The Cambodian Genocide: the Khmer Rouge 1975-79

When the Khmer Rouge and its despotic leader Pol Pot came into power on April 17th 1975, few Cambodians realised what fate lay in store. Some believed that the Communist Party of Kampuchea, commonly referred to as the Khmer Rouge, would bring stability to the country after 5 years of civil war. This was not the case, and as the Khmer Rouge soldiers marched into the capital Phomn Penh in the spring of 1975, there were no big celebrations.

One of the first acts of the communist Khmer Rouge was to drive out the residents of the capital city, and ferry them to the countryside where they would work the land. In a matter of days the city was virtually empty, a city that had a population of 2.5 million at the time. Even people in hospitals, old people that were very sick and couldn't walk by without support, were forcibly ejected from the city. This happened in other major towns and cities around the country. The Khmer Rouge claimed that the cities were under threat from U.S. air strikes to provide an explanation for the sudden evacuations, but the real reason was the creation of a pure agrarian society.

A Nation of Peasants

There would be no more class system, no more education, no more capitalism. The Khmer Rouge wanted all of Cambodia to revert back to a nation of peasants. They believed that it was the people of the cities that were corrupt and that businesses had to be dismantled.

Son Sen and Khieu Samphan, two leading members of the Khmer Rouge, were recorded saying, "We will be the first nation to create a completely communist society without wasting time on intermediate steps." This aspiration to instantly create a communist society was a task with no precedent, and even the Khmer Rouge had not completely thought through how this could be achieved, if it could be achieved at all.

The population was effectively split into two, one set being the 'new people' from the cities, and the 'old people' that were originally from the countryside and has stayed there. Ironically, the leadership, members, and soldiers of the Khmer rouge represented a very real elite during their time in power, and exercised authority over the general population. The 'new people' were treated most harshly, and sent to places all over the country to carry out forced labour. They were given the hardest jobs and the smallest amount of food, and families were broken up so that different member could be sent to separate work brigades. Overall, the 'old people' seemed to be treated marginally better, and were sometimes allowed to stay in their original homes. Everyone was expected to work for the new communist party, and often people were worked to death, or died of starvation.

The Killing Fields

The Khmer Rouge were fiercely opposed to religion, minority groups, and educated people. Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, disabled people, even people wearing glasses, were targeted, and often ended up in detention centres, and later killed. The severe paranoia within the leadership meant that they could not trust anyone and would not tolerate any type of political dissent or opposition. They purged Cambodian society of anyone they saw as a threat, and some people were executed purely down to their appearance.

Security Prison 21 was setup in Phomn Penh shortly after its evacuation, and around 20,000 people were sent there to be tortured and interrogated. Almost all of these people ended up at the Choeung Ek extermination centre, where they were forced to dig mass graves before they were executed and thrown in them. This situation was happening in other locations in Cambodia, and the mass graves that have now been uncovered are often referred to as the Killing Fields. There are no definite figures for exactly how many people were summarily executed, but a study conducted by DC-Cam Mapping Program and Yale University reported that they were at least 1,386,734 victims within the 20,000 mass grave sites they analysed. It is believed that executions attributed to around 30 to 50 per cent of all the deaths in Cambodia during the years of the Khmer Rouge, and that in total the number of deaths could be as high as 3 million. In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge came to power, the estimated total population of Cambodia was 8 million people. (Submitted by Imogen Reed)