Khmer Rouge—Worse than the Worst
Imagine a regime that tries to kill all the educators in the countries so that the people become dumb and obedient. It is not a joke made by a pesky kid who hates school, but a part of modern history in Cambodia that still plagues the country today. On April 17, 1975, the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK, also known by the public as the Khmer Rouge), a former guerrilla made its way out of the jungle and started a four-year bloody ruling that turned Cambodia into something worse than hell. The Capital city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, once known as the “Pearl of Asia”, had a population of 3 million before was made into the Cambodian version of Silent Hill overnight—thousands of teachers, doctors and scholars were executed, the rest were evacuated to labour camps in rural Cambodia and died of starvation or overwork.
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA Ieng Sary, who co-founded Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge movement in the 1970s, served as its public face abroad and decades later became one of its few leaders to face justice for the deaths of well over a million people, died Thursday morning. He was 87.
His death came during the course of his trial with two other former Khmer Rouge leaders by a joint Cambodian-international tribunal. Lars Olsen, a spokesman for the tribunal, confirmed his death.
Ieng Sary founded the Khmer Rouge with leader Pol Pot, his brother-in-law. The communist regime, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, claimed it was building a pure socialist society by evicting people from cities to work in labor camps in the countryside. Its radical policies led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution.
The Khmer Rogue came to power through a civil war that toppled a U.S.-backed regime. Ieng Sary then helped persuade hundreds of Cambodian intellectuals to return home from overseas, often to their deaths.
The returnees were arrested and put in “re-education camps,” and most were later executed, said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group gathering evidence of the Khmer Rouge crimes for the tribunal.
As a member of the Khmer Rouge’s central and standing committee, Ieng Sary “repeatedly and publicly encouraged, and also facilitated, arrests and executions within his Foreign Ministry and throughout Cambodia,” Steve Heder said in his co-authored book “Seven Candidates for Prosecution: Accountability for the Crimes of the Khmer Rouge.” Heder is a Cambodia scholar who later worked with the U.N.-backed tribunal.
Known by his revolutionary alias as “Comrade Van,” Ieng Sary was a recipient of many internal Khmer Rouge documents detailing torture and mass execution of suspected internal enemies, according to the Documentation Center of Cambodia.
”We are continuing to wipe out remaining (internal enemies) gradually, no matter if they are opposed to our revolution overtly or covertly,” read a cable sent to Ieng Sary in 1978. It was reprinted in an issue of the center’s magazine in 2000, apparently proving he had full knowledge of bloody purges.
Khmmer Rouge: A Interview with Pol Pot
Pol Pot’s Interview with Yugoslav Journalists
Phnom Penh home Service 2300 gmt 20 Mar 1978. Text of report of interview given on 17th March by the Cambodian Premier, Pol Pot, to a visiting Yugoslav press delegation {read by announcers].
At 0830 on 17th March 1978 at the state guest house, Comrade Pal Pot, Secretary of the CPK Central Committee and Premier of the Democratic Cambodian Government, received and answered questions in an interview with the Yugoslav pressdelegation which is now on a visit to Democratic Cambodia.
First of all, our Comrade Party Secretary said to the journalists from the friendly country: We are very pleased with the Yugoslav press delegation’s visit to our country. The visit of our comrade Yugoslav journalists will further strengthen the ties of friendship between our two peoples and countries. Like our Democratic Cambodia, Yugoslavia is a non-aligned country which has ad’aered to the position of preserving independence. Friendship between our two countries is therefore based on the same principle. We have always esteemed and respected Comrade President Tito and the friendly Yugoslav people. Comrade President Tito and the Yugoslav people have always supported and helped us. We have sympathy for them and wish to express our thanks to Comrade President Tito and the friendly Yugoslav people. In 1950, i went to Yugoslavia to work in a work unit in the Zagreb area. I have sympathy for President Tito and the Yugoslav people. Comrades, you come to
our country as friends.
our country as friends.
Now we would like to answer your questions.
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