Cambodia is a fascinating country, towering mountains, impenetrable jungles, flat plains and vast rivers. It is a nation that posses a majestic ancient history, with its old Khmer imperial art and architecture, one of the most unique styles seen in the world, scattered throughout its lands, a constant reminder of what once was. Sadly though despite the best efforts of restoration projects, many of these impressive structures with the exception of the Angkor Wat, exist as a mere shell of what they used to be. Which to some signify the inevitable passage of time, to others, a metaphor of an empires decline. For many in the West, Cambodia exists  only as a picture on a map, a place so far removed from home and so understudied that is almost feels like a semi-mythical land. Every so often tales from this land will reach us back home, stories of ancient kings, empires and legendary structures the likes of which we have never seen in Europe, capture the imagination of many. However, there is one story that emerged from this country in recent times that really put this place on the map, this is the story of the Khmer Rouge. Without turning this post into a full-blown history lesson, I will try my best to tell the story of how the Khmer Rouge came to power, and the atrocities they committed whilst in power. 

The Road to Power

The Khmer Rouge (initially referred to the Communist Party of Kampuchea) began its life as an insurgency group in the 1960’s, largely confined to the jungles in Northern and Eastern Cambodia. They were led by a man named Saloth Sâr, or as many of us today refer to him by his revolutionary name ‘Pol Pot.’ He came from a wealthy land owning family under French colonial rule, and was granted a place at a university in Paris in his early 20’s. It was here where Pol Pot’s political ideas, inspired by Marxism were formed, due to his membership with various Cambodian communist student groups that existed in secret. At the fall of French rule in Cambodia, Pol Pot returned to the country armed with his newfound communist beliefs. He quickly found political refuge within the communist party of Kampuchea and began to quickly rise within the party. In 1962 he became the leader of the party following the (potentially US backed) assassination of Tou Samouth. With the party under his control, he launched an insurgency campaign against King Sihanouk’s government from 1968.  Alongside this, he also aligned himself with the Viet Cong, providing them with jungle camps and staging posts in the Jungles of Eastern Cambodia, to help in their fight against the US backed South Vietnamese forces. However, When King Sihanouk was deposed in 1970 by the US backed general Lon Nol, Pol Pot’s communist forces supported by the Viet Cong, began a new war against this perceived puppet government. By 1975, alongside the general US withdrawal from Southeast Asia, Pol Pots forces overran Lon Nol’s government and ultimately took control over all of Cambodia. The stage was finally set for terror. 

Reign of Terror

With his power established, Pol Pot quickly set about making his dream of Cambodia become a reality. A classless, moneyless, agrarian, self sufficient society,  isolated from the rest of the world. To achieve this, almost overnight he abolished all forms of currency, transforming the Cambodian economy into a barter system, where Cambodians would trade what little valuables they had, in exchange for items such as food and clothing. The Khmer Rouge also quickly set about evacuating every civilian from the major cities and into the countryside to work on farms. In total, estimates range from 2-3 million people forcibly relocated to the countryside, resulting in many families being separated, almost certainly never to be reunited. It is also said that approximately 20,000 people died on these journeys to the countryside as a result of malnutrition. With all citizens relocated to the countryside, they were then forced to work 12 hours a day every day on the rice fields unpaid. It was Pol Pot’s theory that if everyone farmed rice,  then there would be enough food for the nation to become self sufficient. This idea was inspired by Mao’s ‘great leap forward’ in China, a policy which resulted in the deaths of up to 50 million Chinese. However, despite this poor record, Pol Pot pressed on.  Unsurprisingly, all this policy did was cause a major nationwide famine, resulting in the deaths of anywhere between 2-300,000 people. Pivoting away from the famine, the Khmer Rouge also began a ferocious campaign of genocide against their fellow Cambodians. It began with the elites, those involved in the previous government. Then it extended to the rich, the religious, and the intellectuals. It was said that wearing glasses would see you killed, as glasses were a symbol of intelligence. Essentially, anyone of any higher status were murdered, as the Khmer Rouge deemed them a threat to the revolution. The killings were expanded greatly in the countryside, to those deemed to not be working hard enough, those who asked questions, sick people, pregnant mothers, babies, anyone who could not pull their compulsory 12 hour shift of hard labour. The infamous line that Khmer Rouge soldiers told their victims to justify why they killed people was ‘we profit nothing in keeping you alive, we lose nothing from killing you.’ Anyone accused of engaging in anti-revolutionary activities were also killed. These sorts of accusations against others were made by people incarcerated in the Khmer Rouge’s brutal prison camp systems, where false confessions were extracted under methods of brutal torture. The killings also extended to ethnic minorities, Vietnamese and Chinese minority groups that lived in Cambodias border regions. All in all, within three and a half years, the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal regime claimed the lives of roughly 1.5-2 million Cambodians or 25% of Cambodias total population at the time. The methods of killing where ghastly, with bullets being far too expensive for the regime to waste, executions were carried out primarily with farming tools, demonstrating a brutality that can only be rivalled by the events in Rwanda in 1994. 

