Читать книгу The Worst World Disasters of All Time - Kevin Baker - Страница 12

Khmer Rouge victims' skulls.

Date: 1975-1979.

Location: Cambodia.

Disaster Type: Genocide.

Fatalities: 2.2 million deaths.

Resulting Damage: 95% of Buddhist temples destroyed, alongside the inhuman political crimes.

Many people have heard about the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian militia who once followed an extreme communist regime, but few know a lot of details involving what these people actually did. The killing fields are perhaps their most dreadful legacy, and refer to both a geographical place and a period in history. If you visit Cambodia, a large number of fields may be pointed out to you as the killing fields, the locations where massacres happened.

The Khmer Rouge was an extremist group who came from the Vietnamese army, mostly from North Vietnam, who established themselves in Cambodia to bring about a new communist future for the country. It was formed in 1968 and by 1975 it ruled the country, until the group was finally driven out by Vietnamese forces after they had attempted to invade back into Vietnam. However, most of their political actions pale when compared with all of the inhuman brutality they were involved in.

Most of what the Khmer Rouge did when they grabbed power was find and arrest anyone who did not swear loyalty to their new regime or were seen as a potential threat. This included everyone from ethnic Vietnamese people, Chinese people, Thai, Christians, Buddhists, to many more groups. In all, over 2 million people were arrested, with the vast majority being killed in what would become one of the biggest genocides of modern times. A recent survey showed that based on the arrangement of tombs, the killing fields alone saw 1.3 million people killed by the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot, the then leader of the group, was sometimes referred to as Cambodia's Hitler. Some believe that over 2.2 million people ended up being killed by this group.

The judicial process when they were in power was fairly simple. There was no court of law; instead the government would issue two warnings for small crimes, and then the person was arrested and killed. Any type of political association or opinion that the Khmer did not approve of meant instant death. The goal was to ‘purify’ the population and remove any element that had any connection to the old regime or to foreign countries. Most of the executions were done using machetes, bamboo sticks or poison, and the dead were buried in mass graves, with the killing fields being by far the most populous ones.

The Khmer Rouge funded themselves using slavery and diamond trafficking. It was not a stable economy, and in just a few years, they collapsed due to a lack of funds. In a last ditch effort, they tried to invade part of Vietnam in order to gather more people to kill or trade into slavery, but they were driven back and forced to disband. In 1997, Cambodia enlisted the UN's help to set up a genocide tribunal, and in 2007, the most senior member of the group still alive, Nuon Chea, was sentenced to 35 years in jail for his involvement in the massacres.