It was 1979…the end of the Khmer Rouge reign of terror

Jane Anderson
Jane Anderson
It was 1979…the end of the Khmer Rouge reign of terror

From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime established terror in Cambodia. Indoctrination, torture… The Khmer Rouge genocide left more than 2 million dead in the country.

*featured photo: extract from the film “The Tear

Who are the Khmer Rouge?

In Cambodia in 1975, the Republic is overthrown by a movement communist revolutionarysupported by China and Vietnam “the Khmer Rouge”. This movement ultranationalist politics and military led by the dictator Pol Potset up a regime of terror during their years in power from 1975 to 1979. The goal was to make a clean sweep of the past and establish a new order. The ideal of purity established by the Khmer Rouge, made more than 2 million victims. In 8 years, 20% of the country’s population disappears, victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Knowledge targeted

The Khmer Rouge regime began when 120,000 farmersled by leaders, take power.

They want establish an ideal of purity inspired by the simple life peasantsthe only ones to have all inclusive of real life. For that, everything must be started from scratch. They therefore suppress the civil servants of the old regime, they empty the cities, and remove the currency by doing blow up the national bank. No one had to keep anything, we had to start from scratch and all valuables were requisitioned.

Families, which are considered traditional, are divided. The children are enlisted in the army and parents are considered children that needs to be re-educated.

Educated people are sent to the fields to do manual work, any form of knowledge is considered to be bad. Just wearing glasses is suspicious.

Very quickly, the Khmer Rouge deleted the media. There were no more newspapers, no more radio, Khmer Rouge propaganda is set up. They were trying to indoctrinate the population with a sort of “re-education”, with speeches on the history and future of the country.

In the country, it is a climate of paranoia which sets in, at the slightest suspicion men and women are isolated in camps or prisons. Prisoners tortured denounce each other.

The end of the massacre

The Khmer Rouge lose power in 1979When the Vietnamese army launches a massive invasion of Cambodia. Pol Pot’s regime was extremely hostile towards Vietnam, despite previous alliances between Cambodian and Vietnamese communists.

During the years of Khmer Rouge rule, numerous border clashes frequent have worsened tensions between the two countries. In response to these attacks and the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, Vietnam decided to intervene militarily. Much better equipped and organized, Vietnamese troops quickly advanced, and the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh fell on January 7, 1979.

A slow reconstruction, and condemnation

After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Cambodia undertook a long and difficult process of reconstruction. Vietnam installed a pro-Vietnamese government, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), led by Heng Samrin, a former member of the Khmer Rouge who had defected.

The Paris Peace Accords in 1991officially put end of civil war. These agreements led to the creation of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) to oversee the transition to peace.

Under UN supervision, democratic elections were held in 1993, leading to the formation of a coalition government and the gradual reintegration of the remaining Khmer Rouge factions.

In 2006, a UN-backed tribunal(Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia), is established for judge those most responsible for the crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime. But its record remains mixedafter thousands of hours of instruction and hearing, only five responsible Khmer Rouges were tried, for three convictions only.