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A History of Democratic Kampuchea 1975 - 1979
Chapters Who were The Khmer Rouge? How Did They Gain Power? - The Khmer Rouge Come to Power - The Formation of the Democratic Kampuchea Government - Administrative Divisions of Democratic Kampuchea - The Four-Year Plan - Daily Life - The Security System - Office S-21 - Foreign Relations - The Fall of Democratic Kampuchea. Plus appendix and bibliography.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
75 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2007
30 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 7, 2016
Four stars for an introductory, or overview type book looking at the history of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979.
This is a magazine sized publication, with a lot of photographs (often poor quality, understandable given the situation), which is aimed at high school aged children. Even so, it is not a straight forward history, with the a number of contradictions - noting that this is not a criticism of the book or the writing, just the confusing and contradictory way the Khmer Rouge leadership devastated the Cambodian people.
This is a magazine sized publication, with a lot of photographs (often poor quality, understandable given the situation), which is aimed at high school aged children. Even so, it is not a straight forward history, with the a number of contradictions - noting that this is not a criticism of the book or the writing, just the confusing and contradictory way the Khmer Rouge leadership devastated the Cambodian people.
November 20, 2018
A brief history of Democratic Kampuchea during their short stint between 1975-1979 before. A short but very impactful years for the Cambodians during that time, and even until now.
A good book for a starter who love to know more about the Khmer Rouge era, be it at any age range. As stated by the author & his team in this book, this project mainly targeting their local high school students for their educational purposes, namely the new generation. It also can be a helpful source for the adults too, as there a many more list of books and articles in the bibliography section that can be referred to for further studies.
The drawback for this book personally, the author not try to elaborate heavily the 'why' factor behind all those maniac act by the Khmer Rouge regime during that time. This book discussed more issues regarding to the what, who, when and the how things only.
Other than that, the footnote features is a clear plus for an additional informations. But to put it all together at the end of the book, instead of at the bottom of the respective pages, can be quite a hindrance sometimes. Some of the pages printed out that has a color defect also shows the lack of attention granted by the publisher.
All in all, a good book for all of us to take some good lesson to. So we can really evaluate ourselves, whether this communist system is a good political system or not for all of us human being.
A good book for a starter who love to know more about the Khmer Rouge era, be it at any age range. As stated by the author & his team in this book, this project mainly targeting their local high school students for their educational purposes, namely the new generation. It also can be a helpful source for the adults too, as there a many more list of books and articles in the bibliography section that can be referred to for further studies.
The drawback for this book personally, the author not try to elaborate heavily the 'why' factor behind all those maniac act by the Khmer Rouge regime during that time. This book discussed more issues regarding to the what, who, when and the how things only.
Other than that, the footnote features is a clear plus for an additional informations. But to put it all together at the end of the book, instead of at the bottom of the respective pages, can be quite a hindrance sometimes. Some of the pages printed out that has a color defect also shows the lack of attention granted by the publisher.
All in all, a good book for all of us to take some good lesson to. So we can really evaluate ourselves, whether this communist system is a good political system or not for all of us human being.
March 22, 2024
I bought this book from one of the survivors when I stretched out Cambodia’s darkest history at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. On my last day of the Vietnam and Cambodia holidays, I also spent two hours probing further at Cheung Ek—the killing fields. Still, I could not clarify many questions until I read this 100+ pages of the book.
The Document Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam) published the second edition in 2020. This book is intended for all Cambodians and human beings to confront and learn about the bleak past and prevent future genocide, both at home and in the myriad countries that are facing massive human rights abuses.
After that, I have a much better understanding of how the Khmer Rouge murdered and starved 1 out of 4 Cambodians between April 17, 1975, and January 6, 1979, three years, eight months, and twenty days. There has never been a brutal regime like the Khmer Rouge, as the ruling government, in recent history, that would have exterminated their own people within such a short period.
Here are my takeaways from the book:
• Khmer Rouge’s official name was the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). From the day they took power, they wanted to implement radical Maoist and Marxist-Leninist transformation programs. They abolished money, free markets, normal schooling, private property, foreign clothing styles, religious practices, and traditional Khmer culture.
• Democratic Kampuchea, commonly known as the Khmer Rouge regime, was officially established on April 17, 1975, when the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh.
