Democratic Kampuchea
| 1975 – 1982 | |||||||||||
  Top: (1975 - 76)
Bottom: (1976 - 82)  Emblem
(1975–82) | |||||||||||
| Anthem: បទនគររាជ Nôkôr Réach "Majestic Kingdom" (1975–1976) ដប់ប្រាំពីរមេសាមហាជោគជ័យ Dâb Prămpir Mésa Môha Choŭkchoăy "Victorious Seventeenth of April" (1976–1982) | |||||||||||
 Location of Democratic Kampuchea | |||||||||||
| Capital | Phnom Penh | ||||||||||
| Official languages | Khmer | ||||||||||
| Religion | State atheism | ||||||||||
| Demonym(s) | Kampuchean • Cambodian | ||||||||||
| Government | Unitary one-party socialist republic under a totalitarian dictatorship (under a coalition government from 75 - 76)[1][2][3] | ||||||||||
| General Secretary | |||||||||||
• 1975 – 1979 | Pol Pot | ||||||||||
| Head of State | |||||||||||
• 1975 – 1976 | Norodom Sihanouk | ||||||||||
• 1976 – 1979 | Khieu Samphan | ||||||||||
| Prime Minister | |||||||||||
• 1975 – 1976 | Penn Nouth | ||||||||||
• 1976 | Khieu Samphan | ||||||||||
• 1976 – 1979 | Pol Pot | ||||||||||
| Legislature | Kampuchean People's Representative Assembly | ||||||||||
| Historical era | Cold War | ||||||||||
| 17 April 1975 | |||||||||||
• Proclamation | 15 January 1976 | ||||||||||
| 7 January 1979 | |||||||||||
• Establishment of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea | 22 June 1982 | ||||||||||
| Area | |||||||||||
| 181,035 km2 (69,898 sq mi) | |||||||||||
| Currency | None | ||||||||||
| Driving side | right | ||||||||||
| Calling code | 855 | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
| Today part of | Cambodia | ||||||||||
Democratic Kampuchea was the official name of Cambodia, or Kampuchea, from 1976 to January 1979. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge ruled the country. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979 and took over the government, Democratic Kampuchea became the People's Republic of Kampuchea.
Cambodian genocide
[change | change source]As many as 3,000,000 Cambodians (1⁄3 of the Cambodian population) died in the Cambodian genocide (Khmer: ហាយនភាពខ្មែរ / ការប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍ខ្មែរ) committed by Democratic Kampuchea's Khmer Rouge regime.[4] This was around 25% of the population: one in every four people.[5]
Killing fields
[change | change source]The Khmer Rouge massacred at least hundreds of thousands of people in the "killing fields," and buried them in mass graves to destroy evidence that could be used for proving their genocide.[4][6] They also forced city populations into the countryside to work in labor camps, where many died from starvation, overwork, and disease.[6]
End
[change | change source]In January 1979, communist Vietnam invaded Cambodia. They wanted to oust Pol Pot from power as his army had crossed the Cambodian–Vietnamese border to massacred Vietnamese civilians.[7] They removed the Khmer Rouge from power and propped up another pro-Vietnamese communist dictatorship, which was not recognized by many UN members.[7] Hundreds of thousands of survivors fled to refugee camps in Thailand,[8]: 45 Many of whom immigrated to the United States afterwards.
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Trials
[change | change source]In 2006, the United Nations and the Cambodian government established a special court called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). This court has tried some former Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity.[6]
Kaing Guek Eav – also known as Comrade Duch – was the first to be tried before the ECCC. Eav was the head of Security Prison 21 during the genocide. The court found him guilty of crimes against humanity and breaking the Geneva Conventions of 1949.[9] He was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.[10]
In 2011, the ECCC convicted two top Khmer Rouge officials, Noun Chea and Khieu Samphan, for crimes against humanity, genocide, and breaking the Geneva Conventions.[10]
Cambodian genocide denial
[change | change source]Academia
[change | change source]
On the debate about the Cambodian genocide, American political scientist Donald W. Beachler remarked,[11]
Many of those who had been opponents of U.S. military actions in Vietnam and Cambodia feared that the tales of murder and deprivation under the Khmer Rouge regime would validate the claims of those who had supported U.S. government actions aimed at halting the spread of communism. Conservatives pointed to the actions of the Khmer Rouge as proof of the inherent evils of communism and evidence that the U.S. had been right to fight its long war against communists in Southeast Asia.
