CAMBODIAN OUTREACH PROGRAM

CAMBODIANOUTREACHPROGRAM

IDEOLOGICAL

UTOPIA

THE EARLY

HISTORY

PATH TO POWER

AND REIGN

NAMES OF THE

WAR

YEAR ZERO

PROPAGANDA

10753

INCURSIONSKHM

ER ROUGE

ALLIANCES

DEATHS

KILLING FIELDS

FALL OF THE

KHMER ROUGE

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I am studying the Cambodian war and how there is hardly any knowledge towards the Cambodian Khmer Rouge Genocide

that took place in the early 1970s. I want to spread awareness in educating to what the war has caused to our modern society. There is only little education toward what people actually do

know about the war and I want to promote education in a way where they know the history before and after. In addition to

this I want to show people how Cambodia is still slowly pick-ing from the aftermath of the genocide. Over the duration of

two summers ago, I volunteered in Cambodia for the UN High Commissioner for Cambodian Refugees and they had asked me if to re-brand their organization. I was more than honored to be in such recognized organization and agreed to help them. They wanted me to re-brand the website, make an awareness video and whatever else I thought was necessary to promote

awareness. This was my proposal.

CAMBODIAN OUTREACH PROGRAM

EARLYHISTORY OF CAMBODIAThe Kingdom of Cambodia, formerly known as Kampuchea, Khmer: is a country in South-east Asia that borders Thailand to the west and northwest, Laos to the north, Vietnam to

the east and southeast, and the Gulf of Thailand to the south .

BEFORE THE WARCambodia is a constitutional monarchy with Norodom Sihamoni as King . Phnom Penh is the kingdom’s capital and largest city, and is the principal center for the country’s economi-cal, industrial, commerce and cultural center of Cambodia. Siem Reap, a city located near the famous ruins of Angkor Wat is the gateway to the Angkor region, and is Cambodia’s main destination for tourism. Battambang, the larg-est city in western Cambodia, is known for its rice production, Sihanoukville, a coastal city, is the primary sea port and beach re-sort. Cambodia has an area of approximately 181,035 square kilometres (69,898 sq mi) and a population of over 14 million ethnic Khmer. A citizen of Cambodia is usually identified as “Cambodian” or “Khmer”, though the latter strictly refers to ethnic Khmers. Most Cambodi-ans are Theravada Buddhists, but the country also has a substantial number of predominantly Muslim Cham, as well as ethnic Chinese, Viet-namese and small animist hill tribes. Cam-bodia is the traditional English name, taken from the French Cambodge, while Kâmpchea , formerly the name of the country in English, it is the direct transliteration, more faithful to the Khmer pronunciation. The name used on formal occasions, such as political speeches and news programs, is Prâteh Kampuchea. Khmer is spelled with a final “r” in the Khmer alphabet, but the word-final “r” phoneme disappeared from most dialects of Khmer in the 19th century and is not pronounced in the contemporary speech of the standard dialect.Since original independence, the official name of Cambodia has changed several times, fol-lowing the troubled history of the country. The following names have been used in English and French since 1954.

Preahreachanachâk Kampuchea means “King-dom of Cambodia”. Etymologically, its compo-

nents are: Preah- (“sacred”); -reach- (“king, royal, realm”, from Sanskrit); -ana- (from

Pāli āāā, “authority, command, power”, itself from Sanskrit ājñā, same meaning) -châk (from Sanskrit chakra, meaning “wheel”, a symbol of

power and rule).

UTOPIAIDEOLOGICAL

Pol Pot became leader of Cambodia in mid-1975. During his time in power, Pol Pot im-posed a version of agrarian collectivization, forcing city dwellers to relocate to the coun-tryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects, toward a goal of “restarting

civilization” in a “Year Zero”

Khmer Rouge evacuating fami-lies and children away from their homes on April

17th , 1979

IDEOLOGICAL UTOPIA

The Khmer Rouge was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the totalitarian ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan. The regime led by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979 was known as the Democratic Kampuchea.This organization is remembered primarily for its policy of social engineering and the genocide this caused. Its attempts at agricultural reform led to wide-

spread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, even in the sup-ply of medicine, led to the deaths of thousands from treatable diseases (such as malaria). Brutal and arbitrary executions and torture carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during purges of its own ranks be-

tween 1976 and 1978, are considered to have constituted a genocide.Khmer Rouge means “Red Khmer” in French, the administrative language of colonial-era Cambodia (the Khmer people are the major ethnic group in Cam-bodia).[1] The term was originally coined by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the

