The Khmer Rouge (Khmer: 
, pronounced [kʰmaːe kɾɒːhɒːm]) was a communist organization which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Its name is French: Khmer Rouge in the masculine singular, Khmers Rouges in the plural. The term "Khmer Rouge," meaning "Red Khmer" in French, was coined by Norodom Sihanouk and was later adopted in English. The official name of the Khmer Rouge was the Communist Party of Cambodia, later the Party of Democratic Kampuchea. It was also known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the Khmer Communist Party and the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea. It was deposed by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1979, after which the latter installed a pro-Soviet communist regime in Cambodia.[1]
The Khmer Rouge regime is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people (from an estimated 1972 population of 7.1 million), through execution, starvation and forced labor. It is often said to have been one of the most violent regimes of the 20th century — on par with the regimes of Adolf Hitler and, in the views of many, Joseph Stalin. In terms of the number of people killed as a proportion of the population of the country it ruled and time in power, it was probably the most lethal regime of the 20th century. The organization received support while it was in power from the People's Republic of China, who intended to "box in" the Soviet-backed Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
As of February 2006, three of the Khmer Rouge leaders have been imprisoned since the de facto end of the organization's rule (different from the official end; see below). In 1981 Pol Pot formally dissolved the Cambodian Communist Party; he died of natural causes in 1998.
Establishment
"You will get many lashes and electrocutions": Camp "rules" at
S-21
The Indochinese Communist Party was founded in 1931, and a separate Cambodian Communist Party was founded in 1951, although later the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, insisted that the party was founded in 1960. In its early years the party remained subordinate to the Communist Party of Vietnam. From the mid 1960s the Cambodian Communists conducted a low-level insurgency along the Vietnamese border, mainly in support of the Vietnamese Communists in their war with the United States.
In the 1970s the Party became known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and in the 1980s and 1990s as the Party of Democratic Kampuchea, but it became commonly known by the French name Khmer Rouge, a name originally given by Norodom Sihanouk in the 1950s.
The Standing Committee of the Khmer Rouge's Central Committee ("Party Center") during its period of power consisted of:
- Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) "Brother number 1" the effective leader of the movement, General secretary beginning February 1963 until his death, April 15, 1998
- Nuon Chea "Brother number 2" Prime Minister (alive)
- Ieng Sary "Brother number 3" Deputy Prime Minister (Pol Pot's brother-in-law) (alive)
- Khieu Samphan President of the Khmer Rouge (alive)
- Ta Mok (Chhit Chhoeun) "Brother number 7" Final Khmer Rouge leader, Southwest Regional Secretary (alive)
- Son Sen Defense Minister (dead), also;
- Yun Yat (dead), Ke Pauk "Brother number 13" Former secretary of the Northern zone (dead) and Ieng Thirith (alive).
The leadership of the Khmer Rouge was largely unchanged between the 1960s and the mid-1990s. The Khmer Rouge leaders were mostly from middle-class families and had been educated at French universities. The great majority of Khmer Rouge fighters were from poor peasant families and many were conscripted. The Khmer Rouge was funded by Vietnam in the 1950s, supplied with small arms, explosives, military weapons and support from China in the 1980s.
Political ideology
The ideology of the Khmer Rouge combined an extreme, revised form of Maoism with the anti-colonialist ideas of European Left-wing politics its leaders had acquired during their education in French universities in the 1950s. Leaders sometimes claimed that Kropotkin's theories of the French Revolution were particularly influential. But once in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge were hard pressed to find any international support, leading to the standard of self-sufficiency. While in hiding in the jungle of Ratanakiri from Prince Sihanouk's and Lon Nol's condemnation, Saloth Sar and company lived among the Khmer Loeu (highland Khmers). The tribal pariahs, who were very accommodating, left such an impression that Saloth Sar considered them pure. This kind of purity was then adopted to the ideology.
In power, the Khmer Rouge carried out a radical program that included isolating the country from foreign influence, closing schools, hospitals and factories, abolishing banking, finance and currency, outlawing all religions, confiscating all private property and relocating people from urban areas to collective farms where forced labor was widespread. The purpose of this policy was to turn Cambodians into "old people" through agricultural labour. It resulted in massive deaths through executions, work exhaustion, illness, and starvation.
The motive for the evacuations was ideologically reflected in the Maoist doctrine which the Khmer Rouge followed, which praised the rural peasants and detested urban city dwellers. On the other hand, very few if any Maoists or Anti-Revisionists today defend the Khmer Rouge as a reflection of any kind of genuine communism.
The Khmer Rouge in power
Photos from the Khmer Rouge regime's archives showing a few of their hundreds of thousands of victims (Photos on display at the
Tuol Sleng Museum,
Phnom Penh
After a coup d'état by Prime Minister General Lon Nol in 1970 deposed Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge began to garner even more support, especially in the Cambodian countryside to the point that by 1973 the Khmer Rouge exercised de facto control over the majority of Cambodian territory, although only a minority of its population. When the U.S. Congress suspended funds for bombing Khmer Rouge positions and limited aid to Cambodia in 1973, the Khmer Rouge made sweeping gains in the country. By 1975, with the Lon Nol government running out of ammunition, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before the government would collapse. On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh.
