Forty years ago, on the 7th of January 1979, the Vietnamese army overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime. Between April 1975 and January 1979 about 1,5 to 2 million Cambodians died, a quarter of the population.
The anniversary is not actually celebrated. After all these years, talking about the Khmer Rouge is still controversial. This is partly because the genocide came ‘from within’. Almost every family has a feud that goes back to this dark history in the seventies.
How could this have happened?
The Marxist guerrilla movement was able to grow with support from North Vietnam. The Cambodian General Lon Nol, who came to power in 1970 after a coup, wanted to fight these communists and was backed by the United States – at the time involved in the Vietnam war. American bombings hit many civilians, who started to dislike the government and welcomed the Khmer Rouge soldiers when they marched into capital city Phnom Penh in 1975.
But euphoria soon turned into fear. You were in danger if you were considered to be ‘intellectual’. Being able to read, speaking foreign languages or even wearing glasses could be fatal.
In the documentary ‘Iron legs’, by filmmaker Vanna Hem, San Sovan explains how she escaped death.
“They asked me to write something”, she recalls. She is left-handed, but used her right hand and produced some barely readable words. She could walk out freely -being labeled ‘illiterate’.
Starvation and torture
Guerilla leader Pol Pot wanted an agrarian society, without external interference. People had to leave the cities and were forced to work on the field. Many died from starvation, exhaustion or sickness.
The regime was very suspicious and every possible enemy was tortured and killed. The ‘Tuol Sleng’ or ‘S21-prison’ in Phnom Penh, were these executions took place, gives a clear impression of this violence.