The Khmer Rouge (, French: [kmɛʁ ʁuʒ],
Red Khmers; Khmer: ខ្មែរក្រហម
Khmer Kror-Horm) was the name popularly given
to the followers of the Communist Party of
Kampuchea and by extension to the regime through
which the CPK ruled in Cambodia between 1975
and 1979.
The name had originally been used in the 1950s
by Norodom Sihanouk as a blanket term for
the Cambodian left.
The Khmer Rouge army was slowly built up in
the jungles of Eastern Cambodia during the
late 1960s, supported by the North Vietnamese
army, the Viet Cong and the Pathet Lao.
The Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil War
when in 1975 they captured the Cambodian capital
and overthrew the government of the Khmer
Republic.
Following their victory, the Khmer Rouge led
by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen
and Khieu Samphan renamed the country as Democratic
Kampuchea and immediately set about forcibly
evacuating the country's major cities.
The regime would go on to murder hundreds
of thousands of their perceived political
opponents.
Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide would lead
to the deaths of 1.5 to 3 million people,
around 25% of Cambodia's population.
The Khmer Rouge regime was highly autocratic,
xenophobic, paranoid and repressive.
The genocide was in part the result of the
regime's social engineering policies.
Its attempts at agricultural reform through
collectivisation led to widespread famine
while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency,
even in the supply of medicine, led to the
death of many thousands from treatable diseases
such as malaria.
The Khmer Rouge's racist emphasis on national
purity included several genocides of Cambodian
minorities.
Arbitrary executions and torture were carried
out by its cadres against perceived subversive
elements, or during genocidal purges of its
own ranks between 1975 and 1978.
The regime was removed from power in 1979
when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and quickly
destroyed most of the Khmer Rouge's army.
The Khmer Rouge then fled to Thailand whose
government saw them as a buffer force against
the Communist Vietnamese.
The Khmer Rouge continued to fight the Vietnamese
and the new People's Republic of Kampuchea
government during the Cambodian–Vietnamese
War which ended in 1989.
The Cambodian governments-in-exile (including
the Khmer Rouge) held onto Cambodia's United
Nations seat (with considerable international
support) until 1993, when the monarchy was
restored and the country's name was changed
to the Kingdom of Cambodia.
A year later, thousands of Khmer Rouge guerrillas
surrendered themselves in a government amnesty.
In 1996, a new political party called the
Democratic National Union Movement was formed
by Ieng Sary, who was granted amnesty for
his role as the deputy leader of the Khmer
Rouge.
The organization was largely dissolved by
the mid-1990s and finally surrendered completely
in 1999.
In 2014, two Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea
and Khieu Samphan, were jailed for life by
a United Nations-backed court, which found
them guilty of crimes against humanity for
their roles in the Khmer Rouge's genocidal
campaign.
The Khmer Rouge dissolved sometime in December
1999.
== Name history ==
The term "Khmers rouges", French for "Red
Khmers", was coined by Cambodian head of state
Norodom Sihanouk and later adopted by English
speakers (in the form of the corrupted version
Khmer Rouge).
It was used to refer to a succession of communist
parties in Cambodia which evolved into the
Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and later
the Party of Democratic Kampuchea.
Its military was known successively as the
Kampuchean Revolutionary Army and the National
Army of Democratic Kampuchea.
== Ideology ==
=== 
Marxist thought ===
In power, the movement's ideology was shaped
by a power struggle during 1976 in which the
so-called Party Centre led by Pol Pot defeated
other regional elements of the leadership.
The Party Centre's ideology combined elements
of Marxism with a strongly xenophobic form
of Khmer nationalism.
Due in part to secrecy and changes in the
regime's presentation of itself, academic
interpretations of its political position
within Marxist thought vary widely, ranging
from interpreting it as the "purest" Marxist-Leninist
movement to characterising it as an anti-Marxist
"peasant revolution".Its leaders and theorists,
most of whom had been exposed to the heavily
Stalinist outlook of the French Communist
Party during the 1950s, developed a distinctive
and eclectic "post-Leninist" ideology that
drew on elements of Stalinism, Maoism and
the postcolonial theory of Frantz Fanon.
In the early 1970s, the Khmer Rouge looked
to the model of Enver Hoxha's Albania, which
they assessed as the then most advanced communist
state.
Many of the regime's characteristics, such
as its focus on the rural peasantry rather
than the urban proletariat as the bulwark
of revolution, its emphasis on Great Leap
Forward-type initiatives, its desire to abolish
personal interest in human behaviour, its
promotion of communal living and eating and
its focus on perceived common sense over technical
knowledge appear to have been heavily influenced
by Maoist ideology in particular.
However, the Khmer Rouge displayed these characteristics
in a more extreme form.While the CPK described
itself as the "number 1 Communist state" once
it was in power, some communist regimes such
as Vietnam saw it as a Maoist deviation from
orthodox Marxism.
The Maoist and Khmer Rouge belief that human
willpower could overcome material and historical
conditions was strongly at odds with mainstream
Marxism, which emphasised materialism and
the idea of history as inevitable progression.
=== Khmer nationalism ===
Khmer ultranationalism was a defining characteristic
of the regime, which combined an idealization
of the Angkor Empire (802–1431) with an
existential fear for the existence of the
Cambodian state, which had historically been
liquidated during periods of Vietnamese and
Siamese intervention.
The spillover of Vietnamese fighters from
the Vietnam War further aggravated anti-Vietnamese
sentiments as the 1960s went on: the Khmer
Republic under Lon Nol, overthrown by the
Khmer Rouge, had itself promoted Mon-Khmer
nationalism and was responsible for several
anti-Vietnamese pogroms during the 1970s.
Some historians such as Ben Kiernan have stated
that the importance the regime gave to race
overshadowed its conceptions of class.Once
in power, the Khmer Rouge explicitly targeted
the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Cham minority
and even their partially Khmer offspring.
The same attitude extended to the party's
own ranks as senior CPK figures of non-Khmer
ethnicity were removed from the leadership
despite extensive revolutionary experience
and were often killed.
=== Autarky ===
Khmer Rouge economic policy, based largely
on the plans of Khieu Samphan, focused on
the achievement of national self-reliance
through an initial phase of agricultural collectivism.
This would then be used as a route to achieve
rapid social transformation and industrial
and technological development without assistance
from foreign powers, a process which the party
characterised as a "Super Great Leap Forward".
The strong emphasis on autarky in Khmer Rouge
planning was probably influenced by the early
writing of Samir Amin, who was cited in Khieu
Samphan's PhD thesis.
The party's General Secretary Pol Pot strongly
influenced the propagation of this policy.
