Cambodia-Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge

Cambodia was certainly interesting. The ancient history reminded me of Egypt: a mighty civilization thousands of years ago that somehow fell from power and competency. How did this happen?

In Cambodia’s case it had a city (Angkor complex) that was 20 times bigger than either Paris or London 1000 years ago. Now that is a ruin. Then more recently, a server hundred plus years it controlled 90% of the Indochina peninsula. That too passed.

Then in 1975-1978, after the Vietnam war ended, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (“Khmer” is the local race in Cambodia; “rouge” is “red” meaning communist) took over. They had a distorted view that they could create the perfect society by making everyone equal. They intended to do this by lopping off the upper classes…eliminating all upper and middle class people and obtaining “purity” by having everyone be a peasant farmer. The number killed and dying of starvation was somewhere between 1.7 and 3.5 million depending upon the source of the number.

Both of our tour guides, the one in Siem Reap and the one in Phnom Pehn, were born slightly prior to the Khmer Rouge period. The first one was taken from his parents and put into a children’s center run by the Khmer Rouge to “educate” him in the Khmer Rouge values and system. He did not know his exact age because if his parents had written that date down, they would have been considered “intellectuals” and therefore have been killed.

The guide in Phnom Pehn was also taken to this type of camp as a toddler. His mother was able to visit him to treat him for a skin infection, but had to hide that fact from the staff. His family also hid some gold chunks in their well because all wealth and food had to be given to the Khmer Rouge. If the Khmer Rouge had discovered that you withheld something, you would be killed.

[These were the stories from the guides. I repeat them as such…not that I can attest that they are true, or free from embellishment.]

Vietnam finally invaded and kicked out the Khmer Rouge about 3 years later. While I have heard of the “killing fields,” I was not aware of this at the time it happened. (I wonder if this is the same as the Dafur coverage today.)

Cambodia today is: 85% rural, 85% poor, and 85% uneducated. (I assume these 3 sets are mostly congruent, but that is only my assumption.)

The guides described some awful things that happened in the killing fields. Brutal killings of all…including woman and children in nasty ways. Thirty years later the first trial of the offenders has just now started.

I don’t mean this as a downer entry, but I just find this type of talk with locals to be mentally expanding. On the positive side, it is encouraging that the locals that we talked to are very positive about Cambodia being on the upswing for the past 10 years or so. I also find it interesting to see such a long, thousand year history of ups and downs, history to be affecting a country.

It puts our country’s 233 year history into perspective. We have only begun, and could continue to succeed, or we could fall for some kind of known or unknown reason as did Cambodia.