Cambodian genocide

During the Cambodian genocide^[a], as many as 3,000,000 Cambodians^[b] were killed by the Khmer Rouge under Pol 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 a rural farmer.^[4] Soldiers forced millions of people to move from Cambodia's cities into forced labor camps in the countryside.^[3][5] Hundreds of thousands died there from starvation and diseases.^[3][5] The Cambodian genocide is sometimes compared to the Holocaust.

The Khmer Rouge murdered over 1,300,000 in the killing fields, then buried them in mass graves. Particularly, they tortured and executed hundreds of thousands of people.^[3][6] In January 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and removed the Khmer Rouge from power. This ended the Cambodian genocide.^[3][5]

Before 1953, Cambodia was part of French Indochina. It gained its independence in 1953, and became the Kingdom of Cambodia.^[7] The Communist Party of Kampuchea, namely the Khmer Rouge, wanted to make Cambodia into a communist country.^[7]

In the 1960s, they built up an army, namely the Kampuchea Revolutionary Army, in the country's eastern forests. They got help from the Viet Cong, the Pathet Lao, the North Vietnamese army and the Chinese Communist Party.^[8]

Beginning in 1967, the Khmer Rouge's army fought the Kingdom of Cambodia in the Cambodian Civil War. They wanted to take power from Prince Norodom Sihanouk and make Cambodia into a communist country.^[7] In 1970, Lon Nol led a coup and took control of the country.^[7] He was not a communist. He was pro-American and pro-capitalist, and the United States supported his coup.^[9]

In 1970, the United States and South Vietnam were fighting the Vietnam War against North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. Lon Nol's new Cambodian government formed alliances with the United States and South Vietnam (two capitalist countries).^[10] 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, the United States military purportedly bombed large areas of the Cambodian countryside.^[9] Allegedly, 150,000 peasants were killed in these bombings.^[11] The United States had also supported Lon Nol's rise to power.^[1] The Khmer Rouge "used the United States' actions to recruit followers and as an excuse for [their] brutal policies," according to the Holocaust Museum Houston.^[9]

On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh and took over the country.^[12] They renamed it "Democratic Kampuchea." This ended the Cambodian Civil War and began the Cambodian genocide.^[3][12]

The Khmer Rouge were a "fanatical Communist movement ... which imposed a ruthless agenda of forced labor, thought control, and mass execution" across Cambodia.^[13] Most members were teenage peasant boys.^[11] The Khmer Rouge believed the people in Cambodia's cities had been poisoned and corrupted by the ideas of Western capitalism.^[4] They wanted to return Cambodia to "Year Zero," a time when everybody in the country was a rural farmer.^[4]

They thought this would create an agrarian socialist utopia – a perfect, farm-based society without social classes, where people would share property.^[3][4] They did not believe that money, free markets, or educated professions, such as medicine, 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][12] In just a few days, they forced everyone in the city into the countryside to do forced labor on farms.^[3][14] Eventually, they did the same in every city and town in Cambodia.^[15] According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM):^[12]

By the afternoon of that very first day, soldiers using bullhorns began ordering the city’s two million residents into the countryside. Houses and schools were emptied at gunpoint, with shots fired if people did not move fast enough. Not even hospitals 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 huge detention center".^[16] They abolished all civil rights and human rights. The peasants lost the right to vote, participate in the government or criticize the government. People who questioned the government were often tortured or murdered.^[13]

All private properties were taken away by the Khmer Rouge.^[16] Civilians could not choose who to marry, where to work or what to wear – everybody had to wear "peasant work clothes".^[17] A person could only gather and talk with one other person at a time.^[16] People were not allowed to have cars, there was no public transportation, and there were strict rules about leisure activities.^[16]

In cities across the country, the Khmer Rouge closed banks, shops, offices, pagodas, mosques, churches, factories, hospitals, schools, and universities.^[13][17] They made all of these things illegal:^{[11][4][16][18]}

• Music
• Money
• Radios
• Religion
• Education
• A free market
• Traditional Khmer culture
• Non-revolutionary entertainment
• Newspapers, mail, television and non-Khmer costumes
• Gathering to talk to more than one other person at a time

Imitating Maoist China, the Khmer Rouge immediately collectivized Cambodia. They abolished personal property rights and forced everybody to work on farms.^[3][18] Pol Pot wanted to double the amount of rice Cambodia was growing immediately, using the new collectivized farms.^[17]

Soldiers forced millions of people on death marches into the countryside for slave labor, from dawn to dusk, digging canals, building dams and growing crops.^[13] They were given little food or training, with a few to no proper tools. Hundreds of thousands died of exhaustion or starvation.^[18]

Soon after they took power, the Khmer Rouge murdered thousands of politicians, soldiers, and civilians who had worked for Lon Nol's government.^[16] The Khmer Rouge imprisoned, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of Cambodians who refused to be "re-educated" or questioned the regime.^[9] They killed large numbers of professionals, including but not limited to doctors, lawyers and teachers.^[19]

As per the Encyclopaedia Britannica, they also killed "anyone who could remotely be described as 'intellectual,' which included anyone wearing [eyeglasses] or who could speak a foreign language."^[19] At a single prison in Phnom Penh, famously known as the Security Prison 21, they executed at least 15,000 people.^[17] The victims included many loyal Khmer Rouge members whom Pol Pot suspected of treason.^[3]

The Khmer Rouge made everybody in Cambodia follow its policies. However, they persecuted some specific groups. These included educated people, such as doctors, lawyers, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Chinese Cambodians, Thai Cambodians and Vietnamese Cambodians.^[3][19] Between 70% and 80% of all Muslims in Cambodia were killed during the genocide.^[19]

The Khmer Rouge deliberately broke families apart. They did not want Cambodians to be loyal to anyone or anything except the state. Starting at age 8, children were taken from their parents and put in labor camps.^[20] There, they were taught that the state was now their parent.^[4]

According to the Holocaust Museum Houston:^[9]

In an effort to create a society [...] in which people worked for the common good, the Khmer Rouge placed people in collective living arrangements — or communes — and enacted “re-education” programs [. ...] People were divided into categories that reflected the trust that the Khmer Rouge had for them; the most trustworthy were called “old citizens.” 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 and indoctrinated. 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 were corrupt enemies.

The Khmer Rouge's policies created a widespread famine. Between 500,000 to 1,500,000 Cambodians died directly from this famine.^[18] It was made worse by the shortage of medicines for illnesses and pandemics associated with weakened public 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][18]

In January 1979, communist Vietnam invaded Cambodia. They wanted to remove Pol Pot from power because his army had crossed the Cambodian–Vietnamese border to massacre Vietnamese civilians.^[21] They removed the Khmer Rouge from power and propped up another pro-Vietnamese communist dictatorship.^[21] Hundreds of thousands of survivors fled to refugee camps in Thailand.^[19] Many later immigrated to the United States.

In 2006, the United Nations and the Cambodian government established a special court called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). This court has tried some former Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity.^[9]

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 him guilty of crimes against humanity and breaking the Geneva Conventions of 1949.^[22] He was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.^[23]

In 2011, the ECCC convicted two top Khmer Rouge officials, Noun Chea and Khieu Samphan, for crimes against humanity, genocide, and breaking the Geneva Conventions.^[23]

• Holodomor
• The Holocaust
• Bosnian genocide
• Rwandan genocide
• Genocides by the Soviet Union