Cambodian Genocide



"My father remembered about the Cambodian Genocide. It was a terrible time when about over two million Cambodians were being killed by the Khmer Rouge. Luckily, Vietnam just saved Cambodia from being destroyed by the darkness of the Khmer Rouge, but it seems that China seemed to be hating this."

--Su Ji-Hoon, When Darkness Fell to Cambodia Again

The Cambodian genocide (Khmer: របបប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍) was carried out by the Khmer Rouge regime under the leadership of Pol Pot, inflicting a population loss between 1.671 and 1.871 million people from 1975 to 1979, or 21 to 24 percent of Cambodia’s 1975 population. The Khmer Rouge wanted to turn the country into a socialist agrarian republic, founded on the policies of ultra-Maoism. In 1976, the Khmer Rouge changed the name of the country to Democratic Kampuchea. In order to fulfill their goals, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and forced Cambodians to relocate to labor camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labor, physical abuse, malnutrition, and disease were prevalent. This resulted in the death of approximately 25 percent of Cambodia's total population. Approximately 20,000 people passed through the Tuol Sleng Centre (also known as Security Prison S-21), one of the 196 prisons operated by the Khmer Rouge, and only 7 adults survived. The opposition were taken to the Killing Fields, where they were executed (often with pickaxes to save bullets) and buried in mass graves. The abduction and indoctrination of children was widespread, and many were persuaded or forced to commit atrocities. The genocide triggered a second outflow of refugees, many escaping to neighboring Vietnam and, to a lesser extent, Thailand. The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia ended the genocide by defeating the Khmer Rouge in 1979.

On 2 January 2001, the Cambodian government established the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, to try the members of the Khmer Rouge leadership responsible for the Cambodian genocide. Trials began on 17 February 2009. On 7 August 2014, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were convicted and received life sentences for crimes against humanity during the genocide. As of 2009, the Cambodian NGO Documentation Center of Cambodia has mapped some 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution. Direct execution is believed to account for roughly 60% of the full death toll during the genocide, with other victims succumbing to starvation or disease.

In When the Cold Breeze Blows Away,it will make Khmer Rouge rise again and starting Second Cambodian Genocide.