Autogenocide is the extermination of a country's citizens by its own people or government.[1] Auto comes from the Greek reflexive pronoun while genocide comes from Greek genos meaning "race, tribe" and the Latin word -cidere meaning "kill".
The term was coined in the latter half of the 1970s to describe the actions of the Khmer Rouge government of Cambodia, to distinguish such acts from the genocide of groups considered "other" by a government, such as the killing of Jews and people of Slavic origin by Nazi Germany.[2]
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