Written by: Louisa Steijger
10/03/2023
Content Warning: This post contains discussions of war, death, violence and destruction.
The Khmer Rouge’s dark reign in Cambodia (Kampuchea), under the totalitarian leadership of Pol Pot, between 1975 and 1979 remains a haunting chapter in history, characterised by unparalleled brutality and the systematic extermination of c.1.7 million people through execution, forced labour, torture, mass killings, and involuntary displacement. But what drove this regime to inflict such unimaginable suffering?
Before we can answer this question, it is crucial to establish an understanding of the Khmer Rouge, which emerged as a prominent entity in the late 1960s. Also referred to as the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), the Khmer Rouge originated from the dense forests of Eastern Cambodia. Bolstered by support from various factions including the Viet Cong, the North Vietnamese Army, the Pathet Lao, and the Chinese Communist Party, the CPK forged a political alliance with the ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk, employing a guerrilla warfare campaign against Prime Minister Lon Nol who had taken power in a 1970 US-backed coup. This collaboration marked the beginning of the Khmer Rouge’s rapid ascent to power in which they progressively seized control of rural Cambodia, leveraging the turmoil of the political landscape to cultivate a substantial support base. Amidst a volatile environment, the Khmer Rouge capitalised on their momentum, culminating in the seizure of Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, and the subsequent consolidation of absolute authority.
The foundation of the Khmer Rouge’s extremism can be traced back to Cambodia’s turbulent history of colonialism and postcolonial struggles. A legacy of foreign rule, marked by unequal power dynamics and subjugation, fuelled a deep-seated sentiment of historical humiliation among Cambodians. The French Protectorate, established in 1864, played a critical role in constructing this legacy of humiliation by introducing a hierarchical social system that subjugated the Cambodian majority while simultaneously privileging the French elites as well as the Chinese and Vietnamese minorities. The psychological impact of enduring foreign rule, built on the unequal distribution of power and the manufactured inferiority of Cambodians, produced significant anti-foreign and anti-capitalist sentiment. These ideologies increased the susceptibility of portions of Cambodia to extremism and created a social context ripe for the radical ideologies of the Khmer Rouge, who offered a postcolonial pathway of liberation and Cambodian empowerment. This idea prompts us to consider whether, without this history of national humiliation, the Khmer Rouge would have been able to inflict such widespread harm. While there is no answer to this question, rather mere speculation, an analysis of the historical experience of colonialism and the postcolonial influences reveals the vulnerabilities of Cambodians that made them more receptive to the radicalisation of Khmer ideology that aimed to restore Cambodia’s greatness.
Moreover, Cambodia’s postcolonial era was marred by political instability, exacerbated by Cold War rivalries and external interventions. The departure of the French colonial power in 1953 created a power vacuum transforming the nation into a pawn within the greater Cold War struggle. It is important to note that Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, has become an ideological battleground for the United States (capitalist) and Soviet Union (communist) superpowers. In the early 1970s, this battleground spilled over into Cambodia causing the US, under President Nixon’s leadership, to intervene in the nation by disrupting North Vietnamese fighters and their use of strategic trade routes in the eastern borders of Cambodia. This intervention was part of the US’s wider foreign policy centred on the containment of Communism, which was used to justify the carpet bombing of the Cambodian countryside (Operation Menu) to destroy the supposed Vietnamese Communist threat. The US, to some extent, facilitated the rise of the Khmer Rouge; their prioritising of containment over the lives of Cambodia’s rural population stoked anti-foreign sentiment and the devasting consequences of the US bombing campaigns became an integral part of Khmer Rouge propaganda, heightening the radicalisation of Cambodian society. Furthermore, the US-backed coup in 1970, which toppled Prince Norodom Sihanouk, had plunged Cambodia into further chaos. The alignment with foreign powers and the repression of dissent fuelled disillusionment among the populace, particularly the rural population. Thus, the Khmer Rouge seized upon this discontent, positioning themselves as the representatives of a true Cambodian identity and promising to rid the nation of foreign influences. Internally, historical humiliation and political instability created significant disillusionment among a large portion of the population. This disillusionment was compounded by the international climate of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and US intervention, which collectively created an environment that necessitated change, which the Khmer Rouge offered.
