In April 1975, a communist group known as the Khmer Rouge (KR), led by Pol Pot, seized control of Cambodia and renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot and his followers capitalized on the destruction caused by extensive U.S. bombing of Cambodia as part of the Vietnam War to recruit followers and justify their extreme policies. For four years, the Khmer Rouge imposed policies that led to the death of more than 1.7 million Cambodians through execution, overwork, starvation, and torture.
The Khmer Rouge believed that the Cambodian race had been tainted by exposure to outside ideas, especially those from the capitalist West. The regime emptied out the cities and persecuted and murdered groups they viewed as outsiders. This included members of ethnic minorities such as Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Lao, Kola, and Cambodians with foreign ancestry. Religious groups such as Muslim Chams, Christians, and Buddhist monks were also targeted. Other victims included the educated and officials of the previous regime. The Khmer Rouge imposed a single language, style of dress, atheism, and collective farming on the entire population.
Every aspect of daily life was controlled by the Khmer Rouge. People ate their meager food rations in communal canteens, worked exhausting hours for no pay on collective farms or poorly planned infrastructure projects, and attended group political education in the evenings. Families were frequently separated, even marriages were arranged by the regime. Life was extremely difficult, especially for the so-called “new people” who had once lived in cities. Anyone who stood up to the Khmer Rouge, even by foraging for extra food to feed their starving families, could face execution in the killing fields surrounding their village. Survival was determined by one’s ability to work and Cambodia’s elderly, handicapped, ill, and children suffered enormously because they were unable to perform demanding physical labor.
When the Khmer Rouge’s policies resulted in mass starvation, the secretive Khmer Rouge increasingly turned on itself. Supposed traitors were tortured and murdered at killing centers such as Tuol Sleng (S-21), from which only thirteen people are known to have survived. Some former Khmer Rouge members fled across the border to Vietnam, including Hun Sen, who was became the leader of Cambodia after a Vietnamese invasion toppled the Khmer Rouge in January 1979.
After its enemy Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge, the United States supported fugitive Khmer Rouge leaders, including Pol Pot, by among other things lobbying for the Khmer Rouge to continue to hold Cambodia’s seat at the United Nations until the early 1990s. Meanwhile, some remnants of the Khmer Rouge remained free in rural areas and carried out sporadic attacks. Although Pol Pot died a free man in 1998, a special tribunal was eventually set up in Cambodia to try high ranking members of the Khmer Rouge. Called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the tribunal indicted five leading or influential leaders of the regime, including “Comrade Duch,” the commandant of Tuol Sleng.
Sources:
Jones, Adam. Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2017.
Kiernan, Ben. “The Cambodian Genocide, 1975-1979.” In Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, edited by Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons. 4th ed. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Source: CIA World Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cb.html