Cambodian Head of State between 1955 and 1970, to describe the Cambodian left. Prior to their 1975 victory, the Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces were of-

ficially known as the Cambodian People’s National Liberation Armed Forces (CPNLAF). After the fall of Phnom Penh, they were renamed Revolutionary

Army of Kampuchea (RAK). The clandestine Communist Party of Kampuchea itself constituted the secret leadership of the Khmer Rouge, as its official name was known only to a few insiders: it called itself the Angkar (the organization) and only announced officially its existence in 1977, almost two years after the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge

regime, the organization’s remaining guerrilla forces became known as the Na-tional Army of Democratic Kampuchea. In 1981 the party itself was dissolved,

and substituted by the Party of Democratic Kampuchea.

YEARZERO

In 1979, after the invasion of Cambodia by neighbouring Vietnam in the Cambodian–Viet-namese War, Pol Pot fled into the jungles of southwest Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge

government collapsed

Pol Pot adopted the Maoist idea that peasants were the true working class. In 1976, people were reclassified as full-rights (base) people, candidates and depositees - so called because they included most of the new people who had been deposited from the cities into the com-munes. Depositees were marked for destruction. Their rations were reduced to two bowls of rice soup, or “p’baw” per day.

According to François Pon-chaud’s book Cambodia: Year Zero, “Ever since 1972 the guer-rilla fighters had been sending all the inhabitants of the villages and towns they occupied into the forest to live and often burning their homes, so that they would have nothing to come back to.” The Khmer Rouge refused offers of humanitarian aid, a decision which proved to be a humanitar-ian catastrophe: millions died of starvation and brutal govern-ment-inflicted overwork in the countryside.

The city people were considered like a disease that needed to be contained so that it would not infect areas run by the Khmer Rouge. He also ordered a series of general purges. Former gov-ernment officials, along with anyone with an education, were singled out in the purges. A set of new prisons was also con-structed in Khmer Rouge run areas. The Cham minority at-tempted an uprising around this time against attempts to destroy their culture.

STARVATION OVERWORK DISEASE

Pol Pot

The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. As the leader of the Communist Party, Saloth Sar was the designated leader of the new regime. He took the name “brother number one” and declared his nom de guerre Pol Pot, from Politique potentielle, the French equiva-lent of a phrase supposedly coined for him by the Chinese leadership. A new constitu-tion was adopted on January 5, 1976, officially altering the country’s name to “Democratic Kampuchea”.

KHMER ROUGE

“Since he is of no use anymore, there is no gain if he lives and no loss if he dies.”

SIAM RIEP PURSAT TRENG

“I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT EVERTHING I DID, I DID FOR MY COUNTRY.”

The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. As the leader of the Communist Party, Saloth Sar was the designated leader of the new regime. He took the name “brother number one” and declared his nom de guerre Pol Pot, from Politique potentielle, the French equivalent of a phrase supposedly coined for him by the Chinese leadership. A new constitution was adopted on January 5, 1976, officially altering the country’s name to “Democratic Kampuchea”. The newly-established Representative Assembly held its first plenary meeting on April 11-13, electing a new government with Pol Pot as prime minister. His predecessor, Khieu Samphan was instead given the position of head of state as of the State Pre-sidium. Prince Sihanouk was given no role in the government and was placed under detention.

Immediately after the fall of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge began to implement their concept of Year Zero and ordered the complete evacua-tion of Phnom Penh and all other recently cap-tured major towns and cities. Those leaving were told that the evacuation was due to the threat of severe American bombing and it would last for no more than a few days. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had been evacuating captured urban ar-eas for many years, but the evacuation of Phnom Penh was unique in scale. The first operations to evacuate urban areas occurred in 1968 in the Ratanakiri area and were aimed at moving peo-ple deeper into Khmer Rouge territory to better control them. From 1971-1973, the motivation changed. Pol Pot and the other senior leaders were frustrated that urban Cambodians were re-taining old habits of trade and business. When all other methods had failed, evacuation to the countryside was adopted to solve the problem.

Pol Pot adopted the Maoist idea that peasants were the true working class. In 1976, people were reclassified as full-rights (base) people, can-didates and depositees - so called because they included most of the new people who had been deposited from the cities into the communes. De-positees were marked for destruction. Their ra-tions were reduced to two bowls of rice soup, or “p’baw” per day. This led to widespread starva-tion. “New people” were allegedly given no place in the elections taking place on March 20, 1976, despite the fact the constitution was said to have established universal suffrage for all Cambodi-ans over age 18.

