Why Did They Kill

Wisconsin Bookwatch, May, 2005

Why Did They Kill

Alexander Laban Hinton

University of California Press

2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94720

0520241797 $21.95 www.ucpress.edu

Why Did They Kill?: Cambodia In The Shadow Of Genocide by Alexander Laban Hinton (Associate professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University, Newark) explores the cultural and political underpinnings of one the most heinous holocausts of the twentieth century, perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia from April 1975 to January 1979. Approximately twenty percent of Cambodia's population died due to starvation, malnutrition, disease, and outright execution due to the drastic policies the Khmer Rouge implemented trying to transform the nation into a purely agrarian state. The Khmer Rouge regime was unusual among genocidal states in that, though it did target muslim, Chinese, and Vietnamese citizens, much of the killing was ethnic Khmer exterminating ethnic Khmer, a perplexing feature that sets it apart from many ethnicity or religion-based genocide situations. Indeed, the Khmer purged so many of its own cadres that its destructive ways weakened itself and contributed to its downfall when Vietnam invaded. Why Did They Kill? strives to answer its title question drawing upon the author's extensive anthropological study and expertise, and includes numerous interviews and testimonies, as well as insights into human psychology and sociology. Postulating that societies can be "primed" for genocide when saturated by certain features such as severe class distinctions, the absence of an international response, moral restructuring, socioeconomic uphevals and more, and then "activated" into mass killing by various triggers, especially idealogues who spread a climate of fear to induce violence. Chilling yet meticulous in its search for answers, "Why Did They Kill?" is an absolute must-read for scholars and lay people alike striving to understand genocide in Cambodia as well as the horrific underpinnings and workings of so-called "idealogical genocide" in general.