The Khmer Rouge Genocide, or more famously known as the Cambodian Genocide, was not originally planed to be a mass murder, but to turn the country into a communist agrarian utopia. During the Cambodian Genocide, approximately 1.7-2 million died during a 4 year span and not a single helping hand from other countries. Their many targets where doctors, teachers, monks, journalists, the rich, artists, basically anyone with higher education than a farmer during that time period. But they would also kill people who could no longer take part in physical labor and people who would be suspected of rising against the regime. The iron in the regime lies in the leader himself as he is very well educated, rich beyond compare (for Cambodians), and appointed many highly educated officials into his office.
Although the Khmer Rouge regime did take part in the genocide, the events that lead up to it is even more shocking as it was born from the struggle against French colonization and influenced by the Vietnamese victory against the French.
As the Vietnam War spilled over into Cambodia, the US troops used Cambodia as a regrouping zone in addition to bombing parts of the Cambodian country to eliminate suspected Viet Cong targets. The bombings from the US alone killed as many as 300,000 people from January to August of 1973, which decreased their trust from the West. Not only where the Cambodians killed from the US bombings, after the Khmer Rouge reigned, there was an increase in physical abuse, spread of diseases, starvation, and some people died due to the sheer amount of exhaustion that has accumulated which tore down their physical and mental health.
sources: http://endgenocide.org/learn/past-genocides/the-cambodian-genocide/
Thank you for this blog post Chi! I remember learning a little bit about the Khmer Rouge in 7th grade when we read The Clay Marble. I told the story of a young girl around the time of the downfall of the Khmer Rouge but I still remember learning about some of the brutal ways they treated people at the time. I was interested in learning ab it more on the camps that people were sent to and found that one in particular, known as S-21, was so brutal that only7 of the roughly 20,000 people imprisoned there are known to have survived.
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