Cambodian Genocide

Cambodian Genocide

"What is rotten must be removed"

When: 1975-1979

v 1925: Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) is born into a farming family in central Cambodia

v 1949: Pol Pot moves to Paris and becomes absorbed in Marxism (communism)

v 1953: Pol Pot returns to Cambodia and joins the underground Communist movement

v 1962: Pol Pot, now leader of the Cambodian Communist Party, is forced to flee into the jungle and forms the armed resistance movement against Prince Sihanouk, known as the Khmer Rouge and wages war on Sihanouk

v 1970: Prince Sihanouk is ousted by a U.S. military coup and joins Pol Pot's group in opposing the new military government

v 1970: U.S. invasion of Cambodian border occupied by the North Vietnamese, forces the Vietnamese deeper into the jungle where they ally themselves with the Khemer Rouge

v 1969-1973: The U.S. occasionally bombs North Vietnamese sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia, killing 150,000 Cambodian peasants, and hundreds of thousands of Cambodian peasants fled to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capitol

v By 1975: U.S. had withdrawn all troops from Vietnam and Cambodia lost its American military support

v April 17, 1975: Seizing the opportunity in Cambodia's disorganized government, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army marched into Phnom Penh and took control of Cambodia

v December 25, 1978: Vietnam launches a full-scale attack of Cambodia

v January 7, 1979: Phnom Penh falls and Pol Pot was deposed

v 1979-1996: Pol Pot retreats into Thailand with his Khmer Rouge and continues to attack a succession of Cambodian governments

v 1996: Pol Pot loses control of the Khmer Rouge

v April 1998: Pol Pot dies of a heart attack before he could be tried for the events of 1975-1979.

Where: Cambodia

v Cambodia in South East Asia

v Pol Pot renamed Cambodia the "Democratic Republic of Kampuchea" and instituted prisons and new provincial boundaries all over Cambodia, including the evacuation of Cambodia's capital: Phnom Penh, and S-21: a secret prison operated by Pol Pot's regime in Phnom Penh

v Vietnam: which attacked on the borders of Cambodia leading to the overthrow of Pol Pot

Application of the United Nations Definition:

Killing of members of the group:

v Deadly purges to kill many target groups

v 20,000 tortured and killed in Tuol Sleng

v People suspected of disloyalty were shot on sight

v 212,500 Chinese living in Cambodia perished

v 20,000 killed on the evacuation of Phnom Penh

Causing serious bodily or mental harm

v Prisoners in the camps were beaten to submission so that they would not question authority and only work

v Imposed a harsh schedule on those who survived the march from the cities, so that the only thing they could think of was sleep, if they resisted while working, they were shot

v In camps, prisoners were tortured into false confessions of crimes and were beaten until they believed what they said

v Told that "whether or not you die is not of great significance"

Inflicting on the group conditions of life

v Forcibly evacuated all cities

v March to the countryside, as many as 20,000 died along the way

v Millions forced into slave labor

v Accustomed to city life, the Cambodians started to die from diet of one tin of rice every other day, 18 hours of work every day, one day of rest every 10 days, disease, malnutrition, and overwork, in Pol Pot's "killing fields"