Revolution and Genocide in Ethiopia and Cambodia (review)

Prerevolutionary Ethiopia and Cambodia featured powerful monarchies, institutionalized religions, and past golden ages. In social and economic terms, however, Ethiopia and Cambodia differed greatly. Ethiopia maintained a pluralistic society despite Amhara cultural domination, while Cambodia, 80 percent Khmer, was often described as mono-ethnic. As Ethiopia developed a more oppressive land tenure system with a land-holding elite and a large landless peasantry, Cambodian peasants enjoyed better access to land and greater food security thanks to a more stable tropical climate. Yet despite such structural differences, both societies experienced cataclysmic revolutions: Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991, and Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.

However, as Kissi’s analysis shows, revolutions seem to have further widened the distinctions between the two societies. While the Khmer Rouge sought a fundamental restructuring of society—from the banning of all religions to the abolition of money and markets—the Derg pursued a more “pragmatic” and often “opportunistic” policy (47–48). Khmer ethnic chauvinism, which took the form of radical social engineering, led to ethnic purges and the deportation of ethnic minorities. In the Ethiopian case, the Derg’s killing spree resulted not from ethnic atavism but from the proliferation of armed opposition groups that threatened its vision of national unity (79–80).

Chapter 5, the most theoretical part of the book, makes a clear distinction between genocide, as in Cambodia, and political massacre, or “politicide,” as in Ethiopia. The fact that most Cambodian victims were ethnic minorities, members of religious groups, or urban dwellers makes it easier to apply the 1948 U.N. definition of genocide as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” By contrast, the Derg’s indiscriminate extermination of political opponents, regardless of religion or ethnicity, makes such a legal application more difficult. As Kissi firmly observes, “although genocide did occur in Cambodia, it did not in Ethiopia. And far from what has been asserted in some of the literature, the Dergue was not Ethiopia’s Khmer Rouge” (xx).

The present government in Ethiopia was able to invoke the 1957 Ethiopian penal code, whose definition of genocide includes politically motivated killings, to convict thousands of former Derg officials (98, 103). While leading genocide scholars such as Israel Charny and Leo Kuper regard the inclusion of political groups in genocide trials as proper (104), Kissi’s work warns against that practice. Where political groups are involved, especially insurgency groups with arms, it becomes impossible to distinguish victims from perpetrators. After all, Ethiopia’s opposition groups not only engaged in reprisal violence, but they also deliberately provoked the military regime. “The killings in Cambodia were one-sided. Those in Ethiopia were not” (118).

Kissi’s fine line between politicide and genocide works well for his particular case studies—but it may not be widely applicable to other cases. In Rwanda, for instance, the Hutu massacre of Tutsi began after the shooting down of the presidential plane by Tutsi insurgents, or the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), as it was then believed. Kissi argues that the interpretation of politicide as genocide opens a Pandora’s box wherein accusations and counteraccusations lead to fruitless academic polemics (159–60). The problem with such an argument is that it absolves governments whose genocidal inclinations, in the first place, forced their opponents into armed uprisings. This is, unfortunately, a dangerously narrow definition of genocide, and one that needs to be replaced with a broader theoretical framework that takes contemporary political reality into consideration.

Otherwise, Kissi has produced a provocative and engaging comparative masterpiece that genocide scholars as well as historians of Ethiopia and Cambodia will find informative and fascinating. His sources are somewhat asymmetrical, reflecting the relatively rich literature on Cambodian genocide. But disparity in sources is one of the many challenges inherent in comparative studies, and Kissi, in fact, deserves commendation for augmenting the Ethiopian side with oral interviews and newspaper accounts.