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 Khmer Rouge's interrogator-in-chief Kaing Guek Eav, better known by his alias Duch, died Wednesday in Cambodia's capital at the age of 77. [13]:260 While two former leaders were convicted of genocide, this was for treatment of ethnic and religious minorities, the Vietnamese and Cham. The Khmer Rouge's interrogator-in-chief Kaing Guek Eav, better known by his alias Duch, died Wednesday in Cambodia's capital at the age of 77. [7]:[11][49][50] High-ranking CPC officials such as Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help. [32]:176 Monks were not ordered to defrock until as late as 1977 in Kratié Province, where many monks found that they reverted to the status of lay peasantry as the agricultural work they were allocated to involved regular breaches of monastic rules. [80] In November 2018, the trial convicted Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan of crimes against humanity and genocide against the Vietnamese, while Nuon Chea was also found guilty of genocide relating to the Chams. [45], At some time between 1949 and 1951, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary joined the French Communist Party. [30]:191 While 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. [21]:515 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. [96] On 29 December 1998, leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologised for the 1970s genocide. Nevertheless, the Khmer Rouge's policies dramatically reduced the Cambodian population's cultural inflow as well as its knowledge and creativity. While some academics such as Michael Vickery have noted that arranged marriages were also a feature of rural Cambodia prior to 1975, those conducted by the Khmer Rouge regime often involved people unfamiliar to each other. [25] The spillover of Vietnamese fighters from the Vietnamese–American War further aggravated anti-Vietnamese sentiments: the Khmer Republic under Lon Nol, overthrown by the Khmer Rouge, had promoted Mon-Khmer nationalism and was responsible for several anti-Vietnamese pogroms during the 1970s. By 1990, the ANS, now renamed the Armée Nationale pour Khmer Independent (ANKI), had essentially become an offshoot of the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge was a brutal communist regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Ieng Sary, who has died aged 87, was for many years "Brother No 3" in the hierarchy of the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and was the brother-in-law of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge's enigmatic leader. Almost without exception, all of the earliest party members were Vietnamese. The ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 under the leadership of "Brother Number One" Pol Pot -- a charismatic intellectual who studied in France. The party leadership endorsed armed struggle against the government, then led by Sihanouk. [23]:110 In 1975, Khmer Rouge representatives to China said that Pol Pot's belief was that the collectivisation of agriculture was capable of "[creating] a complete communist society without wasting time on the intermediate steps". Unable to believe he was being purged, So Phim went into hiding and attempted to contact Pol Pot by radio. "Economic saboteurs" as many former urban dwellers were deemed guilty of sabotage because of their lack of agricultural ability. However, some analysts argue that this change meant little in practice because according to historian Kelvin Rowley the "CPK propaganda had always relied on nationalist rather than revolutionary appeals". Then, the Vietnamese established a new governing state called People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). 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. Acting through the Santebal, the Khmer Rouge arrested, tortured and eventually executed anyone who was suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed enemies:[46], The Santebal established over 150 prisons for political opponents; Tuol Sleng is a former high school that was turned into the Santebal headquarters and interrogation center for the highest value political prisoners. However, it specified that what it termed "reactionary religion" would not be permitted. Critics have castigated interference by the government and the pace of proceedings. Of the 3,157 civilians who had lived in Ba Chúc,[88] only two survived the massacre. After three months of interrogation at Tuol Sleng, he confessed to working with the CIA to undermine the revolution following which he and his wife were executed. [20] 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. By calling itself a workers' party, the Cambodian movement claimed equal status with the Vietnam Workers' Party. Labourers were forced to work long shifts without adequate rest or food, resulting in many deaths through exhaustion, illness and starvation. [1]:251–310 These were not the first evacuations of civilian populations by the Khmer Rouge because similar evacuations of populations without possessions had been occurring on a smaller scale since the early 1970s.