The Cardamom Project: About Cambodia

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Abridged from Andy Carvin's excellent site, "From Sideshow to Genocide: Stories of the Cambodian Holocaust"

6. Cambodia Under Pol Pot

Evacuation of the cities was the first of many radical steps taken by the Khmer Rouge. As new people were forced out of the urban centers they soon learned of the new rules that were being imposed by Angka ("The Organization"), the secretive team of leaders who dictated the lives of every Cambodian citizen. Among these new rules, religion, money and private ownership were all banned; communications with the outside world eliminated; family relationships dismantled. All previous rights and responsibilities were thrown out the window. As was often said by the Khmer Rouge, 2000 years of Cambodian history had now come to an end; April 17 was the beginning of Year Zero for the new Cambodia: Democratic Kampuchea (DK).

For the first two years of Khmer Rouge regime, most Cambodians had no idea who was running the country. The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), the political movement behind the Khmer Rouge, believed that secrecy was one of the best tools for controlling the population. The Cambodian people didn't even know the CPK existed. All they were told was that the country was now run by Angka. No leaders were mentioned by name - there was only Angka. The less the people knew about Angka, so the idea went, the more effective (and powerful) Angka would be.

Behind this mysterious political veil were a core group of radicals who began espousing communism in the mid 1950s after studying in Paris, as well as their supporters who joined them in the jungle in the 1960s. Khieu Samphan, the studious former National Assembly member, was the political leader of the Khmer Rouge, and his doctoral research in Paris served as the basis for their ideology. Ieng Sary, known as "Brother Number Three," became foreign minister in 1975. Chhit Chhoeun (Ta Mok) led purges against suspected KR cadres and coordinated massacres against Vietnamese civilians. Nuon Chea, also known as "Brother Number Two," developed the radical economic strategies that eliminated money and trade with the outside world. Finally, Saloth Sar, best known under his pseudonym, Pol Pot, served as chairman of the party, for which he claimed the infamous title "Brother Number One" and the reputation as the all-out leader of the Khmer Rouge. The people behind Angka were known only among themselves until September, 1977, Pol Pot introduced the world to Democratic Kampuchea through a public radio broadcast.

One of the main goals behind resettling urban residents into the countryside was to build a new Cambodia focused on agricultural success. Cambodians were expected to produce an average national yield of 3 metric tons of rice per hectare (1.4 tons per acre). Even during pre-Khmer Rouge, peacetime Cambodia, the average national yield was only one metric ton of rice per hectare. To meet these new demands on rice production the Khmer Rouge enforced strict policies where workers labored in the fields for 12 hours a day without adequate rest or food. Many new people lacked any experience in manual labor and became ill and died, since the Khmer Rouge favored the traditional medicine of the peasants and hilltribes over modern western medicine. Those new people who survived but were not well enough to work often vanished: after being taken away to a distant field or forest, they would be forced to dig their own graves before Khmer Rouge soldiers would bludgeon them on the back of the head with a shovel or hoe.

Many Cambodians soon discovered that hard work wasn't necessarily enough to keep them alive. "Keeping new people is no benefit," so the Khmer Rouge slogan went; "Losing them is no loss." The lives of new people were seen as having little to no value, so even the most minor infraction was enough reason to get sent to a killing field. For example, foraging for extra food was a capital offense, despite the fact that the Khmer Rouge's daily food allowance was so low it would cause hundreds of thousands of people to starve to death. And because family relationships were now banned (for parents exploited their children, so the argument went), associating with a relative without the permission of Angka could get you killed. If you spoke French, you would die. If you were educated, you would die. If you wore glasses, you would die. If you practiced Buddhism, you would die.

These incredibly harsh conditions limited one's options for survival. Most Cambodians submitted to each and every Khmer Rouge demand and hoped for the best. Those Cambodians who knew they could be labeled as an enemy (the educated, monks, government officials, business owners, etc.) had no choice but to cut off all ties to their past and pretend to be an illiterate peasant.

Young children were seen as being pure and untainted by capitalism and family influence. From an early age children were propagandized and brainwashed to believe in nothing but Angka - even their parents might become their worst enemies. Khmer Rouge brainwashing techniques were often so successful that children would spy on their parents or report on their families' activities during the Lon Nol regime. Children received expanded privileges under Angka as their parents were taken away to die. In some farming collectives there were so many adolescent Khmer Rouge cadres it seemed there were no adults running the camps.

The quality of life in these farm cooperatives varied greatly from district to district; overall, though, very few Cambodians were spared from suffering, misery, starvation or the threat of death. Conditions worsened in 1977 and 1978 as Angka increased demands on rice production. To make matters worse, the Khmer Rouge's disdain of technology forced villagers to farm by hand only. The bulk of the rice was earmarked for soldiers and political cadre. New people could only eat the scraps that were given to them; if they were caught supplementing their diets with grass or even insects, they too would be sent to the killing fields.

Skulls from some of the victims of the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 reign of terror are displayed in Phnom Penh.

As hundreds of thousands of Cambodians slowly starved in the rice fields, a select number of political prisoners and their families met a terrible fate inside Khmer Rouge interrogation centers. The most famous of these centers, codenamed S-21, was located in the abandoned suburban Phnom Penh high school of Tuol Sleng, which ironically translates to "hill of the poison tree." The sole purpose of S-21 was to extract confessions from political prisoners before they were taken away for execution outside of the capital near the farming village of Choeung Ek. Nearly 20,000 people are known to have entered Tuol Sleng; of these only six are known to have survived. Ironically, the majority of the victims of Tuol Sleng were actually former Khmer Rouge cadres.

Prisoners would be induced to sign their names to confessions, usually false, forced out of them by torture. Even loyal Khmer Rouge cadres would eventually admit to spying for the CIA or the KGB, secret loyalty to the Vietnamese, sexual crimes - whatever the interrogators asked for they usually got. Thousands of these confession files, including 5,000 photographs, survive to this day, giving us a grim look at the activities that occured inside Tuol Sleng. The Yale Cambodian Genocide Center has spent many years examining these records, but thousands of the people sent to S-21 have yet to be identified. We may never know who they were or why they were sent there.