Why is there a essay about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge on a Travelling blog?
I would like to preface this to warn you that this post really takes a sharp detour away from my usual topics and tone. Nevertheless, when we visited Cambodia we were really shocked by Cambodias recent history that we previously knew very little about. If I tried to include the following information in my normal posts, which I would have to as there was a hardly a place we visited that wasn't scarred in someway by the Horrors of the Khmer Rouge, I don't think I would do it justice. Combining it with our day to day travels, as a small paragraph or two would take away from the real impact these events had on the country we visited and the feelings it invoked in us on our trip. I understand if you choose to skip reading this, its not an easy. The following is by no means a comprehensive guide to the events what happened, I have tried to verify all facts from multiple sources but being human I may have gotten some things incorrect.
Who is Pol Pot and why was he important?
Saloth Sar (later known as Pol Pot “brother number one”) was born in 1925 in a small village located about 100 miles north of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. Despite the French colonial rule, his family was relatively well-off owning a 50 acre plot of paddy fields - an average family owned only 5 acres. He had a varied education, first being sent to a Buddhist monastery at age 9 before continuing on to a French Catholic School. At the age of 24 he gained a scholarship to a school in Paris where most sources say he studied radio technology (the internet was confused on this point) it was here where he first became involved in communist circles. It was in Paris where Pol Pot was born.
When his scholarship was withdrawn in 1953, he headed back to Cambodia in time for the revolution against the French colonialist rule, a revolution that ended in Cambodias independence and left the country in an unsettled political situation.
The rise of Pol pot
Once back on home soil Pol Pot wasted no time before joining Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP) while also locking in a job as a teacher at a private school. The KPRP was a communist political group that was once part of a larger group (IRP) a political communist party that spread across Vietnam, Cambodia and Loas. In 1960 the KPRP was rebranded the to the Workers Party of Kampuchea (WPK) and by 1962, Pol Pot was the WPK’s secretary general. The Khmer Rouge was the armed wing of the WPK.
As the WPK and Khmer Rouge weren’t exactly popular with the monarchy supporting population of Cambodias capital, the group hightailed it to the remote jungle and mountainous areas in the northeast of the country, near the border with Vietnam. There they met up with members of the Viet Cong and continued planning the changes they wanted to make to Cambodia. In 1966 the WPK had its final transformation becoming the Communist Party of Kampuchea - although this change was pretty irrelevant as they’re mostly referred to as the Khmer Rouge.
Under Pol Pots leadership, the group turned more radical and militant, wanting revolution rather than political reform. They only way, they believed, to get a true classless communist country was to eradicate any western influences including technology. They wanted to do away with intellectualism too - quite ironic seeing as Pol Pot himself was an educator who went to school abroad.
From 1968 the Khmer Rouge started attacks on government forces in Cambodias capital Phnom Penh, but they didn’t start gaining any support from the people until 1970. This is where it all changed, in 1970 Lon Nol (a General with American backing) staged a coup in which he seized control of the government from Prince Norodom Sihanouk. This change in leadership didn’t go down too well with most people, who supported their monarchy. So when the Khmer Rouge took Prince Norodom into their protection, using him as a figure head of sorts, enlistment into the Khmer Rouge soared. By 1972, the Khmer Rouge had more than 30,000 regular soldiers and more than 100,000 reservists.
Okay, I might have over simplified that last point a bit. It wasn’t just that the people liked the prince, it was also because Americas war in Vietnam had spilled onto Cambodias soil. After Lon Nol came into power the USA - in an attempt to prevent communist leaders taking over Cambodia - dropped thousands of bombs on Cambodia. Sources say that at least 10 percent of bombs were dropped indiscriminately, meaning the bombs hit ordinary men, woman and children, those who had nothing to do with political parties and were just going about everyday life. In total, from from 1965 to 1973 over 2.7 million tons of ordnance was dropped onto Cambodias soil by the USA; to put this into perspective during WW2 the allies dropped around 2 million tons of bombs collectively. This was all done to a country they weren’t actively at war with - no wonder America supporting General Lon Nol was far from popular.
So astoundingly, America’s plan backfired. By the time the Khmer Rouge marched in neat formation into Phnom Penh in 1975, they did so to cheers and celebration. The residents of capital finally felt safe for the briefest of moments.
