The forgotten holocaust: Cambodia (spell checked version)

The forgotten holocaust: Cambodia

Today on the 7th of January 1979 the Vietnamese People's Army
(VPA) entered Cambodia's capital city of Phonon Phenh - there they found a city on the brink of collapse, and almost completely neglected...They progressed through Cambodia and saw peasants working in fields, they also found a school house with blood stained corpses all over the floor and 7 people who were amazingly still alive inside it (although recent research suggests that possibly 196 people surrived the prison)...Then they found documents about the school house which showed that sense 1975 it had been used as a torture and execution chamber by one of the worst regime’s in history - the Khmer Rouge.

The Khmer Rouge under the command of Pol Pot (1925-1998)
came to power in war torn Cambodia on the 17th of April 1975.
Before that Cambodia had been graced with a U.S. puppet regime - "The Khemer Republic" under the leadership of Lon Nol and his brother Lon Non.

The Lon Nol government needless to say was extremely corrupt
and relied and like the "Republic of China" under Chaing Kai Shek constantly demanded US aid to prop itself up. The US had their own imperial agenda though in Cambodia, - the Vietcong.
The Vietcong were attempting to capture S. Vietnam at the time and as part of this attempt had pushed into Cambodia, sponsoring Pol Pot's Khemer Rouge guerilla’s as they went- then the "People's Republic of China" joined in and the Khemer Rouge had enough motovation to defeat the inept Lon Nol regime in April of 1975.
In 1973 Richard Nixon ordered the bombing of Cambodia, over 600,000 Cambodian's died in this bombing although Noam Chomsky claimed it was only 200,000 ---- Chomsky's views on Cambodia are less then trust worthy...

This angered and greatly radicalized the 'red Khmer’s' who would bitterly remember what the west did to them, and later take it out on their own people after 1975.
The Khemer Rouge's first move when they captured Cambodia was to order a mass evacuation to the countryside - because Pol Pot was inspired by Mao's evacuations in China during the "Cultural revolution" which Pol Pot partly witnessed.
Any Cambodian's who refused to move to the country were shot by the Khmer Rouge..
Lon Non, Lon Nol's brother and the other members of the "Khmer republic" were executed, with the Khmer Rouge claiming they were beheaded.

Lon Nol himself fled Cambodia on the 1st of April 1975 when it became all to obvious that the "Khmer republic" was doomed. However Lon Brett and Lon Non among with other ministers decided to try and negotiate a truce with the approaching Khmer Rouge forces, however Pol Pot's teenagers (the Khmer Rouge was mainly made up of children and teenagers) were not interested in a cease fire...

The Khmer Rouge then established their constitution in 1976 which was extremely vague and simply stated that all Cambodian's were 'equal' and some other vague half Marxist half ultra-nationalist rhetoric. In-between the 11th and 13th of April 1976, the Khmer Rouge healed a national assembly meeting where, Pol Pot was 'elected' prime minister, however Pol Pot didn't reveal himself as head of the country to his fellow country men or the world until 1977.
They renamed the country "Democratic Kampuchea" (DK)
though this title would soon prove contradictory.
They also renamed the CPK (Communist party of Kampuchea) "The Angkar" - "the organization" and now the killing could begin in earnest.

All intellectuals were rounded up and shot, all Cambodians who spoke either English and/or French were shot, although as some have pointed out this was hypocrtical as Pol Pot himself could speak French....Teachers were shot and education apart from basic mathematics was banned, instead Cambodian's were thought to love Angker; who became their, masters and family. Vietnamese, Laotians and Chinese minorities were either deported and/or shot. Actually the only Cambodian's not to be shot by the Angkar were peasant farmer's who the Khmer Rouge believed to be 'the real working class' - based on Maoist philosophy.

Instead of death the peasants were made to work in labor camps for over 16 hours a day, were thousands more died of starvation and sickness. Music was banned under the Khmer Rouge and artists either fled the country or were shot.
Buddhist monks (Buddhism was the primary religion in Cambodia up to 1975)faced persecution, with their religion been virtually banned by the Angkar
at least half the Buddhist population were murdered by 1979 along with other religious groups.

