"Khmer Rouge"- the informal name of the far left trend in the communist agrarian movement in Cambodia, created in 1968. Their ideology was based on Maoism (in the most rigid interpretation), the rejection of everything Western and modern. The number is about 30 thousand people. Basically, the movement was replenished by teenagers aged 12-16, who had lost their parents and hated the townspeople as "accomplices of the Americans."

On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, established a dictatorship and announced the start of a "revolutionary experiment" to build a "100% communist society" in Cambodia. The state of Cambodia was renamed Democratic Kampuchea.

At the first stage, all urban residents were evicted to the countryside, foreign languages ​​and books were banned, commodity-money relations were eliminated, Buddhist monks were persecuted and religions were completely banned, schools and universities were banned, and officials and military personnel of the former regime at all levels were physically destroyed.

On April 17, 1975, over two million people were evicted from Phnom Penh, and they were not allowed to take anything with them. “In accordance with the order, all residents were obliged to leave the city. It was forbidden to take food and things. Those who refused to obey the order or hesitated were killed and shot. Neither the elderly, nor the disabled, nor pregnant women, nor the sick who were in hospitals escaped this fate. People had to walk, despite the rain or the scorching sun ... During the journey they were not given any food or medicine ... Only on the banks of the Mekong, when the Phnom Penh people were transported to remote areas of the country, about five hundred thousand people died.

Higher forms of cooperatives were created throughout the country, in which people driven from the cities were engaged in low-skilled physical labor under the most difficult conditions. With primitive tools or by hand, people worked 12-16 hours a day, and sometimes longer. According to the few who managed to survive, in many areas their daily food was only one bowl of rice for 10 people. The leaders of the Pol Pot regime created a network of spies and encouraged mutual denunciations in order to paralyze the will of the people to resist.

For criminal offenses (for example, for a banana plucked from a commune tree), the death penalty threatened.

Repressions were practiced according to national and social parameters (ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, individual Cham peoples, former representatives of the ruling classes and even those with higher education emigrated from the country; most of the students, teachers, Buddhist monks).

Teachers, doctors, priests, the intelligentsia were destroyed (at the same time, anyone who wore glasses, read books, knew a foreign language, wore decent clothes, in particular European cut) was considered an intellectual, as well as those suspected of having links with the previous government, or foreign governments. It was forbidden to write and read.

The massacres perpetrated by the “Khmer Rouge” defy description: “The population of the village of Sreseam was almost completely destroyed ... soldiers drove children, tied them in a chain, pushed them into funnels filled with water and buried them alive ... People were driven to the edge of the trench, struck with a shovel or hoe in back of the head, and pushed down. When there were too many people to be eliminated, they were gathered in groups of several dozen people, entangled with steel wire, passed current from a generator installed on a bulldozer, and then they pushed the unconscious people into a pit and covered them with earth. Even his own wounded soldiers, Pol Pot ordered to be killed so as not to spend money on medicines.

Vietnamese, Chams were exterminated on ethnic grounds, Christians, Muslims and Buddhist monks were killed on religious grounds.

Monks were destroyed (out of 60,000 monks, about 3,000 remained alive), statues of Buddhas and Buddhist books, pagodas and temples were turned into warehouses, not a single active pagoda of the 2,800 that existed in the former Cambodia remained.

From 1975 to January 1979, all 60,000 Christians, both priests and laity, were killed. Churches were looted, most blown up.

Of the 20,000 Muslims living in Kampongsiem district (Kampongcham province), not a single person survived. Of the 20,000 Muslims in Kampong Meas County in the same province, only four survived. All 108 mosques were destroyed and devastated, some of them were turned into pigsties, blown up or bulldozed.

The Pol Pot regime left behind 141,848 disabled people, more than 200,000 orphans, numerous widows who could not find their families. The survivors were debilitated, unable to reproduce, and in a state of poverty and complete physical exhaustion.

634,522 buildings were destroyed, of which 5857 schools, as well as 796 hospitals, paramedical stations and laboratories, 1968 churches were destroyed or turned into storage facilities or prisons. The Pol Potites destroyed a myriad of agricultural tools, as well as 1,507,416 heads of cattle.”

Democratic Kampuchea

Democratic Kampuchea is a state that existed from 1975 to 1979 on the territory of Cambodia. The name was given by the Khmer Rouge during their reign.

Democratic Kampuchea was a recognized state - it was recognized by the UN, Albania and North Korea. The USSR also de facto recognized the Khmer Rouge government as it invited Pol Pot to Moscow.

The Khmer Rouge regime maintained external communications only with China, North Korea, Albania, Romania, and France.

The names and portraits of the leaders of the country (Pol Pot - Brother No. 1, Nuon Chea - Brother No. 2, Ieng Sari - Brother No. 3, Ta Mok - Brother No. 4, Khieu Samphan - Brother No. 5) were kept secret from the population.

Fall of the Khmer Rouge

In April 1975, the Vietnam War ended: North Vietnamese troops took Saigon, South Vietnam fell and the country was united. In the same month, the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, thereby winning the civil war in Cambodia. Almost immediately after that, relations between the two countries began to deteriorate rapidly.

Historically, Cambodia and Vietnam have been at enmity with each other, but more important were the tensions that arose between the leadership of Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge in the early 1970s. At first, the North Vietnamese army took an active part in the Cambodian civil war on the side of the Khmer Rouge, but the deep differences between the allies revealed that in 1972-1973 North Vietnam withdrew its troops from the front line.

Already in May 1975, the first armed incidents occurred on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. They (like all subsequent ones) were provoked by the Cambodian side.

In 1977, after some lull, there was a sharp surge in hostilities. The Khmer Rouge crossed the border and killed Vietnamese civilians. The biggest tragedy occurred in April 1978 in the village of Bachuk, An Giang province, whose entire population - 3,000 people - was exterminated. Such actions could not go unpunished, and the Vietnamese army made several raids on the territory of Cambodia.

In December 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge regime. The country fell into such decline that, due to the lack of telephone communications, the Khmer Rouge had to deliver combat reports on bicycles.

Phnom Penh was taken on January 7, 1979. Power was transferred to the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea, led by Heng Samrin.

The fall happened so rapidly that Pol Pot had to flee Phnom Penh two hours before the triumphant appearance in the capital of the army of Hanoi. However, Pol Pot was not going to give up. He fortified himself in a secret base with a handful of his loyal followers and formed the National Liberation Front of the Khmer People. The Khmer Rouge retreated in an organized manner into the jungle on the border with Thailand. This area became their home base for the next two decades.

Meanwhile, China - the only country with close ties to the Pol Pot regime - was watching with annoyance. By this time, Vietnam in foreign policy had finally reoriented itself towards the USSR, with which China continued to maintain extremely tense relations. The Chinese leadership publicly announced its intention to "teach Vietnam a lesson" in connection with the occupation of Cambodia, and on February 17, 1979, the Chinese army invaded Vietnam. The war was fierce and fleeting - by mid-March, hostilities were over. Formally, Vietnam won.

After repelling Chinese aggression, the Vietnamese army launched a new offensive against the Khmer Rouge. By the middle of the year, she controlled all the main cities of Cambodia.

Since the government army of Heng Samrin was still too weak, Vietnam continued to keep a military contingent in Cambodia with a constant strength of 170-180 thousand people.

The strengthening of the Cambodian government army and international changes led to the fact that by the end of the 1980s, Vietnam began to curtail its participation in the war. In September 1989, the complete withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia was announced, but there were still Vietnamese military advisers there. The war between the Cambodian government and the Khmer Rouge continued for about a decade.

According to available estimates, during more than ten years of being in Cambodia, the Vietnamese army lost about 25 thousand soldiers killed.

killing fields

The killing fields are places in Cambodia where, under the Khmer Rouge government (in 1975-1979), a large number of people were killed and buried - according to various estimates, from one and a half to three million people, with a total population of 7 million.

The legal process associated with political crimes began with the fact that a person received a warning from Angkar - the de facto government of Cambodia. Those who received more than two warnings were sent to "retraining", which meant almost certain death. Usually, the "retrained" were forced to confess to "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included either business activities or connections with foreigners), declaring that Angkar would forgive them and "start from scratch." The clean sheet was that the confessor was sent to Tuol Sleng for torture and subsequent execution.

A variety of tortures were used on the victims, including pulling out nails, forcing them to swallow excrement and urine, hanging, and many others. In order to conserve ammunition, people were often killed with hammers, axes, shovels, or pointed bamboo sticks. The executions were carried out mainly by young soldiers from the countryside.

The most famous killing field is Choeng Ek. Today there is a Buddhist memorial in memory of the victims of terror.

The exact number of deaths at the hands of the Khmer Rouge is a matter of dispute - the government established by the Vietnamese who overthrew Pol Pot's regime claimed 3.3 million victims, while according to the CIA, the Khmer executed from 50 to 100 thousand people, and up to 1.2 million died in total. mostly from hunger. More recent estimates give approximately 1.7 million victims.

The current state of the Khmer Rouge

In 1998, after the death of leader Pol Pot, the movement continued to exist. In 2005, the Khmer Rouge detachments were active in the region of the provinces of Ratanakiri and Styngtraeng.

On July 21, 2006, the last commander of the Khmer Rouge, Ta Mok, died. Nothing is known about the new leadership of the movement.

On September 19, 2007, 80-year-old Nuon Chea, nicknamed "Brother Number Two", was arrested and charged with crimes against humanity. In the 50s and 60s, Nuon Chea helped the dictator Pol Pot come to power and then became the main ideologist of the movement. A few weeks later, other key Khmer Rouge figures who had previously surrendered to the Cambodian government (including Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan) were arrested. All of them are currently awaiting trial.

