How many cambodians were killed

Historically, this period—as shown in the film The Killing Fields —has come to be known as the Cambodian Genocide. Throughout the s, the Khmer Rouge operated as the armed wing of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the name the party used for Cambodia. Operating primarily in remote jungle and mountain areas in the northeast of the country, near its border with Vietnam, which at the time was embroiled in its own civil war, the Khmer Rouge did not have popular support across Cambodia, particularly in the cities, including the capital Phnom Penh.

As the monarch had been popular among city-dwelling Cambodians, the Khmer Rouge began to glean more and more support. For the next five years, a civil war between the right-leaning military, which had led the coup, and those supporting the alliance of Prince Norodom and the Khmer Rouge raged in Cambodia. Eventually, the Khmer Rouge side seized the advantage in the conflict, after gaining control of increasing amounts of territory in the Cambodian countryside.

In , Khmer Rouge fighters invaded Phnom Penh and took over the city. With the capital in its grasp, the Khmer Rouge had won the civil war and, thus, ruled the country. Prince Norodom was forced to live in exile. These tribes were self-sufficient and lived on the goods they produced through subsistence farming. He also outlawed the ownership of private property and the practice of religion in the new nation.

Workers on the farm collectives established by Pol Pot soon began suffering from the effects of overwork and lack of food. Hundreds of thousands died from disease, starvation or damage to their bodies sustained during back-breaking work or abuse from the ruthless Khmer Rouge guards overseeing the camps. Those seen as intellectuals, or potential leaders of a revolutionary movement, were also executed.

Legend has it, some were executed for merely appearing to be intellectuals, by wearing glasses or being able to speak a foreign language. In the four years that the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia, it was responsible for one of the worst mass killings of the 20th Century. The brutal regime, in power from , claimed the lives of up to two million people. Under the Marxist leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge tried to take Cambodia back to the Middle Ages, forcing millions of people from the cities to work on communal farms in the countryside.

But this dramatic attempt at social engineering had a terrible cost. Whole families died from execution, starvation, disease and overwork. The Khmer Rouge had its origins in the s, as the armed wing of the Communist Party of Kampuchea - the name the Communists used for Cambodia. Based in remote jungle and mountain areas in the north-east of the country, the group initially made little headway. But after a right-wing military coup toppled head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk in , the Khmer Rouge entered into a political coalition with him and began to attract increasing support.

In a civil war that continued for nearly five years, it gradually increased its control in the countryside. Khmer Rouge forces finally took over the capital, Phnom Penh, and therefore the nation as a whole in Those who made it to Thailand brought malaria, typhoid, cholera, and a host of other illnesses into the camps. As many as , Cambodians were killed from by American B bombers, using napalm and dart cluster-bombs to destroy suspected Viet Cong targets in Cambodia.

Many Cambodians had become disenchanted with Western democracy due to the huge loss of Cambodian lives resulting from the US involving Cambodia in the Vietnam War. While the Khmer Rouge was gaining power, the U.

The American Embassy was concerned with Cambodia solely in relation to the effect on the Vietnam War. Embassy staff in Phnom Penh was not particularly interested in the regime or the victims.

General William Westmoreland, the commander of U. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient. When the Vietnamese invaded in , they were first seen as liberators from the genocidal regime of Pol Pot. The economy had failed under Pol Pot, and all professionals, engineers, technicians, and planners who could potentially reorganize Cambodia had been killed in the genocide.

Instead, the US and UK offered financial and military support to the Khmer Rouge forces in exile, who had sworn opposition to Vietnam and communism. The Vietnamese, originally seen as liberators, soon began to be viewed as unwelcome occupiers, not only because of their lengthy ten-year stay in Cambodia, but also because of the hundreds of years of animosity between the two countries.

In the early s, mass graves were uncovered throughout Cambodia. They held hundreds of skeletal remains from Khmer Rouge execution grounds, known as killing fields. Survivors suffered high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder, but their trauma often went undiagnosed and almost always went untreated. The Khmer Rouge based their policies on the idea that citizens of Cambodia had become corrupted by outside influences, especially Vietnam and the capitalist West.

They forced citizens into what they called reeducation schools, which were essentially places of state propaganda. The regime forced families to live communally with other people, in order to destroy the family structure. In addition, anyone who was believed to be an intellectual was killed: doctors, lawyers, teachers, even people who wore glasses or knew a foreign language became targets. Specially targeted were the inhabitants of the areas close to the Vietnamese border. On December 25, Vietnam invaded Cambodia.

The Vietnamese sought to remove the Khmer Rouge from power. At first, survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime considered the Vietnamese to be liberators, but they were soon viewed as occupiers. Vietnamese troops stayed in the country until , with armed clashes between Vietnamese and Cambodians going on throughout the s.