Political prisoners were tortured under the watchful eye of "Comrade Duch" who ran the school turned torture camp menthioned at the start, named S-21, were over 15,000 Cambodian's were killed by 1979. Those unfortunate enough to survive were made to dig their own graves in the infamous 'killing fields' were they were then hacked to death by pick axes - the Khmer Rouge wanted to save bullets....the primary killing field lay 15kl away from S-21 named “Boeung Choeung Ek,” or “Crow’s Feet Pond” where ten teenage Khmer Rouge soldiers led by “Teng” a Khmer officer in his early 20’s….Teng and his men would dig the graves after hearing about prisoners coming from S-21 so that their victims were ready for the slaughter as soon as they arrived.
Prior to this (before S-21 became to full of bodies and the killing field's were used) Duch's prisoner's were often hit over the head by metal bars and then their necks were broken, in a small backyard outside S-21. In another prison camp ("Camp of Choung" 17,000 were killed by 1979)..

in 1977 Pol Pot eventually revealed "Democratic Kampuchea" to the world, announcing himself as prime minister and talking about his plans for his country, in an interview with a Yugoslavian film crew he said "I want to rid Cambodia of it's past." , in 1978 the Pol Pot administration allowed a few Western journalists inside the country, mainly Elizabeth Becker; who for years along with Noam Chomsky and other left wing intellectual's had denied the rumors that there was genocide happening in Cambodia.

Becker was shocked to find that Pol Pot spoke in a calm voice but that he was "always ranting and raving" he wore a grey clad Mao like suit and "looked like a king" stretched out in his office.
Becker soon found she changed her mind about the Angkar as she saw the fear in peasants eyes as she travelled around Cambodia "under virtual house arrest" along with her companion Professor Caldwell.

The night, she had interviewed Pol Pot a group of Khmer Rouge soldiers burst into her room and shot Professor Caldwell dead, threatening her, the next day she was rushed out of the country as the Vietnamese had started their invasion.

Why did Vietnam invade Cambodia?

The Vietnamese were growing increasingly weary of the Khmer Rouge by 1978.
In 1975, shortly after taking power Pol Pot made it clear that Cambodian communism was different from Vietnamese communism, and that he considered the Vietnamese racial enemies of Cambodia. in 1977-78 the Khmer Rouge conducted border raids into Vietnam and kidnapped and killed over 500 Vietnamese citizens, burning down their villages as they went. Vietnam had up to this stage barely tolerated the Pol Pot government but this was the last straw...on the 22nd of December 1978 radio Hanoi - the state owned radio of Vietnam announced it would be building a force made up of anti-communists, Viet communists and Cambodian exiles who would invade Cambodia.
One of these Cambodian exiles, Hun Sen who up till 1977 was an officer in the Khmer Rouge, is now prime minister of Cambodia.

It took the Vietnamese little more then two weeks to capture all of Cambodia, finally taking the capital city on the 7th of January 1979. Pol Pot and the other Khmer leaders fled deep into Cambodia's jungles, were they would continue to launch a bloodthirsty guerilla war against the new Vietnamese puppet state in Cambodia
"The People's Republic of Kampuchea" (PRK). Hun Sen was installed as prime minister in the 1980's by the Vietnamese, who also shut down Pol Pot's labor camps and for the first time made the full contence of the Pol Pot regime available to the outside world - who did nothing...


Why did the UN not give aid to Cambodia for at least a decade?

The UN was sidelined in it's approach to Cambodia for at least the next decade or two. the Khmer Rouge continued to try and overthrow the Hun Sen administration which was been backed by Vietnam, who in turn was been backed by the USSR. In 1985, the Regan administration gave over $5 million in aid to the Khmer Rouge, the Thatcher administration in England also financed the Maoist movement and in 1989, the US and Japan both put political pressure on the UN not to send international aid to Cambodia. In short both the capitalist powers US and UK supported the Khmer Rouge because of geopolitics (and they claim to care about freedom?) the USSR was financing Vietnam who in turn was propping up the PRK, so the US and UK took the opposite role.

in 1984 in an interview with the British TV programme "Blue Peter" Margret Thatcher said she supported the "moderate factors" within the Khmer Rouge.
When asked what this meant, she replied that she was told by Khmer Rouge diplomats that they were more "moderate" then Pol Pot's supporters within the movement.
When one of these so-called moderate diplomats was asked what he thought the Khmer Rouge's greatest mistake was he replied "we failed to move quickly enough against our enemies" - hence they failed to kill enough people...