Now the remnants of the Khmer Rouge units continue to hide in the jungle, trading in robbery and smuggling.

In 1968, the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPC), which was in opposition to the government, created a paramilitary movement that became one of the parties to the civil war in Cambodia. They were the Khmer Rouge. It was they who made Cambodia another stronghold of socialism in Southeast Asia.

The origins of the current

The infamous Khmer Rouge appeared a year after the start of the peasant uprising in the province of Battambang. The militias opposed the government and King Norodom Sihanouk. The dissatisfaction of the peasants was picked up and used by the leadership of the CPC. At first, the forces of the rebels were insignificant, but in a matter of months Cambodia plunged into the chaos of a civil war, which is rightly considered as another episode of the Cold War and the struggle between two political systems - communism and capitalism.

A few years later, the Khmer Rouge overthrew the regime that had been established in the country after gaining independence from France. Then, in 1953, Cambodia was declared a kingdom, of which he became the ruler. At first, he was even popular among the local population. However, the situation in Cambodia was destabilized by the war in neighboring Vietnam, where, starting in the late 1950s, the confrontation between the communists, supported by China and the USSR, and the democratic pro-American government smoldered. The "Red Threat" was also hiding in the bowels of Cambodia itself. The local communist party was formed in 1951. By the time the civil war began, Pol Pot became its leader.

Personality of Pol Pot

The monstrous events in Cambodia in the 1970s in the mass consciousness (including in our country) are most associated with two images. and the Khmer Rouge became symbols of inhumanity and genocide. But the leader of the revolution began very modestly. According to the official biography, he was born on May 19, 1925 in a small, unremarkable Khmer village, hidden somewhere in the tropical jungle of Southeast Asia. At birth, there was no Pol Pot. The real name of the leader of the Khmer Rouge is Saloth Sar. Pol Pot is a party pseudonym that the young revolutionary took during the years of his political career.

Education turned out to be a social lift for a boy from a modest family. In 1949, the young Pol Pot received a government scholarship that allowed him to move to France and enroll at the Sorbonne. In Europe, the student met the communists and became interested in revolutionary ideas. In Paris, he joined a Marxist circle. Education, however, Pol Pot never received. In 1952, he was expelled from the university for poor progress and returned to his homeland.

In Cambodia, Pol Pot joined the People's Revolutionary Party of Cambodia, which was later transformed into a communist one. The newcomer began his career in the organization in the department of mass propaganda. The revolutionary began to publish in the press and soon became extremely famous. Pol Pot has always had remarkable ambitions. Gradually, he climbed the party ladder, and in 1963 he became its general secretary. The Khmer Rouge genocide was still far away, but history was doing its job - Cambodia was approaching civil war.

Ideology of the Khmer Rouge

The communists became more and more influential year after year. The new leader laid new ideological foundations, which he adopted from the Chinese comrades. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were supporters of Maoism - a set of ideas adopted as an official doctrine in the Celestial Empire. In fact, the communists of Cambodia preached radical leftist views. Because of this, the Khmer Rouge were ambivalent about the Soviet Union.

On the one hand, Pol Pot recognized the USSR as the forge of the first communist October revolution. But the Cambodian revolutionaries also had many claims against Moscow. Partly on the same basis, an ideological split arose between the USSR and China.

The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia criticized the Soviet Union for its revisionist policies. In particular, they were against the preservation of money - one of the most important signs of capitalist relations in society. Pol Pot also believed that agriculture was poorly developed in the USSR due to forced industrialization. In Cambodia, the agrarian factor played a huge role. Peasants made up the absolute majority of the population in this country. As a result, when the Khmer Rouge regime came to power in Phnom Penh, Pol Pot did not ask for help from the Soviet Union, but was much more oriented towards China.

power struggle

In the civil war that began in 1967, the Khmer Rouge was supported by the communist authorities of North Vietnam. Their opponents also acquired allies. The government of Cambodia was oriented towards the USA and at first the central power was in the hands of King Norodom Sihanouk. However, after a bloodless coup in 1970, he was overthrown, and the government was in the hands of Prime Minister Lon Nol. It was with him that the Khmer Rouge fought for another five years.

History is an example of an internal conflict in which outside forces actively intervened. At the same time, the confrontation in Vietnam continued. The Americans began to provide significant economic and military assistance to the government of Lon Nol. The United States did not want Cambodia to turn into a country where enemy Vietnamese troops could easily go to rest and recuperate.

In 1973, American aircraft began bombing Khmer Rouge positions. By this time, the US had withdrawn troops from Vietnam and could now focus on helping Phnom Penh. However, at the decisive moment, Congress had its say. Against the backdrop of massive anti-militarist sentiments in American society, politicians demanded that President Nixon stop the bombing of Cambodia.

Circumstances played into the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Under these conditions, Cambodian government troops began to retreat. On January 1, 1975, the Khmer Rouge launched its final offensive against the capital Phnom Penh. Day after day, the city lost more and more supply lines, and the ring around it continued to narrow. On April 17, the Khmer Rouge took full control of the capital. Two weeks earlier, Lon Nol announced his resignation and moved to the United States. It seemed that after the end of the civil war, a period of stability and peace would come. However, in reality, Cambodia was on the verge of an even more terrible catastrophe.

Democratic Kampuchea

Having come to power, the communists renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot, who became the head of state, announced the three strategic goals of his government. First, he was going to stop the ruin of the peasantry and leave usury and corruption in the past. The second goal was to eliminate Kampuchea's dependence on other countries. And, finally, the third: it was necessary to restore order in the country.

All these slogans seemed adequate, but in reality everything turned into the creation of a tough dictatorship. Repression began in the country, initiated by the Khmer Rouge. In Cambodia, according to various estimates, between 1 and 3 million people were killed. The facts about the crimes became known only after the fall of the Pol Pot regime. During his reign, Cambodia fenced itself off from the world with the Iron Curtain. News of her inner life hardly leaked out.

Terror and repression

After the victory in the civil war, the Khmer Rouge set about a complete restructuring of the society of Kampuchea. According to their radical ideology, they abandoned money and eliminated this instrument of capitalism. Urban residents began to move to the countryside en masse. Many familiar social and state institutions were destroyed. The government liquidated the system of medicine, education, culture and science. Foreign books and languages ​​were banned. Even wearing glasses has led to the arrest of many residents of the country.

The Khmer Rouge, whose leader was extremely serious, in just a few months did not leave a trace of the previous order. All religions were subjected to repression. The heaviest blow was dealt to the Buddhists, who in Cambodia were a notable majority.

The Khmer Rouge, whose photos of the results of the repression soon spread around the world, divided the population into three categories. The first included the majority of peasants. The second included residents of areas that had resisted the advance of the communists for a long time during the civil war. Interestingly, at that time American troops were even based in some cities. All these settlements were subjected to "re-education", or, in other words, mass purges.

The third group included representatives of the intelligentsia, the clergy, officials who were in the public service under the previous regime. They also added officers from the Lon Nol army. Soon, the savage tortures of the Khmer Rouge were tested on many of these people. The repressions were carried out under the slogan of fighting the enemies of the people, traitors and revisionists.

Socialism in Cambodia

Forcibly driven into the countryside, the population began to live in communes, distinguished by strict rules. Basically, the Cambodians were engaged in planting rice and wasting time on other low-skilled labor. The atrocities of the Khmer Rouge consisted of harsh punishments for any crime. Thieves and other petty violators of public order were shot without trial or investigation. The rule even extended to fruit picking on plantations owned by the state. Of course, all the land and enterprises of the country were nationalized.

Later, the world community characterized the crimes of the Khmer Rouge as genocide. Mass killings were carried out along social and ethnic lines. The authorities executed foreigners, including even Vietnamese and Chinese. Another reason for the reprisal was higher education. Going to a conscious confrontation with foreigners, the government completely isolated Kampuchea from the outside world. Diplomatic contacts remained only with Albania, China and North Korea.

Causes of massacres

Why did the Khmer Rouge stage a genocide in their native country, causing incredible harm to its present and future? According to the official ideology, in order to build a socialist paradise, the state needed a million able-bodied and loyal citizens, and all the remaining several million inhabitants were to be destroyed. In other words, the genocide was not an "excess on the ground" or the result of a reaction against imaginary traitors. The killings became part of the political course.

Estimates of the number of deaths in Cambodia in the 70s. extremely contradictory. The gap from 1 to 3 million is caused by the civil war, the abundance of refugees, the partisanship of researchers, etc. Of course, the regime did not leave evidence of its crimes. People were killed without trial or investigation, which made it impossible to restore the chronicle of events even with the help of official documents.

Even films about the Khmer Rouge cannot accurately convey the scale of the disaster that has befallen the unfortunate country. But even the few pieces of evidence that have become public thanks to the international trials held after the fall of the Pol Pot government are horrifying. Tuol Sleng prison became the main symbol of repression in Kampuchea. Today there is a museum there. The last time tens of thousands of people were sent to this prison. All of them were to be executed. Only 12 people survived. They were lucky - they did not have time to shoot them before the change of power. One of those prisoners became a key witness in the trial of the Cambodian case.

A blow to religion

Repressions against religious organizations were legally enshrined in the constitution, which was adopted by Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge saw any denomination as a potential danger to their power. In 1975, there were 82,000 monks of Buddhist monasteries (bonzes) in Cambodia. Only a few of them managed to escape and flee abroad. The extermination of the monks took on a total character. No exceptions were made for anyone.

Buddhist libraries, temples and pagodas were destroyed (before the civil war there were about 3 thousand of them, but in the end not a single one remained). Like the Bolsheviks or Communists in China, the Khmer Rouge used religious buildings as warehouses.