Despite the abundance of verified testimonies from Cambodian refugees and foreign witnesses, Cambodian genocide denial within academia was widespread in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Australia etc.[12][13]
Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman
[change | change source]With the transnational academic-cultural network tied to their prominence in Western academia, American scholars Noam Chomsky (1928 – ) and Edward S. Herman (1925 – 2017) published several books discrediting the survivors, objecting to the genocide classification and the confirmed death toll of the Cambodian genocide,[14] which influenced hundreds of millions worldwide into doing the same.[14]
Gareth Porter
[change | change source]In 1976, American historian Gareth Porter (1942 – ) co-authored the book Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution with George Hildebrand in which he denied that one million Cambodians had already been killed by the Khmer Rouge. On May 3, 1977, Porter repeated his denial at the Solarz hearing in the U.S. Congress.[15]
Historians have been critical of Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution. Particularly, historian Bruce Sharp conducted an in-depth research on the citations of that book. Of the 50 citations in a chapter of that book, 33 were traced to the state propaganda of the Khmer Rouge, while 6 from that of the CCP,[16] which served as a proof of their confirmation bias and intellectual dishonesty.[16]
Recalling the encounter later in his life, Solarz called Porter's Cambodian genocide denial "cowardly and contemptible," comparing him to those who denied the Holocaust.[17]: 40
Samir Amin
[change | change source]Egyptian-French economist Samir Amin had been a good friend of Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan since they were studying in France in the Cold War's early years.[18] When the Cambodian genocide was exposed, Amin continued to hail the Khmer Rouge as the most superior communist model.[19] When asked again about the Cambodian genocide in 1986, Amin retorted with an inversion of reality by blaming the "American imperialists," Vietnamese communists and Lon Nol for the suffering of the Cambodians.[20]
Responses
[change | change source]François Ponchaud
[change | change source]François Ponchaud (1939 – ) is a French priest who lived in Cambodia during the genocide. As a witness, he documented the genocide in his book Cambodge Année Zéro (Cambodia: Year Zero), which attracted biased criticism from Noam Chomsky and Gareth Porter who denied the genocide. In response, Ponchaud called out their intellectual dishonesty,
They say there have been no massacres [...] blame for the tragedy of the Khmer people on the American bombings. [...] For them, refugees are not a valid source [. ...] if something seems impossible to their personal logic, then it doesn't exist. Their only sources for evaluation are deliberately chosen official statements. Where is that critical approach which they accuse others of not having?
Sophal Ear
[change | change source]Cambodian-American historian Sophal Ear satirically referred to the biased narrative of pro-Khmer Rouge Western academic leftists as the Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia (STAV),[21]
[They] hoped for, more than anything, a socialist success story with all the romantic ingredients of peasants, fighting imperialism, and revolution.
William Shawcross
[change | change source]British journalist William Shawcross criticized the STAV academics as well. His criticism was endorsed by human rights activist David Hawk who pointed out that
Western governments were indifferent to the Cambodian genocide due to the influence of anti-war academics on the American left who obfuscated Khmer Rouge behavior, denigrated the post-1975 refugee reports, and denounced the journalists who got those stories.
Jakob Guhl
[change | change source]Jakob Guhl, the Senior Manager, Policy and Research of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), said that Cambodian genocide denial among Western academic leftists was rooted in their dogmatic rejection of liberal democracy,[22] presumption of "moral superiority" of anti-capitalist regimes and division of political actors into binary categories (oppressors vs. oppressed) to justify "anti-hierarchical aggression" towards hypothetical oppressors, who are dehumanized to have their suffering denied.[22]
References
[change | change source]- ↑ Jackson, Karl D. (1989). Cambodia, 1975–1978: Rendezvous with Death. Princeton University Press. p. 219. ISBN 0-691-02541-X.
- ↑ "Khmer Rouge's Slaughter in Cambodia Is Ruled a Genocide". The New York Times. 15 November 2018. Archived from the original on 13 April 2019. Retrieved 13 April 2019.
- ↑ Kiernan, B. (2004) How Pol Pot came to Power. New Haven: Yale University Press, p. xix
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Khmer Rouge". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
- ↑
- Heuveline 2001, pp. 102–105: "As best as can now be estimated, over two million Cambodians died during the 1970s because of the political events of the decade, the vast majority of them during the mere four years of the 'Khmer Rouge' regime. This number of deaths is even more staggering when related to the size of the Cambodian population, then less than eight million. ... Subsequent reevaluations of the demographic data situated the death toll for the [civil war] in the order of 300,000 or less."
- Kiernan 2003b, pp. 586–587: "We may safely conclude, from known pre- and post-genocide population figures and from professional demographic calculations, that the 1975–79 death toll was between 1.671 and 1.871 million people, 21 to 24 percent of Cambodia's 1975 population."