The Khmer Rouge soldiers told residents that they would be moved only about "two or three kilometers" outside the city and would return in "two or three days." Some witnesses say they were told that the evacuation was because of the "threat of American bombing" and that they did not have to lock their houses since the Khmer Rouge would "take care of everything" until they returned.
The Khmer Rouge attempted to turn Cambodia into a classless society by depopulating cities and forcing the urban population into agricultural communes. The entire population was forced to become farmers in labour camps. During their four years in power, the Khmer Rouge overworked and starved the population, at the same time executing selected groups (including intellectuals) and killing many others for even minor breaches of rules.
Cambodians were expected to produce three tons of rice per hectare; before the Khmer Rouge era, the average was only one ton per hectare. The Khmer Rouge forced people to work for 12 hours non-stop, without adequate rest or food. They did not believe in western medicine but instead favoured traditional peasant medicine; many died as a result. Family relationships not sanctioned by the state were also banned, and family members could be put to death for communicating with each other.
The Khmer language has a complex system of usages to define speakers' rank and social status. During the rule of the Khmer Rouge, these usages were abandoned. People were encouraged to call each other "friend" or "comrade" (Khmer: miet), and to avoid traditional signs of deference such as bowing or folding the hands in salutation, known as samphea. Language was transformed in other ways. The Khmer Rouge invented new terms. People were told to "forge" (Khmer: lot dam) a new revolutionary character, that they were the "instruments" (Khmer: opokar) of the Angkar (Organization, not to be confused with Angkor), and that nostalgia for prerevolutionary times (Khmer: choeu stek arom, or "memory sickness") could result in their receiving Angkar's "invitation."
Killings and torture
Number of inhabitants between
1961 and
2001 in thousands. Note the decrease during the Khmer Rouge years (1975-1979). FAO Data, Demographics of Cambodia
The Khmer Rouge regime arrested, tortured and eventually executed a number of people suspected to have had connections with the former government or with foreign governments, professionals, intellectuals as well as ordinary Khmer people who breached their rules. Ethnic Vietnamese, Cambodian Christians, Muslims and the Buddhist monkhood were also targets of persecution.
Today, examples of the torture methods used by the Khmer Rouge can be seen at the Tuol Sleng Museum. The museum occupies the former grounds of S-21, a high school turned prison camp that was operated by Khang Khek Leu, more commonly known as "Comrade Duch". Some 200,000 people passed through this centre before they were taken to sites (also known as The Killing Fields), outside Phnom Penh such as Choeung Ek where most were executed and buried in mass graves.
The exact number of people who died as a result of the Khmer Rouge's policies is debated. The Vietnamese-installed regime that succeeded the Khmer Rouge claimed that 3.3 million had died. The CIA estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 people were executed by the Khmer Rouge, but executions represented only a minority of the death toll, which mostly came from starvation.
The United States Department of State and the State Department funded Yale Cambodian Genocide Project give estimates of the total death toll as 1.2 million and 1.7 million respectively. Amnesty International gives estimates of the total death toll as 1.4 million. R. J. Rummel, an analyst of historical political killings, gives a figure of 2 million. Former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot gave a figure of 800,000. Khieu Samphan said 1 million had died.
In 1962, the last census before Cambodia was engulfed by war, the population of the country was 5.7 million. A decade later, in 1972, the population was estimated at 7.1 million. Using Amnesty International's estimate of 1.4 million deaths, about 20 percent of the population would have died between 1975 and 1978.
Fall of the Khmer Rouge
In December 1978, after several years of border conflict and a flood of refugees into Vietnam, Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia, capturing Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979 and deposing the Khmer Rouge regime. Despite Cambodians' traditional fear of Vietnamese domination, the Vietnamese invaders were assisted by widespread defections of Khmer Rouge activists, who formed the core of the post-Khmer Rouge government. The Khmer Rouge retreated to the west and continued to control an area near the Thai border for the next decade, unofficially protected by elements of the Thai Army and funded by smuggled diamonds and timber.
China launched a punitive invasion of northern Vietnam. During the '80s, the U.S. gave military and humanitarian support to the republican KPNLF and royalist ANS insurgent groups. The Khmer Rouge, still led by Pol Pot and the most militarily capable of the three rebel groups, received extensive military aid from China and intelligence from the Thai military. While eastern and central Cambodia were firmly under the control of Vietnam and its Cambodian allies by 1980, the western part of the country continued to be a battlefield through the 1980s, with millions of landmines sown across the countryside.
Pol Pot relinquished his Khmer Rouge leadership post to Khieu Samphan in 1985, but he continued to be the driving force behind the Khmer Rouge insurgency, giving speeches to his followers. Some journalists [2] commented that despite the international community's near-universal condemnation of the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule, a sizable amount of Cambodians in KR-controlled areas seemed to genuinely support Pol Pot, perhaps owing to his nationalism and vision of a "pure" Khmer society.