He was reportedly impressed with the self-sufficient
manner in which the mountain tribes of Cambodia
lived, which the party interpreted as a form
of primitive communism.
Khmer Rouge theory developed the concept that
the nation should take "agriculture as the
basic factor and use the fruits of agriculture
to build industry".
Pol Pot's belief was that collectivisation
of agriculture was capable of "[creating]
a complete Communist society without wasting
time on the intermediate steps" as the Khmer
Rouge said to China in 1975.
Society was accordingly classified into peasant
"base people", who would be the bulwark of
the transformation; and urban "new people",
who were to be reeducated or liquidated.
The focus of the Khmer Rouge leadership on
the peasantry as the base of the revolution
was according to Michael Vickery a product
of their status as "petty-bourgeois radicals
overcome by peasantist romanticism".
The opposition of the peasantry and the urban
population in Khmer Rouge ideology was heightened
by the structure of the Cambodian rural economy,
where small farmers and peasants had historically
suffered through indebtedness to urban money-lenders
rather than through oppression by landlords.
The policy of evacuating major towns as well
as providing a reserve of easily exploitable
agricultural labour was likely viewed positively
by the Khmer Rouge's peasant supporters as
removal of the source of their debt.The Khmer
Rouge officially renounced communism in 1981
following the Cambodian–Vietnamese War in
which they saw support from the United States.
=== Relationship to religion ===
Democratic Kampuchea is sometimes described
as an atheist state, though this is not strictly
accurate as its constitution in fact stated
that everyone had freedom of religion, or
not to hold a religion, although it specified
that what it termed "reactionary religion"
would not be permitted.
The relationship of the CPK to the majority
Cambodian Theravada Buddhism was complex as
several key figures in its history such as
Tou Samouth and Ta Mok were former monks.
Though there was extreme harassment of Buddhist
institutions, there was a tendency for the
CPK regime to internalise and reconfigure
the symbolism and language of Cambodian Buddhism
so that many revolutionary slogans mimicked
the formulae learned by young monks during
their training.
The repression of Islam practised by the country's
Cham minority, and adherents of Christianity,
was extensive.
Islamic religious leaders were executed, although
some Cham Muslims appear to have been told
they could continue devotions in private as
long as it could not interfere with work quotas.
Nevertheless, Mat Ly, a Cham who served as
the deputy minister of agriculture under the
People's Republic of Kampuchea, stated that
Khmer Rouge troops had perpetrated a number
of massacres in Cham villages in the Central
and Eastern zones where the residents had
refused to give up Islamic customs.Buddhist
laity seem not to have been singled out for
persecution although traditional belief in
the tutelary spirits or neak ta, rapidly eroded
as people were forcibly moved from their home
areas.
The position with Buddhist monks was more
complicated: as with Islam many religious
leaders were killed whereas many ordinary
monks were sent to remote monasteries where
they were subjected to hard physical labour.
The same division between rural and urban
population was seen in the regime's treatment
of monks as those from urban monasteries were
classified as "new monks" and sent to rural
areas to live alongside "base monks" of peasant
background, who were classified as "proper
and revolutionary".
Monks were not ordered to defrock until as
late as 1977 in Kratié Province and many
monks found that as the agricultural work
they were allocated to involved regular breaches
of monastic rules, they reverted to the status
of lay peasantry.
While there is evidence of widespread vandalism
of Buddhist monasteries, many more than were
initially supposed survived the Khmer Rouge
years in fair condition as did most Khmer
historical monuments and it is possible that
stories of their near total destruction were
propaganda issued by the successor People's
Republic of Kampuchea.
Nevertheless, it has been estimated that nearly
25,000 Buddhist monks were killed by the regime.While
François Ponchaud stated that Christians
were invariably taken away and killed with
the accusation of having links with the CIA,
at least some cadres appear to have regarded
it as preferable to the "feudal" class-based
Buddhism.
Nevertheless, it remained deeply suspect to
the regime thanks to its close links to the
French colonial power as Phnom Penh cathedral
was razed along with other places of worship.
== Origins ==
=== 
Early history ===
The history of the communist movement in Cambodia
can be divided into six phases, namely the
emergence before World War II of the Indochinese
Communist Party (ICP), whose members were
almost exclusively Vietnamese; the 10-year
struggle for independence from the French,
when a separate Cambodian communist party,
the Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary
Party (KPRP), was established under Vietnamese
auspices; the period following the Second
Party Congress of the KPRP in 1960, when Saloth
Sar (Pol Pot after 1976) and other future
Khmer Rouge leaders gained control of its
apparatus; the revolutionary struggle from
the initiation of the Khmer Rouge insurgency
in 1967–1968 to the fall of the Lon Nol
government in April 1975; the Democratic Kampuchea
regime from April 1975 to January 1979; and
the period following the Third Party Congress
of the KPRP in January 1979, when Hanoi effectively
assumed control over Cambodia's government
and communist party.In 1930, Ho Chi Minh founded
the Communist Party of Vietnam by unifying
three smaller communist movements that had
emerged in northern, central and southern
Vietnam during the late 1920s.
Almost immediately, the party was renamed
the Indochinese Communist Party, ostensibly
so it could include revolutionaries from Cambodia
and Laos.
Almost without exception, all of the earliest
party members were Vietnamese.
By the end of World War II, a handful of Cambodians
had joined its ranks, but their influence
on the Indochinese communist movement as well
as their influence on developments within
Cambodia was negligible.Viet Minh units occasionally
made forays into Cambodian bases during their
war against the French and in conjunction
with the leftist government that ruled Thailand
until 1947 the Viet Minh encouraged the formation
of armed, left-wing Khmer Issarak bands.
On April 17, 1950 (25 years to the day before
the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh), the
first nationwide congress of the Khmer Issarak
groups convened and the United Issarak Front
was established.
Its leader was Son Ngoc Minh and a third of
its leadership consisted of members of the
ICP.
According to the historian David P. Chandler,
the leftist Issarak groups aided by the Viet
Minh occupied a sixth of Cambodia's territory
by 1952 and on the eve of the Geneva Conference
controlled as much as one half of the country.In
1951, the ICP was reorganized into three national
units—the Vietnam Workers' Party (VWP),
the Lao Issara and the Kampuchean (or Khmer)
People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP).
According to a document issued after the reorganization,
the VWP would continue to "supervise" the
smaller Laotian and Cambodian movements.
Most KPRP leaders and rank-and-file seem to
have been either Khmer Krom, or ethnic Vietnamese
living in Cambodia.
The party's appeal to indigenous Khmers appears
to have been minimal.According to Democratic
Kampuchea's perspective of party history,
the Viet Minh's failure to negotiate a political
role for the KPRP at the 1954 Geneva Conference
represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement,
which still controlled large areas of the
countryside and which commanded at least 5,000
armed men.
