Library > Geography & Travel > Asia

The Khmer Rouge

2003
The Khmer Rouge, a communist regime, led by Pol Pot, was the cause of nearly two million deaths in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge soldiers marched into Phnom Penh (the capital of Cambodia) and proudly established their new form of government. In the four years they were in control, they managed to convince all urban residents to trek the long and excruciating journey to the countryside where most met their deaths, including children. The Cambodian people were forced to leave the city in false pretense that they were leaving for something better. They couldn’t be farther form the truth. If you didn’t starve to death in these camps then you were personally killed by one of the Khmer soldiers. Most educational curricula these days require students to learn about the Holocaust or the mass killings in Rwanda, but they don’t touch on the subject of the mass genocide that occurred in Cambodia nearly thirty years ago.