From Sideshow to Genocide

From April 17, 1975 to January, 1979, the Khmer Rouge government of Cambodia committed one of the most egregious slaughters of humanity in modern history. Through a systematic campaign of murder, starvation and neglect, this enigmatic communist regime managed to kill as many as two million fellow Cambodians - nearly two out of every seven people in a country no larger than the state of Missouri.

In the 20 years since the Khmer Rouge genocide, Cambodians have struggled to put their once prosperous and peaceful kingdom back together again. Historians, too, have struggled with the equally difficult task of understanding how Cambodian society managed to turn on itself and implode with such disastrous consequences. While it may take generations to respond successfully to these questions, it is of paramount importance for us - all of us - to consider the causes and effects of the Cambodian genocide and the important lessons they may teach us.

This website is a modest attempt to remind us as vividly and graphically as possible what happens when a society ends up preying on itself or other people. Here you will find an overview of the events that led to the Cambodian holocaust, as well as the stories of survivors who have struggled successfully to put their lives back together. For teachers and students of holocaust studies there are also recommended reading materials, lesson plans and questions for discussion.

Copyright 1999 Susanne Cornwall

About the Background Image

The image used in the background of this page and the website's homepage is a photograph of victims' portraits from the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. Tuol Sleng, formerly a suburban high school, was converted into the S-21 interrogation center where the Khmer Rouge's opponents were routinely tortured and killed. Of the over 17,000 people who entered S-21 for questioning, only six of them are known to have survived. Today Tuol Sleng stands as an intimate reminder of the Khmer Rouge atrocities as it is plastered with hundreds of photographs of the many prisoners who were condemned there. The author of this website visited Tuol Sleng in November 1997 - please feel free to read about Andy Carvin's experience in his essay, A Day in the Killing Fields.

What is Genocide?

Genocide

The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. N. (1944) [genos Greek: race, kin; cida, from caedere Latin: to cut, to kill]

Genocide is a word that stirs up the deepest emotion, an uncanny chill that makes one realize how inhumane humanity can sometimes be. Incredibly, the word did not even exist until the 1944, when the Polish Jewish scholar Raphael Lemkin used it to describe the anti-semitic atrocities of of Hitler's Nazi Germany. In a period of less than six years the Nazis murdered over 10 million people: Slavs, Roma, and six million Jews. This wasn't the first time that a regime attempted to wipe out so many innocent people. Throughout history there are records of the mass slaughter of civilian populations, but it wasn't until the world's collective recognition of Hitler's "final solution" that we were able to give such destruction its own name.

Genocide, the murder of an entire people. Murder as policy.

In the years immediately following World War II, the newly created United Nations declared genocide an international crime. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted in 1948, declared that genocide was

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Genocide itself was now a crime, along with conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempts to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide. Political and military leaders could not cite their sovereign status as their implied right to commit genocide - under no circumstances would genocide be viewed in an acceptable light.

Despite the U.N.'s declaration that genocide would no longer be acceptable, regimes have continued to strike down mercilessly on civilian populations. In the 1990s alone we have witnessed the "ethnic cleansing" of Bosnian Muslims and Rwandan Tutsis. Though the rhetoric has changed, the results are still the same: hundreds of thousands of people murdered because of their religion, ethnicity or tribe.

While those of us in the United States deplore these atrocities, at a certain level we seem to dismiss their relevance to us. It is all too easy for us to close our eyes and say, "This is not our problem - we have nothing to do with it." In the case of Cambodia, though, the deaths of two million Khmers is our problem. Like it or not, our policies there during the late 1960s and early 1970s contributed to the conditions that allowed for the ascent of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Genocide does not occur in a vacuum. It is the consequence of hatred, paranoia, corruption, and power run amok. It is also the consequence of a world that lacks the will to prevent it.

For Pre-Genocide Cambodia History see other document.

From Sideshow To Genocide:

The Khmer Rouge Years

On April 17, 1975, thousands of Phnom Penh residents celebrated in the streets as victorious Khmer Rouge troops entered the capitol. This joyous celebration, however, was not because the people of Phnom Penh were supporters of the Khmer Rouge; instead, they felt great relief that the five-year civil war had now come to an end. For the first several hours of that sunny morning it didn't matter which side you were on - Cambodia was finally at peace. This morning revealed a moment of hope.

But hope quickly turned to fear as residents noticed that the Khmer Rouge troops weren't celebrating with them. Embittered and toughened after years of brutal civil war and American bombing, the Khmer Rouge marched the boulevards of Phnom Penh with icy stares carved into their faces. The troops soon began to order people to abandon their homes and leave Phnom Penh. By mid-afternoon