Genocide
Whilst in Cambodias northwest, the tribes Pol Pot stayed with worked together for the good of the community. They had little use for money but instead all shared the labour of working the fields and its results, they also had little time for religion. These tribes served as inspiration for what he was hoping to recreate, a communist agricultural utopia, all be it on a much larger scale. It wasn’t long before Pol Pot started to put his communist ideals into action, Cambodia was restarted at “year zero”. To ensure that any western influences were eradicated the country was sequestered from the rest of the world, and Cambodia’s culture it self was to be forgotten. No more cultural practices, no more history and no more religion - any idols of the buddha were beheaded especially those at the Angkor Wat. But this didn’t all happen at once, first the Khmer Rouge had a population to subdue.
The khmer rouge arrived around noon on the 17th April 1975, by the afternoon the soldiers were already firing guns into the air to round up all of Phnom Penh’s two million residents for an evacuation of the city. No one was exempt, children were pulled from schools, patents in hospital were brought from their beds, even those undergoing surgery were dragged out to join the rest. Some bleeding, all underprepared, they were marched from the city into the countryside. Although they were told it was only for three days, most never returned to the city at all, some didn’t survive this initial journey.
They were put to work in the fields, forced to do a job they had no idea of how to do. They worked from dawn until dusk, given hardly any food, no adequate rest and little medical help for those who got sick. This is unless you had higher education or professional training, those people were singled out for execution for the crime of not fitting into the Khmer Rouges ideals. Any form of “rebellion” was harshly dealt with, the most unlucky got sent to Security Prison 21 (S-21). Those not important enough for specific attention from the khmer rough were killed across the country, their bones still filling caves in the hills and hastily dug holes that make up Cambodias many “killing fields”.
S-21, now the site of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh (Toul Slang translating as “Hill of the Poisonous Trees”) was formally a school that the Khmer Rouge transformed into one of 150 - 200 “prisons” spread across Cambodia, although in reality it was a torture and execution centre. It is roughly estimated that 20,000 victims lost their lives at S-21 alone, a figure generated by counting the photos taken of each prisoner on arrival.
On arrival, each prisoner was photographed before having to give a detailed description of their life up to their arrest, they were then stripped naked and forced into roughly constructed cells so small that they could hardly lay down. When all the cells were full, inmates were shackled to iron bars along the floors of empty school rooms, they were laid head to feet with the next prisoner in order to fit in as many people as possible. Packed tightly like sardines in a tin, they were not allowed to talk to each other, nor were they able to leave in order to go to the bathroom. They were fed two spoons of porridge twice a day, and if caught drinking water without guards permission they were beaten. They would be hosed down where they lay every four days, and any illness and diseases that these highly unsanitary and inhumane conditions caused were left untreated. The only medical care the did received was after the torture and beatings dolled out by the guards, not out of any sort of sympathy but because they couldn’t die before they confessed - that was the whole point of this after all. Whilst in S-21 all prisoners had to obey the following 10 rules. These have been copied from a sign that stands in the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum today and the strange wording is due to its translation from Khmer to English.
You must answer accordingly to my question. Don't turn them away.
Don't try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
Don't be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
Don't tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
Don't make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.
If you don't follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.
If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.
Those in centres likes S-21 were brought in because they were “enemies of the state”, although in reality their crimes were that of being of being middle-class, of being educated, or even just because their glasses made them appear smart. They wanted to get rid of anyone with the potential to oppose them, they wanted them to confess to their crimes and they did. Their confessions were their life stories mixed with the information fed to them by their torturers, they were so broken down by their treatment they would say anything to make it stop but that wasn’t enough. It only stopped when they also named their fellow conspirators and their crimes too.
It is easy to think, sitting in the comfort of our own homes that we wouldn’t, we couldn’t, name our own friends and family, sentence them to the same horrible fate, just to make it stop, but we haven’t lived through the horrors these people endured. When not shivering, shackled to a cold concrete floor, deprived of sleep and surrounded by their own, and others filth, they were being tortured to confess. They were electrocuted with cattle prods, branded with searing hot metal, finger nails pulled out, slashed with knives, suffocated, hung until nearly dead, waterboarded or sent to the medical centre, where they could be bled or even have organs removed without anaesthetic. In S-21, it was the frame of the school children’s swing set they used for the hangings, a place of innocent fun that was used for the darkest of purpose. This is just a small list of the unimaginable horrors visited upon those who had the misfortune to be persecuted by the Khmer Rouges regime.
Not everyone survived the torture but if they did they would confess, then the beatings would continue till they confessed with their “crimes” in chronological order, followed by more beatings until they would name others involved in their espionage. This cycle would continue until their confession was just right, the confessions were thousands of words long and sometimes listed as many of hundred others involved in their treason. Most people confessed within two to three months.
