The Party Centre's ideology combined elements of Marxism with a strongly xenophobic form of Khmer nationalism. The seat was retained under the name Democratic Kampuchea until 1982 and then under the name Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea. As in other contemporary Southeast Asian cultures with strong Theravadin identities, the Buddhism practiced in Cambodia is characterized by two trends. [21]:63, After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot threw himself into party work. Some scholars, including Michael Ignatieff, Adam Jones[57] and Greg Grandin,[58] have cited the United States intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965–1973) as a significant factor which lead to increased support for the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. Many deaths resulted from the regime's social engineering policies and the "Maha Lout Ploh", an imitation of China's Great Leap Forward which caused the Great Chinese Famine. Cambodia Tribunal, "Life in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge Regime". His associates functioned as the party's Political Bureau, and they held a majority of the seats on the Central Committee. Though North Vietnam had not been informed of this decision, its forces provided shelter and weapons to the Khmer Rouge after the insurgency started. All the others agreed to cooperate with the government and were afterward under 24-hour watch by the police.[46]. Monk with begging bowl, Wat Preah Prom Nath, Siem Reap. Khieu Samphan specialized in economics and politics during his time in Paris. [7][8][9][10] Although it originally fought against Sihanouk, on the advice of the CPC, the Khmer Rouge changed its position and supported Sihanouk after he was overthrown in a 1970 coup by Lon Nol who established the pro-American Khmer Republic. Cambodia has always been overwhelmingly a land of villages. [41], Pol Pot, who rose to the leadership of the communist movement in the 1960s, attended a technical high school in the capital and then went to Paris in 1949 to study radio electronics (other sources say he attended a school for fax machines and also studied civil engineering). Most Cambodian villages in those days were made up of ethnically homogeneous people and had a population of fewer than 300 persons. The typical Khmer family consisted of a married couple and their unmarried children. Samouth's allies Nuon Chea and Keo Meas were removed from the Central Committee and replaced by Son Sen and Vorn Vet. [48]:92–100, 106–112, By 1973, Vietnamese support of the Khmer Rouge had largely disappeared. During that time, all monks were disrobed or killed and most religious scholars were murdered or fled into exile. Many Vietnamese are members of the Roman Catholic Church or of such syncretic Vietnamese religious movements as Cao Dai. [2]: These Khmer Rouge bases were not self-sufficient and were funded by diamond and timber smuggling, military assistance from China channeled by means of the Thai military, and food smuggled from markets across the border in Thailand. Many of the new recruits for the Khmer Rouge were apolitical peasants who fought in support of the king, not for communism, of which they had little understanding. Pol Pot’s Total Revolution offers a fresh reading of Cambodia’s Democratic Kampuchea period. [61][62] Craig Etcheson acknowledged that U.S. intervention increased recruitment for the Khmer Rouge but disputed that it was a primary cause of the Khmer Rouge victory. Western governments voted in favor of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea retaining Cambodia's seat in the organization over the newly installed Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea, even though it included the Khmer Rouge. In 1976 they renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea. Insgesamt gibt es weltweit über 18 Millionen Khmer (Stand 2014). In 1981, the Khmer Rouge went so far as to officially renounce communism[2]: and somewhat moved their ideological emphasis to nationalism and anti-Vietnamese rhetoric instead. [82]:124, While the period from 1975 to 1979 is commonly associated with the phrase "the Cambodian genocide", scholars debate whether the legal definition of the crime can be applied generally. The focus of the Khmer Rouge leadership on the peasantry as the base of the revolution was according to Michael Vickery a product of their status as "petty-bourgeois radicals who had been overcome by peasantist romanticism". Landholdings tended to be small in the crowded south-central regions of the country. Following their victory, the Khmer Rouge, who were led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, and Khieu Samphan, immediately set about forcibly evacuating the country's