Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
One”; his contemporary,
Ieng Sary
, subsequently foreign minister of Democratic
Kampuchea; and
Khieu Samphan
, the future party chairman.
When the Khmer Rouge arrived in Phnom Penh, they set out to achieve their
ideal: a nation of
peasants
working in an agrarian society where family, wealth and
status were irrelevant. Family groups were broken up, money was abolished and
everyday life - down to the smallest detail - was dictated by
Angkar
,
the secretive
revolutionary organization behind the Khmer Rouge. Within hours of entering
Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge had begun to clear the city; within a week the
capital was deserted. In other towns around Cambodia (now renamed
Democratic
Kampuchea
) the scenario was repeated, and practically the whole population of the
country was displaced.
Forced labour
was deployed in the fields or on specific
building projects supervised by party cadres. The regime was harsh and nutrition
inadequate; hundreds of thousands perished in the fields, dying of simple illnesses
and starvation. Almost immediately after seizing power, the Khmer Rouge began a
programme of
mass execution
, though the twisted logic that lay behind this has
never been made clear. Senior military commanders were among the first to die, but
before long it was the turn of monks, the elite, the educated, those who spoke a
foreign language, even those who wore glasses.
Prince Sihanouk, his wife and family had returned to Phnom Penh from exile in
Beijing in mid-1975; they lived out the rest of the Khmer Rouge years under
virtual house arrest.
As time went on, the regime became increasingly paranoid and began to look inward,
murdering its own cadres. It's estimated that between one and two million people,
around
twenty percent of the population
, died under the Khmer Rouge. Those who
could escape fled to refugee camps in Thailand or to Vietnam, but the majority had no
option but to endure the three years, eight months and twenty days - as any older
Cambodian will still say today - of Khmer Rouge rule, and to which they still refer as
sa'mai a-pot
, the Pol Pot era.
The Khmer Rouge's eventual
downfall
was orchestrated by their original mentors,
the Vietnamese. Frequent border skirmishes initiated by the Khmer Rouge irritated
the Vietnamese, who sent troops into Cambodia in 1977, though this incursion
lasted just a few months. The final straw for the Vietnamese came when the Khmer
Rouge massacred Vietnamese villagers along the border in early 1978. This caused
Vietnam to begin supporting anti-Khmer Rouge factions, a shift that led to the
formation of the Khmer National United Front for National Salvation, or
KNUFNS
.
On December 22, 1978, a Vietnamese invasion force of more than 100,000 entered
Cambodia, and just seventeen days later they had taken Phnom Penh. The leaders of
the Khmer Rouge made their escape just ahead of the invading forces, Pol Pot by
helicopter to Thailand, the rest crowded onto the train north to Battambang.
Following their leaders, Khmer Rouge troops and villagers loyal to them retreated to
the jungles along the northwest border.
The Vietnamese era
Although opinions about the
Vietnamese era
are divided between those who call them
liberators and those who call them occupiers, no one disputes that they were widely
1952
1953
1963
King Sihanouk stages a coup,
dismissing the government
and appointing himself prime
minister
Cambodia achieves full
independence from the
French, now embroiled in
fighting in Vietnam
Government-led communist purges lead to
Saloth Sar and several other future Khmer Rouge
leaders fleeing Phnom Penh to become full-time
revolutionaries
