Khmer Rouge in Power

The Reign of Terror

The rule of the Khmer Rouge was formally established as the Democratic Kampuchea when the communist forces entered the fallen Khmer Republic capital of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. This apparently was seen as a success of King Norodom Sinahouk and his supporters, but all the efforts for making the king return to his homeland as the Head of State could not bear any fruit. Pol Pot, the party leader throughout the reign of the regime, became the effective authority in the country.

However, the King was declared a Head of State as the Prince of Cambodia, though in name only, and the first premier was Samdech Penn Nouth. Pol Pot did not himself assume the title of Prime Minister until April 17, 1976. Khmer Rouge established a communist and a totalitarian regime in the country, with little tolerance to any opposition whatsoever. Although this could be true for any other regime in a way, but the government founded by Khmer Rouge is remembered to this day for its Stalinist approach of dealing with any possible threats.

The Khmer Rouge regime was determined on running the country the way they considered appropriate, by supposedly removing elements like foreign and colonial intervention and corruption from the society. In order to do so, they intended to form an egalitarian and an agrarian society, which should be able to feed its population. However, feeding the urban population on assuming power, forced them to evacuate people from major cities. People were deported from the cities into the rural areas for farming, and money was abolished altogether.

But this egalitarian society existed in name only, as actually the leaders of the Khmer Rouge lived in far better conditions than the general public. In fact, the nepotism prevalent during the Khmer Rouge days was as worse as that practiced during the reign of Sihanouk. The Khmer Rouge regime even resorted to keep children separated from their parents so that they can grow to be devoted communists. Family links which the Khmer Rouge saw as illegal were punishable by execution and all sorts of communication was prohibited.

Another painful step they took was not different than the kind of actions for which totalitarian regimes like that of Stalin. Any hint of intelligence in their subjects was dealt with harshly, which resulted in a mass massacre. All the intelligentsia of Cambodia, along with skilled workers were either executed or made to work in the farms indiscriminately from the rest of the people and books were burned. All the population was forced to work as farmers confined in a labor camp.

It is believed that no less than 1.5 million Cambodians fell victim at the hands of the oppressive Khmer Rouge, and died either because of torture, starvation or murder, some even estimate the actual count of the death from 2.5 million to 3 million, which was the greatest massacre of its kind after the Holocaust and the similar killings under the Stalin regime in the Soviet Union.

Various people such as intellectuals, those having links with the previous government, ethnic Vietnamese, Thai or Chinese, religious monks and clerics or anyone considered to be a threat for the regime, were arrested, tortured and executed relentlessly. The infamous Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge still send chills down the spines of millions around the world who realized the magnitude of the horror. The evidence of the torture and the massacre is preserved in the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. A number of people from the Khmer Rouge regime are undergoing trials for committing crimes against humanity even to this day.

The Vietnamese communists were not really happy with the Khmer Rouge, who proceeded to take hold of power in Phnom Penh after the 1973 Paris Peace Accord, which was intensified by the ongoing tension between the two countries during the reign of Khmer Rouge, particularly due to the conflict between the ethnic majorities of the twp countries. Furthermore, many local Cambodian communists were also tired of the atrocities that the Khmer Rouge committed. So they acted in collusion to drive the Khmer Rouge out of power, as the Vietnamese attacked Cambodia in 1979 and formed People’s Republic of Kampuchea, which was a pro-Soviet moderate communist republic.