major cities. [2]: On the other hand, the CPC largely "armed and trained" the Khmer Rouge, including Pol Pot, both during the Cambodian civil war and the years afterward. Minority populations are not Theravada Buddhists. Today the country is about 95 percent Buddhist. Die Khmer (ខមរ ˈ:k:m:ɛər) (auch Camarini, Coa Mein, Kambuja, Kampuch, Khmae, Khom, Kui kmi, Kumar oder Mein) sind die größte Ethnie in Kambodscha und stellen mit mehr als 15,5 Millionen Einwohnern über 97 Prozent der Bevölkerung dar. The book is unique in that instead of focusing on the victims as most books do, it collects the stories of former Khmer Rouge, giving insights into the functioning of the regime and approaching the question of how such a regime could take place. [112], The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), an independent research institute, published A History of Democratic Kampuchea 1975–1979,[79] the nation's first textbook on the history of the Khmer Rouge. [47], His comrades Ieng Sary and Hou Yuon became teachers at a new private high school, the Lycée Kambuboth, which Hou Yuon helped to establish. I share your utter horror that these terrible things went on in Kampuchea". [37], Viet Minh units occasionally made forays into Cambodian bases during their war against the French and in conjunction with the leftist government that ruled Thailand until 1947. Several of the rooms are now lined with thousands of black-and-white photographs of prisoners that were taken by the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge was a brutal regime that ruled Cambodia, under the leadership of Marxist dictator Pol Pot, from 1975 to 1979. Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge’s totalitarian regime (1975–79) in Cambodia responsible for the deaths of more than one million Cambodians. "Genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda". [107] Since the commencement of Case 001 trial in 2009 through the end of 2011, 53,287 people participated in the public hearings. [121] ECCC has its own weekly radio program on RNK which provides an opportunity for the public to interact with court officials and deepen their understanding of Cases. This dissertation consists of 12 chapters and an appendix. A traditional rural settlement on the bank of the Tonle Sap, Cambodia. Of the 3,157 civilians who had lived in Ba Chúc,[88] only two survived the massacre. [32]:182 Some cadres who had previously been monks interpreted their change of vocation as a simple movement from a lower to a higher religion, mirroring attitudes around the growth of Cao Dai in the 1920s. Their ideology was also influenced by colonial French education, which posited Khmers as "Aryans among Asians", who were morally superior to Chinese or Vietnamese. [46], Inside the KSA and its successor organizations, there was a secret organization known as the Cercle Marxiste (Marxist circle). [23]:244 However, the Khmer Rouge displayed these characteristics in a more extreme form. [46] Language was also transformed in other ways. [67] China has defended its ties with the Khmer Rouge. [23]:62 Banks were raided, and all currency and records were destroyed by fire, thus eliminating any claim to funds. His Cambodian forces crossed the border and looted nearby villages, mostly in the border town of Ba Chúc. [73] After 1976, the regime reinstated discussion of export in the period after the disastrous effects of its planning began to become apparent. [122], Youth for Peace,[115] a Cambodian NGO that offers education in peace, leadership, conflict resolution and reconciliation to Cambodian's youth, has broadcast the weekly radio program You Also Have A Chance since 2009. Um diese Massenmorde des steinzeitkommunistischen Pol-Pot-Regimes von anderen Völkermorden zu unterscheiden, werden si… Journalist Nate Thayer, who spent some time with the Khmer Rouge during that period, commented that despite the international community's near-universal condemnation of the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule a considerable number of Cambodians in Khmer Rouge-controlled areas seemed genuinely to support Pol Pot. His radical communist government forced the mass evacuations of cities and left a legacy of brutality and impoverishment. Some four-fifths of the population still live in rural areas, the remainder being classified as urban. Before the outbreak of war in 1970, it held about 500,000 people, but its population by 1975, then swollen with refugees, numbered some 2,000,000. It was used to refer to a succession of communist parties in Cambodia which evolved into the Communist Party of Kampuchea and later the Party of Democratic Kampuchea. Kulturelle und religiöse Einrichtungen, Schulen und Betriebe wurden zerstört. In an attempt to