With particular cruelty, the supporters of Pol Pot cracked down on Christians, as they were carriers of foreign trends. Both laity and priests were repressed. Many churches were ravaged and destroyed. During the terror, about 60,000 Christians and another 20,000 Muslims died.

War with Vietnam

In a matter of years, Pol Pot's regime led Cambodia to economic collapse. Many sectors of the country's economy were completely destroyed. Huge victims among the repressed led to the desolation of vast spaces.

Pol Pot, like every dictator, explained the reasons for the collapse of Kampuchea by the wrecking activities of traitors and external enemies. Rather, this point of view was defended by the party. There was no Pol Pot in the public space. He was known as "brother No. 1" in the top eight party figures. Now it seems surprising, but in addition to this, Cambodia introduced its own Newspeak in the manner of the dystopian novel 1984. Many literary words were removed from the language (they were replaced with new ones approved by the party).

Despite all the ideological efforts of the party, the country was in a deplorable state. The Khmer Rouge and the tragedy of Kampuchea led to this. Pol Pot, meanwhile, was busy with the growing conflict with Vietnam. In 1976, the country was united under communist rule. However, socialist proximity did not help the regimes to find a common language.

On the contrary, bloody skirmishes constantly took place on the border. The biggest was the tragedy in the town of Batyuk. The Khmer Rouge invaded Vietnam and slaughtered an entire village inhabited by about 3,000 peaceful peasants. The period of clashes on the border ended in December 1978, when Hanoi decided to end the Khmer Rouge regime. For Vietnam, the task was made easier by the fact that Cambodia was experiencing an economic collapse. Immediately after the invasion of foreigners, uprisings of the local population began. On January 7, 1979, the Vietnamese took Phnom Penh. Power in it was given to the newly created United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea, which was headed by Heng Samrin.

Partisans again

Although the Khmer Rouge lost the capital, the western part of the country remained under their control. For the next 20 years, these rebels continued to harass the central authorities. In addition, the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot survived and continued to lead large paramilitary units that had taken refuge in the jungle. The struggle against the perpetrators of the genocide was led by the same Vietnamese (Cambodia itself lay in ruins and could hardly eradicate this serious threat).

The same campaign was repeated every year. In the spring, a Vietnamese contingent of several tens of thousands of people invaded the western provinces, carrying out purges there, and in the fall they returned to their original positions. The autumn season of tropical rains made it impossible to effectively fight the guerrillas in the jungle. The irony was that during their own civilian years, the communists used the same tactics that the Khmer Rouge now used against them.

Final defeat

In 1981, the party partially removed Pol Pot from power, and soon it itself was completely dissolved. Some communists decided to change their political course. In 1982, the Democratic Kampuchea Party was formed. This and several other organizations merged into which the UN soon recognized. The legitimized communists renounced Pol Pot. They acknowledged the mistakes of the previous regime (including the adventurism of refusing money) and asked for forgiveness for the repressions.

Radicals led by Pol Pot continued to hide in the forests and destabilize the situation in the country. Nevertheless, the political compromise in Phnom Penh led to the fact that the central authority was strengthened. In 1989, Vietnamese troops left Cambodia. The confrontation between the government and the Khmer Rouge continued for about a decade. Pol Pot's failures forced the rebels' collective leadership to remove him from power. The once seemingly invincible dictator has been placed under house arrest. He passed away on April 15, 1998. According to one version, the cause of death was heart failure, according to another, Pol Pot was poisoned by his own supporters. Soon the Khmer Rouge suffered a final defeat.

French Indochina ordered a long life in 1954: observing international agreements, France left the Indochinese peninsula. Thus, new independent states appeared on the world map: Laos, Cambodia and two Vietnams. After that, interesting times began on the peninsula, in the era of which, as you know, you don’t wish anyone to live.

Vietnam and Laos also distinguished themselves in every possible way, but still, Cambodia, aka Kampuchea, deserves the palm for the Khmer Rouge and for Monsieur Pol Pot personally. No other regime in the entire human history, apparently, destroyed so many of its population in such a short time: in the four years of his reign, Pol Pot exterminated every seventh Cambodian. And no other regime of the world has been so illogical and so obviously abnormal.

brother number one

In fact, his name was not Pol Pot (Cambodians generally rarely call their children Paul, they much prefer names like Khtau or Tjomrayn). The future shaker of the country was named Saloth Sar, and, like many dictators, his origins are dark and confusing. According to one version, he is generally the nephew of a courtier and almost royal blood. He himself liked to describe the hardships of his impoverished peasant childhood under the yoke of the accursed imperialists. But most likely, the main biographers of Pol Pot are right - the Australian researcher Ben Kiernan and the American historian David Chandler, who, having shaken up the proven facts of the genealogy of our hero, considered that in fact he belonged to a prosperous semi-rural, semi-bureaucratic family, and his sisters are native and cousin - were court dancers and royal concubines (of whom, however, there were many in the palace).

We must give the biographers their due: they were truly detective work, because Pol Pot avoided any publicity so much that in the first year of his reign, virtually no one in Kampuchea, not to mention the outside world, knew who was hiding under the name Brother number one - he managed take over the country incognito. The nickname Pol Pot, taken ten years earlier, according to some surviving former associates, was an abbreviation of the French "politique potentielle" ("powerful politician") and was a form of the term "leader". Only in the second year of Pol Pot's reign, a fuzzy photograph that got into the Western press, made it possible to establish that the executioner of Cambodia was the virtuous and modest school teacher Salot Sar, who was identified by his former associates in the Communist Party of Indochina.

Based on the premise that all human atrocities are the result of childhood shocks, historians desperately wanted to find evidence that Pol Pot was an innocent victim of circumstances, a plaything in the hands of fate, who turned a kind boy into a terrible scarecrow. But all the surviving acquaintances and relatives of Pol Pot assured in chorus that he was a sweet and quiet child, whom his relatives loved, who received a very decent education on a state scholarship, and who looked least like an unfortunate ragged child of the third world. Yes, in a French college he was forced to speak French and play the violin, but no traces of other imperialist tortures could be found in Pol Pot's life.

In 1947 he left to study in Paris, became a staunch anti-Westernist there, joined the French Communist Party and even published a couple of articles about the oppression of the workers, but he still remained an even, friendly and pleasant young man with no special ambitions and no special talents. And when he returned home, he began to actively cooperate with local communists, while working at the same time as a teacher in a lyceum, until a full-scale war broke out in the country.

Civil War in Cambodia

Now it will be very interesting. Anyone who manages to follow the logic of what is happening to the end will receive a bonus. In 1954, after liberation from the French protectorate, Cambodia received the status of a neutral country with a more or less constitutional monarchy. The rightful heir, Prince Sihanouk, came to power, chosen by the state council from among the possible contenders, of whom, with such an abundance of concubines, you yourself understand, there were always enough in the palaces. The prince was not a communist, but he had, it must be admitted, very similar convictions to the communists. He wanted to be friends with China in every possible way, to help the Northern, pro-Soviet, Vietnam fight against the Southern, imperialist. At the same time, Cambodia broke off diplomatic relations with the main imperialists of the world - the United States, after the Americans wandered a little beyond their borders, sorting out relations with the Viet Cong *.

*

Note Phacochoerus "a Funtika: « The Viet Cong was the name given to the fighting units of the South Vietnamese communists, who, while cooperating with the troops of North Vietnam, nevertheless maintained a certain autonomy. If an article sometimes contains only “Viet Cong” or one “Northern Vietnamese”, then consider that the author is simply too lazy to always mention them together».

14 years - the average age of the Khmer Rouge army fighters

3,000,000 of Cambodia's 8,000,000 inhabitants were immediately disenfranchised

1,500,000 Kampucheans died during the four years of Khmer Rouge rule

2,500,000 people had to leave all cities in 24 hours

20,000 photographs of Tuol Sleng prisoners become the basis of the Genocide Museum

04/16/1998 biology and history together finished with Pol Pot

The Americans apologized and categorically forbade their soldiers from even approaching the Cambodian borders. In exchange, Prince Sihanouk, with a grand gesture, allowed the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops to pass through the Cambodian territories and set up bases there. What Prince Sihanouk was thinking at that moment, only the Buddhas know, since even a not very intelligent fifth grader could predict the further development of events. For a while, the Vietnamese communists played the "I'm in the house" game.

They attacked the South Vietnamese troops, after which they ticked into Cambodia, on the border of which their pursuers were forced to stop and look plaintively at the cheerful haze over the hearths of the Viet Cong bases. I must say that the local population was not enthusiastic about the Vietnamese soldiers running around their country. In addition, they really did not like the fact that Sihanouk considered it possible to send his soldiers to take away grain from the peasants (more precisely, to forcibly redeem it for a penny). Not surprisingly, Cambodia's own communist underground began to enjoy enormous support from the famine-stricken peasants. The largest of these organizations was called the Khmer Rouge, and it was run by a sweet schoolteacher named Pol Pot. Yes, he never became a bright leader and a genius that serious mature revolutionaries would follow, but he knew how to work well with children. Under his wing, he, as befits a teacher, took youth: peasant teenagers 11-12 years old were recruited into the Khmer Rouge, and Pol Pot himself repeatedly said that for the good of Kampuchea it would be necessary to kill everyone over fourteen, since only a new generation able to create a new ideal country.

Popular uprisings and terrorist attacks by the Khmer Rouge forced Prince Sihanouk to wake up a bit and assess the state of affairs in the lands entrusted to him. And in the country there was - let's call a spade a spade - a civil war. The Khmer Rouge took control of settlements and raided government organizations. The Viet Cong felt at home here and took what they wanted, including driving peasants to fight in their ranks. The peasants fled from all this beauty to the cities, a qualitative famine began ... And then Prince Sihanouk rushed to the United States for help. Relations were restored, the States bombed areas where the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese bases were located. But Sihanouk still did not dare to officially ask the Americans for help in the civil war: political convictions interfered. Then the prince was quickly overthrown by his ministers, led by Prime Minister Lon Nol, who demanded that the North Vietnamese withdraw their troops from Cambodian territory in 72 hours.