In the first year, those who confessed at S-21 were killed and buried in the empty neighbourhood surrounding the centre but they soon ran out of space so the Boeung Choeung Ek extermination centre was brought into existence. Confessors would be blindfolded before being driven the 15 kilometres to the extermination centre where, due to the scarcity of ammunition, they were beaten to death by teenagers with farm implements and pick axes before being buried in mass graves. Towards the end of Pol Pots reign, not even members of the Khmer Rouge were safe. Pol Pots paranoia grew so great that any infraction, real or imagined, would have the person suspected sent straight to S-21 for torture, no matter if they were a guard who worked or a high ranking member of the party.
It is believed that the majority of confessions recorded in S-21 were false and those 20,000 incarcerated were innocent of all crimes. Only twelve people are confirmed to have survived S-21.
The slow fall
Just a year into Pol Pots reign over Cambodia, he was already courting his own down fall. With his mounting paranoia he was convinced that Vietnam was looking to expand and in doing so would be a threat to the independence of Cambodia. By 1977 border conflicts between Cambodia and Vietnam had arisen, Khmer Rouge forces would be sent in to attack and slaughter Vietnamese villages that sat along the border, the retaliation for Vietnam was bombing on the Cambodian side. The conflict continued to ramp up with more and more troops being sent to pro-actively attack any Vietnam troops sighted. With the forces along the eastern border failing to meet Pol Pot's expectations, he became suspicious of their true allegiances and ordered 400 CPK soldiers to be sent to S-21. This action, rather than to solidify his control over the rest of the army, caused many to rethink their stance and to rebel against the Khmer Rouge. Once again more troops were sent to the eastern border, this time to exterminate any villages thought to be surrporting the rebels, the massacre that followed only cemented the rebels position, with many of them fleeing into to Vietnam to help the forces there.
Although Pol Pot tried to rally his allies of China and Thailand, they seemed to be content with seeing how it played out and didn't send any ground forces to help the CPK against Vietnam. In December 1978 Vietnam launched a full scale invasion into Cambodia and by February 1979 most of the Khmer Rouges government including Pol Pot had been forced by Cambodia. Of course this wasn't the end of things, in In November 1979, the United Nations General Assembly voted to recognise the Khmer Rouge delegation, rather than that of the Vietnamese-backed government, as the legitimate government of Cambodia, despite the horrors that they had perpetrated.
In the end this became a political fight (despite his main backer being the Marxist China who provided the CPK troops with firearms to help them retake the country) Pol Pot was backed by most capitalist countries while Vietnam had the Marxist countries on their side; and the poor normal citizens of Cambodia were stuck in the middle. In the following years the CPK, while still fighting against the Vietnamese troops, went through a rebranding. They changed the name, the policies, the idealogies and even their outfits. Pol pot commented that the previous administration was too left-wing, and then tried to blame what happened on his former colleagues.
Although Pol pot himself resigned from the Khmer Rouge in 1985, the party continued on but it wasn't until the fall of the Berlin Wall that things really changed in Cambodia. With the end of the Cold War the US and it's allies quickly lost interest in who would actually govern Cambodia. A ceasefire was called for by the UN, and they oversaw the set up of a democratic election. Pol Pot agreed mainly as he was outnumbered and had no other choice. Despite many calling for the leaders of the Khmer Rouge to face justice for their crimes, they would have gotten away with it had Pol Pot made one final mistake. In 1994, unhappy with his replacement he called for his execution alongside all of his other family members. Although, he denies ever arranging this assassination, it was successful, and finally Pol Pot was arrested along with some of the other leaders of the Khmer Rouge. In 1998, Pol Pot died still not having been brought before a court to face justice for the genocide he perpetrated.
Although Pol Pot is gone, many former members of the Khmer Rouge are still in power. Their current prime minister, the longest serving prime minister in the world was formerly of the Khmer Rouge.
It is estimated that between 1.5 - 2 million people died unnaturally during Khmer Rouge regime.
The aftermath
Cambodia is still struggling to come to terms with its past, with half of the population being under the age of 24 many alive have no first hand experience of the horrors faces by their older countrymen. Due to government suppression of information, many Cambodians never learn about the genocide in school and so question whether the killing fields really ever happened.
Since the 1980's there has been a push to revive the culture in Cambodia although with such as sharp decline in population, it is hard to revive a countries culture without enough people to pass it down. The government is working towards better funding for the arts, knowing that a countries culture is what bands its people together.
The scars from the Khmer Rouge can still be seen across Cambodia today, from the decapitated Buddhas in the Angkor Wat to the poor infrastructure of the roads. Despite this, Cambodia is a deeply welcoming country that is trying to move on from its past.
Sources
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