Democratic Kampuchea

Democratic Kampuchea (in Khmer, កម្ពុជា ប្រជាផិបតេយ្យ) was the official name of Cambodia under the government of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge party from 1975 until 1979. The period saw the death of approximately 1.7 million Cambodians as a combined result of political executions, starvation, and overwork. A 1984 movie, The Killing Fields, dramatized the horrors of Khmer Rouge rule.

Forced Evacuation

One of the Khmer Rouge's first acts was to move most of the urban population into the countryside. They told the residents that they would move only about "two or three kilometers" outside the city and would return in "two or three days." Other witnesses report being told that the evacuation was because of the threat of an American bombing and that they did not have to lock their houses since the Khmer Rouge would "take care of everything" until they returned. The roads out of the city were clogged with evacuees. Phnom Penh—the population of which, numbering 2.5 million people, included as many as 1.5 million wartime refugees living with relatives or in shantytowns around the urban center—was soon nearly empty. Similar evacuations occurred at Battambang, Kampong Cham, Siemreap, Kampong Thom, and throughout the country's other towns and cities.

Related Topics:
American - Khmer Rouge - Battambang - Kampong Cham - Siemreap - Kampong Thom

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Even Phnom Penh's hospitals were emptied of their patients. The Khmer Rouge provided transportation for some of the aged and the disabled, and they set up stockpiles of food outside the city for the refugees; however, the supplies were inadequate to sustain the hundreds of thousands of people on the road. Even seriously injured hospital patients, many without any means of conveyance, were summarily forced to leave regardless of their condition. According to Khieu Samphan, the removal of Phnom Penh's population resulted in 2,000 to 3,000 deaths. The foreign community, about 800 persons, was quarantined in the French embassy compound, and by the end of the month the foreigners were taken by truck to the Thai border. Khmer women who were married to foreigners were allowed to accompany their husbands, but Khmer men were not permitted to leave with their foreign wives.

Related Topics:
Khieu Samphan - Khmer

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Aside from the alleged threat of United States air strikes, the Khmer Rouge justified the evacuations in terms of the impossibility of transporting sufficient food to feed an urban population of between 2 and 3 million people. Lack of adequate transportation meant that, instead of bringing food to the people (tons of it lay in storehouses in the port city of Kampong Saom, according to Father Ponchaud), the people had to be brought to (and had to grow) the food. Western historians claim that the motives were political, based on deep-rooted resentment of the cities. The Khmer Rouge was determined to turn the country into a nation of peasants in which the corruption and parasitism of city life would be completely uprooted. In addition, Pol Pot wanted to break up the "enemy spy organizations" that allegedly were based in the urban areas. Finally, it seems that Pol Pot and his hard-line associates on the KCP Political Bureau used the forced evacuations to gain control of the city's population and to weaken the position of their factional rivals within the communist party.

Related Topics:
United States - Kampong Saom - Father Ponchaud - Pol Pot - KCP Political Bureau

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