The North Vietnamese spoke approximately in the same spirit that you, my dear, would not go to drown in the Mekong. Then Lon Nol appealed to the Americans. In 1970, early-gray President Richard Nixon, already torn to pieces at home by pacifists, took another highly unpopular step and ordered a ground operation in Cambodia. For two months, the Americans and the South Vietnamese kicked out the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong from Cambodia - I must say, very, very successfully. But the States, which themselves were already on the verge of riots in connection with the colossal anti-war movement in the country, were forced to withdraw their troops. Cute girls in knitted scarves with pacifists achieved their goal: the States helped the Cambodian authorities with money and equipment, but they avoided hostilities. The dove of peace laid a rotten egg on the heads of the Cambodians: after the American troops left, a full-fledged civil war broke out here with the participation of government troops, the Khmer Rouge army (which had already subjugated some areas), other anti-government groups, South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese. Cambodia still tops the sad list of "The most mined countries in the world": the jungle and rice fields here are still stuffed with terrible traps that the parties poured into each other.

True, there were no very large-scale battles - rather, there was a guerrilla war of everyone against everyone. And in 1975, the Khmer Rouge won this war. Having killed several tens of thousands of soldiers and officials, on April 17 they captured the capital Phnom Penh, announced the creation of a new state, Democratic Kampuchea, and began to live and live.

They hated the Vietnamese so passionately that in the end they entered the war with the Vietnam that had united by that time, lost it and were driven back into the jungle. Thus, the Khmer Rouge held on to power for four years, but managed to make a serious claim in the fight for the title of the bloodiest regime of all time. We will discuss these four years in more detail in the next chapter.

And here's what's interesting. Nobody liked the Khmer Rouge because they were a completely crazy bunch of bastards. The refugees who were lucky enough to crawl away from Democratic Kampuchea, in unison, told monstrous things about the order that had reigned in the country: about mass executions, about infant corpses along the roads, about terrible famine and fanaticism of the authorities ... But even less the UN and NATO countries liked the fact that the pro-Soviet Vietnam after the fall of the Khmers, it actually gained another province, as a result, the position of the USSR in the South Asian region was dangerously strengthened, tipping the scales of geopolitical harmony. Therefore, the UN was very careful with the recognition of the deeds of the Pol Pot communists as genocide - unlike the Soviet Union, where any Octobrist at school listened to the nasty uncle Palpot, and in the yard - the popular ditty "For ... boo-torment, like Pol Pot Kampuchia!"

And here is the promised bonus. Today, communists and nationalists, nostalgic for the USSR, love to justify the Khmer Rouge, while scolding the Americans, who at one time also worked hard to justify these Khmer Rouge at least a little. Why this is happening is for psychoanalysts from geopolitics.

Feast of obedience

On April 17, having occupied Phnom Penh and other large cities, having launched thousands of juvenile savages with machine guns into their streets, the Khmer Rouge informed the townspeople that all of them, without exception, from now on become "bourgeois" and "test subjects", are affected in their rights and must leave the cities at 24 hours with children and the elderly. From that day on, they are called "people of April", because while all the good guys were making a revolution, these traitors and imperialist hirelings sat out in the cities and drank the blood of the working people. In fact, in the cities by that time, most of the inhabitants were peasants who had fled there from the war, but in the eyes of the Khmer Rouge they were not at all close to class - on the contrary, they were pitiful cowards and traitors.

Fall of Phnom Penh (1975)

The “People of April”, under pain of immediate execution, were ordered to line up in columns, and, accompanied by heavily armed teenagers, two and a half million people - a third of all the inhabitants of the country - crawled along their way of the cross. We must pay tribute to Pol Pot's equanimity: along with other "people of April", members of his family set off on the road, including the family of his older brother, in whose house he actually grew up. This brother died on the road, his wife was beaten to death, but the dictator's sister survived, who later was able to tell the world this interesting fact. However, none of the family could have imagined then that the faceless leader who sent them to their death was their dear brother Saloth Sar.

To understand the vigor with which the new Kampuchea was built, you need to know that, in general, this is a small and not too crowded country. In 1975, its population was between 8 and 8.5 million. In four years, Pol Pot and his associates destroyed at least a seventh of the Cambodians (this, according to the most careful calculations, is usually called a figure twice as large).

The program for the development of Democratic Kampuchea, created by the Khmer Rouge government, was preserved, because it was printed in the only remaining newspaper in the country, the Revolution, which was published every ten days and was intended for top party members who had the misfortune of being literate - it was read to the rest of the population by radio. This document is extremely fascinating, containing a lot of amazing information.

For example, here is an excerpt from the chapter on cultural development:

“Having rejected the bourgeois, alien culture, the victorious people spend their leisure time listening to revolutionary poems and songs, as well as easily studying politics and culture.”

And these were the plans for the growth of the welfare of the Cambodian people:

“In 1977, everyone will be given two sweet meals a week.

In 1978, one sweet meal every second day.

In 1979, sweet meals will be given to everyone daily.

The chapter on imports begins with the words:

“We will import bolts, nuts and more sophisticated equipment…”

TOOL SLENG

The Khmer Rouge did not keep any documentation of executed, starved and diseased people for a very good reason: most of them could neither read nor write.

The bodies of the dead were simply stuffed into pits or dumped in the forest, so that in addition to mines, the land of Cambodia is also littered with skeletons. The only place where they tried to register prisoners in any way was the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, located on Tuol Sleng hill, whose name eloquently translates as Poison Hill.

Since the cities were empty and there were only revolutionaries and members of their families, it is not surprising that in Tuol Sleng they exterminated mainly "traitors" from their own ranks. Many photographs of prisoners and their "confession letters" were found in the prison archive.

Most of those held here are Khmer teenagers. It is known that at least half of the approximately 20,000 prisoners who came here in four years were killed after severe torture. It now houses the Genocide Museum.

However, both the language in which the program was written and the mention of sweet dishes in it are far from accidental. As already mentioned, almost all Khmer Rouge were children. The average age of the fighters was 14 years old, and these peasant children, who grew up during the war, had no idea at all about the structure of life on Earth. It was convenient to work with such material: they were not afraid of death, did not ask difficult questions, did not suffer from excessive civility, and firmly believed everything that their leaders said. They knew how to handle machine guns perfectly, they were much worse with hoes, and they didn’t know how to read, write and think at all, but that was just a plus. Because it was precisely such brave soldiers that Pol Pot needed, or, as they began to call him, Brother number one (the rest of the government members were brothers under different numbers, up to brother number eight).

The cities stood as deserted and terrible monuments to themselves. The “People of April” were sent to rural and forest areas, where, under the supervision of the Khmers, they set up camps, cleared the forest, cleared the fields with their bodies and began to implement the main plan of the party, which was called “We will give three tons of rice per hectare!”. Rice was badly needed by Pol Pot. His power was quickly recognized as legitimate by China, which promised to provide Kampuchea with the necessary equipment, primarily military equipment, provided, of course, that Khmer comrades had currency. And the easiest way to exchange currency is for rice, which itself is actually a currency. Pol Pot never farmed in his life. His closest associates were also not big specialists in rice growing.

From what ceiling they took this figure - three tons per hectare - is difficult to answer. Now, with modern technology and fertilizers, hybrid varieties can bring more than ten tons, but in the 70s, when the green revolution was just beginning, one and a half tons per hectare was an excellent result. As the Revolution pointed out, "three tons of rice per hectare will be a brilliant testament to the collective revolutionary will of the people." They became. Since a dispute with top officials was considered a rebellion and was punishable by immediate execution, the overseers of the labor settlements did not write truthful reports - they sent peppy reports to the center, knowing for sure that they would not be able to collect any three tons per hectare. Fleeing from the regular execution, they quickly sold the harvested rice to the Chinese and fled the country, leaving the "April people" to die of hunger. Least of all, however, Pol Pot was worried about the "people of April": they were still subject to destruction.

Hoe on points

Khmer Rouge wedding

As soon as he came to power, Pol Pot abolished money, religion, private property, women's long hair (as too unhygienic and bourgeois), education, books, love, family dinners, diversity in dress and medicine. All this was considered alien to the true Kampuchean spirit. And the "April people", and progressive peasants and workers, and Khmer soldiers, and members of the government had to wear the same black cotton suits - trousers and a shirt.

There was no difference between men's and women's clothing. Everyone fed together at long tables, since Pol Pot personally insisted that the traditions of family dinners are a bourgeois ceremony, a hotbed of musty philistine ideas. They entered into marriage on the orders of the authorities, who made up suitable couples to their liking. Teenagers from among the military were appointed doctors. Since there were no medicines anyway, and they were not able to produce them in Cambodia, the order was given to focus on the "old traditions of traditional medicine." Of course, at first there were doctors, teachers and even unfinished engineers in the country, but Pol Pot hated the intelligentsia with a completely bestial passion, they were not even ranked among the “people of April”.

These were official enemies who were forbidden to marry and have children, they were used for the hardest work, and those who were too weak or sick were slaughtered especially zealously. Those of the doctors who still managed to survive were strictly forbidden to engage in treatment. Books in many settlements were completely banned. Wearing glasses was also terribly persecuted - putting glasses on your eyes was tantamount to admitting that you were a secret bookworm practicing seditious thoughts. It was possible to kill a person suspected of hiding his education even without the consent of his superiors. The only thing that was strictly forbidden was to waste valuable cartridges on such rubbish, so young Khmers had to learn how to break their heads with hoes and clubs. Children aged 5-6 years were taken away from their parents and sent to separate children's settlements, where they learned rural work, fighting in the jungle and revolutionary chants. At the age of 11 they were drafted into the army.

