Cambodia's Holocaust
Warning! This page includes references to torture and genocide and is unsuitable for children.
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Year Zero
After five years of bloody civil war, the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, on 17 April 1975. There was no resistance from the forces of the toppled republican government and the whole city, its population swollen by refugees from the fighting, was relieved that peace had come at last.
That relief was short-lived. On the pretext that they were expecting the USA to bomb Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge forced the whole population to evacuate the city on foot. Those who refused were shot, as were hospital patients who were unable to walk. The roads out of the city were clogged with bewildered people, clutching a few belongiongs. Children were separated from their parents; the old and infirm who could not keep up were left to die at the roadside.
The same thing happened in all the cities and towns, and the whole country was effectively turned into a vast forced labour camp. Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge, was achieving his dream of Year Zero, the return of Cambodia to a peasant economy in which there would be no class divisions, no money, no books, no schools, no hospitals. 'Reactionary religion' was banned in the constitution of January 1976.
Those who had had any connection with the previous regime were eliminated. People who were deemed to have been the lazy elite, in other words the educated and the skilled, were also disposed of. Every vestige of the former corrupt way of life had to be destroyed. Many people tried to conceal their identity or former occupation, but were eventually found out or betrayed. Whole families would be executed. Even babies were killed by smashing their skulls against trees.
Pol Pot summed up the policies of the Khmer Rouge in 1978:
We are building socialism without a model. We do not wish to copy anyone; we shall use the experience gained in the course of the liberation struggle. There are no schools, faculties or universities in the traditional sense, although they did exist in our country prior to liberation, because we wish to do away with all vestiges of the past. There is no money, no commerce, as the state takes care of provisioning all its citizens. The cities have been resettled as this is the way things had to be. Some three million town dwellers and peasants were trying to find refuge in the cities from the depredations of war. We evacuated the cities; we resettled the inhabitants in the rural areas where the living conditions could be provided for this segment of the population of new Cambodia. The countryside should be the focus of attention of our revolution, and the people will decide the fate of the cities.
(Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley, Red Brotherhood at War, 1984)
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Scars of the Khmer Rouge: How Cambodia is healing from a genocide
Help the Cambodian Children
Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime
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Interview – Sydney Schanberg, author of Beyond the Killing Fields
Cambodia’s Healing Fields
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Caught In the Crossfire
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