The Khmer Rouge positioned themselves at the centre of this change, offering a trajectory to restore Cambodia to its previous greatness. In reality, the Khmer Rouge’s ideology was one of radicalism and totalitarianism, rooted in a distorted form of Maoism and Marxist communism, that was employed to justify the regime’s total control and subsequent terror and atrocities. Their extreme ideology manifested in the implementation of ‘Year Zero’; this radical agenda aimed to erase all existing historical hierarchical power structures and rebuild Cambodia as an agrarian utopia, free from class distinctions and foreign influences. In this way, the Khmer Rouge’s ideology can be seen as a transposition of French Orientalism, in which the Khmer Rouge sought to portray everything Cambodian as the anthesis of everything European: collectivistic rather than individualistic, self-sufficient rather than capitalist, rural rather than urban. This ideological extremism justified the regime’s draconian policies and laid the groundwork for mass atrocities in pursuit of a classless society.
One key element of the Khmer Rouge’s ideology was the total rejection of urbanism and the idealisation of an agrarian lifestyle. This philosophy stemmed from the KR association of the bourgeoise with urban areas, perceiving them as the epicentres of capitalist foreign influences that were incompatible with the Khmer Rouge’s interpretation of Marxist communism and their vision to eradicate class distinctions. The evacuation of cities and the forced displacement of the urban population to the countryside resulted in the systematic dismantling of urban communities, the separation of families, and the ultimate erosion of the traditional fabric of Khmer society. As part of the wider agenda of collectivisation, the urban population were forced to assume a peasant lifestyle working the land in which they were denied their most basic human needs. The Khmer Rouge’s ruthless devotion to achieving their vision of a classless agrarian commune led to widespread suffering in which many workers were worked to death and starvation became widespread.
A critical component of the Khmer Rouge’s ideological vision was the deep-seated belief in the need to ‘purge’ all perceived obstacles to their regime to allow the KR to assert total control and power over everyday life. These obstacles included religion, knowledge, and education as well as ‘social groups’ that did not conform to the Khmer way of life. The Khmer Rouge sought to eradicate intellectuals, elites, and ethnic minorities such as the Chinese, Vietnamese and Muslim Chams, who were perceived to be potential transmitters of anti-revolutionary rhetoric and thus were a threat to be eliminated as their very existence undermined the very classless, agrarian society that the Khmer Rouge sought to achieve. The immense purges that swept across Cambodian society created an environment of immeasurable paranoia in which the KR began to target and harm thousands of people based on the simple suspicion that they were or could become enemies of the state. The environment of paranoia and suspicion within the Khmer Rouge extended even to its own ranks, creating an atmosphere of constant fear in which KR cadres themselves were purged, sent alongside their families as well as other individuals who were perceived a threat, to prisons where they were tortured into confessing further individuals for the regime to target and purge. The most famous of these prisons was S-21 in Tuol Sleng, over 15,000 people were sent to S-21 of this number only seven survived, and the remaining deceased victims were transported to the Killing Fields (mass grave sites) outside of Phnom Penh.
The motivations behind the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities are multifaceted, entrenched in a complex interplay of historical grievances, ideological extremism, and a relentless quest for power. The deep-rooted historical humiliation, struggles for independence, US intervention, and unstable internal political climate, created a breeding ground for the Khmer Rouge’s radical and extremist ideologies in Cambodia. However, historical humiliation alone does not hold the capacity to underpin the extermination of one-fifth of Cambodia’s population. Instead, their motivations are encapsulated in the Khmer Rouge’s ideological pursuit of an egalitarian and classless utopia. Their insatiable thirst for power and commitment to attaining the regime’s vision of restoring Cambodia to its pre-colonial greatness, regardless of the human toll, became the driving force behind the Khmer Rouge’s reprehensible draconian policies. Ultimately, the legacy of the Khmer Rouge serves as a chilling reminder of the dangers of extremism and the fragility of human civilisation.
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Featured Image Credit: Khmer Rouge, History, https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/the-khmer-rouge
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