Liberation

This genocidal nightmare at the hands of the Khmer Rouge would more or less come to an end in 1979, following the Vietnamese invasion. In the preceding 4 years, the Khmer Rouge repeatedly launched deadly cross-border raids into Vietnam. The battle hardened Vietnamese had finally had enough and on Christmas Day 1978, they launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia. The invasion was short and swift, the far superior Vietnamese army swept across Cambodia in a matter of weeks, toppling Pol Pot’s regime and ending the Cambodian genocide. Finally, the red terror had ended, or so they thought… Despite the collapse of the Khmer Rouge, they were still able to mount an insurgency confined to Cambodias jungle regions that would last until 1999, before the Cambodian government could finally put an end to this nightmare once and for all. 

The Legacy of the Khmer Rouge

My time in Cambodia revealed a lot about how a nation grapples with its troubled past. My overarching feeling throughout my trip to Cambodia was one of sadness, as if the weight of its past still bore heavy on its present. I guess that quite literally is true, the scars of Cambodias past are visible in its people today. Whenever I saw a Cambodian who looked to be over the age of 40, my immediate feeling was one of empathy, my mind would automatically ask the question ‘you must have seen some things.’ Despite my best efforts, it was impossible to find anyone willing to talk to me about their experiences with the Khmer Rouge, I was either dismissed or angrily told to not ask questions. Perhaps this is the Cambodian people’s way of moving on, to not speak about it and act as if it never happened. Maybe this is to be expected? After all, a common human response when dealing with trauma is to shut it out of our minds. Maybe my mere mentioning of the past brought on a flood of emotion in people that to this day are still too raw to process. 

Educational Scars

Nevertheless I set about conducting my own research into the observable effects of the Khmer Rouge on Cambodian society, and I made two key findings. Firstly it’s impact on education. As of 2018, UNICEF describe Cambodias education system as poor, with a distinct lack of qualified teachers causing poor quality learning environments. The reasons for this rest solely with the actions of the Pol Pot’s regime 40 years prior. The Khmer Rouge decimated Cambodias education system by executing almost all existing teachers due to them possessing an education, leaving only a few hundred  teachers still alive in the country following the fall of the Khmer regime. This caused incredibly low primary and secondary school enrolment rates in the late 70’s, only gradually increasing year by year through the 80’s. As a result, a massive cohort of children during Cambodias reconstruction period missed out on an education, many of these being potential future teachers. This issue manifests itself in the present day, with Cambodia boasting a poor student-Teacher ratio of 44-1 as of 2018. This issue is only compounded by the fact that nearly half of Cambodias population is under the age of 24, a figure spurred on by a ‘baby Boom’ that occurred in the decades following the genocide, a trend consistent with periods of national trauma.

Political Scars

A second Observable effect is the nature of Cambodian politics. Since the fall of the Khmer Rouge Cambodia has been ruled by the Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP). Their grip on power has remained so strong due to their politicisation of the issue of the Genocide, by positioning themselves as the political party who gave Cambodia a second chance to be reborn. This extended period of CPP rule, combined with its post genocide rhetoric, has resulted in the deep entrenchment of CPP power, fostering a deep sense of conservatism within the country. This conservative culture manifests itself when there are calls for change in the political establishment. Such calls are often viewed by many in Cambodia, as an attempt to undo the progress that has been made since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, making any real change hard to achieve. This is the political legacy of the Khmer Rouge, a political culture that is shackled by a deeply conservative social environment, born out of a fear of a return to the past. A political culture that has enabled the ruling party to hold onto power for decades, leading many to call them an authoritarian, and almost dictatorial force in Cambodian politics. 

Final Thoughts

Whilst Cambodia poses a natural and cultural beauty that very few countries can compete with. It is the scars from Cambodias dark past, still present today, that leave you with an almost uneasy feeling. For anyone planning to visit all I would say is this, take time to learn about Cambodias history before you arrive here. To fully appreciate Cambodia today, you must understand it’s past. To choose not to learn about the history, would be similar to skipping to the ending of a film without watching any of the buildup, making the ending somewhat redundant. What did strike me however, was how engaged the younger generation in Cambodia are with their own history. My visit to the S21 prison (now the national genocide museum) in Phnom Penh demonstrated this. Whilst the displays in the museum were horrific, I couldn’t help but notice that the entire complex was flooded with locals of a similar age to me, almost as if it’s a pilgrimage that all Cambodians take at least once in their lives. This observation gives me hope, hope that there are great efforts to educate the next generation, so that such a tragic event can never occur again.