• In the early days of the Khmer Rouge, the regime received support notably from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which provided significant backing to the Khmer Rouge. North Vietnam and the Viet Cong also supported the Khmer Rouge during its insurgency against the Cambodian government.
• They forced the no-exception evacuation of the cities, including Phnom Penh. Vast portions of the population were forcibly moved from towns and cities to rural areas, as well as from one rural area to another. This was part of Khmer Rouge’s radical socialist revolution through a “great leap forward” and to defend the Party against internal and external enemies.
• The Khmer Rouge wanted to build a new Cambodia based on the expanded production of rice. In their four-year plan (1977-1980), they called for the collectivisation of private property and placed high national priority on rice cultivation. Cambodian families were split up as part of the process, and people were assigned to work groups. Husbands and wives were separated, and children were separated from their parents.
• The four-year plan aimed at achieving an average national yield of three tons of rice per hectare. This was an impossible task because Cambodians had never been forced to produce that much rice on a national scale. In consequence, no one in the Khmer Rouge regime ever had enough to eat. Hence, many people died of starvation.
• In the Democratic Kampuchean wedding, couples were married in mass ceremonies. Most men and women were not allowed to choose their partners; instead, each couple was designated by Angkar, aka CPK or the organisation. In most cases, their family members were not allowed to attend the wedding or be invited. Traditional clothes, dancing, singing, and religious ceremonies were prohibited.
• Poor peasants were thought by the Khmer Rouge to be the purest revolutionists. The following groups were labelled as enemies and marked for execution.
Internal enemies
o People from the previous regimes whose social status was classified as capitalist or feudalist.
o Officials of the Lon Nol government. They extended down from leaders to soldiers. Anyone who had served this government was targeted to die, including their families and relatives.
o Minority groups. All minority people who were not considered trustworthy and were suspected by Angkar were persecuted.
o Cham Muslins. The Khmer Rouge forced Cham people to flee their villages and live dispersed among Khmers. They were forbidden to speak their language or to practice Islam. Moreover, the Chams were forced to eat pork, which was banned by their religion. Tens of thousands of Chams were killed or died of diseases, starvation, and overwork.
o Vietnamese. In 1977 and 1978, Vietnamese were singled out simply because they were Vietnamese. The regime began systematically killing them.
o Ethnic Chinese. Those Chinese entrepreneurs would be treated harshly if they did not work hard enough in the agricultural work. However, they were not cherry-picked to be executed.
o Intellectuals. The Khmer Rouge leaders saw other educated people as potential enemies to be eliminated. Those identified as “educated” had to pretend to be illiterate. Thousands of school teachers and university-educated people were eradicated.
o Alleged Traitors. Many Khmer Rouge cadres and simple citizens could be accused of betraying the revolution by joining the Vietnamese troops or making trivial mistakes such as stealing food, talking critically about Angkar, not working on time, not working hard enough, complaining about living conditions, etc.
External enemies
They were referred to the U.S. and its allies, as well as some socialist countries, especially Vietnam and the Soviet Union. Those who could speak a foreign language were spies for foreign countries.
Once enemies were named, the regime’s officials would tell them, “Angkar invites you to go for further education.” Many victims were often executed without a serious examination of whether or not they had actually committed a crime. The Khmer Rouge said, “It is better to arrest ten people by mistake than to let one guilty person go free.”
• Office S-21. The most important prison in Democratic Kampuchea was known as S-21 (Security Officer 21). It was a secret facility for the detention, interrogation, torture, and extermination of its prisoners. The prison was once the buildings for two high schools. It was named Tuol Sleng. Today, it is the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. For the first year of S-21’s existence, corpses were buried near the prison. However, by the end of 1976, cadres ran out of burial spaces, so the prisoners were taken by trucks at night to Choeung Ek (aka the Killing Fields), where they were beaten to death with hoes, axes, sticks or shot.