Following the conference, about 1,000 members
of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made
a Long March into North Vietnam, where they
remained in exile.
In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia
founded a legal political party, the Pracheachon
Party, which participated in the 1955 and
the 1958 National Assembly elections.
In the September 1955 election, it won about
four percent of the vote, but did not secure
a seat in the legislature.
Members of the Pracheachon were subject to
constant harassment and to arrests because
the party remained outside Sihanouk's political
organization, Sangkum.
Government attacks prevented it from participating
in the 1962 election and drove it underground.
Sihanouk habitually labelled local leftists
the Khmer Rouge, a term that later came to
signify the party and the state headed by
Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan and their
associates.During the mid-1950s, KPRP factions,
the "urban committee" (headed by Tou Samouth)
and the "rural committee" (headed by Sieu
Heng), emerged.
In very general terms, these groups espoused
divergent revolutionary lines.
The prevalent "urban" line endorsed by North
Vietnam recognized that Sihanouk by virtue
of his success in winning independence from
the French was a genuine national leader whose
neutralism and deep distrust of the United
States made him a valuable asset in Hanoi's
struggle to "liberate" South Vietnam.
Advocates of this line hoped that the prince
could be persuaded to distance himself from
the right-wing and to adopt leftist policies.
The other line, supported for the most part
by rural cadres who were familiar with the
harsh realities of the countryside, advocated
an immediate struggle to overthrow the "feudalist"
Sihanouk.
=== Paris student group ===
During the 1950s, Khmer students in Paris
organized their own communist movement which
had little, if any, connection to the hard-pressed
party in their homeland.
From their ranks came the men and women who
returned home and took command of the party
apparatus during the 1960s, led an effective
insurgency against Lon Nol from 1968 until
1975 and established the regime of Democratic
Kampuchea.Pol Pot, who rose to the leadership
of the communist movement in the 1960s, was
born in 1928 (some sources say 1925) in Kampong
Thum Province, northeast of Phnom Penh.
He attended a technical high school in the
capital and then went to Paris in 1949 to
study radio electronics (other sources say
he attended a school for printers and typesetters
and also studied civil engineering).
Described by one source as a "determined,
rather plodding organizer", he failed to obtain
a degree, but according to Jesuit priest Father
François Ponchaud he acquired a taste for
the classics of French literature as well
as an interest in the writings of Karl Marx.Another
member of the Paris student group was Ieng
Sary, a Chinese-Khmer born in 1925 in South
Vietnam.
He attended the elite Lycée Sisowath in Phnom
Penh before beginning courses in commerce
and politics at the Paris Institute of Political
Science (more widely known as Sciences Po)
in France.
Khieu Samphan was born in 1931 and specialized
in economics and politics during his time
in Paris.
Hou Yuon (born in 1930) studied economics
and law, Son Sen (born in 1930) studied education
and literature and Hu Nim (born in 1932) studied
law.Two members of the group, Khieu Samphan
and Hou Yuon, earned doctorates from the University
of Paris while Hu Nim obtained his degree
from the University of Phnom Penh in 1965.
Most came from landowner or civil servant
families.
Pol Pot and Hou Yuon may have been related
to the royal family as an older sister of
Pol Pot had been a concubine at the court
of King Monivong.
Pol Pot and Ieng Sary married Khieu Ponnary
and Khieu Thirith, also known as Ieng Thirith),
purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan.
These two well-educated women also played
a central role in the regime of Democratic
Kampuchea.A number turned to orthodox Marxism–Leninism.
At some time between 1949 and 1951, Pol Pot
and Ieng Sary joined the French Communist
Party.
In 1951, the two men went to East Berlin to
participate in a youth festival.
This experience is considered to have been
a turning point in their ideological development.
Meeting with Khmers who were fighting with
the Viet Minh (and whom they subsequently
judged to be too subservient to the Vietnamese),
they became convinced that only a tightly
disciplined party organization and a readiness
for armed struggle could achieve revolution.
They transformed the Khmer Students Association
(KSA), to which most of the 200 or so Khmer
students in Paris belonged, into an organization
for nationalist and leftist ideas.Inside the
KSA and its successor organizations, there
was a secret organization known as the Cercle
Marxiste (Marxist circle).
The organization was composed of cells of
three to six members with most members knowing
nothing about the overall structure of the
organization.
In 1952, Pol Pot, Hou Yuon, Ieng Sary and
other leftists gained notoriety by sending
an open letter to Sihanouk calling him the
"strangler of infant democracy".
A year later, the French authorities closed
down the KSA, but Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan
helped to establish in 1956 a new group, the
Khmer Students Union.
Inside, the group was still run by the Cercle
Marxiste.The doctoral dissertations written
by Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan express basic
themes that were later to become the cornerstones
of the policy adopted by Democratic Kampuchea.
The central role of the peasants in national
development was espoused by Hou Yuon in his
1955 thesis, The Cambodian Peasants and Their
Prospects for Modernization, which challenged
the conventional view that urbanization and
industrialization are necessary precursors
of development.The major argument in Khieu
Samphan's 1959 thesis, Cambodia's Economy
and Industrial Development, was that the country
had to become self-reliant and end its economic
dependency on the developed world.
In its general contours, Samphan's work reflected
the influence of a branch of the "dependency
theory" school, which blamed lack of development
in the Third World on the economic domination
of the industrialized nations.
== Path to power and reign ==
=== KPRP Second Congress ===
After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot
threw himself into party work.
At first, he went to join with forces allied
to the Viet Minh operating in the rural areas
of Kampong Cham Province (Kompong Cham).
After the end of the war, he moved to Phnom
Penh under Tou Samouth's "urban committee",
where he became an important point of contact
between above-ground parties of the left and
the underground secret communist movement.His
comrades Ieng Sary and Hou Yuon became teachers
at a new private high school, the Lycée Kambuboth,
which Hou Yuon helped to establish.
Khieu Samphan returned from Paris in 1959,
taught as a member of the law faculty of the
University of Phnom Penh and started a left-wing
French-language publication, L'Observateur.
The paper soon acquired a reputation in Phnom
Penh's small academic circle.
The following year, the government closed
the paper and Sihanouk's police publicly humiliated
Samphan by beating, undressing and photographing
him in public—as Shawcross notes, "not the
sort of humiliation that men forgive or forget".Yet
the experience did not prevent Samphan from
advocating cooperation with Sihanouk in order
to promote a united front against United States
activities in South Vietnam.
Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon and Hu Nim were forced
to "work through the system" by joining the
Sangkum and by accepting posts in the prince's
government.In late September 1960, twenty-one
leaders of the KPRP held a secret congress
in a vacant room of the Phnom Penh railroad
station.
This pivotal event remains shrouded in mystery
because its outcome has become an object of
contention (and considerable historical rewriting)
between pro-Vietnamese and anti-Vietnamese
Khmer communist factions.The question of cooperation
with, or resistance to, Sihanouk was thoroughly
discussed.
Tou Samouth, who advocated a policy of cooperation,
was elected general secretary of the KPRP
that was renamed the Workers' Party of Kampuchea
(WPK).
His ally Nuon Chea, also known as Long Reth,
became deputy general secretary, but Pol Pot
and Ieng Sary were named to the Political
Bureau to occupy the third and the fifth highest
positions in the renamed party's hierarchy.
The name change is significant.
By calling itself a workers' party, the Cambodian
movement claimed equal status with the Vietnam
Workers' Party.
The pro-Vietnamese regime of the People's
Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) implied in the
1980s that the September 1960 meeting was
nothing more than the second congress of the
KPRP.On July 20, 1962, Tou Samouth was murdered
by the Cambodian government.
At the WPK's second congress in February 1963,
Pol Pot was chosen to succeed Tou Samouth
as the party's general secretary.
Samouth's allies Nuon Chea and Keo Meas were
removed from the Central Committee and replaced
by Son Sen and Vorn Vet.
From then on, Pol Pot and loyal comrades from
his Paris student days controlled the party
centre, edging out older veterans whom they
considered excessively pro-Vietnamese.In July
1963, Pol Pot and most of the central committee
left Phnom Penh to establish an insurgent
base in Ratanakiri Province in the northeast.
Pol Pot had shortly before been put on a list
of 34 leftists who were summoned by Sihanouk
to join the government and sign statements
saying Sihanouk was the only possible leader
for the country.
Pol Pot and Chou Chet were the only people
on the list who escaped.
All the others agreed to cooperate with the
government and were afterward under 24-hour
watch by the police.
=== Sihanouk and the GRUNK ===
The region where 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 central government made them
willing recruits for a guerrilla struggle.
In 1965, Pol Pot made a visit of several months
to North Vietnam and China.Pol Pot 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 closely
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 Sihanouk.
In 1967, several small-scale attempts at insurgency
were made by the CPK but they had little success.In
1968, the Khmer Rouge was officially formed
and its forces launched a national insurgency
across Cambodia.
Though North Vietnam had not been informed
of the decision, its forces 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 Sihanouk did very little to stop it.
As the insurgency grew stronger, the party
finally openly declared itself to be the Communist
Party of Kampuchea.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 acronym GRUNK) backed
by China.
The Nixon administration, although thoroughly
aware of the weakness of Lon Nol's forces
and loath to commit American military force
to the new conflict in any form other than
air power, announced its support for the newly
proclaimed Khmer Republic.On 29 March 1970,
the North Vietnamese launched an offensive
against the Cambodian army.
Documents uncovered from the Soviet archives
revealed that the invasion was launched at
the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge following
negotiations with Nuon Chea.
A force of North Vietnamese quickly overran
large parts of eastern Cambodia reaching to
within 15 miles (24 km) of Phnom Penh before
being pushed back.
By June, three months after the removal of
Sihanouk, they had swept government forces
from the entire northeastern third of the
country.
After defeating those forces, the North Vietnamese
turned the newly won territories over to the
local insurgents.
The Khmer Rouge also established "liberated"
areas in the south and the southwestern parts
of the country, where they operated independently
of the North Vietnamese.After Sihanouk showed
his support for the Khmer Rouge by visiting
them in the field, their ranks swelled from
6,000 to 50,000 fighters.
Many of the new recruits for the Khmer Rouge
were apolitical peasants who fought in support
of the King, not for communism, of which they
had little understanding.
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 who helped the Khmer
Rouge against the Lon Nol government thought
they were fighting for the restoration of
Sihanouk.By 1975, with the Lon Nol government
running out of ammunition, it was clear that
it was only a matter of time before the government
would collapse.
On 17 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured
Phnom Penh.
=== Foreign involvement ===
The relationship between the massive carpet
bombing of Cambodia by the United States and
the growth of the Khmer Rouge, in terms of
recruitment and popular support, has been
a matter of interest to historians.
Some historians have cited the United States
intervention and bombing campaign (spanning
1965–1973) as a significant factor leading
to increased support of the Khmer Rouge among
the Cambodian peasantry.
However, Pol Pot biographer David P. Chandler
argues that the bombing "had the effect the
Americans wanted – it broke the Communist
encirclement of Phnom Penh".
Peter Rodman and Eric Lind claimed that the
United States intervention saved the Lon Nol
regime from collapse in 1970 and 1973.
Craig Etcheson agreed that it was "untenable"
to assert that United States intervention
caused the Khmer Rouge victory while acknowledging
that it may have played a small role in boosting
recruitment for the insurgents.
However, William Shawcross wrote that the
United States bombing and ground incursion
plunged Cambodia into the chaos that Sihanouk
had worked for years to avoid.The North Vietnamese
invasion of Cambodia, launched at the request
of the Khmer Rouge, has also been cited as
a major factor in their eventual victory,
including by Shawcross.
Communist Vietnam later admitted that it played
"a decisive role" in their seizure of power.
By 1973, Vietnamese support of the Khmer Rouge
had largely disappeared.
China "armed and trained" the Khmer Rouge
both during the civil war and the years afterward.The
United Nations sided with the Coalition Government
of Democratic Kampuchea, which included the
Khmer Rouge, against the Vietnamese-backed
People's Republic of Kampuchea.
== Regime ==
=== 
Leadership ===
The governing structure of Democratic Kampuchea
was split between the state presidium headed
by Khieu Samphan, the cabinet led by Pol Pot
as prime minister and the party's own Politburo
and Central Committee.
All were complicated by a number of political
factions existing in 1975.
The leadership of the Party Centre, the faction
headed by Pol Pot, remained largely unchanged
from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s.
Its leaders were mostly from middle-class
families and had been educated at French universities.
The second significant faction was made up
of men active in the pre-1960 party and who
therefore had stronger Vietnamese links.
However, government documents show that there
were several major shifts in power between
factions during the period in which the regime
was in control.
In 1975–1976, there were several powerful
zonal Khmer Rouge leaders who maintained their
own armies and who came from a different party
background to the Pol Pot clique, particularly
So Phim and Nhim Ros, both vice presidents
of the state presidium and members of the
Politburo and Central Committee respectively.