Are the Khmer Rouge still with us?

Oddly enough, but there were many Cambodians who were quite satisfied with this state of affairs. It's nice to know that the neighbor's pants are no better than yours; it's easy to live when you don't have to think about anything; the heavy burden of freedom of choice has been lifted from your shoulders, and you know, clear the reeds and sing about the sacred hatred of the workers ... So, when the Vietnamese expelled Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from most of Cambodia, locking them in the remote mountainous regions, at least a hundred thousand peasants left next. For almost twenty years, the Khmer did not give up. Kampuchea, which has become Cambodia again, has long been living in love and friendship with most of its enemies, the United States is integrating it into the world economy, a descendant of Sihanouk who is fond of ballet sits on the throne, political parties succeed each other at the helm - and the Khmer Rouge all march around the fires with chants and make military sorties into the territory of the slaves of imperialism...

The confrontation lasted until 1998, when the sick and old Pol Pot finally let go of the reins of power. The Khmer Rouge themselves arrested their former leader and tried - however, they only sentenced him to house arrest. But it no longer mattered, since on April 16, 1998, Pol Pot died. A few months before his death, he managed to give an interview for the Hong Kong magazine Far Eastern Economic Review, where he said that “everything he did, he did out of love and pity for the people,” and categorically refused to plead guilty to the genocide of his people, emphasizing that all this is an invention of the enemies. After his death, the Khmer organization crumbled completely. Former Khmer Rouge, except for very odious characters, are not particularly persecuted, some of them today even occupy quite high government posts.

According to an unspoken social contract, it was decided, perhaps, for all the inhabitants of Kampuchea not to arrange noisy trials over such a still recent and painful past.

Mike Ely

Direct talk about the trial of Pol Pot

In late July, the ABC released footage of Pol Pot's trial in Khmer Rouge-controlled territory in western Cambodia.

Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge for a long time. The Khmer Rouge armed forces seized power in Cambodia in 1975 after years of guerrilla warfare. They ruled the country for three years. They were then removed from power by the 1979 Vietnamese invasion and returned to the countryside.

Coat of arms and flag of Democratic Kampuchea

Along with the news of Pol Pot's arrest and prosecution, the US media repeated their old "killing fields" allegations in 1975-79 when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia. They insisted that Pol Pot be handed over to an international tribunal that would try him for genocide.

Nowhere is it mentioned that for a number of years the US invaded and bombed Cambodia in an attempt to defeat anti-imperialist forces, completely destroy the country's economy and punish the Cambodian people. Given this bloody history, the US imperialists have no right to say what's good for Cambodia - and no right to judge those who fought against them.

(jcomments on) In the mouths of the Western media, the history of Cambodia has become a primitive anti-communist moralizing fable. New York Times reporter Elizabeth Becker recently reappeared on TV as an official "expert" to make the point: Cambodia, she said, showed that attempts to embody the "great-sounding ideals" of equality with the help of "social engineering" are disastrous for the people.

To fit the facts to this idea, the official discussion takes the Cambodian events out of any recognizable context. Cambodia is portrayed as a calm, peasant land destroyed by the communist revolution. In fact, any serious approach to events in Cambodia must begin with the US-led imperialist invasion of Indo-China in 1965 and the class character of Cambodian society.

US robbery and Year Zero challenges

"Traditional" Cambodia was a brutal feudal society in need of a revolution. About 80% of the population were peasants, most of them extremely poor and exploited by a class of government officials who settled in the city strongholds. The absolute monarchy of Cambodia relied on the military, who repeatedly suppressed peasant uprisings. In the late 1800s, the country was colonized by France. In one famous incident, 900 workers died during nine months of hard labor at the construction site of the colonial resort at Bokor.

When the French imperialists were defeated in Indochina, the US seized control. In Cambodia, the US gained influence through aiding and arming the government of Prince Sihanouk while supporting a reactionary military against Sihanouk.

In the 1960s, the Khmer Rouge, led by Angka (Angkar - "Organization" in Khmer), began a just revolutionary armed struggle, establishing rural base areas among the peasants (Angka later openly called itself the Communist Party of Kampuchea). Their goals were to overthrow feudalism, develop a new independent economy, and drive out of Cambodia all forces of foreign domination.

Khmer Rouge entry into liberated areas

As the revolutionary forces in Indochina were making headway, in 1965 US forces staged an invasion. For several years, 500,000 US soldiers were in Vietnam.

Although not widely known, the US has also launched a "secret war" of massive bombing raids on the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos - targeting the rural base areas of guerrilla forces. The United States launched its aggression against Cambodia. In 1969, a US-inspired coup ousted Sihanouk and brought right-wing general Lon Nol to power. Then, in 1970, President Nixon ordered an invasion of eastern Cambodia to attack the Vietnamese liberation forces stationed there. This adventure ended in defeat for the United States - their armies were forced to withdraw. And the Khmer Rouge have made significant achievements.

The US responded with one of the most intense and longest air wars in history. Between 1970 and 1973 they dropped more than 500,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia - three times as many as the US dropped on Japan during World War II. In 160 days of "carpet bombing" in 1973, US aircraft dropped more than 240,000 tons, concentrating on the main agricultural areas along the Mekong River.

It was a real episode of the genocide in Cambodia, which left its mark on everything that followed.

In April 1975, when the Khmer Rouge troops took the capital Phnom Penh, Angka and the masses faced extremely difficult conditions. Unable to win the war, the US set out to destroy and punish the country. Agriculture was in ruins. At least 500,000 people died during the war - many due to US bombing. Approximately two million people - a third of the country's population - fled the countryside to Phnom Penh, where they faced the threat of starvation.

Phnom Penh in April 1975

At the beginning of what Angka called "Year Zero", the problems were enormous: a new state system, agriculture and industry had to be recreated, virtually from scratch, in one of the poorest countries in the world - under the constant threat of a new invasion.

In May 1975, US President Gerald Ford orchestrated the so-called Mayaguez Incident, launched new air raids, and destroyed Cambodia's only oil refinery.

Under these conditions, any government in charge of Cambodia would have to take extraordinary measures to ensure the survival of the masses. Along the way, the Khmer Rouge tried to replace the old semi-feudal, semi-colonial society with their vision of a new independent Democratic Kampuchea.

Any serious analysis of the Khmer Rouge must begin with an understanding of these conditions - namely, their usual stories of the "Khmer Rouge genocide" are trying to hide.

juggling

The Western press repeats the standard formula: "at least a million people died under Pol Pot." People are supposed to hear this and believe that one million people were killed by Pol Pot.

Soldiers from the Khmer Rouge

In fact, this number includes all those who died from starvation, disease, and political executions during the period 1975-79. between the wars - and blames each of these deaths on the new government of Khmer Rouge-led Democratic Kampuchea.

Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman have devoted a helpful chapter in their book After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina & the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology. documenting how the official myth of the "Khmer Rouge genocide" was constructed with the help of lies and fraud.

Cambodia, after 10 years of war, revolution, invasion and bombardment, famine and devastation, was littered with mass graves. Many, or rather hundreds of thousands, died during the years when the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia. Their skulls and bones are offered as proof of the "atrocities of the Khmer Rouge". In fact, the vast majority of those who died in the 1970s were victims of war, bombing, famine, and disease.

Michael Vickery in Cambodia 1975-82 explains why no one knows how many Cambodians died during the wars and upheavals of the 1970s. There were no reliable population data before this period. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (The Nation, June 25, 1977) point out that John Barron and Anthony Paul, who wrote the first widely known book accusing the Khmer Rouge, estimated in the genocide, only about 10% of those who died during the tough first year since 1976 were victims of political executions. Vickery's tally, which covers the longer period 1975-79, offers a higher ordinal estimate of the number of execution victims, but he highlights the lack of precision inherent in all data and estimates from this period.

David Chandler, a former US Foreign Service official in Phnom Penh, said the US government estimated that one million Cambodians would starve to death in the year following the US bombings. Then - as hundreds of thousands starved to death - the US media machine announces that this was a "self-genocide" of those who opposed US aggression.

Any serious international tribunal for the Cambodian genocide would have to indict US aggressors Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, General Westmoreland, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, Gerald Ford and everyone else.

The basis of serious analysis

Defenders of capitalist/imperialist society examine the Cambodian experience from their point of view - in terms of defending and justifying capitalist society. In these assessments, the overthrow of the old society is considered a crime in itself. The facts that the upper class elite had to do manual labor under the Khmer Rouge, or that young men and women were encouraged to break with traditional family control, or that the officials of the old society were removed and often punished, are portrayed as atrocities.

It is clear that studies proceeding from these bourgeois positions cannot serve our struggle for liberation. For the oppressed, serious analysis must approach this practice from a completely different perspective, using a completely different standard - in the pursuit of a radical break in traditional ideas and traditional property relations.

In a discussion on Cambodia, Chairman Avakian demanded (Revolution, Fall 1990):

“Break away from these highly repressive and exploitative attitudes and traditions, customs and culture in a way that…is fundamentally based on the masses and comes from the understanding that it is they who must carry out these social transformations. This will not happen purely spontaneously - it is necessary that the masses have the leadership of the vanguard party, but the vanguard party firmly relies on the masses to bring about changes, and does not try to impose from above.

Assessing the experience of the Khmer Rouge is a very complex and difficult problem. Reliable information and analysis is difficult to access and fragmented. But some initial research points out several important questions that should be considered in any serious assessment of the Cambodian experience and the approach of the Communist Party of Kampuchea.

