Khmer Rouge

The **Khmer Rouge** was a communist militant group in Cambodia that took over the country in 1975. It was overthrown in the 1979 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia.

## Overview

Under the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia became a totalitarian state. The Khmer Rouge was responsible for the Cambodian genocide, which claimed the lives of 3,000,000 ( of the Cambodian population at the time).

## History

The Khmer Rouge took over the capital city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, on 17 April 1975. They named the country Democratic Kampuchea. Their leader was Pol Pot (formerly called Saloth Sar). Immediately, they forced everyone out of the cities and effectively turned the whole country into a giant labor camp.

The Khmer Rouge were defeated by the Vietnamese in January 1979. However, the international community continued to recognize the Khmer Rouge as the government of Kampuchea for a decade after they were defeated. Therefore, the Khmer Rouge held a seat in the United Nations until 1989. In 1999, the Khmer Rouge disbanded.

As per Henri Locard:> The Khmer Rouge regime [was] the ultimate twentieth-century [example] of the totalitarian state. Using sheer violence and terror, a small clique [took] power. [It saw itself as] messianic [with a] mission to bring happiness and prosperity faster than any of its revolutionary model and competitors. It came to control every aspect of social and private life. No one was allowed to [hold or] express any form of opposition.On 17 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh, and took control of the country. They renamed the country as the Democratic Kampuchea and began the Cambodian genocide.

## Beliefs

The Khmer Rouge were a "fanatical Communist movement ... which imposed a ruthless agenda of forced labor, thought control and mass execution" across Cambodia. Most members were teenage peasant boys.

The Khmer Rouge believed the people in Cambodia's cities had been poisoned and corrupted by the ideas of Western capitalism. They wanted to return Cambodia to "Year Zero," a time when everybody in the country was a rural farmer. They thought this would create an agrarian socialist utopia - a perfect, farm-based society without social classes, where people would share everything.

They objected to the existence of money, free markets or educated professions (e.g. medicine, engineering, law and teaching). To the Khmer Rouge, being a poor farm worker was the only acceptable lifestyle. They viewed educated people as a fundamental threat to communism.

## Victims

Historians cannot say exactly how many people were killed in the Cambodian genocide. Most estimates say that between 1,400,000 and 3,000,000 Cambodian people were killed. This was between 20% and 33% of Cambodia's population back then. In his 2005 article, Henri Locard wrote:> Between 17 April 1975 and 7 January 1979 the death toll was about 25% of a population of some 7.8 million; 33.5% of men were massacred or died unnatural deaths [and so did] 15.7% of the women ... 41.9% of the population of Phnom Penh [was killed].

## Military & secret police (1975-1979)

The Revolutionary Army Of Cambodia or the Khmer Rouge Military were the official military that controlled Democratic Kampuchea’s:

- Army (Revolutionary Ground Army of Cambodia)
- Air Force (Revolutionary Air Force of Cambodia)
- Navy (Revolutionary Navy of Cambodia)

it originally was a partisan army during the Cambodian Civil War from 1967-1975. However, when the Khmer Rouge Military invaded Vietnam, it did not have good infantry troops, tanks, artillery, or armoured trains to transport infantry or planes. It also did not have enough helicopters or boats for paratroopers or marine infantry. This shortage happened because Pol Pot wanted to deindustrialise Cambodia during the Cambodian–Vietnamese War in 1978/1979 . The Khmer Rouge also had a secret police called the Santebal**,** which controlled Security Prison 21 from 1975-1979 .

## Related pages

- Pol Pot
- Cambodian genocide
- Cambodian genocide denial
- Totalitarianism
- The Holocaust