Cambodia Genocide

For the last three decades, Cambodia has been consumed by warfare, genocide, slave labor, forced marches, hunger, disease, as well as civil conflict. Approximately the size of Missouri, surrounded by Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, Cambodia had a population of possibly 7 to 8 million in 1975 when the ominous Khmer Rouge guerrillas swept into Phnom Penh and began what they called the purification campaign which was "the centerpiece of their extremist agrarian revolution." Four years later, the Khmer Rouge was pushed back into the jungle, leaving behind their legacy: 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians dead in what would become known to the world as "the Killing Fields." Twenty percent of the population wipe out. In America that would be 50 to 60 million people.

Most people say that in regards to what occurred in Cambodia cannot be called a genocide because basically, it was Khmers killing other Khmers, not someone trying to destroy a different "national, racial, ethnical or religious group" which is how global law defines genocide.

To make such distinctions, however, is sometimes to relinquish common sense. After all, the Khmer Rouge set out to wipe out an entire culture, which was Cambodia's religion, Theravada Buddhism. And this may help explain why, over the years, the law has proved so poor a guide to the reality of human slaughter. For, whether you call the mass killing in Cambodia a genocide or simply a crime against humanity, it was the same by either name. It was a vindication of evil.

One might rationally pick Cambodia as a example for the law's weakness in dealing with such crimes. International law, after all depends for its accuracy on the willingness of the world's Nation-States to abide by and enforce it. In Cambodia's case most Nation-States expressed shock and horror and did nothing. Still after the Vietnamese Army pushed the Khmer Rouge out of power in 1979, ended the genocide, were welcomed as liberators, and installed a pro-Hanoi government in Phnom Penh, Western nations saw to it that Cambodia's seat at the United Nations continued to be occupied for several years by those very same Khmer Rouge.

For the human record, let us examine exactly what the Khmer Rouge

did to the Cambodian population. Their first act, within hours of military

victory, was to kidnap it, drove everyone out of cities and towns into work camps deep in the countryside. All villages that touched on roads were likewise emptied. Cambodia, in fact, was transformed into one giant forced labor camp under the fist of Angka, "the organization on high."

The Khmer Rouge had actively sealed off the country. The world could not look in it and see the true figure of the horrors that would soon occur. Led by Pol Pot, their Paris educated, Maoist-influenced "Brother Number One," the new rulers progressed to entirely smash to smithereens the three underpinnings of Cambodian society the family, the Buddhist religion, and the village. In arduous migrations, people were marched to sites as much as possible from their home villages. Children were separated from parents and placed in youth groups, where they were indoctrinated to inform on their parents and other adults for any infractions of Angka's severe rules. Marriage was prohibited except when arranged by Angka. The schools were shuttered, currency eliminated, factories deserted. Newspapers ceased to exist. Radio sets were taken away. Everything that allowed access to the outside world was taken from each and every Cambodia.

As for religion, Buddhist temples were ruined or closed. Of the sixty thousand Buddhist monks that lived only