Movement of people
and rebuilding agriculture

The bourgeois press often accuses the Khmer Rouge of atrocities, as they immediately evacuated Phnom Penh, capturing it in April 1975. This evacuation is portrayed as an irrational and brutal "death march".

In fact, the Khmer Rouge had real reason to fear that the US might launch bombing raids on Phnom Penh and its people. The US did this during the Tet Offensive of 1968, when Vietnamese fighters captured parts of Hue and Cholon.

In addition, the huge refugee camps around Phnom Penh only had enough food for a few days. Eight thousand people had already died in the month before the liberation. Hospitals were severely overcrowded, and more than half of the doctors emigrated from the country. This objective situation must be taken into account when evaluating the decision to evacuate Phnom Penh.

At the same time, the line being drawn must be evaluated. The new government of Democratic Kampuchea placed the entire country on an emergency footing - and moved the assembled people to farming settlements or uninhabited forest areas to cultivate rice, build new irrigation systems, rebuild agriculture and roads. Vickery estimates that since the overthrow of Lon Nol, the Khmer Rouge quickly displaced more than 2.5 million people into the countryside.

Undoubtedly, it was a painful process. In many areas, people had to dig up roots and edible plants before the first crop could be harvested. Tools were often lacking and many of the displaced people knew little about cultivating the new land. There were many deaths from starvation and disease.

But the village during the reign of the Khmer Rouge

This process was politically torturous as well - strangers were placed in isolated villages in huge numbers, resources were strained - and sharp conflicts inevitably occurred over who would govern, who would own the land, how food, tools and seed grain would be distributed. .

Vickery reports that a new political classification was envisioned, dividing the population into three categories: full-fledged, candidates, and deposed. “People with full rights were the poor peasants, the lower stratum of the middle peasants and the workers. The candidates were the upper stratum of the middle peasants, wealthy peasants and the petty bourgeoisie; the minority of capitalists and foreigners were overthrown. People associated with Lon Nol officials and police were reportedly classified as deposed.

Vickery writes that this division was often applied in practice, so that "between the 'new' people (evacuees) and the 'old' or 'basic' people... who lived in the revolutionary areas prior to April 1975, there was indeed a working division. This division is all the more significant since even peasants from non-revolutionary areas were classified as overthrown, and in some cases a distinction was made between the overthrowers of the main area (former capitalists or non-Khmers) and the "new" overthrowers from the city. Some sources report that peasant refugees who fled to the cities were sometimes accused of having "deserted" to Lon Nol's side and were therefore treated as political suspects. These reports require further research.

It would be important to better understand the policy of the Khmer Rouge in building a new revolutionary power. Did they create a revolutionary dictatorship of workers and peasants, and what classes did they consider as allies? What was their policy on the slogan "land to the farmer" and on the collectivization of the land? Did they consider it necessary to have a united front led by the proletariat?

Vickery and other sources indicate that redevelopment policies varied enormously from area to area and even between neighboring cities. It would also be important to better understand the reasons for the line differences.

Khmer Rouge

In many cases, these new arrangements had to be introduced from today to tomorrow - with little or no involvement of trained political cadres. What proportion of practical politics stemmed from the spontaneous actions and views of the "basic" peasants? Cambodian villagers harbored a long-standing animosity towards cities and townspeople. Some may have resisted associating with the large number of strangers entering their villages.

To what extent did Angka's organizational and political weaknesses contribute to misguided and unbalanced policies? Vickery and other sources report that the Khmer Rouge's centralized communication of the various areas was extremely weak - and that very different policies were pursued in the seven main Khmer Rouge regions. This suggests that the lack of a strong party organization was a serious problem in this movement.

In order to understand what happened in Cambodia, it is important to appreciate the Pol Pot line that ultimately emerged from the intense internal strife in Angka/CCP after the takeover. As the unified command was consolidated, Angka/CCP tried to quickly abolish all money, the wage system, markets, religion, and private ownership of land and productive forces.

This policy is often referred to in the Western press as "ultraramaoist". But in reality, it is very different from the policy of the New Democratic Revolution, carried out by Mao during the liberation of China. Mao developed a whole theory in which the socialist transition to communism was seen as a long and undulating process of struggle to overcome class society based on the masses.

Vickery says the implementation of this new consolidated policy has coincided with a change in the use of political executions. Until 1977, he writes, capital punishment was used mainly against officers and officials involved in the crimes of the former regime. After 1977, he suggests, the number of executions increased to include more punishments of both "new" and "main" people who came into conflict with new campaigns and new authorities. And again, more research would be needed to assess the truth of such reports, and to understand the extent to which wrong methods were used to impose the policies of the new government.

The problem of nationalism

It is clear that the policy of the Khmer Rouge bore the strong imprint of strong Khmer nationalism. There were undoubtedly attempts to forcibly suppress the language, religion and culture of minor nationalities - such as the Muslim Cham (Cham). The Vietnamese living in Cambodia were reportedly treated very harshly. Vickery's report that national minorities were generally categorized as "overthrown" suggests that such a policy was not limited to local errors.

Such narrow nationalism may also have played a role in the alliance between the Khmer Rouge and those following the capitalist path in China. During the years of the guerrilla war, the Khmer Rouge movement developed close ties with Maoist China. But in September 1976, a year after the CCP came to power, Mao Zedong died and his close allies were arrested in a counter-revolutionary coup. In September 1977, Pol Pot traveled to China in his first public appearance and, on behalf of the CCP and the DC government, embraced China's new reactionary leaders.

The bourgeois press often associates Pol Pot with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that Mao led in China - but in fact, Pol Pot associated with forces like Deng Xiaoping, who overthrew the Maoist forces and reversed the Cultural Revolution.

Khmer Rouge leader Comrade Pol Pot

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge held all power in Cambodia for three short years. The internal struggle between Pol Pot and the CCP forces in Cambodia's eastern region escalated into an open military struggle - which Vietnam used as a pretext to invade Cambodia and install a new allied government. The Khmer Rouge were pushed back into the rural core areas in western Cambodia - where they still exist as a military force. At that time, part of the population openly fought to defend the government of Democratic Kampuchea - and in later years, a significant part of the population supported Pol Pot for his incorruptible reputation, his identification with the peasants, and his relentless struggle against foreign domination.

Government of the Khmer Rouge

led by Pol Pot goes back to the partisans

Any revolutionary critique of Pol Pot requires a much deeper examination of the events and politics of this complex experience. Meanwhile, the recent trial of Pol Pot in the jungle appears to be an attempt by forces among the Khmer Rouge to make themselves acceptable to a faction in the Cambodian government and to the world's imperialist powers.

Pol Pot drove the US imperialists out of Cambodia. And that's why they hate him. By vilifying Pol Pot, the US is trying to put an end to all dreams of changing society - to declare that the communist revolution and even national independence for the oppressed countries should be rejected and condemned. They cannot be allowed to do this.

During the Cold War, the US authorities and intelligence agencies resorted to new tricks. For example, they themselves created pseudo-communist regimes to split and discredit the socialist bloc.

On the one hand, on the other hand, the militarists built an alliance with China in every possible way and turned it against the USSR. So the United States had an ally in the socialist camp.

And the real pseudo-communist regime was the regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia

In 1969, a coup d'état took place, as a result of which the head of state, Norodom Sihanouk, was removed from power.

South Vietnamese and American troops appeared in the country.

This caused dissatisfaction among the Cambodians, and the Khmer Rouge took advantage of this, starting, relying on China, an active armed struggle. For some time they enjoyed quite serious support from the population, and in 1975 they came to power.

Cambodia

One of the horror stories of the 20th century, sometimes used to justify international violence, is the story of the Cambodian Pol Pot.

"Pol Pot" sounds very similar to "Phnom Penh", the name of the capital of Cambodia, but it's a pseudonym, and a completely European one. It's short for "Potential Politics". Every politician must be able to see the potential and turn the possible into reality. Yes, everyone should be able to do this!

Pol Pot came to power in Cambodia in 1976, and in 1979 the Vietnamese army entered Cambodia and overthrew him. The world community was presented with photographs depicting the crimes of Pol Pot.
Democratic Kampuchea was a partially recognized state - it was recognized by the People's Republic of China, Albania and the DPRK.

The USSR at first de facto recognized the revolutionary government of the Khmer Rouge, and Pol Pot made an official visit to Moscow. Despite the fact that during the revolution the Soviet embassy was destroyed, and the diplomats were preparing to be shot, the USSR embassy was later evacuated.

Pol Pot

In the future, Democratic Kampuchea was not ranked among the socialist countries or countries of socialist orientation in the USSR.
Democratic Kampuchea was almost completely isolated from the outside world. Full diplomatic contacts were maintained only with China, Albania and North Korea, partial - with Romania, France and Yugoslavia.

The essence of the regime came to light later, and at first in the West, the Khmer Rouge regime was called communist, like in other socialist countries, and was criticized mainly for the murder of British journalist Malcolm Caldwell in Kampuchea in 1978.

Nevertheless, irritated by the recent victory of Vietnam, the Western countries considered the pro-Chinese-minded Pol Pot regime as a counterbalance to the expansion of Vietnam (and its main ally, the USSR), therefore, without establishing formal diplomatic relations with the regime, they considered it the only legitimate regime in Cambodia even after the overthrow of the power of Pol Pot.

It was the Pol Potites who represented Cambodia at the UN (since 1982 - formally as part of the "coalition government of Democratic Kampuchea", English Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea) until the creation of a transitional administration under the auspices of the UN in 1992.

Horror

Firstly, the number - out of the seven million population, either a million or three died.