• The Fall of Democratic Kampuchea. There were three reasons why Democratic Kampuchea fell.
o A weakened populace. Democratic Kampuchea’s four-year plan specified that the country would produce a yield of three tons of rice per hectare. It was impossible to reach this quota, and cadres throughout the country falsified their production reports. CPK officials believed that the party never made mistakes and could never be wrong. As living conditions grew worse during the regime, hundreds of thousands died from overwork and malnutrition.
o Purges. In mid-1976, many members of the CPK were purged. Pol Pot and his leaders believed a rebellion against the party’s leadership was always being hatched, and the enemies were everywhere. After the Vietnamese invasion in late 1977, many Khmer Rouge’s soldiers joined the Vietnamese troops. Most of these defectors were later wiped out by the Khmer Rouge.
o Clashed with Vietnam. This was the most definitive cause of Democratic Kampuchea’s demise. The two countries were at war throughout 1978. After the Khmer Rouge was removed from power on January 7, 1979, Vietnam installed a new government in Cambodia known as the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. This government existed until the current Royal Government of Cambodia was established in 1993.
While the Khmer Rouge no longer controlled the country, they nevertheless persisted as a formidable guerilla force for over a decade. The final collapse of the Khmer Rouge was marked by the death of its leader, Pol Pot, in 1998.
In 1997, the government of Cambodia requested assistance from the United Nations (UN) to establish a trial to prosecute senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge. In 2001, the Cambodian National Assembly established a domestic court called the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), which would be responsible for trying individuals for serious crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979).
It was a Cambodian court created under Cambodian law, with international participation and assistance from the UN. The court would be independent of the Cambodian government and the UN, but it would apply international standards of justice, and it would be comprised of both Cambodian and international judges, legal officers, and administrative staff.
During the trials, several key figures from the Khmer Rouge regime were found guilty.
Notably:
• Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number Two and the regime’s chief ideologist and served as the deputy leader to Pol Pot, was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
• Khieu Samphan, the former head of state of Democratic Kampuchea, was also found guilty of the same charges and received a life sentence.
• Kaing Guek Eav (Comrade Duch) was the commander of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison (S-21), where thousands of people were tortured and executed. He was also found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and received a life sentence. Duch passed away in September 2020 while serving his sentence.
Duch apologised publicly to the victims and their families during his trial at ECCC. He expressed his “excruciating remorse” and took full responsibility for the torture and murders that occurred at the Tuol Sleng prison in the 1970s. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge and Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 to 1979, was never tried by ECCC because he died in 1998, before the establishment of the tribunal.
These verdicts were significant as they represented the first time an international tribunal ruled on charges of genocide against the Khmer Rouge regime. The book filled me with awe that the nation has the courage and esteem to stand up to put its darkest day on trial and make the stories of inhumanities and atrocities available.
What this book has missed is the DC-Cam didn’t try hard to explore “why did the Khmer Rouge carry out genocide to their own people with all these heinous massacres?”. This book only discussed what, who, when, and how the killings were done.
In my view, Pol Pot was heavily influenced by Maoist and Marxist-Leninist ideologies and sought to eliminate any perceived threats to their transformation programs. The Khmer Rouge’s extreme measures were also driven by a desire to eliminate any remnants of the “old society,” including cultural and religious practices, and to restructure the social fabric according to their radical communist beliefs. The regime’s paranoia and the leadership’s desire to maintain absolute control further fuelled the monstrous carnage.
Pol Pot met with China’s Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong on June 21, 1975, before he became Cambodia’s Prime Minister. At that time the Chinese Cultural Revolution was to end in 1976. Therefore, he replicated what the CCP had done during the Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 and implemented that in Cambodia.
The Document Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam) published the second edition in 2020. This book is intended for all Cambodians and human beings to confront and learn about the bleak past and prevent future genocide, both at home and in the myriad countries that are facing massive human rights abuses.
After that, I have a much better understanding of how the Khmer Rouge murdered and starved 1 out of 4 Cambodians between April 17, 1975, and January 6, 1979, three years, eight months, and twenty days. There has never been a brutal regime like the Khmer Rouge, as the ruling government, in recent history, that would have exterminated their own people within such a short period.
Here are my takeaways from the book:
• Khmer Rouge’s official name was the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). From the day they took power, they wanted to implement radical Maoist and Marxist-Leninist transformation programs. They abolished money, free markets, normal schooling, private property, foreign clothing styles, religious practices, and traditional Khmer culture.
• Democratic Kampuchea, commonly known as the Khmer Rouge regime, was officially established on April 17, 1975, when the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh.
• In the early days of the Khmer Rouge, the regime received support notably from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which provided significant backing to the Khmer Rouge. North Vietnam and the Viet Cong also supported the Khmer Rouge during its insurgency against the Cambodian government.