broaden its support base, the Khmer Rouge formed the Patriotic and Democratic Front of the Great National Union of Kampuchea in 1979. [7]:[8][11][15][16][17]:[18] The regime was removed from power in 1979 when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and quickly destroyed most of the Khmer Rouge's forces. [1]:241, In July 1963, Pol Pot and most of the central committee left Phnom Penh to establish an insurgent base in Ratanakiri Province in the northeast. This resulted in the expulsion and execution of numerous people within the party and army who were deemed to be of the wrong class. Festivals and marriages, celebrated by a whole village, were usually held after the rice had been harvested and money had been obtained from selling the surplus grain. Based … As in other contemporary Southeast Asian cultures with strong Theravadin identities, the Buddhism practiced in Cambodia is characterized by two trends. [114] The textbook is aiming at standardising and improving the information students receive about the Khmer Rouge years because the government-issued social studies textbook devotes eight or nine pages to the period. [52], In April 1975, Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, and in January 1976, Democratic Kampuchea was established. Almost without exception, all of the earliest party members were Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge regime was highly autocratic, totalitarian, xenophobic, paranoid, and repressive. ICfC launched the Justice and History Outreach project in 2007 and has worked in villages in rural Cambodia with the goal of creating mutual understanding and empathy between victims and former members of the Khmer Rouge. [48]:181–2, 194[53], On 29 March 1970, the North Vietnamese launched an offensive against the Cambodian army. The prevalent "urban" line endorsed by North Vietnam recognized that Sihanouk by virtue of his success in winning independence from the French was a genuine national leader whose neutralism and deep distrust of the United States made him a valuable asset in Hanoi's struggle to "liberate" South Vietnam. [7]:96–8[60] Peter Rodman and Michael Lind claim that the United States intervention saved the Lon Nol regime from collapse in 1970 and 1973. [51] The change in the name of the party was a closely guarded secret. [23]:244, While the CPK described itself as the "number 1 Communist state" once it was in power,[17]:25 some communist regimes, such as Vietnam, saw it as a Maoist deviation from orthodox Marxism. KHMER RELIGION.The majority of Khmer, the dominant ethnic population of Cambodia, identify themselves as practitioners of Therav ā da Buddhism. Attempting to create a classless society, the Khmer Rouge abolished money, capitalism, private property, formal education, religion, and traditional cultural practices. In keeping with the regime's theories on Khmer identity, the majority of new words were coined with reference to Pali or Sanskrit terms[77] while Chinese and Vietnamese-language borrowings were discouraged. Der Genozid in Kambodscha ereignete sich in den Jahren 197579 unter der Herrschaft der Roten Khmer. KHMER RELIGION. After Sihanouk showed his support for the Khmer Rouge by visiting them in the field, their ranks swelled from 6,000 to 50,000 fighters. [28], The party's General Secretary Pol Pot strongly influenced the propagation of the policy of autarky. [1] Im engeren Sinne umfasst sie den Zeitraum der letzten 1200 Jahre, in dem sich das Reich der Khmer (gesprochen: kmer) entwickelte, wie die Kambodschaner sich selbst und ihre Sprache nennen. [98] Members of this younger generation may know of the Khmer Rouge only through word of mouth from parents and elders. [89], At the same time, the Khmer Rouge retreated west and it continued to control certain areas near the Thai border for the next decade. On 25 December 1978, the Vietnamese armed forces along with the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, an organization founded by Heng Samrin that included many dissatisfied former Khmer Rouge members,[30]: invaded Cambodia and captured Phnom Penh on 7 January 1979. [112] Eventually, these remains were showcased in the memorial's centerpiece stupa, or Buddhist shrine. Farmers had no access to agricultural machinery, and the work of several people was needed to grow enough rice to feed a family for a year. [110] The Khmer Rouge called the center S-21. The party leadership endorsed armed struggle against the government, then led by Sihanouk. A year later, thousands of Khmer Rouge guerrillas surrendered themselves in a government amnesty. Its leaders were mostly … [21]:312–4, In September 1978, a purge of the ministry of industry was begun, and in November Pol Pot ordered the arrest of Vorn