Cambodia
Cambodia
As Pol Pot came to power in the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge took over the majority of Cambodia. Because the United States' bombing campaign during the Vietnam War weakened Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge was eventually able to enter the capital to institute a new, authoritarian regime. All opposition to the regime was exterminated in a genocidal campaign. Between 1975 and 1979, over 2 million Cambodians were targeted for destruction.
History/ Background: The Khmer Rouge is an offshoot of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), founded in 1951. Early leaders of the Khmer Rouge studied in Paris, where they were influenced of the French Communist Party. The CPK was originally closely allied with the communists in Vietnam but it tried to distance itself from the Vietnamese as the war progressed. During this time, real power of the movement fell into the hands of Cambodians who despised intellectualism, including Saloth Sar (more commonly known as Pol Pot). In 1960, Pol Pot became chairman of the CPK, and, fearful of outside influence, purged thousands of party members believed to be allied with the Vietnamese communists. The Vietnamese Communist Party was willing to overlook such purges and assist the newly named Khmer Rouge in taking over Cambodia. By 1970, the Khmer Rouge and Vietcong guerrillas had successfully taken over two-thirds of the country. A 1970 coup sent then-Cambodian king, Norodom Sihanouk, into exile and put a pro-American regime in power in the other third of the country. To close off supply routes to the Vietcong on the Cambodian side of the border, the Untied States launched a bombing campaign in Cambodia. Between 1970 and 1973, US forces dropped three times the quantity of explosives on Cambodia that it had dropped on Japan during World War II. By 1975, war had exhausted the Cambodians and made them frustrated with the pro-American government, creating a perfect opportunity for the Khmer Rouge to seize total control. On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge entered the capital, Phenom Penh, declaring April to be the beginning of a new era: Year Zero.
Dynamics of the Genocide: After seizing power the Khmer Rouge outlawed the family, education, religion, books, healthcare, holidays, art, music, markets, and technology. Hundreds of thousands of individuals were ordered to evacuate the cities because the Khmer Rouge saw urban dwellers as the enemy of the peasant-oriented society that it intended to create. Newly resettled into the countryside, Cambodians were ordered to produce an impossible 1 ton of grain per acre. Rice paddies became known as “killing fields” because of the strenuous working conditions. Expendable citizens were forced to work 12 hour days without adequate food or rest. Those who could not keep up with the Khmer Rouge's demands were forced to dig their own graves and then executed. Political prisoners were held in special detention centers and tortured till they gave elaborate, false confessions with electric shocks, hot metal prods, and knives before being killed. Between 1975 and 1979, nearly 2 million Cambodians died. Ethnic tensions increased between Vietnam and Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge's reign, culminating in the expulsion of ethnic Vietnamese from Cambodia. On Christmas Day 1978, 100,000 Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia in response to the Khmer Rouge's treatment of its Vietnamese citizens. The Vietnamese army reached Phnom Penh by January 7, 1979, installing a new pro-Vietnamese government. Though the Khmer Rouge had been kicked out of the capital, they did not completely disappear. Because of American resentment towards the Vietnamese Communists, the Khmer Rouge remained the legal government of Cambodia for years afterwards and occupied a seat in the UN General Assembly. In 1991, the Khmer Rouge agreed to UN-supervised elections and the disarmament of most of its forces. By 2003, the UN reached a draft agreement with the democratic Cambodian government to establish an international criminal tribunal for former Khmer Rouge leaders. That tribunal's prosecutors identified five potential defendants in July 2007.
