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Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia aimed to create an ethnically purified communist country, resulting in the Killing Fields where millions were systematically executed or died of starvation. Pol Pot’s hatred of intellectuals and capitalists led to one of the most horrific acts of genocide in the 20th century. His death in 2000 occurred before he could be tried for his role in the atrocities.
Shortly after the last Americans were evacuated from Vietnam in 1975, both Cambodia and Vietnam fell under Communist rule. One of the main architects of the Communist Party in Cambodia, also known as the Khmer Rouge, was a despot named Pol Pot. Although Pol Pot himself was highly educated, he became resentful of the intellectuals and capitalists who controlled the largest cities and the politics of the Cambodia. Most of his Khmer Rouge recruits came from peasant stock and were systematically conditioned to accept his views on a new society.
During the early 1970s, Pol Pot successfully eliminated some of his political enemies through summary executions and managed to force the evacuation of several major cities. The idea behind these forced evacuations was to “re-educate” compliant city dwellers in the ideals of an agrarian society, which would be governed by a benevolent communist government. This vision led to a horrific event known as the Killing Fields.
In 1976, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge army officially became the rulers of a new Cambodia, renamed Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot wasted no time implementing his plans for an ethnically purified communist country. Since he saw no need for more than a few million loyal citizens, Pol Pot used this opportunity to systematically remove intellectuals, political opponents, mestizos, the elderly and cripples from the country’s population count. From 1976 until the Vietnamese intervention in 1979, the death camps of Kampuchea were in operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Civilians living in Cambodia’s big cities were forcibly removed from their homes by armed Khmer Rouge soldiers. They were then herded into large rice patties or other fields in the remote Cambodian countryside. Many were forced to dig their own mass graves or perform other degrading tasks. Food rations in the Killing Fields were reduced to a few bowls of rice soup a day, assuming the evacuees were fed. Many starved to death or committed suicide to escape daily torture.
In an effort to save munitions, Khmer Rouge soldiers working in the Killing Fields were encouraged to use primitive weapons to commit their murderous acts. After completing the mass burial pits, thousands of civilians were beaten to death with clubs or stabbed with bamboo poles. Some were simply buried alive. This continued unabated for nearly three years, as many Western governments either worried about the aftermath of the Vietnam War or were reluctant to intervene for political reasons.
The total number of lives lost in the Killing Fields is still a matter of dispute, but the Khmer Rouge themselves have placed the number at nearly 3 million. External estimates range from 1.2 to 2.4 million, but some victims may have already been executed before 1976. Several memorial shrines in Cambodia contain thousands of skulls excavated from the killing fields after the fall of Pol Pot.
The scale of Cambodia’s (Kampuchea) death camps is often compared to that of the Jewish Holocaust or the ethnic cleansing efforts in Bosnia and Rwanda. Pol Pot’s personal hatred of intellectuals and capitalists drove him to commit one of the most horrific acts of genocide of the 20th century. His death in Thailand in 2000 occurred before he could be tried for his role in Killing Fields, but his evil deeds against his own people will never be forgotten by the world.
