foreign
Cambodia was a nation under various regimes from French Colonial rule until the Japanese Occupation in
1941 then again as a French Colony until 1953 when it became an independent Kingdom from 1953
to 1970. Later it became a short-lived Republic from 1970 to 1975 until overthrown by the Khmer
Rouge regime in 1975 which ended in 1979. It remained a communist country until 1993 when
it once again became a kingdom. Cambodia was a major sanctuary and supply base for the North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces where they were protected from American military operations until
the election of President Richard M Nixon in 1968. Following the end of the Allied
involvement in Vietnam a communist regime took power in Cambodia just as one erupted in Laos
and millions would die as a result of one madman. What were the Killing Fields of Cambodia? Why did
the Communist Regime of Vietnam go to war with its former communist ally and supporter? How did
Pol Pot join Stalin, Mao, Hitler and others in the pantheon of mass murderers? Hello I'm Colin
Heaton former soldier, Marine Corps scout sniper history Professor, historian and book author, and
we've answered these questions and other issues on this segment of Forgotten History [Music]
Saloth Sar better known by his name ee guerre Pol Pot was born on May 19 1925 in Prek Sbauv located about
100 miles north of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. He came from a rich family that owned
some 50 acres of rice paddy 10 times the national average. In 1934 Pol Pot moved to Phnom Penh where
he spent a year at a Buddhist monastery before attending a French Catholic Primary School. In
1949 he went to Paris on a scholarship. While there he studied radio technology and became
quite active in communist groups. In January 1953 when Pol Pot returned to Cambodia the whole region
was in active revolt against French colonial rule. Cambodia officially gained its independence from
France later that year as did Indochina the next year which became Vietnam and Laos. Pol
Pot meanwhile joined the Communist Khmer People's Revolutionary Party the KPRP established in 1951
with support of the North Vietnamese in opposition to French occupation. From 1956 to 1963 Pol Pot
taught history geography and French literature at a private school while simultaneously plotting a
revolution. During the Vietnam War Cambodia was one of the few sanctuaries for communist Vietcong and
North Vietnamese forces fighting the Allied Coalition. Cambodia was officially off limits
to American forces as they pursued the enemy along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and across the Mekong River.
Norodom Sihanouk was the hereditary prince of the royal family and the national leader but he was
a political survivor and when it suited him he supported whichever political entity rose to the
occasion. He courted Ho Chi Minh and China, entertained the communist revolutionaries
in his country and later supported Pol Pot and agreed with the programs of re-education. Due to
Cambodia violating its self-stated neutrality in the war in March 1969 U.S President Richard M.
Nixon ordered a secret bombing campaign as well as military ground operations into Cambodia to
interdict and destroy enemy troops and camps. Over the span of four years U.S planes dropped 500,000
tons of bombs on Cambodia, more than three times the amount dropped on Japan during World
War II. These operations killed tens of thousands of communist soldiers and supporters and brought
the Communists of China, North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos even closer into a rather fragile alliance.
By the time the U.S bombing campaign ended in August 1973 the number of Khmer Rouge troops had
increased exponentially and they now controlled approximately three quarters of Cambodia's
territory. Soon after they began shelling the capital Phnom Penh with rockets and artillery. The
Cambodian Civil War was in full swing and final assaults on the refugee filled capital started
in January 1975 with the Khmer Rouge bombarding the airport and a blockading river crossings.
China and North Vietnam were the primary Khmer Rouge supporters during the Civil War. As a result of
their influence the U.S airlift of supplies failed to prevent thousands of children from starving.
