Now is the time to consider how we will react to the next genocide. Although the hope that the judgments at Nuremberg would deter genocide and similar crimes against humanity in the postwar world, genocides have occurred without sanction since 1945. The best-documented cases I have studied include the attempted annihilation of Buddhism in Tibet by China (1950-59), the selective genocide of the Hutus in Burundi by the Government of Burundi (1972), the genocidal slaughter of Hindus in East Pakistan by the Government of Pakistan (1971), and the extermination of the Ache Indians of Paraguay from 1971 onward with the toleration or complicity of the Government of Paraguay.
Under the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia it has been estimated that about 2 million, or three out of ten Cambodians, were killed or died due to the regime's policies. Whether these murders, termed “auto-genocide” by Anthony Paul, fit the definition of genocide under the Genocide Convention is open to question.