There was a possible military coup attempt
in May 1976, led by a senior Eastern Zone
cadre called Chan Chakrey, who had been made
deputy secretary of the army's General Staff.
A reorganisation of September 1976, which
demoted Pol Pot in the state presidium, was
later presented by the Party Centre as an
attempted pro-Vietnamese coup.
Over the next two years, So Phim, Nhim Ros,
Vorn Vet and many other figures associated
with the pre-1960 party would be arrested
and executed.
So Phim's execution would be followed by that
of the majority of the cadres and much of
the population of the Eastern Zone that he
had controlled.
The Party Centre, lacking much in the way
of their own military resources, accomplished
their seizure of power by forming an alliance
with Southwestern Zone leader Ta Mok and Pok,
head of the North Zone's troops.
Both men were of a purely peasant background
and were therefore natural allies of the strongly
peasantist ideology of the Pol Pot faction.The
Standing Committee of the Khmer Rouge's Central
Committee during its period of power consisted
of the following:
Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) (died 1998), "Brother
number 1", General Secretary from 1963 until
his death, effectively the leader of the movement
Nuon Chea (Long Bunruot), "Brother number
2", Prime Minister, arrested in 2007, high
status made him Pol Pot's "righthand man",
sentenced to life in prison on 7 August 2014
Ieng Sary (Pol Pot's brother-in-law) (died
in custody awaiting trial for genocide, March
14, 2013), "Brother number 3", Deputy Prime
Minister, arrested in 2007
Khieu Samphan, "Brother number 4", President
of Democratic Kampuchea, arrested in 2007,
sentenced to life in prison on 7 August 2014
Ta Mok (Chhit Chhoeun) (died July 21, 2006),
"Brother number 5", Southwest Regional Secretary,
final Khmer Rouge leader, died in custody
awaiting trial for genocide
Son Sen (died 1997), "Brother number 89",
Defense Minister, Superior of Kang Kek Iew.
Assassinated on Pol Pot's orders for treason
Yun Yat (died 1997)
Ke Pauk (died 2002), "Brother number 13",
former secretary of the Northern zone
Ieng Thirith, (died 2015) arrested in 2007,
sister-in-law of Pol Pot, former Social Affairs
Minister, deemed unfit to stand trial due
to dementia in 2012
=== Life under the Khmer Rouge ===
In power, the Khmer Rouge carried out a radical
program that included isolating the country
from all foreign influences, closing schools,
hospitals and some factories, abolishing banking,
finance and currency, and collectivising agriculture.
Khmer Rouge theorists, developing the ideas
of Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan, believed that
an initial period of self-imposed economic
isolation and national self-sufficiency would
stimulate the rebirth of the crafts and the
country's latent industrial capability.
=== Evacuation of the cities ===
In Phnom Penh and other cities, the Khmer
Rouge told residents that they would be moved
only about "two or three kilometers" outside
the city and would return in "two or three
days".
Some witnesses said they were told that the
evacuation was because of the "threat of American
bombing" and that they did not have to lock
their houses since the Khmer Rouge would "take
care of everything" until they returned.
People who refused to evacuate would have
their homes burned to the ground and would
be killed immediately.
The evacuees were sent on long marches to
the countryside, which killed thousands of
children, elderly people and sick people.
These were not the first evacuations of civilian
populations by the Khmer Rouge as similar
evacuations of populations without possessions
had been occurring on a smaller scale since
the early 1970s.On arrival at the villages
to which they had been assigned, evacuees
were required to write brief autobiographical
essays.
The essay's content, particularly with regard
to the subject's activity during the Khmer
Republic regime, was used to determine their
fate.
Military officers and those occupying elite
professional roles were usually sent for reeducation,
which in practice meant immediate execution
or confinement in a labour camp.
Those with specialist technical skills often
found themselves sent back to cities to restart
production in factories interrupted by the
takeover.
The remaining displaced urban population ("new
people"), as part of the regime's drive to
increase food production were placed into
agricultural communes alongside the peasant
"base people" or "old people".
The latter's holdings were collectivised.
Cambodians were expected to produce three
tons of rice per hectare as before the Khmer
Rouge era the average was only one ton per
hectare.
The total lack of agricultural knowledge on
the part of the former city dwellers made
famine inevitable.
The rural peasantry were often unsympathetic,
or were too frightened to assist them.
Such acts as picking wild fruit or berries
were seen as "private enterprise" and punished
by death.
Labourers were forced to work long shifts
without adequate rest or food, resulting in
a large number of deaths through exhaustion,
illness and starvation.
Workers would be executed for attempting to
escape from the communes, for breaching minor
rules, or after being denounced by colleagues.
If caught, offenders were taken quietly off
to a distant forest or field after sunset
and killed.
Unwilling to import Western medicines, the
regime turned to traditional medicine instead
and placed medical care in the hands of cadres
given only rudimentary training.
Because of the famine, forced labour and the
lack of access to appropriate services there
was a high number of human losses.
=== Economic activity ===
Khmer Rouge economic policies took a similarly
extreme course.
Trade was officially restricted only to bartering
between communes, a policy which the regime
developed in order to enforce self-reliance.
Banks were raided and all currency and records
were destroyed by fire thus eliminating any
claim to funds.
After 1976, the regime reinstated discussion
of export in the period after the disastrous
effects of its planning began to become apparent.Commercial
fishing was said to have been banned by the
Khmer Rouge in 1976.
=== Family relations ===
The regulations made by the Angkar also had
effects on the traditional Cambodian family
unit.
The regime was primarily interested in increasing
the young population and one of the strictest
regulations prohibited sex outside marriage,
which was punishable by execution.
In this as in some other respects, the Khmer
Rouge followed a morality based on an idealised
conception of the attitudes of prewar rural
Cambodia.
Marriage required permission from the authorities
and the Khmer Rouge were strict in only giving
permission for people of the same class and
level of education to marry.
Such rules were applied even more strictly
to party cadres.
While some refugees spoke of families being
deliberately broken up, this appears to have
referred mainly to the traditional Cambodian
extended family unit, which the regime actively
sought to destroy in favour of small nuclear
units of parents and children.The regime promoted
arranged marriages, particularly between party
cadres.
While some academics such as Michael Vickery
have noted that arranged marriages were also
feature of rural Cambodia prior to 1975, those
conducted by the Khmer Rouge regime often
involved people unfamiliar to each other.
As well as reflecting the Khmer Rouge obsession
with production and reproduction, such marriages
were designed to increase people's dependency
on the regime by undermining existing family
and other loyalties.
=== Education ===
It is often concluded that the Khmer Rouge
regime promoted illiteracy.
This statement is not completely incorrect,
but quite inaccurate.