Finally on April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge entered the city winning the Civil War and ending the
fighting. About half a million Cambodians had died during the Civil War yet the worst was still to
come. The Khmer Rouge Communists and their insane leader Pol Pot came to power in 1975 and almost
immediately the Khmer Rouge forcibly evacuated Phnom Penh's 2.5 million residents. Most of these
were civil servants, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other highly educated professionals. These
people were deemed intellectuals and therefore anti-revolutionary and they were stripped of their
homes and private possessions and forced into slave labor working in the fields and rice paddies with
the peasants. The Khmer Rouge's most notorious prison S-21 which held up to twenty thousand
prisoners had only seven survivors and was revealed in May 1979. That death camp was converted
into the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. In fact Pol Pot operated over 150 Khmer Rouge death camps. It
seems ironic that a French educated intellectual would purge all of the other intellectuals in the
country to impose his communist ideals, but that was the Marxist game plan. Between 1975 and 1979
the Khmer Rouge genocide killed between 1.5 and 2 million people nearly 25 percent of Cambodia's
entire population. During the genocide China was the main International patron of the Khmer Rouge
supplying more than 15,000 military advisors and most of its external aid and therefore was
complicit. This was all part of Pol Pot's re-education program and it was a brutal
process. One prime example of those targeted was Dr. Haing S. Ngor who was trained as a surgeon and
gynecologist. His practice was in the capital Phnom, Penh when the Khmer Rouge seized control of
the country and renamed it the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. Thousands of highly
educated people were murdered in their homes and in the streets in a political and social cleansing
operation as they were considered a threat to the limited intellects of the mainly illiterate
peasant communist forces. Ngor knew that he had to conceal his education medical skills and even
the fact that he wore glasses which meant that he had financial means; ergo some form of high
paying employment or running the risk of being perceived as an intellectual to avoid the new
regime's intense hostility towards intellectuals and professionals. Dr Ngre was expelled from
Phnom Penh along with the bulk of its more than 2 million inhabitants as part of the Khmer Rouge's
"Year Zero" social experiment. He and his wife My-Huoy along with thousands of others were imprisoned in
a concentration camp and she died giving birth along with their unborn child. Although he was
a highly trained gynecologist he was unable to treat his wife who needed a cesarean section as
that would have ensured that they were all killed. Finally after the guards were distracted during a
mass execution and their attention was diverted by the Vietnamese Army invading he eventually crawled
between Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese lines to safety in a Red Cross refugee camp and eventually
left with his niece for the United States. Dr. Ngor was unable to resume his medical practice
in the United States but he became an actor and starred with Sam Waterston in the highly acclaimed
film "The Killing Fields." Ngre is the only actor of Asian descent to win an Academy Award for best
supporting actor. At first Pol Pot largely governed from behind the scenes; he became prime minister
in 1976 after Prince Norodom Sihanouk was forced to resign. By that time border skirmishes were
occurring regularly between the cambodians and the Vietnamese the fighting intensified in 1977 and in
December 1978 the Vietnamese sent to more than 60,000 troops along with air and artillery units
across the border. On January 7 1979 they captured Phnom Penh and forced Pol Pot to flee back into
the jungle where he resumed guerrilla operations. The world was learning of the mass murders by Pol
Pot in violation of all the existing conventions regarding armed conflict and human rights.
This included more than 30,000 Vietnamese civilians who had been tortured and murdered by
Pol Pot's forces. Thousands of Vietnamese were forcibly taken back across the border as slave
labor to work the rice paddies and work on building projects. A prime example for the
Vietnamese retaliation was the Ba Chuc Massacre when the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed the
entire population of over 3,000 people with only one woman surviving to tell the tale.
Even communist Vietnam with its own blood-stained history had seen enough and invaded Cambodia in
late 1978. In a declared display of communist fratricide China who supported Pol Pots
madness invaded Vietnam in February 1979 a month after Vietnam captured Phnom Penh on January
9. During the Cambodian genocide the bones of millions of people who died from malnutrition
overwork or inadequate health care joined those who were just executed filling up the mass
graves across the country. Under Pol Pot the state controlled all aspects of a person's life; money
private property jewelry gambling most reading material and religions were outlawed; agriculture
was collectivized. Children were taken from their homes and forced into the military and communist
indoctrination, the re-education camps and strict rules governed sexual relations, vocabulary, how
someone even spoke and clothing. These laws were laid down and renamed in the name of
the country Democratic Kampuchea. Throughout the 1980s the Khmer Rouge received arms from
China and political support from the United States, ironically enough, which opposed the
decade-long Vietnamese occupation but the Khmer Rouge's influence began to decrease following
a 1991 ceasefire agreement and the movement completely collapsed by the end of that decade.
In 1997 a Khmer Rouge splinter group captured Pol Pot and placed him under house arrest; he died
in his sleep in Anlong Veng village, Oddar Meanchey, on April 15 1998 at age 72 due to heart failure.
Despite the millions killed due to the tyrannical regime the United Nations backed Human Rights
Criminal Tribunal has convicted only a handful of Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity.
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