A NIGHTMARE IN BLOOD - CAMBODIA UNDER THE KHMER ROUGE
On April 17 1975 the Khmer Rouge marched into the capital Pnom Penh and evacuated that and all other cities in Cambodia. The leaders of the Khmer Rouge, The Communist Party of Kampuchea, had a vision of introducing a communist society with no private property. no religion and a society that was self sufficient. Offer of aid was turned down, closed the country and put people to work, mainly growing rice and irrigation work. People had to work day and night, often without enough food or time to sleep. The population was organized into cooperatives, much ike the peoples communes in China under Mao Tse-Tung. Young men and women were organized into work brigades. People could be ordered around the country. Money was abolished. It was a revolutionary dream and a desktop revolution that had developed in the minds of a small group of revolutionaries that saw themselves as pioneers of communism. They had a vision and nothing should block its way. They boasted about having gone further tan any other revolution. The price was high - scholars still debate how many died these years. One scholar, Ben Kiernan, has made a thorough investigation and has taken into consideration the victims of the US bombings. He has calculated the death toll and has arrived at the figure of 1,7 million people that died during Democratic Kampuchea.
"If you have rice you have everything"
Some of the irrigation constructions still remain and are used today - one is in the photo to the left. How many lives did it cost to build?
The cities were emptied
Personal freedom abolished
The whole population lived in villages that were administered together as so called cooperatives. The leaders of the cooperative (often 3 persons) got orders from above about what to dig and what to produce. Sometimes people lived i families sometimes they were separated, but young men and women were almost always living separately. Forced marriages were common, sometimes in big collective ceremonies where hundreds of couples were declared man and wife. The meals were eaten in collective dining halls. The picture below is from the cooperative Ang Tassom in August 1978.
You could not travel freely. If you found food, for instance fruit or vegetables, and ate it, you could be severely punished, sometimes executed. Those suspected of the smallest misdemeanor could disappear , most often to be killed on site. Sometimes people were taken to different prisons and the most well known is Tuol Sleng, a torture center in Pnom Penh. There was no legal system with courts, When I asked (on visit 1978) I was told that courts were unnecessary. Freedom of religion was abolished - the buddist monks were disrobed and assigned work in the rice fields. The pagodas were used as storage when they weren´t destroyed. The Cham people, who are muslims, were forbidden to practice their religion and forced to eat pork. Many were killed.
The fights against Vietnam and the fall of the Khmer Rouge
During spring of 1978 the Khmer Rouge continued to attack Vietnamese villages across the border. In Vietnam there were now Cambodian refugees. Amongst them there were defecting Khmer Rouge cadre. Vietnam decided to overthrow Pol Pot and supported actively a Cambodian resistance, It was totally dependent on Vietnam. In december 1978 Vietnam invaded Cambodia and quickly crushed all resistance. January 5 the Khmer Rouge abandoned Pnom Penh and January 7 the Vietnamese conquered an empty city. A few weeks later practically all of Cambodia was occupied by Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge continued their resistance against the Vietnamese and later the Hun Sen government in Pnom Penh. as late as 1999 the last Khmer Rouge troops laid down their weapons. The photo shows Vietnamese troops taking Pnom Penh.
How many died under the Khmer Rouge
Many figures have circulated to describe the death toll under Democratic Kampuchea. The scholars don´t totally agree, among other thing because one is divided on the issue of how many inhabitants there were oin Cambodia 1970. Another issue has been that it has been claimed that the numbers of deaths are exaggarated and do not take into account those of died of the US bombings. The number of deaths of those bombings are most often said to be between 600-800000 dead.
Most calculations end up in a death toll under the Khmer Rouge if 1,5-1,7 million dead. The most detailed study has been made by there scholar Ben Kiernan. He has interviewed people of different backgrounds and from their stories calculated the death tolls in the following way.
Most calculations end up in a death toll under the Khmer Rouge if 1,5-1,7 million dead. The most detailed study has been made by there scholar Ben Kiernan. He has interviewed people of different backgrounds and from their stories calculated the death tolls in the following way.
Estimated death toll in Cambodia 1975-1978
Socialgroup
Population 1975
Number of dead
Percent
The New people
The people were divided into two groups: The new people who lived under Nol and the "Old People" or "Base people" who lived under the Khmer Rouge for a long time
Khmer city population
2000000
500000
25
Khmer rural population
600000
150000
25
Chinese population (all urban)
430000
215000
50
Vietnamese population (urban)
10000
10000
100
Laotisk population (urban)
10000
4000
40
Total for "The New People"
3050000
879000
29
Base people
Khmer rural
4500000
675000
15
Khmer Krom (khmer from southern Vietnam)
5000
2000
40
Cham (muslim minority,rural
250000
90000
36
Vietnamese (rural)
10000
10000
100
Thai (urban)
20000
8000
40
Minorities in the Mountain Areas
60000
9000
15
Total Base People
4840000
792000
16
Total for the population of Cambodia
7890000
1671000
21