- Sullivan, Meg (16 April 2015). "UCLA demographer produces best estimate yet of Cambodia's death toll under Pol Pot". UCLA. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
- Tyner, James A.; Molana, Hanieh Haji (1 March 2020). "Ideologies of Khmer Rouge Family Policy: Contextualizing Sexual and Gender-Based Violence during the Cambodian Genocide". Genocide Studies International. 13 (2): 168–189. doi:10.3138/gsi.13.2.03. ISSN 2291-1847. S2CID 216505042. Archived from the original on 9 April 2023. Retrieved 31 May 2022.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Khmer Rouge leader admits crimes
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Vietnam's forgotten Cambodian war". BBC News. 2014-09-14. Retrieved 2024-10-26.
- ↑ Caldwell, Malcolm. 1975. "Cambodia: Rationale for a Rural Policy." pp. 26–103 in Malcolm Caldwell’s South East Asia, edited by B. Hering and E. Utrecht. Townsville, Australia: Committee of South-East Asian Studies, James Cook University of North Queensland.
- ↑ Rashid, Norul Mohamed. "Judgment of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) against Kaing Guek Eav alias Duch (2010)". United Nations and the Rule of Law. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 "The Extraordinary Chambers". Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
- ↑ Beachler, Donald W. (2009) "Arguing about Cambodia: Genocide and Political Interest" Holocaust and Genocide Studies 23(2):214–38.
- ↑ Ear, Sophal (May 1995). The Khmer Rouge Canon 1975–1979: The Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia (PDF) (BA thesis). Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 August 2014. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
- ↑ Sharp, Bruce (2023) [2003]. "Averaging Wrong Answers: Noam Chomsky and the Cambodian Controversy". Mekong Network. Retrieved 21 July 2023.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1
- "Chomsky and the Khmer Rouge". The New York Times. 1988. Retrieved December 18, 2024.
- Brinkley, Joel (2011). Cambodia's Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land. Public Affairs. pp. 48–49.
Khmer Rouge apologists easily outnumbered those who believed a tragedy was under way. These people had been vociferous opponents of the Vietnam War [. ...] whatever the US government had to say now was per force a lie [. ...One of the deniers Gareth] Porter said simply that it was 'a myth that between one million and two million Cambodians have been victims of a regime led by genocidal maniacs [. ...] A few weeks earlier Noam Chomsky [...] offered an article in the Nation that conflated the American bombing and the Khmer Rouge horrors [. ...] He cited 'highly qualified specialists' [...] concluded that executions numbered at most in the thousands.'
- Smith, Harrison (November 16, 2017). "Edward S. Herman, media critic who co-wrote 'Manufacturing Consent,' dies at 92". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 18, 2024.
Dr. Herman was championed by many on the left [...] but his writings on genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda were criticized for [...] belittling the testimonies of survivors.
- Blackwell, Matthew (July 15, 2018). "Devastation and Denial: Cambodia and the Academic Left". Quillette. Retrieved December 18, 2024.
Amazingly, even as Cambodia disintegrated, the Khmer Rouge benefitted from unsolicited apologetics from intellectuals at the West's august universities.
- ↑ Human Rights in Cambodia." Hearing Before the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, 95th Congress, 1st Session. 1977 May 3. Also available via Google Books.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Cite error: The named reference
MKwas used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page). - ↑ Thompson, Larry Clinton. 2010. Refugee Workers in the Indochina Exodus, 1975–1982. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland.
- ↑ "Specters of Dependency: Hou Yuon and the Origins of Cambodia's Marxist Vision (1955–1975) | Cross-Currents". cross-currents.berkeley.edu. Archived from the original on 25 November 2020. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
- ↑ Jackson, Karl (2014). Cambodia, 1975–1978: Rendezvous with Death. Princeton University Press. p. 246. ISBN 9781400851706.
- ↑ Gough, Kathleen (Spring 1986). "Roots of the Pol Pot Regime in Kampuchea". Contemporary Marxism (12/13).
- ↑ Ear, Sophal (May 1995). The Khmer Rouge Canon 1975–1979: The Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia (PDF) (BA thesis). Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 August 2014. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 Guhl, Jakob (January 8, 2025). "Left Wing Extremism". Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). Retrieved January 14, 2025.
[H]igh-profile far-left writers [...] downplayed the severity of the Holodomor [...] Decades later [...] Noam Chomsky argued that reports based on refugee testimony about the Cambodian genocide [...] were exaggerated propaganda [. ...] antisemitism on the far-left has a long history, including the persecution [...] against Soviet Jews [...] targeting Jewish institutions [. ...] prevalence of [...] conspiracy mentality provide two major openings to antisemitism.