This study examines Western responses to human rights abuses in Cambodia between 1975 and 1980, years which included the murderous rule of the Khmer Rouge regime, a Vietnamese invasion, a civil war, and a famine. It argues that the Vietnamese invasion of December 1978 forced Western states to choose between the conflicting principles of promoting the individual human rights of the Cambodian people and furthering the geostrategic interests of the Western states.

The twentieth century has been labelled the ‘century of genocide’, and according to estimates, more than 250 million civilians were victims of genocide and mass atrocities during this period. This book provides one of the first regional perspectives on mass atrocities in Asia, by exploring the issue through two central themes. Bringing together experts in genocide studies and area specialists, the book looks at the legacy of past genocides and mass atrocities, with case studies on East Timor, Cambodia and Indonesia. It explores the enduring legacies of trauma and societal divisions, the complex and continuing impacts of past mass violence, and the role of transitional justice in the aftermath of mass atrocities in Asia. Understanding these complex legacies is crucial for the region to build a future that acknowledges the past. The book goes on to consider the prospects and challenges for preventing future mass atrocities in Asia, and globally. It discusses both regional and global factors that may impact on preventing future mass atrocities in Asia, and highlights the value of a regional perspective in mass atrocity prevention. Providing a detailed examination of genocide and mass atrocities through the themes of legacies and prevention, the book is an important contribution to Asian Studies and Security Studies.

This study examines Western responses to human rights abuses in Cambodia between 1975 and 1980, years which included the murderous rule of the Khmer Rouge regime, a Vietnamese invasion, a civil war and a famine. It argues that the Vietnamese invasion of December 1978 forced Western states to choose between the conflicting principles of promoting the individual human rights of the Cambodian people and furthering the geostrategic interests of the Western states.

Genocide is one of the most heinous abuses of human rights imaginable, yet reaction to it by European governments in the post-Cold War world has been criticised for not matching the severity of the crime. European governments rarely agree on whether to call a situation genocide, and their responses to purported genocides have often been limited to delivering humanitarian aid to victims and supporting prosecution of perpetrators in international criminal tribunals. More coercive measures - including sanctions or military intervention - are usually rejected as infeasible or unnecessary. This book explores the European approach to genocide, reviewing government attitudes towards the negotiation and ratification of the 1948 Genocide Convention and analysing responses to purported genocides since the end of the Second World War. Karen E. Smith considers why some European governments were hostile to the Genocide Convention and why European governments have been reluctant to use the term genocide to describe atrocities ever since.

In 1946, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights became the first international body empowered to promote global human rights. During its first twenty years, the Commission established most of the contemporary standards of human rights. Increased social awareness in the 1960s enabled the Commission to respond to specific complaints from individuals and nongovernmental organizations and to pressure offending governments by using various measures that ranged from exhortation and mediation to sanctions designed to isolate violators. These enforcement activities have increased the Commission's visibility and have dramatically transformed its operation. Dr. Tolley's thematic history of the Commission offers important insights into states' political conduct in international human rights organizations, the evolving legal and institutional means of preventing human rights violations, and the difficulties encountered when an intergovernmental body is pressed to provide impartial protection to citizens against abuse by their own government.

No detailed description available for "A Rhetorical Crime".

In Red Internationalism, Salar Mohandesi returns to the Vietnam War to offer a new interpretation of the transnational left's most transformative years. In the 1960s, radicals mobilized ideas from the early twentieth century to reinvent a critique of imperialism that promised not only to end the war but also to overthrow the global system that made such wars possible. Focusing on encounters between French, American, and Vietnamese radicals, Mohandesi explores how their struggles did change the world, but in unexpected ways that allowed human rights to increasingly displace anti-imperialism as the dominant idiom of internationalism. When anti-imperialism collapsed in the 1970s, human rights emerged as a hegemonic alternative channeling anti-imperialism's aspirations while rejecting systemic change. Approaching human rights as neither transhistorical truth nor cynical imperialist ruse but instead as a symptom of anti-imperialism's epochal crisis, Red Internationalism dramatizes a shift that continues to affect prospects for emancipatory political change in the future.