[Marxism] Re: Wikipedia (Cambodian death toll)

["Clinton Fernandes" <clintonf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lance Murdoch <lancemurdoch@xxxxxxxxx>  wrote:

Then the second paragraph begins "The Khmer Rouge regime is remembered
mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, through
execution, starvation and forced labor."  As someone familiar with
this I'd say the key word is estimate. The main method scholars have
used to get this number is going by censuses - subtract the 1979
population from the 1975 one and there you go.   Problems arise though
- no census of Cambodia had been taken since 1962.  Then, on top of
trying to base the 1975 number on the 1962 one, the question of how
many Cambodians were killed directly or indirectly due to American
bombs up until 1975 has to be answered.  Thrown into this is
subtracting the 1979 number from the 1975 one doesn't work because
there were a lot of refugees from Cambodia in neighboring countries,
so that has to be estimated as well.  Along with the possibility that
the birth rate dropped between 1975 and 1979 (or even 1970 and 1975,
since the 1975 population is a wild guess).


Note that there is nothing out of the ordinary in using demographic data as ONE 
OF the tools in calculating the death toll from the war. 
It is standard practice among historians. In almost every case of genocide, 
there simply isn't a statistician standing at the ready, 
marking off people who are killed and confirming before a judge and jury in a 
court of law 
that it was as a direct result of the aggressor's actions. Below is an excerpt 
from Professor Ben Kiernan's 
research note on "The Demography of Genocide in Southeast Asia", Critical Asian 
Studies 35:4 (2003), 585-597. 
Kiernan is with Yale University's Genocide Studies Program.
 

Extract:  

Cambodia's last census before the Khmer Rouge came to power in April 1975 was 
held in 1962. 

It counted the country's population at 5.729 million. The demographer Jacques 
Migozzi, in the most extensive

 study of Cambodia's population, considered this an undercount, and came up 
with an estimate of 7.363 million

 for 1970. Migozzi anticipated in 1972 that the population would continue to 
increase at 2.9 percent per annum (p.a.),

 despite the ongoing 1970-75 war, and he predicted a 1975 population of 8.5 
million. But the war took a substantial

 toll and also slightly reduced the natural population growth rate. A mid-1974 
United Nations (UN) estimate produced

 a figure of 7.89 million, representing growth of 2.46 percent p.a. The UN 
estimate was corroborated at the time 

by an independent statistician,W. J. Sampson, then working in Cambodia.

 

Demographers Judith Banister and Paige Johnson estimate the April 1975 
population at 7.3 million; 

Marek Sliwinski estimates 7.566 million. These two figures seem low in the 
light of Migozzi's 

estimate for five years earlier, those of 1974, and concurring higher estimates 
for later years (see below). 

More recently, the demographer Patrick Heuveline of the University of Chicago 
calculated a population of

 7.562 million for April 1970, and assuming 300,000 excess wartime deaths in 
1970-75, 

postulated a figure of 8.102 million by April 1975.

 

The mid-1974 estimates suggest a similar April 1975 figure of 8,044,000. After 
its victory, 

Pol Pot's new Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime quickly expelled 150,000 ethnic 
Vietnamese residents. 

I have therefore calculated a population of 7.894 million remaining in Cambodia 
in April 1975; 

Heuveline's figure would be 7.952 million. A Cambodian statistician working for 
the DK regime also learned

 in 1975 that the population was "about 8 million" in that year.

 

>From a base figure of 7.894 million, the harsh living conditions that the DK 
>regime immediately imposed probably 

restricted Cambodia's 1975-79 natural population growth rate (births minus 
"normal" deaths) to around 1 percent p.a.

 This would project an "expected" January 1979 population of 8,214,528-minus 
"excess" deaths since April 1975.

 

Documentary evidence for not only excess deaths but actual population decline 
after April 1975 includes 

an official, published DK figure of 7,735,279 in March 1976. In August 1976, 
another official DK source gave a 

confidential estimate of 7,333,000, a statistical loss of over 400,000 in just 
six months. 

It is clear not only that the lower estimates for the pre-1975 population are 
wrong, but also that the post-1975 population was declining.

 

The most detailed post-genocide population figure is a government count of 
6,589,954 people at the end of 1980, 

documented by the Cambodian Department of Statistics in 1992. From this, 
Banister and Johnson have calculated 

a population figure of 6.36 million for the end of 1978. This means a 
statistical loss from the projected early 1979 figure 

(8,214,528) of around 1,854,528. Alternatively, a figure of 1,671,000 results 
from calculating and combining the different

 estimated tolls for Cambodia's various ethnic and geographic communities. 
Marek Sliwinski calculates the 1975-79 

nationwide toll at 1.843-1.871 million. We may safely conclude, from known pre- 
and post-genocide population figures 

and from professional demographic calculations, that the 1975-79 death toll was 
between 1.671 and 1.871 million people, 

21 to 24 percent of Cambodia's 1975 population. Extract ends.  
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