Secondly, the quality is completely irrational, the cities were destroyed, the economy was abolished, some kind of direct group insanity and suicide. And this is the country of meek Buddhists!

Yes, if such satanic potentials are hidden in people, an international gendarme is needed, and the more gendarme, the better!

The Pol Potites are compared to a totalitarian sect whose leaders possess some kind of supernatural hypnotizing abilities, so there is only one way out - death to them!
The good news is that Cambodians have a very bad reputation among the surrounding nations - vindictive and vicious people.

A modern tourist from Russia does not even suspect this.
So a modern American, coming to Russia, sees an unfortunate country whose population suffered terribly from communism.

He does not know what Chechens and Ukrainians think about these sufferers, and which of these sufferers was an executioner in communist times - and the executioners are alive, alive, they have top-notch medical care.

People go to Cambodia to see the famous Angkor Wat - a gigantic temple city, in comparison with which Hagia Sophia or Cologne Cathedral are just toys. So after all, Angkor Wat is a monument to a huge and by no means bloodless empire.

Of course, this is thousands of years old. In the present, for a Cambodian - more precisely, for a Khmer - murder is the greatest sin. And in parallel there is the concept of the greatest shame. A humiliated person should not only take revenge on the offender - he must make sure that he can no longer harm him.

Ideally, to exterminate all the relatives of the offender. This is called "phchankh phchal", analogous to the Russian designation for the victory over Hitler: "complete and final surrender." Boon Chan Mol described this in terms of boxing:

“If a person knocks down an opponent, he will not calmly stand by. On the contrary, he ... will beat the enemy until he loses consciousness, and maybe even dies. … Otherwise, the loser, in turn, will not accept defeat” (Quoted in Lifton, 2004, 69).

This is completely contrary to modern European ideas about "fair play". This also contradicts Cambodian notions of fair play, to be sure.
But honesty is honesty, and life is life - or should I say death is death? Is it necessary to give examples of how impeccably honest aristocrats at the card table or on the golf course calmly deceived "strangers"? By the way, historians agree that in 1863 the French deceived the Cambodian king into agreeing to a protectorate - he did not really understand what it was. But the Czechs were very understanding when Hitler in 1938 declared the Czech Republic a "protectorate of Bohemia."

Did the French occupation matter for the tragedy of Cambodia? And for the tragedy of Vietnam?

European colonialism has one thing in common: under the talk of the need to "civilize", they hindered development. This is called paternalism: under the pretext of education, to mutilate a child, turning him into an infantile sadomasochist for life.

By the way, more often this is done in relation to their own child, not to someone else. God bless the French - in France itself, freedoms have flourished and are flourishing. But in Russia, for example, under communist slogans, this is how they mutilated each other. As Nestor the Chronicler would sarcastically add, "even to this day."

The French, by the way, forced King Norodom I to declare Christianity instead of Buddhism as the state religion of Cambodia.

According to the American historian Ben Kernan (who created the center for the study of the Cambodian genocide at Yale University), the French “mummified” the country, fencing it off from external influences, especially from Vietnamese and communist. Archaic monarchy, archaic social structure and archaic economy. As a result, Cambodia gained independence primarily due to the victory of the Vietnamese communists over the French troops.

By the way, it is the French - French archaeologists - that the peasants of Cambodia owe their troubles under Pol Pot.

The fact is that these scholars suggested that the heyday of Cambodia (of which Ankhgor Wat became a monument) was the result of skillful irrigation organized by the state.

Pol Pot knew this theory and tried to put it into practice. He did not ruin agriculture, he improved it. I did not feel the difference between theory and truth. But is it only dictators who make such mistakes?

The French are not the first and, unfortunately, not the last "progressors" in the history of Cambodia. In 1953, the country became independent, but the king (Norodom II Sihanouk, the great-nephew of the former) also treated the people quite paternally. As a result, even in comparison with Vietnam, Cambodia was a very backward country. In a peasant country, the cell of society was the family, and not the village community, as in Vietnam.

Most of the peasants did not even remember the names of their grandfathers. Rural Cambodia and urban Cambodia differed not only economically, but even ethnically: the cities were dominated by Vietnamese and Chinese. Thanks to the French, the traditional system of schools run by Buddhist monks was dilapidated, and a new system was not created.

True, universities appeared under Norodom II, but at the same time the impoverishment of the peasantry began. In 1950, there were 4% of landless peasants in Cambodia, in 1970 - 20%.

And these 20% were ready to deal with the remaining 80% in the name of justice and goodness. “The Communist Party of Cambodia in 1954 consisted predominantly of peasants, Buddhists, moderates and pro-Vietnamese people. By 1970 it was run by French-educated urbanites, anti-Vietnamese radicals” (Kiernan, 1998, 14).

Yes, Pol Pot hated the Vietnamese - he even hated the Khmers who came into contact with the Vietnamese, and this is a whole million inhabitants of South Vietnam. The Vietnamese liberating Cambodia from the monster is a beautiful picture. Only the monster came to power, among other things, thanks to the support of the Vietnamese.

Pleasures of the regime

In 1970, Norodom was overthrown by an even more conservative and, most importantly, pro-American general. A classic example of the "good son of a bitch".

What did the Americans need in Cambodia? Vietnamese! The Americans fought against the communist, northern Vietnam, and fought so hard that the Vietnamese fled to Cambodia. What was even more outrageous - from the point of view of American generals - Cambodian peasants were selling rice to the Vietnamese. This had to be stopped.

Stalin in 1928-1933 starved to death millions of Ukrainians and Russians. Mao starved to death 13 million Chinese in 1959-1961 alone. And how many Cambodians died from American bombings? It is enough that the Cambodians hated the cities - they bombed the Cambodian villages, and in the cities there was a regime that did not protest against these bombings and considered their help in the fight against the communists.

To the credit of the Americans, they are trying to find out how much evil they have done. The bill goes to hundreds of thousands, at least. In any case, already in 1966, the king spoke of hundreds of thousands of dead. Kernan's conclusion:

“Never would have come to power if Cambodia had not been destabilized – economically and militarily – by the United States. This destabilization began in 1966 when America invaded neighboring Vietnam and peaked in 1969-1973 with US B-52 carpet bombing of Cambodia. This was perhaps the main factor in Pol Pot's success."

“Economic destabilization” is fig. Thanks to the policy of the king, in the mid-1960s, Cambodian farmers began to collect record harvests of rice.

For the first time since 1955, rice exports began. For an agricultural country, this was the beginning of prosperity.

And then the Vietnam War began. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese stopped sowing and started shooting, and the peasants of Cambodia sold rice to both warring parties - to sell without paying taxes, the border was close at hand and it was the border of a warring country. No taxes, no prosperity.

However, what money and smuggling! American intelligence agencies organized 1835 raids on the territory of Cambodia, to a depth of 30 kilometers - they were special forces dressed as "Viet Cong". The operation was named poetically - "Daniel Boone". Only the legendary Boone planted trees, and these killed (“terrorized”) the peasants. The goal was the same as that of the bombing - to deprive the Vietnamese soldiers of at least a temporary shelter.

The bombings were stopped by the US Congress in 1973. In 2000, the US president, visiting Vietnam, declassified bombing data as a sign of reconciliation - to facilitate the search for unexploded bombs.

The figure turned out to be more than previously thought - yes, Cambodia had 2,756,941 tons of bombs, a quarter of a million sorties, more than a hundred thousand bombed villages. Not kilograms, but tons, half of them - 1073 in the last six months. Of course, the death rate from bombing is not as high as the bombers would like, but napalm was still used ...

The most remarkable - and little known - that the United States supported the Pol Pot regime. The old imperial principle of "divide and rule" is to play the Cambodian communists against the Vietnamese. Capitalist America behaved exactly like communist Vietnam - for Cambodia against Vietnam.

As Kissinger put it about the Pol Pot regime:

"The Chinese though to use Cambodia against Vietnam ... We don't like Cambodia, whose government is in many ways worse than the Vietnamese, but we prefer to see her independent."

Pol Pot was supported by China and the United States until he was overthrown by the Vietnamese. In 1984, Deng Xiaoping stated:

“I don’t understand why some people want to kill Pol Pot. He made some mistakes in the past, but now he is leading the fight against the Vietnamese aggressors.”

China in the 1980s annually gave Pol Pot's people $100 million.

The USA is less, from 17 to 32 million.

While the Vietnamese occupied Cambodia (until 1989), the US blocked aid to the Cambodians from international organizations, demanding that the money go to the "legitimate government" in the jungle to Pol Pot.

The CIA officially stated that in 1977-1979 Pol Pot did not kill people, that there were only half a million victims (yes, half a million is a more familiar figure than one and a half million, although the difference, of course, is not qualitative).

So the widespread myth that at the time of the tragedy no one knew what was happening in Cambodia is a lie. They knew it very well, but they covered it.

It was the United States that insisted that Pol Pot's men represented Cambodia at the UN. In the 2000s, the US government refused to participate in the financing of the trial of the still living Pol Pot leaders. No matter how they began to emphasize that in the 1980s, American "military advisers" helped them.

Pol Pot killed, apparently, not as many people as they sometimes write in the yellow press. Not three million, but one and a half, not half the population, but a fifth. On the eve of his victory in the country, 7.7 million people, after the victory over him - 6 or 6.7 million.

Is it fair to put Pol Pot's crimes in the "Black Book of Communism"? But are the Vietnamese who liberated the Cambodians from Pol Pot also communists?

Ideologically, Pol Pot was just as far from communism. His main ideal was quite Platonic (unfortunately, not Platonic) - a strong state.

The vertical of power was brought to the maximum - which, in fact, led to the collapse of Pol Pot. People just stopped obeying. Therefore, the invasion of Vietnam was unsuccessful, and the retaliatory intervention of the Vietnamese met with almost no resistance.