[1]:251–310. [67] Demographer Patrick Heuveline estimated that between 1.17 million and 3.42 million Cambodians died unnatural deaths between 1970 and 1979, with between 150,000 and 300,000 of those deaths occurring during the civil war. Note that these are t… The second half of the 20th century was a period of radical change for Cambodia. Pol Pot, the leader of this movement, was educated in France. The Khmer Rouge leaders and followers had to flee out of Cambodia. According to a document issued after the reorganization, the Vietnam Workers' Party would continue to "supervise" the smaller Laotian and Cambodian movements. 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. Chum Mey, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, walks past a portrait of Nuon Chea, a former Khmer Rouge leader. The other two convicted were Nuon Chea, "Brother Number Two" and chief ideologue of the regime -- who died last year -- and Khieu Samphan, the former head of state who served as the Khmer Rouge's public face to the world. Partly because of its secrecy and changes in how it presented itself, academic interpretations of its political position vary widely,[17]:25 ranging from interpreting it as the "purest" Marxist–Leninist movement to characterising it as an anti-Marxist "peasant revolution". [46], Inside the KSA and its successor organizations, there was a secret organization known as the Cercle Marxiste (Marxist circle). 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. For the next two years, the insurgency grew as Sihanouk did very little to stop it. 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. In 1981, the Khmer Rouge went so far as to officially renounce communism[2]: and somewhat moved their ideological emphasis to nationalism and anti-Vietnamese rhetoric instead. Party cadres who had fallen under political suspicion: the regime tortured and executed thousands of party members during its purges, This page was last edited on 24 December 2020, at 22:39. Towards the end of the regime, the Khmer Rouge devoured its own with repeated purges -- driven by paranoia from the leadership that the revolution's enemies were hidden within. [23]:47, In Phnom Penh and other cities, the Khmer Rouge told residents that they would only be moved about "two or three kilometers" away from the city and would return in "two or three days". [87], Hou Yuon was one of the first senior leaders to be purged. However, to counter the power of the Soviet Union and Vietnam, a group of countries including China, the United States, Thailand as well as some Western countries supported the Khmer Rouge-dominated Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea to continue holding Cambodia's seat in the United Nations, which was held until 1993, long after the Cold War had ended. The pro-Vietnamese regime of the People's Republic of Kampuchea implied in the 1980s that the September 1960 meeting was nothing more than the second congress of the KPRP. Kiernan, Ben (Winter 1989). In 1965, Pol Pot made a visit of several months to North Vietnam and China. [51] The change in the name of the party was a closely guarded secret. The Khmer Rouge wanted to "eliminate all traces of Cambodia's imperialist past", and its previous culture was one of them. The nation of Cambodia was in a near-decade civil war between the Communist (Khmer Rouge) and the monarchy and then the Khmer Republic. In 1976 they renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea. [75], It is often concluded that the Khmer Rouge regime promoted functional illiteracy. [21]:63, After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot threw himself into party work. Government attacks prevented it from participating in the 1962 election and drove it underground. [69] The second significant faction was made up of men who had been active in the pre-1960 party and had stronger links to Vietnam as a result. He said that he held negotiations with the top Khmer Rouge leaders, including Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea (who died in 2019), to find the real … [110] 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. [30]:185 Based on a speech which Pol Pot made in 1978, it appears that he may have ultimately envisaged that illiterate students with approved poor peasant backgrounds could become trained engineers within ten years by doing a lot of targeted studying along with a lot of practical work.[30]:185. 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. [21]:265 In mid-1976 Ieng Thirith, minister of social affairs, inspected the northwestern zone. The death toll of these two groups, approximately 100,000 people, is roughly 5% of the generally accepted total of two million. Pol Pot and Ieng Sary married Khieu Ponnary and Khieu Thirith, also known as Ieng Thirith, purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan. [67] An additional 300,000 Cambodians starved to death between 1979 and 1980, largely as a result of the after-effects of Khmer Rouge policy. [112] 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. Some witnesses said they were told that the evacuation was because of the "threat of American bombing" and they were also told that they did not have to lock their houses since the Khmer Rouge would "take care of everything" until they returned. In September 1966, the WPK changed its name to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). I share your utter horror that these terrible things went on in Kampuchea". [91], 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.