Hate kills! the consequences of bigotry  (Page 8/11)

The killing fields of cambodia

Cambodia is still known as the killing fields, which is a reference to the murder of two million Cambodians (25% of the population) by the Communist insurgent paramilitary group known as the Khmer Rouge, which was led by Pol Pot, from 1975-1979. Mass graves scarred the earth over all of Cambodia. The massacred men, women and children were tossed in pits that were covered only loosely with soil. Within months, erosion due to monsoonal rains and winds caused the bones of the dead to rise to the surface littering the ground with the skeletal remains of the victims. The bones were gathered up and stored in sheds and warehouses. Children often gather the bones that litter the earth, the bones of their ancestors—sometimes the bones of their parents, grandparents or siblings. (External Link) . Power, Samantha. “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. Perennial, New York: 2003. ISBN: 0-06-054164-4. (External Link)&rlz=1T4GZEU_enUS330&q=the+killing+fields+of+cambodia&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=KY90S83gIIOFnQeUuti5CQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CCEQsAQwAw (External Link)

South african apartheid

Throughout its more than 400 year history, South Africa has been a nation separated by color. The dominant white group, descended from Dutch and later British settlers, comprised only 10 % of the population but controlled the economy, the government, the military and police, the educational system, and all internal and external commerce. Although it had existed in fact for more than two hundred years, the rigid, caste-like system of racial segregation known as Apartheid was begun officially in the late 19th century. It gained strength and popular support in the 1920s and 1930s when internal passports were required of all non-whites who were forced to live in “black” or “colored” townships such as Soweto which were called ironically, “homelands,” but were, in fact, little more than shanty towns populated by poor blacks. An unknown number of black South Africans were murdered by their government between 1930 and the early 1990s. Garbage dumps are seldom, if ever, built in affluent communities. Environmental racism exists all over the world. The waste of the world, toxic and non-toxic, is dumped near the neighborhoods of the poor. Soweto was no exception, it dumped its own refuse and the refuse of all-white Johannesburg in its own back yard.

Metal and wood scraps are usually scrounged to build houses. A typical Soweto house was a makeshift shanty. Some “affluent” blacks, physicians, lawyers, educators, and merchants who managed, against all odds, to attend universities in Europe, lived in brick houses. However, affluence is relative and the bricks and mortar for their houses was usually scrounged also. Open cooking fires often led to large portions of Soweto erupting in flames. Because there was no fire department, bucket brigades were used to try to contain the conflagration. Sometimes, however, the fires were set deliberately by dissidents or by white soldiers acting on official orders. The vast majority of houses in Soweto had no electricity, running water, plumbing, natural gas, telephones or any of the utilities that white South Africans not only took for granted but felt entitled to—much as we do in America. However, children, even in places liked Soweto, exhibit an enormous exuberance and joy of living even though the perimeter of Soweto and all the other homelands was fenced and gated. Traditional celebrations, with people dressed in traditional, ethnic/tribal clothing, are a method of identity maintenance and social cohesion in the midst of anomie—conditions of social chaos. Maintaining traditions is also a social critique that indicates resistance toward oppression. Maintenance of peoplehood is helpful in overcoming depression and alienation. (External Link) (External Link)&query=subject%3AApartheid (External Link) (External Link)