar. His more common name was Pol Pot. The chairman of CPK became Pol Pot. He purged thousands of party members that were believed to be allied with Vietnamese communist. Overlooking such purges, the Vietnamese Communist was willing to look at the purges. They assist the newly named Khmer Rouge in taking Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge and Vietcong guerrillas by 1970 had taken over two-thirds of the country. Cambodian king, Norodom Sihanouk was sent by a 1970 coup into exile and then put a pro American regime in power in the other third world country. This was to close off supply routes to the Vietcong on the Cambodia side of the border. A bombing campaign was launched in Cambodia was launched by the United States. The US dropped three times the quantity of explosives on Cambodia between 1970 and 1973 then what they have dropped on Japan in World War 2. The war began to exhaust the Cambodians. On April 17, 1975, Khmer Rouge had entered Phenom Penh which is the capital and declared April to be the beginning of a new era: year zero. Over 2 million Cambodians were targeted for destruction between 1975 and 1979.

Reference: STAND anti genocide coalition; http://www.standnow.org/