Khmer Rouge's Reign: Cambodia’s Untold Agony

Three days, told to walk for three days to evade the bombs and then they could return home, but the bombs never came, the walk continued, and what waited for them was a true horror. Leading up to the communist takeover, lasting from 1975-1979, was the formation of the Khmer Rouge in the 1950s. The Khmer Rouge was an assemblage of angry peasant farmers seeking salvation in communism. In the 1960s, Pol Pot became head of the Khmer Rouge and organized the overthrowal of Cambodia’s government, headed by Lon Nol. By 1975 they had complete control and began their regime of reforming Cambodia into a classless, agrarian, communist state by the name of New Kampuchea. To complete their reformation they acted out the Cambodian genocide, killing essentially all upper class and educated so as to glorify the Khmer race of hard workers. The Khmer Rouge regime over Cambodia in the second half of the 1970s is characterized by the persecution and

Genocide was one of the traits of the Khmer Rouge’s New Kampuchea, this was often seen in the use of prisons or more correctly referred to as “execution facilities.” Tuol Sleng, previously called S-21, was probably the most infamous of Khmer Rouge prisons, here 20,000 prisoners died and only seven were ever know to make it out alive. The largest massacre in Tuol Sleng was on May 27. 1978 and 582 were executed that day. An even gorier occurrence than a typical day at Tuol Sleng was during the January of 1979 when fleeing Khmer officials slit the throats of all remaining prisoners and left them chained to their cots, blood spilling out. At a typical execution in any of the “prisons”,