The Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979)
In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia killed between one and two million Cambodian. The Khmer Rouge attempted to purify Cambodian society racially, socially, ideologically and politically. In their attempt they destroyed people from every social category, murdering not only politicians and military leaders from the previous government, but also businessmen, journalists, students, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and ethnic Vietnamese, Chinese and Muslims. When it finally ran out of enemies, the Khmer Rouge turned on its own party.
From 1975 until 1979, the genocidal Democratic Kampuchea regime ruled in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge, a radical group of communist inspired rebels headed by Pol Pot, came to power after a bloody civil war in which some 600,000 people died. The regime set out immediately to transform Cambodia into an agrarian, communist state. Beginning in the spring of 1975, the nation’s cities were evacuated, hospitals emptied, schools closed, factories deserted, money and wages abolished, monasteries emptied and libraries scattered. Freedom of the press, freedom of movement, freedom of worship, organization, association and discussion all completely disappeared for nearly four years. Everyday family life disappeared as well. During these four years, Democratic Kampuchea (the name given to the country by the Khmer Rouge) was a prison camp state, and the eight million Cambodians were the prisoners working in virtually solitary confinement. One and a half million of these Cambodians were worked, starved, tortured executed, and beaten to death.
In their quest to establish a pure Cambodian society, the Khmer Rouge also went after the various ethnic groups living in the country. Prior to the Khmer Rouge revolution, the largest ethnic minority groups in Cambodia were the Vietnamese, the Chinese, and the Muslim Chams. These communities suffered tremendous under the Khmer Rouge. The Vietnamese community was entirely destroyed. In 1970, the Vietnamese community had numbered about 400,000. About half of them were expelled by the Lon Nol regime, which feared that they had communist sympathies. Immediately following Pol Pot’s victory in 1976, another 100,000 or so were driven out of the country. The rest were executed. The exact numbers of Vietnamese killed are unknown, but researchers in the country after the downfall of the Khmer Rouge, after searching for a year, were unable to find a single Vietnamese who had survived. Eyewitnesses, including ethnic Khmers who were married to Vietnamese, have testified to the terrible fate of their Vietnamese spouses and neighbors. This campaign against the Vietnamese eventually spilled over and resulted in the massacres of thousands of Khmer Krom, or lowland Cambodians, who were ethnic Khmer from southern Vietnam who had resettled in northwest Cambodia.
The ethnic Chinese under the Khmer Rouge suffered the worst disaster ever to befall an ethnic Chinese community in southeast Asia. Only half of the 1975 population of 430,000 Chinese survived the four years of Khmer Rouge rule. The ethnic Chinese in Cambodia were virtually all urban, and therefore they were seen by the Khmer Rouge as city dwellers, and the enemy. In this case, they were targeted for execution not only because they were Chinese, but also because they were urbanites.
The toll among smaller ethnic minorities was also high. The Thai community of 20,000 was reduced to about eight thousand. Only 800 families survived out of 1800 ethnic Lao families. Of the two thousand members of the Kola minority, no trace has ever been found.
The Muslim Chams in Cambodia numbered at least 250,000 in 1975. Their distinct religion, language and culture, their large villages and autonomous leadership threatened the closely supervised rural society that the Khmer Rouge planned. Of 113 Cham community leaders in 1975, only 20 survived in 1979. Only 25 of 226 Cham deputies survived. Only 38 out of 300 religious teachers at Cham Koranic schools were left alive by 1979. It is estimated that some 90,000 Chams had died by 1979.