The Khmer Rouge wanted to "eliminate all traces
of Cambodia's imperialist past", and previous
culture was one of those.
The Khmer Rouge didn't want their people to
be completely ignorant, and primary education
was provided.
Nevertheless, their policies dramatically
reduced the cultural inflow as well as Cambodian
knowledge and creativity.
Their goal was to gain full control on all
the information that people received, and
spread revolutionary culture among the masses.It
is also true that education in Democratic
Kampuchea came to a "virtual standstill".
Irrespective of central policies, most local
cadres considered higher education useless
and were suspicious of those who had received
it.
The regime abolished all literary schooling
above primary grades, ostensibly focusing
on basic literacy instead.
In practice, primary schools in many areas
were not set up due to the extreme disruption
caused by the regime takeover and most ordinary
people, especially "new people", felt their
children were taught nothing worthwhile in
those that did exist.
The exception was the Eastern Zone, run until
1976 by cadres who were closely connected
with Vietnam rather than the Party Centre,
where a more organised system seems to have
existed as children were taught by teachers
drawn from the "base people" from a limited
number of official textbooks and were given
extra rations.Beyond primary education there
were a number of technical courses taught
in factories to students drawn from the favoured
"base people".
However, there was a general reluctance to
get involved with further education in Democratic
Kampuchea as in some districts cadres were
known to kill people who boasted of educational
accomplishments and it was considered bad
form to allude to any special technical training.
Based on a speech made in 1978, it appears
that Pol Pot may have ultimately envisaged
that students from the approved poor peasant
background could go from illiteracy to being
trained engineers within ten years based on
targeted study and a large proportion of practical
work.
=== Language reforms ===
The Khmer language has a complex system of
usages to define speakers' rank and social
status.
During the rule of the Khmer Rouge, these
usages were abolished.
People were encouraged to call each other
"friend" (មិត្ត; mitt) and to avoid
traditional signs of deference such as bowing
or folding the hands in salutation, known
as samphea.Language was also transformed in
other ways.
The Khmer Rouge invented new terms.
In keeping with the regime's theories on Khmer
identity, the majority of new words were coined
with reference to Pali or Sanskrit terms while
Chinese and Vietnamese-language borrowings
were discouraged.
People were told to "forge" (lot dam) a new
revolutionary character, that they were the
"instruments" (ឧបករណ៍; opokar)
of the ruling body known as Angkar (អង្គការ,
The Organization) and that nostalgia for pre-revolutionary
times (chheu satek arom, or "memory sickness")
could result in execution.
Rural terms like Mae (ម៉ែ; mother) replaced
urban terms like Mak (ម៉ាក់; mother).Many
Cambodians crossed the border into Thailand
to seek asylum.
From there, they were transported to refugee
camps such as Sa Kaeo or Khao-I-Dang, the
only camp allowing resettlement in countries
such as the United States, France, Canada
and Australia.
In some refugee camps, such as Site 8, Phnom
Chat, or Ta Prik, the Khmer Rouge cadres controlled
food distribution and restricted the activities
of international aid agencies.
=== Crimes against humanity ===
The Khmer Rouge government arrested, tortured
and eventually executed anyone suspected of
belonging to several categories of supposed
"enemies", including the following:
People with connections to former Cambodian
governments, either those of the Khmer Republic
or the Sangkum, to the Khmer Republic military,
or to foreign governments.
Professionals and intellectuals, including
almost everyone with an education and people
who understood a foreign language.
Many artists, including musicians, writers,
and filmmakers were executed including Ros
Serey Sothea, Pan Ron and Sinn Sisamouth.
Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, ethnic
Thai and other minorities in the Eastern Highlands,
Cambodian Christians (most of whom were Catholic
and the Catholic Church in general), Muslims
and senior Buddhist monks.
The Roman Catholic cathedral of Phnom Penh
was razed.
The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork,
which they regard as forbidden (ḥarām).
Many of those who refused were killed.
Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed.
"Economic saboteurs" as many former urban
dwellers were deemed guilty of sabotage due
to their lack of agricultural ability.
Party cadres who had fallen under political
suspicion: the regime tortured and executed
thousands of party members, including senior
figures such as Hu Nim.The Khmer Rouge established
over 150 prisons for political opponents,
of which Tuol Sleng, a prison holding purged
Party cadres and their families, is the best
known.
According to Ben Kiernan, "all but seven of
the twenty thousand Tuol Sleng prisoners"
were executed.
Examples of the Khmer Rouge torture methods
can be seen at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
The museum occupies the former grounds of
a high school turned prison camp that was
operated by Khang Khek Ieu, more commonly
known as Comrade Duch, together with his subordinates
Mam Nai and Tang Sin Hean.
The buildings of Tuol Sleng have been preserved
as they were left when the Khmer Rouge were
driven out in 1979.
Several of the rooms are now lined with thousands
of black-and-white photographs of prisoners
that were taken by the Khmer Rouge.On 7 August
2014, when announcing convictions and handing
down life sentences for two former Khmer Rouge
leaders, Cambodian judge Nil Nonn said there
were evidences of "a widespread and systematic
attack against the civilian population of
Cambodia".
He said the leaders, Nuon Chea, the regime's
chief ideologue and former deputy to late
leader Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan, the former
head of state, together in a "joint criminal
enterprise" were involved in murder, extermination,
political persecution and other inhumane acts
related to the mass eviction of city-dwellers,
and executions of enemy soldiers.
==== Number of deaths ====
Modern research has located 20,000 mass graves
from the Khmer Rouge era all over Cambodia.
Various studies have estimated the death toll
at between 740,000 and 3,000,000, most commonly
between 1.4 million and 2.2 million, with
perhaps half of those deaths being due to
executions, and the rest from starvation and
disease.The Cambodian Genocide Program at
Yale University estimates the number of deaths
at approximately 1.7 million (21% of the population
of the country).
A United Nations investigation reported 2–3
million dead while UNICEF estimates that 3
million had been killed.
Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline
suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42 million
Cambodians were killed while Marek Sliwinski
estimates that 1.8 million is a conservative
figure.
Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation
Center of Cambodia suggests that the death
toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a
"most likely" figure of 2.2 million.
After five years of researching grave sites,
he concluded that "these mass graves contain
the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution".An
additional 300,000 Cambodians starved to death
between 1979 and 1980, largely as a result
of the after-effects of Khmer Rouge policy.
== Fall ==
Fearing a Vietnamese attack, Pol Pot ordered
a pre-emptive invasion of Vietnam on 18 April
1978.
His Cambodian forces crossed the border and
looted nearby villages, mostly in the border
town of Ba Chúc.
Of the 3,157 civilians who had lived in Ba
Chúc, only two survived the massacre.
