The Horrors Of The Khmer Rouge
The followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea were given the name of the Khmer Rouge. This reign in Cambodia is considered as the worst disasters in modern history.
In 1970, the Khmer Rouge soldiers began an insurgency against the government. They were helped by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops, and used this combined power to gain control over more than two-thirds of the country in a short time. The popularity of the Khmer Rouge is witnessed by the dramatic rise in strength from 3,000 in the year 1970 to 30,000 in 1973. With this, most of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops had withdrawn.
Finally, led by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge overthrew the Cambodian government in 1975, after which the “Democratic Kampuchea” was established. Literally overnight, the new governance took cruel and drastic measures. Entire cities were evacuated. Property was abolished. Factories were closed. Schools were shut down. Money did not hold any value. Hundreds of thousands of taxi drivers, cooks, factory workers, clerks and everyone else became farmers suddenly. They even assassinated skilled workers and intellectuals, and many others died due to starvation. Records show that at least 2 million people died. Cambodia was reduced to nothing but a nation of slaves.
By the year 1979, tensions with Vietnam increased and Vietnamese troops invaded, helping the rival Communists factions in deposing the new Khmer Rouge government. But the Khmer Rouge continued to have a huge army of 30,000 near the Thai border and was also recognized by the United Nations as the official Cambodian government.
This government formed a coalition in 1982, with Norodom Sihanouk, the former premier and the non-Communist leader, Son Sann. Pol Pot gave up his leadership for Khieu Samphan, but it was said to Pol Pot who continued to call the shots. On the request of the different factions in Cambodia, who signed a treaty, the United Nations assumed administration of the government in 1991 and help elections in 1992. Around that time, the Khmer Rouge withdrew itself from the peace process did not accept the results of the elections which led to the formation of a coalition government in Cambodia, and began fighting again.
Internal disputes and disagreements led the Khmer Rouge to its own destruction in 1997, with the imprisonment of Pol Pot, leading to his death within a year. Some of the members of this disturbed communist party surrendered, while others were captured and by 1999 it all came to an end.
Not many scholars believed the reports of mass killings in Cambodia before 1979; however, when the Khmer Rouge was overtaken by the Vietnamese, the extent of the disaster was clear to all.
A chill runs down the spine of every Cambodian when they think back on the Khmer Rouge. It shocked the world with the atrocities that were considered to be the worst ever the world had to face. The wounds of the rule remain raw even today, as they changed the lives of the population of Cambodia, like nothing else has before.
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