Word: khmers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Simultaneously, the Khmer Rouge were planning the steps necessary for a radical shift to an agrarian society. During the Khmer Rouge's nascent days, the movement's leader, Pol Pot, had grown to admire the way the tribes on the outskirts of Cambodia's jungles lived, free of Buddhism, money or education, and now he wanted to foist the same philosophy on the entire nation. Pol Pot envisioned a Cambodia absent of any social institutions like banks or religions or any modern technology. He sought to triple agricultural production in a year, absent the manpower or means necessary...
...deadly arrogance. With the cities emptied and the population under Khmer Rouge control, Pol Pot's means of implementation was to begin exterminating anyone who didn't fit this new ideal. He declared that he was turning Cambodia - now renamed the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea - back to "Year Zero," and intellectuals, businessmen, Buddhists and foreigners were all purged. "What is rotten must be removed," read a popular Khmer Rouge slogan at the time, and remove they did, often by execution but sometimes simply by working people to death in the fields...
...impossible to tally the total number dead with any precision, but it is generally assumed that the Khmer Rouge killed between one million and two million people during their reign. Thousands more died of malnutrition or disease, and the upper classes of Cambodian society were all but wiped out. The killing continued unabated until Vietnamese troops, tired of border skirmishes with the Khmer Rouge, invaded in 1979 and sent the Khmer Rouge back to the jungles...
...continued to lead the Khmer Rouge as an insurgent movement until 1997, when he was arrested and sentenced to house arrest by his own followers after killing one of his closest advisers. He died in 1998 in a tiny jungle village, never having faced charges...
...five leaders of the Khmer Rouge will face charges in a tribunal backed by the United Nations. The first, Kaing Guek Eav - known better by his nom de guerre, Duch - ran the Tuol Sleng prison camp in Phnom Penh, where out of 17,000 Cambodians who were imprisoned, fewer than 20 survived. Pol Pot's second-in-command, Nuon Chea, will also face charges, as well as the Khmer Rouge's former foreign minister and head of state...