These Cambodian forces were repelled by the
Vietnamese.Due to several years of border
conflict and the flood of refugees fleeing
Kampuchea, relations between Cambodia and
Vietnam collapsed by December 1978.
On 25 December 1978, the Vietnamese armed
forces along with the Kampuchean United Front
for National Salvation, an organization that
included many dissatisfied former Khmer Rouge
members, invaded Cambodia and captured Phnom
Penh on 7 January 1979.
Despite a traditional Cambodian fear of Vietnamese
domination, defecting Khmer Rouge activists
assisted the Vietnamese and with Vietnam's
approval became the core of the new People's
Republic of Kampuchea.
The new government was quickly dismissed by
the Khmer Rouge and China as a "puppet government".At
the same time, the Khmer Rouge retreated west
and it continued to control certain areas
near the Thai border for the next decade.
These included Phnom Malai, the mountainous
areas near Pailin in the Cardamom Mountains
and Anlong Veng in the Dângrêk Mountains.These
Khmer Rouge bases were not self-sufficient
and were funded by diamond and timber smuggling,
by military assistance from China channeled
by means of the Thai military and by food
smuggled from markets across the border in
Thailand.
=== Place in the United Nations ===
Despite its deposal, the Khmer Rouge retained
its United Nations seat, which was occupied
by Thiounn Prasith, an old compatriot of Pol
Pot and Ieng Sary from their student days
in Paris and one of the 21 attendees at the
1960 KPRP Second Congress.
The seat was retained under the name Democratic
Kampuchea until 1982 and then under the name
Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea.
Western governments voted in favor of the
Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea
retaining Cambodia's seat in the organization
over the newly installed Vietnamese-backed
People's Republic of Kampuchea, even though
it included the Khmer Rouge.
In 1988.
Margaret Thatcher stated: "So, you'll find
that the more reasonable ones of the Khmer
Rouge will have to play some part in the future
government, but only a minority part.
I share your utter horror that these terrible
things went on in Kampuchea".
On the contrary, Sweden changed its vote in
the United Nations and withdrew its support
for the Khmer Rouge after a large number of
Swedish citizens wrote letters to their elected
representatives demanding a policy change
towards Pol Pot's regime.
=== Ramifications of the Vietnamese victory
===
Vietnam's victory was supported by the Soviet
Union and it had significant ramifications
for the region while the People's Republic
of China launched a punitive invasion of northern
Vietnam and retreated (with both sides claiming
victory).
China, the United States and the ASEAN countries
sponsored the creation and the military operations
of a Cambodian government-in-exile known as
the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea
which included besides the Khmer Rouge also
republican KPNLF and royalist ANS.Eastern
and central Cambodia were firmly under the
control of Vietnam and its Cambodian allies
by 1980 while the western part of the country
continued to be a battlefield throughout the
1980s and millions of landmines were sown
across the countryside.
The Khmer Rouge still led by Pol Pot was the
strongest of the three rebel groups in the
Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea
which received extensive military aid from
China, Britain and the United States and intelligence
from the Thai military.
Britain and the United States in particular
gave aid to the two non-Khmer Rouge members
of the coalition.
In an attempt to broaden its support base,
the Khmer Rouge formed the Patriotic and Democratic
Front of the Great National Union of Kampuchea
in 1979.
In 1981, the Khmer Rouge went as far as to
officially renounce communism and somewhat
moved their ideological emphasis to nationalism
and anti-Vietnamese rhetoric instead.
However, some analysts argue that this change
meant little in practice because as historian
Kelvin Rowley puts it "CPK propaganda had
always relied on nationalist rather than revolutionary
appeals".Although Pol Pot relinquished the
Khmer Rouge leadership to Khieu Samphan in
1985, he continued to be the driving force
behind the Khmer Rouge insurgency, giving
speeches to his followers.
Journalists such as Nate Thayer who spent
some time with the Khmer Rouge during that
period commented that despite the international
community's near-universal condemnation of
the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule a considerable
number of Cambodians in Khmer Rouge-controlled
areas seemed genuinely to support Pol Pot.While
Vietnam proposed to withdraw from Cambodia
in return for a political settlement that
would exclude the Khmer Rouge from power,
the rebel coalition government as well as
ASEAN, China and the United States, insisted
that such a condition was unacceptable.
Nevertheless, Vietnam declared in 1985 that
it would complete the withdrawal of its forces
from Cambodia by 1990 and it did so in 1989,
having allowed the government that it had
installed there to consolidate its rule and
gain sufficient military strength.After a
decade of inconclusive conflict, the pro-Vietnamese
Cambodian government and the rebel coalition
signed a treaty in 1991 calling for elections
and disarmament.
However, the Khmer Rouge resumed fighting
in 1992, boycotted the election and in the
following year rejected its results.
It now fought the new Cambodian coalition
government which included the former Vietnamese-backed
communists (headed by Hun Sen) as well as
the Khmer Rouge's former non-communist and
monarchist allies (notably Prince Rannaridh).
A "Provisional Government of National Union
and National Salvation of Cambodia" was established
by Khmer Rouge authorities in July 1994.There
was a mass defection from the Khmer Rouge
in 1996, when around half of its remaining
soldiers (about 4,000) left.
A conflict between the two main participants
in the ruling coalition caused in 1997 Prince
Rannaridh to seek support from some of the
Khmer Rouge leaders while refusing to have
any dealings with Pol Pot.
This resulted in bloody factional fighting
among the Khmer Rouge leaders, ultimately
leading to Pol Pot's trial and imprisonment
by the Khmer Rouge.
Pol Pot died in April 1998.
Khieu Samphan surrendered in December.On 29
December 1998, the remaining leaders of the
Khmer Rouge apologized for the 1970s genocide.
By 1999, most members had surrendered or been
captured.
In December 1999, Ta Mok and the remaining
leaders surrendered and the Khmer Rouge effectively
ceased to exist.
Most of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders
live in the Pailin area or are hiding in Phnom
Penh.
== Memorialization ==
Cambodia has gradually recovered demographically
and economically from the Khmer Rouge regime,
although the psychological scars affect many
Cambodian families and émigré communities.
It is noteworthy that Cambodia has a very
young population and by 2003 three-quarters
of Cambodians were too young to remember the
Khmer Rouge era.
Nonetheless, their generation is affected
by the traumas of the past.Members of this
younger generation may know of the Khmer Rouge
only through word of mouth from parents and
elders.
In part, this is because the government does
not require that educators teach children
about Khmer Rouge atrocities in the schools.
However, Cambodia's Education Ministry started
to teach Khmer Rouge history in high schools
beginning in 2009.