After a decade of inconclusive conflict, all Cambodian political factions signed a treaty in 1991 calling for elections and disarmament. But in 1992 the Khmer Rouge resumed fighting and the following year they rejected the results of the elections. There was a mass defection in 1996 when around half the remaining soldiers (about 4,000) left. Factional fighting in 1997 led to Pol Pot's trial and imprisonment by the Khmer Rouge itself. Pol Pot died in April 1998, and Khieu Samphan surrendered in December. On December 29, 1998 the remaining leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologised for the deaths in the 1970s. By 1999 most members had surrendered, or been captured. In December 1999 Ta Mok and the remaining leaders surrendered and the Khmer Rouge effectively ceased to exist.
Before the Khmer Rouge came to power, some Cambodians had already fled to refugee camps. Those who were not able to flee had to work in rural farms until the Vietnamese liberated them and later escaped to the camps. Many Cambodians had crossed the border into Thailand to seek asylum. From there, they were transported to refugee camps such as Khao-I-Dang, the only camp allowing resettlement in countries such as the United States, France, Canada, and Australia.
Recovery and trials
Since 1990 Cambodians have gradually recovered, demographically and economically, from the Khmer Rouge regime, although the psychological scars affect many Cambodian families and emigré communities. Although the current government teaches about Khmer Rouge atrocities in the schools, Cambodia has a very young population and by 2005 three-quarters of Cambodians were too young (less than 20 years old) to remember the Khmer Rouge years. The younger generations would only know the Khmer Rouge through word-of-mouth from parents and elders.
When the Vietnamese defeated the Khmer Rouge, Duch attempted to destroy the documents at Tuol Sleng. However, he left over 100,000 pages of documentation of Tuol Sleng. Another 100,000 pages of documents were left behind at Son Sen's (presumed) residence. Most of the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders live in the Pailin area or are hidden in Phnom Penh.
In 1997, Cambodia established a Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force to create a legal and judicial structure to try the remaining leaders for war crimes and other crimes against humanity. Funding shortfalls have plagued the operation since the beginning, there is some debate in the press about the exact details, but generally the only remaining fiscal problem facing the tribunal is the some U.S. $13 million that the Cambodian government itself is supposed to contribute. In several public statements the government has said that due to the poor economy and other financial commitments, the Cambodian government can only afford to devote a limited amount to the funding of the tribunal and has gone to the international community requesting that the remainder of the Cambodian share be made up through donations. Several countries, including India and Japan, have come forward with extra funds, but as of January, 2006, the full balance of funding is not yet in place. Nonetheless the work of the tribunal and its members is underway. The task force has begun its work and has taken possession of two buildings on the grounds of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) High Command headquarters in Kandal province just on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. This is a newly constructed facility, there has been some concern that the Cambodian military would be able to exercise undue pressure on the process; however, assurances have been made that a fence will be erected between the two buildings occupied by the tribunal task force and the third building still being used by the RCAF. The tribunal task force expects to spend the rest of 2006 training the judges and other tribunal members before the actual trial is to take place. [3]
On Mar 9, 2006, the Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan nominated seven judges for a trial of the Khmer Rouge.
Notes
^ An article in The Third Indochina Conflict (1951) by David Elliott notes "It is evident that the Vietnamese did not regard the Kampuchean Party which was to be formed as a real Communist Party."
References
Further reading
Two of the very few western scholars who know the Khmer language and have published works about Cambodia are Ben Kiernan and David P. Chandler. Nayan Chanda, the Indochina correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review, is also very familiar with this period (through personal reporting, including many interviews with principals).
- Elizabeth Becker: When the War Was over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution
- Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War After the War (Collier, New York, 1986) (very comprehensively footnoted)
- David P. Chandler: A History of Cambodia (Westview Press 2000); ISBN 0813335116.
- David P. Chandler: Brother Number One: A Political Biography (Westview Press 1999); ISBN 813335108.
- David P. Chandler: Facing the Cambodian past: Selected essays, 1971-1994 (Silkworm Books 1996); ISBN 9747047748.
- David P. Chandler, Ben Kiernan etc.: Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays (Yale University Press 1983); ISBN 0938692054.
- Evan Gottesman: Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge: Inside the politics of Nation Building
- Henry Kamm: Cambodia: Report from a Stricken Land
- Ben Kiernan: The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79; ISBN 0300096496.
- Ben Kiernan: How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975 (Yale University Press, Second Edition 2004); ISBN 0300102623.
- Sharon May and Frank Stewart: In the Shadow of Angkor: Contemporary Writing from Cambodia
- Haing Ngor and Roger Warner: Survival in the Killing Fields
- Dith Pran (compiled by): Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors
- William Shawcross: Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia
- Jon Swain: River of Time; ISBN 0425168050.
- Loung Ung: First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
- Carol Wagner: Soul Survivors: Stories of Women and Children in Cambodia
See also
External links
General
Genocide
