As we move into the bigger cities of Cambodia, it is time to get a bit into its history. Cambodia has a complicated history, we will get into it in two main parts, the glorious antic Angkor kingdom, which we will talk about later while visiting Angkor Wat and the 20th century, which we will be talking about in that present article.

Warning: It will involve a lot of historical information. Also, it is complicated, it involves lots of politics that we don’t fully understand. Particularly this Sihanouk guy is controversial.

Before the Khmer Rouge

Colonial time and independence

Once a glorious kingdom, the Cambodian kingdom got smaller and smaller (more about that later) and the neighbour Thai and Vietnam kingdoms became a bigger and bigger threat. Fearing a Thai invasion, the Cambodian king asked France (who already had some colonies in the region) in 1863 for protection, which later turned into a full-term colonial relationship which was unforeseen by the king.

French rule lasted until the 1950s and looking back it seems like rather a less problematic era. They were less harsh than in Vietnam, treated the elite well, didn’t touch the local government too much, and had little impact on the general population. Compared to Vietnam, little infrastructure improvements were done. On the other hand, french archaeologists helped uncover Khmer history by deciphering the old inscriptions, rebuilding temples etc, creating a new sentiment of a nation in the population.

A minority of literate Khmer started to form the idea of independence and by the time of the Fall of France in 1940, they took it as an opportunity and started to negotiate terms towards independence. Step by step, the current king Sihanouk had the final meeting and Cambodia declared independence from France in 1953.

Sihanouk

While he was king since 1941, Sihanouk unexpectedly abdicated from the throne in 1955 and formed his political party, which won the general elections. Sihanouk was then appointed as prime minister and later became head of state in 1960. In the beginning, he was promoting an anti-communist sentiment to appeal to the West. But in 1964, he secretly helped the Communist Vietnamese (who were fighting the US) by providing Chinese military help via a trail through eastern Cambodia. This led to a severance of diplomatic ties with the US in 1965.

Between 1966 and 1970, Sihanouk continued to be head of state through manipulations of elections. Once its relations with China worsened, he turned back again to the US for help, authorizing them to bomb the part of Cambodia where the Vietnamese were present. Sihanouk tried to keep Cambodia out of war, but his opportunist policies gave rise to two extreme groups forming in Cambodia; the pro-US and the anti-US extreme communist group (later named Khmer Rouge).

The emergence of the Khmer Rouge

Rooted in a small communist party created by Khmer students in Paris in 1950, the Khmer Rouge movement’s ideology has elements of Communism combined with a strongly xenophobic form of Khmer nationalism. In 1968, the Khmer Rouge was officially formed, and its forces launched a national insurgency across Cambodia, opposing the rule of Sihanouk.

In 1970, Sihanouk was removed by a pro-US general. This changed everything: Now the Khmer Rouge, helped by Vietnam and China, received support from Sihanouk. This fact, combined with a destructive bombing campaign of the US against them, generated wide support for the communist movement from the local people. With crucial military aid from the Chinese Communist Party, the Khmer Rouge won the civil war in 1975 and took control of the government, and that day they were welcomed as heroes in the streets of Phnom Penh, everyone was happy and celebrating. This feeling lasted for only 3 days.

Khmer Rouge in power

Here is a timeline of what happened:

Let’s start by saying this: Khmer Rouge is bad, Sauron looks like a peanut compared to them.

Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, had this utopic farming-based non-monetary communist idea. Therefore, the first thing they did once arriving in Phnom Penh was to evacuate the whole city (they also did the same as all other big towns): everyone was sent to the rural areas to work on the farms. Another wave of expulsion would happen between 1976 and 1978:

Khmer Rouge policy applied these:

• The regime’s social engineering policies repressed any form of intellectualism, and even physicians were targeted.
• Religion is forbidden, 95% of temples were destroyed and many monks were killed.
• Agriculture is collectivised, and unattainable crop yield targets were set everywhere (though only rice, also lots of other types of farming were abandoned).
• Industry and banking are abandoned.
• China supports the regime, sending a lot of money.
• Relations with neighbours got worse, especially in Vietnam.

Shortly after getting into power, killings of people started. First, people clearly against Khmer Rouge were the targets, like the military and political leaders of other parties, the old government etc. Soon it spread to other people: some ethnicities in Cambodia, foreigners, intellectuals (whoever wore glasses and knew how to hold a pen were targeted), who could speak a foreign language, religious people, former businessmen and bureaucrats, anyone who is scavenging for food or absent from work for any reason. In the end, everyone was under suspicion of treason, even poor illiterate farmers were captured, tortured and executed. Moreover, the regime targetted also the whole families of all of these people, including children, even babies.

S21: The Khmer Rouge killing machine

These executions were done in secret, and prisoners were brought to one of the many camps of the regime, we visited one in Phnom Penh.

Named S21, this camp was previously a high school. During the Khmer Rouge regime, this place became a detention and torture camp, where more than 12000 people went through, and most of them died there… We saw some classrooms, which were used as torture rooms:

At dark, prisoners were tortured until they “confess” their connection with the CIA or a similar foreign connection, and then they were executed in the killing fields by getting hit with a shovel to their heads (because bullets are expensive and the sound of it could attract people) and put in the massive graves.

Other classrooms were used for detention, cells were built in these:

These graves and camps were only discovered after the Vietnam invasion, so during the Khmer Rouge, the people remaining had no idea what is happening. Their loved ones were disappearing and sometimes they were receiving a letter saying they were kidnapped by the CIA and they should not look for them.

Also at some point, the socialists rebelled against the regime and were abruptly shut down killing an estimated 150 000/200 000 people.

Because of the impossible crop yield targets imposed by the regime, the lack of medical care (physicians were killed because deemed intellectuals) and the forced labour, many more thousands of people died of starvation, exhaustion and disease.

Eventually, Khmer Rouge got so paranoid, they even executed their torturers and people from their party. Even the once 2nd person of the Khmer Rouge was executed.

Overall, the average estimation of the total death toll during the three years of the Khmer Rouge regime is up to between 1.5 and 3 million people, or 20/40% of the population at that time.

Vietnam invasion: The end of the Khmer Rouge?

In 1979, the Vietnamese army with Cambodian resistance groups overthrew the Khmer Rouge, leading to the establishment of a new government. The Khmer Rouge retreated to the jungles, yet they were supported(!) by some countries including China, the US, Thailand, and some Western countries and they hold onto Cambodia’s seat in the UN until 1993! Pol Pot remained free until 1998 and also died that year. With peace efforts starting in 1989, finally through elections in 1993 Cambodia established a constitutional monarchy with internationally recognized human rights; with a coalition between two parties with the co-prime ministers Hun Sen (a Khmer Rouge defector) and Prince Ranariddh (Sihanouk’s son). Note that Hun Sun is still in power after 30 years. His party has all the sits in Parliament, and while it is a multi-party system, the other parties get so few votes they do not exist… While now killings are part of the past, many things remain to be improved on the Democratic side.