Cambodia: Not for the Faint Hearted.

Disclaimer: If you cry over the starved children you see on those tv commercials, then you might want to skip over this blog for today. Certainly do not watch the video, you probably will cry for a few hourse. But, if you are curious about the things which have happened in our world over the past 30 years, then continue on with your mind and heart ready to be shocked.

One of the most terriffic and bloody regimes the modern world has ever seen (or chosen not to see) was that of the Khimer Rouge of South East Asia, opperating in Vietnam and conducting its bloody work in Cambodia. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the khimer rouge set about the task of eliminating the progressive ideals of all non-agrigrarian people, especially those who were educated, city-dwellers, or religiously devout.





The Khmer Rouge in power
Main article: Democratic Kampuchea
The leadership of the Khmer Rouge remained largely unchanged from the 1960s to the mid-1990s. The leaders were mostly from middle-class families and had been educated at French universities.

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 from 1963 until his death in 1998
Nuon Chea (Long Bunruot) "Brother number 2" Prime Minister (alive, arrested in 2007 [6])
Ieng Sary "Brother number 3" Deputy Prime Minister (Pol Pot's brother-in-law) (alive, arrested in 2007)
Ta Mok (Chhit Chhoeun) "Brother number 4" Final Khmer Rouge leader, Southwest Regional Secretary (died in custody awaiting trial for genocide, July 21, 2006)
Khieu Samphan "Brother number 5" President of the Khmer Rouge (alive, arrested in 2007)
Son Sen Defense Minister (dead)
Yun Yat (dead)
Ke Pauk "Brother number 13" Former secretary of the Northern zone (dead)
Ieng Thirith (alive, arrested in 2007)
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 labor. These actions resulted in massive deaths through executions, work exhaustion, illness, and starvation.

In Phnom Penh and other cities, the Khmer Rouge 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. These were not the first evacuations of civilian populations by the Khmer Rouge. Similar evacuations of populations without possessions had been occurring on a smaller scale since the early 1970s.

The Khmer Rouge attempted to turn Cambodia into a classless society by depopulating cities and forcing the urban population ("New People") into agricultural communes. The entire population was forced to become farmers in labor camps. During their four years in power, the Khmer Rouge overworked and starved the population, at the same time executing selected groups who had the potential to undermine the new state (including intellectuals or even those that had stereotypical signs of learning, such as glasses) 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.[citation needed] Family relationships not sanctioned by the state were also banned, and family members could be put to death for communicating with each other. In any case, family members were often relocated to different parts of the country with all postal and telephone services abolished. The total lack of agricultural knowledge by the former city dwellers made famine inevitable. Rural dwellers were often unsympathetic or too frightened to assist them. Such acts as picking wild fruit or berries was seen as "private enterprise" for which the death penalty applied.

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 abolished. People were encouraged to call each other 'friend' or 'comrade' (Khmer: មិត្ត; mitt), 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' (lot dam) a new revolutionary character, that they were the 'instruments' (Khmer: ឧបករណ៍; opokar) of the ruling body known as 'Angkar' (Khmer: អង្គការ; pronounced ahngkah; meaning 'The Organization'), and that nostalgia for pre-revolutionary times (choeu stek arom, or 'memory sickness') could result in execution. Also, rural terms like Mae (Khmer: ម៉ែ; mother) replaced urban terms like Mak (Khmer: ម៉ាក់; mother).

Many Cambodians 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.


[edit] Crimes against humanity

Skulls of Khmer Rouge victimsThe Khmer Rouge government arrested, tortured and eventually executed anyone suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed "enemies":

anyone with connections to the former government or with foreign governments
professionals and intellectuals - in practice this included almost everyone with an education, or even people wearing glasses (which, according to the regime, meant that they were literate)
ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, Cambodian Christians, Muslims and the Buddhist monks
Homosexuals
"economic sabotage" for which many of the former urban dwellers (who had not starved to death in the first place) were deemed to be guilty of by virtue of their lack of agricultural ability.
Through the 1970s, and especially after mid-1975, the party was also shaken by factional struggles. There were even armed attempts to topple Pol Pot. The resultant purges reached a crest in 1977 and 1978 when thousands, including some important KCP leaders, were executed.

Today, examples of the torture methods used by the Khmer Rouge can be seen at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The museum occupies the former grounds of a high school turned prison camp that was operated by Khang Khek Ieu, more commonly known as "Comrade Duch". Some 17,000 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 (mainly by pickaxes to save bullets) and buried in mass graves. Of the thousands who entered the Tuol Sleng Centre (also known as S-21), only ten are known to have survived.


Photos of genocide victims on display at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
[edit] Number of deaths
The exact number of people who died as a result of the Khmer Rouge's policies is debated, as is the cause of death among those who died. Access to the country during Khmer Rouge rule and during Vietnamese rule was very limited. In the early 1980s, the Vietnamese-installed regime that succeeded the Khmer Rouge conducted a national household survey, which concluded that over 3.3 million had died, but most modern historians do not consider that number to be reliable.

Modern research has located thousands of mass graves from the Khmer Rouge era all over Cambodia, containing an estimated 1.39 million bodies. Various studies have estimated the death toll at between 740,000 and 3,000,000, most commonly between 1.4 million and 2.2 million, with perhaps half of those deaths being due to executions, and the rest from starvation and disease.[7]

The United States Department of State funded Yale Cambodian Genocide Project give estimates of the total death toll as 1.2 million and 1.7 million respectively. Amnesty International estimates 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, and his deputy, Khieu Samphan, said 1 million had been killed.


Thanks to wikipedia and youtube.

:-)