The Khmer Rouge leadership boasted over the state-controlled radio that only one or two mil-lion people were needed to build the new agrar-ian communist utopia. As for the others, as their proverb put it, “To keep you is no benefit, to de-stroy you is no loss.” Hundreds of thousands of the new people, and later the depositees, were taken out in shackles to dig their own mass graves. Then the Khmer Rouge soldiers beat them to death with iron bars and hoes or buried them alive. A Khmer Rouge extermination prison directive ordered, “Bullets are not to be wasted.” These mass graves are often referred to as The Killing Fields. The Khmer Rouge also classified by religion and ethnic group. They banned all religion and dispersed minority groups, forbid-ding them to speak their languages or to practice their customs. They especially targeted Buddhist monks, Muslims, Western-educated intellectuals, educated people in general, people who had con-tact with Western countries or with Vietnam, dis-abled people, and the ethnic Chinese, Laotians and Vietnamese.

“I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT EVERTHING I DID, I DID FOR MY COUNTRY.”

The casualty list from the civil war, Pol Pot’s consolidation of power, and the later interven-tion by Vietnam is disputed. Different estimates vary from 750,000 to over two million. Credible Western and Eastern sources[18] put the death toll inflicted by the Khmer Rouge at 1.6 million. A specific source, such as a figure of 3 million deaths between 1975 and 1979, was given by the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. François Pon-chaud suggested 2.3 million, the Yale Cambo-dian Genocide Project[8] estimates 1.7 million, Amnesty International estimated 1.4 million and the United States Department of State, 1.2 million. Milton Leitenberg estimated 2 million deaths, but noted that only 80,000 to 100,000 of these were directly killed

1960 1964 1969 1972 1979

deaths

each percentage represents how many people died in Cambodian based on a 100% ratio

10 %5.5 %

6.5 %

10 %

36 %

NAMESOF THE WAR

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.

POL POT

Saloth Sar (May 19, 1928– April 15, 1998), better known as Pol Pot, was the leader of the Cam-bodian communist movement known as the Khmer Rougeand was Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from 1976–1979. His time as the leader of Cambodia, in which he attempted to “cleanse” the country, resulted in the death of an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million people. Pol Pot became leader of Cambodia in mid-1975.During his time in power, Pol Pot imposed a version of agrarian collectiviza-tion, forcing city dwellers to relo-cate to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects, toward a goal of “restart-ing civilization” in a “Year Zero”.In 1979, after the invasion of

combined effects of slave labor, malnutrition, poor medical care, and executions resulted in the deaths of approximately 21% of the Cambodian population. On March 30, 2009, Kaing Guek Eav, Khmer Rouge commandant of Cambodia’s Tuol Sleng prison and torture house, testified at the UN-backed Tribunal, that US policies in the 1970s contributed to the brutal regime’s rise to power..”I think the Khmer Rouge would al-ready have been demolished,” he said of their status by 1970. “But Mr Kissinger (then US secretary of state) and Richard Nixon were quick [to back coup leader Gen Lon Nol], and then the Khmer Rouge noted the golden opportu-nity.” After another wave of

repression by Sihanouk in 1965, the Khmer Rouge movement un-der Saloth grew at a rapid rate. Many teachers and students left the cities for the countryside to join the movement. “Because of this alliance, the Khmer Rouge were able to build up their power over the course of their 1970-75 war against the Lon Nol regime, Duch said. In 1979, after the inva-sion of Cambodia by neighbouring Vietnam in the Cambodian–Viet-namese War, Pol Pot fled into the jungles of southwest Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge government collapsed.

NUON CHEA

Noun Chea also known as Long Bunruot, (born July 7, 1926,[3] Voat Kor, Battambang Province) is a retired Cambodian communist politician and former chief ideolo-gist of Khmer Rouge. Nuon Chea was born as Lau Ben Kon (Chinese) at Voat Kor, Battambang in 1926. Nuon’s father, Lao Liv, worked as a trader as well as a corn farmer, while his mother, Dos Peanh was a tailor. Nuon Chea’s family was of Chinese-Khmer heritage;Lao Liv was of Chinese ethnicity while his mother was the daughter of a Chi-nese immigrant from Shantou and his Khmer wife. As a child, Nuon Chea was raised in both Chinese and Khmer customs. The family prayed at a Theravada Buddhist temple, but observed Chinese relig