On the 1st of September 1989, the Vietnamess pulled out of Cambodia
and in 1991 peace talks took place between the Khmer Rouge and other countries.
Australia a country who had prior to 1991 refered to the Khmer regeme as "genocide" agreed to take the wording out of it's offical reference's.
Whilst the US and UK diplomats laughed and joked with KR offical's in their hotel rooms...

The peace did not last and fighting continued in Cambodia,
in 1996, Pol Pot's brother in law switched sides and became part of the now "constitutional government" which was still led by Hun Sen, with Norodom Sihanouk; a figure who I have failed to mention in this history, but let's just say he had a complex relationship with the Khmer Rouge, as King (he was King of Cambodia in the 1950's won it independence from France, then became prime minister untill he was overthrown in 1970 by Lon Nol - he then fled into the jungle and lent his name to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge...) so basically the so-called "democratic" government established in the Paris peace talks was made up of the same people, except now Hun Sen followed a free-market policy instead of a communist policy which he had done while in charge of the PRK. – It’s worth nothing that Hun Sen was only in charge at this time because he refused to give up power to one of Sihanouk’s sons, who on paper was the real prime minister of the new government, however Sen overthrew him in a military coup in 1997, clamming that he was saving Cambodia from ‘anarchy’.

Norodom Sihanouk; officially pardoned the Khmer Rouge in the 1990's
and in 1997 Pol Pot ordered the killing of Sen Senn (and his family) who was minister for defense in "Democratic Kampuchea" the KR staged a show trial for Pol Pot and put him under house arrest, where he died on the 15th of April 1998.

Today the west barely mentions the genocide
and compared to films, plays, musicals, books about the Nazi Holocoust there is really very little, apart from a few biography's of Pol Pot and some accademic boooks on the Khmer Rouge.
There is however an excellent 1984 film called "the killing fields" which tells the story of three real life journalists who found themselves trapped in Khmer Rouge Cambodia.

in 2004 Sihanouk claiming ill-health resigned as King
and moved to the DPRK and then to China, where he now lives in self-imposed exile.
Hun Sen was again elected prime minister of Cambodia in 2003 where he is now head of a coalition government with a royalist party.
in July of 2009 "Comrade Duch" was sentenced to 30 years in prison by a Cambodian-UN war crimes/crimes against humanity court. However he has already served 11 of those 30 years so he will now only have to serve 19 years -- something which rightfully outrages many Cambodian's.
Other top leaders of the KR are awaiting trial's that might begin in 2011.
However Hun Sen has said that persecuting the KR leaders would only lead to a civil-war...

And that is the story of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge
the U.S., UK and PRC still remain vague about their support for such monsters
and compared to Hitler's Holocaust the event is somewhat sidelined it seems,
rarely making it into school history books.
One can only hope that such monsters don't surface again
but then again that's what we hoped for after WWII.

I'm going to end this article
with a quote from Cambodian Photojournalist Dith Pran who was a surrivor of the 'killing fields' (and coined the name) and who is one of the central characters in the 1984 film of that name:

"Please help spread the word of the Cambodian genocide. I believe it needs to be told, the new generation needs to be educated and we want history not to repeat itself. We don't want to see the holocaust, the genocide, the killing fields keep returning to this planet".

P.S.

It is believed that 1.7 million (21% of the population) Cambodians were killed under the Khmer Rouge regime.....The Vietnamese conducted a survey after they captured Cambodia in which they came to the conclusion that 4 million died - the full population of Cambodia at the time was 8 million....However historian's say this figure is unlikely, Dith Pran himself said in a university lecture in the US some years later that 3 million were killed. Pol Pot said that 800,000 died however this figure is blatently propaganda, and other Khmer Rouge leaders said 1.4 million died.

Whatever the amount the genocide is clearly a degrading period in the history of humanity...I claim that's it's forgotten simply because, as far as I can see it is not as mainstream as other massacres - despite the fact that more people died in the Cambodian genocide than the Yugoslavian genocide in the 1990's.