Khmer_Rogue

‘Explain why the Khmer Rouge became such a significant force in Cambodia by 1979.’ Respond to this statement in approximately 2000 words. When Cambodia was retitled Democratic Kampuchea in 1975, the alteration of title not only signified the acquisition of the nation by a recently instated governing force, but also heralded the destruction of the country’s history, technology and over 1.7 million lives at the hands of what had become the most significant political and militant force in the entirety of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge, a communist based movement founded on extreme agrarian ideology, xenophobia, ethnic hostility and indifference towards the death of hundreds of thousands of its countrymen, became the solitary ruling force in Kampuchea in April 1975 due, in large part, to the suffering a five year civil war and Lon Nol’s desperately repressive regime had inflicted on the populace of Cambodia which subsequently roused a desire amongst the public to see an end to the death caused by such aggression. Seizing the opportunity to construct an agricultural utopian society, the Khmer Rouge, after deposing of the Lon Nol regime, purged itself of all foreign influence and instituted a labour program that saw Cambodian society completely replaced with the Khmer Rouge’s agrarian ideal. Pre-Revolutionary Cambodia was characterised by its charismatic, eccentric and somewhat flamboyant monarch Norodom Sihanouk, who wished to maintain his country’s neutrality, in spite of shared borders with countries such as Vietnam and Laos, to circumvent Cambodia being dragged into the wider conflict in Vietnam. In the years proceeding 1970, however, Sihanouk’s popularity began to diminish as, to avoid invasion, he allowed Viet Cong forces to establish bases in Cambodia. This resulted in American retaliatory B-52 bombing raids of the Viet Cong headquarters thought to be in Cambodia and near the Vietnamese/Cambodian border, killing hundreds and injuring thousands of Cambodians in the process, in what was known as Operation Menu. The public disapproval of Sihanouk’s actions culminated on the 18th March 1970 when, whilst abroad for health reasons, he was overthrown in a coup led by his Army Chief of Staff, General Lon Nol, and his Deputy Prime Minister, Sirik Matak. General Lon Nol was distinctively pro-American and anti-Vietnamese, and so his new government, the Khmer Republic, almost immediately gained US recognition and support, which its army used in an attempt to eradicate the countryside of Communist bases, thus ending any pretence of Khmer neutrality. However the Cambodian Communist forces, duly named the Khmer Rouge by Sihanouk, remained firmly rooted in regions of rural Cambodia as Lon Nol’s forces proved incompetent. “The Cambodian army was ill-trained, many recruits were school children with corrupt officers, and Lon Nol recommended magic rituals for safety in battle” (Wood, 1990). Lon Nol’s assault on the Khmer Rouge did not, however, go unreturned. Hence from the period of 1970 to 1975, a civil war ravaged pastoral Cambodia, fought between the US backed Lon Nol regime and the combined forces of the Viet Cong and the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), or the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge continued to gain political support in Cambodia during the years of Lon Nol’s oppressive regiment, as their political success offered a beguiling alternative to civil war, which had already claimed over 500 000 Cambodian lives, and their markedly xenophobic, nationalist and anti-Vietnamese agenda assured the party esteem amongst rural Cambodian districts. While in exile Sihanouk made an alliance with the Khmer Rouge, becoming their nominal leader. The actual leadership remained with Saloth Sar, who adopted the political pseudonym Pol Pot, and whose identity was not disclosed to the public or a majority of the party members until 1977. This fictitious partnership saw the Khmer Rouge extend their influence over a majority of rural Cambodia as they now claimed a political association with the still popular ex-monarch, greatly accelerating the success of their insurgent revolution and rendering them the de facto government for those areas where they held authority. The Khmer Rouge continued to gain support when in 1973 the United States congress voted to suspend all aid to Lon Nol’s Cambodia, resulting in a rapid decline in the government’s capacity to counteract armed militant uprisings. The Khmer Rouge began their final advance on the capital, Phnom Penh, in January 1975, moving within shelling range of the city. It was not until the 1st April 1975 that Lon Nol fled Cambodia, escaping to Thailand. The Khmer Rouge forces marched into Phnom Penh on the 17th April with little opposition, relabelling the country Democratic Kampuchea (DK). The Khmer Rouge began to equip their agrarian ideology with momentum; purging the capital of its people, destroying what they saw as western technology and implementing mass agricultural schemes, driven by urban Cambodians. From the 17th – 20th of April Phnom Penh was emptied in a fierce mass evacuation, not only being removed of the urban and middle classes, who were renamed the “new people”, but also of any technological device. Items such as cars, telephones, televisions and refrigerators were destroyed, to bring the nation back to, what the Khmer Rouge coined as, ‘Year Zero.’ These actions were in accordance with the primary policy of the Khmer Rouge, Radical Agrarian Marxism (RAM), which, in essence, was a revolution whereby the peasantry, who worked in the rice fields, would become the only class in Kampuchea. Those Cambodians who had previously resided in urban cities would be relocated to the countryside farming communes, to form the basis of an agricultural economy. The process of transforming the nation into a classless, agricultural and uneducated society under RAM was to be overseen by Angkar Loeu, the higher organisation; the faceless and secretive governing body of the Khmer Rouge. The revolution was to be swift, completely transforming the routine of the nation without a transitional period. Chandler states that “Family life, individualism, and an integrated fondness for what they [the Khmer Rouge] called ‘feudal’ institutions, as well as the institutions themselves, stood in the way of the revolution.” To combat these challenges for a hasty conversion, religious centres, particularly Buddhist temples, were emptied, money was completely abolished, all previous documentation detailing public systems and buildings was destroyed and schools and hospitals were demolished. The nation was divided into seven geographical zones, called phumipheak by the CPK, each under the administration of Khmer Rouge cadres and soldiers. In order to become a self-sufficient agricultural nation, massive labour movements were conducted in each zone, particularly those in the North West. Contradictory to the ideology of RAM these zones and even the society crafted by Angkar Loeu was not an egalitarian classless state. In some zones “old people” or those people who were previously poor and lower middle-class peasants were unabashedly considered superior to the “new people.” The "new people" were treated as slave laborers. They were constantly moved, were forced to do the hardest physical labor, and worked in the most inhospitable, fever-ridden parts of the country, such as forests, upland areas, and swamps. "New people" were segregated from "old people," enjoyed little or no privacy, and received minimal food rations. “The people worked from dawn to dusk in return for a meager ration of food. City dwellers who proved ineffective peasants could be executed for economic sabotage” (Wood, 1990.) Intellectuals and those who had an association with the previous governing institution, or even those who wore glasses, were declared enemies of the state and were executed. Although the Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea was promulgated in January 1976, it offered the Kampuchean populace no guarantee that human rights would be observed, and declared private property, religion and family oriented agricultural production illegal. Additionally, the Khmer Rouge and Angkar Loeu were fanatically intolerant of any non-Cambodian citizens, a principal that saw those Chinese, Thai or Vietnamese Cambodians that didn’t flee the country slaughtered, in attempt to reconstruct the nation’s cultural purity. Endeavouring to eliminate individual will, the Khmer Rouge would often divide families, sending each member to a separate zone, alongside a policy of constant surveillance that saw punishment, often beatings or killings, in retaliation to complaints. Although direct Khmer Rouge policy is responsible for an estimated 50 percent of 1.7 million deaths during their time in power, the additional 50 percent is attributed to the malnutrition, starvation and diseases that wouldn’t have been life threatening if treated with modern medicine and a . The deaths in Kampuchea were so numerous during the Khmer Rouge’s rule that it was dubbed ‘the Killing Fields.’ Acting as a poignant monument to this genocide, the Tuol Sleng high school in Phnom Penh is plastered with false confessions and photographs of the thousands of people who died within its walls. The classrooms of Tuol Sleng were renamed S-21 during the years of CPK administration, and acted as interrogation centres for enemies of the state. A majority of those whom saw the walls of S-21 were killed, whether proven ‘enemies’ or not. Those suspected of being enemies to the regime were usually identified by the subordinates of Pol Pot; “The agents of Pol Pot’s terror campaigns were the Khmer Rouge youth – urban and rural teenagers aged 13-20. Illiterate and highly propagandised, they enforced Angkar’s perverted goals with brute force” (Cantwell, 2005.) Non-members were requested to show their hands and, if not calloused and dirty, suspicion of laziness arose and the Cambodian was considered an enemy. These ‘enemies’ were usually nothing more than educated persons such as teachers, students, professors and doctors and if they were not killed immediately upon arrival at Tuol Sleng, then they would be subject to rigorous interrogations until they wrote a confession, regardless of innocence and would then, on most occasions, be killed. Suspects, however, were not limited to the intelligista, but frequently included members of the Khmer Rouge itself, amidst suspicion on intra-party conspiracy. It is estimated by historians that nearly 15 000 people died at Tuol Sleng. Tuol Sleng is but one example of the secretive subterfuge employed by the Khmer Rouge in its attempt to keep the public in a constant state of fear, to eliminate both palpable and imaginary enemies and in the complete destruction of individualism. Pol Pot’s indiscriminate violence extended during the period of in 1977-78, when ever increasing hostility towards Vietnam over territorial disputes on the border led to guerrilla outbreaks of aggression. Thousands of Vietnamese people had already been killed as a result of Pol Pot’s xenophobic policies, and those that sought refuge in their home nation regaled their fellow countrymen with stories of Khmer Rouge brutality. The constant border attacks and ‘ethnic cleansing’ led to the death of over 50 000 Vietnamese. North Vietnam responded to this consistent persecution of its people by launching a retaliatory attack from Hanoi, consisting of tanks and five divisions of the People’s Army infantry, on the 22nd of December 1978. The assault was targeted at the capital, and the Vietnamese military partitions received very little resistance whilst mobilising across the Kampuchean landscape. Realising that the People’s Army outranked them, had far superior weaponry and could easily defeat them, the Khmer Rouge disbanded and fled. The Vietnamese armed forces reached Phnom Penh in seventeen days, by which time Pol Pot and his subsidiaries had fled to Thailand. “Tuol Sleng was liberated, prisoners were released, documents were captured and the horrors of the Pol Pot regime were exposed to the world for the first time” (Cantwell, 2005.) Peace, however, still eluded the war-stained nation as its history had been tainted by a brutal and violent dictatorship, which saw the death of over twenty percent of its population and the complete destruction of its domestic urban economic investments. Cambodia fell into a new civil war, between the newly instated, Vietnamese controlled government and the exiled Khmer Rouge, which resulted in many thousands of Cambodian deaths. It is without question that the Khmer Rouge is considered the most significant force in 1970s Cambodia. Having ascertained full authority over the nation through the inadequacies of the previous governing establishment, the Khmer Rouge completely reversed any preconceived notion of Cambodian society by transforming it into an agriculture-dominated peasantry. The actions taken by the Khmer Rouge subsequent to April 17th 1975, emblazoned the combined political and militant movement into the history of Cambodia, for the estimated millions of deaths it caused and the brutally vicious totalitarian rule it imposed upon its citizens. Word Count: 2,031 Written by Edan Langford-Salisbury, St Patrick’s Marist College Dundas, 2007. 24/25 – Good work! Bibliography Thomas Cantwell – Contested Spaces: Conflict in Indochina, 2005. McGraw Hill, Australia. John Wood – Vietnam and the Indochina Conflict (2nd Edition), 1990. Macmillan Publishers, Auckland. James Harpur – War Without End (2nd Edition), 1998. Longman, Australia. David Chandler – History of Cambodia (2nd Edition), 1992. West View Press, Colorado. Ken Webb – HSC Modern History, 2006. Science Press, Marrickville. B Dennett and Stephen Dixon – Key features of Modern History (3rd Edition), 2005. Oxford University Press, Melbourne. Ron Ringer – Excel HSC Modern History, 2004. Pascal Press, Glebe. Wikipedia: (used for following searches) Cambodia, Democratic Kampuchea, Enabling Act, Cambodia under Pol Pot (1975-1979), Khmer Rouge, 2006. [Internet] Available from < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page > Accessed 9/7/07 Charles Sturt University: Conflict in Indochina; Cambodia, 2005. [Internet] Available from: Teachers notes for improvement: • Historiography (i.e. quotes) should be typified by reliable historians (like Chandler or Kershaw) and not from text books (like those written by Wood or Cantwell). You lost a mark for this. • Keep sentences a bit shorter – they are a bit too long and lose their clarity at times. Some words were also used out of context. • Come back to the question a bit more. • Bibliography should be in alphabetical order – use the Harvard system exactly.