| Cambodian genocide | |
|---|---|
 Skulls from victims of the Cambodian genocide | |
| Location | Democratic Kampuchea |
| Date | 17 April 1975 – 7 January 1979 (3 years, 8 months and 20 days) |
| Target | Cambodia's previous leaders,business leaders,journalists,students,doctors,lawyers,Buddhists, Chams, Chinese Cambodians,Christians,intellectuals,Thai Cambodians, Vietnamese Cambodians |
Attack type | Genocide, classicide, politicide,ethnic cleansing,extrajudicial killings,torture,famine,forced labor, unethical humanexperiments,forced disappearances,deportation,crimes against humanity |
| Deaths | c. 3,000,000 (33% of Cambodian population) |
| Perpetrators | Khmer Rouge |
| Motive | Marxism-Leninism,Maoism, Anti-Buddhism, anti-Cham sentiment,anti-Christianity,anti-intellectualism, anti-Thai sentiment, anti-Vietnamese sentiment, Khmerultranationalism, Sinophobia and Islamophobia |
During theCambodian genocide[a], as many as 3,000,000Cambodians[b] werekilled by theKhmer Rouge underPol Pot.[1][2] The genocide lasted from April 17, 1975 to January 7, 1979.[3]
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge wanted to roll back Cambodia to "Year Zero," when every inhabitant was aruralfarmer.[4] Soldiers forced millions of people to move from Cambodia's cities intoforced laborcamps in the countryside.[3][5] Hundreds of thousands died there fromstarvation anddiseases.[3][5] The Cambodian genocide is sometimes compared tothe Holocaust.
The Khmer Rougemurdered over 1,300,000 in thekilling fields, thenburied them inmass graves. Particularly, theytortured andexecuted hundreds of thousands of people.[3][6] In January 1979,Vietnaminvaded Cambodia and removed the Khmer Rouge from power. This ended the Cambodian genocide.[3][5]
Before 1953, Cambodia was part ofFrench Indochina. It gained itsindependence in 1953, and became the Kingdom of Cambodia.[7] TheCommunist Party of Kampuchea, namely theKhmer Rouge, wanted to make Cambodia into acommunist country.[7]
In the 1960s, they built up an army, namely theKampuchea Revolutionary Army, in the country's easternforests. They got help from theViet Cong, thePathet Lao, theNorth Vietnamese army and theChinese Communist Party.[8]
Beginning in 1967, the Khmer Rouge's army fought the Kingdom of Cambodia in theCambodian Civil War. They wanted to take power fromPrinceNorodom Sihanouk and make Cambodia into acommunist country.[7]
In 1970,Lon Nol led acoup and took control of the country.[7] He was not a communist. He was pro-capitalist and pro-American.[9] The United States supported his coup by sending money and weapons.[10]
According to theU.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum:[10]
ByCongressional order ... aerial attacks ended in August 1973 after a final surge ofbombing. But U.S. weapons continued to flow to Lon Nol’s slowly retreating forces. Ultimately, civilian andmilitary aid to his government totaled $1.6billion.
In 1970, the United States andSouth Vietnam were fighting theVietnam War againstNorth Vietnam and theViet Cong. Lon Nol's new Cambodian government formedalliances with the United States and South Vietnam (two capitalist countries).[11] Meanwhile, the Khmer Rouge (a communist party) had alliances with North Vietnam and the Viet Cong (which were trying to make Vietnam a communist country).[1]
Between 1970 and 1973, theUnited States military purportedly bombed large areas of the Cambodian countryside.[12] Allegedly, 150,000peasants were killed in these bombings.[13] The United States had also supported Lon Nol's rise to power.[1] The Khmer Rouge "used the United States' actions torecruit followers and as an excuse for [their] brutal policies," according to theHolocaustMuseumHouston.[12]
On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Cambodia'scapital,Phnom Penh and took over the country.[14] They renamed it "Democratic Kampuchea." This ended the Cambodian Civil War and began the Cambodian genocide.[3][14]
The Khmer Rouge were a "fanaticalCommunist movement ... which imposed aruthless agenda of forced labor,thought control, and massexecution" across Cambodia.[15] Most members wereteenagepeasant boys.[13] The Khmer Rouge believed the people in Cambodia's cities had been poisoned andcorrupted by the ideas ofWesterncapitalism.[4] They wanted to return Cambodia to "Year Zero," a time when everybody in the country was arural farmer.[4]
They thought this would create anagrariansocialistutopia – a perfect,farm-basedsociety withoutsocial classes, where people would shareproperty.[3][4] They did not believe thatmoney,free markets, or educated professions, such asmedicine,engineering,law or teaching, should exist. To the Khmer Rouge, being a poor farm worker was the only acceptable lifestyle. They viewed educated people, including qualified professionals, as a threat.[3][4]
The Khmer Rouge began the genocide immediately after capturing Phnom Penh.[3][14] In just a few days, they forced everyone in the city into the countryside to doforced labor onfarms.[3][16] Eventually, they did the same in every city and town in Cambodia.[17] According to theUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM):[14]
By the afternoon of that very first day, soldiers using bullhorns began ordering the city’s twomillion residents into thecountryside.Houses andschools were emptied at gunpoint, with shots fired if people did not move fast enough. Not evenhospitals were spared, with patients forced into the streets [. ...] Thousands of people died in the chaos along jammed roads leading from the capital.
As per the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor, the Khmer Rouge "turned the country into a hugedetention center".[18] They abolished allcivil rights andhuman rights. The peasants lost theright to vote, participate in the government orcriticize the government. People who questioned the government were often tortured or murdered.[15]
Allprivate properties were taken away by the Khmer Rouge.[18] Civilians could not choose who tomarry, where to work or what to wear – everybody had to wear "peasant work clothes".[19] A person could only gather and talk with one other person at a time.[18] People were not allowed to have cars, there was nopublic transportation, and there were strict rules aboutleisure activities.[18]
In cities across the country, the Khmer Rouge closedbanks,shops, offices,pagodas,mosques,churches,factories,hospitals,schools, anduniversities.[15][19] They made all of these things illegal:[13][4][18][20]
ImitatingMaoist China, the Khmer Rouge immediately collectivized Cambodia. They abolished personal property rights and forced everybody to work on farms.[3][20] Pol Pot wanted to double the amount ofrice Cambodia was growing immediately, using the new collectivized farms.[19]
Soldiers forced millions of people on death marches into the countryside forslave labor, fromdawn todusk, diggingcanals, buildingdams and growingcrops.[15] They were given little food or training, with a few to no proper tools. Hundreds of thousands died of exhaustion orstarvation.[20]
Soon after they took power, the Khmer Rouge murdered thousands of politicians, soldiers, andcivilians who had worked for Lon Nol's government.[18] The Khmer Rouge imprisoned,tortured andmurdered tens of thousands of Cambodians who refused to be "re-educated" or questioned the regime.[12] They killed large numbers of professionals, including but not limited todoctors,lawyers andteachers.[21]
As per theEncyclopaedia Britannica, they also killed "anyone who could remotely be described as 'intellectual,' which included anyone wearing [eyeglasses] or who couldspeak a foreign language."[21] At a single prison in Phnom Penh, famously known as theSecurity Prison 21, they executed at least 15,000 people.[19] The victims included many loyal Khmer Rouge members whom Pol Pot suspected oftreason.[3]
The Khmer Rouge made everybody in Cambodia follow its policies. However, theypersecuted some specific groups. These includededucated people, such asdoctors,lawyers,Christians,Buddhists,Muslims,Chinese Cambodians,Thai Cambodians andVietnamese Cambodians.[3][21] Between 70% and 80% of all Muslims in Cambodia were killed during the genocide.[21]
The Khmer Rouge deliberately broke families apart. They did not want Cambodians to beloyal to anyone or anything except the state. Starting at age 8, children were taken from their parents and put in laborcamps.[22] There, they were taught that the state was now their parent.[4]
According to the Holocaust Museum Houston:[12]
In an effort to create asociety [...] in which people worked for thecommon good, the Khmer Rouge placed people incollective living arrangements — orcommunes — and enacted “re-education” programs [. ...] People were divided into categories that reflected the trust that the Khmer Rouge had for them; the mosttrustworthy were called “oldcitizens.” The pro-West and [people who lived in cities] began as “new citizens” and could move up to “deportees,” then “candidates” and finally “full rights citizens”; however, most citizens never moved up.
As per the Holocaust Day Memorial Trust:[4]
For the Khmer Rouge, children were central to the revolution as they believed they could be easily moulded, conditioned andindoctrinated. They could be taught to obey orders,become soldiers and kill enemies. Children were taught to believe that anyone not conforming to the Khmer laws werecorrupt enemies.
The Khmer Rouge's policies created a widespreadfamine. Between 500,000 to 1,500,000 Cambodians died directly from this famine.[20] It was made worse by theshortage ofmedicines forillnesses andpandemics associated with weakenedpublic health from the famine. This shortage could have easily been avoided without the Khmer Rouge's policies. Meanwhile, the country's doctors had been killed or sent to the countryside, causing many more peasants to die from easily curable diseases.[3][20]
In January 1979, communistVietnaminvaded Cambodia. They wanted to remove Pol Pot from power because his army had crossed the Cambodian–Vietnameseborder tomassacre Vietnamesecivilians.[23] They removed the Khmer Rouge from power and propped up another pro-Vietnamese communist dictatorship.[23] Hundreds of thousands ofsurvivors fled torefugee camps inThailand.[21] Many laterimmigrated to theUnited States.
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In 2006, theUnited Nations and the Cambodian government established a specialcourt called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). This court has tried some former Khmer Rouge leaders forcrimes against humanity.[12]
Kaing Guek Eav – also known as Comrade Duch – was the first to be tried before the ECCC. Eav was the head of Security Prison 21 during the genocide. The court found himguilty of crimes against humanity and breaking theGeneva Conventions of 1949.[24] He was eventuallysentenced tolife imprisonment.[25]
In 2011, the ECCCconvicted two top Khmer Rouge officials, Noun Chea and Khieu Samphan, for crimes against humanity, genocide, and breaking the Geneva Conventions.[25]
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 March 2010
