Cambodia

The Cambodian Genocide refers to the attempt of Khmer Rouge party leader Pol
Pot to nationalize and centralize the peasant farming society of Cambodia
virtually overnight, in accordance with the Chinese Communist agricultural
model. This resulted in the deaths of over 25% of the country’s population in
three years, from 1975 when the Khmer Rouge seized power until they were
overthrown by the Vietnamese in 1979.
Cambodia, a country in Southeast Asia, is about the size of Wisconsin; its capital
is Phnom Penh. In the years preceding the genocide, the population of Cambodia
was just over 7 million, almost all of whom were Buddhists. The country is
bordered by Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.

Decolonization

The genocide emanated from a harsh climate of political and social turmoil that
began during the French decolonization of Southeast Asia in the early 1950s and
continued until the late 1980s.

Cambodia gained independence from France in 1953 after nearly 100 years of
colonial rule. Power was given to Cambodia’s Prince Sihanouk. During his rule,
civil war broke out in neighboring Vietnam between Communist North Vietnam
and the South Vietnamese Army, aided by the US. Cambodia maintained
neutrality by giving support to both sides, allowing the Viet Cong to use
Cambodian ports to ship in supplies, while allowing the US to secretly bomb Viet
Cong hideouts in Cambodia.

In 1970, Prince Sihanouk was deposed in a military coup led by his own
Cambodian Lieutenant-General Lon Nol, a response to the turbulent political
climate of Southeast Asia during this time. Lon Nol was made president of the
new Khmer Republic while Prince Sihanouk and his followers joined forces with a
communist guerrilla organization known as the Khmer Rouge. Soon after, civil
war began.

Rise of the Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement was founded in 1960. The movement’s
leader, Pol Pot, was educated in France and was an admirer of Maoist (Chinese)
communism. Pol Pot envisioned the creation of a new Cambodia based on the
Maoist-Communist model with the aim to deconstruct Cambodia to a primitive
“Year Zero,” wherein all citizens would participate in rural work projects and
Western innovations would be destroyed. Pol Pot brought in Chinese training
tactics and Viet Cong support for his troops and soon produced a formidable
military force.
 Khmer Rouge soldiers

In 1970, the Khmer Rouge began a civil war with the U.S.-backed Khmer
Republic, under Lieutenant-General Lon Nol. Lon Nol’s government assumed a
pro-Western, anti-Communist stance and demanded the withdrawal of North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces from Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge guerillas
deposed Lon Nol’s government in 1975 and within days of overthrowing the
government, the Khmer Rouge began the mission to reconstruct Cambodia on
the communist model of Mao’s China. These extremist policies led to the
Cambodian genocide.

In order to achieve the “ideal” communist model, the Khmer Rouge believed that
all Cambodians had to work as laborers on collective farms; anyone who opposed
this system would be eliminated. This list of potential opposition included
intellectuals, educated people, professionals, monks, religious enthusiasts,
Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, and
Cambodians with Chinese, Vietnamese, or Thai ancestry. The Khmer Rouge also
frequently executed its own members on suspicions of treachery.
Cambodian genocide victims
Under the threat of death, Cambodians nationwide were forced from their homes
and villages. The ill, disabled, old, and young incapable of making the journey to
collectivized farms and labor camps were killed on the spot. People who refused
to leave were killed, along with any who appeared to oppose the new regime.
People from cities were forcibly evacuated to the countryside. All political and
civil rights of citizens were abolished. Children were taken from their parents and
placed in forced labor camps. Factories, schools, universities, hospitals, and all
other private institutions were shut down and former owners, employees, and
their extended families were murdered. Religion was banned. Leading Buddhist
monks and Christian missionaries were killed, and temples and churches were
burned. While racist sentiments did exist within the Khmer Rouge, most of the
killing was inspired by the extremist propaganda of a militant communist
transformation. It was common for people to be shot for speaking a foreign
language, wearing glasses, smiling, or crying. One Khmer slogan best illuminates
Pol Pot’s ideology: “To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss.”

Cambodians who survived the purges and marches became unpaid laborers who
worked on minimum rations for endless hours. They were forced to live in public
communes, similar to military barracks, with constant food shortages and
rampant diseases. Virtual slave labor, starvation, injury, and illness caused many
Cambodians to become incapable of performing physical work, and they were
killed by the Khmer Rouge as expenses to the system. These conditions of
genocide continued for three years until Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 and
ousted the Khmer Rouge government in 1979. Civilian deaths totaled over 2
million people.

Cambodians continued to suffer after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. Countless
numbers of people fled to Thailand. Many died of starvation or stepped on land
mines that the Khmer Rouge soldiers placed along the western border to prevent
their victims from fleeing. Those who made it to Thailand brought malaria,
typhoid, cholera, and a host of other illnesses into the camps. Human rights
groups estimate that 650,000 people died in the year following the fall of the
Khmer Rouge.