• They forced the no-exception evacuation of the cities, including Phnom Penh. Vast portions of the population were forcibly moved from towns and cities to rural areas, as well as from one rural area to another. This was part of Khmer Rouge’s radical socialist revolution through a “great leap forward” and to defend the Party against internal and external enemies.
• The Khmer Rouge wanted to build a new Cambodia based on the expanded production of rice. In their four-year plan (1977-1980), they called for the collectivisation of private property and placed high national priority on rice cultivation. Cambodian families were split up as part of the process, and people were assigned to work groups. Husbands and wives were separated, and children were separated from their parents.
• The four-year plan aimed at achieving an average national yield of three tons of rice per hectare. This was an impossible task because Cambodians had never been forced to produce that much rice on a national scale. In consequence, no one in the Khmer Rouge regime ever had enough to eat. Hence, many people died of starvation.
• In the Democratic Kampuchean wedding, couples were married in mass ceremonies. Most men and women were not allowed to choose their partners; instead, each couple was designated by Angkar, aka CPK or the organisation. In most cases, their family members were not allowed to attend the wedding or be invited. Traditional clothes, dancing, singing, and religious ceremonies were prohibited.
• Poor peasants were thought by the Khmer Rouge to be the purest revolutionists. The following groups were labelled as enemies and marked for execution.
Internal enemies
o People from the previous regimes whose social status was classified as capitalist or feudalist.
o Officials of the Lon Nol government. They extended down from leaders to soldiers. Anyone who had served this government was targeted to die, including their families and relatives.
o Minority groups. All minority people who were not considered trustworthy and were suspected by Angkar were persecuted.
o Cham Muslins. The Khmer Rouge forced Cham people to flee their villages and live dispersed among Khmers. They were forbidden to speak their language or to practice Islam. Moreover, the Chams were forced to eat pork, which was banned by their religion. Tens of thousands of Chams were killed or died of diseases, starvation, and overwork.
o Vietnamese. In 1977 and 1978, Vietnamese were singled out simply because they were Vietnamese. The regime began systematically killing them.
o Ethnic Chinese. Those Chinese entrepreneurs would be treated harshly if they did not work hard enough in the agricultural work. However, they were not cherry-picked to be executed.
o Intellectuals. The Khmer Rouge leaders saw other educated people as potential enemies to be eliminated. Those identified as “educated” had to pretend to be illiterate. Thousands of school teachers and university-educated people were eradicated.
o Alleged Traitors. Many Khmer Rouge cadres and simple citizens could be accused of betraying the revolution by joining the Vietnamese troops or making trivial mistakes such as stealing food, talking critically about Angkar, not working on time, not working hard enough, complaining about living conditions, etc.
External enemies
They were referred to the U.S. and its allies, as well as some socialist countries, especially Vietnam and the Soviet Union. Those who could speak a foreign language were spies for foreign countries.
Once enemies were named, the regime’s officials would tell them, “Angkar invites you to go for further education.” Many victims were often executed without a serious examination of whether or not they had actually committed a crime. The Khmer Rouge said, “It is better to arrest ten people by mistake than to let one guilty person go free.”
• Office S-21. The most important prison in Democratic Kampuchea was known as S-21 (Security Officer 21). It was a secret facility for the detention, interrogation, torture, and extermination of its prisoners. The prison was once the buildings for two high schools. It was named Tuol Sleng. Today, it is the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. For the first year of S-21’s existence, corpses were buried near the prison. However, by the end of 1976, cadres ran out of burial spaces, so the prisoners were taken by trucks at night to Choeung Ek (aka the Killing Fields), where they were beaten to death with hoes, axes, sticks or shot.
• The Fall of Democratic Kampuchea. There were three reasons why Democratic Kampuchea fell.
o A weakened populace. Democratic Kampuchea’s four-year plan specified that the country would produce a yield of three tons of rice per hectare. It was impossible to reach this quota, and cadres throughout the country falsified their production reports. CPK officials believed that the party never made mistakes and could never be wrong. As living conditions grew worse during the regime, hundreds of thousands died from overwork and malnutrition.
o Purges. In mid-1976, many members of the CPK were purged. Pol Pot and his leaders believed a rebellion against the party’s leadership was always being hatched, and the enemies were everywhere. After the Vietnamese invasion in late 1977, many Khmer Rouge’s soldiers joined the Vietnamese troops. Most of these defectors were later wiped out by the Khmer Rouge.
o Clashed with Vietnam. This was the most definitive cause of Democratic Kampuchea’s demise. The two countries were at war throughout 1978. After the Khmer Rouge was removed from power on January 7, 1979, Vietnam installed a new government in Cambodia known as the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. This government existed until the current Royal Government of Cambodia was established in 1993.