The destruction of cities, which is very strange for Europeans, is explained precisely by the desire to eliminate any possibility of opposition. This is where the deep role of cities emerges - policies, burgs, etc. in the liberation of man. This is, first of all, not an economic role, but an informational one.

US intelligence agent

So, Pol Pot is not a protege of the USSR at all, but of transnational forces and the United States. Moreover, judging by the positive policy, it was Henry Kissinger who oversaw it.

Pol Pot was originally his henchman in a difficult game. Like the genocide in Rwanda, this is the development of methods of mind control and population reduction.
This version is confirmed by other studies. Thus, the American historian and journalist J. Anderson, based on data from the early 1990s. claimed that
« The CIA… supports the remnants of the Pol Pot gangs”.

Other foreign sources also report that “under pressure from the United States, the international organization World Food Program in the mid-1990s handed over to Thailand products worth 12 million dollars specifically for the Khmer Rouge, responsible for the destruction of 2.5 million people in 4 years of Pol Pot board (1975-1978).

In addition, America, Germany and Sweden are supplying Pol Pot followers with weapons through Thailand and Singapore.” These data and opinions are also not refuted by anyone ...

But in fact: Pol Pot in 1979-1998, until his death - that is, almost 20 years - was not somewhere, but ... at the former US CIA base in the inaccessible region of the Cambodian-Thai border, in fact, on the rights of extraterritoriality ( !).

And, we emphasize, there was not a single attempt by the new authorities of Cambodia to seize either this area, or at least Pol Pot himself. And for some reason, the West had no desire to betray this figure even to the Hague Tribunal...
Pol Pot's detachments, which ended up on Thai territory since the 1980s, while terrorizing Cambodia, did not obey either the laws or the troops of Thailand.

And this, we note, is many thousands of thugs, armed with American weapons. Moreover, in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, the United States, Thailand and China jointly supported Pol Pot's "Democratic Kampuchea" in the UN, preventing post-Pol Pot Cambodia from joining this structure.
With the fall of the Jiang Qing faction and the simultaneous return to power of Deng Xiaoping, Pol Pot returned to the post of prime minister. And soon, from November 1976, a new massacre of opponents of this figure began in Kampuchea. And since December 1976, the supply of American weapons to the Pol Pot regime through Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia began to increase.

The connections of Pol Pot and a number of his “comrades-in-arms” with the US CIA are noted, for example For example, in the book of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam "The Vietnam-Kampuchea conflict: A Historical Record" (Hanoi, Foreign languages ​​publishing House, 1979).

According to some Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian researchers, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai (Prime Minister of the PRC in 1949-1975) since the autumn of 1975 sought to remove Pol Pot from the leadership of the then Cambodia and take him to the PRC. In their opinion, many of Pol Pot's actions discredited socialism and China.
However, this intention of the PRC leaders was resisted not only by Deng Xiaoping (until April 1976, the third most powerful and influential figure in the ruling hierarchy of then China), but also by influential structures in Thailand and in the West, especially in the United States.

Henry Kissinger and Deng Xiao Ping, USA and China together supported the Pol Pot regime

But the American media in the 1980s were often “full of” reports about the “heroism” of Pol Pot in the fight against Vietnamese “hegemonism”, as well as the fact that an increasing number of Cambodians sympathize with Pol Pot’s “freedom fighters”.

Alas, if even Pol Pot was an "agent of influence" of the world government - the Bilderberg Club, then what can we say about many figures from the Western countries, whom Daniel Estulin mentions in his book? ..

The choice of location does not seem to be accidental: the financial and economic situation in Spain is close to that of Greece, there are calls in the country to return the national currency and, in general, "remember the experience of caudillo Franco."

That is, the national-oriented policy of the late 1930s and mid-1970s, as a result of which Spain was not a member of NATO and the European Union, we emphasize, until the mid-1980s ...

Results
For 4 years, the Khmer Rouge pursued a course of "one hundred percent pure socialist revolution" and the construction of a classless society.

Private property, religion, commodity-money relations, and most importantly, all those who were associated with the previous regime - entrepreneurs, intellectuals, clergy were subject to complete destruction. As a result, during their reign, the Khmer Rouge killed 1,700,000 people.

Meanwhile, experts still disagree on who is responsible for what happened in Cambodia in the 70s.

A report from the first meeting of the trial of "Comrade Dud" on March 31 was published in the Cambodian newspaper Phnom Pen Post. Its author is a well-known military journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker who made a film about the events in Cambodia (Zero Year: The Silent Death of Cambodia, 1979) John Pilger.

Pol Pot overthrew not the democratic West that covered him, but the socialist Vietnam, which did not recognize the criminal regime of Pol Pot

Soldiers of the Vietnamese army on captured M-113 armored personnel carriers in Kampuchea.

Pilger, in particular, claims that on the eve of the Khmer Rouge coming to power, American bombers killed 600,000 Cambodians, and after the overthrow of the Khmers who came to power, their supporters in exile were supported by the British authorities.

The memory of the tragic events of 30 years ago is still alive in Cambodia.

"At the hotel where I stayed in Phnom Penh, women and children sat on one side of the room, men on the other, respecting the rules of etiquette. There was a festive atmosphere," says Pilger.

But suddenly people rushed to the windows, crying. Turns out the DJ played a song by Sin Sisamut, the famous singer who, under Pol Pot's regime, was forced to dig his own grave and sing the Khmer Rouge anthem before he was executed. I met many more reminders of those distant events.

Once, while traveling through the village of Neak Leung (on the Mekong River, southeast of the capital of Kmbodia), I passed through a field dotted with funnels. I met a man who seemed to be beside himself with grief. His entire family, 13 people, were destroyed by American B-52 bombs. This happened in 1973, two years before Pol Pot came to power. According to some estimates, 600,000 Cambodians died in the same way."

says in Pilger's material.

Companions of Pol Pot who died in battle

The only problem with the UN-backed Phnom Penh case against former Khmer Rouge leaders is that it only tries the killers of Sin Sisamut, not the killers of the Neak Leung family, Pilger said. In his opinion, the "Cambodian Holocaust" took place in three stages. The genocide by Paul Pot is one of them. And only he survived in history.

But Pol Pot would not have been able to come to power if Henry Kissinger had not launched a military offensive in Cambodia.

In 1973, American B-52 bombers fired more bombs into central Cambodia than they did into Japan during World War II, Pilger claims.
Some research proves that the American command was aware of the political consequences of these bombings.

"The damage caused by B-52 fighters is the focus of [Khmer Rouge] propaganda," the commander of the operation reported on May 2, 1973. "This strategy allowed for the recruitment of a large number of young people and was effective among the refugees (forced to leave their villages)," he added.

The Pol Pot regime fell in 1979 when Vietnamese troops took over the country and the Khmer Rouge lost Chinese support.
The British Special Air Service (SAS) trained the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s, says John Pilger.

“Neither Margaret Thatcher nor her ministers and senior officials, who are now retired, will be at the trial. They led the third stage of the Cambodian Holocaust, supporting the Khmer Rouge after they were expelled from Cambodia by the Vietnamese.

In 1979, the United States and Great Britain imposed a trade embargo on an agonizing Cambodia, as the Vietnamese that had liberated it found themselves in the wrong camp during the Cold War. Few campaigns run by the British Foreign Office have reached this level of cynicism," says Pilger.

All these facts must be investigated and made public, the expert believes.

The crimes committed in Cambodia from April 17, 1975 to January 6, 1979 by the Khmer Rouge regime were already condemned in August 1979 by the People's Revolutionary Tribunal, supported by Vietnam and other countries of the communist bloc, the Phnom Pen Post notes. Pol Pot and Ieng Sari (second-in-command in the Khemra Rouge government) were convicted and sentenced to death in absentia. However, this verdict was not recognized by the international community.

Other opinions about what happened in Cambodia on the air of Radio Liberty were expressed by Vice President of Radio Free Asia Dan Sutherland and Director of the Genocide Research Program at Yale University Ben Kiernan.

Radio Free Asia Vice President Dan Sutherland said: "The Khmer Rouge believed that a number of countries were trying to stage a coup against them.

They went so far as to start killing even their own cadres, and at a fairly high level, because they suspected them of having links with the CIA, the KGB and the Vietnamese communists. Some of those killed have received accusations that they work for all these services combined," the expert said.

It was one of the most mass exterminations of people in the twentieth century.

And I still think about it, I go to Cambodia twice a year, I talk to people... Every Cambodian I meet has lost relatives, and in the most terrible way. And if we talk about the trial, then now all this information that they tried to hide will become known to people. It seems that the trial will still take place, and perhaps it will give the Cambodians at least some sense of justice. Although it took an unreasonably long time to organize this court," Sutherland said.

Ben Kiernan, director of the Genocide Research Program at Yale University, told RS about why it took so long to condemn the genocide in Cambodia:
“Cambodia was a victim of the Cold War in the sense that politics determined the relationship to law. The United States at that moment pursued the main goal - to form an alliance with China in order to resist the Soviet Union.

For Cambodia, this meant the following. The United States could not support the Vietnamese troops who entered Cambodia and stopped the Khmer Rouge genocide because the Khmer Rouge was backed by China. Moreover, China supported them in the United Nations.

And it is curious that the representative of the Khmer Rouge represented the country in the UN until 1993, although the Pol Pot regime was no longer in power. In practice, this meant that they could resist the trial of themselves," Kiernan said.

As a result, the US militarists with China set up an inhuman experiment on the inhabitants of Cambodia, interrupted only by socialist Vietnam.

But until now, this Pol Pot regime is unfairly considered socialist.