Lon Nol abandoned the neutrality stance of his predecessor,

establishing close ties with the US and South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
U.S. troops felt free to move into Cambodia to continue their struggle with the
Viet Cong. Cambodia soon became a battlefield, harboring U.S. troops, airbases,
barracks, and weapons. As many as 750,000 Cambodians were killed from 1970-
1974 by American B-52 bombers, using napalm and dart cluster-bombs to
destroy suspected Viet Cong targets in Cambodia. The heavy American
bombardment and Lon Nol’s collaboration with America drove new recruits to Pol
Pot’s Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement.
 Khmer Rouge soldiers at Phnom Penh Airport

Many Cambodians had become disenchanted with Western democracy due to the
huge loss of Cambodian lives resulting from the US involving Cambodia in the
Vietnam War. Pol Pot’s communism brought images of new hope, promise, and
national tranquility for Cambodia. By 1975, Pol Pot’s force had grown to over
700,000. Within days of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia in 1975, Pol Pot
had put into motion his extremist policies of collectivization, government
confiscation and control of all properties, and communal labor.

While the Khmer Rouge was gaining power, the U.S. government had very little
interest in the events that were occurring in Southeastern Asia. The American
Embassy was concerned with Cambodia solely in relation to the effect on the
Vietnam War. U.S. Embassy staff in Phnom Penh was not particularly interested
in the regime or the victims. General William Westmoreland, the commander of
U.S. forces in Vietnam, stated, “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on
life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient.”

Cambodia was in ruins when the Vietnamese took control in 1979. The economy
failed under Pol Pot, and all professionals, engineers, technicians, and planners
who could potentially reorganize Cambodia had been killed in the genocide. After
Cambodia fell under Communist Vietnamese control, foreign relief aid from any
Western democratic state was unlikely. Instead, the US and UK offered financial
and military support to the Khmer Rouge forces in exile, who had sworn
opposition to Vietnam and communism. The Vietnamese occupation and the
continued threat of Khmer Rouge guerilla forces left Cambodia in
underdeveloped conditions until Vietnam’s eventual withdrawal in 1989. In the
military conflicts of 1978-1989, an additional 14,000 Cambodian civilians
perished. In 1991, a peace agreement was finally reached, and Buddhism was
reinstated as the official religion. The nation’s first democratic elections were
held in 1993.

Khmer Rouge Killing Fields

On July 25, 1983, the “Research Committee on Pol Pot’s Genocidal Regime”
issued its final report, including detailed province-by-province data. The data
showed that 3,314,768 people, an estimated 25% of the population, lost their
lives in the “Pol Pot time.”

In the early 1990s, mass graves were uncovered throughout Cambodia. They
held hundreds of skeletal remains from Khmer Rouge execution grounds, known
as killing fields. Survivors suffered high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder
but often went undiagnosed and almost always went untreated.

Bringing the perpetrators to justice has proven to be a difficult task. The UN

called for a Khmer Rouge Tribunal in 1994; The Extraordinary Chambers in the
Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was established, and trials finally began in November
of 2007 and are ongoing today.

Many suspected perpetrators were killed in the military struggle with Vietnam or
eliminated as internal threats to the Khmer Rouge itself. In 1997, Pol Pot was
arrested by Khmer Rouge members; a “mock” trial was staged, and Pol Pot was
found guilty. He died of natural causes in 1998. The last members of the Khmer
Rouge were officially disbanded in 1999.
 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)

The ECCC tribunal has been criticized for handing down only three convictions
despite being operational for eleven years at a cost of $300 million. This is in
part due to the court prosecuting only senior leaders most responsible for the
crimes. Additionally, Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge member,
has opposed further indictments. Several government officials are former Khmer
Rouge members and there have been considerable efforts to protect them,
including denying access to witnesses because of their position.

Kaing Guek Eav, known as “Comrade Duch,” Nuon Chea, and Khieu Samphan are
the only perpetrators of the genocide to be convicted thus far. Duch was found
guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes and was originally sentenced to
35 years in prison, but the sentence was overturned in favor of life imprisonment
in 2012. Nuon Chea was found guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes,
and genocide and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Chea appealed the verdict
but the sentence was upheld in 2016. Khieu Samphan was found guilty of crimes
against humanity, war crimes, and genocide and sentenced to life imprisonment.
He appealed the verdict, but his sentence was also upheld in 2016.

Today, Cambodia’s main industries are fabrics and tourism; foreign visitors to
Cambodia surpassed five million in 2016. However, corruption remains a serious
issue in Cambodian politics. International aid from the US and other countries is
often embezzled by bureaucrats. This illegal seizure of foreign aid has greatly
added to the widespread income disparity which affects most Cambodian citizens
today.

Human rights abuses soared in recent years, according to Human Rights Watch.
In 2016, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) led by Prime Minister Hun Sen,
escalated political persecution against Cambodia’s opposition party, human rights
workers, social activists, and intellectuals. There have been arbitrary arrests,
extrajudicial killings, and denial of citizens’ rights to protest. Human rights abuses
continued into 2017. The leader of Cambodia’s opposition party was arrested and
the party was dissolved, leaving no opposition to contest the CPP in the 2018
elections.