Vet, the deputy premier for the economy, followed by his supporters. Cambodia's queen mother, Monineath, greeting Buddhist monks in front of the Royal Palace, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2012. [113] The 74-page textbook was approved by the government as a supplementary text in 2007. [21]:308 In 1977, the center began purging the returnees, sending 148 to Tuol Sleng and continuing a purge of the ministry of foreign affairs where many returnees and intellectuals were suspected of spying for foreign powers. Despite friendly relations between Sihanouk and the Chinese, the latter kept Pol Pot's visit a secret from Sihanouk. [100][101], The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was established as a Cambodian court with international participation and assistance to bring to trial senior leaders and those most responsible for crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime. Tuol Sleng – dieser Name steht für das Grauen. [29] Society was accordingly classified into peasant "base people", who would be the bulwark of the transformation; and urban "new people", who were to be reeducated or liquidated. [32]:176 The position with Buddhist monks was more complicated: as with Islam, many religious leaders were killed whereas many ordinary monks were sent to remote monasteries where they were subjected to hard physical labour. "[17]:16–19 Pol Pot biographer David P. Chandler writes that the bombing "had the effect the Americans wanted – it broke the Communist encirclement of Phnom Penh", but it also accelerated the collapse of rural society and increased social polarization. [86] Although considerably higher than earlier and more widely accepted estimates of Khmer Rouge executions, Etcheson argues that these numbers are plausible, given the nature of the mass grave and DC-Cam's methods, which are more likely to produce an under-count of bodies rather than an over-estimate. [15][17]:[18] In June 1975, Pol Pot and other officials of Khmer Rouge met with Mao Zedong in Beijing, receiving Mao's approval and advice; in addition, Mao also taught Pot his "Theory of Continuing Revolution under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat（无产阶级专政下继续革命理论）". Workers were executed for attempting to escape from the communes, for breaching minor rules, or after being denounced by colleagues. In 1975–1976, there were several powerful zonal Khmer Rouge leaders who maintained their own armies and had different party backgrounds than the members of the Pol Pot clique, particularly So Phim and Nhim Ros, both of whom were vice presidents of the state presidium and members of the Politburo and Central Committee respectively. Buddhism and Khmer Rouge Cambodia 19-Jan: 2015 . The governing structure of Democratic Kampuchea was split between the state presidium which was headed by Khieu Samphan, the cabinet was led by Pol Pot who was also Democratic Kampuchea's prime minister and the party's own Politburo and Central Committee. [83], Ben Kiernan estimates that 1.671 million to 1.871 million Cambodians died as a result of Khmer Rouge policy, or between 21% and 24% of Cambodia's 1975 population. The leadership of the Party Centre, the faction which was headed by Pol Pot, remained largely unchanged from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s. [30]:306 The opposition of the peasantry and the urban population in Khmer Rouge ideology was heightened by the structure of the Cambodian rural economy, where small farmers and peasants had historically suffered from indebtedness to urban money-lenders rather than suffering from indebtedness to landlords. Southeast Asia November 21, 2013-No comments. It began fighting the Cambodian coalition government which included the former Vietnamese-backed communists (headed by Hun Sen) as well as the Khmer Rouge's former non-communist and monarchist allies (notably Prince Rannaridh). [21]:282 The center also ordered troops from the eastern and central zones to purge the northern zone killing or arresting numerous cadres. [281] Buddhist monks were viewed as social parasites and designated a "special class". The Khmer language has a complex system of usages to define speakers' rank and social status. [59] According to Ben Kiernan, the Khmer Rouge "would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilization of Cambodia. [82]:105 However, a 2013 academic source (citing research from 2009) indicates that execution may have accounted for as much as 60% of the total, with 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution. [44], Two members of the group, Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, earned doctorates from the University of Paris while Hu Nim obtained his degree from the University of Phnom Penh in 1965. Pol Pot died in April 1998. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge had a policy of state atheism . See also. Seng Kok Ung, I survived the killing fields, pp. [64] In 1970 alone, the Chinese reportedly gave 400 tons of military aid to the National United Front of Kampuchea formed by Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge. [21]:264–5, At the end of 1976, following disappointing rice harvests in the northwestern zone, the party center ordered a purge of the zone. Son Sen was sent to the eastern zone with center zone troops to aid the defense. Party cadres who had fallen under political suspicion: the regime tortured and executed thousands of party members during its purges, This page was last edited on 23 January 2021, at 05:54. [118] Following the dialogues, villagers identify their own ways of memorialization such as collecting stories to be transmitted to the younger generations or building a memorial. Instead, he defines Khmer Rouge killings as "dystopicide": "The no-prisoners-taken pursuit of badly implemented, poorly conceived communist utopia-building." Such acts as picking wild fruit or berries were seen as "private enterprise" and punished with death. Wir machen das nicht aus Spaß. Men efter at evangelikale missionærer fra bl.a. Tou Samouth, who advocated a policy of cooperation, was elected general secretary of the KPRP that was renamed the Workers' Party of Kampuchea (WPK). [112] After the discovery of the site in 1979, the Vietnamese transformed the site into a memorial and stored skulls and bones in an open-walled wooden memorial pavilion. Theravada Buddhism is Cambodia’s state religion and has been since the 13th century, except during the Khmer Rouge period.During that time, all monks were disrobed or killed and most religious scholars were murdered or fled into exile. The government also aimed at extending the executions to the Vietnamese, with the regime directing Kampucheans to “kill the 50 million Vietnamese”. Buddhism has existed in Cambodia since at least the 5th century AD, with some sources placing its origin as early as the 3rd century BC. Pol Pot og hans Khmer Rouge-partisaner har næste to millioner liv på samvittigheden. The Khmer Rouge aimed to abolish the traditional family. Money was abolished as a form of payment, books were burned and nearly all of Cambodia's intellectual elite was persecuted and murdered. Electricity has always been rare in village areas, and country people were generally asleep soon after sunset. The Viet Minh encouraged the formation of armed, left-wing Khmer Issarak bands. It used the bombing's devastation and massacre of civilians as recruitment propaganda and as an excuse for its brutal, radical policies and its purge of moderate communists and Sihanoukists. [30]:193, The history of the communist movement in Cambodia can be divided into six phases, namely the emergence before World War II of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), whose members were almost exclusively Vietnamese; the 10-year struggle for independence from the French, when a separate Cambodian communist party, the Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP), was established under Vietnamese auspices; the period following the Second Party Congress of the KPRP in 1960, when Saloth Sar gained control of its apparatus; the revolutionary struggle from the initiation of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in 1967–1968 to the fall of the Lon Nol government in April 1975; the Democratic Kampuchea regime from April 1975 to January 1979; and the period following the Third Party Congress of the KPRP in January 1979, when Hanoi effectively assumed control over Cambodia's government and communist party. In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge first took control of Phnom Penh, they tried to completely destroy Buddhism and very nearly succeeded. In October 1978, Chea Sim led a group of 300 people across the border into Vietnam, and the Vietnamese then launched a raid into the eastern zone that allowed Heng Samrin and his group of 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers and followers to seek refuge in Vietnam. —Documentation Center of Cambodia. [10][11] Despite a massive American bombing campaign against them, the Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil War when they captured the Cambodian capital and overthrew the Khmer Republic in 1975. Schools, shops, churches, and government buildings were converted into prisons and crop storage facilities. In Cook, Susan E., ed. KHMER RELIGION. [17]:26, Once in power, the Khmer Rouge explicitly targeted the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Cham minority and even their partially Khmer offspring. The second half