ligious customs during the Lunar New Year and Qingming festi-val. Nuon Chea started school at seven, and was educated in Thai, French and Khmer. In the 1940s, Nuon Chea studied at Thammasat University in Bangkok and worked part-time for the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He began his po-litical activities in the Communist Party of Siam in Bangkok.[9] He was elected Deputy General Sec-retary of the Workers Party of Kampuchea (later renamed as the Communist Party of Kampuchea) in September 1960.[10] In Demo-cratic Kampuchea, he was gener-ally known as “Brother Number Two.” Unlike most of the leaders of Khmer Rouge, Chea did not study in Paris. As the recently-

state legislature, the Kampuchean People’s Representative Assembly held its first plenary session dur-ing April 11–13, 1976, Chea was elected President of its Stand-ing Committee. He was forced to abandon this post along with all others as the Vietnamese captured Phnom Penh in January 1979.On December 29, 1998, following a bargain with the government, Chea surrendered as part of the last remnants of Khmer Rouge re-sistance and in a press conference after the deal expressed a terse statement of sorrow for the suffer-ing of Cambodians.

IENG SARY

Of Khmer ancestry on his father’s side, and Chinese ancestry on his mother’s, Ieng Sary was born in Chau Thanh, Tra Vinh province, southern Vietnam. Sary changed his name from the Vietnamese Kim Trang when he joined the Khmer Rouge. He is the brother-in-law by marriage, of the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot (real name: Saloth Sar). Sary and Saloth Sar studied at Phnom Penh’s Lycée Sisowath where their future wives, the sisters Khieu Thirith and Kh-ieu Ponnary also studied. Before leaving Cambodia to study in Paris, Sary was engaged to Khieu Thirith. Sary and Saloth Sar also studied together in Paris. Whilst there, Sary rented an apartment in the Latin Quarter, a hot commu

nist of student radicalism. He and Saloth Sar met with French com-munist intellectuals, and formed their own cell of Cambodian com-munists.Sary and Khieu Thirith married in the town hall of Paris’ 15th arrondissement the sum-mer of 1951 and Thirith took her husband’s name, becoming Ieng Thirith.proclaimed After return-ing to Cambodia, he was inducted into the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Kampuchea in September 1960. After the fall of the Khmer Republic on 17 April 1975, Sary made personal appeals to expatriates (the well-educated Cambodians who had survived the prison death camps, and had af-terwards moved abroad and oth-ers who wanted to come back to

Cambodia homeland) to help re-build Cambodia. However upon returning to Cambodia, they were arrested on arrival, and thrown into brutal detention centres.To-gether with Pol Poth, Ieng Sary was sentenced to death in absentia after the Khmer Rouge had been overthrown in 1979. The then Cambodian King Norodom Siha-nouk officially pardoned Ieng Sary in 1996.

PROPAGANDAAND REGIME

The movement was estimated to consist of no more than 1500 regulars, but the core of the movement was supported by a number of villagers many times that size. While

weapons were in short supply, the insurgency was still able to operate in twelve of nine-teen districts of Cambodia. In the middle of the year Saloth called a party conference

and decided on a change in propaganda strategy.

The human costs of this experiment were enor-mous, and are still being paid by survivors of the regime. Within a week of the Khmer Rouge ‘lib-eration’ of Phnom Penh in April 1975, its popu-lation was driven into the countryside en masse to begin establishing a collectivised agricultural system. Thousands of people died on the way. Within a month, towns, private property, mar-kets and money were abandoned; law-courts, government offices and schools were closed and religious practices were forbidden. As everyone set to work under the supervision of revolution-

REGIME& PROPAGANDA

ary soldiers, Democratic Kampuchea became a prison farm. Pol Pot and his colleagues, who be-lieved that secrecy had played an important role in their victory, only revealed their identity to the world in October l977 when forced to do so by their Chinese patrons. Conditions in Democratic Kampuchea varied from time to time and from place to place, but were generally harsher than most Cambodians had ever known. The Khmer Rouge had systematically set out to obliterate Cambodia’s Buddhist culture, its family-based system of social organization and its educated classes. Between April l975 and January l979 perhaps as many as l.5 million Cambodians died from malnutrition, overwork and disease. At least 200,000 others were executed without trial as ‘class enemies’. It was only during the 1980s that the full horrors of the Khmer Rouge period became known to the outside world. The Khmer Rouge had presided over the deaths of roughly one in five of Cambodia’s inhabitants, pursuing what the French writer Jean Lacouture has called a policy of ‘auto-genocide’, which left deep scars on its survivors. What had happened in Democratic Kampuchea also altered people’s views of Cambodian history.