While the Khmer Rouge no longer controlled the country, they nevertheless persisted as a formidable guerilla force for over a decade. The final collapse of the Khmer Rouge was marked by the death of its leader, Pol Pot, in 1998.
In 1997, the government of Cambodia requested assistance from the United Nations (UN) to establish a trial to prosecute senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge. In 2001, the Cambodian National Assembly established a domestic court called the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), which would be responsible for trying individuals for serious crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979).
It was a Cambodian court created under Cambodian law, with international participation and assistance from the UN. The court would be independent of the Cambodian government and the UN, but it would apply international standards of justice, and it would be comprised of both Cambodian and international judges, legal officers, and administrative staff.
During the trials, several key figures from the Khmer Rouge regime were found guilty.
Notably:
• Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number Two and the regime’s chief ideologist and served as the deputy leader to Pol Pot, was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
• Khieu Samphan, the former head of state of Democratic Kampuchea, was also found guilty of the same charges and received a life sentence.
• Kaing Guek Eav (Comrade Duch) was the commander of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison (S-21), where thousands of people were tortured and executed. He was also found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and received a life sentence. Duch passed away in September 2020 while serving his sentence.
Duch apologised publicly to the victims and their families during his trial at ECCC. He expressed his “excruciating remorse” and took full responsibility for the torture and murders that occurred at the Tuol Sleng prison in the 1970s. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge and Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 to 1979, was never tried by ECCC because he died in 1998, before the establishment of the tribunal.
These verdicts were significant as they represented the first time an international tribunal ruled on charges of genocide against the Khmer Rouge regime. The book filled me with awe that the nation has the courage and esteem to stand up to put its darkest day on trial and make the stories of inhumanities and atrocities available.
What this book has missed is the DC-Cam didn’t try hard to explore “why did the Khmer Rouge carry out genocide to their own people with all these heinous massacres?”. This book only discussed what, who, when, and how the killings were done.
In my view, Pol Pot was heavily influenced by Maoist and Marxist-Leninist ideologies and sought to eliminate any perceived threats to their transformation programs. The Khmer Rouge’s extreme measures were also driven by a desire to eliminate any remnants of the “old society,” including cultural and religious practices, and to restructure the social fabric according to their radical communist beliefs. The regime’s paranoia and the leadership’s desire to maintain absolute control further fuelled the monstrous carnage.
Pol Pot met with China’s Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong on June 21, 1975, before he became Cambodia’s Prime Minister. At that time the Chinese Cultural Revolution was to end in 1976. Therefore, he replicated what the CCP had done during the Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 and implemented that in Cambodia.
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May 20, 2025This is horrific. I don't know much about this history - but it is horrific. A such, I can't rate a book that details such horrors.
November 26, 2023
A small, yet rich summary on Democratic Kampuchea.
A key introduction for anyone interested in one of the most bizarre political experiments of the 20th century.
A key introduction for anyone interested in one of the most bizarre political experiments of the 20th century.
April 29, 2024
This book gives a summary of Cambodia's political situation during its darkest time back in 1975 - 1979
With some details of each DK leader's profile background and also the timeline of the Genocide.
Based on the foreword, this book was written for high school students handbook of history. And also one of the first book written by Cambodian.
With some details of each DK leader's profile background and also the timeline of the Genocide.
Based on the foreword, this book was written for high school students handbook of history. And also one of the first book written by Cambodian.
December 5, 2011
This is a straightforward and clear description of the Khmer Rouge's rise and rule. It's written by a Cambodian born after Vietnam vanquished the Khmer Rouge from much of the country, and a variety of Cambodian and foreign researchers aided him. The book's main limitation is that it doesn't significantly explain the intellectual roots of the Khmer Rouge (i.e. it doesn't answer the question 'why'), the Cold War context (the Vietnam War isn't really a factor), or the debates and competition among Communists.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews