The Killing Fields of Cambodia

• The Khmer Rouge were the ruling party of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979

• They were responsible for one of the worst mass killings of the 20th Century

• The Khmer Rouge had its origins in the 1960s, as the armed wing of the Communist Party of Kampuchea - the name the Communists used for Cambodia

• Based in remote jungle and mountain areas in the north-east of the country, the group initially made little headway

• But after a right-wing military coup toppled head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970, the Khmer Rouge entered into a political coalition with him and began to attract increasing support

• In a civil war that continued for nearly five years, the Khmer Rouge gradually increased its control in the countryside

• Khmer Rouge forces finally took over the capital, Phnom Penh, and therefore the nation as a whole in 1975

• On April 17, 1975, victorious Khmer Rouge troops entered the capital, Phnom Penh, of Cambodia

• The Khmer Rouge were enthusiastically greeted as they entered the capital

• Yet the Khmer Rouge were embittered after years of fighting the brutal civil war and years of American bombing

• Khmer Rouge soldiers marched into Phnom Penh with icy stares carved into their faces

• Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge

• During his time in the remote northeast, Pol Pot had been influenced by the hill tribes

• He respected their self-sufficiency, communal living, no use for money, and being “untainted” by Buddhism

• Under directives from Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge began to order the people to abandon their homes in Phnom Penh

• Pol Pot believed that an ideal communist society was a society where all people lived and worked in the countryside as peasants

• Peasants, in fact, were the Khmer Rouge communist ideal

• The Khmer Rouge felt that some people had made an active choice to live in cities and as city dwellers had declared their allegiance to capitalism

• All city dwellers were enemies of the new communist state

• Pol Pot also developed a “four-year plan” in which Cambodians were expected to produce an average national yield of 3 metric tons of rice per hectare (1.4 tons per acre)

• But even in peacetime years, the average national yield was only one metric ton of rice per hectare

• To meet these new demands on rice production, the Khmer Rouge enforced strict policies where workers labored in fields for 12 hours a day without adequate rest or food

• Many people lacked any experience in manual labor and became ill and died

“Keeping new people [city dwellers] is no benefit,” so the Khmer Rouge slogan went; “Losing them is no loss.”

• Foraging for food was a capital offense, despite the fact that the food allowance was so low, hundreds of thousands of people starved to death

• In addition, new rules in Kampuchea were being imposed by Angka (“The Organization”), a secretive team of Khmer Rouge leaders

• Angka banned family relationships and often took advantage of children

• Young children were seen as being pure and untainted by capitalism or family and thus, trained as informers for the new state and future Khmer Rouge soldiers

• If a Cambodian spoke French, was educated, wore glasses, or practiced Buddhism; he was killed

• Families with connections to previous Cambodian governments were susceptible to ill treatment; while former soldiers and civil servants executed

• Among the Khmer Rouge’s rules; religion, money, and private ownership were banned

• Communications with outside world was eliminated

• Families were dismantled

• Yes, Pol Pot said that 2000 years of Cambodian history had now come to an end

• On April 17, 1975, the Year Zero was declared in Cambodia

• The country was renamed the Democratic Kampuchea (DK)

• Pol Pot isolated people from the rest of world and set about emptying cities, abolishing money, private property, religion, and setting up rural collectives

• The Khmer Rouge government was finally overthrown in 1979 by invading Vietnamese troops, after a series of violent border confrontations

• While both Vietnamese and Cambodian communist forces grudgingly supported each other as they fought U.S.-backed forces in South Vietnam and Cambodia during the Vietnam War, ethnic animosities prevented them from developing any lasting bonds

• The Khmer Rouge received support from China, Vietnam's rival to north, while the Vietnamese were assisted by U.S.S.R., which competed with China

• By January 7, 1979, Vietnamese forces successfully occupied Phnom Penh

• Vietnamese soldiers were shocked to see that Cambodia was pockmarked by sunken depressions of dirt

• The depressions marked the spots of mass graves: of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians slaughtered by their own countrymen (the Killing Fields)

• Pol Pot was denounced by his former comrades in a show trial in July 1997, and sentenced to house arrest in his jungle home

• Less than a year later he was dead - denying the millions of people who were affected by this brutal regime the chance to bring him to justice