In 1968, the Khmer Rouge forces launched a national insurgency across Cambodia (see also Cambodian Civil War). Though North Vietnam had not been informed of the decision, its forc-es provided shelter and weapons to the Khmer Rouge after the insurgency started. Vietnamese support for the insurgency made it impossible for the Cambodian military to effectively counter it. For the next two years the insurgency grew as Si-hanouk did very little to stop it. As the insurgency grew stronger, the party finally openly declared itself to be the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK).The appeal of the Khmer Rouge was in-creased as a result of the situation created by the removal of Sihanouk as head of state in 1970. Premier Lon Nol, with the support of the Na-tional Assembly, deposed Sihanouk. Sihanouk, in exile in Beijing, (known by its French acro-nym, GRUNK) backed by the People’s Republic of China. Sihanouk’s popular support in rural Cambodia allowed the Khmer Rouge to extend its power and influence to the point that by 1973 it exercised de facto control over the majority of Cambodian territory, although only a minority of its population. Many people in Cambodia helped the Khmer Rouge against the Lon Nol govern-ment thought they were fighting for the restora-tion of Sihanouk.

KHMER ROUGE ALLIANCE

The relation between the massive carpet bomb-ing of Cambodia by the United States and the growth of the Khmer Rouge, in terms of recruit-ment and popular support, has been a matter of interest to historians. In 1984 Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia argued that it is “untenable” to assert that the Khmer Rouge would not have won but for U.S. interven-tion and that while the bombing did help Khmer Rouge recruitment, “would have won anyway.”

FALL OF THE KHMER ROUGE

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.

FALL OF THE KHMER ROUGE

The region Pol Pot and the others moved to was inhabited by tribal minorities, the Khmer Loeu, whose rough treatment (including resettlement and forced assimilation) at the hands of the cen-tral government made them willing recruits for a guerrilla struggle. In 1965, Pol Pot made a visit of several months to North Vietnam and China.He received some training in China, which had enhanced his prestige when he returned to the WPK’s liberated areas. Despite friendly relations between Norodom Sihanouk and the Chinese, the latter kept Pol Pot’s visit a secret from Sihanouk. In September 1966, the party changed its name to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK).The change in the name of the party was a close-ly guarded secret. Lower ranking members of the party and even the Vietnamese were not told of it and neither was the membership until many years later. The party leadership endorsed armed struggle against the government, then led by Si-hanouk. In 1967, several small-scale attempts at insurgency were made by the CPK but they had little success. In 1968, the Khmer Rouge forces launched a national insurgency across Cambodia (see also Cambodian Civil War). Though North Vietnam had not been informed of the decision, its forces provided shelter and weapons to the

impossible for the Cambodian military to ef-fectively counter it. For the next two years the insurgency grew as Sihanouk did very little to stop it. As the insurg The political appeal of the Khmer Rouge was increased as a result of the situation created by the removal of Sihanouk as head of state in 1970. Premier Lon Nol, with the support of the National Assembly, deposed Sihanouk. Sihanouk, in exile in Beijing, made an alliance with the Khmer Rouge and became the nominal head of a Khmer Rouge-dominated government-in-exile (known by its French acro-nym, GRUNK) backed by the People’s Republic of China. ency grew stronger, the party finally openly declared itself to be the Communist Party

KILLINGFIELDShe Killing Fields were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to

1979, immediately after the end of the Vietnam War.

KILLING FIELDSThe Killing Fields were a num-ber of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Vietnam War. At least 200,000 people were executed by the Khmer Rouge[(while estimates of the total number of deaths result-ing from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, range from 1.4 to 2.2 million out of a population of around 7 mil-lion).In 1979, communist Vietnam invaded and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime, which was offi-cially called Democratic Kampu-chea. Cambodia’s ethnic minori-ties constituted 15 percent of the population in pre-Khmer Rouge era. Almost all of them were repa-triated by December 1975. Some argue that the Khmer Rouge had no intent to cause serious mental and physical harm to the Vietnam-ese during the sun repatriation process.The Chinese community (about 425,000 people in 1975) was reduced to 200,000 during the next four years. In the Khmer Rouge’s Standing Committee, four members were of Chinese ancestry, two Vietnamese, and two Khmers. Some observers argue that this mixed composition makes it dif-ficult to argue that there was an intent to kill off minorities.