China has defended its ties with the Khmer
Rouge.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang
Yu said that "the government of Democratic
Kampuchea had a legal seat at the United Nations,
and had established broad foreign relations
with more than 70 countries".
=== Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of
Cambodia ===
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of
Cambodia (ECCC) was established as a Cambodian
court with international participation and
assistance to bring to trial senior leaders
and those most responsible for crimes committed
during the Khmer Rouge regime.
It has been handling four cases since 2007.
ECCC's efforts for outreach toward both national
and international audience include public
trial hearings, study tours, video screenings,
school lectures and video archives on the
web site.
As of May 2018, cases against the former leadership
of the Khmer Rouge regime for crimes including
genocide and crimes against humanity remain
ongoing.After claiming to feel great remorse
for his part in Khmer Rouge atrocities, Kaing
Guek Eav (alias Duch), head of a torture centre
from which 16,000 men, women and children
were sent to their deaths, surprised the court
in his genocide trial on 27 November 2009
with a plea for his freedom.
His Cambodian lawyer Kar Savuth stunned the
tribunal further by issuing the trial's first
call for an acquittal of his client even after
his French lawyer denied seeking such a verdict.
On 26 July 2010, he was convicted and sentenced
to thirty years.
Many condemned the sentence as too lenient.
Theary Seng responded: "We hoped this tribunal
would strike hard at impunity, but if you
can kill 14,000 people and serve only 19 years
– 11 hours per life taken – what is that?
It's a joke", voicing concerns about political
interference.
In February 2012, Duch's sentence was increased
to life imprisonment following appeals by
both the prosecution and defence.
In dismissing the defence's appeal, Judge
Kong Srim stated that "Duch's crimes were
"undoubtedly among the worst in recorded human
history" and deserved "the highest penalty
available".Public trial hearings in Phnom
Penh are open to the people of Cambodia over
the age of 18 including foreigners.
In order to assist people's will to participate
in the public hearings, the court provides
free bus transportation for groups of Cambodians
who want to visit the court.
Since the commencement of Case 001 trial in
2009 through the end of 2011, 53,287 people
have participated in the public hearings.
ECCC also has hosted Study Tour Program to
help villagers in rural areas understand the
history of the Khmer Rouge regime.
The court provides free transport for them
to come to visit the court and meet with court
officials to learn about its work, in addition
to visits to the genocide museum and the killing
fields.
ECCC also has visited village to village to
provide video screenings and school lectures
to promote their understanding of the trial
proceedings.
Furthermore, trials and transcripts are partially
available with English translation on the
ECCC's website.
=== Museums ===
The Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide and Choeng
Ek Killing Fields are two major museums to
learn the history of the Khmer Rouge.
The Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide is a former
high school building, which was transformed
into a torture, interrogation and execution
center between 1976 and 1979.
The Khmer Rouge called the center S-21.
Of the estimated 15,000 to 30,000 prisoners,
only seven prisoners survived.
The Khmer Rouge photographed the vast majority
of the inmates and left a photographic archive,
which enables visitors to see almost 6,000
S-21 portraits on the walls.
Visitors can also learn how the inmates were
tortured from the equipment and facilities
exhibited in the buildings.
In addition, one of the seven survivors shares
his story with visitors at the museum.
The Choeng Ek killing fields are located about
15 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh.
Most of the prisoners who were held captive
at S-21 were taken to the fields to be executed
and deposited in one of the approximately
129 mass graves.
It is estimated that the graves contain the
remains of over 20,000 victims.
After the discovery of the site in 1979, the
Vietnamese transformed the site into a memorial
and stored skulls and bones in an open-walled
wooden memorial pavilion.
Eventually, these remains were showcased in
the memorial's centerpiece stupa, or Buddhist
shrine.
=== Publications ===
The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam),
an independent research institute, published
A History of Democratic Kampuchea 1975-1979,
the nation's first textbook on the history
of the Khmer Rouge.
The 74-page textbook was approved by the government
as a supplementary text in 2007.
The textbook is aiming at standardising and
improving the information students receive
about the Khmer Rouge years because the government-issued
social studies textbook devotes eight or nine
pages to the period.
The publication was a part of their genocide
education project that includes leading the
design of a national genocide studies curriculum
with the Ministry of Education, training thousands
of teachers and 1,700 high schools on how
to teach about genocide and working with universities
across Cambodia.Youth for Peace, a Cambodian
non-governmental organization (NGO) that offers
education in peace, leadership, conflict resolution
and reconciliation to Cambodian's youth, published
a book titled Behind the Darkness:Taking Responsibility
or Acting Under Orders? in 2011.
The book is unique in that instead of focusing
on the victims as most books do, it collects
the stories of former Khmer Rouge, giving
insights into the functioning of the regime
and approaching the question of how such a
regime could take place.
=== Dialogues ===
While the tribunal contributes to the memorialization
process at national level, some civil society
groups promote memorialization at community
level.
The International Center for Conciliation
(ICfC) began working in Cambodia in 2004 as
a branch of the ICfC in Boston.
ICfC launched the Justice and History Outreach
(JHO) project in 2007 and has worked in villages
in rural Cambodia with the goal of creating
mutual understanding and empathy between victims
and former members of the Khmer Rouge.
Following the dialogues, villagers identify
their own ways of memorialization such as
collecting stories to be transmitted to the
younger generations or building a memorial.
Through the process, some villagers are beginning
to accept the possibility of an alternative
viewpoint to the traditional notions of evil
associated with anyone who worked for the
Khmer Rouge regime.
=== Media coverage ===
Radio National Kampuchea (RNK) as well as
private and NGO radio stations broadcast programmes
on the Khmer Rouge and trials.
ECCC has its own weekly radio program on RNK,
which provides an opportunity for the public
to interact with court officials and deepen
their understanding of Cases.Youth for Peace,
a Cambodian NGO that offers education in peace,
leadership, conflict resolution and reconciliation
to Cambodian's youth, has broadcast the weekly
radio program You Also Have A Chance since
2009.
Aiming at preventing the passing on of hatred
and violence to future generations, the program
allows former Khmer Rouge to talk anonymously
about their past experience.All Cambodian
television stations include regular coverage
of the progress of the trials.
The following stations feature special programming:
Cambodian Television Network (CTN) (English/Khmer)
maintains a special van at the court for live
transmission of the proceedings
National Television Kampuchea (TVK) (Khmer)
Apsara TV (English/French/Khmer) targets viewers
in Europe, Australia and North AmericaInternational
television stations such as the BBC, Al Jazeera,
CNN, NHK and Channel News Asia also cover
the development of trials.ECCC also uses various
social media to update the development of
the tribunal.
== See also