of the 20th century was a period of radical change for Cambodia. [30]:347, While François Ponchaud stated that Christians were invariably taken away and killed with the accusation of having links with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, at least some cadres appear to have regarded it as preferable to the "feudal" class-based Buddhism. [89], After several years of border conflict and the flood of refugees fleeing Kampuchea, relations between Kampuchea and Vietnam collapsed by December 1978. The urban areas of Cambodia emerged in their present form in the early 20th century, during the French colonial period, as commercial and administrative centres serving their surrounding rural regions. Since 1991, when Cambodia's warring factions signed a peace accord, international organizations have helped the Cambodian government restore the sites at Angkor and revive Cambodia's traditional crafts. Theravada Buddhism is Cambodia’s state religion and has been since the 13th century, except during the Khmer Rouge period. [46] From the 1950s on, Pol Pot had made frequent visits to the People's Republic of China, receiving political and military training—especially on the theory of dictatorship of the proletariat—from the personnel of the CPC. Most ethnic Khmer are Theravada (Hinayana) Buddhists (i.e., belonging to the older and more traditional of the two great schools of Buddhism, the other school being Mahayana). Bei dem Genozid kamen je nach Schätzung bei einer Gesamtbevölkerung von ungefähr 8 Millionen zwischen 750.000 und mehr als 2 Millionen Kambodschaner durch Hinrichtung in den Killing Fields, Zwangsarbeit, Hunger und mangelhafte medizinische Versorgung ums Leben. [110] Of the estimated 15,000 to 30,000 prisoners,[111] only seven prisoners survived. [65] It is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid to Khmer Rouge came from China, with 1975 alone seeing US$1 billion in interest-free economics and military aid and US$20 million gift, which was "the biggest aid ever given to any one country by China". A meeting was arranged, but instead of Pol Pot a group of center soldiers arrived, and So Phim committed suicide; the soldiers then killed his family. Documents uncovered from the Soviet Union archives revealed that the invasion was launched at the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge following negotiations with Nuon Chea. Both her parents were slaughtered and five of her siblings died of starvation or illness. [27] The same attitude extended to the party's own ranks, as senior CPK figures of non-Khmer ethnicity were removed from the leadership despite extensive revolutionary experience and were often killed. If people refused to evacuate, they would immediately be killed and their homes would be burned to the ground. The Khmer Rouge government did away with all former Cambodian traditional administrative divisions. [97] By 1999, most members had surrendered or been captured. Both men were of a purely peasant background and were therefore natural allies of the strongly peasant ideology of the Pol Pot faction.[30]:159. The Khmer Rouge soldiers would target anyone who was associated with the deposed Kingdom of Cambodia, ethnic minorities, religious communities (mainly Buddhists), and intellectuals. [96] On 29 December 1998, leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologised for the 1970s genocide. [17]:26, Its leaders and theorists, most of whom had been exposed to the heavily Stalinist outlook of the French Communist Party during the 1950s,[23]:249 developed a distinctive and eclectic "post-Leninist" ideology that drew on elements of Stalinism, Maoism and the postcolonial theory of Frantz Fanon. The latter's holdings were collectivised. The Khmer Rouge also established "liberated" areas in the south and the southwestern parts of the country, where they operated independently of the North Vietnamese.[55]. [17]:464 The buildings of Tuol Sleng have been preserved as they were left when the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979. Zwischen 15.000 und 20.000 Kambodschaner starben in S-21 oder in den "Killing Fields" in einem Dorf, einige Kilometer von T… [102] ECCC's efforts for outreach toward both national and international audience include public trial hearings, study tours, video screenings, school lectures and video archives on the web site. By 1975, with the Lon Nol government running out of ammunition, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before the government would collapse. Wir müssen sie verletzen, damit sie schnell antworten. In 1996, a new political party called the Democratic National Union Movement was formed by Ieng Sary, who was granted amnesty for his role as the deputy leader of the Khmer Rouge.